"Left and right, left and right, left...... Turn right! ”

In a large open field outside an improvised camp, two kilometres east of the city of Amorim, nearly a thousand newly transferred laborers from Austria-Hungary were undergoing simple training. In fact, the Chinese workers recruited to Europe received simple military training and were well adapted to life in the barracks.

With the support of Li Haidun, the Chinese workers in Austria-Hungary were reorganized into the Chinese Workers' Corps according to the military establishment, with Wu Guangxin as the head of the regiment, and there were six "Volunteer Corps" under it, each with 1,500 officers and soldiers.

There were four Chinese Workers' Volunteers in Galicia and South-West Ukraine, one in Romania, and the 1st Chinese Workers' Volunteer Regiment assisted the Austro-Hungarian garrison in the Balkans. Most of these Chinese workers from Shandong, Hebei, Henan and Anhui have undergone physical examinations and screenings before going abroad, and most of them are strong and able to bear hardships and stand hard work.

However, most of these laborers who dared to cross the ocean and go to foreign countries to venture out to earn money were themselves proletarians who had lost their land and wandered around, and many of them were outlaws who turned out to be bandits, so the eating, drinking, prostitution, gambling, fighting, and theft in the Chinese workers' camps were repeatedly prohibited, and some criminal cases occasionally arose in the local area.

Ye Quan, an officer who had just left the military academy, was directly appointed as a battalion and company commander with hundreds of people under him, and the positions above the regimental level were held by senior officers from Lu University. Fortunately, both Austria-Hungary and Germany, having recruited nearly 8 million recruits after the start of the war, had rich experience in training and organizing recruits, and now these Chinese Workers' Corps were basically controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Officers and Non-commissioned Officers Advisory Corps, which relieved them of most of their burden.

Weapons were not a problem, as a result of the defeat of Italy, Germany and Austria collected 2,700 cannons, 20,000 machine guns, 1,200 mortars and more than 1.3 million rifles from the Italians.

Although the Italian standard Manlicia-Carcano M18.91 rifle has good performance, it uses a 6.5 mm caliber rifle cartridge, which cannot be matched with the standard rifles used by Germany and Austria, and there is no problem in providing it to the Chinese army. Due to its light weight and the shorter barrel, the Carcano rifle was more suitable for the Orientals with a short stature.

With the defeat of Italy and Serbia, Austria-Hungary was finally able to concentrate its forces on the Eastern Front, and by the spring of 1916 the total number of troops amassed by Austria-Hungary on the Russian-Austrian front had reached 1.5 million. However, Falkenhain transferred the three German armies of the Eastern Front to the Western Front and threw them into the meaningless Battle of Verdun.

On the Western Front, by February, the Battle of Verdun, which Falkenhayin had insisted, seemed to have become another protracted massacre of mutual attrition on both sides. The Germans' dreams were shattered again, and their offensive momentum had been curbed. Falkensen's redeployment of forces on the Eastern Front gave the Russians another opportunity.

Large German and French forces fought each other around a fortress of no military value, and a steady stream of troops poured into the battlefield from all over France and Germany, after which trains loaded with the bodies of wounded soldiers and fallen men returned from the front line. Falkensen was now disregarded by the fact that the battle would determine his personal future and reputation, and that the Germans had wasted their elite troops in a senseless battle.

In February 1916, the port of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turks finally welcomed another fleet, and one of the Ottoman triumvirates, Admiral Jemal Pasha, welcomed with mixed feelings the support fleet sent by his former enemy and now ally. The commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy, Admiral Sorochin, the former commander of the battlecruiser "Goburn", is also still on the list.

Vice Admiral Maouf commanded a German fleet of four battleships and two armored cruisers, plus Vice Admiral Pachner led the Austro-Hungarian fleet consisting of the battleships "Empress Teresa" and "Moretz" and the armored cruisers "Emperor Maximilian" and "Emperor Karl I" to Constantinople.

The Sea of Marmara is shining on a sunny day in February, and Istanbul is not too cold in its luxurious decline, and the Ottoman crescent flag hangs listlessly from the roof of the main entrance to the Ottoman Navy Command's Italian-style building.

The Russians tore off piece after piece of land from the Ottoman Empire through wars: the Crimean Peninsula, the Transcaucasia, Azerbaijan, Bukhara and Astrakhan in Central Asia. Europe now has no hope of getting it anymore, and the feuding Austrians have annexed almost all of the Balkans and North Africa's former Ottoman homeland, which is the legacy of the Ottomans.

But now the Austrians are allies, leaving the Turks helpless.

Barbarossa. The glory of the Haredin era has long since faded, and now it is the Austro-Hungarian fleet that is roaming the Mediterranean, and they have extended their claws to the Black Sea - in Constanta, Romania, the Austro-Hungarian Black Sea Fleet was formed, and at the same time, a river fleet called the Danube Fleet was established.

A sudden cold air from the south of Russia invaded the entire Black Sea coast, and the temperature plummeted below freezing, which made the Austro-Hungarian sailors from the warm Mediterranean look quite uncomfortable. Rain and snow fell over Constantinople, the streets were covered with unmelted snow and ice, and the northern shores of the Bosphorus were covered with a thin layer of ice, which seemed to be back to winter.

In such weather, Admiral Sorochin set sail from the Golden Bay Naval Base in the Sea of Marmara for overhaul with the battlecruiser "Selim Sultan" ("Yavos") and the battlecruiser "Mitiri", the original German battlecruiser "Goeben" and "Brest". The Ottomans were unable to provide a large enough dock for their warships to carry out repairs, and the large holes blown out by mines on the two warships could not be completely repaired, and the Turks had to plug the holes in the hull of the "Yavos" with wood, which was also a pioneering achievement.

Admiral Sorochin had been commanding such a wrecked ship, fearing that the hull would be opened with two more skylights, and that he would have to lead his German sailors to swim in the Black Sea.

He breathed a sigh of relief from the arrival of the combined German-Austrian fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Pachner and Vice Admiral Maouf.

With the Great War imminent, the Austro-Hungarian fleet had taken over the Turkish defence on the Black Sea for him, and now he was finally able to take the battered ship to a larger shipyard for repairs.

After the defeat of Italy, its capital ships were divided between Germany and Austria, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy received the "Dante" and three battleships of the "Count Cavour" class, four dreadnoughts, four armored cruisers and six cruisers, while the Germans received two battleships of the "Durio" class, two armored cruisers and four cruisers. After the blockade of the Dardanelles by Britain and France was lifted, the German fleet led by Vice Admiral Maouf was also under the command of Admiral Sorochin, and Sorochin, who now had four battleships and a battle cruiser, finally straightened his waist and was qualified to compete with the British Mediterranean fleet.

However, the current strategic focus seems to have shifted to the Black Sea.

Now the Russians are on the move again, this time regrouping 2.7 million troops on the Eastern Front.

The Germans were now empty, with only three armies on hand in Hindenburg and Mackensen from East Prussia to Poland, and the defensive line was full of holes.

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