Command of the Second Macedonian Army in Romania.

"Your Excellency, our artillery fire has destroyed this area." The chief of staff, Major General Tokuji, pointed to the map and said, "But we are currently unable to organize forces to occupy this area. "The previous war with the Ottoman army was too fierce, and the number and strength of the Balkan coalition army were far greater than the Ottomans on the other side, but their casualties in the war were still quite large.

Especially in bilateral tank battles, the armored forces of the Romanian Second Army suffered heavy losses, which also had a certain impact on the battlefield.

Under such circumstances, Lieutenant General Stoika made a temporary retreat, covered with artillery fire to block a possible counterattack by the Ottomans, and then reorganized the battle plan of the counter-offensive of the forces!

The artillery fire successfully held back the Ottomans, but it would take about three days for the Romanian Second Army to gather new forces and sufficient superior artillery fire.

Three days was needed by the Romanian army, and by the Ottomans. After the repulsion of the Romanian legion, the pressure on the Ottoman Macedonian Army was greatly reduced, if it were not for the heavy army to transfer to the Macedonian Second Army to the direction of Montenegro, the former deputy chief of the general staff of the Ottoman army, the current Macedonian governor and commander-in-chief of the front army Muhammad. Talat Pasha had to teach the Serbian army a good lesson.

The three days passed quickly, and the offensive forces raised by the Romanian Second Army were generally in place, just short of ammunition supplies and a certain period of pre-battle rest, and the Serbian army was also actively making adjustments - they were constantly fighting with the Macedonian army on the Ottoman side for the past two days, trying their best to attract the attention of the Ottoman army.

But no one knows. In the space of these two days, the Macedonian Ottoman army was reinforced by an infantry division. Although this is not a mechanized infantry division, just a very ordinary and ordinary infantry division. There was only a poor armored brigade, and about fifty artillery. But the Ottomans used good camouflage - all the troops were transported in closed wagons with the words 'fuel', 'grain' and 'fodder' written on them. Tanks were camouflaged with straw. , sent this division to the Macedonian front without knowing it.

A division has at least 20,000 men, which is an unusually large supplement for the Macedonian Front, which is now stronger than 100,000 in numbers. And these people are all new forces, and taking the train is not much more exhausting than fighting!

Zhang He poured a sip of strong tea vigorously, feeling a little refreshed. His gaze returned to the document in front of him. The small square words pierced his eyes with tears. As a 60-year-old man, it is very sad to not fit his eyes for a day and two nights. Zhang He's eyes were bloodshot.

However, as the deputy head of the military delegation of the Chinese National Defense Forces to the Ottomans and the general adviser of the Macedonian Front of the Ottoman army, he has too many things to care about and deal with these days. For example, if you send tank troops, launch an early counterattack against the Romanian army that is about to attack.

Yes, in response to the advance counterattack of the Romanian army, the commander-in-chief of the tank forces was Zhang He. Because yesterday at the military meeting of the highest level of the Front. Zhang He completely vetoed the battle plan of Umar Pasha!

"Yesterday the artillery commander of the Front, Nuri Pasha, transferred the artillery units to our troops. After my study with the 11th Mechanized Bezrupasha, we decided to distribute the artillery units evenly among the attacking units, so that we could provide the necessary artillery support in a timely manner to the troops seizing the enemy's forward support points. ”

"What is the density of artillery in the direction of the offensive?" At that time Muhammad. Talat Pasha asked.

"Due to the equal distribution of all the artillery to the attacking units, the density of our artillery per kilometer of frontage can reach seventy to a hundred."

"How are you going to attack?"

"Tomorrow at five o'clock in the afternoon. First two hours of saturation artillery bombardment of the enemy's positions, followed by an infantry attack. ”

"And what about the tanks you have in your army? What role should they play in the offensive? ”

"The same. I will distribute the tanks evenly among the various units to provide fire support to the attacking infantry. ”

Talat Pasha nodded with satisfaction. Complimented: "Good plan. Then it was completely overturned by Zhang He, who spoke. At that time, everyone looked at Zhang He with surprised eyes, because Zhang He did not interfere with their command at all after entering the Macedonian Front. The advisory group he led was more of a staff officer. The entire Macedonian Front has a very high opinion of the Chinese advisory group. None of the generals could have imagined that Zhang He would speak at this time, and completely rejected the battle plan of the Macedonian Third Army, Umar Pasha.

"I feel that the attacking forces should follow the principle of concentrating artillery fire in the direction of the main offensive and hand over the command of the artillery to the 3rd Army Umar Pasha, instead of continuing the command of Nuri Pasha. And it is necessary not to completely disperse the use, but to ensure the density of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty guns per square kilometer of frontage in the main assault direction.

At the end of the two-hour artillery preparation, the artillery should quickly move positions and maneuver according to the pace of the Third Army's advance, and continue to provide artillery support for the battle in depth.

At the same time, the tank forces - "

"Suppose we are after the shelling. The infantry was only dispatched to attack, and from the map, our offensive position was almost five kilometers away from the enemy's front line, and it would take our infantry about one hour to reach an effective attack range. And in such a long time, the Romanians had already recovered from the panic of the initial shelling. Our army will inevitably be frantically blocked by them, causing heavy casualties. ”

"We have to play the role of armored forces." Zhang He was in favor of a two-hour saturation bombardment, which he had no objection to, but he believed that after an hour and a half of shelling, the tank units should be ordered to attack and stop 300 meters in front of the Romanian position. "This distance can prevent accidental injury to a certain extent, and at such a long distance, shrapnel flying from hundreds of meters away is not lethal at all.

"The reason why I want to keep the tanks before the end of the shelling. It reached 300 meters from the front of the enemy's position, with two purposes: first, to clear the mines in front of the position for our subsequent infantry units. The Romanians will certainly lay a large number of anti-infantry mines on their positions, but these will not do much damage to the tanks. Second. After the artillery has finished the shelling, the tank units can quickly rush into the position, tear a hole in the enemy's defensive line, and cover the infantry that will follow immediately to expand the breach. As for the infantry units that served as the attack, they were supposed to advance to the enemy's front ten minutes after the tank sortie. "The reason why the infantry and tanks are not allowed to attack at the same time is that the tanks are faster than the infantry, and even if they set off at the same time, they will get to the designated position first. And if the infantry and tanks attack at the same time. There was bound to be a problem of fighting for passages, especially if the Ottoman infantry had not yet adapted to the infantry on a large scale. The Ottomans are not China, and the army units here, except for the mechanized divisions for the main battle, have little experience in combat/exercises with tanks. Letting them go with the tanks can easily lead to unnecessary confusion in the attacking troops.

Zhang He concluded at that time: "According to the speed of the infantry's advance, when they reach the enemy's position, our tank unit should have already tore a hole in the enemy's defensive line. At this time, they can cooperate with the tanks to clear the remnants of the enemy in the trench fortifications, consolidate their positions and continue to attack. ”

This method is very common in China. The advisory group led by Zhang He has even made all the preparations for the Ottomans, there are quite a number of Chinese military cadets in the Ottoman army, Zhang He thought that the Ottoman counterattack plan would be as smooth as in China, but who knew that the Ottoman counterattack plan was so low!

Comrade Zhang, who had never bet on Ottoman before. Along with Umar Pasha, who did not know the Third Army, he was a well-known diehard in the Ottoman army, and as for the commander-in-chief, Muhammad. Talat Pasha was not so much a military general. Nowadays, it is more so that he is a politician who knows a certain military command.

Muhammad. Talat Pasha nodded with satisfaction after hearing this, because of the way Zhang He said. As long as the brain is not confused, you can judge it. This will greatly reduce the casualties of infantry units when attacking enemy positions.

As a result, the formulation of this battle plan fell entirely on Zhang He's head, and Umar left directly after the meeting, leaving only a staff officer at the headquarters of the front army as a liaison officer on both sides.

Zhang He is not a good-tempered person, and Umar's move directly made him hold a grudge. And the consequences are definitely not something that Umar can bear and is willing to bear.

Is the Chinese delegation really used as an ornament? Umar's sweep of Zhang He's face is to sweep China's face. At this juncture, a Umar is a gross compared to China's funding? Even though he had some influence in the Ottoman army and had some support behind him, he was only a thin little arm compared to the thickness of China's thighs.

Zhang He would have let Umar know the consequences, but now he had to complete all the counterattack plans, and there were five hours left.

The entire advisory group is working intensively in the calculation and deduction again and again, and there are many people like Zhang He who have not closed their eyes for two nights and a day. It's just that these officers are very young, and they are in their twenties and thirties when they are working hard.

Two hours before the battle began, the members of the advisory group led the interpreters down to the Third Army. Artillery and tank crews are their center of gravity. Zhang He also finished his work and fell asleep on the eve of the start of the battle. Although he slept only for an hour and a half, he was woken up by the guards half an hour before the start of the battle.

Zhang He finally contacted the anti-aircraft artillery positions everywhere, and when the Ottoman artillery fire rang out, the Romanian army was in a panic, and it was only the front-line troops who were in chaos, and their airship troops would immediately take off and rush towards the Ottoman army. The Ottoman airship forces would naturally meet the battle, but the performance of the airships on both sides was roughly equal, and the Ottomans were definitely a regional disadvantage in terms of numbers, otherwise they would not have been cut off by Romanian artillery fire for three days. This is the time to test the air defense forces of the Ottoman army!

Things were not at all what Zhang He expected, even at dusk, the Romanian airship troops rose into the air at a very fast speed, and then rushed over with great momentum.

......High in the sky, in the afterglow of the setting sun, hundreds of airships were mixed together, and machine guns and heavy machine guns were spraying their own flames. Huge airships are like fallen gods, falling from the sky. Less than forty Ottoman airships could not stop the Romanians, and soon lost seven airships. The Romanian airship did not waste much time to break through the opponent's blockade,

The anti-aircraft positions of the Ottoman army quickly began to intercept, and there were even anti-aircraft machine guns pulled by tractors or cars, chasing after the airships.

The casualties were mutual, the Romanians more than thirty airships were shot down, and the Ottoman side naturally could not afford not to pay the price. They also had eleven airships fall, two anti-aircraft artillery positions were heavily damaged, and one artillery position was devastated.

But the plan for a counterattack by the Ottoman army was completed. Their artillery bombardment interrupted the steps of the Romanians on the eve of the attack, and the tank units successfully broke through the two lines of defense of the Romanian army - the Romanian Second Army, which was about to start an offensive battle, the vanguard was placed on their first line of defense, and the follow-up troops were mainly concentrated in the second line of defense, and although the Ottoman army did not destroy the Romanian army, it actually inflicted heavy losses on the attacking troops of the three divisions raised by the Romanian Second Army.

The Romanian army lost more than 20,000 men, 400 artillery pieces and more than 30 tanks.

And for the Ottoman army, the most important thing is that they defeated the Balkan coalition forces. After this heavy blow, it will take at least a week for the Romanians to recover. The Serbian army's previous desperate entanglement with the Ottoman Macedonian Front was not their hero, but to buy time for the Romanian Second Army. Now of course, it will also stop.

The Ottoman army won at least ten days, and the battle that would decide the fate of Albania would come to an end ten days later. There were 400,000 Ottoman troops, 550,000 troops of Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania. They also had the Greek navy to help. And the Greek Navy has increased in strength in the last two years, although there are no dreadnoughts, but there are three former dreadnoughts, and the reason is clear to the Ottomans with their toes.

The northern front of the Ottomans was divided into three battlefields, and in addition to Macedonia and Albania, there was also the border with Bulgaria, where all the Bulgarian troops were now concentrated. On the entire northern front, the Ottomans mobilized 700,000 troops, but they could only guarantee the possibility of complete victory on the Albanian battlefield, and the other two places could only be mainly defensive counterattacks. Even if you win, you won, and you don't take advantage of the victory to pursue more and more strength! (To be continued.) )