On a gravel road on the outskirts of Amiens, a rustling of footsteps could be heard from far and near, and as far as the eye could see, a gray team was marching at a rapid pace. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 The soldiers on the info team have canvas helmets covered in canvas to prevent the metal spires from reflecting light and becoming targets for enemy soldiers. The front of the helmet canvas cover is embroidered with numbers in blue thread, which represents the number of the regiment to which they belonged. 9, that is, the 9th Marine Infantry Regiment of the German Navy, also known as the "9th Marine Infantry Regiment".

The uniforms worn by these naval infantry are more than eighty percent similar in color and style to the German Army's M1907 infantry compulsory field uniforms, in order to confuse the enemy's line of sight and make it difficult for them to distinguish the German Army field units from the Marine Corps in appearance. Due to the possibility of encountering and engaging enemy troops at any time at night, the naval infantry had bayonets stuck in their rifles, but the M1888 mounted rifle was much shorter than the Mauser M1898 and was equipped with a standard bayonet of 38 cm, which gave the impression of being out of proportion.

Fighting lightly, the infantry unloaded their iconic marching backpacks and carried only magazines, water bottles, shovels, and wooden-handled grenades. To reduce the sound of objects bumping, the kettle is wrapped in canvas and the short shovel has a special sheath, which is usually tied to the bayonet sheath.

The battle has been fought for more than a month, and tens of thousands of officers and men of the front-line troops on both sides have been awarded medals at all levels, regardless of whether they are victorious or lost, but in this marine unit, whether officers or soldiers, their chests are still blank.

Glory is waiting for them to fight for it with practical actions.

"Attention...... Stop moving forward! Get ready for battle! ”

As the officers in front gave the order, the naval infantry quickly left the road, or crawled on the ground, and there was a sound of loading bullets in the ranks, and the light machine gun shooters also looked for the best firing position in the periphery as quickly as possible, and set up machine guns ready to shoot at any time.

"Sharp knife platoon...... Scout Advance! ”

The officer's muffled voice suddenly brought an invisible sense of urgency.

The soldiers who had served as the pioneers had formed a sparsely packed and staggered straggler line, advancing without hesitation, and their sturdy figures soon disappeared into the night.

A few minutes later, the crisp sound of gunfire and loud grenade explosions suddenly came from the front, and there was a bang for a while before bullets whizzed over the heads of the German officers and soldiers who were on standby. It is obvious that the lads of the knife platoon managed to take the enemy by surprise.

Suddenly, a German soldier ran back like a cat, stealthily and quickly. Listening to his report, the officer in charge of the operation urgently ordered the troops to use the platoon as a combat unit and plunge into battle at the speed of trotting.

Platoon after platoon, hundreds of German naval infantry marched in an orderly manner like waves rushing to the shore, and they soon crossed a block of road, crossed a park, and caught up with their comrades in a residential area. The corpses of French soldiers were everywhere, and it was evident that they relied only on ordinary hand rifles, unlike the German naval infantry, which was equipped with light machine guns up to the platoon level and heavily distributed pistols and grenades.

With the arrival of the reinforcements, the fierce German naval infantry resolutely launched a charge, and they crushed more than 100 French officers and soldiers who organized a front along the street in one fell swoop, some of them stayed behind to continue to clear the French soldiers hiding in the houses on the side of the street, and most of them followed the footsteps of the defeated French army to attack in the direction of the city.

At the same time, on the west bank of the Verne railway bridge across the Somme, nearly 2,000 German officers and men belonging to the 1st and 3rd Naval Infantry Brigades were defending themselves against the French attack in an arc position. Although a blind attack on the battlefield had proven to be foolish and useless, in such a devastating counterattack, only a relentless onslaught could give the outnumbered French army a glimmer of hope for a reversal and victory.

After a series of fierce battles, the railway line in front of the German position was already covered with French dead soldiers, and two groups of smoke-curling vehicle wreckage could still be seen twenty or thirty meters away from the German position. In order to cooperate with the counterattack, the French army transferred armored trains from Paris, but under the attack of German reconnaissance troops, the French sappers failed to repair the previously damaged railway line, and this heavy combat equipment known as land battleships did not get a chance to show their skills, and in the battle to capture the Verne railway bridge, the French put in another combat equipment, wheeled armored fighting vehicles.

Back in 1855, the Englishman Cohen installed a machine gun and armor on the chassis of a steam tractor, made a wheeled armored car, and obtained a patent, but this armored car failed to be practically applied. Forty-four years later, the Englishman Sims loaded the Maxim machine gun on a four-wheeled motor vehicle and added a shield to make the first mobile combat vehicle, which played a role in the Boer War a year later. In 1902, Sims launched an improved version of the "combat motor vehicle", which was the world's first heavy armored vehicle with a fully covered steel plate armor, which was equipped with a Daimler gasoline engine with a maximum power of 16 horsepower, with a maximum speed of 14 kilometers per hour, and a machine gun in the front and rear of the hull, which could be rotated left and right to shoot. Although the Sims is considered to be the ancestor of modern armored vehicles, it was not chosen by the British military due to its large size, poor lateral stability, and poor reliability due to the use of chain drives in mobile devices.

In the following years, Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia and other European countries have developed various styles of wheeled combat vehicles, and the French "Chalon" armored vehicle has become the most representative practical combat vehicle of that era. It was finalized in 1908, the body used riveted thin armor plates, and a hinged armor plate was set in the front of the cab, which opened to expand the driver's field of vision; The upper part of the hull was equipped with a cylindrical machine-gun turret, which was raised and lowered by rotating the handwheel. Russia purchased a batch of "Chalons" from France and copied them, and then the German military studied the opportunities for these armored vehicles to be transported through the railway line, so that the shadow of "Chalons" could also be seen on the wheeled armored vehicles that later equipped the German Army.

At the outbreak of the war, the French Army had more than 200 wheeled armored vehicles, a number second only to the Russians, who were particularly keen on them. Although these armoured vehicles used bulletproof steel plates and solid rubber tires to withstand bullets and shrapnel, and the French military had high hopes for their battlefield breakthrough capabilities, in the offensive operations in Alsace and Lorraine, the wheeled armored vehicles sent by the French army were bombarded by German artillery with shrapnel shells, and their limited cross-country ability made it impossible for them to cross even an ordinary trench. By the time of the Battle of the Marne, the French army still had more than 90 wheeled armored vehicles in 20 tank platoons, but only half of them were engaged in the battle, and the rest were basically assembled in Paris and other strategic points for auxiliary defense.

In the hazy night, the French infantry with bayonets came up again. Before they could get close to their positions, the German heavy machine gunners opened fire, and the four MG08s firmly controlled the open area around the railway line in a cross-fire manner, and they had enough ammunition to take out as many French as they came. The French Hatch Chase machine guns clucked and roared in the distance, and the Cinnaides machine guns were laid out in pre-constructed bunkers, which could not be destroyed by rifle and machine gun fire alone.

Seeing that the platoons of his infantry were overthrown, the French battlefield commander, Colonel Ebel, was anxious, and he forced the members of the armored vehicles to directly attack the German positions - a total of five wheeled armored vehicles transferred by the army group headquarters, one was damaged in the German air raid, one broke down due to transmission failure on the way to the battlefield, and the remaining three were sent to him, which shows Philippe Petain's high hopes for the recapture of the Verne railway bridge. Although the German troops defending the bridge were not equipped with tracked combat vehicles, the French armored vehicles were deflated at the first attack, and they were attacked by grenades in front of the German positions, and two armored vehicles were destroyed on the spot, and none of the occupants survived. It was precisely because of the experience of the previous car that in the end, in the later offensive, the armored car did not advance every two or three hundred meters from the German position.

Ignoring the infantry commander's death order, the armored vehicle crew once again stopped advancing in the old place and supported the infantry charge with machine guns. Wherever the machine-gun bullets swept through, the Germans' defensive firepower must have been weakened considerably, but this did nothing to change the tide of the battle. In contrast, German naval vehicles, armed with both small-caliber guns and vehicle-mounted machine guns, had a more effective close-range support capability, destroying fortified bunkers and removing points of fire from enemy positions one by one.

The attack at the front could not be opened, and Colonel Abel looked anxiously at his watch, his troops had been held back here for forty minutes, and the effect of the sudden attack had long since been lost. Although these forty minutes were only an insignificant amount of time in a battle, since the outbreak of the war, the two sides have fought each other in the fortress of Liège, Alsace-Lorraine, the border area, the fortress of Verdun, and even the Marne, but the German occupation of Luxembourg, the breakthrough of the Maas, and the forced crossing of the Aisne River also showed the power of quick victory, and he always feared that the German tanks could arrive at any time. The debut of these tracked vehicles at Verdun was not particularly successful, but when it came to the Marne, the chariot units that rushed to the front line repeatedly saved the tide of battle, and in the battle for Amiens, they played an irreplaceable role.

As the gunfire from behind got closer and closer, the French troops that had arrived on the banks of the Somme gradually fell into the German counter-encirclement. In the absence of liaison with the divisional headquarters, Colonel Abel made the decision to break out on his own. At this time, there were still more than 3,000 officers and men of the 5,000 officers and men under his command, but nearly half of them were wounded soldiers who had difficulty moving, and many companies and platoons serving as flankers could not be contacted in time. Under these conditions, the colonel crossed his mind and with his main infantry regiment as the rearguard, all the men retreated along the Somme to Moleuil, to the southeast.

(End of chapter)