Chapter 5: Let Him Revel for an Hour Before Closing the Net

"The 75s are still the most reliable! If those fellows in the artillery regiment could just be a bit quicker on their feet, we wouldn't have had to sacrifice so many of our men!"

Major De Gizeh, commander of the 4th Division of the Belgian Army, finally let out a sigh of relief as he watched through his high-powered binoculars. Two German heavy machine-gun nests on the outermost perimeter had been directly targeted and obliterated by his own quick-firing guns.

The rumbling of the artillery fire provided him with an extra sense of security. At the same time, his dissatisfaction with the performance of his two useless regimental commanders only deepened.

The 3rd Regiment had arrived early that morning, and the 4th had arrived by noon. Combined, the two regiments numbered nearly five thousand men, even if they lacked heavy support at the time. Yet, they had failed to break through a ruined town defended by a reinforced company of at most three or four hundred men. To have attacked all day without success, with the sun already setting, was an utter disgrace.

In the end, he had been forced to humble himself, borrowing a few trucks from His Majesty originally intended for transporting royal valuables to haul the remnants of his division's artillery to the front line. Only then had the situation finally shifted. There was no helping it; the remnants of the Belgian Army, having been in full retreat for over a dozen days, had lost almost all their trucks. Their artillery carriages and draft horses were also nearly depleted, making it extremely difficult to maneuver the few remaining cannons—often requiring entire squads of soldiers to haul them or forcing them to requisition local cows on the spot.

The entire Belgian 4th Division was left with only these four guns. The neighboring 6th Division had more left because their defensive sector was closer and their retreat route shorter, while the 1st Division, which had served as the rearguard, was the most tragic—they had none left at all.

As the outermost street on the east side of Leopold Town was cleared, Major De Gizeh immediately ordered two battalions of the 3rd Regiment to advance cautiously and probe into the town. The two majors leading the battalions advanced with extreme care, one along the south side of the coastal highway and the other along the north.

As they passed the ruins of houses, the soldiers kept their eyes glued to the doors and windows. When nothing untoward happened, the soldiers began to lower their guard. At the start of the Great War, both sides were blank slates when it came to urban warfare; never before in human history had there been a conflict involving urban fighting with modern firearms.

The Belgian forces successfully passed the first line of defense and pushed to the second. The enemy's resistance remained sporadic, and with the time now approaching dusk, the soldiers finally began to grow bold.

However, just as the Belgians pushed deeper into the town:

"Ta-ta-ta—"

From the street corners on both sides, bursts of machine-gun fire erupted, catching them completely off guard.

"Ugh—" Cries of pain and curses echoed instantly through the street. From several piles of rubble that had been simply camouflaged, dense tongues of fire spat out.

From the west-facing windows and collapsed wall holes of the very street the Belgian vanguard had just safely passed, more malicious tongues of fire suddenly emerged, hungrily claiming lives. The crossfire cut down more than half of the infantry who had pushed too deep; the survivors could only retreat in a frantic scramble.

...

"Hmm, although it goes against a soldier's sense of honor, those camouflage techniques you mentioned are truly effective. How did you think of using the ruins and debris of houses to build such realistic concealed firing points?"

Colonel Lister lowered his binoculars, looking at the hidden heavy machine-gun nests as they slaughtered the enemy troops who had waded into the pocket. He was very satisfied with the result. The selection of the crossfire points had been made by the battalion commanders and vetted by the Colonel himself; it had proven to be excellent, leaving no blind spots. However, the camouflage measures for these points had come from Lelouch's impromptu suggestions just moments before.

Having just transmigrated, Lelouch’s grasp of the military fundamentals of this era was not yet solid enough to command independently. However, his mind was filled with the lessons of urban warfare from the future—theoretical knowledge that, even in small doses, helped the Colonel patch the holes in his defense.

Of course, facing the Colonel’s inquiry, he had to find another excuse for the source of his knowledge:

"Don't you remember, Colonel? I graduated from the Architecture Department of the Royal Academy of Art. Civil engineering is my trade. I am an expert in load-bearing structural design. Even if these firing points are built from broken walls and debris, they will never collapse. I can perform simple stress calculations in my head."

"Very good. Your time in architecture school was well spent." The Colonel lowered his binoculars and patted his shoulder with pride.

...

This scene left Lieutenant Barak, who was responsible for coordination, feeling quite envious. Barak was the deputy commander of the reconnaissance cavalry company; after Captain Andre was wounded, he had stayed close to the Colonel to handle coordination, allowing the cavalrymen to support the friendly forces of the 16th Regiment.

Barak had not known much about Lelouch before and found it difficult to understand why a mere sergeant was receiving such heavy reliance. Seeing Lelouch’s performance now, he was finally somewhat convinced.

Before he could dwell on it further, the Colonel spoke again: "Excellent. Let the men maintain this elastic defense. If the enemy advances, we retreat. Abandon the outer positions, do not expose yourselves to the direct fire of the enemy's quick-firing guns, and lure the enemy in before we strike!"

The Germans were skilled in elastic defense; it was a fundamental skill. Over two months ago, when the war had just begun, they had used elastic defense tactics in the Alsace-Lorraine region to bleed the French army, inflicting 200,000 casualties. Colonel Lister was naturally highly proficient in this art.

Lelouch, standing beside him, took the opportunity to observe and learn, feeling that he was benefiting immensely. He was like a sponge, greedily absorbing practical command experience to build a foundation and earn himself more capital to survive.

The bloody, seesaw battle lasted for a full hour. The Belgian forces were repulsed twice, leaving at least several hundred more corpses in front of the positions. As they fought, the sky turned completely dark, and the momentum of the Belgian charge finally began to slow.

On the west side of the town, the French offensive was also held off by the Colonel using nearly identical defensive techniques.

...

"The enemy is using elastic defense again! I never expected a mere company commander to use such defensive tactics in urban warfare."

Major De Gizeh watched his troops being repulsed once more. His initial joy had completely vanished, and he looked like a beaten rooster, his riding crop uncontrollably striking the hitching post.

"General! The enemy must have received reinforcements! In the back-and-forth fighting just now, we killed at least a hundred men. If there were really only a single company, they would have been wiped out by now!"

Colonel Djokic, commander of the 3rd Regiment, in an attempt to mitigate his own blame, exaggerated the results of the fighting to his division commander, emphasizing that the enemy's strength was not insignificant.

However, De Gizeh knew his subordinates too well. He instinctively divided the reported results by several times, his face as cold as water as he commented: "Do not emphasize the difficulties! Even if the enemy has a few reinforcements, they are nothing more than stragglers driven by the flood! We have artillery now; how can we still fail to take such a small town?"

Djokic: "But our direct-fire artillery is blocked by the ruins of the outer streets; we cannot hit the firing points scattered throughout the town. It is almost dark, and artillery observation is becoming increasingly difficult. Should we wait until tomorrow morning to attack?"

Major De Gizeh nearly struck him with his riding crop. Wait until morning? How could these fools suggest such a thing! His Majesty was waiting for the road to be cleared so the entire army could break out. In a race against death, waiting an entire night?

De Gizeh paced back and forth in agitation, his eyes scanning the battlefield. After thinking for a while, he finally reached a decision: "Move all 75mm guns into the town! We will use close-range, direct-fire to eliminate the enemy firing points in the inner blocks!"

Colonel Djokic was alarmed: "General, you cannot! Once inside the town, the distance between each block is only a few hundred meters—it is too close! The enemy's hidden mortars and heavy machine guns can easily counter our artillery positions. We have no range advantage!"

De Gizeh knew his subordinate was right. Field artillery was meant to be used for unilateral slaughter from outside the range of heavy machine guns and mortars, ideally at a distance of two kilometers or more. Rushing into a range where they could fire at each other was simply handing the enemy an opportunity. If it were open field combat, it might be fine, but this was urban warfare; the terrain was too complex.

De Gizeh hesitated for a long time, observing the terrain through his binoculars and studying the map, until he finally thought of a way.

"I have it! Do not enter the town directly from the front! Have your men charge once more! Once inside, occupy the buildings on the northernmost side of those cross streets! The north side of the town is the sea; before every attack, we can contact the British light cruiser *HMS Audacious* to provide a few rounds of covering fire. It is a pity that it is a cruiser focused on anti-torpedo tasks and its naval guns have a low trajectory, unable to bombard the depths of the town. But with it there, the enemy at least won't dare show their faces on the northern side of the town.

"So, if you attack from the northeast corner, you will certainly be able to hold your ground. Then, move these quick-firing gun positions to the northern ends of those north-south streets, or even onto the beach, and deploy them to fire precisely along the streets toward the south. If you see an enemy firing point, wipe it out immediately!

"In this way, the naval guns will open up positions for the direct-fire guns, and the direct-fire guns will cooperate to strike deep along the streets inside the town. By coordinating like this, we will surely break through the enemy! The length of these streets from south to north is enough to exceed the range of their heavy machine guns and light mortars. At that point, it will be us shelling the enemy, and they will have no way to counter us."

This order finally made his colonels and lieutenant colonels brighten up. They rarely admitted it, but their division commander's tactical vision was indeed sharper than their own; he could come up with such a clever maneuver. If they only moved the cannons to the northern entrances of the north-south streets without penetrating deep into the town, they wouldn't have to worry about ambushes in the complex terrain. The 75mm quick-firing guns' own bulletproof shields would be enough to withstand close-range fire from small arms, posing little threat.

The Belgian army quickly sprang into action. Regardless of the fading light, they organized another attack. The initial "elastic defense" phase proceeded just as before. The German forces retreated after putting up slight resistance, then used the firing points hidden in all directions to snipe at the Belgians. Each time, the hidden firing points were in different locations. The positions used to repulse the previous wave were gone by the next, forcing the Belgians to use their own lives to locate them again.

However, this time, the Belgian troops gritted their teeth and held on longer than before, because they had been told that once they gained a foothold, the heavy support would be moved forward to destroy the enemy's machine-gun nests hidden in the ruins.

Soon, Major De Gizeh’s deployment was effectively executed. The *HMS Audacious* offshore cleared a no-man's-land in the northeast corner of the town, which the Belgian infantry then occupied. Then, the 75mm guns were hauled onto the beach at the northern street entrances, their muzzles turned south, ready to sweep the town street by street from north to south.

...

"The Belgians have finally taken the bait. They thought we had no heavy support. It was indeed worth holding back the field artillery until this moment."

Looking through his binoculars at the movements of the Belgian forces, Colonel Lister finally let out a long breath. To be frank, at the start of the war, the performance of German 3-inch class artillery was not as good as the French. The M96 77mm field gun was crushed by the Schneider 75mm in terms of rate of fire, and it had no advantage in other indicators. The only clear advantage of the German 77mm gun was its higher muzzle velocity, which should have granted a significant range advantage. However, in pursuit of a lower profile, the German carriage design had limited the maximum elevation, wasting the high muzzle velocity, and in the end, their actual ranges were about the same.

All of this had to be compensated for by tactics and training. Fortunately, at this moment, Colonel Lister’s tactical deception had been a complete success. The Belgian army, teased and provoked by the mobile firing points within the town, had finally lost their patience and could not resist pushing their quick-firing guns forward.

"All 77mm field artillery units, take note: adjust firing coordinates within two minutes and execute a rapid fire of six rounds according to the following coordinates!"

"Artillery battery acknowledges, executing immediately!" The regimental field artillery battery responded to the Colonel's order, working with nimble and orderly precision.

A few minutes later, sudden, thunderous booms erupted at the edge of the beach on the north side of the town. The Belgian artillery positions, which had just been hauled into position and had not yet fully deployed, were struck by German 77mm shells landing right in their midst.

"What? This is impossible! How could the Germans have field artillery? We shelled them unilaterally for an hour or two, and they didn't return fire! Where did they get field artillery? How could they have hauled such heavy equipment through the flooded areas!"

Major De Gizeh, observing the battle from outside the town, felt blood rush to his head as he saw enemy shells landing on his own deploying quick-firing gun positions, erupting in brilliant flashes of fire. He felt his head spin, and he nearly fainted.

In that instant, he knew his plan was ruined. The German forces had truly been patient! They had cannons but didn't use them? They had simply relied on heavy machine guns and elastic defense to hold out for an hour or two, just to trick him into relaxing his vigilance!