The river in this area downstream is relatively narrow. Although crossing the river takes less time, there are advantages and disadvantages. The water speed is correspondingly faster. The rapid river water increases the difficulty of crossing the river.
A reconnaissance detachment of the 26th Italian Division quietly crossed the Tejo River in an attempt to conduct a follow-up reconnaissance mission.
As a reconnaissance unit, it can be described as large-based on two infantry platoons, equipped with two ultra-light mortars and a heavy machine gun, with a total number of more than ninety people.
This was an ingenious and temporary formation by the Italians based on feedback from the National Army, because the latter claimed that squad and platoon-level reconnaissance detachments would often be easily repelled after being discovered by the opponent.
The Italians didn't want to think about how to hide themselves to prevent being discovered, but they did the opposite, setting up such a large-scale reconnaissance unit with as much fanfare as a combat patrol, as if they were afraid that others wouldn't know about it.
The sun was setting in the west, the sunset glow dyed half of the sky red, and the floating clouds turned into shining red and yellow.
According to Zhou Changfeng's request, it is necessary to patrol within one's own front lines and control areas. He divided more than 20 places, large and small, according to factors such as geographical location and distance, corresponding to different alert standards.
For example, here, according to regulations, security patrols are carried out repeatedly at intervals of three hours, and the team size is half a shift.
"We pass by here every day, and I feel like I can complete the circle smoothly even if I close my eyes."
"War is like this. Most of the time is spent marching, camping, and being on guard. Combat may only take up one-tenth of the time..."
"Hush! Encounter! Ten o'clock!"
When the five British members of Company A of the 71st Battalion were walking on this boring old road, they happened to see a sneaky Italian paddling a rubber boat across the river.
A few rubber boats obviously couldn't transport nearly a hundred people across the river at once, so they had to repeat it several times, which greatly lengthened the crossing time and inevitably led to early discovery.
"What do these guys want to do?"
Several people quickly ran into the woods nearby, and then carefully hid themselves under the cover of bushes.
The corporal leading the team raised his binoculars and said while observing: "Four small boats, totaling about one hundred, can see at least one heavy machine gun and two mortars."
Because of the lighting, they couldn't tell whether these guys were Italian troops or National troops by the color of their uniforms.
The corporal ordered the three people to return immediately to report, while he and another person stayed to continue observing.
Later, several people rushed to a nearby stronghold and reported the emergency situation to the headquarters by phone.
The third platoon of the 102nd Tank Company, which happened to be training nearby, immediately loaded some ammunition, and then rushed to support with a platoon of infantry.
"How much fuel is left?!"
"Half, that's enough!"
"Hey! The ammunition hasn't been replenished yet!"
These dozens of people and five tanks had only walked halfway when they saw a yellow flare rising into the sky in the distance.
Immediately afterwards, clearly audible gunshots were heard.
The two British soldiers who stayed behind to monitor were discovered by the Italian soldiers. There were only a few of them. In order to prevent them from going back to report the news, dozens of Italian soldiers quickly chased after them. Like a mountain roaring and a tsunami, the momentum was quite large. .
After setting off the signal flare to warn, the corporal and another person hurriedly evacuated, with a group of enemies behind him.
A sudden encounter broke out immediately. The arrogant and careless Italian soldiers did not realize that the crisis was approaching when they heard the sound of the engine. They thought it was just a truck transporting troops.
As a result, they quickly found cover nearby, deployed heavy machine guns and mortars, and prepared for an encounter.
Because the lieutenant leading the team felt that only by repelling the opponents who came for reinforcements could they conduct reconnaissance and search in this area with peace of mind.
However, contrary to expectations, when the outline of the Type 26 tank appeared in sight, the dozens of Italian soldiers were immediately stunned.
"Bang-boom!"
An anti-explosive bomb flew next to the Italian army who had just found cover, and then a series of "ta-da-da" sounds also rang out.
The soil splashed by the explosion scattered down one after another, and the dust was flying for a while. Several Italian soldiers were hit by the 7.36mm bullets and fell twitching on the field beside the river beach.
As an old thing that was born ten years ago, the Type 26 light tank weighs only eight tons and is equipped with a short-barreled gun and two machine guns. Today it is actually considered backward, but it is not a group of light infantry. Able to compete.
Each 6.5mm bullet hit the 16mm thick nickel-manganese alloy steel plate head-on, and was either bounced off or directly shattered.
The extremely frightened Italian army crawled on the ground and fled to the woods dozens of meters away, and then fired back desperately.
They cleverly placed the Fiat heavy machine gun in a small depression. The gun body was only twenty centimeters above the ground. From a distance, the target looked very small.
At this time, the flat trajectory becomes a disadvantage. Even if the elevation and depression of the tank gun are just a little off, the deviation of the anti-explosive bomb will be magnified many times when it is hundreds of meters away.
There were more than a dozen explosions around the small depression, but none of the shells could effectively hit it. The tanks had to use machine guns to continuously suppress it while slowly approaching.
The soldiers of a platoon also spread out and followed closely behind the tank.
To everyone's surprise, the ultra-light mortars equipped by the Italians actually added a lot of trouble to this encounter that should have been without suspense.
Today's infantry units in any country, without carrying anti-tank weapons, can only rely on cluster grenades and blasting tubes to engage in close combat with tanks.
However, the Briscia M35 45mm ultra-light mortar equipped by the Italian army is an out-and-out wonder. Today's popular mortars are bipods and seat plates, relying on the shells to fall freely in the barrel. And fire.
But the Italian army's ultra-light mortar is a tripod like a heavy machine gun. There is a magazine containing ten rifle blank rounds on the top. The shells are loaded from the muzzle and then pushed out by the gunpowder gas when the blank rounds are fired. muzzle.
Therefore, its rate of fire is very fast, and it also has the ability to shoot flatly that ordinary mortars cannot.
So when the five tanks approached about three hundred meters, they were greeted by a series of high-explosive bombs.
Since the caliber is only 45mm, this high-explosive bomb only weighs 450g and is loaded with 70g of TNT explosive. It is not very powerful and cannot withstand large quantities.
In just ten seconds, the leading Type 26 tank took five hits. The commander's sight glass was shattered, the turret seat was damaged and stuck, and it lost its combat effectiveness.
Two other high-explosive rounds missed the target, missed the tank and fell behind, knocking down several people.
The series of rumbling explosions startled the tank crews. They thought the Italian army was carrying some anti-tank weapons, so they hurriedly stopped the car and fired in the general direction regardless.
"Click, click, click—" The dense firepower overwhelmed the opponent in an instant. The machine gun tracer bullets drew out conspicuous lines of fire in the dusk. The bullets fired by the two sides were so dense that they seemed to hit each other.
Another tank next to it was also hit continuously by 45mm high-explosive bombs. Because the driver did not close the hatch tightly to facilitate getting on and off the vehicle, he was injured by the explosion.
But a mortar is just a mortar after all, and its ammunition is not a dedicated armor-piercing projectile. It is still impossible to completely destroy a tank.
As the two M35 mortars were killed, several tanks slowly approached while maintaining fire suppression.
The Italian army was already in poor morale, and now it had lost its reliance, so it quickly launched smoke bombs to obscure its sight, and then hurriedly retreated.
But... it was so hard to cross the river, how easy would it be to escape back now?
When the tanks and accompanying soldiers emerged from the smoke, nearly ten Italian soldiers were knocked down in the blink of an eye.
The tank tracks ran over the corpse, just like a person stepping on a rotten watermelon. Blood and internal organs exploded and splashed around like juice and melon pulp.
The defeated Italian soldiers no longer had the confidence and leisure they had when they set out. They were killed along the river beach and littered with corpses. Everywhere you looked, there were corpses everywhere.
I don’t know who started it. Soon, they threw their weapons aside one after another and raised their hands in surrender.
However, there were a few fast and clever Italian soldiers who escaped onto rubber boats and were lucky enough to avoid bullets fired from behind and successfully escaped.
Half an hour later.
"Are they all annihilated?"
"Yes, only about ten people crossed the river to escape."
"Interrogate the prisoners, count the seized documents, and bring them over immediately after summarizing them."
After interrogation, everyone learned the specific situation of the enemy in person.
Everyone had previously thought that the enemy troops strutting across the river were a combat patrol, that is, they were here to conduct a tentative attack and raid the outpost security positions.
After working on it for a long time, this stupid team actually came to "reconnaissance"?
After normal people learn that reconnaissance detachments are always discovered and repelled, they must be thinking about how to prevent being discovered, such as taking long routes or strengthening camouflage.
As a result, these guys went in the opposite direction. They are indeed Italians!
The key military information that had been compiled was listed on the paper. Looking at the new enemy numbers that appeared one after another, the officers in the headquarters began to whisper.
"Oh my God, they have assembled four divisions on a thirty-kilometer-wide front, and at least two more divisions are being deployed." Blake, who had recovered from his minor injuries, said in surprise.
"There are quite a few on our side too." Roald pointed at the map and said, "But we can't tell which side will take the lead in launching the offensive."
Chretien, who looked leisurely, put the almost-burned cigarette in the ashtray, "No matter which side starts first, they have to pick a place to achieve a breakthrough, and ours is the most suitable place in theory. "
He glanced at Zhou Changfeng, who was thinking, "But, I have full confidence in our defense line."
Blake and Chretien often broke up with each other, partly because of the old enemies of Britain and France, and partly because of their completely opposite political stances. For example, on the topic of "Who is better at laying out defensive positions between the British and French armies?" The two of them argued for more than half a month.
But Zhou Changfeng didn't care about this. The specific construction and strengthening of defenses had to follow his rules.
A forward warning position responsible for warning and confirming enemy movements; a main position composed of three reinforced trenches, with bellows of barbed wire, minefields, and deer villages in between; a diagonal position used to hinder enemy breakthroughs and divide their offensive formations; A circular position support point used to delay the enemy's advance in depth and gain time for our own counterattack; a counterattack firepower point used to delay and surprise the enemy...
Various trenches, shelters, communication trenches, and firepower points are crisscrossed and dotted. All defense areas are strictly divided according to the principle of "being able to operate independently and flexibly support each other."
The defensive positions built under Zhou Changfeng's personal inspection and guidance from morning to night for more than ten days in a row can be said to be breathtaking. Highland 109 is covered with dazzling tunnels from halfway up the mountain to the top.
This completely shocked the entire 50th Brigade, and Chretien and Blake, who claimed to have "experienced the largest positional battle in human history," were also dumbfounded.
Blake even felt that the rich experience accumulated by the Europeans with millions of casualties in the European War was stolen by the Chinese. Otherwise, it would be impossible to create such a headache-inducing arrangement behind closed doors.
While the officers of the 50th Brigade were discussing the other side's possible next actions, the Spaniards and Italians in the northern part of Talavera were doing the same thing.
The headquarters of the 26th Division is located at Analia Bank. This private bank with a reinforced concrete structure and many granite masonry is usually regarded as the strongest building by local citizens.
Now, the same is true in the military, so it has become an ideal place to set up a headquarters.
Regarding the fate of the "well-prepared" reconnaissance team not long ago, the Spaniards looked very sorry on the surface, but they couldn't help but ridicule in their hearts, while the Italians, who were slapped in the face, pretended not to care.
Major General Antonio's adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo, said in surprise: "The Republican Army does not have many armored vehicles, but several tanks appeared here. They actually assigned precious armor units to these volunteer troops. Does this mean they attach great importance to this place?”
Domingo, commander of the 96th Brigade of the National Army, pondered: "This is for sure. Talavera is the core of the battle. After these days of fighting, we can be sure that the volunteer troops on the other side of the river are experienced elites. They are very capable." It’s difficult to deal with, I think you should agree.”
This was a bit sarcastic, but the Italian officers who had just been slapped in the face were unable to refute.
Antonio, who had been staring at the map with an expressionless face, raised his head at this moment and said slowly: "Many people in Rome and Florence admire ancient Chinese books. I have also read them recently, and there are many comments in them that I very much agree with, such as 'take the lead in taking action. The party that takes action will have an advantage, and the party that takes action later will be constrained by this.' This is highly consistent with the ideas of Vegetius and Machiavelli, and is exactly what we should follow."
"Sir, do you think we should launch an attack in advance?" Ricardo asked.
"In order to break the balance of victory and defeat, we need to create a protrusion on the other side of the Tejo River to facilitate the deployment of follow-up troops, and the city of Talavera cannot be contained by those guys on the other side, and must deal with them."
"yes!"
"With all due respect, General, this will disrupt the battle plan." Domingo was a little dissatisfied. He felt that the Italians were eager to regain face and completely ignored rationality.
Antonio glanced at him and said calmly: "I will apply to the staff, Colonel."
(End of chapter)
