Watching the 8,000 elite Stormtroopers fade into the darkness, Crown Prince Wilhelm’s mood gradually settled from the earlier rush of adrenaline and tension.
He returned to his command post, pulled out some paper and a pen, and began drafting a letter to his cousin—King George V of the British Empire.
Before the Great War, the royal families of Europe were all tangled up in a web of complicated relations.
Take King George V of Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, for example—they were first cousins.
George V’s father was the eldest son of Queen Victoria, making George her direct grandson.
Wilhelm II’s mother was Victoria’s eldest daughter, so he was her direct grandson as well.
The Crown Prince had a deep impression of this cousin of his: a mature, rational, and restrained monarch who always put his country before family, so cold and calculating that it bordered on ruthless.
It was precisely because of this personality that Karl planned to exploit their family ties to his advantage.
Before the war broke out, the two royal families had kept in close contact, frequently hosting gatherings and social events.
Their relationship had been quite solid.
Even after war was declared and that relationship took a hit, George V had gone so far as to change the British royal family’s surname just to distance himself from Germany.
Still, he probably wouldn’t go as far as refusing to even read a personal letter from his own cousin.
As long as that letter landed in George V’s hands, Karl’s goal would be achieved!
This war was bound to end sooner or later.
Now that the Empire no longer had the military strength to solve all its problems, it would ultimately have to return to political means to find a solution.
At this moment, the situation in Europe was volatile and unpredictable.
Russia had erupted in the February Revolution and the October Revolution, overthrowing the Tsar and executing the entire royal family.
Back in the Second Empire, soldier mutinies and worker uprisings were spreading like wildfire, with a very real danger of the whole country going red.
Every European nation, including the mighty British Empire, now stood at a crossroads for their national destiny.
Without the benefit of hindsight, no one knew which direction things would go from here.
This inevitable hesitation in their decision-making was the Crown Prince’s—and the German Empire’s—one and only chance.
The window of opportunity was limited to just November and December.
Miss it, and the chance might never come again!
After finishing the letter, Wilhelm didn’t rush to send the telegram.
Although he was the Crown Prince, he didn’t have much of an international reputation at this point.
George V had met him before, sure, but he probably didn’t have a deep impression of him.
He needed to wait for the right moment.
That moment wasn’t anything complicated—it was this very battle against the Americans.
At a time when everyone believed the German army was about to surrender and that the war was all but over, his decision to go against the grain was bound to draw attention from all sides.
If his defiance resulted in a crushing defeat, he’d be seen as a clown trying to stop a tank with a flyswatter, becoming the laughingstock of every nation.
But if his resistance yielded unexpected results and inflicted devastating casualties on the Entente, then he wouldn’t be a clown at all—he’d be an opponent who demanded serious attention!
Only when his name had spread across the world, reached George V’s ears, and caught the King’s attention would sending this telegram achieve the best possible effect.
Until then, the Americans would just have to suffer and become the necessary price to pay!
...
At 2:30 a.m., both sides’ positions were dead silent.
The American sentries, who had managed to stay sharp during the first half of the night, were now struggling to keep their eyes open, utterly exhausted by the second half.
With less than half an hour to go before the next shift of sentries came to relieve them, the closer it got to that time, the more their mental state began to slack off.
Many had already started daydreaming about crawling back to their bunks for a good long sleep after the handover.
What they didn’t seem to notice, however, was that the wounded soldiers who had been left to die on the battlefield—the ones screaming in agony earlier that day—had fallen silent at some point.
If they had been alert enough, this should have set off alarm bells.
But with their bodies and minds pushed to the absolute limit, they didn’t give it a second thought.
In fact, they actually felt a sense of relief at the sudden peace and quiet, glad they didn’t have to listen to those guys screaming anymore.
Up in the high positions, the soldiers manning the searchlights mechanically cranked the handles, sweeping the beams across the battlefield.
Aside from the uncollected corpses of the day’s dead, the field appeared completely empty, giving the American soldiers a dangerously false sense of security.
Meanwhile, in the exact spots the searchlights had just swept over, groups of dark figures were crawling on the ground, carefully navigating around obstacles, moving at high speed as they closed in on the American positions.
They pulled out wire cutters and began snipping away at the barbed wire strung up in front of the enemy trenches.
"What was that noise?"
One American soldier thought he heard something and couldn’t help but turn his head.
But the moment he turned, the sound stopped.
"Probably just those damn rats again.
Once we take the German trenches, we’ll go through this whole line with flamethrowers and roast the lot of them.
Those disgusting bastards almost bit my toes off the other night!"
You could hear the sheer hatred in the American soldier’s voice when it came to the rats that infested the battlefield.
These things bred fast, had insane survival instincts, and poison gas couldn’t even kill them.
Having lived alongside humans for so long, they had zero fear.
They gnawed on the corpses of the fallen, and sometimes even attacked the living.
If you weren’t careful while sleeping, they’d nibble your toes off.
It was even worse for the wounded who couldn’t move.
If no one was there to chase the rats away, they could literally be eaten alive, forced to watch as the rodents devoured them piece by piece—a fate no different from death by a thousand cuts.
The reason the Great War was hell for the soldiers who fought it was largely due to the brutal nature of trench warfare.
The casualty rates when fighting broke out were astronomical, and even during lulls, the men were tortured endlessly.
It was a no-win situation either way.
But for the Americans holding this position, there was one silver lining: they probably wouldn’t have to worry about developing PTSD after the war.
The bad news?
They probably wouldn’t live to see the sun come up!
Two agile German soldiers quietly crept up behind the sentries, silently dispatching them with a knife to the throat.
Then, they vaulted over the trench walls and began clearing out the enemy who were fast asleep.
"Who’s there?!"
A GI who had woken up to take a leak heard the commotion and called out in alarm.
What greeted him wasn’t a comrade’s reply, but the flaming muzzle of an enemy gun.
RAT-TAT-TAT!
The moment the guns opened up, the Germans stopped holding back.
To maximize their odds of success on this mission, Crown Prince Wilhelm hadn’t just equipped every man with a military-grade night vision device—he’d also armed them to the teeth with the German army’s latest submachine gun: the MP18 Bergmann!
This beast had a blistering rate of fire, capable of spitting out 400 to 600 rounds per minute.
When several of these guns opened up at once, they could lay down a wall of suppressive fire.
On top of that, its compact size and light weight made it absolutely perfect for fighting in the narrow confines of the trenches.
Because the Germans had taken out the perimeter sentries first, the Americans in the trenches had zero warning before the attack hit.
They were caught completely off guard and dragged into the fight before they even knew what was happening.
The German side, on the other hand, was fully prepared and kitted out with top-of-the-line gear.
With the help of their night vision devices, the enemy’s positions and numbers were laid bare.
They charged forward, guns blazing, dumping magazines wherever the enemy was concentrated.
Under the ferocity of the German onslaught, the defensive line at the first American trench began to crumble.
More and more German soldiers poured out of the darkness, breached the barbed wire, and stormed into the American positions.
The sudden ambush sent the Americans into a full-blown panic.
They had no idea how many attackers there were—it just sounded like gunfire was coming from every direction and enemies were everywhere.
The entire American force on the battlefield descended into chaos.
"Hold the line! Don’t panic! Listen to my—"
An American officer tried to organize his men into a coherent defense, but the moment he poked his head up, a German sniper equipped with a night vision scope locked onto him.
BANG!
The officer’s head exploded.
The same scene played out across other parts of the battlefield.
The German snipers specifically targeted high-value enemy personnel: commanders, machine gunners, mortar crews, and any American riflemen occupying key positions in an attempt to halt the German advance.
Trying to find and snipe targets in pitch-black darkness was incredibly difficult without night vision.
But with this game-changing night-fighting gear, the job became ridiculously easy.
Junior and mid-level officers were picked off one by one.
Machine gunners and mortar crews were taken out.
The American defenders in the trenches were left completely leaderless, like a bunch of headless chickens.
Aside from a few brave souls who tried to fight back on the spot, the rest of the American soldiers, seeing which way the wind was blowing, scrambled out of the trenches and fled toward the rear.
But the Germans had no intention of letting them off the hook.
Once they saw the Americans abandoning their positions and running, the German forces immediately adapted.
They left a portion of their men behind to finish clearing out the remaining resistance in the trenches, while the rest climbed over the trench walls and gave chase, pursuing the fleeing Americans straight toward the enemy’s second line of defense.
If they didn’t press their advantage while the enemy was still in disarray, the element of surprise would be lost once the Americans got their act together.
Besides, if they stopped at the first line of defense, the Yanks would probably just turn the entire area into a crater with a saturation artillery barrage.
But if the Germans chased them down, the American artillery would be forced to hold their fire to avoid hitting their own men at such close range.