The low clouds seemed to be only a few meters above the sea, so oppressive that it was breathless, and even the faint sea breeze looked steaming. The sweltering heat makes people feel like they're in a sauna, sweat soaks their clothes, quickly dries them out again, and then sweats profusely, and as a result, it's sticky and itchy, and everyone wants to soak comfortably in the sea.

On the ancient and long coastline, a group of steel-concrete forts exudes an aura that is very different from other wooden forts. Stubby cannon barrels, steel turrets, concrete gun mounts, and teams of soldiers wearing peaked helmets patrol back and forth.

Qingdao, the front end of the south corner of Qianhai Huiquan, Huiquanjiao Fort, built in 1902, is the first German self-built fort in Qingdao, equipped with two 240 mm cannons and two 150 mm cannons. The artillery is a turret-type rotating artillery, and the battery area is equipped with a large-scale underground shelter and a tunnel connecting the Irchis barracks and other places.

At the edge of the battery, the soldiers of the 1st squad rested against the low wall during the patrol.

"It's so hot!" A mustachioed soldier rested his rifle diagonally to his side and took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. His name is Hartman, with the rank of corporal, the highest rank among these 5 people, and he has been in Qingdao for the longest time, and he has almost become a Qingdao master in 3 years.

"Yes! The heat is dead! I didn't expect such a sultry weather on the beach! Another soldier also took off his helmet, revealing curly blond hair. Private Schmidt, who had been stationed along the Jiaoji Railway with his troops, was transferred to Qingdao after the outbreak of the war and assigned to the battery garrison.

"Bad weather, bad situation! I never thought I'd come here to fight! "The older soldier seemed to be in a bad mood as the weather, and Blank, who had come to China with his family a year ago for business and had been drafted into Qingdao as a reservist, had returned to Germany by other means.

The two silent soldiers looked very different from the others - the guy on the right also had a gray military uniform and a pointed helmet, but his skin was like black charcoal, Private Bomgard, who belonged to the German Foreign Legion "Black Storm"; The face and skin color on the left were not significantly different from those of the previous three, but he was wearing a blue military uniform and gray trousers, and Austrian Corporal Tiffett, who had arrived in Tsingtao along with hundreds of other Austrian soldiers stationed in various concessions, had arrived in Tsingtao as loyal allies of Germany.

Blank took out a pack of cigarettes and began to hand them out, as a businessman with a small career, he smoked high-end cigarettes. Hartmann and Schmidt happily took the cigarette, but when it was handed to Tipett, he had no expression.

"Austrians, why are you unhappy and frightened by the Japanese?"

"The Japanese? In my eyes they are just a bunch of dwarf pigs! I hate them, and I hate the British even more. My niece, too, was on the steamer detained by the British the day before yesterday! The Austrian clutched his hat in his hand and said indignantly, "Damn the British, that ship is full of old and weak women and children who are going back to Germany!" I heard that they actually escorted that ship to Weihaiwei! ”

The others were silent for a moment, and on the last day of August today, the British Navy was still the first in the world, and their warships were rampant across all oceans. Since a week ago, the St. George flag and the sun flag have appeared together in the sea off Jiaozhou Bay and blocked the entire harbor. The main force of the German Far East Fleet, the six cruisers, quietly sailed out of Dagang long before the British and Japanese encircled Qingdao, broke through the Japanese blockade line, got rid of the encirclement and interception of dozens of warships from Japan, Britain, France, Russia and other countries, and entered the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean respectively to carry out offensive operations. Queen Elizabeth".

The flames of war have finally reached this beautiful harbor. After Japan declared war on Germany on August 23, it immediately used the Navy's 1st Fleet to guard the Yellow Sea and the northern waters of the East China Sea, and the 2nd Fleet blockaded Jiaozhou Bay on the 27th and seized sea supremacy.

After the outbreak of the European war, the German governor of Jiaoao, Waldeck, drove tens of thousands of Chinese to build temporary batteries, dig trenches, and transport materials for him, and actively prepare for war; On the one hand, the reservists in China were urgently summoned to Qingdao to participate in the war, and the German troops stationed in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Shanghai, Jinan, and along the Jiaoji Railway were transferred to Qingdao. At the beginning of the war, the German army had 17 ships, 9 aircraft, 211 artillery pieces, and 347 machine guns in Qingdao, including the German Foreign Legion composed of more than 5,000 African soldiers and hundreds of Austrian soldiers, with a total strength of 14,000 troops.

The Germans built a total of 4 wharves, 6 forts, and 22 forts in Qingdao, realizing the fortress. Before the Japanese attack, they laid mechanical mines in the port and had a power grid on the shore.

In Qingdao's defense against the sea, forts were built in Taixi, Tuandao, Huiquanjiao, and Taipingjiao, and warships were dispatched to patrol Jiaozhou Bay. In addition, alert detachments were also dispatched to Fushan, Gushan, Aoshanwei, Jinkou, Gaomi, and other places.

In the land defense of Qingdao, it is mainly composed of two lines of defense. The first line of defense consisted of infantry land defense fortress groups. On the west bank of the coastal Bo River, the large infantry fortress group starts from Xiaozhan Mountain in the south and reaches the mouth of the Haibo River in the north, including 6 fortresses of Xiaozhan Mountain, Xiaozhan Mountain North, Central, Taitung Town, Taitung Town North, and Coast.

The second line of defense from Shuishui Mountain to Taiping Mountain through Wannian Mountain is composed of temporary forts and field fortifications built before the war.

The fort is generally composed of 1 large shelter and 1~2 small shelters, which are used to store ammunition, supplies and garrisons. Most of the fort line extends northward along the river channel, the fort is about 100 meters away from the river, and a trench about 5 meters deep and 6 meters wide is dug between the riverbed and the fortress, and the bottom of the ditch is covered with electrified barbed wire, which connects the north and south coasts. On the west side of the trench, a long line of infantry bunkers was built along the ditch, and these small forts were equipped with light artillery, machine guns, rifles and other weapons, forming a fortified defensive line of up to 6 kilometers.

The defense of Qingdao is already strong enough to be comparable to the Lushun Fortress of that year, however, it is far away from Europe, far away from Germany and Austria, and the soldiers cannot expect a large number of reinforcements to arrive like the Russian army back then, they can only rely on their own strength.

"Hey! African friends! As Blank handed the cigarette to Bomgard, the African's eyes flickered, and then he silently took the cigarette.

"Thank you!"

"Oh! It turns out that our African friends speak German! Why did you never talk before? Young Schmidt cried out excitedly.

"There was a German priest who had been preaching in our village, and I learned some from him, and after joining the Foreign Legion, the instructors taught some more!" Bomgard put the cigarette in his pocket, his German sounding a little stiff, but it was already unusual for Schmidt and them.

"Haha! What a strange African! Do you really know how to use a gun? Schmidt seemed curious about Bomgard.

The African snorted and expertly fed the bullet into the chamber of the gun, then aimed the muzzle at Schmidt's toes.

"Don't get excited! My African friend, just now I was just kidding! Tifet hurriedly pushed Bomgard's gun away, lest he accidentally break his toe, and the Austrian laughed sadly.

"I've heard that Black Storm's training is much stricter than ours, right? Mr. Bowgaard! "Corporal Hartmann had been troubled by the complex composition of the patrol team, but now it seems that things are better than expected.

"Yes! We train seriously every day, and everyone uses a variety of weapons, including machine guns and artillery! Africans were less inhibited, and when he and his regiment had been transferred a few days earlier to reinforce the forts in various places, he was still worried about staying with white soldiers, who were still very discriminatory against blacks.

Just when this group of complicated people was talking happily, the whole fort suddenly became noisy, and with a loud bang, the cannons of the fort began to shoot at the sea.

"What's going on?" Hartmann looked at the sea in amazement, since the Japanese announced that they would blockade Jiaozhou Bay from August 27 and restrict the passage of all neutral ships from 35.5 to 36.7 degrees north latitude and 110.10 to 122.36 degrees east longitude, it was difficult to see ship activity on the sea outside the fort.

There was a small black dot on the sea in the distance, and the shells were constantly flying there.

"What's that?"

If there were a high-powered telescope, Hartmann would have found that it was a minesweeper escort ship flying the flag of the Japanese Navy with sixteen Rising Sun Medals.

This minesweeping escort ship was dispatched by the Japanese army in order to open up the water passage to the sea off Qingdao Bay as soon as possible. Not long ago, it quietly appeared in the open sea of Jiaozhou Bay to carry out minesweeping operations, and just as the Japanese soldiers above were about to cut the wire rope on the anchor mine, the German observation sentry at the Huiquanjiao Fort spotted it. The battery's artillery immediately opened fire on it within effective firing range, and then the coastal defense batteries from Yamen Mountain and the South Fort of Ilqisi Mountain also fired at the same time, and the 240-millimeter huge shells of the Huiquanjiao Fort fell around the Japanese ships, and water columns continued to rise around the Japanese ships. Soon after, the Japanese ship caught fire and fled back to the sea off Laoshan in a hurry.

In the early hours of the next morning, Hartman and the others were woken up again. A Japanese minesweeper ran aground near Chaoren Island east of Qingdao, and when the German gunboats arrived at the scene, the Japanese sailors had already left in small boats, and the German gunboats fired more than 10 shells to sink it.

After that, the Japanese army decided that it was impossible for the fleet to directly enter the sea off Jiaozhou Bay, so it was decided to choose a landing site far from the waters of Jiaozhou Bay. The Japanese minister to China shamelessly declared that the Japanese army's attack on Jiaoao was a whole result of the Japanese-British alliance and had absolutely no ambitions for Chinese territory.