The moonlight is like water, sprinkling a gentle glow on every inch of space in the foothills of the Arden Mountain. In this soft and quiet summer night, the smoke and artillery fire that had lasted all day on both sides of Germany and France finally subsided. The exhausted German soldier fell into his own trench, ignoring the sweat stains all over his body, and fell into a deep sleep.

"Boom." The lock opened, the hatch of the tank was lifted, and the pale-faced Guderian climbed out of it with difficulty. He greedily breathed in the strong air mixed with the smell of gunpowder, and his face was full of joy for the rest of his life.

Four hours earlier, Guderian's tanks had been surrounded by a large number of French infantry, firing rifles, poking with bayonets, and trampling with leather boots...... Do whatever it takes. Due to the slow speed of the tanks, the crushing of the infantry in Guderian's original plan almost completely did not appear; The whole tank is like a heavily armed rhinoceros being teased by hyenas, although it has the power to open mountains and crack rocks, but there is no room for its power. After a short time, the tank's guide wheels were blown apart by the continuous fire of the French infantry; With a creaking and screeching sound, the entire tank broke down in the crowd of French troops.

Just as Guderian was about to rest in this metal tomb, the sound of a heavy shell explosion suddenly sounded in the lost position. Guderian, who was expecting a miracle in a desperate situation, suddenly reacted, this kind of explosion, which was far less powerful than a bomb, but several times more powerful than a 75mm gun, could only be caused by his own heavy artillery troops! And the heavy artillery firepower that is difficult to move is covered here, and the large forces in the rear must not be far away!

The explosions of heavy shells rang out one after another, like lightning and thunder. The French officers and soldiers, who had been surrounding their cars, scattered in a hurry. The murmur of insulting the tank outside the vehicle was inaudible. Due to the fact that the guide wheels of the tank have been damaged, lying in the nest. The observation window was punctured by bayonets during the previous French onlookers and could not be opened; Guderian, who was completely ignorant of the external situation, did not dare to risk opening the hatch at all, so he could only stay in the tank and pray and resign himself to fate.

Minutes and seconds are silent, and the degree is like a year. During this period, the tank was repeatedly visited by stray bullets; Every time the bullets and steel armor suddenly rubbed into a sharp and piercing terrifying sound, it relentlessly stimulated Guderian's sensitive nerves. After a few hours, the explosions and gunfire coming from outside the tank finally subsided. Feeling that the car body had not been damaged by the previous crowd of French troops, Goodry was relieved and happy. This must have been the reason why the French army retreated and moved away from itself! When the gunfire and explosions had completely died away, Guderian and his crew struggled to open the damaged and deformed top hatch. The moon rises high and the sky is full of stars. As far as the eye can see, the vast wilderness seems to have been raised by a sea of corpses; The leather boots stepped on the red earth, and they already had a squishy feeling soaked in blood.

Towards midnight, Guderian finally returned to his tank unit. After a debriefing, his battle finally came to an end. What he didn't know, however, was how the battle had changed during the seven hours he had been trapped in the tank and returning to the queue.

As early as evening, the defensive line of the German airborne troops was on the verge of collapse in the desperate attack of the French army; The line of defense was broken through a large hole four kilometers wide. And it was constantly stretched and torn under the impact of the French army. Countless French officers and soldiers on the edge of the encirclement waited for this opportunity, and immediately fled from the gap between the friendly forces and the outside; Look far away. It was as if the Spring River flood was rolling through the gap in the river and bursting the embankment.

When the herald informed Russell of the situation, the lieutenant general was furious. Although his hunters had already engaged the airborne troops by this time yesterday, the main force of the brigade was still trudging in the rear and could not reinforce its friendly units in time. Until this time, his vanguard troops were still five kilometers away from the front-line battlefield. In order to relieve the pressure on the front line as much as possible in a timely manner, Russell ordered his heavy artillery to set up its cannons and start firing freely at the maximum elevation angle as soon as the French troops were brought into range. So there was the scene that Guderian, who was in a desperate situation just now, saw.

After a somewhat messy artillery bombardment, the main reinforcements from the German southern flank finally joined up with the struggling French army half an hour later. Although the German reinforcements were exhausted by the continuous march, the physical strength of the French army had been exhausted by the previous hours of fierce fighting; In addition, the Germans had a considerable advantage over the French in infantry weapons, and the momentum of the French army's ferocious advance was immediately stopped by a steady stream of German fresh troops entering the battle. When the bright moon hung high, the soldiers on both sides who had been fighting fiercely for three hours were exhausted, and they couldn't help but temporarily stop the confrontation on the battlefield.

With the arrival of German reinforcements, some of the positions occupied by the French were regained by the Germans, and the gap became smaller. Even so, a large number of French troops were fleeing rapidly through the gap at the end of the German encirclement. Perhaps sensing that this gap might be closed at any moment in the German attack, the French discarded all their baggage and heavy weapons, carrying only rifles and necessary supplies, and evacuated lightly and at full speed. The German barrage roared through the air, crashing into the land controlled by the French army, and the deafening explosion was so clear in the night.

Russell was clearly not happy with this situation. Although the French troops who escaped from the gap were all French troops who had been swept into the encirclement after the German southern flank cluster broke through the defensive line, and its 80,000 troops near Visoran were still advancing slowly on the road that was seriously blown up by the German air forces, and they could not reach this gap for a while, but the escape of the French troops in formation was definitely not the result expected by the German army. After resting for three hours, Russell did not give the French a respite; With a rapid artillery bombardment, the German officers and soldiers attacked again with the clear light of the bright moon.

The guns roared angrily, the artillery fire was like a rainbow, and the bloody battlefield during the day, when it was too late to clean up the corpses, became a burial place for officers and soldiers on both sides at night. This time it was the French who had the upper hand. The previous thunderous and fierce offensive of the German army relied on the fierce bombardment of airships and aircraft, the fierce support of heavy artillery units, and the crushing advance of steel chariots. By the end of the night, when the air force had disappeared and the ability of heavy artillery to aim had been greatly reduced, the Germans, who had all their tanks broken down and were waiting to be repaired, suddenly struggled to advance in the face of the French army's long defensive line. In the middle of the night, the Germans did not make the expected breakthrough, and the lightly armed French troops in the encirclement were still running fast and marching away. Russell couldn't do much about the situation; He could only order his troops to intensify the offensive while waiting for the repair of the armored tanks and the arrival of daylight.

In the early morning of 21 May, the Germans again gathered a large number of forces, and with the support of airships and heavy artillery, they launched the last blow at the French troops in the gap in the encirclement. Several steel monsters that had been repaired overnight roared and charged, fearless in the rain of bullets from all directions, and went straight forward. In the face of the fierce German offensive as always, the French army, which hastily erected rudimentary fortifications, had no way to deal with it; Their defensive line was again stabbed by the Germans like in the previous battle, and it was not systematic and large. Although the French defenders were aware of their duty and not a single one of them flinched, the outcome of the battle in the age of hot weapons was no longer determined by mere courage. Under the opening of submachine guns and grenades, the lost trenches were recaptured by the gray wave; With the advantage of weapons, the German army advanced faster than the French army broke through yesterday.

By noon that day, the Germans had regained all of their defensive lines in Alvi. Heavy artillery and airboat fire was fierce, cutting the two flanks of the French army back in the middle; During this period, the French army launched several counterattacks, but they were successfully blocked by the Germans. Yesterday, the French suffered extremely heavy casualties as a result of storming the German machine-gun line, and their vitality was sharply reduced.

After five days of assault, an encirclement was finally formed in the area south of the Ardennes foothills, northwest of the province of Lorraine. Because the two-front attack launched by the French army the day before once broke through the German Alvi line, the French army that had been swept into the encirclement by the main German army fled in large numbers; In just twelve hours, the French troops, who had been on the edge of the encirclement and had been racing against the main German forces in the inner ring, had almost all escaped. The German airship reconnoitred around and found that the more than 40,000 people who had gathered here two days ago were now only scattered in the encirclement.

However, the French paid a heavy price for this not entirely successful rescue operation: more than 25,000 people were killed or wounded, and the heavy layers of corpses were comparable to the massacre in the battle of Salbul half a month earlier. The Germans also suffered 6,000 casualties, all of which were inflicted in a head-on battle with the French in the trenches under the cover of lack of heavy firepower. However, their casualties were already quite low compared to those of the French; What's more, the French troops who hastily retreated in the encirclement abandoned a large amount of ammunition supplies and weapons and equipment, and the German troops who cleaned up the battlefield were also of great benefit.

At the same time that Russell and the French troops were fighting fiercely in Alvi, the other forces in the encirclement were also tightening inward. The 135th Division, which had been serving as a decoy under the city of Visorand, also began to defend and attack, and once again entered the devastated ruins of the almost empty building. Nearly 200,000 German troops delivered the most powerful blow to the more than 80,000 French troops in the encirclement. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you book friends for the monthly ticket support of the world waves, the sky on the white clouds and the reward of the February 30th precept book~~