21. Rush to the door of the color (17)
After a brutal unilateral devastation, Libramont fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht, and based on strict pre-war orders, the railway and road facilities were not seriously damaged, and the damage caused by the stray bullets was quickly repaired by the efforts of the engineers. At the same time, the main force of the Balk battle group, which had flanked Nesato, also successfully took the town. Compared to the bloody siege of Libramont, the fall of Nesato can be described as peaceful. The main force of the battle group took the town of one of the largest in the Ardennes with almost no effort, and almost at the same time as the fall of Libramont, the Black Hawk banner was raised in Nessato.
Now that there were no more unappetizing flies in front of the torrent of steel, Charlemagne's defenders were unaware of the impending invasion and had no defense. In this state, the lightning rush on the open space and the ground is either a sad tragedy or a comedy that laughs people to death, and in the eyes of the Charlemagne, who suffered this disaster, it is more likely to be a farce that humiliates themselves, their ancestors, and their descendants.
- The Mother Goddess is on Alfheim's side.
After the war, historians who leaned to Charlemagne's side always used this vinegary term, in their eyes, because the Divine Will Agent became the dictator of Alfheim, not only brought science and technology beyond the times to the elven camp, but also brought the luck index of the entire elven camp to break through the sky at once. Otherwise, it is impossible for the elven camp to win this rising battle, and there is no chance for the salted fish to turn over. Therefore, Charlemagne's defeat is completely a crime of non-war, purely unlucky and eccentricity of the mother goddess, otherwise it would not be possible to explain the amazing rise of the elven camp.
There are too many loopholes in the logic and objective evidence of the above argument of entrainment of private goods, and a discerning person can see at a glance that there are too obvious tendencies and a "not that we are too incompetent, but that the enemy is too strong" type of barking of defeated dogs. However, in the second stage of the Ardennes breakthrough operation, the above argument is more like a kind of realism, after all, at this time, Army Group B, which had survived a bunch of bad things in the early stages, was so lucky that it was simply hot.
While Balk Battle Group captured Lybramont and Nessato at 10.30 a.m. on the 11th, the rest of Army Group B was not idle. The 2nd Armored Regiment of the 1st Armored Division, after defeating Charlemagne's 60th Zuaf Reconnaissance Battalion in front of it, went straight to the communications center of Charlemagne's army in the area, the village of Pettival, which was once stationed at the headquarters of the 5th Hussar Division and is now the headquarters of the 55th Infantry Division. When the Leopard chariots rushed all the way in an attack formation, stepping on the 500-kilogram aerial bomb bomb dropped by the attack aircraft, the artillerymen of the 4th Battalion of the 78th Artillery Regiment (which was armed with 12-pounder and 24-pounder guns) in charge of the deployment outside the village were completely frightened. The entire artillery position was destroyed without firing a single shot, and most of the artillery did not even remove the cork.
At the same time, the Leopard chariots of the 1st Panzer Regiment drove up the high ground at the entrance of the village and fired artillery at the defenders in the village at the bottom of the valley. The attack aircraft group in the air also lost no time in launching a wave of dive bombing and strafing. The defenders, who had been bombarded for the first time, had completely collapsed, and were littered with fleeing soldiers and frightened horses unridden. When the tanks of the 2nd Panzer Regiment rushed into the village under the cover of the MDS (the infantry had not yet followed), the defenders of the village threw down their weapons and squatted on the ground, and the gray-haired old village chief waved white pajamas (white sheets and tablecloths could not be found) and surrendered to the dumbfounded defenders on behalf of the villagers and the defenders.
Later, according to the prisoners, due to the extreme lack of training, most of the gunners did not fire live ammunition at all, and it was really difficult to hastily let this group of civilians in military uniforms use front-loading smoothbore guns to scare the Leopard fighting vehicle. In that environment, the only choice was to abandon all the equipment they didn't need and wouldn't use it, and to stand still and raise their hands in surrender. Because of this, most of the fighting in the village of Petival was spent capturing prisoners and containing stragglers. After the sporadic fighting, in addition to the minor and serious wounded and missing people who escaped from the battle, only 17 people were able to confirm the names of the dead, including the commander of the 55th Infantry Division. By the time the Medic of the Defense Army ran into the room, which was full of wine bottles and women's underwear, the senior teacher had already reported to the Mother Goddess (because the Senior Commander was called by the Mother Goddess, and the staff officers and senior officers ran away as soon as possible, and finally had to ask the old village chief to surrender on behalf of the defenders and the villagers)...... For this reason, the staff officers who wrote about the battle history made a difficult mistake for a while, whether the death of the enemy division commander on a woman's belly is considered a battle death, and if so, is this the result of our army or the result of a prostitute?
Without waiting for the staff officers to come up with a result, the 1st Panzer Regiment had already rushed out of the gap opened by the 2nd Panzer Regiment, and they did not stop to clear the remnants of the enemy with the 2nd Panzer Regiment, but rushed all the way to the west. At 15 o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, the 1st Panzer Regiment occupied the road junction of Biurgge, completely cutting off the road for Charlemagne's troops to withdraw west in the Ardennes. At the same time, the units of Charlemagne's 55th Infantry Division, who had been ignorant, finally found that the hordes of chariots were rushing towards them, and they tried to get in touch with the division headquarters, but before the heralds could reach the cleared village of Pettival, the ironclad army that covered the sky had already rushed in front of them, and after some symbolic resistance, the entire 55th Infantry Division completely collapsed, scattered and fled for their lives like a flood of embankments, and rushed to the rear with the inhabitants of various villages and towns.
It stands to reason that this is a great opportunity to capture the prisoners, even if they do not expect to rely on the prisoners to add the stars on the epaulettes and the medals on the collar, in order to cover up the battlefield information, even if they do not kill all these rout refugees, at least stop them, so as to prevent the movement of Army Group B from leaking in the direction of Sedang. However, as soon as the aviation unit began to organize the interception unit, a telegram came from above to stir up the matter.
The message was very short, but it lasted in two sentences: "In view of the current state of the battlefield, there is no need to intercept the enemy's routs and refugees. All units of Army Group B were ordered to strictly prohibit attacks on the marching queues of routed troops and refugees. Attribution: Siegfried Otto Lilin. ”
The supreme commander personally gave the order, and naturally the following did not dare to have any opinions, how could the dictator's genius think that ordinary people could understand?
Thus, Army Group B, which had successfully traversed almost the entire Ardennes region, set out to allow the infantry and sappers who followed to consolidate the passage that had been occupied, while allowing the armored spearhead to continue to advance to the last barrier to Sedan, Bouillon.
While the Wehrmacht was preparing to rush to the banks of the Maas River, what were Charlemagne's defenders in the Setang area doing?
It may seem difficult to talk or laugh at the top of the 2nd Army stationed in Sedang as they are using all their energy to make up for the situation in front of them—or rather, to deceive themselves like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand, as if then all the anomalous and unsettling things will disappear and everything will remain under their control.