The tug-of-war that took place in Somsonas, with an average frequency of two warring sides swapping roles twice a day, lasted for four days. Due to the heavy casualties suffered by the front-line troops, Weiss's Lorraine reserve troops finally received orders to replenish to the front line.

The casualty data on the battlefield of Somsonas, Weiss was shocked to watch. This kind of tug-of-war is not as simple as it seems, you sing and I come on the stage, the attackers drive the defenders out of their positions, and then the defenders take advantage of the night to retake their positions. Both the attack and the counterattack were accompanied by terrible artillery fire and bombardment. In order for one side to take the position, it usually needs to wipe out most of the enemy troops stationed on the position, and the defeated side will suffer many losses on the way back.

In this battle, the Union forces adopted a strategy of elastic defense on a long defensive line, and the defense of Somsonas City initially followed this method, but due to the small size of the city and the small depth of the defense, the effect of elastic defense was not so prominent. As the rivalry between the two sides became more and more intense, after each encounter, the positions were almost littered with the remains of the dead.

The front-line command of the campaign was nominally in the hands of the three-member committee, but in reality the Air Force was under the control of the Air Force and the Army under the control of the Army, and Weiss was responsible for dispatching the reserve troops and securing the supply of baggage and heavy loads—a very heavy task. The Normans had already learned the essence of guerrilla warfare from the last war and improved it, which put the Union Army under a lot of pressure from the very beginning of the war. On all fronts, they had to be careful, as the slightest mistake could lead to the destruction of supply and material hoarding points by enemy guerrilla forces. The Federation forces fought in their own territory, but they often faced a passive situation. Obviously, given the limited strength of the regular army, it is possible to give full play to the strength of the reserve forces and the people to fundamentally solve this problem. Weiss knew this, and he focused a large part of his energy on protecting his supply lines and tactical strongholds.

In accordance with the resolution of the three-member committee, Weiss sent six battalions of reserves to the front, while he remained in the rear and did not go with the team. These reserve units, the best reserve battalions of the Lorraine people, five of them received the honorary title of chasseur battalion. Although they were only reserve troops, their combat strength could not be compared with the front-line troops, let alone the elite troops of the Normans, but the two armies had been fighting for a long time, and the participating troops had consumed a considerable part of their strength and energy in the continuous tug-of-war and contention.

Once on the battlefield, these reserves used their familiarity with the environment and the secret path they had predetermined before the battle to quickly break into the Norman-occupied city of Somsonas. The city is small, but the deployment of thousands of troops is not a problem. Due to the heavy weapons of the other side and the bombing of the air force, which caused great casualties to the densely piled up troops, the two sides still deliberately limited the number of garrison troops. In the past few days, the Union Army has invested a maximum of one division in a single attack on the battlefield of Somsonas, and then gradually reduced to half of the force, that is, about two or three regiments per counterattack, and the Normans they faced did not invest more than two regiments at a time, except for the initial attack, and then whether they held or counterattacked. It is only when the battle is at its most critical that mobile reserves are mobilized to augment the front, which may reach four regiments at that time, but usually no more than 10,000 men.

Even in such a situation, the casualties on the battlefield were quite staggering. In just one night, Weiss received news that the six reserve battalions participating in the battle had suffered more than sixty percent casualties, more than half of the troops had lost their combat effectiveness, and the rest were struggling to support. After detailing the battle that night, he realized that such heavy casualties were not due to a problem with command or combat, but a terrible normality, which made one word pop into his mind: meat grinder.

The term "meat grinder" is often used to describe the fierce and ongoing battles, and in the last war, Okujo was notorious as a meat grinder. Both sides have invested millions of troops and lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers. On the battlefield of Somsonas, if you continue to fight at this speed, not only will the front-line troops not be able to stand it, but the reserve troops will soon fight hard, but the battlefield is a state of killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 of them. For every time the Union lost a number of troops, the Normans also lost troops on this battlefield. It's hard to say which of the two sides can withstand it, but often those who stick to it can win.

Early the next morning, the Normans again attacked Sosomsonas. After more than two hours of fierce fighting, they once again expelled the federal troops from the city. In the process, the Federation mobilized heavy artillery to cover the city of Somsonas, and sent bomber groups to launch two rounds of bombardment of the city. The Normans showed no signs of weakness, they dispatched flying ships to sweep the Federalist defense area with powerful artillery fire, and then sent dozens of batches of combat aircraft from early morning to dusk to bombard the Union troops who had withdrawn from Somsonas, and launched a fierce artillery fire before nightfall.

Weiss and his two partners had a long talk about the battle situation of Somsonas, and they both believed that this kind of tragic meat grinding war deviated from the trend of civilization development and returned to the most primitive and bloody instincts, but if Somsonas was surrendered, it would not only lead to tactical defeat, but also could trigger a chain reaction and lead to strategic defeat.

However, if you want to hold Somsonas, you have to constantly fill it with troops, and you have to withstand the enemy's fire, you must know that the Normans have prepared some fresh weapons for this war, such as high-speed transports equipped with multiple large-caliber heavy guns, and they installed large-caliber guns comparable to battleships on these powerful transports, used as mobile batteries, and provided cover with combat ships and combat aircraft. It only takes one or two of these terrible gunboats to turn a town into ruins, and Somsonas has already suffered multiple rounds of this horrific heavy artillery in the previous days of fighting, and many Union officers and soldiers have been killed by such fire.

The Federal Army's side is not without a response. In times of peace, with the efforts of a group of far-sighted people, the Federation's flying technology continues to develop. After the outbreak of the war, relying on the mature aviation industry and the reserve forces cultivated by flying clubs and flying competitions, the Federal Air Force rapidly expanded its scale and recruited fighter units that could come and fight, and became the key force of the Federal Army to resist strong enemies on all fronts. On the battlefield of Somsonas, the Federal Air Force attack planes and bombers constantly dropped incendiary, high-explosive and special bombs on the heads of the Normans. Several waves of bombardment can also raze a town to the ground. If the Normans continue to occupy Somsonas and continue to strengthen the fortifications, they will not hide in the solid underground bunkers, and the bombing effect of the Federal Air Force will become lower and lower......

At dusk, the three-man committee made a difficult choice: send another 2,000 front-line troops and 2,000 reserve troops into a night counterattack, and use a newly transferred assault regiment and four reserve battalions as combat reserves. The 4,000 officers and men who were incorporated into the counterattack unit were temporarily transferred from the previously disabled units and organized into eight combat columns. Most of them had seen the purgatory-like scene of the battlefield of Somsonas, and some of them went to the front for two days in a row, or even three to the front. In the night counterattack, the Union troops were always imposing and devastating, but during the day, they could not support the Normans' attack regardless of casualties.

In the industrial area of the Free Lorraine Canal, southeast of Somsonas, this kind of fierce offensive and defensive battle is also going on repeatedly. The Normans failed to achieve a wave of victories, and they tried to push forward every day, but the daily gains were limited. Sometimes, they were able to take a dozen factories in a day, but at night, the Union forces would also take advantage of the preset path to retake some of the factories. The sturdy factory was gradually reduced to ruins under heavy artillery fire, but even the ruins were able to become a strong battle fortress. Both sides committed tens of thousands of troops here, and the daily losses were in the thousands. Although the battle situation here is not as close to purgatory on earth as Somsonas, the situation is also quite tragic.

The reason why the two sides kept filling in the numbers was obviously their own plans: the Federation army was here to stop the opponent and deplete the enemy's strength and morale, and the Normans, although they could not hold it for a long time, seemed to feel that they could attract and contain the main force of the Union army through such a battle.

Ten days after the Battle of Somsonas, the two sides were still dead, and the Normans finally developed their tactics of assault landing in the air. They used heavily armored transport ships to send tens of thousands of elite soldiers deep behind the Union lines. They made sufficient preparations and carried out a large number of reconnaissance and sabotage operations, but the airborne assault operations of such heavy groups did not achieve the desired results. For the next two days, the Federation forces held various tactical positions, so that the enemy landing force could not make tactical contact with the attacking forces in front of the defensive line, and did not allow them to pose a lethal threat to the vital parts of the Union army in the depths.

Before the second wave of the enemy's landing began, Weiss threw a large part of his reserve force into a night counterattack. This time, fearless of danger, he personally went into battle and blocked the enemy's landing force on the road to the important town in the rear. This difficult and decisive battle disgraced the elite Norman army, and it seemed to be a microcosm of the Battle of Somsonas, where the Normans' vaunted and tried and tested nimble tactics could hardly be as overwhelming as they once were in the face of a united Union army.