Conquer Europe from the West

Chapter 40 This is not war...

The crowd rushed out of the position like a surging tide, accompanied by Patrick's shouts and the neighing of his beloved horse.

The red and blue crowds crossed the hundreds-meter-long Farlan position in an instant and crossed the border of the empire at an extremely fast speed.

The company commanders of each infantry company rode their own war horses and rushed to the front line, using their backs and sabers in their hands as beacons to guide the entire Second Infantry Regiment forward.

Patrick rushed to the front of the entire legion. He and his adjutant were the first to break through the imperial army's barbed wire and witnessed with their own eyes the scene of the entire imperial frontier trenches being turned into ruins by countless artillery shells.

The engineers who followed immediately took the flag handed to them by the adjutant. After a hundred years, they finally planted the tricolor flag of Farlan on the land of Alsace again.

The soldiers who arrived later took this as their center, throwing grenades into the remaining trenches, and their rifles with black bayonets swept through every trench and communication trench, like a blue gust of wind, sweeping across the entire front in an instant.

"Something's wrong!"

After crossing the front line of the Imperial Army, Patrick's adjutant immediately noticed something strange.

He rode close to Patrick, who was firing a captured rifle at the Imperial soldiers a few hundred yards away. "Colonel, the Imperial defense is too weak. I suspect there's a problem! We should temporarily slow down our advance!"

But Patrick dismissed his adjutant's proposal.

He roared, "This means our offensive has scared off the Imperial bastards! The soul of Farlan is attack! Attack! Attack again!"

"The enemy's weak resistance gives us the opportunity to attack! If we cannot directly capture the entire Mulhouse in this battle, we will surely become a disgrace to the Republic!"

After saying that, Patrick rode his horse to the forefront of the entire army again and fired a green flare into the sky, which meant that the battle situation was going well and the entire army should continue to advance.

In an instant, the entire battle line was enveloped by the green light.

The adjutant, who was drenched in mud from grenades and artillery fire, immediately heard the VIVA roar coming from all around him, followed by continuous gunfire and explosions. Soon, only the Farlan soldiers in red trousers and blue coats were left in the entire trench.

In desperation, he could only harden his heart and chase after Patrick, but at this moment, a figure riding a white horse appeared in front of him.

"Major Michel!" the adjutant immediately called out the other man's name: "What are the losses of your troops?"

Michel was an officer in the headquarters company of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. He was responsible for commanding the right wing of the front in this operation. In addition to his own troops, he also had a battalion under his command.

"There are almost no casualties, Pierre!" Michel pulled the reins and approached his adjutant. "The Empire's defenses are practically nonexistent. Only two of my men broke their arms and were unsteady. They've already been ordered back to the rear!"

The adjutant was startled and asked quickly, "Are the enemies on your side so few in number?"

"Not a small number!" Michel's voice began to crack. "We knocked out three machine gun positions and killed a company of Imperial soldiers, but the rest all ran away!"

"All ran away?"

The adjutant was stunned for a moment, recalling what he had just seen. "The people we encountered almost collapsed the moment we met them. Can you point out the direction they retreated?"

Michelle almost laughed out loud at this: "They're heading for the river! What cowards! They think they can survive by swimming across the Rhine!"

The adjutant immediately turned his head to look in the direction Michelle was pointing. There were indeed a few figures there, but they were almost invisible in the distance.

But that made him even weirder.

It is impossible for a normal enemy to flee to an area outside the battlefield. Moving backward can not only obtain fire cover from friendly forces, but also pass news from the front line to the rear.

The Empire's battle lines were built one kilometer apart, which was shorter than the average trench spacing and was obviously more suitable for mutual cover.

He watched Michelle return to his right wing in confusion, but then saw another Farlan flag being raised on the buffer zone further ahead.

By this time, the sun's rays had already penetrated the Rhine Valley. One side of the battlefield was scorched by the golden light, and the thick fog and black smoke mixed together, making it difficult for Pierre to see the battle situation in the direction of Mulhouse.

The soldiers of the two remaining companies of the first battalion roared as they passed by him, their rifles spitting out long flames from time to time, blowing clods of earth on the ground into the sky.

The soldiers of the machine gun platoon were at the very back of the troops. They would only advance a few hundred meters every once in a while, and they obviously had some more equipment in their hands that did not belong to the Farlan Army - machine guns and rifles captured from the Imperial positions.

Pierre clearly felt that the morale of this group of soldiers was much higher than before. Even though their advance speed had become slower, the firepower they could provide was obviously more powerful than the firepower from the Imperial front...

and many more?

Suddenly, Pierre felt a chill running from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

Why is the Empire's firepower even more sparse than ours?
He began to let the horses gallop horizontally along the battlefield, which allowed him to clearly calculate the number of machine guns the Empire had along the entire horizontal battlefield - less than twelve.

And among these twelve, not even one is a heavy machine gun, all of them are the latest light machine guns equipped by the empire.

Pierre even saw some imperial soldiers throw away their machine guns and run away as soon as they saw him.

This was totally inconsistent with his understanding of the empire.

As a country surrounded by enemies, all the troops of the empire were trained to defend the front lines with the determination to die. Their commanders would never allow soldiers to leave their posts unless they were to launch a charge.

But the imperial soldiers didn't even fire at him. They just dropped their machine guns and ran away after seeing him.

This isn't right.

But Pierre had no say in the matter.

Because during the time he was hesitating and thinking, the people from the 3rd Infantry Regiment caught up with him.

They followed the front line opened up by the 2nd Infantry Regiment and rushed into the completely cleared Imperial defense line. The accompanying engineers were not even ordered to repair the trenches on the spot, but like the infantry, they were required to hold guns and shovels and continue to charge towards Mulhouse.

“This is not a war.”

Pierre looked at the scene around him and felt that he was trapped in a strange space that should not exist in reality.

He didn't notice the sky changing from dark to bright, nor did he notice that the sky was moving towards night without him noticing.

In fact, when he realized the change of time, he had unknowingly crossed the last trench of the empire - he could already see the lights in the city.

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Infantry Regiments, totaling more than 10,000 men, gathered around this trench. Pierre heard from the engineers and several staff officers that this place was only 1.5 miles away from Mulhouse and the Imperial artillery could not launch a bombardment here.

Second, the commander of the 1st Infantry Regiment immediately decided to rest here and hoped to officially start the attack on Mulhouse six hours later.

The last three regiments of soldiers to arrive had already set out for Mulhouse, but unlike before, they encountered fierce resistance from the Imperial Army outside the city, and the two sides were in a clear stalemate.

Under the night.

Pierre stood outside what was supposed to be the Imperial Army's command post, on the same plank where Ryan had stood hours before, looking up.

The Vosges Mountains are so huge that they completely block the last ray of sunlight and cover the entire Rhine Valley with their shadow.

And, in his shadow, where Pierre couldn't see.

A few small gray dots have left their hiding places and are slowly moving towards the west.

(End of this chapter)