stonecrandall Chapter 503
Chapter 503
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17th Infantry Division of the First Army was stationed in the Sedan area. This division had a total of 21,000 troops, while the French army had a total strength of nearly 450,000 people on their side, with a gap of more than 20 times!
Such a huge gap allowed the Gauls to attack them from all directions, which put the German defense pressure on them very huge!
Dai Gaole knew very well that if his troops could not open up the passage to the north within five days, then the coalition forces surrounded in the Bastogne area would probably be completely destroyed!
At that time, even if he successfully captured the Sedan area and broke through the German encirclement, it would be meaningless. After all, the purpose of breaking through the encirclement was to rescue the surrounded friendly forces, and once the friendly forces were wiped out, it would be useless to break through the encirclement!
Therefore, after determining the strength of the German army, he immediately took advantage of his large number of people and began to launch a fierce attack on the German positions!
Dai Gaole had more than 1,000 artillery pieces in his hands. He used these artillery pieces to launch a fierce bombardment on the German positions.
Although the Germans had dug trenches and built anti-gun holes and bunkers on the positions before the arrival of the Gallic army, the bombardment of the Gallic army was too intensive, which caused the Germans to suffer heavy losses in the French bombardment even with the protection of trenches and anti-gun holes!
Artillery is the king of war in this era and in later generations. This kind of thing has been the main weapon for killing in all previous wars. Most of the soldiers who fell on the battlefield died under the enemy’s guns!
Boom boom boom!
The sky-covering artillery fire and deafening explosions rang out throughout the German positions. The air waves of the exploding shells and the flying shrapnel turned the German positions into a Shura purgatory!
From a distance, the entire German position was completely shrouded in a sea of fire and smoke. This doomsday-like scene shocked the French soldiers!
“With such fierce artillery fire, even if the German army is a rat hiding underground, they will be shocked to death by the shells, right?”
The Gauls watched all this in fear, but secretly rejoiced.
With the advancement of science and technology, the lethality of weapons that humans can make has become more and more terrifying.
A few decades ago, the shells of various countries were basically solid bullets, and what they fired were the kind of iron lumps that relied on kinetic energy to kill the enemy, or scattered shells like those from shotguns.
This kind of artillery has relatively small power and a small killing range. Although the power of shotguns is extraordinary, its range is relatively long and there are many restrictions on combat.
However, with the birth of shrapnel shells, the power of human artillery has become more and more terrifying. During World War I, howitzers and large-caliber mortars of various countries began to come out. This kind of artillery is simply the god of death for infantry!
Once he If they were hit by a covering attack from a howitzer, there would basically be a pile of corpses left, and not a single one would be left alive!
The birth of large-caliber mortars meant that even if they hid in trenches, they could not escape the fate of being bombarded by the enemy. The nearly vertical trajectory of mortar shells could easily fall vertically from the air and smash into the trenches, blowing shit out of them hiding in the trenches!
Therefore, artillery has gradually become a nightmare for infantrymen in modern times!
The Gallic soldiers were quite thankful that such bombardment happened to the enemy, not to themselves. If they were subjected to such a fierce bombardment, they would probably become cannon fodder, right?
“”Haha, Hans is dead!”
Seeing that their artillerymen were firing large numbers of shells at the German positions as if they were free of charge, the Gallic soldiers were gloating! With such a fierce bombardment, not to mention humans, even the rats underground would be killed. No living creature could survive under such a fierce bombardment!
Seeing that their artillery fire was so fierce that it shook Germany to the ground, Dai Gaole nodded with satisfaction:”Let the infantry get ready. Once the shelling stops, they must immediately rush to the enemy’s position!”
He began to think in his mind that after taking the district, his next step would be to cross the Meuse River.
After crossing the Meuse River, they would still be one or two days away from the Bastogne area. As long as they speed up, they can reach Bastogne within the five-day deadline and open up a passage for the coalition forces to go south!
The total strength of the coalition forces near the Liege Fortress is about 600,000, including 400,000 Belgian troops and 150,000 Gallic troops, including his good friend General George Harut. The 14th Division is the elite of the elite in the Gallic Army. Dai Gaole does not want to watch the most powerful unit of the Gallic Army perish in front of him! As for what he should do next after rescuing this large-scale coalition army, Dai Gaole has not yet thought about it..
After all, once the rescue is successful, he will have one million troops in his hands. This army can organize defense in the Meuse River area to resist the German attack, and can also move closer to Dunkirk to cooperate with the coalition forces on the Western Front to open up Dunkirk, an important strategic node, and rescue the hundreds of thousands of coalition forces that were surrounded on the Western Front!
If those coalition forces can be successfully rescued, then the German army’s combat operation this time will basically be bankrupt!
The coalition forces can almost break out of the German encirclement!
After two hours of fierce bombardment, the German positions have become charred, and there are traces of artillery shells everywhere. There is almost no inch of land that has not been bombed by shells!
Seeing this scene, the Gallic soldiers were relieved!
“Brothers, charge! The Hans have been killed. We just need to plant a flag!”
With an extremely optimistic attitude and short-term weapons, the Gallic soldiers rushed towards the German positions!
One thousand meters!
Five hundred meters!
Two hundred meters!
The Germans never made any movement, and there was no counterattack at all!
It seemed to confirm their previous speculation: the Germans had been blown up by artillery shells!
This news boosted the morale of the Gallic soldiers. Their courage doubled, and they rushed towards the German positions like crazy as if they were stepping on a hot wheel!
At this time, on the German positions, groups of soldiers who were blown up came out of the positions, shook off the mud covering their bodies, grasped their weapons tightly, and silently put the crosshairs on the Gallic soldiers who were charging!
“”Brothers, fight, fight hard!”
With the order of the division commander, the German position, which was originally dead silent, suddenly became lively!
The light and heavy weapons of the German army roared together at this moment, and heavy machine guns, light machine guns, general-purpose machine guns, submachine guns, rifles, etc. fired at the same time, spewing out flames of hatred! The Gallic soldiers who were charging seemed to have hit an invisible wall head-on, and fell in front of the German position in groups!
They were stunned, they were terrified, they were shocked!
Wasn’t it agreed that they would all be blown to death?
Why did the Hans people come back to life?
Are they cockroaches that can’t be killed ? ?
Such a fierce artillery shells, but they haven’t been killed yet?
In fact, the Gallic bombardment did cause great losses to the German army.
The German army lost at least 30% of its troops on the front line just because of the bombardment, and at least more than 1,500 soldiers died in the previous round of bombardment!
However, the German commander was very wise not to put all his troops on the position, but deployed a part of the troops on the position, and most of the remaining troops were hidden in the rear, waiting until the Gallic bombardment ended, and then quietly rushed to the position through the communication trench.
“The commander’s order to us is to defend this place for three days. Within three days, we cannot retreat even a single step. Even if we all die here, we must hold on for me. Whoever dares to escape, I will be the first to kill him!”
The German division commander was none other than Major Paulus, who was thrown to Guderian by Mainz.
As a famous marshal in the history of Germany, Paulus’s refusal to die in the Battle of Stalingrad left him with a lot of black history.
So, Paulus, together with Manstein and Guderian, had his own exclusive title: Bao Bu Die!
This title made Mainz doubt his integrity and loyalty, so he did not put him after the armored forces, but threw him to Guderian, and clearly told Guderian that he should let Paulus start from the infantry unit, and determine his promotion and reuse based on his subsequent performance!
Paulus didn’t know this, but he was very unconvinced.���He was not able to join the armored corps, so he was quite proud and wanted to prove his ability.
Even though the situation faced by the German army in Sedan was more difficult than that in the Battle of Stalingrad, Paulus did not think of escaping, but chose to fight to the end, even if he died in battle, he would accept it. But if he escaped at this time, his life would be over!
“Our reinforcements will come to support us in three days. By then, none of these Gauls will be able to escape. What they did to us today, we will repay them double in the future!”
Although Paulus was reckless, he knew that he had to give the soldiers hope. He knew that the base camp would never give up on them. As long as they could hold on, reinforcements would surely come!