Chapter 202: Have Model And Kemmel Hold The Line
After the meeting, Lelouch seized the time to rest for a night. On the morning of December 11, he led his troops south to aid Austria and Greece.
However, although he said he was rushing to provide aid, he did not take the train directly from the start—because taking the train directly would require detouring back from Poltava to Kharkiv, then looping east before heading south.
The mileage would increase by at least several hundred kilometers, and with the train speeds of this era, a round trip would take nearly a full day.
Therefore, Lelouch temporarily suggested last night that during the reinforcement, they directly cut south through the enemy defense zone between Poltava and Kremenchuk, conveniently shrinking the encirclement by a large margin.
And Kremenchuk had a direct railway line leading to the future Moldovan capital Chisinau, from where they could turn south to the Romanian capital Bucharest, then further south to the Bulgaria-Austria border, all the way to Istanbul.
In short, Lelouch’s route could shave off the easternmost corner inside the current encirclement, depriving the enemy of several thousand more square kilometers of control area.
This plan also received the nod from Duke Rupprecht, treating it as Lelouch doing one more thing for friendly forces before leaving.
Given the current Lusha Army’s combat effectiveness, weakened to the point of desperation, and morale so low it was unimaginably depressed, this breakthrough was sure to succeed.
At 4:30 a.m. on December 11, at a breakthrough point along the railway on the Northern Front, the Germania Army’s supporting artillery fire began roaring on schedule, smashing thousands of artillery shells southward amid continuous blasts, bombing the Lushans along the line into chaos.
Moreover, over the previous three days from the 8th to 10th, the Lushans had continuously organized assaults to break out, leaving their troops in a state of extreme fatigue.
The Lusha generals had not anticipated that even after the encirclement was closed, the enemy was not waiting for the Lusha Army to desperately break out like cornered rats. The Germania Army only needed to hold the defense line, block the gaps, and wait at ease for the exhausted enemy.
But they encountered Lelouch, who did not play by the rules. After three days of holding defensively to wear down the fatigued enemy, on the fourth day they suddenly switched from defense to offense. This rapid shift from defense to attack was astonishing.
The unprepared Lusha Army positions were quickly breached by tanks, tearing open a massive gap that thrust all the way toward Kremenchuk on the Dnieper River bank—
Near Kremenchuk, there was a large railway bridge spanning the Dnieper River. It was exactly on the Poltava to Chisinau railway, crossing the Dnieper here, making it an important transportation hub city.
In 1915 Lusha, there were only two railway bridges across the entire Dnieper River.
One was in Kyiv, connecting the Kyiv to Odessa railway,
The other was in Kremenchuk, connecting Kharkiv-Poltava-Chisinau.
This highlighted the importance of this transportation hub.
Lelouch’s fierce offensive not only inflicted heavy losses on the enemy directly facing him, causing them to collapse and surrender in droves,
But also panicked 4-5 divisions of enemy troops in the defense zone east of Kremenchuk and north of the Dnieper River,
Because once Lelouch infiltrated to Kremenchuk and the Dnieper River bank, it would mean the Lusha Army further east was completely cut off from their main force.
Although they were already wrapped like dumplings, the dumpling wrapper was too large, leaving the inside somewhat loose, much like the air wontons loved by Modu people.
Now Lelouch could infiltrate and cut inside the large dumpling to package small dumplings, so the enemies who might end up isolated in small dumpling zones would naturally be afraid.
This portion of the enemy was forced to move, abandoning their original positions and fleeing west, making the full-line advance of the opposing Germania encirclement troops very smooth.
Lelouch took only one day to arrive at Kremenchuk on schedule, cross the Dnieper River there, and reach the South Bank.
The positions on the South Bank had already been seized in advance by Lieutenant General Kusmanek of the Austrian 3rd Army Group.
Lieutenant General Kusmanek’s troops had pushed early to near the South Bank but had no way to deal with the enemies on the North Bank. Now with Lelouch advancing head-on from the north, their mutual approach created an effect greater than one plus one.
Lelouch’s original intent was just to hurry on the road, but in the process, he conveniently annihilated 4 Lusha Army divisions west of Kremenchuk, freeing up more encirclement troops for friendly forces.
The time spent hurrying was about the same as taking the train detour, so he did not delay the main business at all.
After arriving at Kremenchuk, Lelouch inquired on one hand whether the trains he needed were prepared.
And Lieutenant General Kusmanek patted his chest in guarantee, saying that during his push from the south to here, he had tried to capture enemy-abandoned trains in every city along the way, and also gathered some from the south.
Ensuring transport capacity to move one or two divisions per day was still possible; if more troops needed transport, it would require multiple round trips.
This was also reasonable; large-scale troop dispatch could not be done all at once. The Britannians relied on sea transport, cramming people from other Aegean islands to Thessaloniki daily, with only over 20,000 in capacity.
The Germanian people relied on railways and could move over 20,000 per day, which was already very good.
Kremenchuk to Chisinau was over 500 kilometers, Chisinau to Bucharest another over 400 kilometers, and Bucharest to the Bulgaria-Austria border yet another over 300 kilometers.
Adding up the three segments, the railway was 1300 kilometers total. The railway conditions in 1915 Lusha and Romania were not great, normally averaging 30-40 kilometers per hour, so about 30-36 hours to ensure arrival.
But this railway was single-track, not double-track, so return trips required waiting at major stations like Bucharest and Chisinau for passing. With enough rolling stock, starting a batch every 36 hours and round trip in 72 hours meant assembling 50,000 more to the front line every three days. The 200,000 reinforcements Lelouch hoped for would take nearly two weeks to complete assembly, deployment, and offensive preparations at the Bulgaria-Austria border.
No way around it; dispatching a large army over a thousand kilometers was just that difficult, and the enemy’s situation was the same.
In this era, organizing a 200,000-man offensive with two weeks’ preparation was already very efficient.
Today was December 11; even if they took the train south before midnight tonight, Lelouch estimated the fastest they could launch a full counterattack against the Britannians was just before Christmas Eve.
He suddenly recalled that he, this transmigrator with an Eastern soul, seemed to have a feud with the Britannian dogs’ hypocritical Christmas truce whitewashing.
Last year, he also launched the Battle of Ypres on Christmas Eve, sneak-attacking key railway strongholds like Stenford behind Ypres, cutting off the British Army’s Ypres-Dunkirk railway line.
This year, it seemed there would be another Christmas offensive.
For him, every Christmas Eve was a night for killing.
Of course, before the general offensive, he could also conduct some other diversionary offensives first, or directly pull troops to the Ottoman defense line to help the Ottomans fight a defensive battle—as long as the enemy was not scared off.
“Since we can transport 2 divisions tonight, my division goes first, the next batch let your Hungarian division follow, and if the battle progresses smoothly later, we can pull people early and head south in batches as planned.”
After understanding the transport capacity, Lelouch instructed Lieutenant General Kusmanek accordingly.
Though Lieutenant General Kusmanek was a lieutenant general, he knew Lelouch’s influence, and Lelouch was the lifesaver who pulled him from the prisoner of war camp, so he carried out Lelouch’s requirements fully without discount.
He knew what Lelouch said was equivalent to what Marshal Rupprecht said.
Before boarding the train, Lelouch took time to write a concise tactical summary and had it sent back for Marshal Rupprecht to review.
It summarized the tactical gains and losses from his breakthrough to Kremenchuk today, and suggested that the German 6th Army Group could review and emulate today’s tactics later,
During the process of tightening the dumpling wrapper, avoid rigidly executing a single flat-push tactic across one line. Appropriately send out some surprise forces, combining full-line advances with focused breakthroughs, especially creating situations like “pushing all the way to the Dnieper River bank at certain weak points in one go.”
The current encirclement’s main body was still three railways forming three sides, with the Dnieper River passing through the middle of the encirclement.
Later, whether the North Bank encirclement troops pushed south to the Dnieper River bank, or the South Bank troops pushed north to the Dnieper River bank, it would factually isolate certain portions of the enemy,
Forcing that portion of the enemy, upon realizing they might be “further cut from large dumplings into small ones,” to waver early and flee for their lives. This would give the encircling side more opportunities to annihilate and pursue, making the advance more forceful.
These ideas, if placed on the Earth plane twenty years later, would not need teaching at all, as they were basic operations.
Later armored blitzkriegs, after completing encirclements, to quickly devour the enemy inside, would variously cut large fillings into small ones, trying to chop them finer, rather than “rolling flat with a rolling pin in one line.”
But in 1915, since armored infiltration forces had just emerged, and deep infantry infiltration and penetration tactics were not yet mature, this experience still needed a slight mention. And just a mention was enough; knowledgeable generals would get it instantly.
After receiving it, Marshal Rupprecht deeply agreed and immediately grasped the subtleties, so he had some elite troops execute accordingly, especially instructing Bock, who remained on the encirclement battlefield, to infiltrate quickly once the weather turned cold, muddy, and icy in a few days, accelerating the enemy’s destruction.
……
Lelouch himself would not arrive at the Bulgaria-Austria border until the afternoon of December 13, or even the early morning of December 14.
In the time before that, he could only hope that Model and Kemmel held their respective front lines on their own.
Kemmel would not directly receive Lelouch’s command, so he got the orders through the Ottoman Army Commander-in-Chief, General Zanders.
Instructing him that “if necessary, do not hold out stubbornly; if friendly forces on the north Greece-Austria border or even the Bulgaria-Austria border collapse first, leading to the possibility of our forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula being pinched front and rear by the enemy, then the Gallipoli Peninsula defense troops should withdraw in stages ahead of time, or split forces to reinforce the Greece-Austria border defenders.
Additionally, before being forced to retreat and abandon positions, be sure to destroy defensive fortifications as much as possible to avoid aiding the enemy and increasing difficulty for our counterattack later. As long as you hold for one to two weeks, do not worry about temporarily lost land; wait for Germania reinforcements.”
Kemmel lived up to his military talent; after receiving the orders, he mentally simulated and deduced it, knowing exactly what to do.
Starting from the night of December 10, he had men sequentially sabotage tunnels in areas of the Gallipoli Peninsula base that might need to be abandoned in the future—no need to fill entire tunnels, as that would be too much work and waste the hard-built defensive works.
Just slightly block the tunnel entrances for ten or twenty meters and add minor camouflage. This would ensure that even if enemy large-caliber shells hit the entrance directly, they could not blast it open.
And their own side just needed accurate coordinate markers on the map; next time, they could slowly dig open the entrance with earth-moving equipment and reuse them.
This way, when the Austrian Army was forced to retreat and lose ground, the tunnel network they had operated for months would not aid the enemy. Most of the internal space remained empty; just the entrances were hidden.
After two days of orderly sealing tunnel entrances, by December 12, Kemmel indeed heard bad news from northern friendly forces: the town at the corner connecting the mainland and Gallipoli Peninsula base, Kadikoy, had been captured by the Britannian Army that day!
The Ottoman Army, on terrain without advantage, indeed could not hold against the Britannian Army with absolute equipment superiority and greater numbers.
The “Sick Man of West Asia” reputation was well-deserved. Without Germanian help, relying solely on Ottoman combat effectiveness was simply too weak.
Kemmel knew that without splitting forces to withdraw now, he and the other friendly forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula risked being cut off.
That night, Kemmel withdrew the 1 division under his direct command and another 2 temporarily under his management—a total of 3 Ottoman Army divisions—from the Gallipoli Peninsula to the mainland, holding east of the deepest Britannian Army vanguard point, Kadikoy town, and continuing to resist step by step.
After pulling out the 3 relatively most elite divisions, the Ottoman Army’s defensive combat power on the Gallipoli Peninsula instantly plummeted.
Plus, with many of their tunnels orderly self-abandoned and entrances camouflaged, the defender’s elastic defense maneuver space became much more limited.
The opposing Britannian Landing Army was full of momentum, especially the ANZAC Corps generals who dared to pile on lives for fierce charges.
And the Britannian Empire high command, recently for fighting Gallipoli and Greek mountainous warfare, had brought in the most elite forces from the Indian colonial army at the southern foothills of the Himalayas—the Gurkha Mountain Troops.
Just a few Gurkha Mountain Troops regiments made the Ottoman defenders, who had never seen such units, struggle greatly, exclaiming that the Gurkhas crossed mountains and ridges as if on flat ground, with exaggerated climbing and off-road combat power in mountain assaults.
Even the Germanian and Ollie people’s Alpine Mountain Divisions probably could not match such off-road capability.
The last Ottoman defenders on the Gallipoli Peninsula finally could not hold and began accelerating their collapse.
Finally, holding out until December 18, the Ottoman Army was completely driven off the Gallipoli Peninsula.
The Britannian Landing Army pinched front and rear, seized the entire Gallipoli Peninsula, then pushed further forward, finally killing into the last open basin plain west of Istanbul, the Tekirdag area.
In a word, once the British Army took the two small towns one south and one north on this plain—southern Tekirdag and northern Corlu—then advanced east another 80 kilometers, they would reach the Istanbul urban area!
Half a month ago, when Britannia Naval Minister Walton pitched his strategy of “forget face, directly shamelessly violate Greek neutrality, install puppets, and land in Greece to open a second front” to Prime Minister Asquith, the Britannian Army was still 200 kilometers from Istanbul.
After adopting Minister Walton’s shameless ploy, though Britannia’s international image stank a bit, the effect was immediate.
Sure enough, just 20 days after actual action, the original 200 kilometers had shrunk to only 80 left!
As long as they truly captured Istanbul in the end, they would fully open the Black Sea Strait, destroy the Ottoman state, and even possibly rescue the desperate Lushans.
Compared to such huge profits, face meant nothing.
Although on the southern Greek Peloponnese Peninsula, the Greek King was still protected and resisting, with some minor accidents, it no longer affected the big picture.
The Britannian coalition flooded like tides, piling all fresh troops forward; hundreds of thousands of troops now had only one goal in sight—
Capture the millennial imperial capital Constantinople, restore the glory of the Western world since 1453, and become great conquerors immortalized in history.
As for risks… what risks? The Germanian absolute main force troops were still locked in deadly combat with Lushans at Kyiv city; it was said that the main elite designations of German 10th Army Group and German 6th Army Group had appeared near Kyiv, with their radio signals still around Kyiv. They definitely wanted to take Kyiv first before coming to rescue here.
This was fair too; Germanian people eat Kyiv, Britannian people eat Istanbul, one for one swap.
