After dawn, the rain was still falling. Wallier, a small town of Lorraine surrounded by mountains and rivers, is intriguingly quiet in this rain. In the sky, two ships were flying in the direction of Slane. In terms of size, one of them is fat and short, the other is thin and long, one resembles a sheep and the other is a hound. After a while, they approached Wallier and slowed down. The fat one was the first to lower in altitude, apparently intending to land in the square in the middle of the town, while the slender one was on alert in the air.

"The enemy's second-class cruiser is about 1,500 feet high, and the third-class transport ship continues to decline - its maximum crew is 450 people, which is equivalent to two infantry companies."

In a forest outside the town, several soldiers in camouflage camouflage squatted under a concealed net and observed the enemy situation through binoculars. After raiding and capturing the town, they stayed only half the night, evacuating the inhabitants, transferring prisoners of war, and setting up the battle accordingly. Eventually, they sent a telegram calling for help using captured enemy radio stations and codebooks. The two flying ships in sight are the big fish attracted by the thrown bait.

In the field of view of the telescope, the enemy transport ship gradually decreases in altitude, and when the hull is lower than the spire of the church, the hatches are already open, and the Norman soldiers who are coming with the ship must have been eager to try, at this moment, it suddenly stops descending. Seeing this scene, Weiss couldn't help frowning: these Normans are quite vigilant!

After hovering for a moment, the transport ship actually began to climb, and the ship's signal lights were directed at the patrol ship that was answering at the heights, which the Normans called escorts, and sent a series of signals. The frigate increased its speed and circled around the town, and the transport climbed to a height of about five or six hundred feet above the ground, and slightly staggered the square in the center of the town, as if a large amount of explosives had been planted underneath, powerful enough to swallow the flying ships that had landed or hovered at low altitudes.

At the beginning, Weiss led the Lorraine guerrillas against the Norman army, and used this simple and crude strategy more than once, but the effect is not to be said, but there is one insurmountable shortcoming, that is, it is too expensive. This time, he led the guerrilla advance team back to Lorraine, bringing weapons and ammunition, and high-stability high explosives, it is not impossible to set up an explosion trap that is enough to "devour" the battleship, but these explosives will have a very important use in the future, and it is not wise to use them in one go, and besides, too violent explosions will inevitably cause the collapse of the mine, and if this tactic is adopted, the townspeople will have to move to other places......

Although the Normans in the sky smelled danger from the ground, they did not have the ability to see, and their sight could penetrate the rain, but not the houses and vegetation. After a quarter of an hour, without seeing the enemy or being attacked, they had a new move: the transports circled the town, the escorts like dolphins playing in the water, and each time they descended to the treetops, swept a short distance, then climbed, and so on.

At this time, Weiss was not afraid that the enemy would see through his deployment, but he was a little worried that the soldiers who lacked combat experience would reveal their positions because of misfire or reckless movements. Fortunately, the two thousand officers and men strictly carried out their orders and firmly nailed themselves to the preset ambush positions.

As time passed, the Normans alternated between anxiety, doubt, and curiosity, and finally they decided to send the combat infantry to the surface to find out the truth: the convoys returned to cover positions, and the transports avoided the eerie-looking square in the town and chose to land on the river beach west of the town.

Almost as soon as the Norman transport's support touched the ground, Weiss called, "Hooter, fire a red flare!" ”

Not far behind him, a young soldier rose to his feet, pulled out his flare gun, loaded it with flares, and fired a shot diagonally upward.

In the gray rain, the flickering red points of light are so dazzling. It quickly climbed to the highest point, then slowly descended, and when it was still sliding in mid-air, a sudden "drumbeat" sounded in the silent woods. On the Norman side, some soldiers who had been stationed in Lorraine for a long time absolutely hated this kind of sound - the Lorraine resistance was good at using this warp weapon to carry out all kinds of attacks and ambushes, which for a time made the Norman army unguardable, until the very strategic Baron alla Scala took office as the military governor of Lorraine and adopted a strategy of digging into the roots, which gradually swept away those difficult resistance.

At the beginning, the Klumberg-Haisen factory was hastily transferred, the equipment and materials were not complete, and the performance of the mortars manufactured was not perfect, but now the scale of the guerrilla advance team of the federal army is not large, but it is backed by the wartime industry of the entire Ulster Free Federation, and the mortars they carry are improved by the military industry and processed by precision machine tools, and the combat performance has been improved to a considerable extent. At the moment, a total of 36 mortars were deployed around the town of Wallier, including positions on the other side of the river. Each of the 36 mortar battle groups, led by non-commissioned officers, uses rigorous and scientific operational procedures to strike at ground targets. After the battle began, 36 mortars opened fire one after another at intervals of no more than five seconds, and this dense drum beat was a great encouragement to the officers and men of the guerrilla advance detachment, and a terrible reminder to the enemy. In an extremely short whistling sound, the mortar shells fell one after another on the river beach, some directly hit the Norman transport, the collision of steel and steel, instantly transformed into a violent explosion, some fell on the surrounding river beach, or hit the pebbles and exploded, or plunged into the mud and sand, and waited for the delay fuse to erupt.

The Norman third-class transports were roughly equivalent in function and performance to the Union Army's fast transports. Although they are not covered with armor like combat ships, they are also made of steel and iron bones, and the steel plates covering the hull can effectively withstand the attack of guns and even small-caliber machine guns, and only three or two mortar shells are not enough to destroy them, but continuous bombardment will create more and more wounds, threatening the bridge, damaging and even destroying the steering and propulsion devices. After being bombarded, the Norman transport ship did not care about the soldiers who had already landed and were leaving the ship, it hurriedly rose into the air and quickly climbed high, lest it could not get out of the predicament in the shortest possible time, but more mortar shells followed, even if only a quarter or even a fifth of the hit rate, there were still twenty or thirty mortar shells per minute bombarding the hull, and the continuous explosions eroded its body and soul. It scrambled to a height of about two hundred feet above the ground, and suddenly realized that it could no longer climb up. After a strange shudder, it slowly descended with tongues of fire and billowing smoke, falling about halfway to a position where it smashed into a free-fall posture as if it had suddenly lost its support.

Such a behemoth, the moment it landed, the mountains shook freely. Without hesitation, Weiss ordered the signalmen to fire a green flare. After taking the town, he selected a battle plan according to local conditions, and ordered the more than 2,000 officers and soldiers participating in the battle to be dispersed and act in the signal flares. When the enemy's flying ships were dispatched, he determined the type and performance of the ships through special skills from afar, and conveyed the final battle orders to each mortar group in a combination of field telephone calls and commands transmitted by heralds. This green flare was like a pause on the score, all the mortars immediately stopped firing, and the crew members hid in place to guard against the retaliatory fire of the enemy warships. In fact, due to their decisive shots, accurate positioning, and rapid firing, the mortar crews had only fired seven or eight rounds so far, and the ceasefire lasted less than three minutes from the opening of the fire, and the Norman battleship in charge of covering it had only hurriedly fired a few shells......

Rain, early morning, vegetation, smoke from explosions, and the smoke and noise of mortar fire meant that the gunners on the Norman battleship were not even sure where the target was. Their dozens of small and medium-caliber naval guns fired blindly, and they looked very lively, and felt as if they had swept a large area of woods, but the attackers did not raise a white flag or flee in a hurry, and there was no explosion of a large amount of ammunition in the woods. The intermittent bombardment lasted for half an hour, and the artillery fire of the Norman battleship gradually stopped. A Tier 3 ship, carrying ammunition supplies on regular missions usually does not fill up the spare space. After fighting for so long, the barrel began to overheat, and the ammunition depot was mostly empty. From the air, the murmuring of the Palen River, the originally clear water of the river was contaminated into a dark brown by the blood of the Normans and the various oils on the fallen battleships, which was of course shocking, but even worse, those who landed first, and the Norman soldiers who survived the crash of the battleship, were still trapped in the river beach and adjacent fields. The scattered gunshots continue to harvest their lives.

The crew of the Norman battleship was unbearable to watch their companions struggle on the line of life and death, and what was even more devastating was that they continuously sent out radio codes, but they did not receive a response from their superiors and friendly forces, as if there was a terrible force in the dark that wanted to devour them all. Now, they are caught in a dilemma: either risk being attacked by the enemy's fire and descend to support and rescue their trapped companions, or they can temporarily leave their companions behind to deliver the warning.

The third way, not for nothing, but watching the companions on the ground die one after another, wait until the command notices that something is wrong and then send backups, maybe for a few hours, maybe a whole day...... In comparison, there is undoubtedly more pain and uncertainty in this path.

After a long period of hesitation, the Normans finally made a choice: they first carried out two rapid low-woom skies like dolphins playing in the water, made a close probe of the woods and towns, and bombarded all suspicious targets, and then the cruiser, which was equipped with dozens of guns and covered with light armor in important parts, climbed quickly under the eager eyes of its own infantry, and flew away without looking back.

Seeing the enemy ship go away, Weiss was neither surprised nor frustrated, and of course he was not too excited, but just a little more thinking about the enemy's situation. In the early days of the war, nine times out of ten, enemy ships would land and exchange fire while rescuing. Fierceness may not be the best choice on the battlefield, but it is the embodiment of self-confidence and toughness. Today's Normans seem to be more pragmatic and cunning, and even have a different tact, the deep reasons are not investigated for the time being, and the valuable experience of the past may not be effective, and may play a fatal counterproductive role.