The Compinan Scam

"Huh! Leninkamp, ​​if you still have a bit of conscience, you know that you will send soldiers to guide me and protect the logistics transportation line!" Seeing checkpoints and groups of "Russian soldiers" patrolling the road, Samsonov The general's anger has faded a little. The soldiers of the "1st Army" not only prepared road signs, but also sent special personnel to guide the way at the fork, and his troops moved faster.

"Man, let's take a fire!" A middle-aged soldier suddenly ran from the Russian marching queue to a checkpoint. His name was Kapetanovic, a corporal of the 17th Corps of the 2nd Army. He passed by the day before. His matches were all wet in the swamp, and the worst thing was that the matches of his companions were not spared either.

The soldiers inside the checkpoint looked at him in a daze, as if they didn't hear what he said.

"Matches! Matches!" Kapetanovic raised the cigarette in Yang's hand, and then a sentry took out a box of matches and handed it to him.

"Thank you!" Kapetanovic took the matchbox, but then he called out with wide-eyed eyes:

"German Match?"

At this moment, a man who looked like an officer walked over, who seemed to be the commander of these sentries.

"Yes, this is what we just seized from the Germans yesterday, and there are a lot of canned beef! The supplies of those German pigs are really piled up, hahaha!"

Kapetanovic glanced at him suspiciously, then turned and left without saying anything. At this moment, he suddenly turned around and asked the soldier who gave him the match: "Can this box of matches be given to me?"

"Of course!" The officer replied on behalf of the soldier with a smile, and the soldier had no expression on his face.

"Haha! Don't mind, this little brother temporarily lost his hearing when he was shaken by a cannonball yesterday, and he will be well in a few days!"

Kapetanovic said nothing, and ran back into the queue quickly.

"Damn Russian! Wait for you to look good!" The sentry officer swore viciously.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon on August 20, 1914, the main force of the Russian 2nd Army arrived in the area of ​​Compinan, 40 kilometers away from the German-Russian border.

General Samsonov was standing on a hillside by the road. In his telescope, a German position more than 20 kilometers wide was looming. The fortifications were built along the edge of a sparse forest and the highway leading to the hinterland of East Prussia. Divide the forest into two, and on both sides of the position are virgin forests almost airtight.

"Damn it! That damn Leninkamp actually said that he had defeated the Germans. Where did these Germans come from!" A cavalry company sent by Samsonov to reconnaissance is now all lying in front of the German positions. , And he didn't even know how many people there were on the other side. He could only see the spire helmet looming in the opposite trench, and he didn't know whether the moral army had built fortifications in the woods that could not be observed from the outside.

"Staff, give my order, the soldiers speed up, build a position 5 kilometers away from the opponent, and the artillery will enter the position as soon as possible! Also, I must contact the 1st Army and ask the idiot of Leninkamp now. Where is it!"

"Yes, General!"

At this time, in the woods 3 kilometers behind the German position, there was a small open space where the commander's post of the East Prussian Army was set up. General Francois, the commander of the First Infantry Corps of the Legion, was watching the reports on the enemy's movements sent back by the aviation unit with his brows. The 230,000 troops of the Russian 2nd Army were divided into two parts, 6 Russian infantry divisions and 6 Russian infantry divisions. Two cavalry divisions are spreading out in front of them, and the remaining five infantry divisions are deployed in a ring behind the main Russian attacking unit to resist possible attacks from all directions. The third cavalry division of the Russian army tried to enter the virgin forest on both sides of the German position, but they quickly gave up this attempt, where it was difficult for people to move, and now the cavalry division has retreated to the Russian position.

"Mr. Francois, don't be too nervous, come and have a cup of coffee together!" Chen Tian sat in the open tent beside him, drinking coffee leisurely.

"Your Majesty, you don't seem to be worried at all. There is no strong defensive position like the Instberg Pass, and there is no way for us to outflank them! I don't understand why we don't continue to fight them at the Pass. "François showed some anxious expressions on his face. Although the Battle of the Instberg Gorge made him admire his prince, it was a war after all, and any mistake could ruin the whole battle. Even the entire country.

"I don't want their scouts to see the bloodstains in front of the defile, so that the Russians will feel that their 1st Army may be finished. I want to give them the illusion that their 1st Army will be They are squeezing our illusion on both sides here, so they will continue to attack until the last drop of blood is drained!" Chen Tian stirred the coffee in the cup, although there was neither sugar nor milk in it, but he liked this The feeling of stirring, one day he will put the whole world in his cup and stir gently.

"Col. Hoffman, let the Russian communications officers report to the Russian 2nd Army in the name of the Russian 1st Army, saying that the Germans here should be the Germans who escaped from the Battle of the Instburg Gorge three days ago!"

"Yes! Your Highness!"

"This is a deception war, a huge scam, and I am the leading liar in this world!" Chen Tian muttered there alone in Chinese.

Soon, Samsonov received a telegram from the "1st Army" stating that the Germans who blocked them were nothing more than "thousands of lost bereaved dogs", despite the corpses of more than 100 Cossack cavalry and war horses in front of the German positions. It puzzled him, but he still asked 2 cavalry divisions and 2 infantry divisions to launch a tentative attack after the shelling.

The shelling began. Today, the Russian shells were obviously not as violent as they were in the two days of the Qianxiakou Battle, and they lasted only half an hour. The smoke and dust from the explosion rose up around the position in front of the forest. These smoke and the loud explosion are almost the only things that can endanger the health of German soldiers in the trenches. When the Russian artillery continued to bombard the woods within one kilometer behind the position, it caused some trouble to the German rapid-fire gun positions there.

A large number of tanks, armored vehicles and motorcycles are standing by behind the forest. In fact, motorcycles carrying machine guns are a weapon that is more effective than tanks and armored vehicles in sports warfare. This is not Chentian's invention. The Russians put heavy machine guns on their three-wheelers very early. Motorcycles, very few are equipped with their scouts and communicators.

After half an hour of fierce shelling, the scene in front of the German soldiers was no different from the battle of Xiakou three days ago. The Cossack, riding a sturdy horse and wielding a saber, carried a bayonet on the side of the howling infantry waves.

Elite cavalry is not used to attack positions equipped with a large number of machine guns. Only in mobile warfare can the sturdy Cossack cavalry play their role, but the Russians always did such stupid things in the early stages of the war.

The 77mm rapid-fire cannon in the woods fired, and a piece of Cossack cavalry fell under the shrapnel and shock wave, but no one planned to stop. When they were 1 km away from the position, they started racing against the machine gun bullets. If they and the mount could cross the distance of 1 km before the machine gun bullet penetrated the body, then they would win. The Cossack cavalry fought with their flesh and blood and the metal barrage, but most of them were terrified to see a lot of blood bursting from their bodies, and they fell in front of the German positions with little pain.

The ensuing infantry attacked the German positions with a denser formation and slower speed, and the opponent's artillery and bullets did not retain their bravery. Soon, the German soldiers began to replace the barrels of their "Firebird" light machine guns, and then continued their slaughter.

Slaughter is not the patent of the Germans, and the slaughter is not the speciality of the Russians. On the morning of the first day of the attack on the Liege Fortress, tens of thousands of German soldiers fell under the Belgian artillery and machine guns; when the German East Prussian Army slaughtered the Russians on the eastern front, the 180-kilometer-wide Marne area on the western front , 2 million British, French and German troops strangled each other, and within 8 days 250,000 British and French soldiers and 300,000 German soldiers were killed one after another.

This is an era of massacre!

The expression of Leninkamp three days ago now appeared on Samsonov's face.

"No! This is definitely not the firepower of thousands of defeated soldiers, and 500,000 regular Russian troops do not have so many machine guns! Staff officer, sent a report to the 1st Army, telling them that we were attacked by a large number of regular German troops, at least We are twice as much! Let them quickly return to help and fend against the Germans with us!" Poor Samsonov kept cold sweat, and at this time he had not realized his situation. The most important point is that he and everyone felt that even if all the more than 200,000 people in a group army fell into the water, they would make a thumping sound, but he didn't see a Russian army corpse along the way. Or any trace of battle.

After receiving a telegram from Samsonov to the "1st Army", Chen Tian found that the counterattack had gone too far, and the Russians on the opposite side had lost the courage to continue the offensive. He promptly sent the "1st Army" to report and asked the Russian 2nd Army to wait in place. The "1st Army" would quickly return to help and attack the enemy on both sides.

When Samsonov's soldiers began to dig trenches with sweat, 51 "Sky X" biplane attack aircraft, 37 "Ostrich I" and 65 "Sky IV" biplane bombers of the East Prussian Army Air Force flew over the battlefield. .

"God bless!"

Finding that it was not crows flying in the sky, many Russian soldiers began to kneel and pray.

It's a pity that God didn't bless them, it rained bombs and bullets from the sky. On the 20-kilometer-wide position, more than 100,000 Russian soldiers were in chaos.

Captain Fritz drove a "Sky X" attack plane hovering over the Russian army's position. The Russian army below was in chaos, and the trenches became the only refuge for the Russians exposed in the open space.

After making a big turn in the air, Fritz flew his plane along the trench line, then lowered its nose and started shooting at the crowd in the trench. The bullets penetrated the Russians' heads or backs, causing a larger burst. Panic.

The pilots of the attack aircraft followed Fritz's approach and began to sweep the trenches, and the bombers lowered their altitude and dropped bombs at crowded places. For the poor Russians, there is hardly any place on this earth that is safe.

The artillery position was also a key target of the German aircraft. Bombs continued to fall into the ammunition piles near the artillery, which immediately caused a series of violent explosions, which also exacerbated the panic of the Russian soldiers.

"Strike!" With Chentian's order, 76 tanks, 56 armored combat vehicles, 83 armored personnel carriers, more than 2,000 motorcycles and 120,000 German infantry rushed out of the woods, like a huge gray wave. Overcome the chaotic Russian soldiers...

"Retreat! Retreat!" Samsonov yelled, and then under the protection of the close-fitting guards, they withdrew back together with a large group of panicked Russian soldiers.