In this little-known town northwest of Lorraine, the Norman army, led by Prince Baras, a member of the Imperial royal family and commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front, and the federal army, led by Colonel Long Clumber Haisen, commander of the guerrilla advance team, finally reached a secret agreement for the exchange of prisoners of war, which came into effect immediately and lasted for a week.

After the agreement came into effect, Weiss ordered the signal corps to send back a secret telegram to the guerrilla advance team, asking them to send a small group of men to receive instructions. Before the group arrived, he sat in the conference room with his entourage officers and signal corps, guarding the Norman medic to treat Alves's eye, who had been temporarily restricted from his freedom—as expected, the man's eye was only wounded and not reimbursed. During this time, the Normans made no attempt to rescue him in a brutal manner, and the first two days survived without incident. The Norman army delivered Union prisoners of war and supplies to the designated place as promised, and the Union guerrilla advance team also handed over Norman prisoners of war to the other side in batches and batches. The Normans could not turn a blind eye to the resurgence of smoke on the front line, their transports came and went, and many troops and equipment were withdrawn from around the town, except for the assault ship, which did not "move", and it continued to wait here for two days, until the prisoner exchange was basically completed, and Weiss and his party released Alves as promised, and then left in a hurry.

Watching the Norman assault ship depart with Alves on board, Weiss suddenly understood one thing: Alves Hawk Sedrintz, or the Sedrinz family behind him, meant a lot to Prince Barras and could not afford to lose. Therefore, after Alves was captured by Weiss, Barras did not choose to forcibly release the hostages, but decisively made concessions, and even took the initiative to increase the terms of exchange, thus guaranteeing Alves' absolute safety. If Weiss had seen through this earlier, he could have demanded more from Ballas—and could even have asked the Normans not to set foot in the mountains and forests northwest of Lorraine for a longer period of time, and the guerrilla advance forces would have taken advantage of this to establish a larger, better-equipped secret base to push the Lorraine Resistance back to its peak!

The opportunity has been lost, and frustration has not helped. Weiss soon returned to the temporary camp of the guerrilla advance team, and learned from Lieutenant Colonel Lear that Norman had released 800 Confederate prisoners of war and 200 resistance personnel as promised, and handed over a considerable amount of food, medicine, and standard weapons and ammunition of the Confederates, but the Confederates had failed to send transport ships—the fighting on the front line was fierce, and even if they could pull out their ships, they would not find a chance to cross the enemy line and return safely with the wounded. The combination of these two factors led to the "overcrowding" of the camps, and nearly half of the wounded still had no or only partial combat effectiveness. Under such circumstances, no matter how much weapons and ammunition there are, no matter how much food and medicine are available, there is no way to display the power of guerrilla warfare.

Ballas and Alves had already rushed to the front, and Weiss could not renegotiate with them. At this time, the advantage of his experience in leading the Lorraine guerrillas in the past to fight the Normans became apparent: more than a thousand wounded were looking for a place to hide and recuperate? Not a problem! He quickly selected a valley with a natural water source and personally led 500 warriors to dig a pit. In addition, according to the agreement between the two sides, the partisan advance force should hand over the last batch of prisoners of war to the Normans before the end of the armistice, and the Normans would provide an appropriate amount of supplies according to the previous principle of exchange, and the type of supplies should be determined by the two sides through consultation. As a result, Weiss and Lieutenant Colonel Lear agreed on a new list of supplies, asking the Normans to provide tents, tarpaulins, sapper shovels, kerosene stoves, and other auxiliary supplies in addition to food supplies and medical supplies.

In the last hours before the end of the armistice, with the exception of a few rearguard personnel, the guerrilla advance detachment and the rescued prisoners moved to the hidden camps, where the basic conditions were more or less old. After daybreak, the large units escorting the wounded were concealed in place, and lightly armed combat detachments carried several days' rations to disperse their activities and attract the attention of the enemy. This time, the Normans did not fight back because the agreed stop time had passed, and even in good weather, their flying ships rarely appeared, and the planes were nowhere to be seen......

After surviving the dangerous transition period of the first few days, Weiss regrouped his forces and reorganized them according to the current composition of the force and the situation of weapons and ammunition. Of the 800 Confederate prisoners of war and 200 Resistance men accepted from the Normans, nearly 400 were fit to return to combat, and in view of the possibility that they would be mixed with the enemy's eyeline, Weiss drew dozens of non-commissioned officers and veterans of the guerrilla advance team and formed a new battle column with them, while the rest of the force was reduced to three combat columns of similar size and a baggage force of two hundred men. During this period, the guerrilla operations command, located in the rear, seemed to have been transferred en masse, ignoring the guerrilla advance units sent to Lorraine. In order not to reveal the new concealed position, Weiss's command also kept silent on the radio, and only transmitted a message through the intelligence network: the guerrilla advance team had nearly 2,000 wounded and rescued prisoners, and that there was still enough food and medicine, and if there was a suitable opportunity, they should try to move them to the rear.

In the vast mountains and forests far from the front line, Weiss and his comrades could not hear the rumbling of artillery on the battlefield, could not see the cruel and bloody battle scenes, and could only speculate on the viciousness and heat of the war from the invisible radio waves—apparently out of the need for secrecy, the Union army changed the code book before the battle began, and the radio of the guerrilla advance team received a large number of codes, but could not decipher its contents. Fierce fighting was raging on the frontal battlefield, and the Norman command on the Eastern Front had reason to focus on the front line and "ignore" the vast and sparsely populated mountains and forests of northwestern Lorraine - the guerrilla advance team deployed a guard post more than a hundred miles outside the camp, and still found no trace of the Norman army.

It was as if it had become a forgotten place, and they had become a group of forgotten people.

Rest, training, competition, drill...... The guerrilla advance detachment reorganized its armament day after day, and half a month passed before it knew it. For these federal soldiers who went deep behind enemy lines to carry out combat missions, this was a rare period of peace, and the lightly wounded ones recovered and returned to the team one after another, which was a powerful supplement to the troops and also greatly helped to improve the morale of the troops.

This strange calm was finally broken with the arrival of two intelligence officers. One of them was Brooks' men, calling himself "Second Lieutenant Odlow", and the other was a navigator who came here from the rear and called himself "Captain Joao", the former was a navigator, and led the latter here to bring a new communication code book to the guerrilla advance team - to Weiss and Lieutenant Colonel Lear brought a message from General Pound: The crucial battle had begun, the guerrilla troops behind enemy lines must do their best to cooperate with the frontal battle, and all matters here could be decided by the commander, and everything else could be left to the aftermath of the war.

General Pound was born in intelligence, and it seemed to have become a professional habit to talk half of things and hide half of them, and both Weiss and Lieutenant Colonel Lear felt that he had something to say, and it was difficult to explain the deep meaning behind it for a while. In any case, with the new codebook, they have reopened the window of information to the rear, and they only need to receive and decipher the code on the regular communication frequency, so that they can understand the battle situation on the front line, and get in touch with their own troops when necessary, and cooperate with the battle.

The two intelligence officers delivered what they should have sent and passed on the words that should have been delivered, but the mission was not over. When everyone's attention was on the radio, Ensign Odlow stepped forward and asked Weiss to find a place to talk alone. Since the investigation of the training bomb explosion at the Baseton Military Academy, he has been very disgusted with the behavior of the federal military intelligence department when carrying out counter-espionage and anti-sabotage reviews, but whether it is public or private, he can't avoid it, so he has to take them to his own small "shack". The orderly happened to be boiling a pot of tea on the kerosene stove, and Captain João looked at the stove and asked maliciously: "Is this a trophy captured from the Normans?" ”

Weiss didn't want to lie, so he replied truthfully: "It was exchanged for Norman prisoners of war." ”

The man chased after him and asked, "Is it a deal with your long-lost brother?" ”

"It's not." "He had already been killed in a previous battle, and you can ask Lieutenant Colonel Lear for confirmation of this, as he was a first-hand witness and knows a better idea of what happened." ”

Captain João said "I'm sorry" coldly, and then asked, "Then how did you get in touch with the Normans?" ”

Weiss gave a brief account of the Normans sending out a liaison team, and went out of his way to add that these happened after Ze's death. Incidentally, he told the two informants that if they did not exchange prisoners of war with the Normans, the remaining supplies of the guerrilla advance force would only last for three days at most, and the supplies in the rear could not be transported for a long time, so there were only two routes in front of them: either trade with the Normans or sit back and wait for the ammunition to run out.

"You were in a very bad situation, and the guerrilla operations command knew about it, and they said they could testify about it, and our intelligence department in Lorraine was able to provide some evidence in your favor."

This sound quite pleasant, but Captain Joao's next "but" made Weiss frown.

"But, as far as we know, there are as many as 10,000 federal officers and soldiers in prisoner of war camps in Lorraine, and instead of a one-on-one prisoner exchange, you exchanged nearly 1,600 enemy prisoners of war for 800 captured members of our army, 200 so-called resisters without military status, and supplies that you consider necessary for survival......"

"If we had exchanged 1,600 Federation soldiers, what you would see now would not be more than 3,000 people in this camp, but starvation all over the ground!" Weiss was a little annoyed.

Seeing the other party's stunned face, Captain Joao was neither surprised nor timid, but looked at him with questioning eyes: "I didn't mean that, but I wanted to say that you can exchange 1500, or 1200, or 1000 - federal soldiers." In war, soldiers who have received formal military training and have been on the battlefield to kill the enemy are more valuable than civilians with a little military quality. ”

When Weiss was still a rookie in a military academy, he was also so uneasy, but after experiencing the tempering of the battlefield furnace, he already had a strong heart, enough to defy all kinds of coercion and temptation, but the feeling of being questioned, misunderstood and even wronged was like a fish thorn in the throat, which was unbearable.

"I can't agree with your point of view." He loudly retorted, "In guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, I don't think there is a difference in value between the determined civilian resisters who are familiar with the environment and the ordinary soldiers who have no experience in guerrilla warfare, and sometimes the role is even greater. ”

Seeing that the atmosphere of the conversation was a little out of control, Second Lieutenant Odello under Brooks hurriedly said: "According to the federal constitution, every citizen is free and equal, so we don't need to argue about who is more valuable." I think Captain Joao was just curious about how you were Normans at the time, how to determine the exchange ratio. As an inspector of the intelligence department of the federal army, it is the duty and responsibility to know the contacts of one's own citizens, especially military and political personnel, with personnel of other countries, whether in peacetime or wartime. ”

"I see!" Weiss pretended to be surprised, and then, unceremoniously, he retorted, "That's really sorry! The situation of our Clumber-Haysen family, old and young, up and down, will bother you to pay more attention to it, so that you can bother! So be it! If you feel that it is necessary to conduct an in-depth, separate, or even isolated review, I will absolutely cooperate with you, and the command of the troops can be temporarily entrusted to Lieutenant Colonel Lear, or if you feel that Lieutenant Colonel Lear also needs to be reviewed with me, I personally understand what you want to do, and I will fully cooperate! ”

The two intelligence officers were well-informed, and they immediately heard each other's voices, Second Lieutenant Odlow looked embarrassed, Captain Joao did not think so, he said in a businesslike tone: "We are just acting in accordance with the instructions of our superiors, this time, the superiors let us stay in the guerrilla advance team to observe, understand, and grasp some of the things they are concerned about, which does not include the monitoring and control of Colonel Clumber-Haysen guerrilla, let alone prevent you from commanding the troops to fight the Normans, We hope you will not misunderstand the purpose and mission of our trip. ”

Weiss also responded in a matter-of-fact manner: "What you want to observe, what you want to know, what you want to master, even though you say to me or Lieutenant Colonel Lear, it is our duty to cooperate fully." However, we are behind enemy lines, and once we engage the enemy, in most cases, the enemy is strong and we are weak, and the enemy is outnumbered, and whether it is to reconnoiter in advance, drag back and sweep the tail, or follow a large force in the middle, it is possible to come into close contact with the enemy at any time. This should be a very rare opportunity for you, and of course, I advise you to protect yourself as much as possible, for almost everyone in our troops has been injured over the past few months, including me. ”

At this point, Weiss lifted his clothes and showed them his wounded, still bandaged abdomen, and continued: "I'm not so lucky, but I've been 'bitten' by the enemy's bullets, and if the enemy takes aim a little more accurately, you can come here and have a cup of tea with Lieutenant Colonel Lear." ”

Captain Joao glanced down at Weiss's wound twice, and did not say a word, but Ensign Odlow curiously asked about his injury, and learned that this guy had killed N times in the enemy line, and his eyes suddenly increased a lot of admiration. In the early days of the war, especially in the Northern Campaign, the Norman army was extremely strong, and like an autumn wind sweeping away leaves, it crushed the Wessex and Union armies that had the advantage of the total number of troops participating in the war, and in the eyes of most of those who participated in the war and the vast majority of those who did not participate in the war, this Norman army was stronger and more difficult to deal with than their predecessors. In the first year of the war, the Wessex royal family and army had to huddle in the frozen land of the four seasons to hide from the Normans, while the Union army barely managed to hold back the decline and stabilize the battle line with losses that were multiplied by the enemy's losses. In the second and third years thereafter, only some small and medium-sized battles were fought on the northern front carried by the Wessex army, and the burden of fighting the Normans basically fell on the shoulders of the Union army.

In the face of Lieutenant Odlow's polite compliment, Weiss raised his head: "Death is like the wind, always with me...... I think there are many people who will never experience this feeling in their lifetime. ”