Within the territory of the Prosen Empire, Eagle’s Nest, the headquarters of Emperor Reinhard.
At the airport near Eagle’s Nest, a Junkers Ju 52 tri-motor airplane elegantly landed. After the plane came to a stop, a jeep followed by a medium-sized truck carrying a squad of soldiers drove up to the aircraft.
Giles stepped out of the airplane and glanced at the deserted airport, his brow slightly furrowed.
The welcoming major said at that moment, “Your Majesty is waiting for you at Eagle’s Nest. Due to the urgency of military affairs, no one else has been arranged to receive you besides the guards.”
“Understood,” Giles descended the gangway and got into the jeep. His aide-de-camp Feliz took the seat of the co-driver directly.
Seeing this, the welcoming major stood directly on the step outside the truck’s door, holding onto the door, and then made a gesture, “Let’s go.”
The jeep driver pressed the gas pedal, and the motorcade left the airport, heading for Eagle’s Nest along the winding mountain road.
On the way, they passed by a ruin, and Giles, curious, asked, “What’s the story with the ruin?”
Then he realized that due to his aide-de-camp’s actions, the available person to answer this question had taken the guard’s vehicle.
Giles could only close his mouth.
A moment later, the car drove into a tunnel on the mountainside and continued to the deepest part, entering a large electric elevator.
Accompanied by the sound of the electric motor, the elevator began to ascend.
This elevator seemed to have been built solely to boast of the Prosen Empire’s achievements in mechanics and electrical power; it could lift the weight of a jeep and a truck, plus seventeen adults all at once.
When the elevator stopped, the welcoming major made a gesture, “If you please.”
The elevator doors opened, and Giles stepped into the passageway of Eagle’s Nest, making his way to the Emperor’s office with ease. At the entrance to the office, Giles was just about to hand over his sidearm to the secretary, but the secretary said, “His Majesty said you may carry your sidearm into the office.”
Giles hesitated for a moment, then took off his sidearm with the holster anyway, “I can carry my sidearm in, but it’s not required, is it?”
The secretary bowed, “Then I shall keep it for you.”
After taking the sidearm, the secretary pressed a button on the desk, and the doors to the office automatically opened.
This fortress, seemingly to boast of Prosen’s technological prowess, had automated doors driven by machinery everywhere.
Prosen Emperor Reinhard stood in front of a massive sand table, staring at the entire battlefield as if he were a colossal god in control of everything.
Hearing the door open, Reinhard, without turning his head, directly questioned, “I hear you stopped the attack and began digging works?”
“Yes, I discovered that our armored forces are not suited for such an offensive.”
Reinhard: “Nonsense! In Carolingian, our armored forces broke through the fortified regions! Back then, our forces still had many Type 1 and Type 2 tanks!”
“Now our forces also have many Type 1 and Type 2 tanks. In Carolingian, we indeed achieved a glorious victory, but here, after attacking for a day, I achieved nothing but the loss of several hundred casualties and seventy tanks!”
Giles, neither servile nor overbearing, continued, “Your Majesty! I understand that destroying the symbol of the enemy’s will to resist has decisive significance, and war indeed is an extension of politics, but in the end, war is not politics!
“I know you pursue the gains of having the Asgard Knights, which symbolize your ideals, destroy the enemy’s imperial iron wall, but the fact that our Armored Division is not suited for attacking fortified regions is ironclad!
“In Carolingian, our Armored Division was mainly responsible for encircling the enemy and cutting off their logistics. To present the Armored Division in front of the enemy entrenched along the river is a bad idea!”
Faced with Giles’s forceful statement, Reinhard looked at the sky: “You… make sense. That iron wall of Ante’s, is it really that formidable? It made Zigfried, whose name is celebrated alongside our ancient heroes, give up in just one day?”
Giles: “I’m named alongside heroes because my father named me after a hero. It’s not a coincidence, nor is it any ‘Divine Power’ bestowed. It’s my father’s heartfelt wish.”
“But under the propaganda, it’s no longer the case. Zig, you must defeat your enemy!” Reinhard stepped forward three paces, grabbing Giles’s shoulder, “Understand?”
“That’s why I’ve come to earnestly explain the pros and cons to you! We need the engineering corps for earthworks, to cope with the enemy who excels at using artillery! As long as we render the arcs drawn by their artillery in the sky ineffective, we can approach the river.
Then, crossing it in smoke or using concealed 88 guns to destroy the enemy’s armored trains will be as easy as flipping one’s hand!” said Giles.
The Emperor released Giles’s shoulder and walked up to the map: “What about the armored forces, then? The armored forces can’t just travel to the front through tunnels, can they?”
Giles: “We could move the armored forces to the north to join the offensive there. Organization-wise, both the southern and northern pincers are troops of the Central Army Group, so such a move wouldn’t be particularly troublesome.”
“But what about the distance?” Reinhard looked at his classmate from military academy, “Ante is not Carolingian. In Carolingian, such a move would be easy, just a matter of transporting them by train. But in Ante… without railroad transportation, by the time they reach the north, most of the Armored Division will have broken down, with no more than thirty tanks able to move.”
The Emperor returned to the map: “As for using the railroad, look at Ante’s railroad lines. All of them are radial, designed precisely for his troops to be continuously sent from the rear to the front. From the perspective of transporting reserve troops to the front line, their railways are extremely efficient!”
Giles: “Not to worry. Once our infantry and engineers break through the defenses and capture Shostka, the armored forces will still have a chance to gallop across the plains. Beyond the Duva River, it will all be open land to Ye Fort.”
Reinhard, looking at the map in silence for a while, asked, “How long do you estimate it will take to break through the Duva River and capture Shostka?”
“Twenty days. That’s a conservative estimate. In fact, before I took off, the engineers’ latest report stated that the digging work would almost reach the riverbank in about ten days, after which we can consider building a pontoon bridge under smoke cover.”
Reinhard glanced at the calendar: “Hmm, acceptable. A breakthrough in 20 days is manageable.”
The Emperor came in front of Giles: “I ask you, can we publicly claim that you will break through the enemy’s last hope of a defense line within 20 days?”
Giles nodded: “No problem at all. And then, my armored army will gallop across Ante’s fields.”
The Emperor nodded: “Good! Then let’s do it as you say. Break through the Duva River and capture Shostka on October 12th!”
————
In the year 914 of Jules, on September 23rd, Shostka.
Early in the morning, Wang Zhong arrived at the division’s bunker headquarters and found only a few staff members on duty; the night shift’s Popov was nowhere to be seen.
“What’s going on? Where’s the Bishop?”
“He had bad luck this morning and got diarrhea,” a staff member said.
Wang Zhong sighed, knowing that nobody could blame a person for having diarrhea, and it certainly couldn’t be allowed in the division’s bunker—the smell would have been too much of a test.
He went to the observation post and picked up the binoculars to take a look at the opposite riverbank, but as expected, he couldn’t see anything.
Then, he casually changed his viewing angle.
This time he actually spotted the enemy!
All day yesterday, the enemy didn’t appear within the range he could highlight; he almost suspected they had suddenly “gone offline.”
Now, they finally appeared!
Wang Zhong quickly checked what the enemy was doing and discovered they were digging trenches!
Trench digging???
Because in various World War II games, depictions of trench digging are rare, and most of the time it’s soldier against soldier, tank against tank, locked in battle.
The last time he saw large-scale trench digging was in the movie “The Great Battle,” where our forces, with inferior equipment, used trench digging to approach enemy positions with superior firepower.
The movie even included a classic scene shot from a first-person perspective that simulated moving through trenches.
He remembered the dialogue in the movie: “The trenches must be dug to within 50 meters of the enemy’s position!”
Could the enemy be thinking of using this same tactic?
So, you’re not using your tanks anymore?
Wang Zhong suddenly realized that seeing the enemy meant he couldn’t just ignore them. Regardless of what the enemy was doing, the thing to do was to start bombing.
So he said to the staff member on duty, “Get in touch with the artillery battalion! The enemy is engaged in trench digging, implement fire plan one, open fire!”
Five minutes later, artillery shells fell.
Hearing the sound of the artillery, Pavlov and Popov both hurried to the division command post.
Pavlov: “What happened?”
Wang Zhong: “The enemy was advancing their trench digging, I spotted it, so I ordered a round of bombardment.”
Pavlov and Popov quickly grabbed binoculars and ran to the observation post to look out.
“There really is trench digging, and that mound of earth looks obviously like it was dug out. I’m quite sure that wasn’t there yesterday,” Pavlov put down the binoculars. “I suggest we get Colonel Eugene to take a look at it, he comes from a mining background, and has basically overseen the construction of all our fortifications.”
————
Colonel Eugene observed solemnly for half an hour before he put down the binoculars and said to Wang Zhong, “It’s definitely trench digging.”
Wang Zhong thought to himself, I used a cheat to see that, tell me something I don’t know.
Eugene continued, “The bombardment this morning doesn’t seem to have done much, mainly because our artillery can’t ensure the shells fall into the trenches. Plus, trenches are generally W-shaped, so even if a shell falls into one, it can only kill the people in that section of the trench.”
Wang Zhong: “So the bombardment is useless?”
“It has some use, the enemy can’t work when we’re bombarding. As long as we have enough artillery to keep bombarding, the enemy can’t possibly advance.”
Wang Zhong’s face crumpled.
Eugene understood immediately, “We can’t keep bombarding, can we?”
“Correct,” Wang Zhong nodded, it was time to think of a strategy.
He started pacing in the bunker.
Popov even tried to console him, “It’s not like the moment they break through that we’re inevitably going to fall. Our plan also accounts for the possibility that the enemy successfully crosses the river and then we battle them on the beachhead.”
Wang Zhong pursed his lips.
Suddenly, he asked Colonel Eugene, “How long do you estimate it will take the enemy to dig through?”
Eugene: “When we were building the fortifications on the opposite bridgehead, I tested the soil on the western bank. I estimate it will take fifteen days.”
Wang Zhong turned to ask Pavlov, “The airfield has a meteorological unit, right? What’s the latest weather forecast? How soon will it rain?”
Pavlov: “According to the forecast, it will be another 20 days.”
Wang Zhong slapped his thigh, “We should inform the commander on the other side of this situation! Let him know he’s running out of time!”