Xue Yue, the commander of the 61st Regiment, was not from a serious youth army, he was originally a member of the old Yue army. During the Patriotic War, according to the secret agreement between the Kuomintang and the revolution, the Cantonese army was required to surrender the defense area in northern Guangdong and go to Fujian in exchange for arms support from the Youth Army. Xue Yue, who was a second lieutenant in the Guangdong Army at the time, did not want to leave his hometown in Guangzhou, so he took the initiative to leave the Guangdong Army and return to Shaoguan. Later, Xue Yue was recruited into the Youth Army by the Guards Brigade, which was upgraded from a brigade to a division, and due to the lack of officers at that time, Xue Yue, who had not experienced the Xiangxi Military Academy, was exceptionally appointed as a lieutenant platoon commander. Then there was an accident, I don't know which kind person actually recommended Xue Yue in front of Dashuai (actually Wang Zhenyu himself). In short, Xue Yue began to rise to prominence after that, and was sent to the Wuhan Senior Officer Crash Course for a month to study and was awarded the rank of major, and then was added to the European Military Observer Group and promoted to lieutenant colonel. Then he served as the colonel of the 61st Regiment of the Sixth Division of the Expeditionary Force, and it only took one year from second lieutenant to colonel.

Fortunately, there are still so many officers like Xue Yue in the expeditionary force, so it is not so abrupt.

Unlike the traditional officers of the Youth Army, after all, it has only been less than a year since he joined the army, and Xue Yue still retains the tradition of the old Cantonese Army officers commanding from the front. In the traditional youth army, commanders above the regimental level are required to be at the rear, and the purpose of this military order is to protect senior officers and avoid the tragedy of the defeat of troops due to the death of senior officers in battle.

Xue Yue was in the command post of the third battalion at the moment, and his telescope was in the direction of pillboxes 184 and 185.

The Germans were attacking with great ferocity, and after the infantry had been knocked down in large numbers, their soldiers lay down or found shelter with very standard movements. Then the grenade flew over, but it was not very lethal to the reinforced concrete bunker. The Germans could only wait for the artillery to support again at this time, but now it is World War I, not World War II, and the so-called infantry and artillery coordination cannot be done, so naturally it will not be able to do the kind of infantry in later history who shouted the enemy's position to the artillery with walkie-talkies, and then the shells smashed into the enemy's firepower point with great accuracy, but it doesn't matter, the Germans have the Germans' methods, and they soon had more than 20 casualties approaching Pillbox 185, and then plugged the grenade through the shooting hole. With a bang, the bunker was blown up into the sky, and all the Chinese soldiers of a squad inside were martyred.

This method seemed to work, but soon the Germans summoned a blow to their reckless behavior, and the two surrounding pillbox firing points 184 and 186 fired at the Germans in a frenzied angle, killing more than forty brave Germanic warriors, and the Germans had to temporarily retreat.

Zhao Yanbin, Ma Wenyuan, and Xia Liqiu, who were guarding in the No. 184 bunker, looked at the No. 185 bunker that had become ruins twenty meters away, and felt very sad. Everyone began to cheer up and pay close attention to the direction of the German infantry movement, in short, they would not let these Germans get close to the pillbox to carry out the blasting.

The German artillery was finally summoned by the infantry, Xia Liqiu felt the whole earth tremble again, and the squad leader Shi Jinrong sat in the bunker without saying a word and opened a can of fish, and then chewed a piece of fish meat with his hand and chewed it slowly, as if the enemy outside had nothing to do with him, while the other soldiers continued to pray that the bunker they were in would not be hit by German artillery fire.

The bombardment by the artillery improvised by the German infantry lasted only five minutes, as the German artillery ran out of ammunition. And this is only two divisions of firepower to show their power, there is no other heavy artillery, so after the shelling stopped, the German soldiers were extremely disappointed to find that those damn pillboxes were still pouring machine gun bullets on themselves like no money.

For a whole afternoon, in front of Pillbox 184, nearly 200 German corpses were densely piled up. And compared with other pillboxes, Pillbox 184 is not a little lucky, from the outside, the shooting hole around the bullets have long been hit by the German army to return fire everywhere There are holes, but not a single bullet has been successfully fired into the pillbox. As a result, none of the ten soldiers in the class suffered casualties, and at this time, Xue Yue issued a secret order to retreat, because not far from No. 184, pillboxes No. 186 and No. 187 had been blasted by German grenades. No. 184 has now lost its fulcrum, and the result of continuing to hold on is likely to be destroyed by the Germans in the same way at the next point in time. Since the order to stick to it was fifteen days, every soldier was invaluable to Xue Yue now.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, after running out of a bullet from the heavy machine gun, under the leadership of the squad leader, Sergeant Shi Jinrong, the whole squad opened the door of the pillbox and began to run frantically towards the battalion headquarters. And the Germans, who had just been repulsed, did not retreat too far, they were organizing a sixth wave of death squads to come up and deliver grenades. Now they had discovered the attempts of the Chinese defenders at Bunker 184, so they opened fire, and two unlucky comrades were unceremoniously knocked to the ground by the Germans, and the others hurried to drag them. This is also required by military doctrine, you can surrender, but you must not abandon your comrades who are wounded on the battlefield, otherwise you will face a court-martial trial. In the end, the eldest of the two soldiers was not able to save him, and the German bullet pierced his lungs through his back......

The same battle was fought in the defensive positions of the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th regiments, and for a whole day, the Germans paid 4,000 casualties, but only advanced less than 50 meters, which is an extremely frustrating result to think about. Lieutenant Colonel Effenberg, whose troops had suffered more than 40% casualties, was allowed to rotate according to the orders of the German General Staff, and he immediately rode to his division commander, who had to tell him some of his thoughts. And when Field Marshal Hindenburg saw the battle report from the front in Nancy's headquarters, the expression on his face became very wonderful, which was unimaginable. In a small area, the Imperial army failed to take it after an artillery bombardment of such a scale, paying 4,000 casualties, what is the situation? Field Marshal Hindenburg was so angry that he was about to go away with a blow of his beard.

When did the Chinese become so capable of fighting? Marshal Hindenburg remembers very clearly that sixteen years ago, the veteran Marshal Wadsey was very easy to beat the regular army of the Qing Empire plus a million boxers with only 20,000 allied troops. How many years has it been, and the Chinese, a group of East Asian sick men, dare to wrestle with the elite of the empire in Europe?

And in Paris, a reception is taking place, where diplomats and politicians from the Entente powers, including Britain, France, Italy, and others, are enjoying the dry red of the upper haode Bordeaux while exchanging views on the war. It is worth noting that although the Nationalist Government in the south has a diplomatic department, it has not set up a foreign station, so the representative of China at this reception was Hu Weide, the minister of the Beiyang Government in France. Because of the Nationalist Government's dispatch of troops to Europe, Chinese diplomats stationed in France have now become valuable. However, today's reception was obviously not a gathering of friends, and from the beginning of the party, French Prime Minister Clemenceau made a very unceremonious and sincere protest to our Minister Hu Weide, protesting that the damned Chinese army did not seriously fulfill its obligations to the coalition forces. Well, now the poor French army was thrown directly in front of the fierce Germans and beaten badly. And all this was caused by the incompetence of the Chinese army, and poor Minister Hu Weide could only endure Clemenceau's roar with a grim face without saying a word.

And the Japanese diplomats attending the meeting sneered on the side with wine glasses, as if it was a very pleasant thing to see the Chinese ugly, but not every Japanese is like this, the military attache of the Japanese Legation in Denmark Nagata Tetsuyama held the wine glass with one hand, and the other hand put the frame of the glasses on his nose.

Less than two meters away from Nagata, British Prime Minister Lloyd George was talking with Japanese Prime Minister Masashi Terauchi's special envoy Hirota Hiroki with great enthusiasm. This is also a characteristic of Japanese diplomacy during this period, and Masaki Terauchi, who was born in the military, became Japan's prime minister and foreign minister, which determined that many major foreign affairs could not be discussed by Terauchi in person. So the special envoy took on this mission, which originally belonged to the foreign minister.

"Mr. Hirota, it seems that the Chinese army is indeed not as reliable as your country's army, and I still hope that your country can send troops to Europe to beat the Germans together with us, and we can talk about funding and equipment." Prime Minister Lloyd George now looks like a human trafficker, hiring troops everywhere who can shed blood for the British Empire.

Hirota Hiroki nodded and said: "Of course, the Great Japanese Imperial Army is more reliable than the inferior Shina Army, they have defeated the Russian warriors, but this matter is not a trivial matter, I can't express my position here, I can only ask the Imperial Government." Now it seems that your country has spent all the weapons and loans on the people of China, which really makes us as friends of your country feel sad. ”

Nagata Tetsuyama can understand English, and he frowned unconsciously after hearing the conversation between Lloyd George and Hirota Hiroki.

After a few years in Europe, Nagata Tetsuyama, a rational faction, knows much more about the combat effectiveness of the German army than the guys in China who are stubbornly sitting in the well and watching the sky.

Not kidding, as far as the Imperial Japanese Army is concerned, the Navy may still be able to come and beat the Germans, if it is the Army, then come and find a beating. Therefore, the performance of the Chinese this time is not surprising, and the imperial army may not be much stronger. In the final analysis, the war of the great powers is still playing with industrial capacity!