Chapter 120: Taking Out The Entire Southwestern Front’s Logistics Base
Several hours later, the town of Sukhovolia in the western suburbs of Lviv, and the town of Bryukhovychi in the northwestern suburbs.
The siege troops commanded by Lelouch launched sustained and fierce attacks on the Lusha defenders in these two directions.
Light and heavy machine guns swept at each other, Mosin-Nagant and Mauser 98 engaged in fierce back-and-forth exchanges, batches of soldiers repeatedly charged, engaging in continuous slaughter on these two battlefields.
The Lusha artillery regiment bombarded relentlessly with all their might, suppressing the siege troops so they could not lift their heads, yet they could only grit their teeth and hold on.
On the Germania side, there were only a total of 9 76mm field guns, not only few in number but also short-barreled cavalry guns. Trying to engage in an artillery duel with the defending artillery regiment that had 122mm heavy howitzers was obviously extremely inadequate.
Although there were over a hundred grenade launchers, they were clearly of little use in this siege battle scenario, as their range was too severely suppressed by the enemy.
By 3 p.m. in the fierce battle, at least a thousand corpses were left outside both towns. The Germania Army’s personnel losses were unexpectedly more than twice that of the Lusha Army.
The only consolation was that the majority of the casualties were the prisoners of war just rescued, not elites, and the number of weapon losses for the siege troops was kept to a minimum as much as possible.
Most of the firearms left by the casualties were picked up by comrades and used to continue the attack. They could even pick up some Mosin-Nagant from the killed enemies.
Lelouch had no choice; when he assigned the attacking troops, he had configured them with at least twice as many people as weapons.
Of course, even when forced to overstaff personnel, Lelouch did not resort to the Lusha style of crude operation where “two soldiers charge, only one gets a gun, the other gets a stick/club or machete.”
He would at least give the accompanying soldiers an entrenching tool or a bayonet temporarily tied to a stick, and distribute some grenades from the grenadiers to the soldiers without guns.
This way, the soldiers without guns at least had some ranged attack capability; as long as they could close to within fifty or sixty meters of the enemy, they could still throw grenades and pose a threat to the enemy. Having grenades also bolstered the soldiers’ courage, so they no longer felt like they were cannon fodder sent to die.
The enemy also had to divert firepower to guard against these soldiers, indirectly relieving fire pressure for the attacking soldiers with guns.
But even with so many optimizations, the slow progress of the offensive and the massive casualties remained indisputable facts.
As the overall campaign commander, and experiencing his first command of such a large unit in actual combat, Lelouch’s face grew increasingly ashen as the battle dragged on.
Before this campaign, he had after all only been in a role of filling gaps and devising strategies. The scale of personally commanding troops in frontline combat had been limited to two or three battalions.
This airborne operation was Lelouch’s first time commanding an entire regiment in combat, who would have thought it suddenly turned into commanding ninety thousand soldiers, of whom ten thousand had weapons and eighty thousand did not.
This sudden expansion thoroughly exposed the shortcomings in his command abilities, and before long it became stretched thin.
In terms of numbers, this was equivalent to suddenly commanding two armies. Having someone with only regimental commander experience directly command at army level was too much of a disconnect.
Although in this process, Lelouch’s frontline command experience and lessons learned were skyrocketing, counting as a rare training opportunity. But all of it came at the cost of thousands of soldiers’ lives, dealing a huge blow to his conscience and nerves.
Fortunately, he had the capable Rommel with relatively iron nerves by his side, as well as Lieutenant General Kusmanek just rescued from the prisoner of war camp, both of whom could help him fill tactical gaps.
Rommel had just experienced a tactical mistake in an ambush battle that morning and felt some self-blame inwardly, wanting to prove himself through a victory. However, he too lacked experience commanding large units and was learning frantically while fighting.
Lieutenant General Kusmanek had sufficient prestige to steady the morale when the released prisoners of war were sent back into battle, preventing shaken resolve due to casualties.
The lieutenant general also repeatedly had people propagate to the soldiers: Our numbers are more than five times those of the Lviv defenders（in reality not, just bragging to stabilize morale）, and as long as we occupy the train station, there will be endless weapons, so everyone can arm up then, and this battle is certain victory.
Under such encouragement, the troops composed of prisoners of war could endure the casualties and continue the attack.
……
“I didn’t expect siege battles to be this grueling when the enemy has heavy artillery advantage. Sigh, it seems our army has never fought such a tough battle where our artillery is completely inferior to the enemy and we still have to take the initiative in attacking a city.”
In a field command bunker west of Sukhovolia town, Lelouch hid in the bunker, extending a gunner’s periscope to observe the enemy situation and battle conditions; the grim slaughter left him sighing deeply.
After lamenting a couple of sentences, he seemed somewhat forgetful, or perhaps too tense, and asked the company commander of guards Klose beside him again:
“Help me check the map again, how far is it here from the urban area and the train station.”
Sukhovolia is directly west of Lviv and also on the railway line from Lviv toward Przemyśl-Krakow.
Klose glanced at the map and immediately reported: “6 kilometers from the edge of Lviv urban area, 11 kilometers from the train station—in fact these are straight-line distances on the map, the railway is not straight, so if advancing strictly along the railway, the actual total mileage may be 13 kilometers.”
Lelouch murmured thoughtfully: “13 kilometers… that means after fighting into the urban area, we still need to advance another 5 kilometers in the urban area to reach the train station. Not easy—right, how far has Rommel gotten?”
Communications company commander Schweinsteiger on the other side heard the officer’s inquiry and immediately reported: “Just received a reply from Deputy Regimental Commander Rommel, he is about to take Bryukhovychi town, 12 kilometers from the train station, but only 6 kilometers from High Ground 385 in the northwest of the city.
If we can occupy the high ground, our few cavalry field guns should be able to bombard the train station. Although casualties are heavy there too, he is confident in completing the task and will definitely reach High Ground 385 tonight.”
Lelouch nodded, without much comment.
The route through Bryukhovychi town northwest of the city was actually not the main attack, just a diversionary offensive. Reaching the train station from that road in the end was not very realistic, and much more difficult than advancing from west city along the railway.
But Lelouch’s decision to divide forces was sound in itself. He had considered several aspects at the time:
First, his troops were too numerous, nearly ninety thousand, and attacking all from directly west of Lviv would mean the troops could not deploy.
The real world is not a game; one must consider “battlefield width” for how many troops can deploy, stacking together is meaningless.
On the other hand, it was also considering that the last Bohemia prisoner of war camp rescued before the siege was in the northwest of the city. So having Rommel, who went to rescue those Bohemia prisoners of war, turn west nearby with the rescued people into the siege saved extra back-and-forth travel.
This flanking offensive could threaten High Ground 385 closest to the core urban area, which was also the high ground of Lviv urban area and the mountain peak deepest into the urban area.
Even if they ultimately could not reach the train station, as long as they planted a nail there and deployed artillery overlooking from above, it could greatly attract enemy forces. The defending enemy certainly would not sit idly by and would launch a counterattack, fighting a war of attrition with Rommel holding the advantageous terrain, giving Lelouch’s main attack more chances of success.
（Note: The above map is the Lviv campaign situation map, including the schematic of the previous paratrooper prisoner rescue operation）
After understanding the situation, Lelouch ordered all routes to continue advancing as planned, without slacking even until nightfall.
Subordinates asked if they should continue the offensive after dark, and Lelouch gave a very straightforward and decisive answer:
“Of course continue the offensive! We have plenty of nothing but people now. Achieve ‘men rest, guns do not’—after dark, exhausted troops can withdraw in batches, hand the guns to comrades resting during the day, and let fresh warriors full of energy continue the attack!”
The subordinates present deeply agreed; for troops with many people but few guns, this was indeed the way to do it.
They could even subdivide the first half-night 5 hours and second half-night 5 hours attacking troops further, rotate shifts at midnight, making it three shifts a day of continuous offense.
Such relentless offensives would surely make the Lusha defenders, with no one to rotate, suffer immensely.
……
Under Lelouch’s gritted-teeth persistence, the bloody battle finally continued until dusk.
Before nightfall, the last towns on the edge of the main urban area, Sukhovolia and Bryukhovychi, were successively captured by the Germania Army; from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., they advanced another nearly one to two kilometers, very hard-won.
After nightfall, the situation improved somewhat, and the offensive became even fiercer.
Lelouch was initially surprised himself, later realizing it was partly thanks to the Germania Army having enough people to rotate; the fresh troops who just picked up guns after dark attacked fiercely.
On the other hand, nightfall made the enemy’s artillery advantage less pronounced, as nighttime bombardment observation efficiency dropped greatly.
After discussing with Lieutenant General Kusmanek, the lieutenant general judged from experience: They might push past the field positions outside the city before dawn tomorrow, reaching the edge of the core urban area—that is, to the position just 5 kilometers from the train station.
But further ahead, it would be urban warfare, where the Germania Army’s grenade launchers could shine.
But in this operation, they had not equipped flamethrowers; without that divine weapon for clearing defensive fortifications on the Western Front, clearing enemy firing points became a bit more troublesome, still requiring lives to fill.
After calculating, Lelouch quickly discovered a few more shortcomings: “Looks like the situation is tricky, I somewhat over-relied on the experience from the previous Dunkirk Fortress battle, but that fight actually lasted shorter and was less intense than today’s battle.
If we have to fight urban warfare and clear house by house, grenades won’t be enough. In urban warfare, we must breach walls to attack, not go through doors, or we’ll be ambushed by enemies lying in wait. But breaching requires large quantities of cluster grenades.
Also, although we have plenty of grenade launchers, grenades are too few; having tubes but no ammunition is just scrap metal… Do we have to hope that tomorrow morning the airship team flies another run to deliver supplies? If relying on another airdrop resupply, we need to send a report to the rear now, giving them half the night to prepare.”
After tallying the issues clearly, Lelouch did not shy away and directly proposed the suggestion of another airdrop for supplies for everyone to consider.
Lieutenant General Kusmanek also approved of resupply, while Lieutenant Colonel Kesselring nearby had a flash of inspiration and proposed an even more aggressive idea:
“If airdrops are possible, could we call in a few airships, like in the Battle of Dunkirk, to switch to direct bombing missions? We currently have no heavy cannons, and it’s impossible to airdrop heavy cannons. Relying on airdropped grenades, then having soldiers use grenade launchers and manual throws to breakthrough house by house, is inferior to coordinating with some bombing to open the path of attack.”
Lelouch frowned slightly: “Direct bombing? The effect could work, but only high-altitude bombing avoids enemy fighter interception, hard to ensure strike accuracy. To hit key targets, we’d have to descend, with no safety guarantee.”
Kesselring thought for a moment and reminded of an important piece of intelligence: “But I think this risk is completely worth it. Among the brothers we rescued from prisoner of war camps, quite a few were previously forced by Lusha guards to work as train station loaders.
I just asked a few separately, and some can remember the terrain and roughly know the locations of various warehouses near Lviv train station. For example, some prisoners of war previously loaded ammunition for the enemy and transported it to the ammunition depot near the train station; it’s said there are stocks of artillery shells numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
The train station ammunition depot building is very sturdy, said to have over half a meter of reinforced concrete walls, designed to withstand 150mm caliber heavy cannon bombardment. But with super-heavy aerial bombs, it’s still possible to penetrate.”
Moreover, at noon earlier when we made the siege plan, we briefly discussed ‘how to prevent the enemy from orderly destroying warehouses one by one in the train station warehouse area when losing it, to avoid us capturing supplies’; at the time we had no good methods.
Now I’ve suddenly thought, if we can blow up the enemy ammunition depot and kill all the enemies in the train station area with the explosion, then surge forward fiercely, we might seize other warehouses. Though we won’t capture the ammunition stocks, we might still salvage weapons, uniforms, and military rations from the ruins.”
When an ammunition depot explodes, nothing will be left within hundreds of meters. Human flesh can’t withstand such a massive explosion, but goods might.
Textiles, uniforms, and such, as long as not affected by fire, won’t be damaged by just the explosion’s shockwave and fragments. Steel weapons, as long as not smashed and a bit farther away, will be fine. As for military rations, as long as no fire starts, they can still be gathered and eaten later.
As for ammunition, we weren’t likely to capture any anyway—if Germanians really reached the train station ammunition depot, the enemy was very likely to set timed delayed detonations. Then the Germanians rushing in to occupy it might instead be mass-killed in the blast.
Since that’s the case, better to detonate it for the enemy in advance.
This temptation was great enough to finally convince Lelouch:
“Lieutenant Colonel Kesselring’s suggestion is excellent! Let’s draft a request immediately and send a report to the rear tonight. As for concerns about enemy alertness and interception, we can still use the previous ‘take off at 3 a.m., arrive over the battlefield at dawn and bomb’ method, time it to minimize risk.
We’ll have the rear take off airships at 3 a.m., arrive over Lviv at 5:30, then under ground guidance calibrate flight path errors, re-find the target, and drop bombs; that should work.”
With the officer’s approval, Kesselring immediately went to formulate a detailed plan, after which Schweinsteiger personally sent the report requesting rear coordination for air support.
