On a bleak and rainy night, mist fills the sea. On a large battleship with a length www.biquge.info of more than 150 meters, such as the "Helgoland", one can only see the front main turret, the bridge and the chimney from the bow position, and the back part seems to have been swallowed by a terrible monster and disappeared completely.

Diagonally above the large No. 2 main turret is the open-air bridge observation platform, and Natsuki wears a scarf and a woolen jacket and stands with his naval colleagues in a winter outfit. In addition to the sound of waves crashing against the hull of the ship, there is only a low sound of turbines in the ears, and it is impossible to judge how many ships are sailing in this sea area by hearing alone, if someone interprets Natsuki's brain activity at this time, they may be able to see a simulated battlefield map: 4 German dreadnoughts, 3 light cruisers, 9 large torpedo boats, 10 landing craft, and four decommissioned old ships are sailing in formation in Belgian waters where Allied ships are active, and the targets are two Belgian ports where British lightning strikers and submarines are stationed. Zeebrugge and Ostend.

It was a night raid, and the harsh environment was able to conceal the German Navy's attack intentions to the greatest extent. When they arrived at the predetermined sea area between Zeebrugge and Ostend, the support fleet of "Nassau", "Rhineland", "Helgoland", and "Thuringia" was the first to slow down, the light cruiser "Mainz" led a group of ships to Zeebrugge, and the "Munich" and "Danzig" led another group to Ostend, and the battle entered the countdown.

The day was October 27, 1914, exactly 44 years after the Prussian army forced the French Rhine Army in Metz and won a crucial victory (although the Prussian army defeated the main French army in the Battle of Sedan and captured Napoleon III, a coup d'état ensued in France, and the newly established French Third Republic quickly recruited nearly a million soldiers, and the Franco-Prussian War entered a stalemate phase). The German authorities and the generals of the army wanted to see the German soldiers marching on the Champs-Élysées on such a memorable day, for which the troops of the German Crown Prince Wilhelm and the Bavarian Crown Prince Ruprecht launched a very fierce offensive for this, several assault teams entered the city limits of Paris, they were only a few kilometers away from the charming Champs-Élysées, but the French soldiers and civilians burst out with iron willpower in a desperate situation, and now the German army had to pay a heavy price for every street or even a house occupied.

During the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian army besieged Paris for more than five months, and was not able to occupy Paris until the French government surrendered.

While the onslaught on Paris continued, the German General Staff ordered the 2nd Army Corps of General von Bülow to advance to the Belgian coast. When von Kluk's 1st Army occupied Abbeville, more than 200,000 Allied troops, mainly the Belgian army, were trapped in northern Belgium and northeastern France. It is also positive and beneficial to the development of the war situation.

The elimination of the Allied forces in northeastern France and northern Belgium would free up a large number of troops to rush to the front line, and in Natsuki's view, there was an extremely dangerous hidden danger that the Allied troops were trapped here: the British could organize sea transport forces to withdraw these troops to Britain at any time, and stage the Dunkirk evacuation in advance. An Entente army of this size was nothing on the Western Front, but it was a considerable anti-landing force in Britain, and the British royal family and government would have greater confidence to continue to fight against the German Empire of Wilhelm II.

However, this concern was never discussed by Natsuki, because he learned that the German generals felt that it was impossible for the Belgians to leave their own land to continue fighting, and that as long as the French were defeated, the Belgian king and his army would definitely give up resistance.

In response to the offensive of the Bülow Corps, Natsuki proposed to the Naval Staff to launch an amphibious landing operation on the Belgian coast, but the orthodox Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral von Bohr, did not fully understand the significance of amphibious operations, but Kaiser Wilhelm II was very interested in this plan. After listening to Natsuki's report in detail, his personal will easily overwhelmed the weighing considerations of the General Staff of the Navy. The 1st Naval Infantry Brigade, which had returned to Germany, began to prepare for a real landing operation, and before launching a landing attack, it was necessary for the German Navy to eliminate the threat of British mine-striking and submarine forces deployed on the Belgian coast, so the surprise operation of the night took place.

Zeebrugge and Ostend are Belgium's second and third largest seaports in terms of throughput after Antwerp, and the main reason why Antwerp was not chosen for the raid was because it was necessary to cross more than 80 kilometers of fjords from the open sea to Antwerp, and most of this fjord belonged to the neutral Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Just after nine o'clock, the assault fleet led by the light cruiser "Mainz" approached Zeebrugge. The port, which faced the open sea, was protected by an artificially constructed breakwater, and with the exception of the shore defense batteries, the Belgian army's main defense at Zeebrugge was concentrated on the breakwater and its inner position, and the more than a dozen British mine-strike ships, several submarines, and auxiliary ships could be imprisoned by allowing the blocking ships to bypass the breakwater and sink themselves at the canal entering the port.

Under the direct cover of the "Mainz" and four large torpedo boats, six landing craft carrying more than 200 naval infantry quietly sailed to the breakwater, and their task was to seize the fortifications of the Belgian army, blow up the railway bridge between the breakwater and the coast, and cover their two decommissioned old ships to bypass the breakwater and enter the channel.

After successive defeats of the British fleet, the German Navy grasped the strategic initiative in the North Sea, but their main focus was still on the British, and Belgium and northern France were still controlled by the Allied armies, and German surface ships rarely appeared in Belgian waters, and only those elusive German submarines needed to be guarded against, so the Belgian army's coastal defense was not strictly guarded. Under the cover of sea fog, six German landing craft from the Friedrich Royal Shipyard successfully approached the breakwater. The brave men of the 1st Naval Infantry Regiment were ready to go, their rifles loaded with bayonets and the safety covers of their grenades unscrewed. There was silence on the ship, and the only thing in people's ears was the dull roar of motor-driven propellers.

"Who's over there?"

Suddenly, there was a shout from the breakwater, speaking Flemish, the Belgian Dutch, similar to German, which the Germans could roughly understand. A faint beam of light from a flashlight appeared in the darkness. As soon as it was too late, the roar of machine guns rang out from a German landing craft closest to the breakwater, and a series of 25-mm machine gun shells swept past with a dark red sheen, and the flashlight on immediately fell to the ground, flashed, and went out.

Had it not been for this alert and unfortunate Belgian sentry, the German naval infantry might have been able to climb onto the breakwater without the enemy spotting, penetrate the Belgian artillery positions, seize the artillery, and turn them around to bombard the Allied ships in the harbor. The sound of artillery immediately woke the Belgians stationed in the harbor, and a cacophony of shouts came from the breakwater, followed by the harsh searchlights and the sudden sound of gunfire, and it was not long before the British ships anchored in the harbor would join the battle, leaving the German naval infantry with very little time.

The six German landing craft involved in the assault on Zeebrugge were all L-14 with a displacement of 12 tons, and this light landing ship had a draft of only 1 meter, capable of transporting soldiers to shallow waters.

First Rank Corporal Hank Rolfleur, who had the honor of being the first German naval infantry to land in Zeebrugge, had no idea that this step marked the beginning of German amphibious operations, and from that day on, the German Marines would truly become an elite force to be feared by the enemy.

After landing, Lorfler quickly climbed to the top of the breakwater, he half-crouched on the ground, carefully observing the surroundings, there was a corpse lying not far away, the rest of the Belgian soldiers had not yet arrived, the artillery position was on the north side of the breakwater, and thirty or forty meters south of his position was the railway bridge connecting the breakwater and the coast - the defenders could transport equipment and supplies through this monorail line, and could also increase the combat force in case of emergency.

"Demolition team, come here!" Rolfleur shouted and waved his left arm to guide the sappers carrying the high explosives to the railway bridge, when someone fired two green flares into the sky in succession, which was to tell his support ships that the naval infantry had landed.

Before the flares had disappeared, the searchlights of the Belgian defenders had swept over. Lorfler hurriedly threw himself down, killing him with the reflexes he had developed on the front line in Amiens - the moment he lowered his head, a barrage of machine-gun bullets whizzed by, and the sound made his scalp tingle.

The German soldiers who landed on the shore returned fire, and the pilots of several landing craft operated the machine guns to carry out cover fire, but the bullets from the north continued unabated, and the Belgian soldiers apparently hid in the fortifications and opened fire. The high-altitude reconnaissance of the Zeppelin captured the defensive layout of the port, but the minutiae were up to the attackers to explore.

In order to allow the naval infantry to successfully take the defending positions on the breakwater, the light cruisers and large torpedo boats approaching the harbor opened fire on the searchlights, and in a blink of an eye, the two Belgian searchlights were extinguished, and the light on the breakwater was suddenly dimmed. The German infantry who landed on the shore quickly advanced north along the slopes on both sides of the breakwater, and when they approached the defensive position of the Belgian army, there was a sudden earth-shattering noise behind them, and the ground was also trembling significantly. As planned, the blasting of the railway bridge was to intercept the Belgian reinforcements and at the same time cut off their communications from the outside world. Under the cover of artillery fire, the Belgian artillery at the northern end of the breakwater could not carry out effective defensive observation, and even if the landing force could not take the battery in time, the German blocking ships had the opportunity to bypass the breakwater and block the channel before the ships in the harbor rushed out.

(End of chapter)