Iron Cross Fire

On the morning of August 7, Custer woke up and saw that the village had been taken. He nodded casually to show his affirmation.

He did not ask how many casualties there were. He sat up and made a phone call to negotiate with the friendly army group in the south to discuss the next action.

Orleans, a military stronghold, must be taken first. As long as this gap is closed, the surrounding area of ​​Paris will be completely surrounded.

The French are not idiots. They will definitely not give it up in vain. This is destined to be a hard battle. The armies in the north and south must discuss the plan in advance.

According to intelligence, the French defenders are mostly guarding against the army group in the south, deploying nearly 2 armies, while the defense in the north is relatively small, with only 3 divisions, equivalent to about 50,000 people.

The two generals discussed based on this intelligence.

Orleans is located in the Central Region, about 20 degrees and 100 kilometers south-west of Paris.

The Cousté Army, which was still in Normandy, had a distance of nearly 200 kilometers, and this was still a situation where it was required to advance in a straight line. Various difficult-to-eradicate fortresses along the way were one of the variables that interfered with the route.

The Franche-Comté Army in the south was relatively close to here, 120 kilometers away.

So, unsurprisingly, the farther Cousté had more autonomy and did not need to focus all its attention on Orleans.

But he still had to pretend, so he sent four divisions to attack Alençon in the southeast from Messé.

The remaining divisions marched westward, first gathering the army to rush to the English Channel, occupying the entire Normandy Peninsula, and sending a small force to the coast of the Brittany Peninsula to build a defense line before the large army arrived.

Alençon is very close to Messé, about 50 kilometers, and the four divisions arrived in a day and a half.

There was no obstruction along the way, and there was no resistance. The commander had already planned to take a detour immediately when encountering resistance, so as not to waste time. Now it seems that he was worrying too much.

It was not difficult to capture the city. The French army only had four battalions here, which was not worth mentioning.

Custer asked them to attack Le Mans to the south and continue to go deep into France to obtain more accurate intelligence.

The journey was not too far, about 45 kilometers.

This time, the German troops went straight on the avenue, and the speed was faster. They arrived in just half a day with a cart, and there was still no resistance.

It took half an hour to capture the town. After the war, the French army had a total of 2 battalions.

The German army only fired a round of artillery fire, which took 20 minutes. The infantry just charged casually and Le Mans was captured.

In two battles, a total of 6 French battalions were destroyed, equivalent to about 5,000 people.

They still had more than 40,000 people, but they didn't know where they were deployed, which made Custer a little nervous.

Due to his rigorous combat style, Custer kept the four divisions close together and always fought the enemy with superior forces.

For safety, he gave up the idea of ​​rapid maneuver and ordered the army to get off the road immediately, so that they could go directly through the wilderness to Orleans to join forces with friendly forces.

There was still more than 130 kilometers to the total length, and it was believed that they could reach Orleans in about five days, or even only three days.

During the same period, the French deployment was relatively strange, but it was not a big deal from a defensive point of view.

Because Custer's army group advanced too rapidly and kept marching westward, many French troops mistakenly thought that they were going to attack Brittany.

So many troops were deployed south of the Loire River and dug positions on the river bank.

At the same time, they withdrew all the garrisons on the Normandy Peninsula to the vicinity of Brittany with the army, and took away all military supplies before leaving.

Normandy is the most important place for British and French exchanges. It is obviously unreasonable for the French army to abandon it, but it is actually very reasonable.

The endless bombing of the German army before bombed Normandy into a dog, and the infrastructure was almost completely broken.

Although the bombing was mainly aimed at Brittany, due to the long distance and poor accuracy, many shells were bombed in front of the Loire River.

Seeing that it was difficult to hit the shells, Germany naturally transferred its firepower to the Normandy Peninsula, which was closer to them.

As a result, the Normandy Peninsula became devastated as it is now.

There is no benefit here, so there is no need to defend it, especially when the front-line defense may collapse at any time and the retreat is blocked, the troops should be withdrawn to useful places.

Therefore, the process of attacking the Normandy Peninsula was very smooth, and the only enemy there was the surface that was bombed into a hornet's nest.

Only two days later, the German army from Messé traveled 130 kilometers and captured Cherbourg on the peninsula.

More German troops followed, they built fortifications north of the Loire River, pulled the artillery to the front line and laid steel, and then let the machine press it casually, and the fortress group was formed.

It won't be long before they will launch an attack and seize the whole of Brittany.

This is what most French people thought. Although they had four divisions, they had long lost their fighting spirit and tried their best to avoid fighting. They just didn't know when the Germans would arrive.

They only lamented, but they didn't see the Germans on the other side gradually decreasing, and the number of decreases was very large, clearly visible to the naked eye.

But even so, the huge cannons on the shore could still scare them.

In fact, this was because Custer withdrew his troops to the Orleans area, leaving the German army in the Loire River area with less than two divisions, far less than the French army in the south.

This was thanks to their friendly army - the Orleans French Army.

The French army in Orleans was obviously well-trained and successfully blocked the attack of the Franche-Comté Army in the south, leaving them without any results within four days of Coust's massive attack, and they were still blocked on the east side of the Loire River.

A small group of lucky German troops infiltrated the other side of the river from the flank and approached Orleans to the north to fulfill their promise as much as possible.

But they were still blocked by the French reserve in Orleans. At first, the French army could only delay the Germans who had landed on the land, but with the arrival of more French troops, the German army could no longer break through.

If that was all, it would not be enough for Coust to mobilize troops to return to support. The most important thing was the war in the north.

I believe that Coust would curse in the street when he returned, and even grab the clothes of the intelligence director and curse. Because the French had more than those divisions, at least there was an army.

His troops were ambushed, which was not the most fatal. The retreat was also buried. Le Mans was reoccupied by the French. The German army returned after being defeated and found that they were not their own people in the city. They could only desperately build a defense line on the plain.

All the money from the Normandy raid was gone, and now we can only live frugally and survive one day at a time.

After Custer learned about it, he led his troops to the scene while cursing.

If these troops cannot be rescued, the head of the intelligence agency may be killed tomorrow.

However, the intelligence department cannot be blamed, because this is not the original defense line at all, but the reinforcements from Paris, and they just happened to run into them.

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