Retreat, retreat south, retreat all the way south......

At the moment when he made the decision to retreat, Weiss did not expect that the front of the Federation Army, which had been majestic and seemed to contain endless strength, would actually lose consecutive battles and lose all kinds of money after encountering a large-scale counterattack by the Norman army. Within ten days, they had retreated from Hoventis to Kaletenk, and from Kaletenk to the Samba River. This time, the Samba line failed to help the Union forces turn the tide, and was breached by the Norman army in just two days. Had it not been for the timely launch of a timely counterattack by the right flank of the Union Army that threatened the enemy's supply lines, forcing the Norman army to suspend its offensive and withdraw troops to reinforce, the Normans would have had every chance to approach the city and even take the semi-fortified industrial town in one fell swoop. In response to the counterattack of friendly forces, the Union troops who retreated to the front line of the city bottomed out and rebounded, and the whole line was counterattacked, but the result was that the thunder and rain were small, and the Normans were only driven back to the north bank of the Samba River and stopped.

The two armies were temporarily held on the Samba River, and the corps of the Union Army, which had suffered a heavy blow in the early stage, lost no time in regrouping their forces around the city of Ao. The left flanks of the Union Army, with the 9th Corps suffered the greatest losses. The courage and tenacity of this unit in the Battle of Hoffentis became one of the few consolations in this defeat - the command of many units at that time was chaotic, and if it had not attracted the enemy's assault group and held out all night, the other corps, together with their divisional units, would have suffered greater losses in the process of withdrawing from the battlefield, or even been cut off from retreat, and the whole army would have been annihilated.

The former commander of the 9th Corps, Lieutenant General Yateus, who had retired four years earlier, was urgently recalled to take command of the dilapidated unit in place of General Kaisen, who had not been heard from from at all. The veteran arrived in Aocheng on the flying battleship Starry Night, and quickly repaired the broken command system by using the remaining officer corps, and in terms of restoring the combat effectiveness of the troops, he adopted a pragmatic strategy of streamlining the establishment, and all the six divisions under the corps were adjusted to division headquarters + mixed combat regiments, and through the deployment of the supplementary number of reserve troops, the combat effectiveness of these "division-level reinforced regiments" tended to be balanced.

In the process of resting and reorganizing the troops, the field battalions temporarily organized on the battlefield were naturally disbanded on the spot, and their subordinate personnel returned to their respective teams, and Weiss also returned to the reconnaissance battalion of the guard regiment directly under the corps and returned to the command of Major Huo Zesen. Due to the severe attrition of the troops, although the guard regiment retained its independent number, only two battalions remained, namely the reconnaissance battalion and the communications battalion. The reconnaissance battalion originally had only more than 100 people left, and the surviving personnel of the armored battalion and the artillery battalion were merged, and some reservists were replenished, and it basically returned to full strength. Weiss was assigned commander of the heavy company, commanding 133 officers and men, as well as more than a dozen machine guns assigned to the company.

At the new station, adjacent to the Gaston Military Academy, Weiss led the officers and men to train and run in. The first anniversary of graduation is approaching, and the three silver stars on his shoulders could have allowed him to return to his alma mater with his head held high. However, the bad battle situation, the collapse of the 9th Corps, and the loss of contact with General Kaisen, such a situation made him fall into a negative mood of frustration, loss, worry, and melancholy. Looking out at the Barston Military Academy alone became the most common thing he did outside of training. Not long ago, he thought that the turning point of the war had come, and he was beaten on the head, only to realize that it was too early to rejoice. With the current state of the federal army, the Samba River defense line is basically impossible to hold, and when the Norman army moves south again, the Austrian city will definitely become a battlefield, and the Baston Military Academy will also experience the fourth baptism of war since the establishment of the school. Weiss had no doubt that the rebirth of the city and the glorious reappearance of the Badton Military Academy would be sooner or later, but the process was accompanied by countless sacrifices and endless destruction, and history has proven time and again that the living must take on greater responsibilities and suffer more, and therefore require greater courage and more potential......

The Samba line was unreliable, and what Weiss could see, the military top brass certainly wouldn't turn a blind eye. The first task of the 9th Corps after the completion of the reorganization was to enter the M3 and M4 defense areas in the northeast of the Aocheng - referring to the experience and practice of the previous war, the huge Aocheng was divided into 28 defense areas, namely: 16 defense areas in the outer ring, codenamed O1-O16; 8 defense zones in the middle circle, code M1-M8; Inner ring 4 defense zone, code I1-I4. The troops participating in the battle are defending their respective areas, blocking and depleting the enemy army layer by layer, exhausting the enemy army, and then defeating it.

The M3 and M4 defense areas where the 9th Corps is stationed are non-military industrial zones, and there are more than a dozen large and medium-sized factories in metal casting, mold making, power machinery, vehicle assembly and other industries, about one-third of which are owned by the Grumman Group. Climb the water tower to overlook, and there are hundreds of factories, warehouses, dormitories and other buildings densely distributed here, large and small chimneys are lined up in sections, and hardened roads and freight rails are cobwebed all over. From a defensive point of view, the terrain here is well used, which can make the enemy suffer, but there are two side effects: one is that if you want to stop the Norman army, you must pay heavy casualties, and in the end, most of the defending officers and soldiers will have to give an account here; The second is the fierce firefighting, especially relying on the organization of the defense of the plant, which will turn the vast majority of production facilities into ruins.

Counterattack, retreat, and counterattack, in this series of combat operations, the strength of the Union Army was extremely depleted, and troops were transferred from various parts of the General Staff, and the main forces stationed in Austria were not spared. Before the 9th Corps arrived in the defense area, there were only a few unstaffed garrison regiments here, and the strength was quite empty. Now, the command of the two important defense areas is in the hands of Lieutenant General Arteus, and the retired veteran who has returned to the front line can rely on the 20,000 horses in his hands. Even if there were ready-made barricades and ammunition reserves, they had to be carefully calculated and taken into account.

In the eyes of veteran officers, Lieutenant General Arteus was a decisive and charismatic commander, but he also had the advantage and disadvantage that he had a mysterious confidence in his instincts in many combat decisions. In the last war, he relied on this momentum as a battalion and regimental commander, but in the post-war as a divisional and corps-level commander, his performance was polarized: he won brilliantly or suffered a disastrous defeat, with few well-behaved draws or small victories. Because of this over-personality and lack of stability, Arteus missed the opportunity to be promoted to corps commander and even to enter the General Staff, and finally retired from the army at the end of his tenure as commander of the 9th Corps.

After arriving at the defense area, the guard regiment soon received operational arrangements, and their main task was not to guard a certain position or simply protect the corps headquarters, but to "conduct reconnaissance and liaison in urban operations" -- the reconnaissance battalion and the communications battalion worked together to form a number of reconnaissance and liaison detachments, and each detachment had a reconnaissance liaison point and a number of reconnaissance and observation points. This reconnaissance and liaison system operates independently during the battle, and transmits the observed battle information back to the corps headquarters for the headquarters to grasp the battle situation and make decisions for reference.

The reconnaissance battalion and communications battalion were dismantled, and the heavy company under Weiss's command was divided into three positions, each of which was stationed in three combat positions capable of covering and supporting forward reconnaissance contact points. The Norman army approached the city twice, and most of the factories and citizens had been relocated, but some hard-to-move production lines were still running, turning mountains of stockpiled raw materials into industrial semi-finished products, which could be processed locally or transported out – even if abandoned on the ground and with tight rear transport capacity, it would be more cost-effective to abandon them than to transport them directly to the rear.

Weiss's company is located in a foundry that is 60 percent owned by the Grumman Group. There are four blast furnace production lines, which can produce hundreds of tons of steel products a day at full capacity, but now there are only more than 70 volunteers and a few technicians who can barely maintain a blast furnace production line, and it takes a month to use up the last 4,000 or so tons of steel ingots in the warehouse. In view of the fact that the high-temperature fuel in the blast furnace is a great fire and explosion hazard in wartime, which may injure innocents at any time and have a negative impact on the defense of the Union Army, the headquarters of the 9th Corps issued a limited stoppage order on the day after it was stationed, and all high-pressure, high-temperature and high-energy equipment was suspended. Although the head of the factory complained about this, he still unconditionally accepted the wartime management of the military. As the blast furnace turned off and the machine stopped, the huge factory area was like a sleeping giant, and it suddenly quieted down. However, the workers and technicians did not immediately evacuate, but continued to use lathes to repair broken weapons for the Union troops, and cranes to help the defenders build fortifications and increase the thickness of the defenses.

On the water tower next to the blast furnace workshop, Weiss asked the soldiers to set up a visual observation point and set up a pair of high-powered telescopes, where they could not only control the situation around the defense area, but also observe all parts of the city. To the north is the factory area and the railroad freight yard, where the 37th National Defense Division is stationed, and further north is the outer ring of the city, which is defended by other federal forces.

If it is not attacked by enemy artillery fire in wartime, this water tower 100 feet above the ground is undoubtedly a very ideal battlefield observation point, but the shrewd Normans will certainly not allow such an excellent observation point to exist, so Weiss set up fire observation points on the top of the factory and the upper floor of the warehouse. Benefiting from Aocheng's strong military industry, their existing weapons were maintained, and they stockpiled sufficient ammunition, and also towed back two 15PIR field rapid-fire guns and a cart of shells from the repair factory.

On the sixth day of the 9th Corps' march into Austria, the Norman army resumed its offensive on the Samba River line. They used the strategy of attacking the east and attacking the west, concentrating the armored forces in the upper reaches, taking advantage of the dry season to force the river crossing, opening a breakthrough in the weak point of the Union army's front, and then detouring to the defender's flank at high speed, so that the federal army fell into passivity. After the battle began, the Federation Flying Fleet and the fighter units were pinned down in the middle of the battle line, and at first they were weak, but when they moved to the field, they were attacked by the Norman fleet, and they were unable to provide strong reinforcements to the ground forces. In this way, the Samba River defense line was held for only two more days, and the participating units hurriedly withdrew to the city under the cover of friendly forces.

The Battle of Okujo, the third of the two wars, began.