Chapter 205: A Spent Force—now It’s My Turn
The Britannia Army had no idea at all that the consequences of losing infantry-tank coordination would be so severe,
and moreover, the colonel regimental commander of that armored regiment was also swept down by machine gun fire in the melee due to his haste in commanding the troops, so the troops inevitably fell into brief chaos during the retreat.
Nearly thirty armored cars broke through and withdrew, trying to pull away the distance first.
But the Germania Army opposite them had no intention of letting them go, and Model immediately commanded the frontline troops via radio to switch to counterattack.
Especially in that first trench that had just been breached by the British Army using infantry-tank coordination, the Greco-German Allied Forces were actually still holding out in the fight; they had not been completely purged by the British Army infantry.
And as the Greco-German Allied Forces switched to counterattack, these troops erupted with astonishing combat effectiveness in high spirits, using MP15 submachine guns and a large number of grenades to counter-kill back along the trench.
The British Army infantry opposite them was actually still several times their number, and their combat effectiveness was not weak either. But because the armored troops ahead had been repulsed, the morale of these British Army infantry who were unaware of the situation was greatly shaken.
Many British Army soldiers saw the armored car group withdrawing and thought their own side had been defeated.
Once the momentum was overwhelmed, thousands of British Army soldiers were actually pressed back and beaten by merely hundreds of German Army soldiers and over a thousand Greek soldiers.
Large numbers of British Army soldiers scurried about like headless flies, only thinking of retreating and fleeing, with no will to fight left at all.
Instead, during the panicked flight, they were mowed down in droves by MG15 light machine guns sweeping from behind, and in the chaos, they were killed pointlessly, dying without value.
And when the Greco-German Allied Forces retook the trench, the British Army’s armored car group had not yet withdrawn past this trench that they had broken through just twenty minutes earlier.
The Germania grenadiers immediately rushed to the end of the trench—the side near the railway—under the adaptable command of frontline officers, carrying large numbers of sticky bombs and large glass bottles filled with thickened explosives.
The hard roadbed on both sides of the railway, where no trenches were dug, was less than a hundred meters wide, so whether throwing sticky bombs or Molotov cocktails from the trench ends on the northeast or southwest side of the railway, at least one side could always be reached.
The width of this pocket position was carefully designed by Model; it was not because “the hard roadbed on both sides of the railway happened to be just that narrow and couldn’t be dug.”
The Britannians just didn’t figure it out when they charged in, misunderstanding it, and only now, after fully falling into the trap, did they suddenly realize that the enemy’s tactics were designed so meticulously.
“Whoosh whoosh whoosh~” sticky bombs flew out one by one from the trench, toward the infantry-tank separated and panicked fleeing armored car group.
Model’s first wave of interception earlier had only taken out 8 armored cars, but this second wave was completely different.
Because the first wave of attack had to be launched hastily as soon as the British Army armored car group approached the dangerous trench. After the British Army armored cars were stunned and a few were knocked out, they immediately began to retreat and pull away the distance.
But this second wave was a ready-made pocket; the British Army vehicle group had no choice but to grit their teeth and break through, unable to retreat and pull away at the first sign of injury.
The dense bombs soon caused far more results than the first wave, with fully over a dozen armored cars successively destroyed under such dense encirclement throwing.
“Damn it! If only we hadn’t retreated earlier and had just charged straight through the entire valley!”
“Those despicable Germanian bastards! Too vicious, actually ambushing grenadiers on the retreat path too!”
Countless British Army crews cursed the enemy with the most vicious language, but it couldn’t stop clumps of explosives sticking to the vehicle armor, then exploding to shatter the inner walls into countless fragments that flew through the vehicle compartment, penetrating one body after another.
Many armored soldiers thus fell in the vehicles, bloodied and mangled, silent forever.
In the end, surprisingly, fewer than 10 armored cars managed to break out amid the chaos.
Model did not press too far; upon seeing the British Army retreating from afar through the artillery periscope, he also hurriedly commanded the frontline troops via radio not to get bogged down in fighting and to quickly consolidate.
The battle that day thus ended in such a chaotic state.
General Allenby was shocked to hear that the armored car troops had been severely mauled and did not dare to attack the mountain again, immediately ordering the mountain-attacking troops to withdraw as well.
“Damn it! Who the hell is the Germania defending general opposite us? Why do I have this familiar and ominous premonition? This defensive tenacity is simply too terrifying! To actually let an armored car cluster into the position and then close the pocket to counter-kill them back? I need to know who the defending general opposite us is!
I heard they only sent some mid-level officers as advisors? The Empire has blockaded sea transport and Greece’s northern border; the enemy couldn’t possibly have large troops entering Greece.”
General Allenby was driven mad with waves of impotent rage; with no one else to blame, he blamed his own intelligence department for not doing its job properly, being too complacent and failing to scout the opponent’s situation.
After his accusations were sent back to the rear via radio, they were indeed taken seriously, and later someone really replied to him with a telegram, containing the British intelligence department’s findings on the identities of the Greco-German Allied Forces advisors.
General Allenby’s adjutant received the telegram message and immediately had it translated and brought to the general to see:
“Commander, you guessed right; the opposing advisor is indeed not some high-ranking general, just a lieutenant colonel… but our army should be quite familiar with him.
This man is named Walter Model; last year he air-dropped onto Fort Malraux at Dunkirk Port and held out until repelling the Royal Navy Channel Fleet rushing to aid Dunkirk.
For the following half year or more, he was sent to the Isonzo River frontline as a mountain warfare defense advisor, holding off several hundred thousand Italian troops for over half a year. I heard he was air-dropped nearby after our army invaded Greece…”
General Allenby shuddered upon hearing this, as if recalling some bad memories, his whole body reacting with stress.
“So it’s him… just a lieutenant colonel. Germanian promotions really aren’t easy; after such bloody battles and merits, he’s only a lieutenant colonel. One Model is already so talented; how terrifying must Lelouch be, who organized and planned the Dunkirk air-drop back then? Marshal French was captured by that guy…”
……
On the other side, that evening, in the Greco-German Allied Forces defense command post on Mount Parnassus.
Lieutenant Colonel Model had already received the battle results report from the road-blocking defense troops in the valley.
In today’s battle, they had actually destroyed 23 enemy armored cars in total! It could be called an epic victory. Among them, 8 were destroyed when the first wave of British Army charged up, and later, 15 more were destroyed when the British Army broke through to retreat and were intercepted.
After all, the Germanian people had been using armored cars and tanks in combat for nearly three months, and the most in a single campaign was over ten armored cars destroyed by the Lusha people. And the Lusha people had paid the price of at least thousands of Cossack cavalry to barely gnaw out that result.
Of course, today’s Greco-German Allied Forces also suffered considerable casualties; nearly a hundred grenadier warriors were killed by machine guns while rushing up to throw bombs, averaging 4-5 grenadiers dead to destroy one armored car.
Anti-tank weapons with a maximum range of only 50 meters were this dangerous to use. The power was sufficient, but they had to be filled with lives to get close enough to throw.
This was still under the condition of preset ambush positions that greatly shortened the engagement distance. Without preset positions, dozens of grenadiers might die without getting close to an armored car.
And what surprised Model the most was that while the valley defense troops were clearing the battlefield, upon lifting the hatches of the bombed-out armored cars to look inside, they found that 6 vehicles could still drive perfectly!
In other words, those cars had only been hit by sticky bombs detonated by armor-piercing shells, with inner armor fragments flying out to kill the crew members, but the vehicle structure and propulsion system were still intact.
Just replace a few people inside, and as long as they had driving skills, the cars could be driven again.
Among the other 17 destroyed cars, a few were in relatively better condition, with only the control systems, steering wheels, and vehicle instruments damaged, but the engines intact; with minor repairs, they could drive too.
In the end, Model selected some soldiers who could drive from the ranks, had them learn on the spot to drive away those 6 good cars, and used tow ropes to drag back 6 more with repair value, recovering a total of 12. Only the last 11 thoroughly wrecked ruins were left at the site.
Even for those 11 completely wrecked ones, Model had the 22 water-cooled Vickers heavy machine guns carried on them dismantled, and all the vehicle-mounted machine gun bullets boxed up and taken away, all put to immediate use as supplementary firepower for the defense positions.
He even didn’t spare the remaining gasoline in the wrecked fuel tanks, siphoning it out with tubes into cans and hauling it away, leaving them as clean as a bison skeleton after vultures had picked it over.
After doing all this, Model still remembered to continue completing the frontline trenches in the isthmus valley, cutting those trenches off, and organizing deep defense further back. This way, they could hold out another day after dawn tomorrow.
……
In the following days, the details of the Delphi Isthmus attack and defense were not worth recounting one by one.
In short, under Model’s meticulous and tenacious defense, British Army General Allenby kept suffering setbacks, and many of his previously planned offensive tactics were frustrated.
The armored car regiment had lost seventy percent of its strength and was badly mauled, fundamentally unable to launch cluster breakthroughs again.
Allenby had originally planned to definitely reach Athens by December 10, but by the 10th, they hadn’t even broken through the Delphi Isthmus.
On the 10th, Allenby, desperate, tried to make one last gamble.
He somehow obtained a full 6 genuine “Little Willie” tanks, paired with his remaining 10 armored cars, and launched another armored assault.
Perhaps he thought the previous failure was because his side only had armored cars without tanks, with poor obstacle-crossing ability and too-limited attack routes, so they were targeted by the enemy’s poisonous scheme.
When the British Army Greek campaign kicked off at the end of November, only 5 “Little Willie” tank prototypes were sent, but with the battle having raged for nearly half a month, factories in the British rear were urgently working overtime, continuously prototyping new versions based on frontline feedback.
Basically, 5 or 10 per batch, with each batch having some minor optimizations. And several were built and shipped via the Mediterranean to the Greek frontline, virtually pouring the entire empire’s armored productivity into the Southeast European battlefield.
So by December 10, the British Army had about 20 tanks across the entire Greece-Ottoman theater, allowing the precious 6 to be allocated to Allenby here in Greece for another try.
But unfortunately, Allenby thought that the anti-tank tricks Model used that day were his full strength, and that the opponent should be at the end of his rope by now.
But in reality, through learning armored defense tactics from following Lelouch and occasional guidance from Officer Lelouch’s letters, the tactical repertoire in Model’s mind was far beyond what the current Allenby could fathom.
So Allenby’s final reluctant attempt only resulted in more losses again, with 6 precious tanks and 5 armored cars wasted in vain in the valley, serving as tuition for the British Army’s early armored usage trial-and-error.
With all technical attempts failing, the British Army could only resort to piling up lives, using artillery to push forward a few kilometers a day in deployments, assaulting positions one by one.
The Britannians ultimately had an endless numerical advantage; piling with lives would definitely get through in the end, just wasting more lives and time.
The three thousand Germanian soldiers under Model had been whittled down to just over a thousand. The remaining thousand-plus weren’t all killed in action, but at least several hundred seriously wounded were lying in rear hospitals.
The two Greek divisions had also suffered over twenty to thirty percent casualties; Greek morale was really low, unable to withstand twenty percent losses, and began to waver.
Most critically, according to Germanian Army air reconnaissance, after December 10, with the Britannians failing to take the Delphi Isthmus after prolonged attacks, they indeed started planning to open a second battlefield, seemingly intending to land again at Piraeus Port near Athens to go straight for Athens city.
With forces stretched thin, Model had no choice but to personally return to defend Piraeus Port, taking some troops from the Delphi Isthmus side. Ultimately, on December 15, he repelled the attempted landing enemy at Piraeus Port, annihilating thousands of enemy troops on the beachhead.
However, with Model divided, this also led to the Delphi Isthmus ultimately being breached on December 16. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dieter left to guard Mount Parnassus had done his utmost, but in the end, Mount Parnassus was still seized by the British Army.
That Dieter could withdraw in good order, continuing southeast while fighting and moving, preventing the frontline from immediate collapse, was already very tenacious.
“No problem, reaching this point is already very good; we’ve held at least ten days longer than expected, and the enemy’s forces are ten times ours, with sea and land pincers.”
After learning via radio of the isthmus and Mount Parnassus falling, Model did not blame Dieter, but replied by radio for him to withdraw in good order to the southeast.
After the British Army passed through the Delphi Isthmus, there were no more defensible positions on the road to Athens. Holding Athens city to the death would be meaningless and instead lead to the ancient city of thousands of years being destroyed.
On the 17th, Model requested approval from Greek King Constantine and his German emperor brother-in-law the queen, hoping the royal family and General Staff Headquarters would relocate to the mountains of the Peloponnese Peninsula.
King Constantine did not immediately agree, but privately asked one question: “Will Marshal Rupprecht send people to rescue us in time? Why are they still bitterly fighting the Lusha Army at Kyiv without end?
Didn’t I hear that several days ago they had already encircled the Lusha people? I only mustered the courage to persist in resisting the Britannia Army because I believed Emperor Wilhelm’s promise to immediately send troops to save us! You won’t betray allies, will you!”
Model was not authorized to say too much, and besides, he didn’t know many things himself; he could only grit his teeth and reply: “Please rest assured, Your Majesty; His Majesty Wilhelm will not abandon his own sister.
The Empire’s Army will definitely come to rescue; it’s just that currently lacking transport capacity, they can’t ship directly by sea to Greece, only slowly fight their way from the north. The Britannians’ naval power in the Mediterranean is too strong; we have no way. If only comparing armies, ten times the British troops might not be our match!
I’ve already held off over a hundred thousand British troops for over half a month with six thousand men plus your army’s twenty to thirty thousand. As long as Your Majesty withdraws to Mount Killini on the Peloponnese Peninsula, I guarantee we can hold through this year!”
King Constantine had come this far and had no choice, so he gritted his teeth and continued to trust Model.
The royal family and General Staff immediately began relocating, withdrawing west through the Isthmus of Corinth to the Peloponnese Peninsula that same day, reaching Mount Killini by December 18.
The members of parliament had nothing much to relocate; many were partisans of the traitor Venizelos, waiting in Athens to welcome Venizelos into the city.
After the Greek Army withdrew in good order, the British Army on the Delphi frontline entered the Attica region on December 18, and formally took the undefended Athens city on the 19th.
The traitor leader and former prime minister Venizelos, in the identity of “tyrant overthrown,” proudly sat in a sunroof Rolls-Royce sponsored by the British, poking his upper body out the sunroof, entering Athens city along Athena Avenue, even waving to the crowds on both sides of the avenue.
“The people will surely triumph over the tyrant!” Venizelos shouted while waving, and the crowds organized beside him to cheer also shouted slogans in response.
While Venizelos was cleaning up the mess in Athens, the British Army had no time to play along with him and continued marching west the next day, wanting to enter the Peloponnese Peninsula.
Helplessly, Model’s defense was extremely resolute; this time on the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, he blocked the British Army for at least several good days, inflicting considerable casualties on British Army living forces.
From the 20th to the 23rd in defense, fully delaying over a hundred thousand British troops for 3 days. Only then did they withdraw exhausted to the Mount Killini mountainous area.
Model’s actions pinned down over a hundred thousand British Army living forces, and wiped out over half of the armored troops the British Army had deployed to the Greece-Ottoman battlefield, causing British thrusts in the Bulgaria and Ottoman directions to lose momentum, failing to reach the Istanbul suburbs even by Christmas.
Ultimately on Christmas Eve, the British Army on the Eastern Front only reached a town called Silivri, still over 30 kilometers from central Istanbul, and over 70 kilometers from the Bosphorus Strait. The European part of Istanbul city alone is 40 kilometers wide, as it’s the Ottoman capital, a metropolis of thousands of years.）
Moreover, Model’s actions greatly drew the British Army’s attention and reconnaissance forces.
Meanwhile, the Germanian people were cautiously assembling forces on the Northern Front, with a major Christmas Eve counteroffensive about to unfold.
The deeper the British Army sank into the quagmire, the harder it would be to extricate themselves later.
