In August 1914, among the more than 1.6 million German soldiers who were deployed on the Western Front, Hans-Flintz was one of the most common and representative ones. He was born in Potsdam, the Kingdom www.biquge.info of Prussia, to a shoemaker father and a working housewife, and the two raised four sons and two daughters together. Thanks to compulsory education by the state, Frinz and his siblings did not become illiterate because of their poor family. After graduating, Flintz worked as a shoemaker with his father for a few months, then began compulsory military service and was assigned to the "Iron 17" regiment. In this army full of honor, his consciousness and beliefs gradually changed somewhat, and his strict military training also made his body stronger. In his second year of service, he was promoted to Private First Class for his outstanding performance, and then when war broke out, he and his companions embarked on a journey of uncertainty as they climbed into the ranks without hesitation.

According to the arrangement of the General Staff of the Army, the "Iron 17" Regiment was subsumed into the 6th Corps of the German 5th Army Corps and deployed in the Lorraine area in the middle of the front. On the day of the outbreak of the war, the "Iron 17" Regiment crossed the border into Luxembourg as the first echelon, occupied the small Central European country without blood, and then invaded France, arriving on the banks of the Shiel River on August 6, where it remained until August 19. After defeating the French offensive, the entire German 5th Army Corps, under the command of Crown Prince Wilhelm, attacked in a big way, quickly breaking through the French defenses in the Ardennes. The "Iron 17" regiment took the lead and unstoppably arrived on the banks of the Maas River. Led by the regimental commander, Colonel Rice, the infantry launched three charges, regardless of casualties, and resolutely captured a road bridge marked L18 from the French, and the fierce battle continued to revolve around this bridge. After a night of hard fighting, Flinz ran out of ammunition and his bayonet was broken in the fight with the French soldiers, so he had to continue the battle with a Berchtier rifle that he had picked up from the French dead. There were fewer and fewer companions around him, but the sound of guns and cannons around him was strangely dense, and from time to time he could hear the slogans of French officers urging the soldiers to attack, Flinz was exhausted, and the stabbing wounds on his face and hands were quietly devouring what little strength he had left in his body.

"Hey, Flintz, Flintz of Potsdam!"

Hearing this hoarse and low voice, Flintz, who gradually fell into despair and fear, suddenly lifted his spirits. He quickly turned his head, but saw a pale, weak, bloodless face. This man was dressed in a military uniform in the style of a lieutenant, with broad shoulders and thick arms, but he was hunched at the waist, like an old man, and he looked very bad when he saw his left hand covering his chest vigorously.

"Sir, how are you doing?" Flintz asked eagerly how he wished his platoon commander had been followed by a dozen or twenty men—at least a few soldiers—but there was no second man in the darkness.

"If you want my blood to be drained, the French are not enough." The lieutenant replied, looking left and right, "You're alone here?" ”

"No, there's another one with half a life left." Flintz pouted into the corner, where sat a soldier with a bloody face, his head, arms, and thighs wrapped in bandages, mostly soaked in blood.

"Private Sach-Orff salutes you, sir!" The man said, and coughed hard.

The second lieutenant scratched his head.

Seeing this, Flinz suggested: "Perhaps we should withdraw with Orff to the bridgehead, where we will continue to hold off the enemy." What do you say, sir? ”

The second lieutenant breathed a sigh of relief: "Well, I just met with Captain Motesak a few minutes ago, and he is now the acting commander of our battalion. Our task is to hold on to our positions - at all costs! ”

Flinz knew what this order meant, and when he first entered the "Iron 17" regiment, he heard from veterans about the worst battle the regiment had fought in Prussia.

The honor of iron is bought at the cost of blood!

"Last night I dreamed that I was walking through the streets of Paris, and all the French people took off their hats to salute us, and our flag fluttered on the Eiffel Tower, what a pity...... We didn't get a chance to see that. Flinz sighed.

The second lieutenant was relieved and said: "There will be a soul after death, and the soul will look at everything in the world in heaven, and we will certainly see it as long as our army defeats the French and enters Paris." ”

Without hope, Flintz was less disappointed, and he grinned wryly: "I hope so." ”

"Shh The second lieutenant suddenly signaled to Flintz to silence him, and while watching warily ahead, he opened the safety of the pistol.

Flintz hunched on his sandbag, rifle in hand, and began to aim.

From time to time, there were flashes of cannon flames and firelight in the distance, and by this faint light, they saw several vague black shadows moving in this direction, although it was impossible to determine whether it was the enemy or their own people, but if they put the target closer before firing, with the defensive strength of these two half-men, they could not stop a charge of the enemy at all.

Syllable......

The rifle in Flintz's hand was the first to let out a crisp gunshot, and a dark figure immediately fell, followed by gunfire from the adjacent position, which was guarded by another German infantry platoon. Although the sound of the gunfire is scattered, it is telling everyone here: you are not alone.

Pulling the bolt quickly, Flintz aimed at the next target, but at that moment, a German voice came from the front: "Don't fire, it's your own people!" ”

"Is it our people?" As soon as the second lieutenant poked his head out, a bullet flew past his head, and he was so startled that he quickly retracted his head, leaned back against the cover, and hurriedly drew a cross.

Flintz decisively pulled the trigger and muttered: "The trick of the French, these guys deserve to go to hell!" ”

Faced with sporadic gunfire on German positions, the French soldiers continued to advance, their recognizable figures growing in sight. Since the Bochtier rifle was still the old three-round magazine, Flinz threw the empty rifle to Orff for every three shots, and the badly wounded German infantryman had only one hand to use, but was still up to the task of reloading.

Although the cooperation of the two men ensured the continuity of the shooting, the extreme speed of the manual rifles was there, and the French quickly advanced to the front of the position, and just as they quickened their pace and began to charge, the long-lost machine gun sound sounded on the German position, and a series of bullets poured down, and the French soldiers fell a lot.

When the enemy came within range of the pistol, the second lieutenant officer beside Flintz got up and fired without saying a word, and the Luger pistol jumped rhythmically in his hand. In the blink of an eye, there were a few fewer French soldiers with bayonets.

The second lieutenant bowed down to reload, and Flintscha finished the bullets in the magazine, and the French soldiers in front of the position noticed the vacancy and rushed forward with a scream.

Seeing that the enemy had arrived, Flinz squatted up and raised his gun to shoot, knocked down a French soldier in front of him, and then stood up and jumped out of the trench, and stabbed another French soldier suddenly, the other party was quite clever, and blocked Flintz's bayonet with the barrel of the gun, and the two faced each other in place for a moment, and immediately two French soldiers pounced with bayonets. The shoemaker's son did not have peerless martial arts, and he barely lost the wind in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat, and he was ready to accept the arrival of death, at this moment, the second lieutenant broke out, and saw him raise his hand and fire 5 shots in a row, and simply and neatly dealt with the three French soldiers, and the MG-08 on the German position also turned its gun to this side in time, and killed a dozen or so French soldiers in the vicinity with a burst of shots.

Taking advantage of his machine gun to sweep away the French attackers in front of him, Flinz hurriedly retreated to the bunker, gasping for breath while changing rifles with Orff, while the second lieutenant stuffed his pistol into a holster, touched a Mauser 1898 on the ground, opened the bolt and saw that it was empty.

Seeing that the second lieutenant was going to search for bullets on the dead German soldiers, Flinz threw him the loaded Bochtier rifle: "I've found everything I can, let's use this!" ”

Although the second lieutenant felt that the French rifle was not very suitable, he had no choice but to settle for it at the moment. Flinz looked up at the situation, crawled out of the bunker on his back, dragged back a French soldier who had just been killed by the second lieutenant with his rifle, and pulled the bullet box into his waist, but there were only seven rounds.

"This group of French people is not in a good situation!" Flinz tossed the bullets to Orff along with the synchrometer, and then took the loaded Bochtier rifle from him.

The second lieutenant bared his teeth and said: "Whoever can hold out to the end will be the winner of this battle." ”

After a while, the machine-gun sound on the positions stopped, and the ammunition consumption of such weapons was as alarming as their lethality to the infantry. A German battle group equipped with MG08 usually had eight soldiers, and at least half of them were responsible for carrying ammunition when marching. Therefore, the tragic battle has been fought so far, and the "Iron 17" regiment still has machine guns that can fire, which is simply a miracle that is not big or small.

Once the machine-gun suppression wore off, the French would return to the attack like fire-feared beasts when they saw the fire go out, and before that, the French would often bombard themselves with rapid-fire field artillery, a pace that most German officers and men had not survived.

In a moment, the French artillery fire really came. Flinz counted that the enemy had fired only 13 shells this time, and it seemed that the French troops stranded on the east bank of the Maas River were also running out of ammunition.

After the shelling, the sound of artillery was still rumbling. Flintz turned his head to look around, at this time, not only the fire on the other side of the bridge was glittering, the smoke was rising, the winding Maas River was full of battlefields, hundreds of thousands of German and French soldiers were fighting each other, whoever can achieve the combat goal is the winner of this battle, and then add important weight to the balance of this war in favor of their own side.

"Come on! Come on! Why don't you come! Scared? ”

The second lieutenant was rifle in hand, staring ahead, and muttering words. The figure of the French infantry did not appear for a long time, but in front of the sight was the sound of gunfire and explosions. After a while, the sound of gunfire gradually became sparse from dense to thin, and there was a strange sound in front of me, like a large crane at the pier running, and like a ship starting a windlass to raise its anchor chain. The sound was getting louder and closer, and the eyes of the German officers and soldiers who were struggling to hold the position on the east bank of the L18 bridge widened one by one, and soon they saw a few guys who looked like armored cars, but the armored cars they had seen did not emit such a harsh metal grinding sound. Immediately afterwards, they saw the familiar peaked helmets, and the German infantry scattered behind these battle vehicles, and the German battle flags were waving in the wind.

(End of chapter)