Conquer Europe from the West

Chapter 58: The Three-Man Squad of the Farlan Army

Less than half an hour after McIver returned, he called the front line.

It is said that the Farlans have done a better job of blocking intelligence, so it is not clear whether they have replaced the commander of the attacking force.

Ryan understood this because he had just learned that Farlan had basically severed diplomatic ties with the Empire since overthrowing the royal government, so the Empire had no idea what the Farlans were doing over the years.

But McIver didn't do nothing - he learned from Warrant Officer Perris that the military police had obtained a lot of intelligence from the last prisoners.

The most important thing is probably that General Joffre of Farland has been continuously transferring soldiers of the First Army to Lorraine since a few days ago.

Ryan actually knew about this before - he could see it from the system map.

But what he was not sure about was how many troops Xiafei had withdrawn and how many more troops would be withdrawn in the future.

After all, even if he could see the general organization and number of the Farlan troops stationed in Belfort, he did not know the specific situation of these troops.

It is even more impossible to know what their staff is thinking.

This time the intelligence gave Ryan some good news.

The first was that Joffre attempted to deploy almost all his forces in the Lorraine region, including more than half of the First Army's infantry divisions.

The entire withdrawal process will be completed in the next few weeks, but more than a third has already been completed.

This is absolutely good news.

Then came the prisoners of Lieutenant Colonel Pierre.

He was assigned to the Eighth Army of the First Farland Army.

He was the adjutant of the commander of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of an infantry division.

His current direct superior is a Major General named Kraona de Diamond.

There are still more than 30,000 troops left in the division, about ten regiments.

Judging from the Farlans' combat thinking, this is a force that is capable of completely submerging any secondary town.

But Ryan obviously doesn't think so.

He first asked McIver to thank the military police on the phone, and asked McIver to treat the soldiers in charge of the interrogation to two bottles of beer each, and Ryan would pay for it.

Then he wrote a letter to Brian, hoping that he could mobilize ten 150mm guns or twenty 77mm field guns from the th Artillery Regiment and send them to the front line.

The letter was delivered by Wolfe, who drove down the mountain on his motorcycle in just over ten minutes and completed the delivery while McIver drove back to the top of the mountain.

And after all this was done, another hour passed, around ten o'clock that evening.

Brian then contacted Ryan through the telephone line and said that he would urgently send him ten FK.96 field guns and two batches of a total of one thousand artillery shells before midnight.

Ryan was not very satisfied with this number, but the FK.96's rate of fire was still very fast, so Ryan did not make any other requests, but only asked Brian to send more grenades and flares.

Then Ryan asked Wolf to lead the team to deliver all the newly equipped FK.96s to the east bank of the Rhine.

From there, they could bombard the Vosges Mountains directly without being discovered by the Farlan sentinels.

The new battle line was quickly finalized. At the same time, in the city of Belfort.

Major General Damon had already put on a black and gray cloak, and in front of him, more than two hundred seamstresses who had been urgently summoned were busy sewing a layer of black leather on the outside of the military trousers that were still warm.

These were the first batch of two thousand pairs of trousers from the now well-established 124th Infantry Regiment.

Their first three regiments, namely the first, second and third infantry regiments mentioned earlier, had been completely wiped out in previous battles, and the morale of the soldiers was in the process of declining.

Major General Damon personally gave the order so that this group of soldiers could change into a uniform that at least would not appear to expose their identity, to ensure that in subsequent battles they would not be like the soldiers of the 123rd Regiment, who would not even have a chance to hide.

As for the previous battle.

Damon actually didn't know how the soldiers of the 123rd Regiment were wiped out.

However, the battlefield was only a short distance away, and even with his eyes closed, he could still see the lights coming from all around him. Therefore, his primary goal was, as he had said before, to take advantage of the night and prioritize destroying the circle of firepower points in the Vosges Mountains.

After the troops completely occupied the Imperial Army's firepower points in the Vosges Mountains, they would use these firepower points as starting points to suppress the Imperial Army's firepower coming from the direction of Mulhouse.

This tactic is very conservative, but for the current Farlans, it is the only solution.

In front of the desk, a wisp of black smoke rose from the dim oil lamp. Damon stared with his cloudy eyes at the front page of the Empire newspaper in his hand, which was published more than a week ago. On it was a color photo of a young officer drawn in a post-restored manner - it covered the entire page.

"Ryan Flig..." The young man next to him, Damon's adjutant and nephew, a young man named Dominic, said the name of the man in the painting.

Damon turned his head and glanced at him, then turned back to him: "The youngest recipient of the Blue Star Marx Medal in history is now on the hillside not far from us."

Dominic looked enviously at the captain's epaulettes on Ryan's shoulders. The braid tied with gold thread combined with the unique beauty of the blue medallion made Ryan look more like a captain than a lieutenant. He said, "He's a formidable enemy."

"It is also an enemy that the Republic must defeat." Damon's voice sounded unclear.

The Republic and the Empire had severed diplomatic ties for some years, but even with the Empire's intelligence blockade, the newspaper still found its way into his hands.

This was obviously intentional on the part of the Empire.

As for the content of the article...

Damon thought that perhaps there was some exaggeration in it, but it was an indisputable fact that the Republic lost a fleet on the day it launched the offensive against the Fifth Military District.

"uncle."

Suddenly, Dominic patted Damon on the shoulder.

This made Damon instinctively turn his head to look at him, but Dominic, contrary to his usual behavior, did not apologize. Instead, with a thoughtful look on his face, he asked quietly, "Can I go with you on this mission?"

"What do you want to do?"

Damon's eyes widened, and he whispered angrily, "Isn't it obvious that I'm keeping you by my side?"

He thought of his sister who had been in a coma for many years due to illness: "If Leia knew about this, she would kill both you and me."

"But..." The young man wanted to say something.

Damon immediately called his guards with his eyes and said, "Go back, and don't let me hear you say you're going to the front line again."

After saying that, he stood up and walked to the front-line headquarters across the street.

The commanders of the two infantry regiments responsible for the first offensive mission were working together to discuss the plans to be used in the battle.

The staff gave three different options. There was the traditional plan of moving in dense formations, attacking directly up the mountain along the mountain road and occupying the high ground. There was also a plan to divide the troops into three groups, with one group setting out to attack the other side of the Rhine first, and the remaining two groups launching a large-scale raid at night when the empire launched a counterattack.

But both of them were killed by Damon.

Because he thought the first plan was extremely stupid, and the second plan could not be implemented because there were too many people with night blindness in the army.

Of course, what is more important is.

The battlefield they have to face is a big pocket carefully woven by the empire.

But their commander, General Louis, wanted them to occupy the entire Mulhouse before noon tomorrow.

This is obviously nonsense.

So they are discussing the last option.

This plan can almost be described as disorganized and undisciplined.

Perhaps the only advantage is that there is no need to worry about soldiers being directly drowned by artillery like the other two types.

Because they had no way to go, they could only completely disperse the thousands of soldiers.

These soldiers will be divided into teams of three, with each team separated by dozens of meters. Like ants, they will start from Belfort and slowly devour the Vosges Mountains on the side of the entire Rhine Valley under the cover of night.

(End of this chapter)