Chapter 48 of Part 6

"This is Captain Clawson, a field observer sent by the German General Staff, who repeatedly asked to follow a tank to operate. Now I have entrusted his safety to you."

Chen Yiyang smiled and introduced a German officer in his early thirties to Chen Liyao. The tall Clawson gave a standard military salute to Chen Liyao and said, "Hello, from now on, I'm under your command." Chen Liyao unexpectedly discovered that the German officer spoke fluent Chinese.

How can we ensure Chen Liyao's safety on the battlefield to the greatest extent possible? This problem caused Yang Zhi and Shen Yiyang a headache for a long time. The German army just sent a field observation team, and most of the officers in it asked to follow the Chinese army to act together. Chen Yiyang sent one to Chen Liyao without hesitation. His intention was naturally very obvious. With a German officer accompanying him, Chen Liyao must consider the safety of his allies before taking any risky actions, right?

Chen Liyao did not expect that after coming to the division headquarters to attend the pre-war preparation meeting, he actually took over such a job and would launch a general attack tomorrow morning. What's the point of bringing such a person?

"Chief, can you arrange it to another army?" Chen Liyao asked in a low voice with a smile. Chen Yiyang said with no room for discussion, "No, this is a military order. I can't take him with me. I'll transfer you to the division's general staff."

Helplessly, Chen Liyao led Clawson out of the division headquarters and drove to Chen Liyao's third battalion in a jeep. He saw fighter jets hovering from time to time in the sky. Clawson took the initiative to talk to Chen Liyao: "Chen, my father used to be the brigade commander in the Chinese army. He told me that the Chinese army is the first-class in the world and is not inferior to the German army at all."

"Haha, you speak very well in Chinese! Clawson!"

"That's of course. I grew up in China before I was 10 years old. In Hangzhou, it was such a beautiful place as heaven." Clawson recalled with emotion.

"Is that right? I haven't been to Hangzhou before! I must go and see after the war." Chen Liyao responded with some uninterested interest. Clawson saw that Chen Liyao's expression was wrong and asked a little more seriously: "Chen, do you seem to welcome me?"

"Haha, there's a little bit." Chen Liyao didn't hide anything, saying anything.

"Why?" Clawson was not angry, but just continued to ask.

"If you treat yourself as an ordinary soldier, not an officer, I think I would welcome you very much." Chen Liyao's answer made Clawson laugh out loud, and he patted Chen Liyao's shoulder without treating himself as an outsider and said, "No problem, I will be an ordinary soldier under your hands. I am here to learn from you, and I am here to be a student. You don't have to treat me as a guest."

Clawson's words finally brought a smile of appreciation from Chen Liyao. While speaking, the jeep had entered a forest, including 16 tanks parked. He jumped out of the car. Chen Liyao called a group of subordinate officers, explained Clawson's purpose, and held a temporary pre-war preparation meeting, and Clawson also attended.

After the meeting, a group of subordinates went back to prepare. After dinner early, the roar of the tanks rang one after another, and the troops entered the pre-war attack position while the night was falling.

Chen Liyao was busy until two o'clock in the evening. After checking almost every detail, he returned to the temporary tent with confidence. Clawson was indeed a student as he said. Following Chen Liyao for a while, he kept watching silently.

The two of them found a box in the tent and leaned on it for three hours. At five o'clock in the morning, the alarm clock rang. Chen Liyao opened his eyes and wiped his face. After waking up, he led Clawson, who had also rushed his face and finished it.

At 5:30 a.m., three red signal flares rose into the sky. A roar of roar swept across the sky, and dense fighter jets flew over the top of the chariot like locusts. At this time, a dull vibration sound was already remembered in the distance. Clawson laughed and said, "This is the 420mm large caliber howitzer of the Big Belta is firing, it is the natural enemy of the fortress. There is also a 380mm cannon bombardment. Fortress Verdun is indeed a hard bone."

Clawson raised his telescope and looked at the French position in charge of attack by the Chinese army in front. The air strike had already begun. An explosion sounded ten kilometers ahead. The sky before dawn was rendered like daylight. The whistling sound made Clawson frown and said loudly to Chen Liyao: "Why are the artillery preparations of your army full of howitzers? How can you destroy the enemy's barbed wire without cannons?"

Chen Liyao smiled and pointed at the tank and said, "This thing is barbed wire and it is ineffective for it. Moreover, the tank is equipped with 75mm artillery, so the general firepower point can be easily killed."

After answering Clawson, Chen Liyao leaned his head to the exit at the top of the tank and shouted: "I inform everyone not to be nervous. This time the artillery preparation and air strike have been very long. Come out and have a good rest. Those who have the ability to sleep will continue to sleep. If you can't sleep, check the tank a few more times! Don't come to the battlefield and lose your chain."

"Boom!" A deafening muffled sound made Chen Liyao unable to stop and sat on the tank.

"What's so powerful? Your ears are deaf!"

"Haha, this is the mine tunnel that has been detonated, the masterpiece of the German engineer." Clawson smiled indifferently, reached out to clean his ears, and his brows frowned. It seemed that the muffled sound shocked him very much.

"Now we are 20 kilometers away from the front-line position and are unable to stand steadily. Isn't the French army on the position even more difficult?"

"During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the British detonated mine tunnels with 24 tons of explosives. This time we are saying to them once. In the last Battle of Verdun, there were millions of casualties on both sides, so this place was called a meat grinder. In the subsequent Battle of the Somme, the British used tanks on the battlefield for the first time, but their tanks seemed to be primitive society's things than you tanks."

Clawson's last sentence was a bit relaxed and teased. Chen Liyao couldn't help but smile proudly after hearing this. It seems that the tank was launched ten years ago. Chen Liyao had seen the photos of the British tank. Can that thing be called a tank?

Verdun is the gateway to Paris. The Germans once suffered defeat in front of the turrets here. This time, the combat plan formulated by Yang Zhi was not to conquer one by one. Instead, it was violently suppressed with the powerful offensive of the front infantry, concentrated the tanks of four armored divisions, and carried out fierce assaults from the west side, trying to avoid the fire of the French turrets on the front, and then quickly crossed the Meuse River and broke through the French defense line from Mount Moltom, and penetrated directly behind Verdun.

After ten hours of air strikes and artillery preparations, Chen Liyao received an order from his superiors to launch an attack. The four armored divisions were personally commanded by Shen Yiyang and launched a fierce assault from the left side of the French army.

Clawson first realized the power of cluster tank attacks. The French trenches had no effect in front of the new tanks of the Chinese army. The jingling machine gun hit the tank's armor was no different from scratching it. Through the observation hole, Clawson saw the Chinese tanks ruthlessly chasing French soldiers who fled in all directions.

The engineers skillfully built four pontoon bridges on the Meuse River within two hours. Rolling armored torrents roared by. When the French army hurriedly organized troops to defend, Clawson witnessed another cruel tactic of the Chinese army. Hundreds of aircraft carried out a carpet bombardment of the French positions across the river.

After crossing the Meuse River, when Chen Liyao's tank drove onto a French position that was bombed by carpet, Clawson realized that there were no more French soldiers on the position resisting.

That night, an assault cluster composed of four armored divisions conquered Argonne, and the left wing of Verdun's defense was broken through. After a brief correction, the assault cluster continued to advance while the night was dark, leaving one-third of the tanks that could not continue to advance due to failure waiting for the follow-up infantry to follow up. The other tanks continued to think forward and rushed directly to Bulakur behind Verdun.

The 16 tanks under Chen Liyao were quite successful. Although they encountered several failures, they were all minor problems. The most serious tank was that the chain was broken by a mine, and the fault was solved after emergency treatment. After breaking through Agon, the French army's defense was relatively weaker, and there was no way to stop the high-speed propulsion of the armored cluster. 24 hours after the attack was launched, the armored cluster of the rapid army occupied Bulaikur, and Verdun's rear route was cut off.

Unwilling to fail, the French army launched a fierce counterattack on the exhausted armored cluster, and urgently mobilized the infantry of the two armies to launch an attack. The armored cluster was advancing too fast, and the weakness of losing infantry protection was exposed. The fierce artillery fire of the French army brought great trouble to the armored cluster. At this time, Chen Yiyang had no choice but to order the troops to block the French counterattack, and at the same time urged the subsequent infantry to follow up.

While the Chinese army launched a fierce attack on Verdun, the German army concentrated 200 divisions to launch a crazy attack on Amiens and Reims in the west. Although they were prepared for the fierce attacks launched by the Sino-German coalition forces, in the face of such a fierce attack, the French army could only be in a passive state of being beaten.
Chapter completed!