Late at night, the heat of the summer heat was blowing away with the breeze, the stars twinkled in the night sky, the insects sang in the grass, and many people had already fallen asleep, but in Verdun, in eastern France, a fierce battle was in the final stages of brewing. www.biquge.infoNearly 100,000 German troops participating in the battle arrived at the battlefield one after another with battalions as combat units, 26 field artillery batteries and 4 howitzer batteries quietly entered the firing positions, and 6 Hubert-13 naval combat vehicles were also ready to go in a concealed area about 3 kilometers away from the front-line positions.

To the southeast of the fortress of Verdun stands a fort called Pojoslin, which consists of three fortresses connected to each other, each of which is walled with stone. They resemble ancient castles, with battlements on the top, arrows on the bottom, moats on the outside, and iron gates on the passages in and out, except for the fortifications, each fort is equipped with light and heavy artillery, and is defended by machine guns. A few days earlier, the German 19th Infantry Division had tried to take the battery in one fell swoop, but in just over an hour it had buried thousands of well-trained German infantry, and it took two trains for the wounded to retreat to their homeland.

The Fort de Verdun became famous, and the Fort of Boyoslin was considered a German cemetery.

The hour hand was pointing to midnight, and as the field was silent, Natsuki and Colonel Carson followed General von Gels to the preface position. The troops ready for the attack were ready for the attack, and most of the officers and soldiers they saw along the way were eager to try, and few were hesitant or distracted. According to the battle plan jointly developed by Natsuki, Carson, and the personnel of the von Gels command, the attacking force will be spearheaded by the elite Prussian 16th Infantry Division, whose four infantry regiments will form four offensive echelons in turn and attack from a frontal width of 500 meters. Each offensive echelon was divided into 4 attack waves, with one infantry battalion in one wave, separated by 100 meters between the front and rear. Each offensive wave was armed with a machine gun crew or an artillery crew using 37 mm small-caliber rapid-fire guns, with some of the combatants dispensed with explosives.

When the time came, three green flares rose into the air, and more than 200 German field guns and howitzers opened fire. After the first few minutes of correction, they began to pour artillery fire on the French battery and its outlying fortifications at the highest rate of fire, and the flames of the explosion quickly colored the night sky, and the hill where the Poyoslin battery was located was soon filled with gunsmoke.

As the shelling was underway, the echelons of infantry engaged in the attack successively crossed the starting positions and advanced towards the attack on the field fortifications on the periphery of the Boyoslin battery. The only achievement of the German 19th Infantry Division at Verdun was to break through these fortifications and inflict heavy damage on the French field units that had been stationed there. Before it withdrew to the rear to rest, the follow-up troops that had come up took over the position, but they could not withstand the fierce artillery fire of the French batteries, and the Germans voluntarily withdrew from the position, while the French army, which had reoccupied the fortifications, had limited strength and only briefly repaired this outer line of defense for several days. With the support of their own artillery fire, the first attack echelon of the German 16th Infantry Division successfully broke through to the position, and encountered only sporadic artillery fire from French batteries in the whole process.

Taking advantage of the enemy's attention attracted by German artillery fire and infantry echelons, 6 Hubert-13 naval combat vehicles were dispatched. Under the cover of a company of German cavalry, they quickly advanced to the outskirts of the Boyoslin battery, and completed an off-road journey of nearly 7 kilometers in one go. By this time, the cover fire of the German artillery was nearing its end, and the 77-mm caliber field guns began to fire smoke grenades. After a while, the entire battlefield was filled with gray-white smoke, as if a rare thick fog had fallen from the sky. Around the Fort of Boyoslin, where the smoke was most concentrated, it was almost impossible to see a figure ten paces away with the naked eye.

The French gunners stationed at the battery had seen such tactics in the attack of the German 19th Infantry Division, and their searchlights and flares could not break the smoke concealment, but they could indiscriminately shell and strafe the path of the German attack, after all, this artificial smoke is different from the dense fog of nature, and it will soon dissipate in this airy and open area.

French artillery and machine-gun fire tightly sealed the offensive passage on three sides of the battery, and on the outlying positions on the west side of the battery, dozens of German infantry were stacking sandbags in front of six naval combat vehicles according to the advance deployment - these tracked vehicles had been welded with additional steel plates on the front of the hull the day before, and filling the sandbags between these steel plates and the hull could greatly enhance their frontal defense. Although it has not been tested, it is impossible to know what caliber they can withstand direct artillery fire, but this is the simplest and most practical emergency solution that Natsuki has come up with.

At 12:45, three red flares were lifted into the air, the German artillery group stopped firing, and the German tracked combat vehicles with additional protection were restarted, and they lined up in a row, impressively ahead of the first wave of the German first offensive echelon, followed by 155 active German infantrymen, among whom were 24 soldiers who volunteered to serve as demomen, these demomen in groups of four, bowed their heads and bent down to follow the chariots.

Despite the cessation of fire from the German artillery, the artillery of the Pojoslin battery continued to fire desperately. The French gunners in the fort could not hear the roar from far and near, they lowered the muzzle of the guns, and constantly fired howitzer or machine gun shells at the perimeter of the battery, and the machine guns also spat out a series of tongues of fire from behind the shooting holes from time to time, and nearly 10,000 officers and men of the German 19th Infantry Division fell in front of such firepower.

The French thought that such a defense would still be able to contain the forced assault of the German army, and in the forward positions of the German army, everyone from the generals to the soldiers feared that the nightmare of the 19th Division's crushing defeat would return.

The subsequent echelons of infantry continued to depart from the offensive positions, they crossed the battlefield to the fortifications on the outskirts of the battery, and then disappeared one by one into the smoke of gunfire. With the passage of time, the German field artillery was ready to open fire at any time - ordinary shells and smoke bombs were set aside, and they could be loaded and fired in a matter of seconds at the command of the officers.

Suddenly, a loud explosion came from the direction of the battery, although its shock was not as strong as the large-caliber fortress guns of the French army, and even less than the heavy siege guns of the German army, but it was completely different from the sound of ordinary shells, and it was clearly an explosive bag carried by the German demolition personnel.

A moment later, the same roar followed, as if a giant was beating the drums of the German army's attack. The smoke that permeated the Fort of Boyoslin was fading, but those outside could not observe the battle inside, and could only guess the progress of the battle with the sound of the explosion and the light of the fire.

At 12:58, the German troops, occupying the outer positions of the Pojoslin battery, finally signaled with the arc lamps used for night communication on the battlefield: our troops had entered the interior of the battery.

Upon learning of this, General von Gels's front-line command was filled with jubilation. Von Gels's first reaction was to give thanks to God, and then instructed the communications officer to send a report to the corps headquarters to report the good news to Crown Prince Wilhelm.

There was thunder of joy in the German front-line headquarters, but at the Boyoslin Battery, the situation of the German attacking troops was not as optimistic and relaxed as this field report might have been liked. Under the cover of the steel bodies of naval tanks, the German demomen approached the battery and blew open the outer wall of Fort 3 with explosives packs, by which time three of the naval tanks had been damaged by French artillery fire, and one was immobilized by shrapnel through the hood. More than half of the 155 German officers and soldiers of the first wave had been killed or wounded, some infantry were trapped next to the damaged tanks, and could only crawl on the ground, shooting in vain with rifles in their hands, some infantry followed the two naval tanks that still insisted on fighting to break through the iron gate and enter the inside of the battery, and then were attacked by French machine guns, and the two surviving naval tanks destroyed several French fire points with their own 37mm guns, but this unit was still pressed to the ground between the fortresses without shelter. Only those soldiers who enter the fortress through the breach in the outer wall of the fortress become the key to solving the dilemma. They were unstoppable, clearing the French gunners from the gun chamber one by one with pistols, rifles, bayonets and even fists, and the only thing that bothered them was the labyrinthine layout of the fortress.

The vanguard had already penetrated the inside of the battery, and the subsequent German troops rushed to the battery in waves, but without the direct cover of the chariots, these German infantry were mercilessly slaughtered by the French guns before they could approach the battery, and the casualties were increasing at a rate of almost six or seven hundred people per minute, that is, the German attacking troops had to lose an infantry battalion every minute, and this consumption was undoubtedly very terrifying.

Time flowed slowly through the soaring casualty figures, but the tide of the battle was always moving in favor of the attackers. Fort No. 3 of the Fort of Pojoslin was the first to fall silent, and the German soldiers who attacked it managed to turn one of the guns here to the No. 2 Fortress, which was still firing outward, and a few shells passed by, causing a violent explosion. Some of the French defenders in forts 1 and 2 had realized that the situation was not good, and they began to withdraw from the forts and try to retreat to the other batteries of the fortress of Verdun, but these people, like the French troops reinforced from other batteries, were all blocked by German fire from the perimeter, and almost no one was able to reach their destination through the hail of bullets. Other French gunners, dizzy and unaware of the danger around them, were killed on the spot by the angry German infantry, with only a few lucky enough to become prisoners of war.

With the fall of Fort No. 3 and the increasing number of German soldiers breaking into the Bojosling battery, the last French artillery stopped firing at 1:22, so that the battle lasted only 82 minutes, and two days earlier, the French high command had proudly declared that the Belgian fortress of Liège had resisted the German attack for ten days, and the French fortress of Verdun must have prevented the Germans from advancing for a hundred days.

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