Chapter Eleven: The British Counterattack (Part Two)

  In January 1915, while the harsh winter still raged north of the Pyrenees and Alps, the bugle call for a counterattack by the Allies had already sounded.

  To recover the lost ground in northern France, to bring the war fire to German territory, on a 350-kilometer front line from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast, more than 3 million Allied soldiers rushed to the German defense line under the cover of tens of thousands of artillery pieces.

  Although the main force of the German army moved east, nearly two million troops remained on the Western Front. The Allies found it difficult to break through the deep and unpredictable trenches, countless machine guns, strategic depth of several kilometers or even tens of kilometers, and the well-trained German defense line. It's worth noting that the right end of this front was neutral Switzerland, and the left end was the North Sea controlled by Germany, making maneuver warfare and mobile warfare an unattainable fantasy.

  The Allies were battered and bruised in front of the German steel wall, with multiple breakthroughs turning into a complete joke. The Allied high command reflected and decided to concentrate their forces on key breakthroughs, as the German defense line was tight but not invulnerable.

  As a legacy of the Battle of the Marne, the German line formed a salient in the Noyon region less than 100 kilometers from Paris, constantly threatening the security of Paris. The Anglo-French army decided to concentrate its forces on both wings and launch a pincer attack, encircling and cutting off this salient, making Noyon a bait to attract German reinforcements, forcing the unfavorable positional warfare for the Allies to turn into a mobile war that had to be won.

  On February 15, the Battle of Nouvron began, with French forces launching an offensive in the Champagne region between Reims and Massiges, aiming to cut off German supply lines. On February 19, British forces took action on the other side, intending to form a pincer movement with the French.

  I don't remember which round of desperate attack this was by the French army, at lunchtime, another round of shelling, 155mm cannons and howitzers, as well as more 75mm ladies and large-caliber mortars rained down on the German Champagne outer defenses.

  "Damn Frenchman!"

  The French artillery's barrage of duds seemed particularly numerous, with only the occasional explosion of a dozen or so shells breaking the monotony of the dull thud of shells striking the mountain. Since the Battle of Nouvron, the French Army had shown an attacking spirit that would make God himself tremble with fear, and yet the sheer number of duds made Sergeant Aubier feel vaguely uneasy.

  The cramped bunker was filled with cold and stench, Sergeant Abio huddled in the narrow corner, trying to grasp a fleeting inspiration, when a 155mm shell exploded on the reverse slope of the mountain, causing the bunker and the mountain to shake violently, dust and heat waves surged in, and Abio's black bread was immediately shaken to the ground.

  Abby picked up the black bread with a scowl, ignoring the dust on its surface, and swallowed it down with the icy cold water from the thermos.

  "Are we going to be surrounded, Sergeant?" Twenty days into the battle, French casualties had reached 140,000 men, yet the Allied line had advanced only some four hundred meters. The loss ratio created an illusion at German Western Front HQ, and tens of thousands of troops were transferred from the Noyon salient to the Ypres salient, deep in the German lines, where British and French forces were attacking. But just yesterday, the French had taken the outer defenses of Maizières in a surprise move, putting them right outside the town. The French advance was so dazzling that it frightened the new recruits; Private Canin wiped his grimy gray cap with a shaking hand and asked,

  "It's better to fill your belly than to think about retreating, let alone deal with those bloodthirsty Gauls!" Veteran Ebio, who had participated in the Battle of Marne and the Coastal Line Campaign, rolled his eyes in annoyance: "This is the last line of defense on the outskirts of Champagne!"

  The sparse artillery fire finally stopped, and without the commander's reminder, the well-trained German army picked up their weapons, bullet belts, steel helmets, and ammunition boxes and rushed towards the less-than-fifty-meter-high trench fortifications.

  Something in the distance seemed to be able to conquer the instinct of soldiers, so that the pace of the advancing soldier Can Ning was frozen like a shooting star.

  In the era of hot weapons, the cessation of cannon fire has always been a prelude to an enemy attack. From the defensive artillery cave to the reserve position, repairing fortifications, connecting trenches, and setting up machine gun shelters are crucial for the high-intensity defensive battle that is about to follow, not allowing any delay! Corporal Ebio tapped Kanin's helmet, with his mouth full of bread, mumbling a few unclear words:

  "Asshole! What are you still dazing about, quickly enter... the formation..."

  As expected, the French "gleaners" with their Lebel rifles, occasionally mixed with a few old Gras rifles, wearing knee-length, mud-stained, tattered light-colored winter clothes, disheveled and exhausted, did not charge forward. Instead, a person-high, yellow-green, swaying and seductive fog emerged, which burst out of the large and small shell craters scattered in front of the position, and surged towards Ebi and his men with the help of the biting cold wind.

  The soldier's coarser language seemed to be forcibly cut off by an outside force, the white mist called out by Ebio rapidly contracted in the biting cold wind of northern France, and turned into the most terrifying curse: "That's poisonous gas! God, the French are using poison gas on us! The Champagne outer defense line is completely finished!"

  The huge casualties before the Battle of Nouvron made the French, who could not see the dawn of victory, use toxic gas for the first time. The tragedy under the city of Masi was replayed, and even the German army, which had experienced many battles, could not avoid defeat.

  French soldiers wearing thick chemical suits and gas masks strolled casually onto the German positions, bypassing the bodies of German officers whose faces had been torn off by gas or madness. They harvested any living thing that still breathed. For a while, they would gather up the German dead, burn and bury them in mass graves to conceal this atrocity against humanity. Meanwhile, the French flag fluttered just inches from the city of Champagne.

  ****

  In January 1915, the Emden's rising toll of sinkings finally came to an end at a staggering level: two old British unprotected cruisers, one Russian auxiliary cruiser, one French destroyer, one French gunboat and thirty-seven steam merchant ships. At the same time, more than thirty Allied warships and forty auxiliaries were hunting down the Emden raider in the Indian Ocean, leaving less and less room for the Eastern Swan to maneuver.

  The land war in German East Africa continued, with the British and French colonial troops suffering heavy losses in the jungles of East Africa and around Lake Tanganyika under the support of the light cruiser K?nigsberg. However, how long this fight could last without local supplies and reinforcements was uncertain, neither Captain Max Looff of the K?nigsberg nor Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck knew.

  In the Pacific, a Japanese army corps joined more than 3,000 British troops to occupy German Tsingtao Bay. At the same time, Japan's combined fleet formed a southern expeditionary force to attack Germany's island colonies in southwestern Pacific, and Germany quickly lost the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Caroline Islands. The Bismarck Archipelago and Western Samoa were also occupied by Australia and New Zealand respectively.

  The Empire's roaming progress in the North Pacific was not smooth, and the light cruiser Elizabeth and the auxiliary cruiser Eitel Friedrich were sunk by Japanese fleets one after another. However, the South Pacific presented a one-sided situation. The East Asian fleet, composed of two Scharnhorst-class large armored cruisers and three light cruisers, anchored off the coast of Chile, bringing the value of the raiding fleet to an extreme.

  Although the Scharnhorst-class large armored cruiser belonged to the category of armored cruisers within the German Navy, who has seen a standard displacement of 13,900 tons and a waterline belt main armor of 160mm on an armored cruiser? Its overall defensive capability even surpassed the British Invincible class and Indefatigable class! The best proof is that the Southern Detachment of the Japanese Combined Fleet, composed of old battleships and old armored cruisers, was stuck in the central Pacific!

  In late December 1914, the situation was reversed when Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee's British battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible joined the South American Squadron at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

  A large fleet consisting of the Invincible, Australia and New Zealand battlecruisers, Defence and Exmouth old battleships, Carnarvon and Cornwall armoured cruisers, Bristol light cruiser and Macedonia and Orama armed merchant ships left Falkland Islands for Cape Horn and Drake Passage.

  "The Navy Department requires us to avoid Mulr's battle cruiser squadron as much as possible, take a detour through western Africa, and wait for an opportunity to return home..."

  In the southern hemisphere's summer dusk, the iron giant and its sailors, who had been scorched by the fierce sun all day, could finally enjoy the gentle sea breeze, sunset, and leisurely seagulls. Captain Bernhard von Oden stood on the bridge, pointing at the intricate waters of the Magellan Strait to Commander Maximilian von Spee, saying:

  "Turning north up the Stoke's Bay, from the treacherous Magellan Strait back into the Atlantic, the East Asian Fleet narrowly avoided Muir's intercepting fleet, next step was the arduous journey across the South Atlantic to German Southwest Africa."

  Due to the timely change of cipher systems, Germany's intelligence system in South America was preserved. On December 26, Admiral Spee received intelligence that a reinforced British squadron had left Stanley Harbour. Given the three Invincible-class battlecruisers' 24 x 12-inch main guns, the East Asia Squadron could only avoid them.

  There are only two routes to return to the South Atlantic, one is the Magellan Strait with narrow waters and British eyes everywhere, and the other is the Drake Passage with strong winds and vast seas. The former has the advantage of being unpredictable, but it's also easy to expose the fleet's tracks. The latter is steady and safe, but unfortunately, the Drake Passage is too wide.

  Was it the Magellan Strait or the Cockburn Channel? The experienced Spee put his money on what seemed to be the more dangerous Magellan Strait, choosing the unfamiliar Smyth Channel to enter the strait at full speed in an attempt to quickly transit. To gain valuable time, Graf sent the light cruiser Dresden southward to perform a tactical deception.

  Spee won the gamble. Admiral Morel had underestimated the courage of the Graf and scattered his cruiser squadron between the Le Maire Strait and Cape San Juan, leaving only a light cruiser and an armed merchant ship in what seemed to be the safe Magellan Strait; the armed merchant ship Macedonia was patrolling off Froward Point, while the light cruiser Bristol was patrolling north of Puerto Madryn.

  Scheer easily saw through Commodore Harwood's eagerness, shaking his head with a satisfied smile at the young man's youthful enthusiasm, and said in a somewhat unenthusiastic tone: "No, that would be too boring. Perhaps we can go take a stroll around the poorly defended Falkland Islands!"

  A massive East Asian fleet sailed across the ocean, heading deep into the strait. Several nautical miles away, a British cargo ship sailing along the coast of Dawes Island put down his binoculars and turned to his crew with a serious face.

  "The Germans had almost cut off the South American squadron's sea route, and four powerful steamers appeared in the Magellan Strait. It would not be a neutral merchant fleet!" The white-haired old British captain's voice echoed over the Magellan Strait with a hint of excitement: "The South American squadron has been fooled! The German East Asian Squadron is heading for the Magellan Strait! Damn it, it's not too late now, go and send a telegram to recall the intercepting squadron at once!"