Chapter 63: Open The Railway, Furious Advance, Cut Off Dunkirk!
“You’re truly amazing, kid! You actually used this one move to smash the enemy heavy artillery group on the back slope of Kemmel Hill in just one afternoon plus a whole night!
You even forced Haig to make a mistake in the chaos, lose his head, and launch a countercharge against us! It’s simply suicidal! I originally thought that even if we heavily damaged the enemy’s artillery, it would still take another two or three days to capture High Ground 155, but now we’ve taken it!”
A few hours later, when Duke Rupprecht personally stood on High Ground 155, looking at that huge flag planted on the main peak, a sense of heroic pride welled up in his heart.
He couldn’t help but let out a series of exclamations, and he became even more convinced that the major by his side was truly a war god who constantly created miracles.
Major Lelouch was simply like someone who had descended to earth by divine oracle, always insightfully coming up with one ingenious idea after another, one perfect concept after another, to resolve one difficult campaign after another.
Lelouch, however, did not take credit; he modestly reminded him, “Your Highness, it’s still better if we don’t stay on the peak top too long, after all, we’re not completely out of the enemy’s artillery barrage range yet.
Our army has only taken the main peak of High Ground 155; along the entire mountain ridge, there are still many positions that need at least a day to thoroughly purge.
Moreover, this battle should thank the officers and soldiers who fought desperately on the front line, especially Major Rundstedt’s battalion.
They not only infiltrated and seized the initial few tunnels at the beginning, obtaining forward observation points relatively close to the enemy artillery positions.
Later, they also precisely tested the artillery sound-ranging equipment in practice, implementing my set of new tactics and achieving astonishing results.
Finally, they held off the enemy’s counterattack, assaulted the main peak, and planted the flag here.”
Duke Rupprecht nodded repeatedly as he listened.
To be fair, Major Rundstedt’s 2nd Assault Battalion, because its connections were not as strong as Major Bock’s 1st Assault Battalion, had always performed less meritoriously in previous campaigns than the 1st Battalion.
After all, Bock’s uncle was the Chief of Staff, and the combat missions most conducive to earning merit were always prioritized for him. Plus, with Lelouch as deputy battalion commander at the time, being with Bock, his battalion was even easier to shine.
From the very beginning of the attack on Bailleul, Rundstedt’s battalion was prioritized to the north side of the railway, closer to the high ground, and more easily suppressed by enemy artillery.
While Bock’s battalion was on the south side of the railway at the time, with gentler terrain, far from enemy artillery; the only muddy problem was also resolved after the freezing season, and Bock’s breakthrough achievements were far greater than Rundstedt’s at the time.
Unexpectedly, nearly a month into the campaign, after enduring so long, Rundstedt finally had his time to reap the rewards.
Being in the northern sector, he naturally became the main assault battalion for Kemmel Hill. He also excellently completed the mission; just for his final assault on the main peak and planting the flag into Haig’s headquarters, plus his previous hard work, he deserved promotion.
As for Major Bock, who was on par with him, he already had plenty of merit beforehand, and accumulated over the campaigns, he was about ready for lieutenant colonel anyway.
After weighing the matter, Duke Rupprecht issued two orders:
First, urgently transfer two engineer regiments from the rear, giving them at most 48 hours to work day and night without sleep if necessary, to repair the railway that the British Army had bombed to ruins for several kilometers.
Within three days, the railway must be reopened to allow the main force to transport all the armament supplies backed up in the rear to the front line.
Then, the duke on-the-spot signed two promotion orders and reported them to the Chief of Staff for filing, to promote Major Bock and Major Rundstedt both to lieutenant colonel.
The written filing would take several days, but they could notify by telephone first and supplement the paper archives later.
That same day, the duke called the Staff Department,
and upon hearing that among those to be promoted was the Chief of Staff’s own nephew, the handling officer worked with extreme efficiency and finalized it that day.
But after promotion, their duties remained temporarily unchanged; they were still assault battalion commanders.
……
While the duke arranged for the engineer regiments to repair the railway and promoted and awarded a batch of officers meritorious for capturing High Ground 155,
the position battles on Kemmel Hill were still intensely continuing.
Kemmel Hill runs along the southern edge of the Ypres Highlands in an east-west direction, with the entire mountain ridge stretching nearly 20 kilometers.
What was captured that morning was only the main peak position; after success, the troops tore open larger gaps in both eastern and western directions, purging remaining enemies, which would take at least another day or two.
But these were already “garbage time”; after the main peak was seized, the enemy’s artillery power was thoroughly suppressed and could no longer threaten the railway below.
Once the heavy snow stopped and visibility became clear again, it would be the German Army heavy artillery’s turn to suppress the British Army artillery from above with direct fire.
In the following days of the 18th to 20th, the German Army indeed followed the plan, seizing the remaining strongpoints on Kemmel Hill while working day and night to repair the railway.
The heavy snow completely stopped on the 19th.
In the afternoon of the 20th, the first supply train fully loaded with ammunition, military rations, gauze, medicine, and other supplies finally departed from Armantieres station, and after 3 hours of travel, smoothly delivered supplies to the positions of Baria’s 2nd and 3rd Divisions near the Dunkirk Front Line.
The railway had just been repaired, plus there was still snow, so the train only dared to run slightly below 30 kilometers per hour, but that didn’t matter.
Over a dozen full cars, thousands of tons of supplies arrived at the front, giving the front-line German Army a huge boost that day.
The French Army to the west had originally tried to counterattack and cut off the German Army’s deep iron pincer, but after German machine gun bullets and cannon shells became plentiful, the French Army’s counterattack attempts all became a joke.
Countless heavy machine guns continuously fired fiercely, bullets like they were free. 105 and 150 caliber artillery groups also began wantonly pouring shell rain, blasting counterattacking French troops group after group mid-charge.
At such a time, the wisest choice for the French Army was, of course, to immediately switch from attack to defense and stop the pointless sacrifices.
But unfortunately, constrained by this era’s French Army’s backward communications conditions and rigid command system,
after front-line troops suffered casualties and realized the situation was hopeless, to report layer by layer and finally get confirmation and decision change from higher generals would take at least another two or three days.
During wartime, all sorts of news flew around; how could those high-and-mighty generals who didn’t treat soldiers as people instantly judge if the front-line report of “it’s not that our army didn’t fight hard, but the enemy got stronger” was true? What if it was soldiers wanting to shirk and slack?
Without ten or twenty thousand casualties, such news was doomed to go unconfirmed. No one could bear the responsibility of “delaying the battle by ordering a halt when we could still attack.”
In the end, on the Western Front from Cassel to Arnèke and Wormhout line, the French Army’s offensive didn’t completely stop until January 23, wasting another ten thousand men.
Meanwhile, the German Army front-line troops in this area, Baria’s 1st Corps subordinate 2nd and 3rd Divisions, after detecting the French Army’s spent force state, also decisively requested reinforcements from the rear,
hoping Army Group Commander Duke Rupprecht would approve further strengthening the “Western Pincer” forces to infiltrate toward the coastline!
The duke also decisively remotely approved this front-line general’s judgment on the spot, transferring all drawable reserves from the rear to fill the defenses left empty after Baria’s 2nd and 3rd Divisions switched to offense.
And Baria’s 2nd and 3rd Divisions immediately seized the opportunity, bypassing Dunkirk City, infiltrating along the direction west of Dunkirk, and finally on January 26 assaulted to about 20 kilometers west of Dunkirk City, to the seaside town of Gravelines.
In this way, although Dunkirk such a fortified heavy port hadn’t been captured yet, at least a foothold had been established in the coastal town west of Dunkirk!
Completely cutting off the possibility for the British Army, Canadian Army, ANZAC Corps, and Indian colonial troops in the entire great encirclement from Ypres to Dunkirk to withdraw by land to the Frankish rear!
Completing the switch from offense to defense in just three days, then finding weak points to counteradvance another 20 kilometers and seize another town. Such offensive speed was already extremely rapid for 1915.
The French Army and British Army failing to react in time couldn’t be blamed on them; after all, every era has its own rhythm of war command.
To be honest, the “Western Pincer” finally thrusting west of Dunkirk all the way to the sea—this series of operations, Lelouch had no chance to intervene—because he was still busy with the battle on the Ypres Highlands side and truly couldn’t split himself.
The battle situation from Kemmel Hill to Ypres, and the “Western Pincer” defense-counterattack on the west hitting the coastal town of Gravelines, these two operations were carried out simultaneously by two troops.
The assault battalion Lelouch left in the “Western Pincer” did participate in the battle under the remaining officers’ lead and earned some merit, including Deputy Battalion Commander Rommel who hurriedly returned to the front line to command.
But Lelouch himself really couldn’t make it there in time; both sides needed him. （Later text includes the latest battlefield situation map up to January 26, 1915, updating both sides’ control areas）
……
Leaving aside the latest progress on the west line, let’s shift our view back to the frontal battlefield of the Ypres Highlands.
On January 20, after the German Army completely seized the entire mountain ridge along Kemmel Hill, the next day they pulled up their own heavy artillery regiment from the foot of the mountain and deployed it on the counter-slope on the south side of the ridge, beginning to build forward heavy artillery positions.
The whole process was also extremely arduous; although the heavy snow had stopped at the time, the snow on the ground still hadn’t melted.
On thick snow, pulling 10-ton 150mm cannons up the hillside without proper roads was extremely difficult.
In this era, countries like Germany and Austria also lacked tractor trucks because they were oil-poor. Historically in 1915 on the Eastern Front in the Carpathian Mountains of the Balkans, the Austrian Army had the exaggerated record of “a thousand soldiers dragging one heavy cannon up the mountain.”
Today on Kemmel Hill, although the terrain wasn’t as extreme as the southern mountains on the Eastern Front, there was still snow on the ground.
Ultimately, the German Army used a full 350 soldiers cooperating to hard-pull the K16 150mm cannon to the mountaintop. Such a scene would be unimaginable in later times.
Dragging the cannons up the mountain took one or two days, and building the artillery positions took another day.
The heavy artillery regiment’s new positions had advanced a full 9 kilometers north of the pre-war positions, plus the deployment points’ elevation was over 100 meters higher, making the artillery observation posts’ view even clearer and more open.
On January 23, the German Army’s 150mm cannons finally bombarded Ypres City’s eastern suburbs from Kemmel Hill’s summit and blockaded the railway town of Poperinge between Stenford and Ypres—
Although the British Army had long had no usable railways; when Stenford was captured initially, the British Army’s railway was left with only that last short stub.
The positions bombarded by German heavy artillery were already over 15 kilometers away. But the German artillery positions’ elevation was dozens of meters higher than Ypres City, and the drop could slightly extend the actual maximum range.
When the German Army’s first batch of 150 shells landed in Ypres City’s eastern suburbs, the British Army from top to bottom finally completely panicked.
……
On the night of January 23, the Belgian Expeditionary Force Headquarters in Ypres City had lights on all night.
However, they usually used electric lights here, but now they temporarily switched to gas lamps.
Because the power lines to Ypres City had all been smashed by the German 150 heavy cannons; at least dozens of power poles along the way were blasted down, impossible to repair in time.
The whole of Ypres City plunged into a massive blackout; even Commander-in-Chief Marshal French had to use a portable gas lamp with gas canister for lighting.
Everyone’s faces were ashen; some issues could no longer be avoided.
“Does everyone think the Empire should continue to desperately hold the Ypres Highlands? Should we consider gradually contracting northward, withdrawing, and finally retreating to Dunkirk?”
Commander-in-Chief Marshal French knew some things had to be said by him first, or no one below would dare mention them.
Leaving Ypres would basically mean full army retreat. The Empire’s expedition would end in shameful total failure.
Among everyone, the most “staunch and unyielding,” and most eager to regain face, Lieutenant General Haig, was the first to voice opposition:
“We’ve only lost Kemmel Hill and the southern high ground ridge line. But there are still so many towns inside the salient in our hands; do we have to abandon them immediately without further struggle?
This isn’t a simple retreat—since the start of the war, the Empire sent its army here, operating around Ypres for a full four months; rear fleets have been continuously shipping supplies to Dunkirk Port and then rail-hauling them here.
Now, warehouses in towns around Ypres still hold at least 1.5 million rounds of various shells! Military rations enough for 200,000 troops for two years! Plus so many bullets, fuel, uniforms, tents, tires, tobacco, coffee… all supply stocks combined are at least a million tons scale.
If we quickly retreat, do we burn or blow them all up, or what? Shouldn’t we resist position by position, trying to put as much ammunition on the enemy’s heads as possible?
Even starting now, open fire with artillery, continuous 24-hour barrages regardless of wasting gun barrels, fire even without targets! If our army shows this momentum and holds out until the end of the freezing season when weather warms and ground turns muddy, it’s completely doable!”
Lieutenant General Haig’s speech ultimately resonated with quite a few people.
It was really that Britain had been too confident before, stockpiling way too much here to hold this salient.
This wasn’t their fault, because historically they held here for four years unmoving. Without so many supplies, how could they hold so resolutely?
And having taken four months to bring in so much, wanting to haul it all out in a few days—transport capacity was absolutely insufficient.
1.5 million shells, hundreds of millions of bullets, plus proportionally matched military needs! If all these were completely lost, it would be a very major blow to Britain’s overall national strength.
Everyone here would have their careers completely ended.
Upon hearing this, Marshal French quietly scanned those around him and found Haig and others’ eyes still flickering with hopeful ambition.
Yes, those relatively young lieutenant generals and major generals were even more eager for advancement than he this marshal.
If the marshal retreated, it was just retirement at worst, and no one would settle accounts; everyone would save face.
But what about those below? They might not get a chance to marshal in their lifetimes; the great war gave them opportunity for merit and achievement, and they didn’t want to lose it.
“But the enemy’s encirclement is tightening more and more. Even if we want to retreat while fighting, we can’t ignore the risk of sudden events causing the battle situation to deteriorate rapidly…” Marshal French finally voiced his concern.
If they could ensure no complete encirclement, fighting while withdrawing wasn’t unacceptable.
Facing the marshal’s concern, everyone was mostly at a loss, silent for a long time with no one offering a solution.
Finally, after some unknown time, Expeditionary Force Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Archibald broke the silence, suggesting in a measured tone:
“Your Excellency Commander-in-Chief, I believe the current situation is indeed quite critical, but far from the point of being completely surrounded by the enemy.
We don’t know how far the enemy’s ‘Western Pincer’ has progressed, but Dunkirk Port is impregnable, with numerous fortress batteries and heavy troops guarding it, and it can get sea route reinforcements anytime; the enemy definitely can’t take it!
Stepping back ten thousand steps, even if Dunkirk falls, we still have De Panne and Nieuwpoort; these coastal towns may not have Dunkirk’s deep-water good ports, but they can still berth shallow-draft ships.
The Empire’s Royal Navy is invincible worldwide; with them as backing, even if our land retreat routes have some mishaps, the sea retreat route can absolutely ensure smooth passage! So we can completely hold out longer and wait for a turn of events!
Compared to that, the most important now is to ask Your Excellency the Minister to appeal to the Prime Minister for better army-navy coordination, get the navy to dispatch more nearshore bombardment fleets to support us, and if changes arise, immediately send large transport ships to help the army evacuate.”
Chief of Staff Archibald’s words ultimately played a decisive role.
The originally dejected Marshal French finally rallied his confidence again.
It was still early 1915; no air raids existed. The side with absolute sea control could ensure coastal retreat routes were foolproof.
Since so, how could they lightly speak of giving up?
What to do now was just for the army to stop throwing more men into the possible encirclement. While the navy should increase reinforcements and cooperate with the army to the utmost.
“You’re right; I’ll contact London right away.” Marshal French finally made his decision.
Because the whole city was blacked out, the high-power long-range radios needing city power couldn’t transmit. Headquarters had to cobble together a bunch of lead-acid battery packs originally for low-power radios, temporarily series-parallel modified to match voltage and current for the high-power radio.
Then French explained the situation to the rear, expressed determination to hold, but demanded navy reinforcements.
His requests first went through Army Minister Earl Kitchener, then to the Prime Minister, and finally to Naval Minister Walton.
Walton took it very seriously and convened a navy meeting that day, making three deployments:
First, transfer the main force of the Channel Fleet here, having those pre-dreadnoughts ready anytime to support from Dunkirk to Nieuwpoort coast. For enemy land forces approaching the coast, conduct long-range suppression bombardment!
As soon as enemies dare approach within 15 kilometers of the coastline, blast them hard with giant guns battleship main gun caliber!
Second, send all shallow-water heavy gunboats the Royal Navy has straight to Dunkirk Port for immediate battlefield support.
Finally, have Betty’s high-speed battlecruiser fleet maintain highest alert patrols across the entire Belgian to northern France coastal waters, absolutely no repeat of the last chaos when receiving the Belgian Army, letting enemy high-speed warships sneak in to raid the landing zone!
Minister Walton was still worried this was major; just David Betty’s battlecruiser fleet force wasn’t enough. So he had Grand Fleet Commander-in-Chief Admiral Jellicoe transfer over a considerable portion of high-speed main battleships as much as possible.
For a time, North Sea waters from Dunkirk to Dover, and both sides of the Strait of Dover, were full of ten-thousand-ton giant ships.
With this backing, Britain Army and Navy Ministers unanimously believed that even if the Empire couldn’t win against the enemy, at least it could stand undefeated!
——
PS: Already 10,000 words, the third update’s 5,000 words not finished yet, probably around 3pm, no more guarantees.
