“Miss 75 is still the most useful! If those artillery regiment fellows could be a little more efficient, we wouldn’t have had to sacrifice so many officers and men!”
Major General De Gijzel, commander of the Belgian 4th Division, finally breathed a sigh of relief after watching through his high-powered binoculars as two heavy machine gun emplacements on the distant German outermost defensive line were successively knocked out by direct fire from his own quick-firers.
The rumbling artillery gave him an extra sense of security.
At the same time, his dissatisfaction with the earlier performance of the two useless regimental commanders beneath him grew ever stronger.
The 3rd Regiment had arrived early that morning, and the 4th Regiment had arrived by noon as well.
The strength of two regiments, even lacking heavy firepower at the time, added up to nearly five thousand men.
To take a ruined town defended by a reinforced company—three to four hundred men at most—they had actually failed to break through after attacking for a whole day, and the sun was about to set. It was utterly shameful!
In the end, he had to personally swallow his pride, borrow several trucks from His Majesty that were originally meant for transporting the royal family’s valuables, and haul the remnants of his divisional artillery to the front before he could finally crack the situation open.
There was no helping it. The battered remnants of the Belgian army, having retreated in disarray for over ten days straight, had lost nearly all their trucks. Their gun carriages and draft horses had also been decimated, making it extremely difficult to move the few remaining cannons—they even required large groups of soldiers to drag them, or the temporary local requisitioning of dairy cows.
The entire Belgian 4th Division only had these four guns left. The neighboring 6th Division, whose sector was closer and retreat route shorter, had somewhat more artillery remaining. The rearguard 1st Division had it the worst—they didn’t have a single gun left.
As the easternmost street on the outskirts of Nieuwpoort was cleared, Major General De Gijzel immediately ordered two battalions of the 3rd Regiment to advance by bounds and slowly feel their way into the town.
The two battalion commanders, both majors, led the way—one along the south side of the coastal highway, the other along the north side, advancing with extreme caution.
When passing the ruins of houses, the soldiers carefully sighted the positions of doors and windows, but nothing happened. Gradually, the Belgian soldiers became less vigilant.
At the start of the First World War, both sides were complete blanks when it came to urban warfare experience. Never before in human history had there been urban combat with firearms.
The Belgian army smoothly passed through the first defensive line and pushed on to the second. Enemy resistance was still as sporadic as ever, and since it was already evening with the sky gradually darkening, the soldiers finally grew bolder.
However, just as the Belgian troops continued to press deeper into the town,
“Da-da-da—”
Sudden machine gun bursts erupted from the street corners on both sides of the cross-street, catching them completely off guard.
“Ugh—” Instantly, the street echoed with screams of pain and cursing. From several simply camouflaged rubble piles at the street corners, dense tongues of flame spat forth.
From some west-facing windows and collapsed wall openings also facing west along the street that the Belgian vanguard had just safely passed, devious tongues of flame also suddenly emerged, relentlessly licking away at lives. The crossfire swept down the majority of the infantry who had overextended, and the survivors could only hug their heads and scurry away in retreat.
...
“Hmm, although it somewhat violates a soldier’s sense of honor, those camouflage techniques you mentioned are really quite useful.
How did you think to use the rubble and wreckage of houses to build such realistic concealed firing positions?”
Colonel List lowered his binoculars. Watching those concealed heavy machine gun emplacements cut down the enemy who had entered the pocket, he was extremely satisfied with the result.
The selection of the crossfire positions had been made by the battalion commanders below and personally reviewed by the colonel. The results proved the choices excellent, with no blind spots whatsoever.
However, the camouflage measures for these emplacements had come from Lelouch’s impromptu pointers.
He had only transmigrated here not long ago and wasn’t yet solid on the military fundamentals of this era, so he couldn’t command independently.
But he had no shortage of bookish urban warfare lessons learned from later eras stored in his head. Casually bringing out one or two points was enough to help the colonel fill in the gaps.
Of course, facing the colonel’s questioning at this moment, he still had to invent an excuse on the surface for the source of his knowledge:
“Colonel, didn’t you forget? I graduated from the Olio Royal Academy of Art with a degree in architecture. Civil engineering is my old trade. I’m best at load-bearing structural design. Even firing positions built from broken walls and ruins absolutely won’t collapse—I can do simple stress calculations in my head.”
“Very good. That architecture degree of yours was worth the trouble.” The colonel lowered his binoculars and proudly patted his shoulder.
This scene also made Lieutenant Barak, who was responsible for coordination and command nearby, quite envious.
Barak was the deputy commander of the reconnaissance cavalry company. After Captain Andre was wounded, he had stayed close to the colonel’s side to handle coordination, allowing the cavalry company’s soldiers to cooperate with the friendly troops of the 16th Regiment.
Barak hadn’t known much about Lelouch’s deeds before. Seeing a mere sergeant major receive such heavy responsibility was truly hard to understand. Now, having seen Lelouch’s performance, he was slightly more convinced.
But before he could think further, the colonel spoke again: “Excellent. Have the men continue maintaining this elastic defense. When the enemy advances, we retreat. Abandon the outer positions. Don’t expose yourselves to the enemy quick-firers’ direct fire range. Just let them in and hit them!”
The German army was very skilled at elastic defense; it was all basic doctrine.
Over two months ago, when the war had just begun, they had used elastic defense tactics in the Alsace-Lorraine direction to bleed the French army heavily, inflicting two hundred thousand casualties.
Colonel List naturally played this hand with practiced ease.
Lelouch followed by his side, taking the opportunity to observe and learn for a while, also felt he had benefited greatly.
He was like a sponge constantly absorbing water, greedily soaking up practical command experience and building a solid foundation, earning himself more capital for staying alive.
The bloody back-and-forth slaughter lasted a full hour. The Belgian army was repelled twice, leaving at least several hundred more corpses before the positions.
As they fought, the sky turned completely dark, and the Belgian assault momentum finally began to slow.
Meanwhile, on the western side of the town, the French offensive was also fended off by the colonel using virtually the same defensive techniques.
...
“The enemy is using elastic defense again! I didn’t expect a mere company commander to be able to employ such defensive tactics in urban warfare.”
Major General De Gijzel watched his troops be repulsed once again. The initial joy on his face had completely vanished. He was now so furious he looked like a defeated fighting cock, his riding crop lashing out uncontrollably at the hitching post beside him.
“General! The enemy must have received reinforcements as well! In that back-and-forth just now, we killed at least a hundred of them. If it really were just a single company, they would have been wiped out long ago!”
Colonel De Joka, commander of the repelled 3rd Regiment, in order to mitigate his own guilt, casually exaggerated his combat results when facing his division commander’s curses, emphasizing that the enemy’s strength was not weak.
However, De Gijzel knew his subordinates too well. He instinctively slashed his subordinate’s claimed results several times over in his head, evaluating them with a grim expression:
“Don’t emphasize the difficulties! Even if the enemy has received a few reinforcements, they are merely stragglers scattered by the floods! We have artillery now—are we still unable to take a town like this?!”
“But our direct-fire weapons are blocked by the ruins of the outer blocks; we simply can’t hit the firing points scattered throughout the town. It’s getting dark, and artillery observation is increasingly difficult. Why not wait until tomorrow morning to attack?”
Major General De Gijzel nearly lashed him with his riding crop upon hearing this.
Wait an entire night? Only these wastes could come up with that! His Majesty the King was still waiting for them to open the road and break out with the entire army. At a moment of life-or-death racing against time, they wanted to wait a whole night?!
Major General De Gijzel paced back and forth anxiously, his gaze sweeping across the battlefield. After thinking for a moment, he finally made his decision: “Pull all the 75s into the town! Close-range fire! Knock out the enemy firing points in the deeper blocks by direct fire!”
Colonel De Joka was aghast. “General, you can’t! Once inside the town, the distance between each block is only a few hundred meters—too close! Enemy mortars and heavy machine guns lying in ambush can easily counter our artillery positions. We’ll lose our range advantage!”
De Gijzel knew his subordinate was speaking the truth. Field guns naturally had to stay outside the range of heavy machine guns and mortars to massacre the enemy one-sidedly, ideally maintaining a distance of over two kilometers.
Rashly entering into mutual fire range—wasn’t that just giving the enemy an opportunity?
If it were field warfare, that would be one thing, but the key was this was urban warfare; the terrain was too complex.
De Gijzel hesitated for a long time, repeatedly observing the battlefield terrain through his binoculars and poring over the map, until he finally thought of a way.
“I’ve got it! Don’t enter the town directly from the front! Have your men charge once more! After entering the town, secure the northernmost buildings along those cross-streets within the outer two or three blocks!
To the north of the town is the sea. Before every attack, we can coordinate with the Britannian Navy’s light cruiser *Audacious* to provide several rounds of covering fire. It’s a shame that she’s a cruiser focused on anti-torpedo boat duties, and her naval guns’ arcs are too flat to bombard the depths of the town. However, with her there, the enemy at least won’t dare show their faces on the town’s northernmost flank.
So if you attack from the northeast corner, you’ll definitely be able to gain a foothold. Then, pull these quick-firers all the way to the northern ends of those north-south oriented streets, or even onto the beach. Deploy them facing south to conduct precise direct-fire strikes along the streets. See an enemy firing point dare reveal itself, and destroy it on the spot!
This way, the naval guns clear positions for the direct-fire artillery, and the direct-fire artillery cooperates to strike deep targets along the streets inside the town. Working together, we’ll definitely break through! The length of these streets from south to north is also sufficient to exceed the range of heavy machine guns and light mortars. Then it will still be us shelling the enemy while the enemy cannot counter us.”
This order finally made the several colonels and lieutenant colonels under him see the light. They also, for once, sincerely admitted that their division commander’s tactical vision was indeed superior to their own—to think he could devise such an unorthodox maneuver.
If they just pulled the cannons to the northern mouths of those north-south streets without entering deeply into the town, they wouldn’t have to worry about enemy ambushes in complex terrain. The 75mm quick-firer’s own gun shield was enough to withstand close-range small-arms fire; the threat wasn’t great.
The Belgian army quickly got into motion, not caring that the sky had already darkened, and hastily organized another attack.
The initial “elastic defense” phase was just like before. The Germans offered brief resistance before pulling back, then used concealed firing points from all directions to snipe at and whittle down the Belgians.
Moreover, the positions of the German ambush firing points were different every time. The positions used to repel the previous wave were gone by the next attack, having moved elsewhere. The Belgians had to locate them with blood all over again.
But this time, the Belgians clenched their teeth and held on stubbornly, lasting longer than before.
Because they had been told that as long as they secured a foothold, heavy firepower would be moved up to directly destroy the enemy heavy machine gun positions hidden in the ruins.
Soon, Major General De Gijzel’s dispositions were put into effect.
The light cruiser *Audacious* on the sea surface, as usual, cleared out a no-man’s-land at the northeast corner of the town where no one dared remain, after which Belgian infantry occupied it.
Then they pulled the 75mm guns onto the beach at the northern street mouth, swiveled the muzzles southward, and prepared to sweep through street by street from north to south.
...
“The Belgians have finally taken the bait. They still thought we didn’t have any heavy firepower. As expected, holding back the field guns until this moment was worth it.”
Seeing the Belgian troop movements from afar through his binoculars, Colonel List finally let out a long sigh of relief.
To speak without shame, at the beginning of the Great War, the German army had still been inferior to the French in terms of 3-inch class artillery performance.
The Model 1896 77mm field gun was utterly outclassed by the Schneider 75mm gun in terms of rate of fire, and held no advantage in other metrics either.
The German 77mm gun’s only clear advantage was that its shell muzzle velocity was considerably higher than that of the Schneider 75. By all rights, this should have provided a clear range advantage.
But in pursuit of a lower silhouette, the German gun’s carriage structure limited its maximum elevation angle, wasting the high muzzle velocity for nothing. In the end, the actual ranges of the two were about the same.
All of this had to be made up for through tactics and training. Fortunately, at this very moment, List’s tactical baiting of the enemy was wildly successful.
The Belgians had been provoked into completely losing their patience by the roving firing points in the town, finally unable to resist pushing their quick-firers forward to deploy.
“All 77mm field guns, adjust firing data within two minutes. According to the following coordinates, six rounds rapid!”
“Field gun battery received, executing immediately!” The regimental field gun battery immediately responded to the colonel’s order, busying themselves in a brisk yet orderly fashion.
A few minutes later, sudden thunderous explosions rang out at the beach edge on the town’s north side.
The Belgian artillery positions that had just been dragged and hauled forward had barely reached that spot and hadn’t fully completed their deployment when German 77mm shells landed right in the middle of the position.
“What? That’s impossible! How could the Germans have field guns? We were shelling them one-sidedly for an hour or two just now and they didn’t strike back! Where did they get field guns from?! How could they have dragged something so heavy through the flooded zone?!”
Major General De Gijzel, observing the battle from outside the town, saw the enemy shells fall into his own deploying quick-firer positions and explode in brilliant flashes. A rush of blood surged to his head, his brain buzzed, and he nearly fainted.
In that instant, he knew his plan was finished.
The Germans sure could endure! They had guns but didn’t use them? They just stubbornly held out for an hour or two purely with heavy machine guns and elastic defense, insistently tricking him into letting his guard down!