Before dawn, Gu Xunlei came to the bow of the transport ship. It was a transport ship converted from an ordinary passenger liner with more than 2,000 officers and soldiers on board. There are more than forty such transport ships nearby, and not far from the sea, there are two convoys of cargo ships carrying heavy army equipment. According to the plan, the first Army combat units to come ashore would not be sent to the beach until the Marines had captured the landing ground and built a temporary dock. In other words, even if the Marines seized the landing ground as quickly as possible and immediately arranged for the engineers to build a temporary wharf, the army combat units led by Gu Xunlei would not be able to go ashore until the night of the 20th, and the daytime battle on the 20th had nothing to do with him.

A group of bombers flew over the fleet, and it was just dawn, and the sun had not yet risen above the sea.

"That's a bomber from Task Force 1?"

Gu Xunlei nodded to Zhang Xiaolin next to him, this is indeed the bomber of the first task force, at least as far as Gu Xunlei knows, only the first task force is active here, the second task force, the fifth task force and the theater fleet went to block the US reinforcements going south last night, and they will probably come over at noon, so the only ones who can provide support to the Marine Corps are the bombers of the first task force and the naval guns of the third task force.

"General, maybe we'll be able to go ashore in the afternoon."

"Hopefully, maybe we'll have to wait until tomorrow." Gu Xunlei sighed, although he was not seasick, he had been at sea for a few days. It also made him feel very tired.

Colonel Zhang Xiaolin looked towards the group of planes that were flying towards the west. Two years ago, he was the commander of a tank battalion under Gu Xunlei, with the rank of major. On the battlefield on the mainland, Zhang Xiaolin's performance was quite good, and at the end of 24, he also received an Imperial Congressional Medal. Later, Gu Xunlei went to Europe. Zhang Xiaolin returned to China because he was frostbitten on the Russian side, when he was already a lieutenant colonel. Later, Gu Xunlei was transferred out of the European theater, and Zhang Xiaolin was also left in the reserve force in the rear, specializing in the training of recruits. When Gu Xunlei formed the armored force, he immediately thought of him, and made a special trip to Taiyuan (the headquarters of the army's armored reserve force) to ask Zhang Xiaolin over. Now, Zhang Xiaolin is the commander of the newly formed 1st Tank Division, it stands to reason. He should have been promoted to brigadier general, but because the new 1st Tank Division was only a temporary number, he was still a colonel officer.

Gu Xunlei was also looking at the group of bombers in the distance, and listening to the dull explosion from the west, he was even more anxious. Since coming to the Southwest Pacific Battlefield, Gu Xunlei has found out. In this battlefield dominated by the navy, there is not a lot of room for him to play. Although Tan Renhao is a good friend with him, and takes great care of him and helps him solve a lot of troubles, but, no matter what, this place is dominated by the navy. Gu Xunlei still has a lot of respect for Yan Guozhong, and he had heard of Yan Guozhong's name long before he joined the army. At that time, he even thought about joining the Marine Corps instead of the Army, but as a result, in the year he joined the Army, the Marine Corps did not go to his hometown to recruit soldiers, and he could only join the Army. Other than that. Yan Guozhong didn't look at Gu Xunlei differently, and after a few months, Gu Xunlei also knew that Yan Guozhong was a very orthodox soldier. But the problem is that Yan Guozhong is not able to represent the entire navy, as well as the entire Marine Corps!

It is impossible to resolve the hundreds of years of grudges between the empire's navy and land forces in a short period of time, and it is not something that young generals like Gu Xunlei can solve. In terms of seniority, Gu Xunlei's status in the army cannot be compared with Tan Renhao's status in the navy. When the war broke out, Tan Renhao was already a high-ranking officer. Soon after, he became Chief of Staff of the First Task Force, and since then he has become the best young admiral in the Imperial Navy. And when Tan Renhao became a major. Gu Xunlei is only a second lieutenant platoon commander. It can be said that the war has been fought for so many years, and while affecting the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Army has also undergone tremendous changes in the war. Comparatively speaking, the changes in the Imperial Army were more radical and more affected than those in the Navy!

Like the old school in the navy that supported the doctrine of "big ships and big guns", there was also a group of old guards in the Imperial Army, and this old school insisted on the "trench warfare" that was widely used in the last war.

The first global war was the first global war in the history of mankind, and more than seventy percent of the world's countries and eighty percent of the population were involved in this war. And the first global war had two important tactical signs, one was at sea, that is, the decisive battle of the fleet with battleships as the core. The other is on land, that is, positional warfare based on artillery, machine guns, and staggered trenches, also known as "trench warfare".

The First Global War had three main ground fronts, one was the Western European front between Germany and Britain and France, the second was the Eastern European front between Germany and Russia, and the third was the northwestern front between the Tang Empire and Russia. In addition, there were several minor fronts, such as the Southern European Front between Germany and Italy, the Caucasian Front between Persia and Russia, the North African Front between Persia and Italy, and Spain. And these fronts had a unified feature, that is, both sides built a large number of trenches, trenches, and deployed numerous machine guns on the front, and artillery in large numbers behind the front. The ground battles of the first global war took place almost exclusively in the vicinity of these fronts.

The "machine gun" was the most important "invention" of the first global war, and it was in this war that the machine gun was used on a large scale, and a weapon completely changed the face of the entire ground war, and at the same time became a killing machine on the battlefield. During the six years of the war, only three large-scale battles on the Western European front claimed the lives of more than 2 million officers and soldiers on both sides. And on the battlefields of Eastern Europe, at least 3 million officers and soldiers from both warring sides were killed. On the Northwest Front, the number of army officers and soldiers killed in the Tang Empire alone reached 2.5 million! And at that time tanks had not yet appeared, and even in the later stages of the war they were not used on a large scale, and neither side had the means to break through to each other with machine guns. The first global war was arguably the largest war of attrition, consuming not only mountains of ammunition and materials but millions of lives on several fronts.

At the end of the First Global War, tanks appeared on the battlefield, and until the end of the war, the major countries on both sides recognized the importance of tanks, but there was no effective theory of armor tactics at that time, and everyone had a different understanding of the use of tanks. After the end of the war, the armies of almost all countries were studying the use of tanks and summing up the problems that were exposed on the ground battlefield of the first global war. And the time of the appearance of tanks, in fact, is not much different from the appearance of aircraft carriers, and the Navy has disagreements on the use of aircraft carriers, as well as the aviation tactics brought by aircraft carriers. Similarly, the Army has serious disagreements over how to use tanks and how to develop armored tactics.

It can be said that the Imperial Army was the first to realize the importance of tanks, but it was not the first to fundamentally change the tactical system of the Army. During the 20-year armistice, the Imperial Army built and equipped thousands of tanks. It was one of the several armies in the world at that time with the largest number of equipped tanks. But until the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Army still did not have a regular armored force, and almost all the tanks were scattered in the infantry units! From this, it can also be seen that the conservative thinking of the Imperial Army is actually more serious and thorough than that of the Navy.

In the eyes of most army generals, tanks are just moving pillboxes, mobile fortresses to cover infantry attacks. Therefore, for a long time, except for a few generals such as Shi Naixing, the vast majority of army generals insisted on dispersing tanks in infantry units. Used to support infantry. As a result, although the Imperial Army was equipped with more than 3,000 tanks of all kinds before the outbreak of the war (most of which were actually outdated), it did not have a regular armored force. Subsequently, the brutal war proved that the tanks scattered in the infantry units were not even as good as the furnishings!

It can be said that the basic tactical thinking of the Imperial Army at that time was still the desire to rely on "trench warfare" to drag down the enemy. And with the help of tanks, the infantry broke through the enemy's defenses and finally defeated the enemy. This can be said to be an experience summed up by the Imperial Army in the last war, Russia's announcement of its withdrawal from the war before the armistice of the first global war, and the subsequent outbreak of civil war, which is directly related to Russia's massive consumption on the battlefield at that time. According to the orthodox ideology of the Imperial Army, if you can't find a suitable way to defeat the enemy, then you can only rely on the powerful national strength of the Empire to drag down the enemy. And this was the basic idea of the Imperial Army before the outbreak of the Second Global War.

A few years before the outbreak of the Second Global War, that is, Germany. The founders of armored forces in Russia, France and other countries began to summarize armored tactics. And when they formed independent armored forces, the "father of armored forces" of the Imperial Army - General Shi Naixing also put forward the basic tactics of armored forces similar to the German Army's "blitzkrieg" and the Russian Army's "Great Depth Assault Theory", Shi Naixing summarized this tactic as "armored assault tactics", and its core idea is the same as that summarized by German and Russian counterparts, that is, the centralized use of armored forces, the position of tanks and infantry is reversed, not tanks to cover infantry, Rather, motorized infantry accompanies tanks. In addition, the rapid and rapid assault capability of the aviation unit should be used to support the offensive of the armored forces, so as to quickly break through the enemy's defense line, penetrate into the rear of the enemy's defense line, strike at the enemy's fragile logistics supply line, and finally encircle the troops on the enemy's defense line, realize the penetration and encirclement of the campaign and even the strategic level, and finally defeat the enemy.

It can be said that this set of theories is quite avant-garde, because Shi Naixing put forward this theory a few years later than his German and Russian counterparts, and he also appropriately borrowed from the experience of others, so to a large extent, this theory actually summed up Germany's "blitzkrieg" and Russia's "great in-depth assault theory" together, and divided the tasks and objectives at the campaign and strategic levels in detail. Later, this set of theories was the basic tactical theory of the Imperial Armored Corps, and it has always guided the commanders of the Imperial Armored Forces.

It's a pity that compared with his foreign counterparts, Shi Naixing has too few opportunities. After he put forward the theory, he proposed the establishment of a separate armored corps, and Yan Dingyu agreed to the establishment of an armored corps at that time, but he did not give Shi Naixing much real power, but only asked Shi Naixing to organize a reserve-level armored force. It was at this time that Gu Xunlei came to Shi Naixing's staff as a second lieutenant officer and became a disciple of Shi Naixing.

In the first two years after the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Army was shocked by several beautiful battles between French and German armoured forces in the theater of Western Europe, and the large-scale armored offensive between the German and Russian armies over the vast lands of Eastern Europe. Comparatively speaking, the inaction of the Imperial Army in the Northwest Theater can simply be seen as a disgrace. Not only was the empire extremely dissatisfied with the performance of the army on the battlefield, but even Germany, Persia and other allies protested and demanded that the empire increase its investment in the battlefield on land. It is also the internal and external pressure that gives the armored forces of the Imperial Army a chance to develop, and at the same time, it also gives Gu Xunlei, a group of army generals, more room for development and more opportunities to make contributions.

From this point of view, Gu Xunlei's qualifications are indeed not as good as Tan Renhao. As early as 21 years, that is, when the war broke out, Tan Renhao was already the best young officer in the Imperial Navy, and Gu Xunlei only began to emerge in 23 years. The Russian battlefield was where he became famous, and his performance in the Western European theater can be said to be mixed, but it made him the best of the young generals of the Imperial Army, and it also brought him to the Australian battlefield.

Thinking of these, Gu Xunlei was also full of feelings, and in the past few years, his status in the army has risen rapidly. If he hadn't looted the German army's logistics in the Western European theater, I am afraid he would not have had a chance to be assigned to the Australian battlefield, and now the army is launching a final offensive against Russia on the continental battlefield. Gu Xunlei also knew that this would be a battlefield that he completely dominated and would be of great significance to him!

"General, a telegram from the Marines!"

Gu Xunlei turned around and took the telegram from the staff officer's hand. He didn't rush to look, but first looked back at the continent to the west, maybe this will be the place where he will achieve his life's fame!