At the end of the morning, the rain stopped and the wind stopped. The ground was wet and full of mud puddles.

Weiss stood above the bunker of the battalion headquarters, silently watching his comrades leave in a marching column. As a result of the sudden Norman retreat, the Union Northern Front Command urgently deployed troops on the border line to "put out the fires", and the Baston Student Regiment was ordered to send three-quarters of its troops into a special battle group under the command of Lieutenant General Hendrik Durm. At an emergency meeting at the regimental headquarters, Colonel Capes made a decision to select one company of each battalion to remain in the defense area, and the rest of the companies and baggage units to participate in the battle, and personally selected two battalion deputies to serve as acting commanders of the remaining units.

Weiss is one of them.

Weiss did not question Colonel Capes's decision, nor did he question it. Before joining the war, he felt that he had the ability to deal with all kinds of unexpected situations on the battlefield, and even become a key gentleman in key situations, but when the real crisis came, he found that his knowledge and experience could not help much.

The gap between theory and reality can only be crossed through continuous practice and exploration.

Staying with Weiss was Otto Rundes, the number one student among the freshmen of the Baseton Military Academy. Although he was not as popular as Weiss, Mr. Lunders was the best in his first and third grades, from the military academy officer to the subject instructor, and everyone praised him unanimously.

Because of this, Colonel Capes assigned Lunders as the acting battalion commander of the remaining troops, while Weiss remained the battalion lieutenant.

On the ground, tens of thousands of Union officers and soldiers left their original defense areas and marched towards the area where the Norman army had suddenly surrendered. In the sky, Federation ships flew in groups from the direction of Wessex, hurrying towards the direction of the Federation. In this busy scene, the officers and soldiers who stayed behind in the defense area became a group of spectators.

"Think their prospects are worrying, huh?" Lunders asked Weiss.

At a previous regimental meeting, Colonel Capes confessed to the battalion officers that the command did not know how many troops the Normans had parachuted, their equipment and firepower, and how much ammunition and supplies they had stockpiled. In order to ensure the success of the counterattack as much as possible, it was necessary to draw a large number of troops from the border defense line, and north of the border, there were still many federal troops blocking the Norman army, and even if the Normans continued to attack wildly, it would take three to five days to reach the border defense line.

This sounds reassuring, but no one knows how the war will develop.

"Why do you say that?" Weiss asked.

"Because I see a deep, deep pessimism in your face." "It's not like your character at all. ”

Weiss turned his head to look at the scholar: "You seem to understand me very well?" ”

"I didn't understand it before." "After last year's Spring Convention," replied with a deep face, "I began to pay attention to your actions and ponder your thoughts, and perhaps no one knows you better than I do except your family and best friends. ”

Weiss was surprised by this, and he couldn't help but ask, "What's the point of studying me?" ”

Lunders replied, "I thought it would be interesting, but it wasn't interesting, or rather...... Someone's departure makes your life monotonous. ”

Although Lunders didn't directly name the man, how could Weiss not be aware of it? He sighed silently and continued to watch the march of the Basston Student Regiment until the blue regimental flag disappeared from sight.

After lunch, Weiss began to inspect the defense area. It used to take only about ten minutes to inspect the defense area of the 1st Combat Battalion, but now it takes nearly an hour to inspect the defense area of the entire Batton Student Regiment. With three-quarters of the number of troops reduced, the entire defense area looked empty, and the same was true of the defense areas of friendly troops when they stood on a high vantage point and looked around.

At the end of the tour, Weiss faintly heard the rumbling of artillery from the south, and it seemed that the improvised Durm battle group had begun to attack the Norman army that had suddenly surrendered into Confederation. Since dawn, only Federation ships have been seen around the border line, and there has been no sign of Norman warships, which is a crucial benefit for the Durm battle group, which has been hastily put into battle. In addition to the fire support from the air, the federal troops who entered the counterattack also brought a lot of field artillery, which should be enough to deal with the Norman troops who were not firmly established. But for some reason, Weiss always had a bad premonition: not only would it be difficult for the Durm battle group to succeed in the counterattack, but the border defense line with empty troops would also be in trouble.

From the afternoon until nightfall, there was no conclusive news from the front about the state of the battle, but at dusk four transport ships flew in from the direction of the Federation and took several anti-aircraft batteries armed with light anti-aircraft guns from the border defenses. In this case, the fighting would continue, and at night, the Federation fleet and the air defense forces in the border area could not stop the small Norman fleet from incurring by day.

The following night, the southwestern sky was occasionally lit up by the light of artillery fire, which kept Weiss from sleeping. It wasn't until early in the morning that he barely took a nap, and after sleeping less than an hour of Brother Force, he was awakened by the bloody scene in the nightmare.

After a hasty breakfast, Weiss once again inspected the defense area. This time, he tried to observe and think about the shortcomings of the fortification construction and fire deployment from the perspective of the defender commander, and recorded them and brought them back to the headquarters to consult with Lunders. The scholar was not ambiguous at all, he followed Weiss around the defense zone, solving all the problems he found one by one. As a result, in the defense area of the Baston Student Corps, you can once again see the scene of soldiers struggling to swing their tools and adjust their fire positions. Of course, this is only based on the existing personnel and equipment to fill in the leakage and tap the potential, and it is difficult to fundamentally improve the hardness of the defensive line.

On the evening of the second day when the main force of the Baston Student Regiment was integrated into the Durm battle group and left for the battlefield, the remaining personnel received very bad news from the border defense headquarters: the coalition forces invested the main force of the Federal 10th Corps and 6 well-organized garrison divisions to block the Norman army advancing from the airport of Mespport to the Ulster-Wessex border, and the two sides fought fiercely for two days and nights in the area of the Loire Valley southeast of Mespold. Defeated the coalition army with inferior forces, and then took advantage of the victory to pursue, and the advance was rapid, and its vanguard force had reached the small town of Wittenberg, which was more than 100 miles away from the border defense line, and to the south of Wittenberg was the undefended Vidi steppe and the border defense line with empty troops!

Upon hearing this news, Weiss, Rundes, and everyone in the regimental headquarters who stayed behind were speechless.

The clouds in the evening stunned the sky and burned most of the sky red.

At night, the night sky in the southwest is not willing to be lonely and reflects all kinds of lights, white, yellow, red, and orange, as if a unique light show is being staged. By midnight, the distant sound of artillery had become clearer, which was not good news for the coalition side. Sure enough, before dawn, the headquarters of the border defense line ordered all units to enter combat alert through a telephone line, and to be especially vigilant against the enemy troops entering the defense zone with their own retreating troops.

In other words, the Durm battle group is retreating towards the border defenses.

Is this defeated?

After ordering the battalions and companies to put on combat alert by telephone, Weiss and Lunders split up and inspected their regimental defense area overnight. It can be seen that the left-behind personnel, whether they are military academy instructors, cadets or wartime conscripts, are nervous and apprehensive about this impending storm, and many of them have worry or fear clearly written on their faces, and only those inspectors who are responsible for supervising military discipline still try to maintain their composure......

When the first wave of figures appeared in the south of the defense area, the nervousness of the remaining personnel of the various units was stretched to the limit, and the guns began to fire on the positions, which almost caused the tragedy of cannibalism. Fortunately, the officers of the various departments and the inspectors played a restraining role, and the soldiers who had no combat experience did not shoot out of excessive tension without distinguishing between friend and foe.

When the runners, who had no formation to speak of, approached the position, the officers and soldiers left behind finally heard the shouts of their own people. Out of the necessary vigilance, they asked each other about their units in a loud voice, and received answers from the 107th Garrison Division, the 124th Garrison Division, the 142nd Reserve Division, and the 63rd Combat Division, all of which were federal troops originally stationed in the border defense area.

The officers and soldiers left behind raised their guns and let these embarrassed guys enter their positions. When I got closer, I saw that these people were indeed the uniform of the federal army, but more than half of them were empty-handed, and even the most basic tactical equipment was discarded. Most of them were not injured, or they were only minor injuries on the skin, but all of them seemed to have lost their souls, and even if they were re-issued with weapons and equipment, it would be difficult for them to regain their combat effectiveness in a short period of time.

After learning about the situation, Weiss and Lunders had the same idea: for the retreaters who had entered the Baston Student Regiment defense area, let them rest in the trenches and bunkers, and wait until dawn before returning to their remaining units.

Not long after, a second wave of disorderly retreating Union Army personnel appeared in front of the defense area. With the experience of the previous time, the officers and soldiers left behind in the various units were able to identify them calmly and calmly and temporarily resettle them.

In the two waves of retreats, two or three hundred people entered the defense area of the Baston Student League, and the width of their defense area accounted for only one-fortieth of the overall width of the entire border defense line. While settling the evacuees, Weiss and Lunders were doing the same thing: asking them about the two days of battle at the front and news about the main force of the Baston Student Corps. On the first day, the Durm battle group, together with the alert troops in the rear, quickly formed an encirclement of the Norman forces, relying on the fire support of the Union warships to launch an offensive, but the Norman forces were far outnumbered and far more powerful than they expected, not only withstanding the attack of the federal forces, but also launching a ferocious counterattack at night. The next day, the federal army continued to besiege the Norman army during the day, and the continuous attack caused a lot of casualties among the various divisions, and when it entered the night, the Norman army again switched from defense to attack, and I don't know whether it was from the 63rd Combat Division or the 107th Garrison Division, the federal troops participating in the battle retreated like an avalanche, and the two waves of people who were the first to return to the border defense line were the "leaders" who abandoned their weapons and equipment and retreated forty or fifty miles from the battlefield of Nasura in one breath.