Time flickered to the fifth day of incubation, June 26, 1916.

Three days earlier, on June 23, 1916, the Allies had begun a high-intensity artillery bombardment of the German defensive front.

The artillery bombardment that had begun was by no means a small fight, it was the continuous firing of shells from more than 2,000 artillery pieces of the Entente on the forward positions of the entire German front, and then the counterattack of 672 German guns, resulting in the phenomenon that the shell explosions around the entire battlefield never stopped.

In fact, whether it's Richie's commando or Ewald. Feng. The commando team led by Kleist, unbeknownst to them, had shrunk and changed their forces, and were still waiting for targets that might or might not appear at all.

The Germans had only eight divisions of the Second Army left in the entire Somme, and these eight divisions had set up three lines of defense about eight kilometers deep. The rest of the troops retreated to the rear of the defensive line, including the headquarters of the First Army to which Li Qi belonged, and naturally the small number of Guards.

What happened was that the German General Staff intercepted information and learned that the Allies had been mobilizing heavy troops since May, and the most terrible thing was that more than 2,000 artillery pieces of various calibers had been mobilized, including many large-caliber heavy artillery, and more than 1,000 mortars had just appeared, and even 300 planes had been prepared.

The German General Staff believed that the Allies were well prepared, and that the allied forces led by Britain and France would certainly carry out intensive and high-intensity artillery coverage in order to make the offensive go smoothly, and that once the defensive forces on the front were too dense, their own losses would be very staggering. They made the bold decision to withdraw most of their forces, leaving only those they saw fit to defend in place, risking that the Entente might not engage in artillery bombardment and attacking directly.

Eight divisions? Each division of the German army was usually 20,000 men, divided into four regiments, and a regiment would have four battalions, the so-called reserve infantry divisions would have only one artillery battalion, and the Guards would have at least one artillery regiment. Then the troops left on the front to be used to stop the Entente are about 160,000 people, and the purpose of their existence is to show their presence in the face of artillery fire, and then block the enemy when the enemy launches a real attack, so as to buy more time for the rear troops to go to the battlefield.

In order to make up for the lack of firepower due to the small number of troops left behind in the defensive position on the Somme, the German General Staff did one thing, that is, to concentrate the Maxim heavy machine guns as much as possible, and the result was that the German troops left behind in the Somme front line had at least two Maxim heavy machine guns per company, which is equivalent to a regiment with sixteen Maxim heavy machine guns, and the number of Maxim heavy machine guns will continue to increase. Under normal circumstances, each division of the German army actually had only twenty-four Maxim heavy machine guns.

The Entente has been shelling for at least a week, and it is really important to intercept this information, so important that the General Staff dares to take a huge risk to withdraw the troops on the front, and it is also important to be willing to take 160,000 soldiers to drop on the defensive line to be shelled, so that Operation Shenhel, which has a low probability of success, is obviously forgotten to the corner where it does not know where.

As time went by, and with the rising and setting of the sun again and again, the haze in Richie's heart became more and more serious, and he certainly did not feel haze because he was "abandoned", because he did not know that he had been "forgotten".

What was worrying about Li Qi was that the Allied generals who had come to the field hospital on the outskirts of Villeres did not show up, and then the artillery battle between the two sides was extremely fierce...... Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Allied artillery was really ferocious, and it is very doubtful that the planned support will exist at all.

In the face of the fierce artillery bombardment of the Allied countries, the Germans returned fire on the first day, and the abandoned manor house where Li Qi and others were hiding even received a few shots, but fortunately, it was the main building, that is, the entire building complex, that was completely destroyed in the shelling. The yard behind where they were hiding had only been hit by a shot, and luckily it hadn't hit the pig barn where they were hiding, otherwise the whole team would have been wiped out.

Litch and the others were not the most unlucky, even more unlucky than them was Ewald. Feng. The Kleist men, where they took refuge were on the anti-slope of the slope, and were destined to shell most of the bombardment on the slope that was frontal for them.

Ewald. Feng. Kleist and the others lurked for five whole days, and naturally there were no casualties if they were not discovered by the Entente side, but one non-commissioned officer and two soldiers were turned into the first batch of casualties in Operation Shenhel by their own artillery shells from afar, or the way in which there were no bones left.

[Maybe it was because there was artillery fire that returned fire, and those generals thought it was not safe to come at this point in time, so they didn't show up? 】

In fact, Li Qi was also worried about other things, their commando team was divided into three groups, and they would not all be concentrated in one place. In an age without portable radios, they were destined to have non-existent communication anytime and anywhere, and he couldn't determine whether the other two groups had been infiltrated successfully, or if the two groups had been detected after the infiltration had been successful because of the long incubation time.

A "buzzing" sounded like the sound of a swarm of bees, which was inconspicuous at first, and then came to the ears of Li Qi and others more and more clearly.

"Sir, there is a formation of planes to the west, and the number is twenty." Amberg. Goethe, who was the observer on duty, was the first to report his findings: "It seems to be the latest type of aircraft from the French, and I can't tell what model it is." ”

Li Qi was stunned when he heard that there were twenty crosses. The current flight altitude of the plane is generally not high, so he naturally can't rashly go out to look, he can only look for a gap in the pig house where he can look at the sky, but there seems to be not much difference between looking at it and not looking, and he can't recognize the type of aircraft of the Entente countries at all.

The twenty planes flying in the air did belong to France, and their tail fins had three colors of red, white and blue, and what was more puzzling was that the livery of the planes was actually a mixture of yellow, grass green, and dark colors. They received the name Newport 17, a new model from the beginning of 1916, and also aircraft with a machine-gun firing coordinator installed.

The first real fighter recognized as the French Morana. Solnier L-shape. This aircraft was not the first aircraft to be armed with machine guns, but thanks to the French pilot Laurent? The "deflector system" invented by Garros is to add steel plates to the propeller blades to deflect the warhead that hits it, thus making it possible to install a fixed coaxial machine gun on the fuselage, greatly simplifying the pilot's aiming and maneuvering, so that this kind of aircraft is qualified to become a real fighter.

Using the "deflector system", Roland. Garros shot down a German armed reconnaissance plane on 1 April 1915. But Garros, having given hope to the Entente, left the opportunity to the Germans. He was forced to land and captured on April 18, and after studying the "deflector system" on his landline, the Germans found that the shortcomings were quite obvious, the performance of the propeller was reduced after the installation of the deflector blade, and the deflected warhead could also bounce back and damage the engine. So the Dutchman Anthony. Fokker came out and invented the "machine gun fire coordinator", which greatly improved the firepower and safety of the aircraft. The Coordinator was fitted with Fokker E.3 fighters, and the famous "Fokker catastrophe" befell the Allied Air Force.

Litch knew something about the revolutionary progress of the "machine gun fire coordinator" on the aircraft, and the fighter was also born because of the emergence of the "machine gun fire coordinator", but he didn't have the extra attention to think about that, because in addition to the first wave of twenty French planes, the second wave of forty large fleets of forty aircraft consisting of the French Falmont F.20 and the British F.E.2b appeared.

The forty planes didn't have an obvious target or destination like the first wave, they were sailing irregularly under the control of the pilot, and it looked like they were conducting a large-scale, high-frequency reconnaissance in the air?

[It seems to be ...... Something is wrong, huh? 】

There were planes in the air to reconnoitre, and there were relatively scattered scout cavalry on the ground, and everything seemed so unusual.

[Could it be that after waiting for so many days, those generals are finally going to appear? 】

At this moment, it was not only Li Qi and others who were thinking about similar problems, but also Ewald of the slope anticline. Feng. Kleist was also thinking about such questions, but they were more worried about the special event that had occurred.