The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 960 Adolf, Forward!

On September 2, 1884, the Rhine plain was shrouded in a gray-blue mist before dawn. Lieutenant Erich Ludendorff galloped on his horse, his hooves pounding the morning dew and sending sparks flying across the gravel road. His military boots gripped the horse's flanks tightly, and his black overcoat was billowed by the autumn wind, revealing a Luger pistol and folded maps at his waist.

Along both sides of the road, the figures of German sentries appeared and disappeared in the morning mist, their eyes beneath their helmets scanning the Belgian direction warily. Every five hundred meters, there was a machine gun position, the barrels of Maxim heavy machine guns pointed towards the road, ammunition boxes neatly stacked behind sandbag bunkers. As Ludendorff passed the third checkpoint, the sentry recognized him and immediately stood at attention and saluted.

"Identifications, sir!" The sentry's voice was mechanical and cold.

Ludendorff pulled a stiff cardboard badge from the inner pocket; the Prussian eagle emblem on the cover was worn smooth. The sentry carefully inspected it, snapped it shut, and handed it back: "Passed, Lieutenant!"

The horses' hooves rose again, and Ludendorff's gaze swept across the distant horizon. There, the 2nd Army's mule-drawn artillery units were slowly moving, their siege guns, clad in protective covers, looking menacing. Steam tractors, puffing out thick smoke, towed ammunition cars and field kitchens, their wheels leaving deep ruts in the muddy ground.

“The smell of war,” Ludendorf muttered to himself. At only 19 years old, he had just graduated from the NCO school and had caught up with this great era of shining military uniforms; he was incredibly lucky.

In the distance, the whine of a steam locomotive drifted by; a military train, laden with soldiers, was heading towards the border. Inside the carriages, young soldiers gripped their Mauser rifles tightly, their faces a mixture of tension and excitement. Someone hummed "Guardians of the Rhine" softly, the song drifting through the morning mist.

The iron gate of a military camp slowly opened before Ludendorff. Sixteen steel behemoths stood silently beneath the camouflage netting, their tracks covered in mud, their gun barrels pointing diagonally to the sky, like a pack of lurking beasts.

A tank, numbered Pz.II-07, was completely dismantled, exposing its 80-horsepower Daimler gasoline engine, with fuel lines and wires hanging down like intestines. Lieutenant Adolf, a veteran in his thirties, had half his body inside the engine compartment, his oil-stained uniform clinging to his thin back, as he pounded the crankcase with a wrench.

Adolf was a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War and a former subordinate of Lieutenant General Hindenburg, commander of the First Panzer Army. Unfortunately, he was not born into an aristocratic officer corps and had not attended a non-commissioned officer school. He only had a long military career and a hastily completed degree from a panzer technical school, so he could only become a second lieutenant at his advanced age.

However, his mechanical skills were first-rate; he could easily disassemble a majestic tank into parts and then quickly reassemble it. Moreover, he was highly respected among the soldiers—everyone knew he was capable and was willing to learn from him, and he was willing to teach. It's just that he had a bit of a temper.

"Radiator gasket is worn out! Coolant is seeping into the cylinder—do you all understand?" Adolf's roar echoed in the steel chamber. "This piece of junk can't run more than 30 kilometers without needing to stop! If you make the same mistake again and add cheap kerosene, I'll shove you all into the exhaust pipe!"

The soldiers watching were silent, some secretly wiping the oil splattered on their faces.

Ludendorff's whip cracked in the air, the crisp sound sending a shiver down everyone's spine.

"Put it back in! Now!"

Adolf crawled out of the tank, his greasy hands leaving black streaks on his trousers: "What? Are we going to attack Belgium?"

During this period, several army groups under Army Group B were preparing to attack Belgium, and a veteran like Adolf could certainly guess that.

"To the train station." Ludendorff didn't explain further, but pointed eastward, the vibrations of the rails already reaching his feet. "All personnel on high alert! If the Daimler engines break down again, you'll be pulling tanks for them!"

Amid the clanging of steel plates, Adolf's salute was firm and resolute: "Yes, Lieutenant!"

In the B Army Group headquarters in Limburg, bamboo-fiber electric lights cast a stark white glow on the giant sand table. General Alfred von Waldersee slammed his cane heavily against the Belgian coastline, and the blue arrows on the sand table resembled deadly spears, piercing the throat of red France.

“Dunkirk—within 72 hours! Calais—144 hours!” Waldersee’s voice was low and cold.

Commander Hindenburg, commander of the 1st Panzer Army, drew his baton across the river-crisscrossed plains of the Franco-Belgian border: "My tanks will crush the French lines, but surprise must be maintained. The 1st Panzer Corps must complete its march and deployment within 48 hours." His voice carried an undeniable confidence as his finger traced an arc on the sand table. "Then the armored group will break through from here, tearing through the French lines. In another 72 hours, we'll capture Dunkirk, then Calais, and simultaneously move south to encircle Lille!"

Commander Golts of the 2nd Army pointed his pipe westward at the sand table: "The key is to quickly get the heavy artillery to the front through the Belgian railway line. Red France is still asleep." He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke that swirled above the sand table. "Our heavy artillery will blast their Carmel-by-the-Moore line to rubble." Commander Galwitz of the 3rd Army slammed his fist on the Dunkirk model: "The key to conquering France is cutting off the lifeline between London and Paris!" His eyes gleamed with fanaticism. "If we capture Dunkirk and Calais, the supplies flowing from Britain to France will be reduced by 30%. But the key to the operation's success is surprise! Are the Belgians really willing to open the railway line to us?"

Waldersee laughed, “Prince William has done it! He has convinced Leopold II, and his First Guards Corps has secretly taken control of the Liège-Bruges Railway! What you need to do—” He pointed his cane at the port on the sand table, “use a million men, four thousand cannons, and three hundred tanks to smash the Karl Moore Line into ruins! Army Group B, target Dunkirk, advance!”

September 3, 1884, dawn. On the Belgian railway lines, an unprecedented torrent of steel was silently surging forward.

The first military train pulled into Liege station in the pre-dawn darkness, its steam locomotives billowing smoke and the clanging of wheels against the rails shattering the morning tranquility. On the platform, Belgian railway workers stared in disbelief at the seemingly endless train—each flatcar was secured with two tanks painted with the Iron Cross, and the open carriages were crammed with German soldiers wearing pointed steel helmets.

"My God," an old switchman muttered to himself, his hand holding the signal light trembling slightly. He saw on the other side of the platform that a German officer in a Prussian blue uniform was talking in hushed tones with a Belgian railway official, who was bowing and scraping, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

As the first military train slowly pulled away, the second and third followed in quick succession. Each train pulled more than thirty carriages, fully loaded with soldiers, artillery, and supplies. The stationmasters at the Belgian border post received remarkably consistent orders: "Cooperate fully with the German transport; there must be no delays."

At a railway hub outside Brussels, more than twenty military trains pulled into the station simultaneously. German engineers jumped off the carriages and quickly erected temporary platforms. One by one, 150mm howitzers were hoisted onto flatcars by steam cranes, their barrels still wrapped in tarpaulins for rain protection. A German staff officer, wearing a monocle, held a pocket watch and precisely calculated the dwell time of each train.

"Three minutes and twelve seconds! Next train!" The officer's shout was particularly jarring on the noisy platform.

Belgian farmers stood on the ridges of their fields beside the railway, watching in horror as the steel torrent surged forward. Some children's fingers trembled as they counted the seventeenth train—each towing a long flatbed laden with field guns and ammunition boxes. Even more terrifying, these trains showed no sign of stopping, heading west towards the French border.

At Ghent station, a Belgian journalist secretly captured this scene: on the platform, German soldiers stood in neat rows, their bayonets gleaming coldly in the morning light. They silently boarded the train, only the sound of their boots echoing on the empty platform. In the background of the photograph, several 210mm heavy siege guns can also be seen being loaded onto flatbed carts.

“This is not a drill,” the reporter wrote tremblingly in his notebook. “This is a real war.” His pen suddenly stopped—at the end of the platform, a German officer with a small mustache was staring at him coldly, his right hand on the holster at his waist.

September 5, 1884, dawn.

Near the Belgian-French border, at the De Panne position, Lieutenant Ludendorff, standing on high ground, could vaguely see the towers of Dunkirk Port, a dozen kilometers away, through his high-powered binoculars. Second Lieutenant Adolf leaned out of Tank No. 07 and shouted, "Lieutenant! Everything is ready! 12 out of the company's 16 tanks are ready to deploy at any time, 75% operational!"

On the distant artillery positions, rows of 150mm howitzers had their covers removed, their dark muzzles pointing directly at the French lines. Gunners were busy adjusting their firing angles, while ammunition handlers retrieved brass shells from their boxes and neatly stacked them beside the gun emplacements. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and machine oil.

"Fire!" With the artillery commander's order, the earth suddenly trembled. Dozens of heavy cannons roared simultaneously, shells piercing the morning mist and exploding into orange-red fireballs on the distant French positions. The shockwaves from the explosions kicked up clouds of dust, tearing barbed wire and wooden obstacles into pieces that flew into the air.

The shelling lasted a full twenty minutes. As the echo of the last shell still reverberated in the air, Ludendorff had already leaped onto his command tank. "Attention, company!" he shouted to the messenger, "Target: Dunkirk outer perimeter, advance!"

The engines of all twelve Panzer II tanks roared to life, belching billowing black smoke. Their tracks ground with a sickening metallic screeching as they chugged over the muddy earth. Adolf's Panzer 07 led the charge, its 20mm autocannon barrel swaying from side to side, ready to fire at any moment.

The tank formation quickly crossed the Franco-Belgian border marker. In the distance, French machine gun positions were already spitting fire, bullets clanging against the tank armor. Adolf calmly rotated the turret, aiming at a French machine gun position firing wildly. "Fire!" The 20mm cannon roared, the shell hitting the sandbag bunker precisely, obliterating the machine gun and its gunner into parts.

Under the cover of tanks, the German motorized infantry began their advance. Infantrymen jumped from the trucks, brandishing Mauser rifles, and charged after the tanks. The French lines began to crumble, and some soldiers started to retreat.

"Keep advancing!" Ludendorff's order was relayed to every tank via signal flags. "Dunkirk is just ahead!" The tank formation, arranged in a wedge shape, pierced deep into the French lines like a sharp dagger. Behind them, more and more German troops were pouring across the border towards Dunkirk.

(End of this chapter)