In front of the French line of Amiens, the German naval tank units easily broke through the barbed wire belt on the east bank of the canal, but the tank crews did not get carried away by this insignificant achievement, they firmly remembered the important deployment in the offensive plan, did not see the green signal flare to continue the attack, and did not rashly cross the canal to break through the French trenches. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

It was not until the 1st and 2nd Naval Infantry Regiments, which followed the operation, arrived at the barbed wire belt that the battlefield commander gave the order to give the signal for attack. As a series of green flares rose into the air and slowly fell, the German naval tank units resumed their offensive - half of the Hubert-13s were the first to rush down the bank of the canal, and half remained on the east bank of the canal to suppress the fire.

The canal in front of him was about two to three meters wide, and an ordinary adult stood in it, with his head almost flush with the riverbank. At this time, the water in the canal is at a low level. The Hubert-13 chassis developed and produced with the original intention of amphibious landing operations is high, and the engine compartment adopts a sealed design, which can travel normally in water at a depth of 1 meter. The exhaust holes at the back of them spewed out puffs of smoke and roared like angry lions. Some chariots rushed to the opposite bank in one go, and many of them slipped down halfway up because of the loose texture of the aqueduct slope.

The French soldiers had never dealt with such an opponent after all, and they watched as the German steel beasts climbed the river bank step by step, rifle and machine gun bullets clanging against their hulls and turrets, adding to the scratches but not the vital points. In fact, the French army was not without equipment to deal with German tanks, the 37 mm caliber Hatch Chase five-barrel rapid-fire gun can be called a thin armor opening weapon, and the 37 mm Maxim machine gun imported from Britain was also quite sharp, but unfortunately this kind of weapon was usually only equipped on naval ships, and the Allied army was almost not equipped with it until it was fully aware of the great threat of German tanks. In the past, when encountering German wheeled combat vehicles, French officers and soldiers only had to lower the muzzle of the Type 1897 field gun, directly bombard them with shrapnel shells, or blow up their tires with machine guns or shells to make them incapacitated, and then slowly find a way to destroy them.

With their own tanks in front of them, the German naval infantry also got up and moved forward without hesitation. At this time, no one would have considered whether the French would suddenly open the floodgates upstream to release water, but when 12 Hubert-13s and about 200 naval infantry waded through the canal, the water in the canal became turbulent, and the water level rose at a more pronounced rate, from just above the knee to waist-high. By the time the follow-up Hubert-13 drove into the canal, the water surface had passed their induction wheels!

The crews of these German tanks noticed that the situation was not good, and hurriedly increased the throttle to try to get out of the predicament, and three Hubert-13s followed the footprints of their companions to the shore, while the next four stopped one after another.

The abrupt change in the flow of water in the canal, and the instinctive awareness of danger made the German naval infantry behind hesitate. Those who had already walked down the canal had no choice but to wade into the water to the other side of the river in order not to become a living target for the enemy, and although no one drowned in it from the beginning to the end, the danger of wading through the water was undoubtedly much greater. The naval infantry, along with the last few tanks, remained on the east bank of the canal to see how the situation would change.

The follow-up troops did not keep up, and the situation of the German tanks and infantry who had crossed the canal became very bad, but most of the crew of Hubert-13 did not perceive the change in the battlefield situation in time, and after going ashore, they alternated cover, fighting and advancing, and soon ran over the French first-line trenches. Many French soldiers were frightened by these sonorous iron guys, and more than 100 naval infantry also rushed into the French trenches with the chariot group, and with the intensive firepower of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, they quickly occupied the trench area three or four hundred meters wide.

The French officers and men were not blind after all, and seeing that a large number of German troops were temporarily blocked on the east bank of the canal, they fought back with the advantage of numbers and defense. They opened fire on these German tanks from all sides, using pistols, rifles, grenades, machine guns and even flare guns. Although the crews inside the German tanks were not harmed by ordinary bullets, they sensed the change in the situation from the sudden change of situation, and they no longer advanced deep into the French front. Following the training regulations of the Navy's chariot unit, the tank crews chose to reverse and turn the turret to fire at the surrounding French soldiers.

Conventional weapons could not damage the German tank, a few bold French soldiers climbed out of the trench, they held pistols one by one, trying to climb onto the German tank, I don't know whether they wanted to force open the hatch to attack the members or to find the soft underbelly that could be attacked, but they were quickly killed by the German infantry behind with rifles and machine guns, and some French soldiers threw grenades at them from the trenches, but most of the grenades equipped by the French army at this time were still old antiques that were finalized 32 years ago, mainly relying on fragments to kill personnel targets, and the explosion power was small. Aside from damaging a Hubert-13 track, the grenades thrown by French soldiers did nothing.

At the same time, in order to recapture the occupied trenches from the German infantry, a large group of French soldiers armed with bayonets came like a torrent of torrential rain. The two sides then launched a very bloody battle in the narrow trench, the Madsen light machine gun bullets fired at close range could often penetrate three or four French soldiers in a row, and the grenades thrown by the German infantry also continued to set off a bloody rain, and the French did not show weakness, they used grenades to shoot back at the German infantry, with pistols and rifles to fire at them, and the heavy machine gunners also returned to the roofs of the houses that had been attacked by German artillery fire before, and condescendingly strafed the German soldiers in the trenches. The casualty figures on both sides of the fight were climbing at an alarming rate, and the French suffered several times as many casualties in this bloody and terrifying trench, but the outnumbered German marines had to retreat. Had it not been for the discovery and destruction of several French heavy machine-gun fire points by their own chariot units, they would probably have been annihilated by the French in the trenches - the naval infantry had withdrawn from the French positions in disarray, and returned to the bank of the canal under cover for their own tanks. With the exception of the Hubert-13, which was trapped by damaged tracks, the valuable German naval tank unit was able to survive, but if the follow-up units were delayed, they would still not be able to get out of the current predicament, and the situation could get worse.

Huttier, who had been keen to be on the front line to direct the battle when he was the commander of the 1st Guards Infantry Division, had already arrived at the front with his staff team. He was shocked to see the unexpected scene through his binoculars, but quickly calmed down. Without waiting for the chief of staff next to him to express his opinion, Huttier immediately urged the soldiers of the 1st Marine Brigade to force the crossing of the canal at any cost, and his combat orders were quickly transmitted to the front-line commanders by field telephone.

Moments later, the naval infantry, crawling on the east bank and beyond the barbed wire belt, marched forward in response to the attack whistle. The French positions on the opposite side were soon bursting with gunfire, but their fire was fiercely suppressed by German tank and infantry machine-gun fire, and several planes that had just arrived on the battlefield also came to help. The naval infantry rushed down the riverbank, and the water in the canal stopped rising to a certain extent, and the tall soldiers, holding their weapons, moved with difficulty to the opposite bank, while the shorter soldiers had to use the swimming skills of the naval combatants to swim across with guns and ammunition -- the guns were not hindered by a short period of immersion in the water, and the bullets would not be able to fire if they were soaked.

The French shooters in the trenches could not directly hit the attackers in the canals, but the machine guns deployed in the high ground and the artillery in the rear could effectively kill them. Although the battle was not long in progress, some French officers and soldiers realized that this was now the decisive moment to decide the outcome of the battle, and they risked their lives to set up machine guns on the high ground, and with every shuttle of bullets, several or even a dozen German infantry could fall in the canals......

Large groups of German naval infantry went ashore, and the once stagnant battle situation began to develop again in the direction expected by the attackers. Led by the chariots that had crossed the canal in advance, the naval infantry rushed forward with a roar, and they quickly attacked the French trenches, turning their compassion for their fallen comrades into strength, some of them threw grenades, some of them rushed forward with light machine guns, and broke the bayonet counterattack of the French officers and men with brutal attacking fire. In the case of a small difference in numbers, the German marines dominated the battlefield with the superiority of weapons and tactics, and the soldiers fought more and more smoothly, their confidence soared, and their momentum was like a rainbow, but the French officers and men were beaten to the point of confusion and lost their morale due to heavy casualties. They tried to use the fortified houses as a stronghold to wear down their opponents, but the approaching artillery bombardment and even the brutal ramming of the German tanks finally caused them to abandon hopeless resistance, and the remnants of the French army blew up the only two remaining Type 1897 field guns on the artillery positions and retreated to the rear with small arms.

Without time to catch their breath, count the damage, and clean up the battlefield, the German soldiers of the 1st Marine Brigade followed the chariot unit into the city of Amiens, and the capture of the French line was only the threshold to victory, and whether they could capture the bridge over the Somme was the key to this battle. More than one-third of Amiens' urban area is located on the east bank of the Somme, the city center and most of the urban area are on the west bank of the Somme, and within the urban limits, there are as many as 11 bridges across the Somme, most of which can accommodate more than 10 tons of tracked chariots. The section of the Somme River that flows through the city of Amiens is shaped like a spoon, and the most prosperous part of Amiens is the most prosperous part of the city, which is connected to the east bank by the most bridges, the strongest of which is the railway bridge called Verne.

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