By the time the exhausted Wilhelm II left the High Command, it was already late at night.

Wilhelm II, who was sitting in the carriage, looked out the window at the deserted street, and the chill on his body became even stronger.

Everything around me was a nightmare.

Now, Wilhelm II just wants to end this nightmare as soon as possible, one way or another. Remembering the start of the war six years ago, he seems to have forgotten the reason for it.

The story of the assassination of the Grand Duke sounds like a distant dream.

Thinking of the final outcome of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II's family, Wilhelm II couldn't help but fight a cold war.

September 16, 1919, Paris, France.

Autumn is the best season in France, but at this time, there are no sunflowers and lavender in France. Everywhere you look, there are charred earth, smoking craters, collapsed houses, abandoned villages. In the area where the two sides are fighting, a no-man's land stretching for thousands of kilometers has been formed.

On this day, two figures who would later become prominent in history arrived at the headquarters of the coalition forces in France and the headquarters of the Sino-American coalition forces on the southern front.

Paris, the headquarters of the Allied Coalition Forces, an important visitor arrived today to bring the senior commanders of the Allied armies who had just recaptured Paris to Paris. Of course, they were basically British and French officers, and the Chinese representative had only one colonel liaison officer, and the American representative was a celebrity, but he would not be famous until twenty years later, and he was the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force, and the adjutant of General Pershing. Smith? Major Patton.

The person who came was not an officer, but a tall, thin middle-aged man.

As a politician, Arthur? Neville? Chamberlain was exactly fifty years old and was approaching the pinnacle of his political career. This time, as a representative of the War Committee of the British House of Commons, he conveyed important decisions about British political axes to the senior generals here.

Chamberlain's account is perhaps the best account of the history of this event.

"Today, I am in Paris on behalf of the House of Commons, and I am looking forward to this trip, two months ago we took out the German navy. It is said that now only four 'York' class battlecruisers remain in the port of Kiel, and I think the war is really coming to an end.

My friend in London told me before I left: the Germans, through the Swiss political axe, expressed their willingness to end the war.

Well, these hellish bastards, we've been fighting like this for six years, and now you say end the war, then sign an agreement in Berlin and surrender!

September 17th

Yesterday Marshal Fuxi's dinner was sumptuous, and I really can't believe that this was on the front line of the war. The officers are clearly delighted, yes! The Germans are going to be finished, and just a few months ago they occupied Paris. Well, as a French major said, we went to Little Sanssouci for Christmas.

On September 20, today we went to the front line in Amiens, and I saw the soldiers, and their morale was very high. I was chatting with a soldier of the Algerian Colonial Legion, a North African soldier of French origin named Drane, and I remember him saying a lot of interesting things:

"I've been in this foxhole with my partner Raymond for almost a year, and you know that time before that was really hard, the Germans didn't seem to be able to fight to death, and we had to retreat again and again. The number of fellows who came out of Tripoli with me was more than half of them in a month. But Raymond and I were lucky, so we waited until the time to fight back. Hey! Raymond, when we arrive in Berlin, we will go together to Stater den Linden for coffee, and I will treat you to a Silesian sausage. You see, sir, the German line of defense in front of us is now in tatters, and under the half-broken wall lie two damaged guns, which are still captured by our 75 miss, but we blew it up, and the good girl cannot fall into the hands of the Germans. After the young man finished speaking, he withdrew the last bullet case from the chamber with a click, and with the sound of metal touching the ground, he quickly pressed another row of bullets into the magazine, very cleanly. ”

At the forward observation posts, I saw that the Germans, relying on local French towns, had placed some fortifications on the ruins left behind by our previous retreat. The walls and windows of the houses on either side were riddled with bullet holes, some from German infantrymen's machine guns and rifles, others from tanks and armoured vehicles. Although the sometimes sparse and sometimes dense gunfire on the front positions continued to reach people's ears, at least the German soldiers could enjoy a temporary peace and calm on this defensive line. However, I think soon they will be able to go to the prisoner of war camp and enjoy a long period of peace.

We arrived at Fort Resunne in the afternoon, which seemed not as laid-back as Amiens, and the front-line officers who received us said that they had just finished a battle and that they had broken through to the town ahead. The damaged tank was still lying quietly in the middle of the road, the armored car that had burned from the explosion was still emitting wisps of smoke, and dozens of corpses in gray military uniforms were lying on the street, only the blue near the barricades would be more abundant.

It seems that the officers here are all in a hurry, and they have already wanted to launch a general attack in advance. I saw more than a dozen soldiers with steel helmets. As they rushed around the corner, they nearly tripped over the bodies of their fallen companions, and eventually stumbled into the dead end of the Germans' shooting. Soon, the cheers of the soldiers were heard in the town, and the brave warriors could spend the night in the town today, although there were no decent houses there either.

September 21

Today, unexpectedly, the American delegation also came to France. It is said that this time they brought a second expeditionary force, with half a million men. Frankly, these cowboys are brave, but they are not very used to the war. However, all friends are welcome.

On my second day in Leroy, I met the American Secretary of State, Lansing, a middle-aged man with a high nose, a pointed chin, and a somewhat pale face. I don't really like those cowboys, but the industrial power of the cowboys is really strong, and I believe that their participation will end the war as soon as possible. God testifies that Europe now lacks everything, we lack officers, we lack artillery, we lack boots, we lack cans, we lack everything! The industry of the Americans poured out an unforgettable amount of ordnance and ammunition. Among them, a considerable part of the production is concentrated in spring and summer. And now, they came at the right time.

September 24th

In the past few days on the front, I have always felt very happy, although only in those days in Paris, I was able to eat hot meals on time, but the high morale of the front line is more boiling than brandy! I'm going to bring everything here back to London, we're on our way to victory......"

Chamberlain's visit to northern France was undoubtedly joyful, and it made London optimistic. So, the Allies decided to start a major attack on the German lines in October, and to force them to launch the war, pay reparations, and so on.

Churchill, who was supposed to arrive at the same time as Chamberlain, did not arrive in Dijon in southern France until before the war due to the Admiralty's financial problems.

In the early days of the war, Churchill's experience was not much different from Chamberlain's, and the great superiority of the Entente was evident at this moment. From October 12, the offensive was launched, and under the cover of artillery fire, the Chinese and American forces advanced rapidly, advancing from Troyes to Thierry in five days. Judging from the declassified documents obtained after the war, this is actually a conscious abandonment of the German army's contraction defense. And when the coalition forces attacked the outskirts of Verdun, the real bitter battle began.

Churchill's account of this period is the best explanation of the battle.

"October 21.

As a battlefield observer, I moved forward with the squadron [***], and today our goal is Verdun. Half a year ago, we retreated from here, and now we want to reclaim it. Of course, I don't simply think that the Germans just let us go.

The commander of the Chinese is Peifu? General Wu, I have listened to the previous commander of the [***] team? Chen introduced him as one of the most warlike generals in the country, and I have no doubt about that. The Chinese are trustworthy allies, and they send elite and warlike troops, brave, fearless, and even not afraid of life and death.

Their armored forces were not with us, and Xia Fei transferred them all to Saint-Laurent. Of course, I'm not very worried about this, our front is mostly hilly and mountainous, and armored forces are not suitable. But as compensation, we were supported by more artillery and Peca 400 bombers. Our battle was launched before the sun came out, and this completely overturned my self-confidence in war.

On our combat map, a winding, thick blue line roughly runs northwest-southeast through the center of the map, and the red dot in the center of the blue line is the fortress of Verdun.

With this point as the center, two arc-shaped arrows were pointing at it - at that time our attacking troops, the left flank was the troops of General Pershing of the American army, and the right flank was Pérfu? Wu's troops.

The start of the battle still began with artillery, 480 180-mm howitzers of the regimental artillery, a total of 1,690 75-mm rapid-fire guns and 900 120-mm heavy mortars of the artillery battalions of each regiment, plus 280 150-mm cannons of the divisional artillery regiment that arrived that morning, a total of 3,350 cannons of more than 75 mm, began to carry out fierce artillery preparations on the perimeter of the Verdun fortress. Rise into the sky to provide calibration data for artillery groups.

And after the heavy artillery fire, I saw the planes that obscured the sky, and I swear it was the most I had ever seen. Wu told me that this time they concentrated 650 planes to bomb Verdun. Verdun, which had just been surrounded by flames and smoke before my eyes, was in an instant enveloped in fire and flames, and I swear it was a scene only in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Intensive artillery fire and aircraft bombardment continued for four hours, and at 9 a.m. the squadron charged in the morning light. More than 20,000 Chinese soldiers charged in loose straggler lines, wearing steel helmets with brims similar to those of the Germans and wearing gray military uniforms similar to those of the Germans. It's a strange feeling, it's like two German teams fighting each other. The Chinese officers and troops were first trained by the Germans, so that they still have a very strong Prussian style, the same rigor, the same courage and toughness.

The bugle was loud, the battle flag was flying, and a stream of infantry poured out of the trench, and the platoon that was the first to drill out of the trench immediately spread out into a skirmish line, with a distance of more than 5 meters between individual soldiers and weapons groups, and the platoon commander or company commander commanded in the middle of the middle and rear positions of his troops. In addition to the original personnel, the pioneer company of each battalion was reinforced with a squad of sappers and a platoon of assault infantry drawn from other companies, the main armament of the engineers was 3 to 10 kg TNT packs, and the main armament of the assault infantry was 0?5 and 1 kg assault grenades, of course, they were also equipped with rifles and a small number of ammunition for self-defense. While the infantry and light machine gunners of the vanguard company advanced forward, the heavy machine gunners and mortars who remained in the trenches began to suppress fire from the designated firing positions to the enemy positions, leaving a gap of 50 to 100 meters wide between the deployment areas of the battalions to prevent accidental injury, and the standard name was "battalion attack dividing line and fire separation zone", commonly known as "bullet tunnels".

Bullets fired from the rear whizzed past the soldiers, pouring waves onto enemy positions, and in the distance, the flash of shell explosions pierced the eyes of the attackers, and the soldiers who had just stepped out of the trenches could hear the sound of mortar fire behind them and the TNT explosion from the enemy positions 1,500 yards away.

The Germans didn't put up much of a stubborn line in the forward position, with the strikers of the center [***] quickly breaking through their forward defence. Naturally, the Germans would not let the [***] team attack wantonly, and the battle was fought for the main position on the front line. At the same time that the squadron had just poured out of the trenches, the machine guns of the German troops arranged in the front-line trenches began to fire sporadically at the straggler line of the squadron, but the overwhelming artillery fire of the squadron stopped the use of German firepower, and the light and medium mortars of the Chinese army, which were agile, quickly opened fire on the exposed German machine gun firing positions, destroying or suppressing them. However, the Germans took advantage of Verdun's original fortifications and set up a lot of defensive facilities, and once they were suppressed, there were immediately replacement fire points. The rapid-fire guns equipped with a line of rifle fire fired heavily at the skirmish line of the center [***], causing considerable casualties to the middle [***] team advancing at a marching pace.

The squadron [***], which was blocked, quickly summoned artillery to suppress the German firing point. A number of companies of elite soldiers were assembled, armed with light automatic weapons, and led by junior officers, to strike at weak positions in the German lines.

The Germans also made corresponding dispositions, they will attack the infantry, and the elite infantry company to form a "storm commando", between the attack waves of the squadron [***] and at night, a large number of Chinese troops who broke into the core position.

In order to seize the field fortifications on the outskirts of Verdun and complete the strategic encirclement of Verdun, the [***] squadron braved the dense German fire and launched a final charge. When they approached less than 20 yards from the trench, the most elite combat sappers were sent to the front line, and they threw grenades, and the smoke from the grenade explosion just rose, and they jumped into the enemy trench with their bayonet rifles and submachine guns, regardless of whether there were any living people in the trench, first put a row of guns, and then stabbed them indiscriminately, and the wounded were not spared, and they had to stab several times in a row, and then smash the skull with the butt of their guns -- in the previous battle, a junior officer of the squadron [***] team was after attacking the enemy's position, He was stabbed in the neck with a bayonet from behind by a wounded German soldier and died.

In some areas, the Germans set up a complete position and defense system, relying on housing facilities or special terrain to build relatively strong civil fortifications, including cement pillboxes. Artillery fire could not hit directly, and grenades alone were not enough to suppress it. At this time, the combat sappers were dispatched again, and two or three sappers sometimes prostrate, sometimes jumped, and after lying down a few times, they magically moved close to the enemy's fortifications, placed a large or small explosive bag near the weak point of the fortifications or near the firing port, lit the fuse, and quickly ran away. ”

As Churchill said, just the outer field positions alone, the two sides fell into a white-hot struggle. In the four-day battle, the Chinese expeditionary force paid the price of nearly 50,000 casualties before finally occupying the periphery of Verdun. On the left flank, after more than 30,000 casualties were killed and wounded, it was difficult to advance an inch only after completing the encirclement of Verdun.

And the real casualties were the Anglo-French forces on the Northern Front. As the direction of the main attack, the British and French troops gathered 1.87 million troops here, and also mobilized the tank and armor forces of the Chinese army and the American army. Such a large-scale build-up could not be concealed from the German army, which also amassed nearly 1.4 million troops here.

The fighting on the Northern Front was fought simultaneously with the Southern Front, and within five days, as a result of the conscious abandonment of the Germans. The allied forces broke through seven lines of defense from Amiens, the place of departure, and on October 21, they reached Namur. And it was here that the largest armored battle of the war took place in the lowland plains of the triangle of Namur, Mons, and Brussels.

In this wilderness, the Eighth Army, led by the German Crown Prince himself, gathered nearly 300 armored tanks. Opposite him were nearly one thousand and one thousand tanks and armored vehicles of the coalition forces, including the Chinese and American armies.

The Germans used to "entertain" the Allied forces with almost all of their armoured forces, including the A7V heavy tank and the newly developed K-type super-heavy tank. It is a K-shaped tank, a 150-ton monster with 22 combat members, a length of 13 meters, a width of 6 meters, and a height of 3 meters, relying on two 600-horsepower "Daimler-Benz" aviation gasoline engines to propel its huge body.

The battle between the two sides first began in the air, and in the sky of Wavell, hundreds of planes of all kinds: the "Camel" and "Page 400" of the coalition forces, the "Fokk" and "Handel" of the Germans, and in the air battle in the morning, hundreds of people spilled their blood in the blue sky.

(To be continued)