Chapter 1502: Chapter 1419: True Rebellion

“An emperor like this isn’t worth our loyalty!” said a young Qin Country officer angrily in the trench.

His troops endured hunger, fighting the powerful Tang People for such a long time, sustaining heavy casualties, without timely reinforcements.

Retreating all the way to Shahun, they had transformed from a respectable mechanized unit into a pitiful light infantry.

Their weapons had devolved from tanks and armored vehicles to armored vehicles and cars, then to cars and motorcycles, and finally into a mixed jumble of various things.

During the time at Wangdu, they lost all their tanks. The replacement soldiers hadn’t even operated a tank, and their equipment consisted of bicycles and civilian cars.

Those cars, without any off-road capability, were abandoned once they got stuck in the mud, and those discarded civilian cars carried all sorts of their ammunition and supplies.

Later, they had few cars left, so everyone had to walk, and he, the commander of the armored regiment, could only lead a group of light infantry to continue fighting.

Ironically, he had studied abroad; he spent two whole years in Tang Country learning armored troops tactics, making him a high-tech officer who understood modern warfare.

But because he had been to Great Tang, after the declaration of war on Tang Country, he was visibly marginalized to the edges of the military, only to be promoted quickly due to the rapid defeats and officer shortages.

“Exactly! Shortages in food and pay would be one thing, but no weapons? And what sort of recruits are these? 60-year-old men and 16-year-old kids… How is this a fight?” Another young officer agreed dejectedly.

He was also an officer who studied in the Tang Empire, but he specialized in communication equipment, which was now mostly jammed, leaving him, the communication officer, effectively jobless.

Another officer in the command post, not particularly old, probably only around 40, was their main officer, the division commander of this unit.

He, too, was once an exchange student to the Tang Empire, and this was another reason they gathered together.

Were it not for the substantial losses at the front lines and the clear shortage of officers, Qin Country would not tolerate so many officers with connections to the Tang Empire gathering together.

But there was no choice; due to being initially sidelined, these officers who once studied in the Tang Empire were left in relatively insignificant second-line troops, unaffected by the frontline defeats.

As a result, due to the lack of officers, they had to employ these young officers, suddenly granting them considerable basic command authority over numerous troops.

These officers would’ve been fine if nothing went wrong, but with internal issues within the Qin Army itself, these young officers, who had seen the world in Great Tang, began to develop their own thoughts: should they continue to fight for such a degenerate and corrupt country?

Loyalty is a precious quality, but if the people above have first abandoned loyalty, isn’t it too worthless for those abandoned to remain loyal?

“Look at what they gave me as a tank!” The armored regiment commander who first spoke up looked at his tank with disdain; the newly supplemented tanks could hardly be called tanks.

The side and rear armor had been removed, replaced only by ordinary steel plates. These steel plates barely protected against shell fragments and distant rifle fire, just a little better than being unshielded.

As for the roof… it was simply removed. It was said to facilitate crew embarkation and disembarkation, but in reality, it was a complete surrender, even saving the steps for the roof and hatch.

The thickness of the front armor wasn’t even 30mm, regressing to protection levels from a decade ago. To mount a large-caliber cannon and prevent rollovers, this tank even had its turret design removed.

That’s right… this thing was almost like a tank destroyer with its armor abandoned, without a roof—much like a Panzer IV tank destroyer. The problem was, this thing’s tank gun was even worse than the Panzer IV tank destroyer.

Due to time constraints and simplified manufacturing processes, this tank’s cannon used a 75mm caliber gun with low chamber pressure, a bent trajectory, and armor-piercing capabilities that were pitiful.

Sending soldiers to the front line with this thing was almost like not giving them guns. In combat, this “new type” of tank couldn’t even penetrate the armor of the Tang Army’s tanks at a distance of 300 meters…

Surprise attacks and ambushes were futile, so its only purpose was to deplete the Tang Army’s ammunition, making Tang Army aircraft launch rockets or strafing with machine cannons to destroy it…

The Qin Army’s weapons were now a bewildering variety to the extreme, including poorly replicated rocket launchers, rifles, submachine guns, and even some peculiar experimental gadgets.

Some weapons hadn’t been mass-produced, such as anti-aircraft guns modified using Qin Army tank chassis. Those things had almost no spare parts, and once damaged, they were simply discarded without a chance for repair.

The ammunition hoarded at the Western Pass wasn’t entirely withdrawn to Shahun due to transport limitations, so the Qin Army set it on fire to prevent enemy acquisition. Therefore, many troops were now low on ammunition, complicating combat.

Inspired by the defection of the 93rd army, many troops started making moves because besides soldiers, numerous mid- to high-level Qin Country officers were thinking of their futures.

They were certainly smarter and more assertive than the soldiers below. They thought much more about rebellion than the soldiers did, and evidently, more thoroughly.

“Division Commander! How about we just defect directly! Lead the troops to break through Shahun’s defenses from behind and surrender to the Tang Army!” The officer in charge of communications looked at his superior, posing a highly sensitive question.

“We aren’t oblivious to the situation over in Tang Country; it’s mainly the big landlords and nobility who suffer. For people like us, life isn’t much different from now,” the armored regiment commander recalled his scraps, gritting his teeth to add fuel to his superior’s fire.

“If we leave… all those classmates who studied abroad with us… will be doomed.” The division commander hesitated because their special status meant that if anything went wrong, officers with similar backgrounds would be implicated.

“Division Commander! We can’t worry that much anymore! If we don’t act, the soldiers below, driven mad by hunger, will get us killed!” His two subordinates stood up to persuade, implying that if the division commander didn’t agree, they might just act on their own.