Upon the arrival of the 185th Parachute Regiment and the B1 Tank, the infantry of the Italian 17th Infantry Division was demoralized, and their crumbling positions instantly became more solid than the Alps.

Two battalions of paratroopers armed with M1891 rifles, bent over and following the B1 tank in small steps, launched a counter-attack.

They jumped into the trenches and cooperated with the infantry of the 17th Division, warmly entertaining the British infantry who stormed the Italian trenches with bayonets and rifle butts.

One by one, the British infantry was overturned with bayonets, their heads smashed by the butts of their guns, and they fell in wail, red blood and white brains spilled all over the trenches.

Blood-stained bayonets and brain-stained butts inspired the Italian soldiers to drive the outnumbered British infantry out of the trenches and regain control of the trenches.

The 75mm guns in the right front of the 42 B1 tanks opened fire frantically, creating a wall of fire on the battlefield and blocking the path of the British infantry in the rear, and the British offensive momentum was stagnant.

The B1 47mm and 75mm tank shells tore through the air and hit the Matilda II turret and body mercilessly.

The British tankmen did not show weakness in returning the favor to the Italians with 40-mm armor-piercing shells fired from two-pounder guns.

Countless shells intertwined and shuttled, and sparks were splashed on the opponent's tanks, and they were in full swing.

Five hundred meters, it is impossible to penetrate the opponent's armor.

Four hundred meters, it is still impossible to penetrate the opponent's armor.

The Matilda II tank approached the Italian position step by step, and the tank at the forefront had already approached 200 meters from the B1 tank. There were still no casualties among the tanks on both sides.

Face the Matilda II tank with 75 mm thick front armor. The B1 tank's 47-mm guns and 75-mm short-barreled tank guns were helpless.

Faced with the front armor of the B1 tank 60 mm at an angle of 45 degrees. The Matilda II tank's two-pounder gun was also helpless, and the battle situation was in a stalemate for a while.

Just when the two sides were fighting inextricably, behind the position of the 17th Infantry Division, a convoy of eight trucks rushed out of the city of Addis Ababa and drove until it was about 500 meters from the front line before stopping.

As soon as the truck pulled to the side of the road, a German captain jumped out of the cab of the truck, who quickly climbed onto the front of the car and stood on the hatch of the engine compartment with a telescope to look at the front line.

About two minutes later. He jumped to the ground and gave orders as he gestured, and the eight trucks dispersed to the high ground on either side of the road.

The back door of the carriage was wide open, and Italian soldiers jumped out one by one, mixed with seven or eight German soldiers in between.

In groups of twelve soldiers, they worked in unison to quickly unload the truck-towed 90-mm anti-aircraft guns, converting them into combat form.

The muzzles of the eight 90-mm anti-aircraft guns quickly pointed to the battlefield to the east, and after finding their respective targets, sonorous and powerful slogans sounded one after another. Eight armor-piercing rounds were successively advanced into the breech.

In the loud "rumble", white gunpowder smoke erupted from the muzzle of the cannon. Eight armor-piercing shells rushed out of the gun chamber at a speed of 830 meters per second, spinning and whistling, and flew over a distance of seven or eight hundred meters or even a thousand meters in the blink of an eye, falling on the British tank.

After a cacophony of metal crashes, rounded black bullet holes appeared in the bodies of the five Matilda II tanks, as if a full stop drew a perfect end to the evenly matched tank battle.

The five Matilda II stopped instantly, and two of them had billowing black smoke from the cabin, and the tanker opened the hatch and jumped out of the tank.

Before the British tank group could react, a second round of shells followed, and four more tanks were paralyzed.

Abandoned tanks, British tankmen, raging fires and black plumes of smoke shot in the air were a shot in the arm that thrilled the untruthful Italian soldiers in the trenches.

"Long live the Panzers! Long live the tankers! The shouts came and went.

I don't know why the opponent who was originally evenly matched suddenly rose up, and the British tank group quickly reversed in panic, trying to distance itself from the Italian tanks.

Matilda II's speed disadvantage as an infantry tank was exposed at this time, they were like decrepit old men, trembling and reversing while firing, but still unable to escape the tracking shells, more and more Matilda II tanks were blown up on the way to escape.

"Catch up, chase immediately, and don't let anyone go." The unsung hero on the battlefield, the German captain who brought the Italian anti-aircraft guns, brandished a telescope and shouted.

"As long as you chase them, none of them can escape." The German captain shouted anxiously.

As if in close proximity to the German captain, the B1 tank group chased the British through the trenches in front of them.

Shrill whistles rang out from the trenches, and groups of Italian infantry and paratroopers jumped out of the trenches with rifles with bayonets on their hands, and charged behind the B1 tanks.

The bullets and shells fired from the Matilda II clattered into the B1 tank's body, and the 25-pounder shells fired by the British artillery set off fountains of sand and shrapnel around the B1 tank, but they still could not stop the B1 tank's advance.

Seeing that the enemy was getting closer and closer, the panicked British tankers finally couldn't stand the speed of the tank reversing under their seats, and abandoned the car and fled to the rear.

Seeing the reversal of the tide of battle, the British infantry fled the battlefield one step ahead.

Seeing the British fleeing in disarray, the Italian soldiers were even more demoralized, and they followed the tank cluster to the British position with cheers.

Montgomery looked at the British troops who frantically fled back to their starting positions and the Italian troops following behind, frowned and said: "Order the Australian Ninth Infantry Division to block the Italian attack at all costs, and we will go back to the army group headquarters first." ”

After Montgomery finished speaking, he took the lead out of the observation bunker and got into the car to get out of danger.

The British infantry galloped all the way back to the starting position to stabilize their position.

An anti-tank trench more than two meters wide and snake-like snaked crossed in front of the Italian pursuers, blocking their way.

The morale of the Italian army, of course, was not going to be blocked by a simple anti-tank trench. They found the passage reserved by the British in the trench and continued the attack.

A B1 tank withstood British fire and machine-gun bullets. Dragged his bulky body through the passageway.

The moment when the last pair of load-bearing wheels is about to pass through the passage. The huge body came to a screeching halt, and the engine compartment behind the car rattled and then turned off.

Two more two-pounder shells hit the left side of the tank's armor, cutting two bullet holes in the middle and rear windows of its left side armor.

Seeing that the tank was out of control, the tank crew had just lifted the hatch and drilled out of the cabin when they were hit by a hail of bullets and fell headlong under the car.

Two B1 tanks, which had safely broken through the anti-tank trenches, ran over the trenches of the Australian 9th Division infantry with indomitable courage.

The Australian infantry crouched in the trench with their heads bowed, waiting for the tank to run over their heads. Glued the sticky anti-tank grenade No. 74 to the chassis of the B1 tank, and then lay on the ground.

As soon as the two B1 tanks ran over the Australian trenches, two muffled noises erupted from the chassis, and fire and dust erupted from under the body, and the tanks were paralyzed after driving less than ten meters under the action of inertia.

The miserable fate of their comrades woke up to the rest of the B1 tank drivers, whose armor was not invincible and could not do whatever they wanted on the battlefield.

The Italian infantry was even more suppressed by the fire of the Australian infantry, hiding on the other side of the anti-tank trench and doing nothing.

The order to retreat was quickly given, and the Italian army, which was attacked head-on, swept away the sharp spirit of the counterattack, turned around and retreated to their own positions.

Forty minutes later. The sound of gunfire in front of the positions of the 17th Infantry Division gradually thinned out.

Soon after, the secondary battlefield, the battlefield of the 25th Infantry Division, also fell silent.

The first battle between Britain and Italy in Addis Ababa ended after a morning. The corpses, guns and tank wreckage of soldiers on both sides of the war littered the middle of the battlefield.

After consultations, the two sides sent unarmed medical personnel to the battlefield to treat the wounded and recover the corpses, thus casting a layer of humanitarian atmosphere on the battlefield that had just been murderous.

At the end of the first battle, recalling the teachings of his brother-in-law before his departure, Colonel Barak, the head of the German Army's East Africa Teaching Mission, breathed a sigh of relief.

It seems that with the assistance of the teaching group led by themselves, the Italians were able to maintain the situation in Ethiopia on their own.

Barak led a delegation that arrived in Addis Ababa with the Matilda II and B1 tanks donated to Italy, and their public mission was to teach the Italian army how to use these two tanks and to provide logistical support for them.

In addition to the public mission, the teaching group led by Colonel Barak also had the task of observing the battle situation in close proximity and assisting the Italian army in maintaining the situation.

Thinking of his secret mission, Colonel Barak couldn't help but feel a headache.

Why not mobilize a large army to wipe out the British in one fell swoop and end the war in East Africa cleanly?

Why just help the Italians to maintain the war and ensure that the Italians are not wiped out by the British?

Your Excellency Brother-in-law's request is really incomprehensible.

Although he was reluctant and did not understand why His Excellency the Brother-in-law did so, Colonel Barak carried out the task with 120,000 spirits, only because the place where His Excellency the Brother-in-law gave him the task was in the Chancellery, and in the presence of the Führer and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal Brauchitsch.

Colonel Barak quickly wrote a war report, forwarding to Berlin the course of the battle today and the performance of the Italian army.

Over the next week, the British and Italian forces met four times near Addis Ababa.

Colonel Barak and his men fought all over the world during these four battles, sometimes even shirtless, to assist the Italian army in desperately keeping the British out of the city.

Until the end of January, Montgomery had not been able to make the assault on Addis Ababa.

Because the teaching regiment led by Colonel Barak was passive in the offensive, and because the overall combat effectiveness of the Italian army was insufficient, the Duke of Oster launched two counterattacks and failed to drive the main force of the Eighth Army out of the Addis Ababa area, and the battle lines of both sides were stable in Addis Ababa.

On the morning of 1 February, Chen Dao hurried to Berlin and immediately rushed headlong into Goering's office.

Goering looked at Chen Daotou without raising his head to look at the copy of the battle report sent by East Africa, and asked puzzledly: "Let's just send troops to sweep East Africa and deal with the British Eighth Army at once, so that you don't always have to worry about it." ”

Chen Dao raised his head and glanced at Goering dissatisfied.

Goering hurriedly raised his right hand and slapped himself in the mouth, and said, "I won't say anything, the war is up to you, and you can do whatever you want." ”

"You don't understand, there is a philosophical saying in the East called the teaching of deeds without words. For the Italians, it is not enough to rely on verbal education, but the British must be made to suffer more for them, or let them expose their incompetence more in front of us, and hurt their self-esteem hard, so that they can make up their minds to carry out reforms and improve their fighting power.

The stalemate in Ethiopia was a double win for us, not only to stimulate the Italians to reform the army, but also to draw Churchill's attention to the past, and also to allow him to devote the main force of the Commonwealth Army to East Africa, and when the main force of the Commonwealth Army entered East Africa, the fun of humming Churchill would be great. ”

"And then we'll strike and annihilate them in one fell swoop, just as we did with the British Expeditionary Force?" Goering suddenly came to his senses.

"It's not that simple, just wait and see. If Churchill really continued to build up troops in East Africa, it just confirmed one of my judgments. ”

"What judgment?" Goering asked.

"I've been researching Churchill lately, and the more I research, the more I realize that I can't help but fall in love with him." Chen Daoyu said endlessly.

"Ahem, ahem" Goering choked on a puff of cigarette into his trachea and coughed violently.

"I have a bad heart, you don't know, don't stimulate me." Goering finally stopped coughing, stared at Chen Dao dissatisfied, and said.

"Your thinking is too complicated, I'm talking about Churchill's military prowess. During the last war, Churchill served as British Admiralty, and he tried to promote the British plan to attack the Dardanelles, but in the end, the British Royal Navy not only failed to capture the Channel, but also paid a huge price, so that Britain's advantage at the beginning of the war was lost.

Because of this defeat, he was ousted from the position of Lord of the Admiralty and transferred to the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scottish Rifles Regiment as Lieutenant Colonel Battalion Commander. Chen Dao explained unhurriedly.

"What does this mean?" Goering said.

"I recently studied Churchill's military career and came to the conclusion that Churchill's military talents, especially in the Army, were sufficient to command a battalion at most, and that the battalion commander was the most suitable position for him.

But now he is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces. Can I not be happy to have a battalion commander as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the British Empire?

There is an old saying in the East, it is easy to produce comedy if you are overworked, but it is easy to produce tragedy when you are overworked, you wait to see the tragedy of England and Churchill, it is a tragedy of Shakespeare's level, it is rare to witness with your own eyes, and you must not miss this opportunity. ”

"You have to count when you talk, I'll wait to see the tragedy of Churchill." Goering said.

"I almost forgot, there is good news for you, the Japanese Navy has decided to send troops." Goering said with a smile.

"Good, another hooked." Chen Dao also said with a smile.

"Our partner in the scrap steel business said that the people you want will arrive tomorrow, how are you going to arrange them?" Goering said.

"I'm here today for this purpose, and the men came in two groups, one with me to Kiel and one to stay in Berlin. I've already arranged their stay in Kiel, and I'm going to trouble you here in Berlin. ”

"Everything is on me, and I never slack off in business." (To be continued......)