After the mobilization speeches had all concluded, it was time to issue the soldiers their new equipment and familiarize them with the new organization and tactics.
His Grace the Duke, as army commander, and the two division commanders certainly did not have that much time to spare, so they left after finishing their speeches. The remaining work was handled by the two major-ranked battalion commanders and Lelouch, the captain-ranked deputy battalion commander.
Because the time left to the rear was far too short, the arsenals in Thuringia and Karlsruhe could not equip all 2,200 soldiers of the two battalions with new weapons. Thus, when issuing equipment, the two battalions could not follow the organization Lelouch had designed to the letter. Some soldiers could only continue making do with old-fashioned firearms for the time being.
With limited equipment, there would naturally be favoritism. Priority was given to the 1st Assault Battalion, where Lelouch was assigned, and especially to ensuring that the company directly led by Lelouch himself was fully equipped. Whatever remained would then go to the 2nd Assault Battalion.
To avoid resentment over unequal distribution, the weapons were issued separately to the two battalions.
As for the brothers in the 2nd Battalion, Lelouch only greeted Major Rundstedt, the battalion commander, and asked him to be understanding. He did not communicate further down the chain. The fewer complications, the better.
Major Rundstedt was fairly broad-minded, and at forty years old, he had already had a rough climb up the ranks. Knowing that Battalion Commander Bock of the 1st Assault Battalion had a Chief of the General Staff for an uncle, how would he dare compete with Bock for resources?
Being able to enter such an elite unit and gain more opportunities for merit and promotion was already enough to satisfy him.
Besides, it was not as if Lelouch was giving him no submachine guns at all. He was simply receiving slightly fewer than the 1st Battalion, which was entirely acceptable.
……
While issuing the new equipment, Lelouch also took the opportunity to explain to officers at every level the assault battalion’s weapons distribution and organizational structure.
This weapons allocation plan was not something he had decided by fiat. It could only be said that he had proposed the initial plan, then spent the past two days discussing it with Bock, Rundstedt, and Rommel before finally making minor adjustments and settling the draft.
“Each assault platoon has four squads, and each squad has fifteen men.
Each squad has one squad leader, equipped with an MP15 submachine gun, three hundred rounds of 9mm ammunition, and one pair of Carl Zeiss binoculars.
The remaining fourteen men are divided into an assault group and a fire-support group: eight men in the assault group, six in the support group.
Of the eight members of the assault group, five are equipped with MP15 submachine guns and three hundred rounds of ammunition. Two are equipped with Mauser G98 rifles, and one is equipped with a Mauser C96 pistol and one hundred rounds of ammunition.
The submachine gunners carry a relatively heavy ammunition load, so each man carries only six stick grenades. The pistol soldier serves as the specialist grenadier, selected from the strongest soldier in the entire squad, and must carry twenty grenades! The riflemen carry fifteen each as well, and should as much as possible be chosen from soldiers who can throw grenades the farthest.”
(Note: After the protagonist’s improvements, the grenades are similar in weight to the M24 stick grenade, but slightly heavier, at around 0.75 kilograms—one and a half jin apiece.)
After introducing the assault group, Lelouch took a sip of water, then continued:
“The six men in the fire-support group are further divided into a three-man light machine-gun team and a three-man grenade discharger team. The light machine-gun team carries one MG15 light machine gun. The assistant gunner and ammunition bearer do not carry primary weapons, only a C96 pistol for self-defense. The weight saved is all used to carry more machine-gun ammunition.
The main machine gunner carries only a two-hundred-round belt, which can be mounted directly on the gun. The assistant gunner and ammunition bearer must each carry eight hundred rounds. Two grenades apiece will be enough. As a unit providing covering and suppressive fire from relatively rearward positions, they will have very few opportunities to throw grenades.
For the grenade discharger team, the main grenadier carries the grenade discharger and six universal grenades. The assistant grenadier and ammunition bearer each carry fifteen universal grenades, and are equipped with Mauser G98 rifles and one hundred rounds of ammunition.”
After several minutes of explanation, the officers and men at each level had basically grasped the assault squad’s firepower composition and become familiar with their own duties.
The reason two riflemen were also assigned to the assault group was, first of all, that there was indeed such a battlefield need. If the assault group ran into enemy machine-gun or sniper suppression, and the submachine guns could not reach, they would have to count on the riflemen to counter-snipe and suppress the enemy. At least there would be a chance to return fire on the spot.
Secondly, there truly were not enough submachine guns at present, so riflemen had to be added to fill the numbers. The five submachine guns per squad mentioned just now could actually only be achieved in Lelouch’s own company. By the time it came to Rommel’s company, each squad could only receive four.
Companies C and D of the 1st Battalion, farther down the priority list, and even all of Rundstedt’s 2nd Battalion, could only be issued three submachine guns per squad, which meant adding two more riflemen. Of course, since riflemen carried a lighter ammunition load, they would carry more grenades for close-range breakthroughs.
In addition, regarding machine-gun allocation, the requirement Lelouch had previously agreed on with Schmeisser of Thuringia was to produce one hundred new light machine guns before the end of the year, and then work out the mass-production process afterward. The first one hundred were small-scale trial production models. No molds had yet been made, so all parts had to be cut and machined, making the production cost extremely high.
They were only forcing production at such high cost because they were improving the design while trial-producing it.
Even now, Schmeisser had not fully delivered the order; only a little over eighty had arrived. In other words, only the 1st Assault Battalion, where Lelouch served, could be equipped with domestically produced MG15 light machine guns, while the 2nd Battalion would temporarily use the Danish Madsen light machine guns captured at the start of the war—
Back when the world war had just begun, Denmark had an order for six hundred Madsen light machine guns placed by neutral Switzerland. At the time, they were being transported by rail through Demania to Bern, passing through Nuremberg. The Barian royal family detained that shipment ordered by the Swiss, but they did pay for it; they did not simply take it without compensation.
After that batch of 1903-model Danish light machine guns was seized, some were gradually sent to front-line units. But because the barrel caliber was different, most of the guns took some time to have their barrels modified to fit 7.92mm Mauser ammunition. Now that Rundstedt’s battalion did not have enough new light machine guns, they would use the old ones to make up the numbers. In any case, the ammunition was interchangeable.
The Danish goods were inferior to the MG15 in accuracy, resistance to jamming, and rate of fire, but they really were light. Rundstedt was not exactly losing out.
As for the battalion where Bock and Lelouch served, they still had to select the strongest soldiers to serve as main machine gunners for the MG15. After all, they needed to carry a machine gun weighing over twenty kilograms once loaded with its ammunition belt while climbing slopes and storming trenches.
……
Every battalion, company, platoon, and squad had been assigned weapons and organized according to its respective tasks.
The next few days were devoted to specialized training aimed at the soldiers’ tactical and technical proficiency.
Previously, the German army had not had grenadiers and light machine gunners who were quite so specialized. Soldiers selected for the light machine-gun teams had to add extra training in rapidly setting up and deploying light machine guns, as well as marching cross-country while carrying the guns.
The grenade discharger troops, meanwhile, followed a few simple shortcuts that Lelouch had hastily explained to them, strengthening their training in determining the elevation angle of the discharger. This was so that, when firing grenades in the future, they could more precisely determine the barrel’s initial elevation angle and make the range easier to control. The old method of using grenade dischargers by pure feel had depended far too much on luck and experience.
As for the specialist grenadiers responsible for throwing grenades at close range, they used dummy grenades to practice throwing techniques, systematically learning how to sense and control throwing distance.
Real combat was not like a battle royale game, where there was a visible aiming trajectory before throwing a grenade. How much force produced what distance all had to be honed through repeated practice with models.
Finally, Lelouch also gave all the soldiers who had switched to submachine guns an emergency additional subject:
How to fight in close quarters with an entrenching shovel.
It could be considered sharpening the spear on the eve of battle.
The close-combat skills all German infantrymen had originally drilled were bayonet fighting. The Mauser G98 rifle was very long, and combined with the German soldiers’ height and reach, it gave them a great advantage in bayonet combat.
But after switching to submachine guns, they could no longer mount bayonets. Even forcing one on would put them at a great disadvantage; submachine guns were far too short compared with rifles.
Originally, both Major Bock and Major Rundstedt had felt it would be better to simply give up on the submachine gunners’ melee capability. There was no saving it anyway.
In the end, it was once again Lelouch, the quick-witted fellow, who had ordered in advance from the Thuringian arsenal a batch of entrenching shovels forged from high-grade steel with relatively sharp edges.
This would help with terrain modification in the complex environment of trench warfare, while also allowing them to be grabbed up for close-quarters fighting.
The only pity was that Lelouch’s own physical combat ability was far too low, and his melee capability was basically equal to zero.
Even if he had been a super military enthusiast in his previous life, there was no way he would know any “shovel techniques.” At most, he could tell everyone: try to swing the flat of the shovel at the enemy’s head, or swing the blade toward the neck.
As for more specific close-combat moves and routines for the entrenching shovel, they could only count on the soldiers to figure them out themselves, or on talented officers in the army to learn and summarize a set of shovel techniques on the spot.
……
For five or six days straight, the junior officers and ordinary soldiers familiarized themselves with the new weapons and new tactics.
Meanwhile, officers at the company and battalion level gradually began to come into contact with more operational information passed down from above. The two battalion commanders and eight company commanders all realized that the day of the formal offensive was drawing closer and closer.
The only reason the higher-ups had not yet finalized the attack date seemed to be that they were waiting for suitable weather. Before its destruction, the Belgian army had blown up the Yser Canal and created a flooded zone, leaving many places around the Ypres salient with roads that were very difficult to traverse.
The offensive had been delayed before precisely to wait for colder weather, ideally so that the waterlogged lower ground would freeze over and harden somewhat, making it easier for the troops to maneuver.
Over the past few days, however, the temperature had hovered around freezing. There had been occasional light snow, but never heavy snowfall or a sudden freeze.
This dragged on until December 18, when heavy snow finally began to fall over the Lille and Ypres area.
The moment he saw the goose-feather snowflakes falling, Lelouch knew that the day of the general offensive was close at hand.
“Do you think the higher-ups will order the general offensive today or tomorrow?” Bock and Major Rundstedt looked at the snow filling the sky and began discussing the military situation with Lelouch.
Lelouch thought it over carefully before analyzing, “I don’t think so, but it will be within the next two or three days. Heavy snow will also have a considerable impact on the attacking side.
“And besides, it isn’t cold when the snow falls—it’s cold when the snow melts. When the snow lessens and the shallow groundwater freezes over as well, that will be the best time for the general offensive. But the final operational plan should be handed down today.”
Lelouch’s prediction was indeed correct. Before they went to sleep that very night, division headquarters really did send down the operational plan, ordering them to be prepared at any time.