Imperial Elite

Chapter 110 Your bullets are being used up every moment, while my soldiers are endless!
How to drive enemy troops conducting an amphibious landing back into the sea is a matter with almost endless possibilities.

As an officer who had experienced the Gallipoli campaign and was the commander of the local Sudanese garrison, he was in the group that was being stopped by Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa and preparing to retreat.

He had also heard Mustafa's famous order, which he had by then become the supreme leader of Sudan: "I am not ordering you to attack, I am ordering you to die! In the time it takes for us to die, other troops and commanders will be able to come and take our place!"

Furthermore, in the battle of the Saribair Ridge, they drove the Bunitania Overseas Legion back from the ridge and held the position firmly for the next few months.

Having already died once, the local garrison commander was naturally not afraid of death.

Upon receiving reports that the Greeks had landed, the local garrison commander immediately made a decision: a counterattack must be launched immediately.

So, once the local garrison commander figured out the landing location of the "Greeks," he ordered his troops to assemble immediately, gather everyone he could, and bring all the equipment he could carry. After reporting that the "Greeks" had landed, the commander was already prepared to die.

If the local garrison commander had launched a decisive attack at that moment, he might not have been able to crush Joe and his beach assault troops on the beach, but he could at least have inflicted heavy casualties on Wagner's forces.

After all, it's highly questionable how much fighting power a group of people who have been vomiting all day can recover after a short rest.

However, as a survivor of the Battle of Garibaldi, the local garrison commander saw the landing site of the "Greeks" on the map.

Instead of launching an attack, the local garrison commander chose to block the road with his troops, preparing to trap the "Greeks" on the beachhead, just like in the Battle of Garibaldi.

From a topographical perspective, the choice of the garrison commander is not problematic.

Because Wagner's choice of landing point was, logically speaking, extremely poor.

Lake Toulouse, west of the landing point, is very close to the Mediterranean Sea. So close that, on a map, the narrow strip of land between Lake Toulouse and the sea looks like a dam – long but narrow, clearly unsuitable for large-scale troop movements.

To the east of the landing point are three rivers that appear to be twisted together.

The entire landing point is located in the triangular area between Toulouse Lake and the river. The only two routes to escape this triangular area are the road leading to the town that the garrison commander plans to block and the road north along the river.

In theory, if they could block the road and wait for reinforcements to arrive, they could replicate their success in Garibaldi.

As a local garrison, this unit is small, consisting of only one battalion.

Holding two highways simultaneously is a near-impossible task for the local garrison.

The tactical objective of launching an attack to push the troops on the beach into the sea was a bit too much for the garrison commander.

Based on Garibaldi's experience and the current size of the troops, the garrison commander chose to impose a blockade.

This gave Joe an opportunity.

Having had experience with multiple landings, Joe knew that the most troublesome part of a landing was the landing of the second wave of troops.

If possible, it would be best to capture the port.

Utilize the port's facilities to allow subsequent troops to land quickly.

So what should we do in a situation like now where there is no port? Well, we'll just build a makeshift dock by hand.

The river to the east of the landing site is a navigable river, and there is a dike at its estuary.

A diversion dike is a facility that improves river navigation conditions.

At river estuaries, the water flow typically slows down abruptly. Combined with the effects of tides and waves, the large amounts of silt carried by the river easily accumulate, forming constantly changing sandbars and shoals. This is fatal to shipping, as large ships are prone to running aground.

Constructing two parallel diversion dikes is equivalent to artificially narrowing and lengthening the river's outlet. According to the principles of fluid mechanics, water flow is confined within a narrower channel, resulting in a faster flow velocity.

This means that the river's hydrological conditions are suitable for ships to enter.

Then the rest is very simple.

After wiping out the police in the town, Joe, having confirmed that the landing point had been exposed, immediately sprang into action without waiting for a break.

As someone who had received full engineering training, Joe personally led those who had recovered some strength after a short rest to begin building a temporary dock on the riverbank.

At the same time, Joe also gave a strict order to the troops on guard around the area: "Two hours! No matter what you do! You must gain two hours."

After all, the landing point has now been exposed. Unless the Sudanese are fools, they will definitely launch an attack on the beach, even if it is just a probing attack. Given that most of the troops are still in a weakened state, the battle will likely be very difficult.

Therefore, Joe could only place his hopes on the Wagner warriors who were in better condition and had already built defensive positions on the perimeter.

For Wagner's veterans, this was not the first time they had received orders to hold a position to the death.

However, unlike during the war, this time they were no longer armed with bolt-action fire pokers, but with submachine guns and light machine guns.

They could use bullets to pin anyone who tried to attack their positions to the ground in front of them, even though this time they lacked the most important thing for building a defense: barbed wire.

Just as Wagner's troops were reinforcing their defenses and fighting a bloody counterattack by Sudanese forces on the beachhead.

Just one kilometer from the ambush position of Wagner's troops, the Sudanese defenders had already erected barbed wire, piled up sandbags, and dug trenches on both sides of the road.

Machine guns had already been deployed in bunkers, in preparation for resisting the Greek forces' advance inland.

With one side exhausted and unable to attack, and the other side short of troops, the two sides remained in a stalemate across a road, unable to see each other.

In this battle of wits against thin air, both Joe and the local garrison commander were praying that their reinforcements would arrive as soon as possible.

At that very moment, Joe's reconnaissance and sabotage unit began to exert its power.

Despite being in equally dire condition, these reconnaissance and sabotage units, thanks to the Indomitable armored vehicles' superior mobility, wreaked havoc wherever they went.

Joe's orders to them were simply to create as much chaos as possible, to keep the Sudanese from figuring out the situation and what was going on.

So these sabotage groups began to do everything they could to create chaos.

Some raided police stations under cover of darkness, firing a burst of gunfire before throwing away explosives and fleeing.

Some even relied on their superior firepower, including machine guns and submachine guns, to block the gates of the military camp.

There was even a sabotage team that, by sheer chance, encountered a colonel with guards who was on his way to the military camp to command his troops, and thus achieved the biggest victory for Wagner's forces in the night's operation.

This sabotage left the Sudanese commanders in the region completely bewildered. The news of Greek forces causing destruction and attacks everywhere left the Sudanese commanders in a state of confusion.

They had no idea where the enemy troops were, how many of them there were, or even what their objective was.

All sorts of messages flooded the Sudanese's communication lines, leaving even the most experienced generals bewildered and completely unsure where to send their troops.

In this state of confusion, time slipped away little by little.

Finally, two hours later, after completing the simple dock on the riverbank and lying on the riverbank, exhausted from overexertion, Joe watched the huge cargo ship sail into the waterway, and his heart finally settled down.

Although landing mechanized troops usually takes a considerable amount of time, the Wagner troops who arrived by cargo ship were in much better condition than those who came ashore in fishing boats.

After landing, the newly arrived troops immediately began to take over the positions from the beaching troops who had first spent a day on a rocky fishing boat and then had been on high alert for a long time.

At this point, the Sudanese army still did not respond.

There's not much more to say about that, as the armored forces completed their landing on the riverbank.

Joe ordered his troops to advance along the road to capture the town of Tuzla and the area north of the canal, hoping to gain a proper dock where large ships could moor.

Although the local garrison was putting up a desperate resistance, these troops were considered second-rate even among the less-than-stellar Sudanese army, and after Wagner completed the landing, they were even outnumbered.

In just five minutes, Wagner’s troops completely crushed the local garrison’s resistance and then occupied the town of Tuzla without encountering any resistance.

Although, under current technological conditions, night combat is generally considered either a self-inflicted or forced endurance.

But since the Sudanese are currently unable to mount an effective resistance, Joe naturally wouldn't miss this opportunity.

Although Joe was extremely weak, after arriving in Tuzla, he arranged for the equally weak soldiers to rest in the local school.

Joe still gave orders to the main force that arrived later. The troops immediately split into two groups, one to occupy the town of Karatash in the east, which had a dock.

Although small, it was enough for the subsequent Greek troops.

Meanwhile, the other team went to attack the western city of Mersin. As a coastal city, it has a huge commercial port. If they could occupy the city, or even just control the port, the battle would already be half won.

After giving the order, Joe, who was extremely weak due to the severe exhaustion, simply found a place to fall asleep.

If this behavior were committed by someone else, it would most likely be considered dereliction of duty. An officer sleeping while his troops are launching a large-scale offensive—is this a distortion of humanity or a moral decline?

But for Wagner, the situation was not so simple.

Faced with a Joe who was already half-dead from exhaustion, the officers of the Wagner Group who arrived later believed that Joe had already completed the most difficult part of the landing operation, so it wouldn't matter whether Joe was there or not for the rest. After all, armored warfare was just like that: tanks advance and then victory is achieved.

As Wagner's armored forces began their advance toward Mersin, the Sudanese commander in charge of the region's defenses finally grasped the situation.

However, by then it was far too late to figure out the situation.

An armored force that even the Teutons couldn't stop is not something a group of second-line troops can withstand.

Wagner quickly and easily crushed the Sudanese's weak resistance and entered the city of Mersin.

They captured the port area very easily.

But as Joe knew, the Wagner members, as a unit composed of veterans and officers, were a little too proactive.

After capturing the commercial port area, they felt that Mersin's resistance was too weak, even negligible.

So they simply continued westward, capturing the cruise terminal, the city hall and police station in the city center, and most importantly, the telegraph building, informing the Greeks that they had captured the port of Mersin.

Meanwhile, the troops that occupied Karatash encountered almost no decent resistance and captured this small town with a dock.

Thus, in just one night, Wagner captured half the city and three ports.

The next day, after daybreak, Mustafa, who was preparing to defend against Wagner's landing in the west, realized that he had been tricked.

Wagner was not in the west at all. While the Greeks were gathering a large force and seemed to be planning to land in the west, Wagner had already landed in the south and taken control of several ports.

Faced with this situation, all Mustafa could do was mobilize all the troops he could muster and launch an offensive in the south, attempting to drive Wagner into the sea.

If they fail to drive Wagner away in time, it will be all over by the time the Greek troops arrive.

Venizelos, who learned of the news a few hours earlier than Mustafa, had already moved his troops south, preparing to land in the Mersin region and then completely occupy this fertile land.

This might seem like another race to see who can go the fastest, but that's not actually the case.

The logic of who is faster is that Mustafa's Sudanese forces were able to defeat Wagner.

But they can't do that.

After dawn, Joe, who had finally recovered from a good night's sleep, found that the troops were progressing better than he had expected and took back command.

As soon as Joe returned to the game, the first thing he did was to have Wagner, who had taken control of Melsin, contact the Kurds and hand over the police station's equipment to them so they could maintain order in the city.

Like the Habsburgs, the Sultanate was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. The reason it has become what it is today is inseparable from the centrifugal forces caused by its ethnic policies.

So Joe's plan was very simple: to carry on the Bonitania tradition and let heroes govern heroes, and good men govern good men.

Now that the Sultanate of Sudan has disintegrated, these Kurds can't hold back any longer and want to separate and establish their own independent state.

If that's the case, why not make use of these people?
Having these guys maintain order would also free up Wagner's troops to defend important areas or fight in the field.

As for what to do when the Greeks arrive, I haven't made any promises to them. I've just told them to organize themselves to maintain order. What they might think after misunderstanding is none of my business.

At the same time, Joe also knew that with his limited forces, the only reason he was able to control the port of Simmel was because the Sudanese had not yet reacted, and Sudan did not have many troops in this direction.

Therefore, Joe's plan was very simple: rely on the Kurds to maintain order in the city. As long as the city's security was relatively stable, Joe could send Wagner out to fight.

Leaving the city, they dug pits and set traps in the field to launch surprise attacks, delaying the Sudanese's large-scale counterattack and making them unsure of the scale of their mistake.

In any case, as long as Wagner can hold out until the Greek troops arrive, he will be able to get rid of this troublesome task.

The Sudanese had absolutely no concept of Joe's offensive and defensive tactics, or at least they had never heard of them.

After all, as a Central Asian nation that relies entirely on its sheer size for warfare and whose industrial capacity is really not that great, it doesn't have many tanks, let alone armored vehicles.

The Sudanese support forces were easily defeated by this tactic of frequently charging in with tanks.

The Sudanese, however, displayed the same courage they had shown when they fought the Bunitas in Gallipoli. They had once been a dominant force in the Old World, though they had fallen from grace. But how could they tolerate these Greeks in strange uniforms attacking their homeland?
So after encountering Wagner, these Sudanese not only fought resolutely, but even had cavalry units charge towards Wagner.

If the charge of these Sudanese cavalry could still send shivers down one's spine a few hundred years ago, it was now 1920.

Joe's Wagner already had the firepower of at least three submachine guns and two light machine guns in a squad, not to mention the water-cooled machine guns on the armored vehicles.

Thus, these brave cavalrymen quickly understood that while courage was important on the battlefield, tactics were even more crucial.

Under Joe's command, Wagner paid no attention to the front lines or any land outside the port.

The reconnaissance and sabotage team, driving the Unyielding SUVs, went out to attack everywhere. Upon spotting Sudanese, they would first fire a round of machine gun fire and then run away without hesitation.

Generally speaking, if Sudanese people do not have genetic mutations, they cannot keep up with these swift reconnaissance teams on foot.

At this point, the Sudanese faced two choices: either defend in place or retreat to a more advantageous terrain to set up defenses.

Because, strategically, it was the Sudanese who were attempting to launch an offensive to seize the city occupied by Wagner.

Strategically, Wagner, who had lavishly equipped his company and battalion-level combat groups with radios, continued to attack Mustafa's reinforcements under Joe's command.

The Anatolian region, in particular, is a plain, making it the perfect place for Wagner to race his cars.

After being beaten by Wagner for two days on the plains and losing many troops, a force that had set out from the eastern mountain region finally managed to get close to the city of Simmel.

It seems that this painful battle is finally about to take a turn for the better. Once they can enter Simmel, the Sultan will be able to wear down Wagner through street fighting.

Yes, after two days of fighting, the Sudanese finally discovered that the troops that had crossed the border were not the Greeks who had previously been allied with them, but rather reinforcements sent by the Greeks.

Old Joe, who kicked down doors all over the Old World.

The discovery that the visitor was Old Joe gave the Sudanese a reason to console themselves.

Did we lose to the weak Greeks? We lost to Joe. Who is Joe? He's the tough guy who kicks anyone in his path on the mainland. Is it shameful to lose to him?
This prompted Mustafa, who was still trying to turn the tide, to send his troops into Simmel to fight street battles with Joe.

Although they were unable to hold Constantinople, the battle there made Mustafa realize just how hellish urban warfare truly was.

As a defense company, or rather a mercenary group, Wagner may be elite enough, but their numbers are limited.

Even if I traded ten men for one of you, you still couldn't afford it, right, Jordan?

Your bullets are being used up every moment, while my soldiers are endless!
Mustafa's plan was indeed sound. Although they had an absolute advantage in tactics and equipment, they routed the Sudanese in open battle.

However, every battle involves losses, and Wagner also suffered losses in the face of the Sudanese's fierce counterattack.

What Mustafa didn't expect was that Venizelos, the most outstanding Greek in centuries, would not miss this best opportunity to realize his great ideal.

When Mustafa's forces approached Simmel, the Greek army had arrived after two days of whirlwind travel at sea.

Not only the army, but the Greeks also brought their navy.

With a fierce artillery barrage, the unit closest to Simmel suffered a fatal blow.

Unlike Wagner, who would only symbolically pursue the retreating enemy if he was paid to do something, the Greeks, who had deep historical ties with the Sultanate, were not so gentle with the Sudanese.

They would kill any Sudanese soldier they encountered.

With the arrival of Greek troops, Joe also began to withdraw his forces, allowing the Wagner battle group, which had been constantly on the move, to disengage from the front lines and regroup.

At the same time, Joe also used the excuse that some troops had suffered too many losses and needed to be reorganized to send some troops back to their base by boat.

Of course, in reality, the losses of these troops were not that severe; the reason for using this excuse was simply that Joe was preparing to send these troops to the Far East.

Just as Joe was quietly sending his troops to the Far East, the battle, which lasted only three days, was about to begin.

Military professionals worldwide were completely baffled, even though everyone knew Joe was a formidable fighter who often pulled out new tactics from his crotch to slap people in the face.

But isn't this kind of surprise attack tactic a bit too much?

No one knows exactly how many troops Joe sent.

But the Sudanese suffered real losses.

Excluding the second-line troops that were routed on the day of the landing, Joe overcame the siege of four Sudanese divisions in the following two days, averaging two divisions per day.

Even though the Sudanese have never been particularly good at fighting, this level of fighting ability is still terrifying. How did they manage to do it?
(End of this chapter)