.“ What the? Your troops have been routed by a few hundred bandits? Oh, God! ”

Expressions of surprise, anger, and disdain alternated on General Pershing's face, and the colonel standing in front of him could only reply:

"That's true, General! I'm sorry! Not only are they fierce, they even have mortars......"

Pershing rudely interrupted his explanation, "Shut up! You incompetent coward, coward! 1,600 regular army soldiers were beaten by hundreds of bandits under your leadership! Tell me, Colonel Kyle, where is your dignity? Where is your self-confidence? Where is your honor? ”

"But general, they are not very ...... than ordinary bandits."

"Get out!"

Pershing didn't want to listen to it anymore, knowing that he usually didn't say such a rude word easily, but he really couldn't find a better way to vent his anger in this situation.

The mud-covered colonel, with a wounded right arm, had to leave Pershing's office in disgrace, and although it was not entirely his fault that he was ambushed, and the soldiers could not stop the soldiers from fleeing under the onslaught of the other side, his future in the military was largely over.

"How can it be!" Pershing angrily walked to the sand table, and the group of staff officers gathered there all looked at him with frightened eyes.

"Humph! This bunch of rubbish! Even if it was a few hundred German soldiers who ambushed them, they would not have lost so badly and so completely, and do not forget that we control the sea and the sky! Pershing angrily searched the sand table, then snatched a small red flag from a nearby staff officer and planted it at the spot where the colonel and his troops had been ambushed.

"Search the area with all my might, I want to see what kind of bandits they are!"

"Yes!" Taking this as an opportunity, the staff officers left the war room one after another with the papers, so as not to damage themselves to the fire at the city gate.

By the time more than a dozen U.S. planes and two airships arrived at the accident site and unfurled a tight aerial cable, Rommel and his troops had long since left the battlefield and had not even collected much trophies. In fact. They also don't need to get supplies from the American soldiers now, because they have all switched to better German weapons, and the ammunition of the American army does not match the German rifles, and second, they have set up a secret warehouse in the woods near the Santa Maria River, and they go to the secret warehouse near the port of Tampico once a week or half a month to deliver ammunition and supplies. In this way, Rommel's flying battalion will be able to fight on the periphery of the US blockade line for a longer time.

In addition, Rommel made contact with the base through the German merchant in the port of Tampico, and the Zapatista command affirmed their way of fighting. And authorized Rommel to decide on his own the timing and manner of combat operations.

As for the establishment of an arms transfer station in the port of Tampico in the name of German merchants, although it seems a bit presumptuous, Mexico has been reduced to a mixed area of various forces, and the Carranza regime is the nominal Mexican government, but it has been defeated several times by the combined forces of Zapatista and Villa, and now the intervention of American and German forces has greatly weakened the government's control over the region.

In response to the indisputable fact that the German government supported the Zapatista peasant army, the Carranza regime, on the one hand, feared that Zapata's power would be strong enough to subvert itself, and on the other hand, it hoped to use the German government's power to contain the US government, so that the Americans would not continue to cede more land from Mexico. In such a paradoxical situation, they had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the German merchants. Naturally, the U.S. government was disgusted by such behavior of German merchants. But the last time in the port of Veracruz dealt with several German businessmen who were engaged in the secret arms business. However, it attracted the German government's tough "action to protect overseas Chinese", and the powerful German task force made the US Navy nervous for a while, and the Japanese also intervened in it. This lesson made the U.S. government and the expeditionary force much more cautious in their dealings with German merchants.

After dark, the southeast coast of the Gulf of Mexico has become a frequent haunt of German submarines and fast transport ships, and almost every week, three or four German submarines arrive on the eastern coast of Mexico with supplies, either quietly sneaking into small and medium-sized ports where people are answered, or waiting in the open sea to receive ships and unload their cargo directly at sea.

Two weeks later, a company of German "mercenaries" who had just arrived in Mexico by ocean-going submarine joined Rommel's troops directly after arriving at the port of Tampico, and by this time Rommel's men had reached nearly 400 men, and the so-called 23rd Battalion was finally more numerically commensurate with the battalion's establishment, and the combat effectiveness of the troops was not the same as when it was first formed.

With a steady stream of supplies and ammunition, Rommel's approach to warfare was no longer limited to ambushes for the purpose of obtaining supplies. In the first two weeks of December. He dispersed his troops into company and platoon detachments to raid and harass, and successively attacked dozens of American-funded mines, plantations, factories, and warehouses in the Mexican states of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, killing and wounding more than 100 American capitalists and their guards. For a time, American businessmen, factory owners, and expatriates in central Mexico were all in danger, and many began to sell their properties and move back to the United States, while others financed the formation of civil defense units or demanded that the Mexican government send troops to protect them. In short, everyone knows that there is an extremely tough group of "super bandits" in central Mexico.

In view of domestic and foreign pressures, the U.S. Expeditionary Force had to send large numbers of troops from southern Mexico to pacify the American diaspora, a move that made the bandits less brazen than before, but on the one hand reduced the strength of the peasant army in the state of Morelos. On the other hand, it also gave Rommel's troops the opportunity to continue to ambush small groups of American troops.

"Bastard! Knave! Shameless! ”

Barton pulled out all the curse-worthy words in his stomach, but that wasn't enough to quell the anger in his chest. In front of his eyes, the railroad tracks, platforms, and houses were bombed to a pulp, and bloodstains, corpses, and leaflets were scattered everywhere.

It is one of the more important hubs of the U.S.-funded railroad in central Mexico, with a medium-sized station and a small team of U.S. soldiers to protect it. However, the night before, the bandits had suddenly attacked the area, killing and wounding more than two dozen Americans, not to mention the railroad tracks and platforms. According to the preliminary estimate of the technicians, it will not be possible to reopen to traffic here in two weeks.

Several U.S. planes flew in from the south and conducted a wide search in the vicinity, but as usual, it was fruitless. It was as if the peasant army had stealth capabilities. With no trace coming and going, fierce attacks and swift retreats, Patton and his troops had been engaged in several successive searches and pursuits, but they had returned again and again without success.

"Advance in all directions as a company, and be sure to thoroughly search the nearby hills and woods before it gets dark!" Patton gave the order angrily, but in the end he forced his anger and told his subordinates: "You must come back here before dark!" I'm not like someone who sees me being ambushed by the other side in the dark! ”

On a hill less than three miles away, Rommel used his telescope to observe the movements of American troops at the station.

"Very good, sure enough, we came to search in batches! Everyone is ready for battle. Give them a big pocket! Remember, no loot, evacuate as soon as the battle is over! ”

Looking at the woods where Rommel was, the warriors were gearing up one by one.

Before dark, Barton lost one of his companies, and it was the first defeat he had suffered since arriving in Mexico, and the defeat was irretrievably lost, and he didn't even know the name of his opponent at this time. However, he swore to make the opposing commander pay a heavy price for today's events, swearing in the honor of his George, Patton.

With Christmas just around the corner. The command of the American Expeditionary Force, however, was always enveloped by an oppressive atmosphere. No one was busy with Christmas food and programs, and the complicated troop movements and logistical arrangements left the staff officers with no time to say a few superfluous words all day. Despite the covert cooperation of the Mexican government forces, the expeditionary force was never able to deal with the bandits that infested the Santa Maria River area. In Pershing's words. The peasant commander was more cunning than a fox in the mountains.

To the surprise of the hammer general, it was this "cunning little fox" who completely changed his fate.

December 24th, Christmas Eve.

In a U.S. military barracks in the Mexican state of Querétaro, the Christmas bonfire of the 11th National Guard Regiment in Mississippi is going on. Suddenly, there were violent explosions in several barracks where ammunition was stored, followed by more than a dozen mortar shells falling into the midst of the crowd gathered around the campfires in celebration. The soldiers of the 11th National Guard Regiment picked up their guns to find and eliminate the attackers, and just as they poured out of the camp, in an instant, machine guns like fried beans rang out in front of them, and many American soldiers who did not have time to lie down were immediately swept away by the dense bullets.

However. In order to prevent the other side from shelling to cause greater casualties, the US ** officer inside still forced the soldiers to attack the opponent's improvised position in this situation, and it was this wrong decision that cost more American soldiers' lives, and by the time the Mexican peasant army withdrew, a total of 865 soldiers of the National Guard Regiment were killed, and more than 400 others were wounded, and the casualty rate of the whole regiment exceeded 80 percent.

After "Christmas Crying Night". The U.S. government and the expeditionary force took a series of emergency remedial measures, the wounded soldiers were taken to the nearest field hospital for full treatment, the dead were quickly repatriated, the main officers of the regiment who had made major mistakes in command were subsequently suspended for investigation, and General Pershing, who sent such a militia-level force to the dangerous area, was also questioned by the government, the military hierarchy and the people. Just three days later, Brigadier General Pershing was relieved of his post as commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, and the commander of the U.S. Southern Military District, General Frederick Finston, was appointed as the new commander of the expeditionary force.

Both Finston and Pershing were protégés of Arthur MacArthur, and both fought together in the Philippine War and the occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914, and were both known militant officers in the U.S. Army.

In view of the poor performance of the National Guard in Mexico, the first thing General Finston did after taking office was to send these well-armed but poorly trained National Guards back to the continental United States. Thus, Pershing and Barton's trip to Mexico came to an end.

After sending off more than 40,000 National Guard soldiers, Finston did not weaken the encirclement of the Zapatista Peasant Army because of the reduction in its troops. Instead, he adopted a different strategy: he bought information about Zapata's whereabouts from the Mexicans at any cost, and organized several commandos of elite regular troops in an attempt to capture the thief first.

However, it was not only Rommel who was cunning, for after the last raid on the camp by Patton's men, Zapata and his command became very cautious, and at the slightest disturbance within a radius of twenty miles, they moved to the hidden mountains. In addition, Morelos State is originally a mountainous area, and the US military has failed to return from several successive "decapitation operations", but the peasant army has launched a new anti-clearance operation, and several battalion-sized units have followed the example of Rommel's 23rd Battalion to break through the US blockade line and enter the outer line, and continue to obtain arms and material assistance from the German government from the coast. At the same time, the German government also reached a secret agreement with the Villa Peasant Army in northern Mexico, and German arms supplies began to be supplied to the real bandit-turned-Mexican. Soon after, Villa attacked a series of U.S. border cities, killing and injuring many Americans, and once again causing panic on the U.S. border.

In March 1917, General Finston, commander of the U.S. Expeditionary Force, collapsed during an operational meeting and was rushed to a field hospital, where he died of a myocardial infarction. The accident had an incalculable impact on the U.S. government and the War Department, and a week later, Peyton March, who was also a boy boycott, took over as commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, but the first thing the general did when he arrived in Mexico was to prepare for the expeditionary force's return.

On April 2, 1917, the day after April Fool's Day, the U.S. government announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Mexico.

After the U.S. Expeditionary Force was forced to withdraw from Mexico due to the pressure of political opinion at home and abroad and the repeated failures of military operations, the "Senior Advisory Group" and "Mercenary Group" sent by Germany did not return to Germany, and many Germans, including the "guerrilla general" Rommel, continued to stay in Mexico to assist the Zapatista Peasant Army in training soldiers, reorganizing the army, and supporting Zapatista to embark on the road of seizing power by force.

In June 1917, Zapatista and Villa met outside Mexico City, at which they agreed to form a United Revolutionary Party and the Revolutionary Army, and signed a series of aid agreements with special representatives sent by the German government.

On September 9, 1917, after more than three months of active preparations, the Union Revolutionary Party issued the Declaration of the Mexican Revolution, followed by a formal declaration of war on the Carranza regime, and the Mexican Civil War broke out.

Of course, the U.S. government, which had suffered a lot in Mexico, was not willing to cede Mexico to the Germans. Shortly after the outbreak of the Mexican Civil War, they signed a military cooperation agreement with the Carranza government, stipulating that the U.S. government would provide financial and equipment assistance to the Carranza government, and if necessary, send the navy to directly support the government forces in the war, on the condition that the U.S. government would serve as Mexico's "plenipotentiary adviser."