Originally, when the attacking soldiers found no resistance to their charge, they thought that the enemy had already been crippled by the repeated shelling and could not possibly put up any effective resistance.
So, they all let their guard down, thinking that they could just charge up and finish off Hamid's nest with a single charge.
But who would have thought that just when they thought the battle would be won. Suddenly, a massive barrage of machine gun fire erupted from the rocky crevices of the high ground!
The ubiquitous sound of gunfire quickly covered the entire hillside, and the soldiers at the front fell like rows and rows of wheat.
The soldiers at the back were all blinded!
In their haste, they raised their guns and tried to return fire, but there was not a shadow of the enemy in sight!
The only thing they could see were the tongues of fire coming out of the cracks in the rocks everywhere.
And every time they saw the tongues of fire coming out, a group of men would fall to the ground with the tongues of fire coming out.
In less than a minute, the attackers had lost at least 500 or 600 soldiers.
Some soldiers subconsciously returned fire in the direction of the tongues of fire, but their weapons had no real effect on Hamid's permanent fortifications.
At this point, the frontline commander shouted for the soldiers to find cover as soon as possible.
But the most damaging thing was that Hamid had long ago had all the places where he could hide on the sloping hillside treated. Former potholes were filled in, former boulders were blasted to pieces.
All in all, the thousands of men were now on the slope of the hill, unable to find any cover from bullets!
And Hamid's troops were still inside the permanent fortifications. Frantic return fire!
His troops were heavily armed with Russian-made weapons, with multiple 7.62mm, air-cooled Russian PK general purpose machine guns in each permanent fortification, and a handful of 12.7mm anti-aircraft heavy machine guns.
The former had a fast rate of fire and wide fire coverage, and was very lethal to ordinary soldiers after forming a crossfire network from multiple angles and multiple machine guns.
The latter had a slow rate of fire, but was so powerful that a single shot could penetrate the bodies of several soldiers, and even more ruthlessly, when there were many people, the penetrating ability of this weapon far exceeded that of ordinary machine guns.
The combination of these two weapons made them invincible in this kind of highland battle, plus the enemy had no place to hide, so they were completely passive.
There was a huge difference in firepower between the enemy, who had to charge and who, having made the mistake of being light on their feet, were not carrying heavy equipment.
And the greater disparity was that the attacking troops were simply out of harm's way and were fighting bullets entirely with their bodies.
Unlike Hamid's soldiers, they were hidden in permanent fortifications made of rock and concrete. The front was reinforced with steel plates and covered with a layer of mud, so that bullets hit them like mosquitoes bite elephants, with no effect whatsoever.
Their commander in front of the line. Seeing that more and more soldiers were falling around him, he realised that the other side had prepared for the attack and that it was impossible to attack with such force, so he immediately shouted: "Retreat! All retreat behind the armoured vehicles!"