Starting with the smashing of Dunkirk

Chapter 202: Let Model and Kemer hold the line.
After the meeting, Lelouch took a quick night's rest and on the morning of December 11, he led his troops south to aid Austria and Greece.

However, although he was rushing to provide aid, he did not take the train directly at the beginning—because if he had taken the train directly, he would have had to return to Kharkiv from Poltava and then go east in a circle to the south.

The distance would be at least several hundred kilometers more, and at the train speed of that era, it would take almost a whole day to travel round trip.

Therefore, Lelouch made a last-minute suggestion last night: when sending reinforcements, we should head south and break through the enemy's defenses between Poltava and Clementchuk, which would also shrink the encirclement by a significant margin.

Clemenceau, on the other hand, had a direct railway line leading to Chisinau, the future capital of Moldova. From there, it could turn south to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and then further south to the border between Bulgaria and Austria, eventually connecting to Istanbul.

In short, Lelouch's route could cut off the easternmost corner of the current encirclement, reducing the enemy's controlled area by several thousand square kilometers.

Duke Rupprecht also approved the plan, as if it were a way for Lelouch to do something for his allies before he left.

Given the current state of the Lusa army—its fighting strength is so weak it's practically dead, and its morale is so low it's unimaginable—this breakthrough is bound to succeed.

At 4:12 a.m. on December 11, at a breakthrough point along the railway line on the northern front, the Demacian army's artillery support began to roar on time, hurling hundreds of shells southward, causing chaos and destruction among the Lusa people along the line.

Unfortunately, during the three days from the 8th to the 10th, the Lussa people launched a series of strong attacks and breakouts, leaving the troops in a state of extreme fatigue.

General Lusa and his men hadn't anticipated that the enemy had already closed the encirclement. Shouldn't they be waiting for the Lusa army to make a desperate breakout? The Demacian army only needed to hold the line, block the gap, and wait for the enemy to tire themselves out.

But then they ran into Lelouch, who never played by the rules. After three days of patiently waiting and wearing down the enemy, they suddenly switched to offense on the fourth day. The speed of this shift was astonishing.

Caught off guard, the Lusa army's positions were quickly breached by tanks, tearing open a massive breach that continued towards Kremenchuk on the banks of the Dnieper River.

Near Klemenceuk, there is a railway bridge spanning the Dnieper River. The Poltava-Chisinau railway line crosses the Dnieper here, making it an important transportation hub.

In 1915, there were only two railway bridges across the entire Dnieper River in Lusa.

A railway in Kyiv, connecting Kyiv to Odessa.

The other one is in Kremenchuk, connecting Kharkiv-Poltava-Chishinau.

This demonstrates the importance of this transportation hub.

Lelouch's swift attack not only inflicted heavy losses on his enemies, causing them to collapse and surrender, but also...
It also caused extreme panic among 4-5 divisions within the enemy's defense zone east of Kremenchuk and north of the Dnieper River.

Because once Lelouch penetrates to Clementuk and reaches the banks of the Dnieper River, it means that the Lusa army further east will be completely cut off from the main force.

Although they were originally made into dumplings, the dumpling wrappers were too big and the inside of the dumplings was a bit loose, much like the airy wontons that people in Shanghai love to eat.

Now Lelouch can insert smaller dumplings into the larger dumpling area, which will naturally frighten enemies who might be isolated in the smaller dumpling area.

This forced the enemy to move, abandoning their original positions and fleeing westward, which made the Demacian encirclement forces on the opposite side advance very smoothly.

Lelouch arrived at Clementuk on time in just one day, and even crossed the Dnieper River there to reach the south bank.

The positions on the south bank had already been captured by Lieutenant General Kusmanek of the Austrian 3rd Army.

Lieutenant General Kusmanek's troops had long since advanced to the vicinity of the south bank, but they had little effect on the enemy on the north bank. Now, with Lelouch and him advancing head-on, a two-way race, the synergy was greater than the sum of its parts.

Lelouch's original intention was simply to get on his way, but in the process, he also managed to annihilate four DPRK divisions west of Clementchuk, freeing up more of his allies' encirclement forces.

The time he spent traveling was about the same as when he took the train and went the long way around, but he didn't miss any important business.

Upon arriving in Clementuk, Lelouch inquired whether the train he needed was ready.

Lieutenant General Kusmanek also confidently assured that during his advance from the south to this point, he had captured as many enemy-held trains as possible in the cities he passed through, and had also transferred some from the south.

We can ensure that we have enough transport capacity to move one or two divisions every day. If we need to transport more people, we will have to make trips in batches.

This makes sense; large-scale troop movements can't be accomplished overnight. The Britannians relied on sea transport, carrying only about 20,000 people daily from other islands in the Aegean Sea to the Thessalonians.

The Demanians are able to transport more than 20,000 people a day by rail, which is already quite impressive.

The distance from Kremenchuk to Chisinau is over 500 kilometers, from Chisinau to Bucharest is over 400 kilometers, and from Bucharest to the Bulgarian-Austrian border is over 300 kilometers.

三段路加起来，铁路全程1300公里。1915年露沙和罗马尼亚境内的铁路路况不太好，这样的平时也就开30~40公里平均时速，差不多30~36个小时能确保赶到。

However, this railway is only a single track, not a double track. On the return journey, it will have to wait for the trains to converge at major stations such as Bucharest and Chisinau. If there are enough wagons, a batch of trains can depart every 36 hours and make a round trip in 72 hours, which means that an additional 5 men can be assembled at the front every three days. It is estimated that it will take nearly two weeks for Lelouch to complete the assembly, deployment, and preparation for the attack at the Bulgarian-Austrian border, as he hopes for 20 reinforcements.

There's no way around it; deploying a large army across more than a thousand kilometers is incredibly difficult, and the enemy faces the same challenge.

In this era, organizing an offensive involving 20 people and preparing for it for two weeks is considered quite efficient.

Today is December 11th. Even if he takes the train south before midnight tonight, Lelouch estimates that he can launch a full-scale counterattack against the Britannians at the earliest, before Christmas Eve.

He suddenly remembered that he, a transmigrator with an Eastern soul, seemed to be at odds with the hypocritical pretense of the Christmas truce by Bugou.

Last year, he also launched the Battle of Ypres on Christmas Eve, launching a surprise attack on key enemy railway strongholds such as Stenford behind Ypres, cutting off the Burgundian army's Ypres-Dunkirk railway line.

It seems like another Christmas offensive is on the horizon this year.

For him, every Christmas Eve was a night of murder.

Of course, before the general offensive, he could also launch some other diversionary attacks, or pull his troops directly to the Ottoman defenses to help the Ottomans fight a defensive battle. In short, he just wanted to avoid scaring the enemy away.

"Since we can move two divisions tonight, my division will go first, and your Hungarian division will follow in the next batch. If the battle progresses smoothly, we can withdraw troops ahead of time and move south in batches according to the plan."

After understanding the transportation capacity, Lelouch gave Kusmanek these instructions.

Despite being a lieutenant general, Kusmanek knew Lelouch's influence; Lelouch was his savior who had rescued him from the prisoner-of-war camp. Therefore, he carried out Lelouch's orders without hesitation. He knew that what Lelouch said was equivalent to what Marshal Rupprecht said.

Before boarding the train, Lelouch took the time to write a concise tactical summary and had it sent back to Marshal Rupprecht for review.

The above summarizes some of his tactical gains and losses in breaking through to Kremenchuk today, and also suggests that the subsequent German game 6 can be reviewed and imitated.
In the process of gathering the dumpling wrappers, we should no longer simply implement the rigid tactic of advancing along a single line. We can appropriately launch some surprise attacks, combining a full-scale advance with key breakthroughs, especially creating situations where we can "advance all the way to the Dnieper River in one fell swoop at certain weak points".

Today, the main body of the encirclement is still the three railways forming three sides, with the Dnieper River flowing through the middle of the encirclement.

Whether the encircling forces on the north bank push south to the Dnieper River, or the forces on the south bank push north to the Dnieper River, this would effectively cut off a portion of the enemy's forces.
This would force the enemy forces to waver and flee in advance when they realize they might be "further cut into smaller pieces." This would give the encircling side more opportunities to annihilate and pursue the enemy, making the advance more powerful.

If these ideas were applied to Earth more than twenty years from now, they wouldn't need to be taught at all, because they would already be basic operations.

Later armored blitzkrieg tactics, after completing the encirclement, aimed to quickly eliminate the enemy inside by chopping large pieces into smaller ones, rather than "rolling the filling out with a rolling pin."

However, in 1915, since armored penetration forces had only just emerged and deep infantry penetration tactics were still immature, this experience still needs to be briefly mentioned. Moreover, even a brief mention is enough for knowledgeable generals to grasp the point immediately.

Upon receiving the order, Marshal Rupprecht agreed wholeheartedly and immediately grasped its essence. He then ordered a portion of his elite troops to carry it out, especially von Bock, who was left behind in the encirclement battlefield. He instructed him to take advantage of the cold weather and the freezing mud in a few days to quickly infiltrate and accelerate the annihilation of the enemy.

……

Lelouch himself would not arrive at the Bulgarian-Austrian border until the afternoon of December 13, or even the early morning of December 14.

Before that, all that could be done was for Model and Kemmer to hold the line on their own.

Kemer did not receive direct orders from Lelouch; he received his orders through General von Zanders, the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman army.

He was told "not to hold out indefinitely if necessary. If friendly forces on the northern border between Austria and Bulgaria, or even the border between Austria and Bulgaria, cannot hold out first, and our forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula may be surrounded by the enemy from both the front and the rear, then the defensive forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula should withdraw in advance or send troops to reinforce the defenders on the Austrian-Halal border."

Furthermore, before being forced to retreat and abandon the position, it is essential to destroy as many defensive fortifications as possible to prevent them from falling into enemy hands and increasing the difficulty of our counter-offensive. As long as we can hold out for one to two weeks, the temporarily lost territory can be disregarded; we can wait for Demacian reinforcements.

Kemer, as expected of someone with great military talent, quickly understood what to do after mentally rehearsing the order.

Starting on the night of December 10, he ordered his men to destroy tunnels in areas at the base of the Gallipoli Peninsula that might be abandoned in the future—there was no need to fill in the entire tunnel, as that would be too much work and would waste the hard-won defensive fortifications.

By simply filling in the openings of some tunnels by ten or twenty meters and adding some camouflage, it can be ensured that even if a large-caliber artillery shell hits the opening directly, it will not be able to blow it open.

If our side simply marks the precise coordinates on the map, we can use excavation equipment to slowly dig open the hole when we return, and it will still be usable.

This way, even if the Austrian army was forced to retreat and lost ground, their network of tunnels, which they had been building for several months, would not fall into enemy hands. Most of the space inside the tunnels was still empty; only the entrances were nowhere to be found.

After two days of systematically filling in the tunnel openings, on December 12th, Kemer indeed received bad news from friendly forces in the north: the town of Kadkoy, located at the corner connecting the main mainland and the base of the Gallipoli Peninsula, had been captured by the Britannian army that day!

On a battlefield lacking terrain advantage, the Ottoman army was indeed unable to withstand the Bretonnia army, which possessed absolute superior equipment and outnumbered its own forces.

The label of "Sick Man of West Asia" was truly well-deserved. Without the help of the Demacians, the Ottomans were simply too weak to fight on their own.

Kemer knew that if he didn't split his forces and retreat by now, he and his allies on the Gallipoli Peninsula would be in danger of being cut off from their retreat.

That night, Kemer withdrew three Ottoman divisions—one directly under his command and two others temporarily under his control—from the Gallipoli Peninsula into the mainland, where they continued to resist east of the town of Kadkoy, where the vanguard of the Burgh army had penetrated the deepest point.

With the withdrawal of three of its most elite divisions, the Ottoman army's defensive capabilities on the Gallipoli Peninsula were instantly reduced.

In addition, their many tunnels were systematically abandoned and their entrances were disguised, further limiting the range of elastic defenses that the defenders could use.

The Britannian landing forces on the opposite side, however, were riding high on momentum, especially the ANZAC commanders who were extremely daring and willing to risk their lives in a fierce charge.

Meanwhile, the Bretonnian Empire's high command recently recruited the most elite force from the Indian colonial army—the Gurkha Mountain Corps—from its colonies on the southern slopes of the Himalayas in preparation for the Gallipoli and Greek mountain wars.

Just a few regiments of Gurkha mountain troops were enough to overwhelm the Ottoman garrison, who had never seen such troops before. They exclaimed in amazement that the Gurkhas could traverse mountains as if they were on flat ground, and that their climbing and cross-country combat capabilities during the assault were simply too exaggerated.

Even the Alpine strategists of Demania and Oreo probably couldn't achieve this level of off-road capability.

The last Ottoman garrison on the Gallipoli Peninsula finally succumbed and began to collapse at an accelerated pace.

Finally, after holding out until December 18, the Ottoman army was completely driven back and left the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The Britannian landing forces attacked from both sides, capturing the entire Gallipoli Peninsula. They then advanced further, finally penetrating the last open basin plain west of Istanbul, the Tekilda region.

Well, if the Burkina Faso army captures the two small towns to the south and north of this plain, Tekilda to the south and Chollu to the north, and then advances 80 kilometers eastward, they will be able to reach the city of Istanbul!
More than two weeks ago, when Bretanian Navy Minister Walton was peddling his strategy to Prime Minister Asquith—"forget about appearances, shamelessly and forcibly undermine Greece's neutrality, create a puppet regime, and then land in Greece to open a second front"—the Bretanian army was still 200 kilometers away from Istanbul.

Although Bretonnia's international image was tarnished after adopting Minister Wharton's shameless and underhanded tactics, the effects were immediate.

Sure enough, in just 20 days of actual work, the original 200 kilometers were shortened to only 80 kilometers!
If Istanbul is finally captured, the Black Sea straits will be completely opened up, the Ottoman Empire will be destroyed, and the Lussa people, who are in dire straits, may even be rescued.

Compared to such huge profits, what does face matter?

Although the Greek king was still being protected and resisted on the Peloponnese peninsula in the south, and some other minor incidents occurred, these no longer affected the overall situation.

The Bretonnian allied forces surged forward like a tidal wave, pouring all their fresh troops into the fray. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers now had only one objective in their eyes—

To conquer Constantinople, the ancient imperial capital, restore the glory of the Western world since 1453, and become a great conqueror whose name will be etched in history.

As for risks… what risks? The main force of the Demacians is still locked in a life-or-death battle with the Russa in Kiev. I've heard that the main elite forces of the Demacians' 10th and 6th divisions have been spotted near Kiev, and their radio signals are still around the city. They probably want to take Kiev first before coming to its aid.

This is fair; the Dmanians ate Kiev, and the Bretonnia ate Istanbul. Everyone swapped homes.

(End of this chapter)