Outside the Palestinian port of Imbros is now a mess, with waves of Austro-Hungarian landing craft rushing to the shore, and hundreds of Marines jumping from their landing craft, wading waist-deep waters, weapons held high, and launching assaults on the beach. Shells exploded on the beach, whipping up columns of water or white sand. From time to time, someone fell in the explosion, and the British machine guns in the coastal fortifications spat tongues of fire, and the bullets swept across the water, causing a series of splashes. On the blue sea, wisps of blood float on the surface of the sea near the beach.

In the northwest sea of the harbor, dozens of warships lined up in a single column, suppressing the fire of the British with their broadside naval guns, and huge fireballs sprang up between the low heights and rocks on the shore, and earth, wood chips, rock fragments, broken flesh, and mutilated weapons flew in the air in the smoke of gunpowder.

The white sand was littered with soldiers and wrecked vehicles, some of whom, during the brief interlude between machine-gun and artillery fire, got up and quickly rushed forward a few steps, then fell down again, some of whom had never gotten up again. A Marine light tank rushing onto the beach spat out tongues of fire as it tried to rush to the sand bank in front of it. However, the sand bank was too steep, and the tank rushed forward at full speed, and several shells flew from nowhere around the tank, and as the smoke cleared, the tank was already paralyzed in place.

The characteristic screech of large-caliber shells was heard in the air, and the sound was loud, and these shells streaked through the sky and smashed on the positions of the British troops. The earth trembled, and in a series of earth-shattering explosions, the coastal positions of the British army were enveloped in smoke of gunpowder. The enemy's artillery fire near the coast gradually thinned out, and the British counterattack fire quickly weakened under the suppression of the fleet's devastated shelling.

"Rush!"

Supported by the gunfire of the battleships, the officers and men of the Marine Corps began to charge forward, and more and more tanks and armored vehicles came ashore and began to break through the trenches of the enemy's front. The gap has been opened and is constantly expanding.

The British Lancashire Division, composed mainly of Irish, was much more tenacious than the 11th Division composed of English, and the 39th Division, which launched an attack on the positions of the British 11th Division, had already broken through the British defenses, but the 12th Marine Division, which had always regarded itself as an elite, had just gained a foothold on the beachhead.

Now the situation at the beachhead has changed considerably, and it is no longer as tense as it was just now.

Rear Admiral Platisic, who had been watching the battle from the warship, finally relaxed a little.

The smoke had faded a little, the dusky sun had a dim glow from the billowing smoke, and the guns were still ringing, but they had begun to move away from the vicinity of the landing beach. The armored units of the Marine Division had already rushed through the British positions on the first line and began to advance in depth.

On a deserted British artillery position, a piece of artillery that was still majestic was abandoned in the same place, and the artillerymen had already followed the defeated troops and began to flee in the direction of Mesopotamia, and many heavy equipment and supplies were discarded.

In just one day, the British lost the port of Imbros. Now a steady stream of Austro-Hungarian and German follow-up troops is coming ashore from the port and advancing towards Tel Aviv and Beirut.

The loss of Port Isbrom sent a great shock to London.

It is clear that the German-Austrian forces entered the Near East, and their ultimate goal was, naturally, the Suez Canal Zone. Although the strategic value of the Levant region is not great, it gives the British side a bad premonition. If the Suez Canal were to be controlled by the Allies, there was no sign of what force would be able to prevent the Austro-Hungarian Navy from entering the Indian Ocean. In this area, the British defenses were very weak, while the Americans had little to offer.

Now the Austrians were showing their might in the Mediterranean, while the British home fleet was pinned down by the Germans and could no longer draw strength against Austria. If the British Empire wanted to regain their superiority in the Mediterranean, it would have to draw at least seventy percent of the strength of its home fleet, which was simply not possible under the present circumstances.

It was entirely possible that the German-Austrian forces, which had gained supremacy of the Mediterranean, would land at any point on land and strike at the weakest points of the British army, while the British forces in Egypt and the Middle East were in a completely passive position.

After meeting with the Austro-Hungarian Emperor at the Hofburg Palace, Jiang Zuobin finally agreed to send the Chinese Engineer Army to the front line to receive training in actual combat. For the first time, the Chinese Workers' Regiment was pushed onto the battlefield.

In the past two years, the Beiyang side has sent more than 300 officers to Austria, and nearly 600,000 Chinese laborers have been forced to put on Austro-Hungarian gray military uniforms and receive military training in so-called labor camps. But these trained Chinese legions were generally engaged in logistical labor on the battlefield, and had never been sent to the front to fight.

Now, seeing that the former Germans and Austrians were about to win, the Beiyang government, in order to finally train and control this army, ignored the warnings and protests of the British, Americans, and Japanese, and acquiesced in the Austrians' use of Chinese laborers to fight. Anyway, the sky is far away, and we can't help the Austrians, and most of these Chinese laborers are laborers recruited by Britain, France and Russia, and you haven't protected them well, so why do you blame us now.

Contrary to Ye Qi's imagined situation in the heavily guarded port, the German-Austrian forces were quite lax in guarding the port of Tel Aviv, and the docks were chaotic, with military supplies piled up like hills everywhere. The soldiers began to disembark from the transport ship and poured onto the dock, which was crowded with people and looked very noisy.

Of course, the size of Tel Aviv Port cannot be compared with the large ports in Europe, although it is also a relatively large port in the Middle East, but the actual transportation capacity is limited. It took four days for the 1st Division of the Chinese Workers Corps to get all ashore, but most of the transport ships carrying equipment were still dangling on the sea, waiting to vacate the docks before they could be unloaded.

Brigadier General Carroll, as the head of the Austro-Hungarian military's military advisory group for the Chinese Workers' Army, accompanied Wu Guangxin, commander-in-chief of the Chinese Workers' Corps, to stand on the bridge of the armored cruiser "Grand Duke Franz" and watch the Chinese-Workers' Corps land on the dock. This was definitely a heavy military operation of the Chinese Workers' Corps, but he heard that this Commander Wu and the deputy chief of general staff surnamed Jiang belonged to different factions, and the relationship was not very harmonious.

"General Carroll, do you think our troops can really beat the British?" Wu Guangxin said, to be honest, he always felt a little apprehensive in his heart, and he still had a fear of foreigners.

"No problem, General, the Chinese soldiers are very good soldiers, they obey orders, and they are also able to bear hardships and stand hard work, and never complain to their superiors. Since the beginning of the war, I have trained a lot of reservists, and at least your soldiers are better than the Czechs, Poles and Romanians. "It's a little regrettable that their level of education is too low, and they can't carry out the spirit of taking the initiative in battle, and they need to be constantly given orders by their commanders." ”

"Are we really going to war with the British?"

"That's of course, oh, the intensity of operations in North Africa is much worse than in the French battlefield, and even worse than when fighting the Russian army. Don't worry, we have an absolute advantage in numbers. These soldiers cannot become real warriors without experiencing a real baptism of war. ”

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