At 1:20 p.m. on 27 May 1940, the weather was fine. Seventy kilometres west of the Belgian transport town of Kotlek.

Müller stood beside his armored command car and took a telescope to carefully observe the Belgian army's defensive positions in front of him.

What is the first line of defense? Muller didn't want to calculate anymore, since last night until now, his troops have continuously broken through dozens of layers of Belgian defensive positions, but fortunately, this is finally the last piece.

Those Belgians are so powerful, I don't know what they think, they actually set up at least twenty defensive lines in an area that is only fifty kilometers deep. As a result, when I saw the air force reconnaissance photos of this defense line, I almost thought that it was a data photo from the last war. Do they still think that it is 1916, do they think that these outdated trenches, fortifications, barbed wire or something alone can stop today's German ** team? This fragile line of defense simply could not withstand the assault and ferocious artillery bombardment of its own powerful armored forces, and was basically useless except to delay its own time a little.

What I didn't expect was that the Belgians didn't even set up an anti-tank barrier, and those Belgians only set up barriers at the intersection of the road, did they think that their tanks would not be able to move if they left the road? They had the energy to dig dozens of kilometers of infantry trenches, but they didn't dig a slightly more standard anti-tank trench, and when they first saw a Belgian-style anti-tank trench, they thought it was a shallow irrigation canal that had just been dug. If it weren't for the fact that behind that "canal" the Belgian army had built a dozen machine-gun bunkers and set up two layers of barbed wire, I really couldn't see what it was for.

What makes me even more incomprehensible is that they dug such a long trench but did not send enough troops to defend it. In front of them, there were several lines of defense that they broke through, and there were trenches of about 100 meters in places, and only one platoon was used to defend them. It seems that the Belgians did trust the capabilities of their army to the extreme, and they must have thought that a Belgian soldier crouching in a trench could easily take away a dozen German soldiers.

However, the intensity of their firepower was still okay, and those Belgian troops had a considerable number of machine guns and artillery, which caused some problems for the infantry to attack. But their endurance with heavy firepower is not good. They didn't have much ammunition, so their heavy firepower could only last for about ten minutes at a time, and when the time passed, their heavy weapons would stop firing one by one. At first, I thought that the other side was trying to save ammunition, but when I broke through their defense line and prepared to occupy those heavily armed positions, I found that the Belgian artillerymen were all resisting with rifles at this time, and those cannons had already finished the shells.

Now he let the 7th Panzer Division rush to the front, while the 1st Infantry Division protects his left flank, and the 3rd Infantry Division on the right flank, and the whole corps is in a zigzag formation. Interestingly, the 3rd Infantry Division was now a prisoner unit, carrying more than 3,000 surrendered Belgian soldiers in addition to the captured artillery and supplies.

And now it seems that the soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division are still happy to do the job, and they are still so elated when they report to themselves on the radio. Although they sometimes complained that the 7th Panzer Division fought too hard and did not leave them any chance to engage the enemy, this was limited to the reaction of the infantry regiment.

Their artillerymen were very happy, because they had concentrated all three divisions of medium and light artillery units into the assault group of the 7th Panzer Division, and in this half day those artillery fired more shells than they had in the previous month.

Müller was glad that the Belgians, at least until now, had not found a weapon capable of dealing with their own tank No. 3. Their old anti-tank guns simply can't penetrate the main armor of their tanks, and their anti-tank mines, although enough to blow up the tracks of tanks, still can't penetrate the bottom plate of tanks, and they are so few that they basically pose little threat to their tanks.

The Belgian infantry was fighting their own steel beasts in any rudimentary way they could think of. This morning he even saw some Belgian soldiers end up jumping out of the trenches and rushing at their tanks with grenades and Molotov cocktails, before being torn to shreds by tank machine guns.

Although the tactics used by the Belgians made people shake their heads, they were impressed by their courage to resist to the end. If there is a glimmer of hope they will hold on, they will resist until their tanks reach the edge of their infantry trenches.

"This line of defense seems to be the same as the previous ones, is it still according to the old way? Commander? A staff officer asked from the side.

"No, it's not as simple as you think, this line of defense is the last one in their area, and they don't have any systematic defense line behind them, which means that this will be the strongest one. I always felt as if they had some hidden power. You look at the Belgian soldiers in the trenches, they were not at all alarmed by our arrival. ”

Mueller paused, then laughed.

"I know why they're so calm, you look behind their position, over the edge of the woods."

The staff officer picked up the binoculars.

"Nothing."

"Look closely."

"Ahh It seems like there's something. What is it? Artillery? I seem to see a cannon barrel. ”

"It's a tank." Mueller affirmed.

"Belgian tank troops. Looks like the only remaining armored division of them is for us to touch. Oh no, judging by the number of infantry on their positions, maybe it was just an armored battalion. It seems that the Belgians had dismantled their panzer divisions, and they had evenly distributed their tanks over their long defensive line.

No wonder the intelligence of the Sixth Army said that the armored division had suddenly disappeared. Now we have to advance anyway, General Reinhardt is running out of time for us, and if we don't maintain our speed to break through this line, our flanks will be in danger. I think we're going to use the simplest way. We conduct assaults in the style of "Cyprus". ”

Mueller turned around, jumped into his command car, and took a headset and intercom. Begin to give the order to attack into the microphone.

On the other side of the position, Colonel Letos, the commander of the Belgian defensive position, was also looking over with a pair of binoculars.

Letos had fought the Germans in World War I, and he was one of the few senior officers in the Belgian Army who was receptive to new things. As early as World War I, Letos was aware of the threat of tanks to the infantry, and as a stubborn infantry officer, he began to study how to make the infantry withstand enemy tank attacks early on.

Before the start of the war, he had already noticed the formidable fighting power of the German armored forces. As a result, he immediately sent a message to the War Office and demanded the immediate reinforcement of anti-tank equipment and facilities on the Belgian-German border defense. But by the time the War Ministry agreed with his plan and began preparations for its implementation, the Germans had already rushed over from the Ardennes Forest and the border. In just an hour, the border line of defense was completely useless.

While the Germans advanced rapidly, the Belgian troops were beaten back. In the end, with the support of the British, the battle line was stabilized here. If the Germans had put enough tanks in Belgium at that time, even the British might have been able to support it at that time.

But now it seems that the Germans may have realized their mistake, and today there are more German tanks parked opposite his position than the total number of German tanks he has seen since the beginning of the war.

"It seems that if you want to passively resist the attack of those tanks, it is very difficult to passively resist the attacks of those tanks, only you can strike first, cause losses to the opponent first, hit the morale of the opponent, and create chaos for the opponent, at least you can delay for a while and wait for the arrival of reinforcements.

He must hold this line of defense to the death, if this is broken by the Germans, then the whole line of defense will collapse, and it is too late to organize the next line of defense in the back. Unless the British could build up their lines in time, there would be no one to stop the German tank groups from galloping through the last stretches of Belgian territory.

But will this tactic of your own be useful? It only took half a day for these Germans to break through 32 defensive positions in a row, which shows how strong the opposing force is. How much damage can they do with this little power in their hands? ”

Letos pondered over there, and he complained a little about how the commander of the dozens of lines of defense in front of him was defeated so quickly, so that he didn't even have time to prepare.

"Forget it, it doesn't matter if it's useless or not, defense alone can't withstand such a strong force, or a surprise surprise attack may disrupt the opponent's plan and delay their attack. The Germans could never have imagined that they would attack them so strongly, and that they should be able to inflict unexpected damage on them. Well, that's it. Letos also made up his mind, and he ran into his forward command post, picked up the phone, and issued orders.

"Whew...... Rumble. ”

The sudden shelling startled Müller, who did not expect the Belgians to dare to fire on himself first. Due to his own negligence, his armored striker had been drowned in the heavy artillery fire. Muller had already burrowed into the turret as soon as the first shell landed, tightly closing the hatch.

"All tanks, retreat, withdraw to a safe position. Grenades, jamming shots. Mueller roared and issued the order.

The entire tank forward unit began to put up reverse gear, and slowly reversed and began to retreat while firing indiscriminately at the opponent's position. In this case, it may be faster to turn around and run, but no one wants to turn their fragile engines at the enemy's position.

"Report the loss!" When the tanks retreated to their positions, Mueller asked.

"Is anyone hurt?"

He was really afraid that his troops would suffer losses due to his mistakes, how could he forget that those Belgians still had large-caliber artillery. Müller was deeply reflective.

"Report to the commander, except for a No. 3 tank in the second platoon that was hit by shmelnel and pierced the engine's water tank, the others are all small shell wounds, and we still maintain our combat effectiveness intact." A tank company commander reported.

"Attention, enemy tanks are on sortie." A sharp-eyed tanker shouted.

"Oh?" Mueller hurriedly looked through the periscope towards the enemy position.

Sure enough, with the continuous explosion of those shells, through the smoke of gunpowder, Müller saw the Belgian tanks rushing out of the woods at a rapid pace, spewing green smoke from the engines towards the front of their positions.

“amc35？ How is this model? ”

The voice of Lieutenant Colonel Haron, commander of the 25th Panzer Regiment, came over the headphones.

"Haron, how are these tanks?" Muller didn't know much about French tanks.

"It's garbage, leave it to us." Haron replied confidently.

"Yes, we're ready to assault anyway, so let's just rush over in one go, it's still the same." Cyphorus" assault, give them a good look at the color. "Mueller was so depressed by the shelling that he was determined to take revenge.

"Yes, Colonel Müller. Just wait for your orders. ”

Mueller shouted into the microphone, "Okay, the whole army hears it." The last regular line of defense of the Belgians was in front of us. We once swore to tear apart any enemy that stood in our way for our General Reinhardt. Now we have another great opportunity to show our loyalty. Ladies and gentlemen, let those Belgians once again taste the power of our "Cyphorus" legion. Legion "Cypraus", start the assault! ”

At the moment when Müller's assault order was given, all the German artillery began to rain shells at the Belgian positions at the same time. As those shells rained down, the Belgian positions were in a sea of fire in an instant.

And the French-made AMC35 tanks of the Belgian army, with their armor of only 25 millimeters, were no match for the Czech 38T tanks used on the German side, and before they could rush to the center of the battlefield, they were all turned into burning torches.

Then the assault tank group of the German advance suddenly split into two groups to the left and right, ignoring the fierce interception and fire of the Belgians, and slashed diagonally towards the two flanks of the enemy position. When the Belgian artillery fire was attracted to the flanks by the assault tank group, the German support artillery fire immediately began to slowly extend towards the depth of the Belgian position, and the second group of tanks suddenly increased their horsepower and followed the artillery fire towards the enemy's position. The tanks were followed by a large number of German infantry, roaring and charging at the enemy positions.

If anyone could have looked down from the air, he would have found that the entire German assault formation was like a ferocious three-headed dog, which quickly tore through the strong Belgian line and swooped down viciously towards the depth of the position.