Conquer Europe from the West

Chapter 170 Budget Crisis
It's almost the end of February.

The conflict between the Empire and the United Kingdom was now showing signs of spreading to all the countries along the North Sea coast.

Ostend has been on Level 2 alert since last month, which is a set of rules established within the Empire to deal with different levels of threats.

The most serious level is the fifth level of alert, which was the level at which the war with Farland started.

The first level is the easiest, and it is activated every New Year or when the emperor travels.

However, Level 2 is at least a formal war warning level, which means that Ostend must enter a state of 24/7 maritime surveillance, and all soldiers' leave and travel permits will be cancelled to ensure that there are sufficient troops when the war starts.

Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem. The 502nd Regiment is used to the state of war, and dealing with threats from the sea in a wartime state is their daily routine.

However, the new order caused Rein to feel very dissatisfied.

"What do you mean by making my troops stop airborne training and prepare for a large-scale operation that might follow Farland?"

He tossed the order from the capital aside and sat down in front of the fireplace. His boots, which had just run five kilometers on the training field, were covered in water droplets and mud. They were wading on the polished cement floor, the mud everywhere.

Brinkman qualified for an advanced adjutant course at the beginning of this month, but given that everyone is currently at war, her course was canceled. Instead, the General Staff sent a senior adjutant with the rank of lieutenant colonel to teach her through practical work.

The order that Renne had discarded was brought by this new, experienced adjutant.

"So, how does the colonel hope to reclaim the homeland?"

Lieutenant Colonel Catherine von Herlingen, wearing a somewhat dated uniform, stood to the right of Renn, the order she had previously tossed aside reappearing in her hand as if by magic.

She questioned Raine about the order, but her eyes were fixed on Brinkman beside her, looking furious.

Ryan's rise from major to lieutenant colonel, and then to colonel, was so rapid it was beyond human imagination.

Catherine vaguely remembered that when the war had just started in July, Ryan was only a lieutenant, but he was promoted to captain in the second week of the war, and then directly promoted to major in the sixth week. Before October, he was promoted to honorary naval captain.

His promotion in the army was a bit slower than in the navy, but it was basically after he returned from the United Kingdom.

In other words, from the outbreak of the July War until September 30, in just two and a half months, Ryan completed a rank leap from a lieutenant who had not yet been assigned to a unit to a colonel commander of an airborne infantry regiment with four destroyer airships and three battalions of soldiers.

Even with the backdrop of wartime, such a terrifying speed of promotion is still enough to draw attention.

From September of last year to January of this year, Catherine served as the adjutant to her husband, Commander Herlingen, during which time the Seventh Army basically did not carry out any combat missions. This gave Catherine ample time to focus on the situation at the front.

As a result, contrary to her expectations, Raine did not achieve much in the October campaign, nor did she lead her troops to become the most prominent star on the Eastern Front.

With the end of the Eastern Front campaign, the four-month-long rest period led to a languid atmosphere throughout the Imperial Army.

Unfortunately, none of the Empire's current battle lines are on its own soil. The only undefended area is the Verdun Heights, which was captured during the decapitation strike in Rennes.

In addition, Farland had been blocked by heavy snow for several months, and the soldiers, hiding behind a defensive line that stretched for hundreds of kilometers with blast walls and concrete, could not see the Farland front at all.

Therefore, almost all the soldiers on the front lines felt that they would receive Farran's surrender document as soon as spring arrived.

In such a peculiar environment, the only force capable of ensuring that troops continue to perform their garrison duties at the highest wartime standards is the one under Rein.

As a result, when Ms. Catherine returned to the General Staff in the capital after her rotation in the front-line combat units expired, she immediately used her connections to get herself transferred to the 502nd Airborne Infantry Regiment.

Of course, this wasn't a very time-consuming matter, since the person originally coming was just a major on leave, and he would at most stay in Ostend for a week.

His task was simple: bring a letter of order and instruct Rein to get the troops into a state of readiness for combat as soon as possible.

Catherine mainly wanted to see what her goddaughter was doing in this kind of military unit.

But what she saw was far from what she had imagined.

Because of the extreme intensity of military training, most female officers and non-commissioned officers are forced to watch others train from the ground because their physical fitness is not as good as that of their male counterparts.

As the unit commander, Ryan would parachute with his assault company ten times every day. After that, he might also take time to run a five-kilometer march to boost the morale of the new recruits who had just been assigned to the unit.

As a result, after arriving at the camp, Catherine followed Ryan around everywhere but never saw her goddaughter and almost got discovered by Ryan.

That's why she was angry.

But she had no idea that the training intensity of the Rein troops was beyond what a person could withstand. Even female soldiers who failed the assessment were considered elites among elites in a regular army.

Putting everything else aside, just looking at the uniform men's military uniforms of the entire team is enough to say it all.

Right now, Ryan was preoccupied with the orders he had just received and the former superior officer who had urgently taken over his adjutant position.

The General Staff's order wasn't a big problem for Rein.

The training pressure on infantry regiments is very high. If most soldiers can follow the General Staff's orders to enter a level-two alert state, it means that the soldiers of the unit will be able to face the battle that may break out at any time in a relatively relaxed state.

This period of rest will allow the troops to reach a high morale level and unleash even greater fighting power in the upcoming battles.

The problem is that the troops have been training for decapitation strikes and large-scale rear airborne operations for the past four months, while the western front has become a sit-in war between the two sides relying on their own trenches. Decapitation strikes are not very effective under these circumstances, and can even be said to have temporarily failed.

Therefore, Rein must consider whether the current state of the troops is suitable for carrying out the tasks assigned to him by the General Staff.

This made his response time much slower than before.

Finally, after more than ten minutes of silence, Ryan spoke: "Inform the General Staff that the 102nd Air Force Special Service Fleet will be placed on Level 2 alert as ordered, and the 502nd Airborne Infantry Regiment will cooperate with the Air Force Fleet to assist it in carrying out maritime surveillance missions."

Ryan divided his forces into two parts: one was an air force fleet designation used as a cover, and the other was the infantry regiment he actually commanded. Lieutenant Colonel Catherine naturally understood Ryan's meaning. She took out a small notebook, wrote down the contents in shorthand, tore off a piece of paper, and handed it to Lieutenant Brinkman, who was still standing nearby.

Her movements were so swift that Brinkman didn't realize he had left the administration building until he arrived at the communications company's camp.

Meanwhile, in Rennes' office.

"Those guys in the General Staff must be out of their minds to give me this kind of order at a time like this."

After Brinkman had completely left, Ryan got up from the sofa again, hung his rain-soaked coat in front of the fireplace, and took a clean jacket from the coat rack next to him, casually putting it on.

After he finished, he glanced at the military boots on his feet.

There's nothing you can do about the mud on your boots, but luckily the area is easy to clean, so it's okay to ignore it.

Shaking his head, Ryan tried to put the thought of retraining out of his mind. After a while, he looked at Lieutenant Colonel Catherine, who had been temporarily appointed as his adjutant by the General Staff: "I thought they would send a major."

"Air Force General Burke did indeed have this idea."

Lieutenant Colonel Catherine smiled flawlessly and said, "But the Commander insisted that I check on the situation of the lads in the Second and Fourth Battalions, so..."

"So you came, right?"

Ryan could tell that this wasn't what Catherine meant, especially now that she had just tricked Brinkman into going to the communications unit in a very logical way.

But this is not important.

The important thing is that I now have an informant from the General Staff Department by my side.

This is a very bad omen for Rennes.

The 502nd Airborne Infantry Regiment is a unit directly under the General Staff Headquarters and has the same degree of freedom in operations as an army group.

Basically, Rein can do whatever he wants, as long as he can determine that his current actions are in line with the General Staff's expectations of the battle situation.

However, Lieutenant Colonel Catherine had no experience fighting alongside infantry regiments, and she was already quite old, making it impossible for her to be airdropped to the front lines with the troops.

The General Staff was naturally aware of this, which is why they sent the order for Level II alert and the appointment letter together.

This means they have other ideas involved, things that cannot be written down and can only be understood intuitively, not explained in words.

Just as Ryan figured this out, Lieutenant Colonel Catherine spoke up: "I think you, Colonel, have already guessed why the General Staff agreed to let me come."

"It's still about the United Kingdom, isn't it?"

Ryan sighed, got up again and went to the fireplace, took out the cigarette case from his coat pocket, lit one for himself and another for Ms. Catherine, and lit them.

"Level 2 alert is useless. The General Staff probably realized that the United Kingdom was ready to kill the hostage and quit, so they issued an order at this time to keep us out of the spotlight."

Ashes would occasionally fall from the cigarette, but not a drop of smoke escaped from Renn's mouth. He simply held the lit cigarette in his mouth, pondering the General Staff's intentions.

"But the fact that they sent you here means that we will not be at war during this period. It is as if the General Staff wants to appease me and the troops in a different way. If those bald monks were willing to allocate more funds, they wouldn't have asked you to come to the front line."

Ryan still couldn't shake his habits from Stuttgart, but that wasn't a problem for Ms. Catherine, who wouldn't be staying there for long.

Seemingly realizing that the cigarette in his mouth had no effect, Ryan put the cigarette butt on the ashtray and took out the order that the General Staff had sent him last time, and began to study it carefully.

The last order, which required the troops to return to full combat readiness as quickly as possible, was sent after Christmas. At that time, the United Kingdom and the Empire's navy were in a standoff, and a large-scale naval exercise was scheduled for a few days later.

Based on this appointment letter, Renn is confident that the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the Empire will inevitably end in a complete breakdown, and war will soon resume.

It won't be until April at the latest, and tomorrow is already March.

The United Kingdom has mobilized almost all of its naval forces in the past few months, with nearly three hundred warships deployed to the Atlantic Ocean. Scapa Flow, the most important naval port, is now crammed with warships, just waiting for the treaty to expire at the end of March.

In short, the Kingdom has been trying for the past few months to buy itself valuable time to consolidate its fleet by forcing the Empire to make concessions on naval affairs, but the Empire clearly will not yield.

For a kingdom with an extremely large naval fleet, this is a normal operation, but for an empire, it is clearly a bitter pill to swallow.

The empire, on the other hand, was like a mute, completely unable to speak.

The kingdom's excuse was wrong; the Imperial Navy had not modified any ships at all.

The kingdom had clearly realized this as well, so in the last few days it did not make the previous demands, but instead sent more fleets to observe the imperial fleet's exercises.

Until last week.

Looking back now.

Although the official result has not yet been confirmed, it is a foregone conclusion that the peace agreement will not be renewed.

He sat silently at his desk, unsure of what to say.

It was at this moment that Lieutenant Colonel Catherine spoke up.

"The Navy has recently started to have some complaints about the Air Force, because almost everyone has noticed that the Air Force is building up its fleet while the Navy is not getting any new ships."

"The people of the kingdom don't seem to have discovered this yet, but I think they will soon."

(End of this chapter)