Guderian had been told about the Francismancy between the Egyptians and the British, and he immediately understood, but he did not think that Ramsden could run away, and quickly found a solution to the map: while sending troops to quickly take over the city defenses and stationing the air force at the airfield, he instructed the troops to split up and pursue them.

The attack unfolded in a jaw-dropping state, with the three Panzer Divisions advancing rapidly southward, almost all the way with the retreating British - nothing more than the British by water, the Germans by land.

Soon, Ramsden tasted the pain of being hunted down.

On January 17, Guderian's main force arrived in Aswan, and in the afternoon the first wave of planes departed from Aswan to attack the British retreat in the Nile, and General Ted's desert air force had no power to fight back, and could only watch the Germans unilaterally attack their own troops, and the British lost 2 ships and more than 900 people died on this day;

On January 18, the African Army Group quickly moved south, and the British troops in the Nile River lost 3 boats and killed more than 1,200 people.

On 19 January, the vanguard of the Afrika Army crossed the line between Egypt and Sudan and arrived at Wadi Halfa, where the British troops had gathered, the only way for the British to leave the Nile waterway and board the Sudanese train to continue their escape southward, and only one battalion, only armored vehicles and not a single tank of the German reconnaissance unit launched a fierce attack on the British troops of nearly 10,000 men, and the other side was strewn with corpses and devastation, and all the British troops just wanted to flee by the road, and no one was willing to stay and stop the German attack, until the Australian and New Zealand allied troops, who had only light weapons with them, arrivedIt took rudimentary machine guns, rifles and a handful of mortars to withstand the Germans, and the cost of casualties was nearly 2,000.

On January 20, the main German army arrived, and because fuel and logistics supplies had not been available, the army was stuck in Wadi Hallefa, but the gains were still not small - more than 2,000 Anzac rearguard troops were captured, two British retreat trains were blown up, and more than 3,000 casualties, including two colonels.

In just a few days, the British, Australian, and New Zealand coalition troops who fled from Aswan lost nearly 10,000, from more than 30,000 people at the time of departure to more than 20,000 people, whether it was Australia, New Zealand or the British army, their morale fell to the bottom, and they are still a full 900 kilometers away from Kharmu, the capital of Sudan. In later generations, this retreat from Aswan to Khartoum was known as the Bloody Road, and under the pursuit of the German army, the number of Allied officers and soldiers who successfully retreated without illness or injury eventually exceeded 2,000, and the vast majority of them fell before dawn.

Eisenhower had thought that the Afrika Army would be stranded on the Sudanese border due to supply and fuel constraints, but the Germans solved the dilemma perfectly by means of inland waterway transportation: a fleet full of supplies, fuel and Egyptian infantry divisions sailed south from Alexandria and Cairo, both ships and fuel and supplies were the trophies left by the British in Alexandria, and with the help of these supplies, by January 21 the Afrika Army had been supplied to continue its advance, and their next step was very clear. Along the banks of the Nile, it advanced south and reached Kastoum.

In the other direction, the U.S. 2nd Armored Division and the British 78th Infantry Division led by Patton were no better off than the British, although they met the British troops stationed there after landing in Somalia, received much-needed logistical assistance, and did not encounter any enemy aircraft or enemy resistance, but the news that the Flying Fortress Armored Brigade landed in Port Sudan and attacked Eritrea made Patton keenly feel the crisis - Mogadishu was too close to the coast, as long as the Axis organized a landing, it would not take too many troops, As long as there is an armored regiment and the corresponding infantry, it is completely possible to eat this bit of strength in their hands. Therefore, while gathering his troops and retreating inland, he desperately called on Mombasa for support.

Faced with the difficult choice of rescuing Ramsden or rescuing Patton, Eisenhower made a decision in only half a minute under the extremely limited number of planes -- a decision that pronounced the death sentence of the British, Australian, and New Zealand troops on the Western Route.

According to the original idea, Barton should lead the relevant troops to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they would gather strength and recuperate, but the nearest border with Ethiopia was more than 600 kilometers, and his troops did not have enough transport except for two legs. Moreover, in Patton's view, going to Addis Ababa was also a dead end, and it was obvious that the German armored forces moving south would put the follow-up attack target there, and at his suggestion, the African theater finally agreed that he would lead his troops to Kenya, more than 1,000 kilometers away, and retreat directly to Mombasa.

Patton, like the rest of the 20,000 men, walked on the Somali soil with one foot deep and one foot shallow--all the vehicles in the army could only carry a maximum of 4,000 people, which was not enough to make everyone retreat, but this was not difficult for the Americans, who had the best logistics capabilities, and they quickly came up with a good plan: the whole force advanced 10 hours a day, divided into two halves in the morning and afternoon, and all officers and men with operational capabilities, including Patton, had to obey a unified arrangement -- each of them took one hour in a car, three hours on foot, and one hour on foot during each half. Patton divided the soldiers into five waves, each truck carrying the last wave, and kept rolling through Kenya by making five trips back and forth.

Impatient, Eisenhower gathered all the vehicles he could find and went to pick them up. The itinerary was a little faster than walking, moving about 120 kilometers a day, and many soldiers complained that they had not walked such a long distance since they were born. At this point, the American soldiers are inherently insufficient, both the Soviet and German armies have a large number of foot soldiers, and only the US officers and soldiers must rely on vehicles for more than 5 kilometers, and this march almost kills them.

In the whole process, in order to ensure the supply of operational materials for the Patton troops, the United States and the British air force really did their best, all the aircraft with sufficient range, whether B-17 bombers or C-47 transport planes, took off from South Africa, first landed on the island of Madagascar to replenish fuel, and then transferred from Madagascar to Mombasa, and finally loaded all kinds of supplies from Mombasa to the direction of Somalia to airdrop, fuel, supplies, medicine, and a steady stream of materials were transported to this huge army through the air corridor...... (To be continued.) )