For the next two days, the Normans continued to advance step by step. While consolidating the defense of the camp in the valley, they also broadened the breadth and depth of the search, not only going farther but also searching more carefully, and even "digging three feet into the ground" in the secret camp abandoned by the guerrilla advance team, and digging out some of the equipment that the Lorraine guerrillas had buried in those years.

On the other hand, Weiss also skillfully dispatched his troops to evade the enemy on the bridge. Of course, no matter how clever the disguise is, it is difficult to completely sweep away the traces, although the Normans could not catch up with the guerrilla advance party, but they found traces of their stay several times, and the two sides entered a battle of wits and endurance "hide and seek".

During this period, the partisan advance force did not have any foreign aid, while the Normans replenished a shipload of equipment and supplies, and added a tank detachment, an artillery detachment, and a medical detachment, but this reinforcement did not give them an absolute advantage in terms of strength. On the fourth day of their arrival, the Normans departed their cruiser, and at this moment, the balance of power between the two sides seemed to have changed upside down. The guerrilla advance detachment of the Federal Army can completely use extremely aggressive tactics to consume the enemy in the lofty mountains and mountains, and finally annihilate all the remnants of the enemy in the valley...... However, Weiss was still in no hurry to attack, their food supply could still last for ten days, and Lorraine's federal army intelligence, popular resistance groups, and the rear were also waiting for an opportunity to provide support, and this Norman army was alone and seemed to have strong support, but in fact it was not in a good situation. Judging from the signs before and after, they are more like a fat bait, waiting for the big fish to take the bait, but there are times when fishing misses, and it is not surprising that they lose the bait and run away from the fish!

The Norman cruisers, which had broken through the fog in the early morning, reappeared on the edge of the sky in the evening. Judging from the direction and timing of its activity, it is likely that this day was headed to Slane for resupply. The last time, Weiss led a guerrilla advance team to raid Slane, leading his own flying troops to blow it up, making it impossible for the Normans to play its strategic role in a short period of time, but this did not mean that Slane completely lost its military value. Intelligence received from intelligence services and resistance groups indicated that the Norman army had deployed fighter units at Slane and used the remaining facilities and supplies from the bombing to carry out small-scale, short-term replenishment maintenance of the flying ships. Weiss originally planned to fight a guerrilla war in the north of Lorraine first, and then suddenly jump to the middle line, looking for an opportunity to direct a good play of "three attacks on Slane", but now it seems that Slane is really a "hard nail" that is pulled out early.

The Norman cruiser went from a lazy sick cat to a descending tiger. At night, it wanders back and forth over the mountains and forests, and its eight searchlights are like eight-armed demon gods, rampant and domineering. The guerrilla advance fighters, who had not experienced the bitter fighting of the rearguard, could not help feeling the pressure of the situation, and with the help of this cruiser, the Norman ground forces did not withdraw to the camp in the valley as they had done before, but continued to search in the mountains and forests, thus extending their range of activities to the farthest point in several days.

As the enemy approached, the detachments that were originally in a safe position gave warnings one after another—if they did not move overnight, they might not be discovered by the enemy, but once they exchanged fire with the enemy, it would be difficult for a team of hundreds of people to avoid the searchlights of enemy ships like a small number of combatants. Of course, in order to deal with the enemy's night sweep, in addition to emergency evacuation, there are other methods, such as setting trigger explosion traps, using small forces with mortars to attack the enemy camp in the valley at night, and so on.

Weiss examines the enemy's situation, weighs the response, and then sends out heralds to let the combat detachments on the front half of the night try to avoid the enemy by all means, and then counterattack collectively in the second half of the night. If there is no fog in the morning, withdraw from the battle before dawn, and if there is fog in the morning, boldly penetrate behind enemy lines and strike at the enemy's ground forces!

In late autumn and early winter, the fog in Lorraine is commonplace, and when the temperature is colder, the snow and fog weather will take up more than half of the time, which is also one of the favorable factors for Weiss to lead an irregular army against the Norman army for a long time, but bad weather can not protect them all the time, the last battle of the Lorraine guerrilla fighters was fought in the middle of winter after a heavy snowfall - at that time, it was freezing and the non-combatants in the secret stronghold were not easy to transfer, They had to fight a defensive battle against a strong enemy with a limited number of troops, and although they killed and wounded a large number of enemy troops with relatively few casualties, they still ran out of strength in the end, and if they continued to fight, they would only shed everyone's blood. Such a profound lesson made Weiss understand the essence of guerrilla warfare from the roots, and he vowed not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and he would definitely do what he said......

The heralds personally selected by Weiss were all between 22 and 28 years old, and they had relatively rich combat experience, but they were also in the most energetic stage of life, and their heads were still bright, so they were not easy to get confused. For several days, they traveled through the mountains and forests, and they knew most of the terrain by heart, and even at night, they were able to reach their designated positions at a relatively fast speed. Soon after the heralds were dispatched, in Weiss's peculiar vision, the scattered and concealed detachments began to move one after another in the direction of the valley, and they acted with determination and clarity of purpose, as the squirrels were to hyenas and sparrowhawks to vultures compared to the cautious enemy detachments, which could not keep up with them unless they foolishly threw themselves into the net.

From dark to midnight, everything went smoothly as expected, except for the fact that there was no fog in the mountains and forests, and it was difficult to tell if it would be, how big, and how long it would last. During this period, Weiss has been closely monitoring the enemy's movements with the mobile command center, which is as simple as possible, and only carries a portable radio station - unless it is absolutely necessary, it only accepts electric code, does not shoot and send signals, and even if the situation is special, the radio signals it transmits can only effectively cover a radius of hundreds of miles, and it is difficult to directly contact the command organization of the federal army in the rear of the battle line, and it must be manually transmitted by high-power radio stations to be able to contact the large rear.

Just after midnight, this normally "receive, not send" radio suddenly received a coded telegram from its own intelligence department. The communication soldier quickly decoded it, and under the blind light of the black light, he verbally reported to Weiss: "Colonel, I just received a secret message from platform C - heavy rain is coming, prepare an umbrella in time." ”

The so-called platform C is the communication code of the guerrilla warfare command led by General Punk, and "heavy rain is coming" is not the weather, but a pre-agreed secret phrase, which means that the Federation Army is about to launch a full-scale offensive on the Cleve and Neuchâtel and Lorraine fronts. It seems counterintuitive that such an important telegram should not be sent early or late, but it is not surprising if you think about it carefully: communication at night is not easily disturbed, and it is also necessary to avoid sending repeated codes in one direction for a long time, and it is possible that the guerrilla warfare command may have obtained permission from its superiors to convey such important news to guerrilla combat units in various localities only a short time ago. As for "preparing umbrellas in a timely manner," it means that the guerrilla forces in various localities should adopt such methods as attacks, ambushes, and sabotage to divert the enemy's attention as much as possible.

Although this secret telegram strengthened his confidence and determination to deal with the current enemy to the end, he developed the habit of thinking backwards and extended the combat goal from "containment-strike" to "containment-strike-annihilation." This is not just to expand the target, but to reconsider the overall situation from the tactical and tactical level.

After midnight, the temperature in the mountains and forests accelerated to drop, and the continuous operation of "white and black" also brought the Norman officers and soldiers on the front line to the point of fatigue and sleepiness. The Normans basically centered on the valley camp, focusing on the area where the guerrilla advance team abandoned the secret camp was located, and launched a large-angle fan search, and its coverage radius has been expanded to sixty or seventy miles, covering an area equivalent to the urban area of a large city, although the Norman cruiser in charge of controlling the field can overlook this area from the air, once the enemy has exerted force in many places, it is difficult for it to take care of more than two battlefields at the same time, and it is entirely possible to lose one or the other and be exhausted - for Weiss and his troops, It was indeed an ideal time to attack, and without that telegram and the resulting adjustment of objectives, he would not hesitate to shoot a red flare into the sky, but now, he had no intention of giving the slightest order to attack, but sat alone under a tree, calculating and devising a new battle plan in his mind.

Half an hour passed, and then another half hour, and Weiss did not stand still, but got up every once in a while to squint at the enemy. Seeing that the time was getting closer and closer to dawn, an anxious mood grew in his heart, and the soldiers who were on standby to attack must be even more in a mood, but they were regular troops who strictly paid attention to battlefield discipline, and under the condition of keeping the radio silent and not setting up field telephone lines, if there was no unexpected situation, the detachments on standby could only passively accept orders, and even if they had opinions about the method or timing of the battle, they could not take the initiative to send messengers to report to the command headquarters.

He stayed up until four o'clock in the morning, and in more than an hour it was dawn, which was not enough time for a hard battle on the scale of a regiment, and it was at this moment that an officer of Weiss Command alerted him that there was fog in the woods.

There is a saying that "good food is not afraid of late", this point of fog, normally speaking, will not dissipate in less than half a morning. Once the battlefield factor of "morning fog" was substituted into Weiss's long-hesitating calculation, the feasibility of successfully achieving the goal was finally smooth. Refreshed, he looked around to make sure that the fog was rising in the forest, closed his eyes, spent the last two minutes checking his deduction to make sure there were no obvious oversights or paradoxes, and immediately ordered the signal corps to fire three red flares into the sky.

As these red flares rise, the Normans, who have been here for four days, will be surprised to see their opponents attacking with vigor and high spirits as if they had come out of the ground, which was the situation they had hoped for, but the fog that gradually dispersed in the mountains and forests made the air support they relied on face an embarrassing scene of ineffectiveness, and for them, this battle was not easy to fight!