"Humph! Lenenkamp, you still have a bit of a conscience and know how to send soldiers to guide me and protect the logistics and transport lines! Seeing the checkpoints and patrolling groups of "Russian soldiers" on the road, General Samsonov's anger has subsided a little. The soldiers of the "1st Army" not only made good road signs, but also sent special personnel to guide the way at the forks, and the speed of the advance of his troops was greatly accelerated.

"Dude, borrow a fire!" A middle-aged soldier suddenly ran from the Russian marching column to a checkpoint, his name was Kapetanovic, a corporal in the 17th Corps of the 2nd Army, and his matches were all wet when he passed through the swamp the day before, and the matches of his companions around him were not spared.

The soldiers inside the outpost all looked at him stunned, as if they did not hear what he said.

"Matches! Match! Kapetanovic raised the cigarette in his hand, and then a sentry took out a box of matches and handed it to him.

"Thank you!" Kapetanovic took the matchbox, but then he screamed with wide eyes:

"German matches?"

Just then, an officer-like figure walked by, who seemed to be the commander of the sentries.

"Yes, this is what we just captured from the Germans yesterday, and there are a lot of canned beef! The supplies for those German pigs are really piling up, hahaha! ”

Kapetanovic looked at him suspiciously, turned away without saying anything, and then suddenly turned back to the soldier who gave him the matches: "Can this box of matches be given to me?" ”

"Absolutely!" The officer smiled and answered for the soldier, who had no expression on his face.

"Haha! Don't mind, this little brother was shocked by a shell yesterday and temporarily lost his hearing, and it will be fine in a few days! ”

Kapetanovic didn't say anything more and quickly ran back into the queue.

"Damn the Russians! Wait a minute, you guys will look good! The sentry officer scolded viciously.

At 3 p.m. on August 20, 1914, the main force of the Russian 2nd Army arrived in the Compinan area, 40 kilometers from the German-Russian border.

General Samsonov stood on a small hill beside the road, his telescope looming a German position more than twenty kilometers wide, fortified along the edge of a sparse wooded area that was bisected by the road to the heart of East Prussia, flanked by almost impermeable primeval forest.

"Hell! That damn Leningkamp actually said that the Germans had been routed, where did these Germans come from! "One of Samsonov's cavalry companies sent to reconnoiter was now all lying in front of the German positions, and he didn't even know how many men there were, only the pointed helmets looming in the trenches opposite, and he didn't know if the Germans had built fortifications in the woods that could not be seen from the outside.

"Staff officer, pass on my order, the soldiers accelerate their advance, build a position at a distance of 5 kilometers from the opponent, and the artillery will also enter the position as soon as possible! Also, be sure to put me in touch with the 1st Army and ask where that fool is now! ”

"Yes, General!"

At this time, in the woods, 3 km behind the German positions, there was a small open space, where the commander's post of the front of the East Prussian regiments was located. General Francois, commander of the 1st Infantry Corps of the Corps, was frowning at the reports of the enemy's movements sent back by the aviation unit - the 230,000 troops of the Russian 2nd Army were divided into two parts, 6 Russian infantry divisions and 2 cavalry divisions were spreading out in front of them, and the remaining 5 infantry divisions were deployed in a ring behind the main Russian attack force to resist possible attacks from all directions. The third Russian cavalry division tried to enter the primeval forest on either side of the German position, but they quickly abandoned the attempt, where it was difficult to move, and now the cavalry division had retreated to the Russian position.

"Don't be too nervous, Monsieur François, come on, let's have a cup of coffee together!" Chen Tian sat in an open tent and drank coffee leisurely.

"Your Highness, you don't seem to be worried at all, there are no strong defensive positions like the Insterburg Gorge, and we can't outflank them here! I don't understand, why don't we continue to meet them at the mouth of the gorge? François had a restless look on his face, and although the Battle of Insterburg Gap had made him admire his prince to the ground, it was a war after all, and the slightest mistake could bury the whole battle, or even the whole country.

"I don't want their scouts to see the blood in front of the gorge, so the Russians will feel that their 1st Army may be finished, I want to give them the illusion that their 1st Army will be flanked by them here, so that they will keep storming until the last drop of blood is shed!" Tatsuten stirred the coffee in the cup, and although there was neither sugar nor milk in it, he liked the feeling of stirring, and one day he would put the whole world in his cup and stir it gently.

"Colonel Hoffmann, let those Russian communications officers send a telegram to the Russian 2nd Army on the opposite side in the name of the Russian 1st Army, saying that the German troops here should be the German troops who escaped in the Battle of Insterburg Pass three days ago!"

"Yes! Your Highness! ”

"This is the deception war, a huge scam, and I am the number one liar in the world!" Chentian was muttering there alone in Chinese.

Soon, Samsonov received a telegram from the "1st Army", which said that the Germans who were blocking them were nothing more than "thousands of lost dogs", and although he was puzzled by the corpses of more than a hundred Cossack cavalry and war horses in front of the German positions, he still had 2 cavalry divisions and 2 infantry divisions launch a tentative attack after the shelling.

The shelling began, and the Russian shells today were apparently not as fierce as in the Battle of Qianxiakou in the two days, and lasted only half an hour. Mass of smoke and dust from the explosion rose around the position in front of the woods, and the loud sound of the explosion was almost the only thing that could endanger the health of the German officers and men in the trenches. It was only when the Russian artillery extended the shelling of the woods within a kilometer behind the position that it caused some problems for the German rapid-fire artillery positions there.

A large number of tanks, armored vehicles and motorcycles were on standby behind the woods. In fact, motorcycles with machine guns are a more effective weapon than tanks and armored vehicles in sports warfare, and this is not an invention of Chentian, the Russians carried heavy machine guns on their three-wheeled motorcycles very early, and very few equipped their scouts and communications troops.

After half an hour of heavy shelling, the scene before the German soldiers was no different from the battle of the Gorge three days earlier, with Cossacks riding sturdy horses and wielding war knives, and waves of infantry howling with bayonets in hand.

Elite cavalry were not used to storm positions armed with a large number of machine guns, and only in a war of movement could the fierce Cossack cavalry play their role, but the Russians were always doing such stupid things in the early days of the war.

The 77mm rapid-fire guns in the woods opened fire, and one by one the Cossack cavalry fell under shrapnel and shock waves, but not a single one of them intended to stop. At a distance of 1 km, they start a race against machine gun bullets, and if they and their mounts can cross the 1 km distance before the machine gun bullets penetrate their bodies, then they win. The Cossack cavalry fought with their own flesh and blood against a barrage of metal, but most of them were horrified to see the blood bursting from their bodies, and they collapsed in front of the German positions with little pain.

The infantry that followed charged the German positions in denser formations and at a slower pace, and the shells and bullets of the opposing side did not reserve their bravery. Soon, the German soldiers began to change the barrels of their Firebird light machine guns, and their slaughter continued.

Slaughter was not the preserve of the Germans, and slaughter was not a specialty of the Russians. On the morning of the first day of the assault on the fortress of Liège, tens of thousands of German soldiers fell under Belgian fire and machine gunfire; When the German East Prussian Army was massacring the Russians on the Eastern Front, 2 million British, French and German troops were strangled each other in the 180-kilometer-wide Marne River area on the Western Front, and 250,000 British and French soldiers and 300,000 German soldiers were killed in eight days.

This is an age of slaughter!

The expression of Lenenkamp three days ago now appears on Samsonov's face.

"Nope! This is absolutely impossible to be the firepower of thousands of routed soldiers, and 500,000 regular Russian troops do not have so many machine guns! Staff officers, send a telegram to the 1st Army, tell them that we are under attack by a large force of German regular troops, at least twice as many as we are! Let them quickly come back to the aid and flank the Germans with us! Poor Samsonov kept in a cold sweat, and at this time he did not realize his situation. The most important point is that he and everyone felt that even if all the more than 200,000 people of a group army fell into the water, they would make a plopping sound, but he did not see a single corpse of Russian troops or any traces of battle along the way.

After receiving Samsonov's telegram to the "1st Army", Chen Tian realized that the counterattack just now had gone too far, and the Russians on the opposite side had lost the courage to continue the attack. He immediately made a decision to ask the "1st Army" to send a telegram, asking the Russian 2nd Army to wait where it was, and the "1st Army" would quickly return to the aid and flank the enemy from both sides.

While Samsonov's soldiers began to sweat and dig trenches, 51 Sky X, 37 Ostrich I, and 65 Sky IV biplane bombers of the East Prussian Legion Air Force flew over the battlefield.

"God forbid!"

Realizing that it was not crows flying in the sky, many Russian soldiers began to kneel and pray.

It's a pity that God didn't bless them, and it rained down bombs and bullets from the sky. On a 20-kilometer-wide position, more than 100,000 Russian soldiers were in disarray.

Captain Fritz drove a Sky X attack aircraft hovering over the Russian positions, and the Russian troops below were already in disarray, and the trenches became the only refuge for the Russians exposed in the clearing.

After making a big turn in the air, Fritz flew his plane along the line of the trenches, then lowered the nose and began to fire at the crowd inside the trenches, the bullets piercing the Russians' heads or backs, causing an even greater panic.

The pilots of the attack planes followed the example of Fritz and began to strafe the trenches, and the bombers lowered their altitude to drop bombs on crowded areas. For poor Russians, there is hardly any place on this planet that is safe.

The artillery position was also the focus of the German aircraft, and bombs continued to fall into the ammunition pile near the artillery, which immediately caused a series of violent explosions, which also intensified the panic of the Russian soldiers.

"Attack!" With Chentian's order, 76 tanks, 56 armored combat vehicles, 83 armored personnel carriers, more than 2,000 motorcycles and 120,000 German infantry rushed out of the woods, like a gray wave pressing down on the chaotic Russian soldiers......

"Retreat! Retreat! Samsonov shouted loudly, and then retreated with a large group of panicked Russian soldiers under the protection of his personal guards.