Chapter 43: Target Ypres, Launch The Assault!
After the mobilization speech was fully finished, it was time to fully distribute new equipment to the soldiers, familiarize them with the new organization and new tactics.
As the Army Group Commander Your Highness the Duke, as well as the two Division Commanders, certainly did not have that much free time, they left after the speech. The remaining work was handled by the two Major Battalion Commanders and Captain Lelouch as Deputy Battalion Commander.
Because the time left for the rear was too rushed, the arsenals in Thuringia and Karlsruhe also could not equip all 2200 soldiers in the two battalions with new weapons, so when distributing equipment, the two battalions could not fully follow the organization designed by Lelouch. Some soldiers could only continue to make do with old firearms.
The limited equipment would definitely be allocated preferentially, first to the First Assault Battalion where Lelouch was, especially ensuring that the company he directly led was fully equipped. The rest would then go to the Second Assault Battalion.
To avoid the issue of not minding scarcity but inequality, the weapon distribution for the two battalions was done separately.
For the brothers in the Second Battalion, Lelouch only greeted Battalion Commander Major Rundstedt and asked him to bear with it. There was no further communication below that; better to avoid extra trouble.
Major Rundstedt was quite open-minded, and at 40 years old, having had a bumpy career before, he knew that First Assault Battalion Commander Bock had a Chief of Staff uncle, so how could he dare compete with Bock for resources?
Being able to join such an elite unit and get more opportunities for meritorious promotion was already very satisfying.
Besides, Lelouch did give him submachine guns, just slightly fewer than the First Battalion, which was completely acceptable.
……
While distributing new equipment, Lelouch also took the opportunity to explain the weapon allocation and organization of the Assault Battalion to the officers at all levels below.
This weapon pairing plan was not decided by him alone. It could only be said that he proposed the initial plan, then discussed it with Bock, Rundstedt, and Rommel over the past two days, and finally fine-tuned and finalized it.
“Each assault platoon has 4 squads, each squad 15 men.
Each squad is equipped with 1 squad leader, armed with one MP15 submachine gun, 300 rounds of 9mm bullets, and one Carl Zeiss binocular telescope.
The remaining 14 men are divided into an assault group and a fire support group, 8 in the assault group, 6 in the support group.
The 8 assault group members: 5 armed with MP15 submachine guns, 300 rounds of bullets. 2 armed with Mauser G98 rifles, 1 armed with Mauser C96 pistol, 100 rounds of bullets.
Submachine gunners have heavier bullet loads, so each carries only 6 long-handled grenades. The pistol soldier is a professional grenadier, selected as the strongest soldier in the squad, and must carry 20 grenades! Riflemen carry 15, and should also try to select soldiers who can throw grenades far.
（Note: The protagonist’s improved grenade weighs about the same as the M24 wooden-handled grenade but slightly heavier, approximately 0.75KG, or about one and a half pounds each.）
After introducing the assault group, Lelouch took a sip of water and continued:
“The 6 in the fire support group are divided into a 3-man light machine gun group and a 3-man grenade launcher group. The light machine gun group carries 1 MG15 light machine gun; the assistant gunner and ammunition bearer do not carry main weapons, only a C96 pistol for self-defense, using the saved load to carry more machine gun bullets.
The main machine gunner carries only 200 rounds of belt, which can be directly loaded on the gun. The assistant machine gunner and ammunition bearer each carry 800 rounds of bullets, and only 2 grenades are enough, as units providing covering suppression from relatively rear positions will have few opportunities to throw grenades.
The grenade launcher group: the main grenadier carries the grenade launcher and 6 universal grenades, the assistant grenadier and ammunition bearer carry 15 universal grenades, and are equipped with a Mauser G98 rifle and 100 rounds of bullets.”
After several minutes of explanation, all levels of soldiers basically mastered the firepower organization of the assault squad and were familiar with their own duties.
Equipping the assault group with two riflemen was first because there was indeed a battlefield need, to ensure that if the assault group encountered enemy machine gun or sniper suppression and the submachine gun range couldn’t reach, the riflemen could counter-snipe, at least having a chance to fight back on the spot.
Secondly, submachine guns were indeed insufficient now, so riflemen had to be added to make up numbers— the 5 submachine guns per squad mentioned earlier could only be achieved in the company where Lelouch was. In Rommel’s company, each squad could only get 4.
In the First Battalion’s C/D companies further back from Rommel, and the entire Second Battalion of Rundstedt, they could only distribute 3 submachine guns per squad, thus needing to add two riflemen. Of course, riflemen have lighter bullet loads, so they carry more grenades for close-range breakthroughs.
Additionally, regarding machine gun allocation, the requirements Lelouch negotiated earlier with Scheisser in Thuringia were to produce one hundred new light machine guns by year’s end, then figure out mass production processes—the initial hundred were small-scale trial production, without molds yet, so all parts had to be machined, making production costs very high.
It was only to trial produce and improve simultaneously that they endured such high costs to make them.
So far, Scheisser had not fully delivered, only over 80. So in the end, only the First Assault Battalion where Lelouch was could be equipped with domestically produced MG15 light machine guns, while the Second Battalion would temporarily use Danish Madsen light machine guns captured at the start of the war—
At the beginning of the World War, Denmark had an order for 600 Madsen light machine guns placed by neutral Switzerland. They were transiting through Germania by rail train to Bern, passing through Nuremberg. The Baria Royal Family seized that batch ordered by the Swiss, but also paid for it, not taking it for free.
After that batch of 1903 Danish light machine guns was intercepted, some were gradually put into frontline troops, but because the barrel caliber was different, most guns took some time to replace barrels to adapt to 7.92 caliber Mauser bullets. Now Rundstedt’s battalion lacked new light machine guns, so they used the old ones to make up numbers; anyway, the bullets were interchangeable.
The Danish guns were inferior to the MG15 in shooting accuracy, jam resistance, and rate of fire, but they were genuinely light, so Rundstedt didn’t lose out.
While Bock and Lelouch’s battalion still had to select the strongest soldiers to serve as main machine gunners for the MG15, as they needed to carry the gun, which weighed over 20 kg fully loaded with belt, to climb slopes and charge trenches.
……
Weapons were allocated to every battalion, company, platoon, and squad, and their respective tasks were organized.
The following days were specialized training targeting the soldiers’ tactical and technical proficiency.
The German Army originally had no such professional grenadiers and light machine gunners; soldiers selected for the light machine gun group had to additionally train in rapid setup and deployment of light machine guns, as well as cross-country marching while carrying the gun.
The grenade launcher soldiers followed some simple shortcuts temporarily instructed by Lelouch to intensify training in determining grenade launcher elevation angles. This way, when firing grenades in the future, they could more accurately determine the initial elevation of the launcher and better control the range— the original random method for grenade launchers was too reliant on luck and experience.
The professional close-range grenade throwers trained with model grenades, practicing throwing power techniques and systematically learning how to feel and control throwing distance.
Real combat is not like the game where there’s a visible pre-aiming parabola before throwing grenades. How much distance a certain power feel throws requires repeated practice with models to break in.
Finally, Lelouch added a temporary training subject for all soldiers switched to submachine guns:
How to engage in melee combat with entrenching tools.
It was like sharpening a gun in the face of battle.
All German Army infantry originally trained in bayonet fighting. The Mauser G98 rifle was very long, and with German soldiers’ height and arm length, they had a great advantage in bayonet fighting.
But after switching to submachine guns, bayonets could no longer be fitted, and even if forced, it was very disadvantageous, as submachine guns were much shorter than rifles.
Originally, Major Bock and Major Rundstedt thought it better to just give up on submachine gunners’ melee combat ability, as it couldn’t be salvaged anyway.
In the end, it was Lelouch, the quick-thinking guy, who preemptively ordered a batch of sharper-edged, high-grade steel-forged entrenching tools from the Thuringia arsenal.
This was beneficial both for terrain modification in complex trench warfare environments and for picking up to fight in melee.
The only pity was that Lelouch himself had very low physical combat power, with melee ability practically zero.
Even though he was a super military enthusiast in his previous life, he couldn’t know any “shovel techniques,” at most just telling everyone: try to swing the shovel face at the enemy’s head, or the shovel blade at the neck.
As for more specific entrenching tool melee moves and routines, they could only rely on the soldiers to figure them out themselves, or officers with talent in the army to learn and summarize a set of shovel techniques on the spot.
……
For five or six consecutive days, grassroots officers and ordinary soldiers were familiarizing themselves with new weapons and new tactics.
Meanwhile, company and battalion-level officers began to gradually access more operational information revealed from higher up. The two battalion commanders and eight company commanders all realized that the day of the formal offensive was getting closer.
The reason the top had not yet finalized the final attack date seemed to be just waiting for suitable weather—the Belgian Army had destroyed the Yser Canal before its annihilation, creating a flooded area, and many places around the Ypres Salient had bad roads.
The previous delay in the offensive was to wait for cold weather so that the surface water could slightly freeze and harden, facilitating troop mobility.
These days the weather had been hovering around zero degrees, with occasional light snow, but no heavy snow or sudden freeze.
It dragged on until December 18, when the Lille and Ypres area finally had heavy snow.
The moment he saw the heavy snowflakes falling, Lelouch knew the general offensive was imminent.
“Do you think the top will order the general offensive today or tomorrow?” Bock and Major Rundstedt looked at the sky full of heavy snow and discussed the military situation with Lelouch.
Lelouch thought carefully and then analyzed: “I don’t think so, but it will be within two or three days— heavy snow also has considerable impact on the attackers.
Moreover, snow doesn’t freeze until it melts and then refreezes; it’s best to launch the general offensive when the snow lightens and the shallow groundwater freezes. But today the top should issue the final operational plan.”
Lelouch’s prediction was spot on, because that evening before bedtime, Division Headquarters really sent down the operational plan, telling them to be ready at any time.
