"Hold the line!"
"Let them get closer before you open fire!"
"Keep the artillery pounding! Pound them hard!"
Crown Prince Wilhelm wasn’t sitting safely in the rear command post watching the battle unfold. He had gone straight to the front lines to rally his men.
He knew the German troops’ morale and fighting spirit were at rock bottom.
While his decision to stand his ground had steadied some of the nerves, if he wanted his soldiers to fight with real fire, there was only one way to do it: show them he wasn’t afraid to risk his own neck and take personal command at the front!
"Good God, it’s His Highness the Crown Prince!"
"Sir, this place is way too dangerous! You need to get back, now!"
Karl’s arrival sent a ripple of excitement through the front lines. Junior officers and enlisted men alike were practically ready to grab him by the legs and carry him back to safety themselves.
But Karl shot down every attempt with a firm refusal.
"If we lose this fight, we’ll all be conquered subjects. What good is being a prince or a crown prince then? Out here, there are no crown princes—only the most loyal warriors of the Second Empire! Today, I stand with you. We fight the enemy together, and we defend our motherland together!"
Under the effect of his Natural Orator skill, Karl’s impassioned speech hit the soldiers right in the gut. They were moved to the core!
"The Prince is with us! Come on, boys, let’s kill ’em! We’ll protect our motherland and defend His Highness to the death!"
"Come and get some, you Yankee bastards! Before I go down, I’m taking as many of you dogs with me as I can!"
His presence worked exactly as planned. The soldiers who were already locked in combat saw their Crown Prince right there in the trenches with them, and they started screaming and cheering like madmen.
If Karl hadn’t stopped them, these amped-up troops would’ve poured out of the trenches and charged the enemy right then and there!
Karl wasn’t opposed to a countercharge, but the timing wasn’t right. Charging out now would be suicide in the face of the enemy’s withering fire.
His available forces were limited: just four field armies, thirty-four divisions, totaling about 730,000 men.
On the other side, the Americans alone had 1.2 million troops, with hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers lurking nearby, ready to jump in at any moment.
Bleeding the enemy dry in an attritional slugfest wasn’t a winning strategy for him.
He had to inflict maximum casualties with minimum cost to break the enemy’s will!
The Germans, riding a wave of high morale, threw back the first American assault in under an hour.
After leaving the ground littered with corpses, the surviving American soldiers broke ranks and fled back to their own lines in a desperate scramble.
Because the fighting had been so brief and their retreat so chaotic, a massive number of wounded but still-living American soldiers were left behind on the battlefield, screaming and wailing in agony.
The lucky ones who made it back alive could hear their comrades’ screams from the field, but they didn’t dare risk going out to rescue them. All they could do was hug their helmets and shake in the bottom of their trenches!
"Move! Fall back to the second line of trenches and bunkers! The enemy artillery barrage is coming any second now!"
There was no time to clear the battlefield. Seeing the enemy retreating like the tide, Wilhelm immediately ordered his men to pull back to a safe distance.
While the second defensive line wasn’t exactly a guaranteed safe zone either, the enemy’s main focus would still be the first line. Hunkering down behind the second line would let them dodge most of the shelling and keep friendly casualties to a minimum.
Of course, this tactic had its downsides. When the enemy launched their next assault, the Germans would have to rush back to the first line and man the defenses in the shortest time possible.
Otherwise, they’d basically be handing over the undefended first line to the enemy for free.
Once the enemy captured the first line, they could use it as a springboard to push deeper into German territory. If the Germans wanted to take it back after that, they’d have to pay a bloody price just like the Americans had today!
Upon hearing the order, the well-drilled German soldiers quickly redeployed. Not only did every man pull back, but they also took every single weapon, round of ammo, wounded comrade, and supply they could carry.
Whatever they couldn’t take with them was stashed in pre-dug underground tunnels, where small teams of shock troops were also hiding.
Their job was to burst out of the tunnels and counterattack the moment the enemy’s artillery stopped, holding the line until the main force arrived.
If the position unfortunately fell, they would act as a fifth column, linking up with friendly forces to launch a counteroffensive and retake the lost ground.
The moment the Germans finished pulling back, the American artillery kicked off its second barrage.
Maybe it was because the casualties from the first assault were so high, but the furious Americans hammered the German positions for a full five hours straight in a fit of rage.
"This is nothing like the intel!"
"The enemy’s morale is clearly high! Why did the reports say they were demoralized and falling apart?"
"I need tanks! I need tanks to punch through that goddamn minefield and barbed wire!"
Watching the Americans rout through his binoculars, Lieutenant General Liggett, commander of the First Army, was absolutely livid.
The situation on the battlefield was nothing like the glorious victory he had pictured in his head.
He had been dreaming of a decisive triumph. Instead, all he got was a humiliating rout.
The casualty figures weren’t in yet, but from the looks of it, the Americans had lost at least 10,000 men in that last push. Maybe even more!
Yet he didn’t take an ounce of responsibility for the defeat. Instead, he pinned all the blame on the intelligence division, insisting their bad intel was the only reason he’d lost. He never once stopped to consider whether his own command decisions were the problem!
While the Americans were throwing their tantrum, the British and French military observers watching from the sidelines were frowning deeply.
The enemy’s performance today was definitely off. They were like a completely different army from before.
Hell, even the Americans were getting suspicious now. Even the observers themselves were starting to wonder if the news coming out of Germany was just a load of bull.
Could it be that the Kaiser never fled, and this was all just a trap to lure them in?
But regardless, the numbers on the board were 1.2 million to 700,000. The advantage was clearly theirs!
Losing 10,000 men was a bitter pill, sure, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Americans from attacking again. They had already eaten 150,000 casualties up to this point anyway!
If they gave up now, and the Germans actually surrendered later, they’d be going home with absolutely nothing to show for it. Worse, they’d be the ones retreating in disgrace, making them the laughingstock of the entire Entente!
So they had to keep attacking. But this time, the Americans were bringing in the tanks!
Ever since the British invented the tank and first deployed it during the Battle of the Somme...
...the world had recognized the revolutionary value of this new weapon, and every major power had started developing their own.
The United States was no exception. However, they were late to the game, lacked the technical know-how, and didn’t have the capability to develop their own from scratch.
They had no choice but to partner with their Entente allies, the British and the French.
At this point, the Americans hadn’t produced many tanks of their own design—fewer than twenty Mark VIII tanks, developed in cooperation with the British.
The remaining 160 tanks were all bought or borrowed from the French, mostly Renault FT-17s.
Compared to the land behemoths of World War II, World War I tanks were severely underpowered. They were light, poorly armed, and their armor could only stop machine gun and rifle rounds. They stood no chance against an actual artillery shell.
But on a World War I battlefield, tanks were still absolute game-changers. The arrival of over a hundred of them was more than enough to turn the tide!