Week 13-20 (End of November)
Hauptmann (Captain) Alexander von Falkenhausen
He could see the endless plains of Siberia through the train windows and based on how cold it was when he got on the train, he could surmise how cold it was outside and he praised God that the VIP compartment of the train was heated.
"Sir are you listening to me?" his adjutant slash translator, Lieu said in his thick accented German.
"Wǒmen zài nǎ"
"Very good sir, that means "Where are we?" " Leiu explained.
Alexander nodded in apprehension, as a German Liason Officer to the Chinese Military he brought it unto himself to learn Mandarin to better communicate with his hosts. Unfortunately he has only been in this post for a little more than two years and has been learning Mandarin for less than half that time.
Upon arriving in Shanghai at the start of his tour here, he was astonished at how modern Shanghai was. He initially thought that it would be some primitive city but it was as modern as Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne. When he saw the Chinese troops drilling he was yet again surprised, he came here expecting Chinese troops to be of the same quality as African natives but when he saw them drill, he found out that although they were not of the same level as German troops but they were around the same level as France, but France had a population of a bit less than 40 million while the Chinese emperor claims to have almost half a billion. He shuddered at the thought, yet he thanked the wisdom of Bismarck that the Chinese are on the side of the Fatherland.
He was originally assigned to the Chinese Armies in Manchuria, but at the breakout of the war he followed the Armies there to Vladivostok, no Hainshenwai, he corrected himself, then to the Siberian front. He originally detested the assignment to Siberia. Hans, who he came to China with was in Indochina and the others in less colder places. At the battle of Hainshenwai, he changed his mind, as it was in this front that the Chinese deployed their storm troopers. At first, he thought that this assignment would principally involve him teaching the Chinese, but that changed when the war broke out.
When he saw what the Chinese called infiltration tactics in action, he quickly noted everything and asked his Chinese counterparts to educate him on how it worked, but sadly all their manuals are in Chinese and no one in the Stormtrooper command spoke German, so he decided to learn Mandarin. He decided that he would be more useful to the fatherland if he could share what he learned here.
"Leiu stay right here, I will go to the privy." His adjutant merely nodded in reply.
He stood up while clutching his notes on Chinese infiltration tactics and went to the privy which was on two carts behind the one he was in. The privy was unimpressive and dirty as it was used by all the officers in the train. What's worse was that it was not heated, therefore he could feel the cold Siberian air creep in to the compartment. He then proceeded to squat after taking off his clothes.
"Boom! Boom!" he heard loud explosions which were probably caused by exploding bombs on the train tracks. A second later he felt the train shaking, and going off the tracks. Then everything went dark.
He felt a cold breeze of wind and he opened his eyes and upon opening them he could see that he was lying in snow, bloody, bruised and naked! He didn't know how long he was knocked out.
Quickly, he searched for his cloths. But the clothes nearest to him, the ones he came to the privy with were shredded and broken. He wore them non the less and went to the forward part of the train to look for the clothes that he had left behind in his bag.
On the way there he saw Lieu, his adjutant and he assumed that Lieu was dead. Which he could guess from the fact that his body was two meters away from his head.
"Mein gott!" Falkenhausen exclaimed, he forgot about the other people, thinking more about his draggy clothes. There it was his bag, which was ripped open. And he saw a few set of clothes still unscathed and more importantly his note book, where he wrote his observations on Chinese Infiltration tactics were still intact. He then proceeded to change his clothes with the more presentable one.
When he was almost finished he could hear shouts in some incomprehensible language.
He turned around and saw two East Asian looking soldiers pointing rifles at him. He dropped his notes and proceeded to raise his hands.
He realized that he might be mistaken for some Russian spy, especially with the notes in his possession detailing Chinese tactics and Chinese troop movements.
"Déguó rén!"(German) He screamed in his thick accented and probably miss pronounced Mandarin, while pointing to himself. Trying to explain that he is German and not Russian. But the two men didn't seem to understand and kept pointing at him. One of the soldiers, the shorter one, went to see what he dropped.
It took the shorter soldier a bit of time to get what was written in Falkenhausen's notes as it was in German, it was probably when the soldier saw Falkenhausen's illustrations when he began shouting to the other soldier.
After a few back and forth conversations between the two, they begun pointing their guns back at him and kept saying "Leosia seupai!"
"Déguó rén!" he again responded, which was one of the few Mandarin words he knew.
"Déguó rén!" he said again and emphasizing more by pointing to himself again.
"Leosia seupai!" the soldiers screamed again.
Then out of nowhere he felt a force hitting the back of his head. The only thing he saw was the silhouette of a third soldier hitting him with the butt of his rifle before passing out.
French Front
One of the greatest battles in history, the desperate struggle at Ypres in October-November was the climactic fight of the "Race to the Sea" – an all-out German push to break through the Entente lines and capture French ports on the English Channel, especially Calais, thus dividing the Entente, threatening to outflank the French forces from the north.
Reflecting these huge stakes, the First Battle of Ypres was conducted on an epic scale, bringing together more men and more firepower than some whole wars did in the previous century. Including the armed clashes to the north on the River Yser and south to Armentières, it involved about a million men on both sides, including around 600,000 German soldiers, 250,000 French, 80,000 British, and 65,000 Belgians.
The losses were staggering. From October 12 to November 12, the British sustained 56,000 casualties, the French 90,000, the Belgians 24,000 and the Germans suffered around 125,000 casualties. Britain, like the French and Germans had to call more men from the British Isles as they could no longer rely on Raj and Australian troops as they were needed in Asia to fight the Pact.
After the prelude at La Bassée, Armentières, Messines, and the Yser, the main battle of Ypres commenced on October 20 and lasted about three weeks. In this time the nondescript, low-lying countryside of Flanders, its farms and grazing land separated by neat hedges and crisscrossed by drainage canals under a gray sky, was converted into hell on earth by three huge but ultimately unsuccessful German assaults – one at Langemarck beginning October 20, the second at Gheluvelt beginning October 29, and the finale at Nonneboschen on November.
The first German push at Langemarck began just as the British Expeditionary Force was arriving at Ypres, while to the north the Belgians fought desperately to hold off German forces along the Yser, with the help of French reinforcements.
The German plan failed to survive contact with the enemy, as the British divisions, including the 7th Division holding the southern flank, slammed into five German divisions from the new Fourth Army advancing in the opposite direction. The British dug in but the Germans, determined to break through, sent wave after wave of infantry against the shallow, unfortified British trenches, advancing in close formation against machine guns and massed rifle fire. The result was an appalling massacre, with both sides sustaining very heavy casualties, but the Germans suffering most of all, as some regiments lost over 70% of their strength.
The Germans eventually succeeded in forcing the British back, capturing Langemarck on October 22, but the cost was out of all proportion to the gains.
While the main thrust of the first German offensive attack around northeast of Ypres, the Germans were also advancing against the Belgians and French positions behind the River Yser. On the far northern end of the front, the defenders were assisted by shallow-draft monitors from the Royal Navy which bombarded the advancing German Ersatz 4th Division, directed by artillery spotters in a balloon tethered further west on the Belgian coast.
To the south the Germans captured a bridge across the Yser at Tervaete on October 21, but the Belgians prevented them from crossing in force. Meanwhile French marines were fighting tenaciously to hold Dixmude against two German divisions, outnumbering the French by around six to one. From October 23-24 the Germans mounted fourteen separate assaults on Dixmude, but failed to capture the city, again encountering incredibly fierce resistance and sustaining heavy casualties.
As German guns pounded the Belgians and French positions along the Yser, on October 24 the Germans succeeded in driving the Entente back north of Dixmude, and it became increasingly obvious that there was a real chance of a German breakthrough. Now at the suggestion of the French General Ferdinand Foch, Belgium's King Albert decided to use his last, most drastic defense: they would open the dikes and flood the plains along the Yser.
As the floodwaters slowly began to rise, the German generals were absorbed in planning another attempt to break through the British lines with two thrusts – one towards Messines, south of Ypres, and another towards the village of Gheluvelt, to the city's east. To carry out the assault Falkenhayn formed a new formation, with troops from the Fourth and Sixth Armies plus new divisions drawn from elsewhere on the Western Front.
The infantry attack of the German 54th Reserve Division and 6th Bavarian Reserve Division came like a tidal wave along Menin Road, connecting Ypres to the village of Menin. The first German assault hit the junction between the British 1st and 7th Divisions, still occupying hastily dug trenches with few if any defensive improvements.
As British troops were falling back before the German onslaught that morning, the town of Ypres itself came under sustained bombardment for the first time, sowing terror and chaos among the remaining inhabitants.
This time Fourth and Sixth Armies would pin down the Entente with attacks all along the line.
As dawn was breaking on October 30, an even bigger artillery bombardment hit the poorly hidden trenches of the British 7th Division, which were quickly pulverized, sending the defenders fleeing backwards. The German 39th Division now captured the village of Zandvoorde, which gave them a good vantage point on British positions to the north, enabling them to wipe out whole British units with deadly accurate artillery fire.
But the diversionary attacks failed utterly and British troops tenaciously defended the eastern approaches to Ypres, falling back slowly while inflicting very heavy casualties on the advancing Germans with rifle and machine gun fire. By the early afternoon the Germans were shifting their main effort south towards the British cavalry near Messines, but achieved only modest success. At the end of the day the British had fallen back about two miles but still held the Messines Ridge, a key defensive position.
At 6:45 a.m. the German attack began with yet another rolling bombardment followed immediately by the advance of the 54th Reserve Division, 30th Division, and 6th Bavarian Reserve Division against the British 1st Division. The Germans soon punched a hole in the center of the British line, where just 1,000 British troops, stretched to their breaking point and cut off from headquarters to the rear, staged a desperate defense against tens of thousands of German attackers; British rifle fire was so intense the Germans assumed, incorrectly, that they were facing machine guns. Unsurprisingly the massively outnumbered defenders were forced back, and around 10 am the Germans captured Gheluvelt, the last Entente defensive position on the way to Ypres and the English Channel beyond.
Defeat was looming when a British officer, scraped together troops from the British 2nd Division and sent them to attack the Germans in Gheluvelt on their right flank. Over a quarter were wiped out in the first minutes of the advance across open fields, but the remaining attackers pounced from Gheluvelt, The troops made contact with the handful of beleaguered British troops holding out near the chateau and soon reestablished their defensive line.
The hard-fought victory at Gheluvelt meant the British troops would enjoy the enormous advantage of defenders from now on, with predictably bloody consequences for the Germans.
After their hard-won victories in October, in early November the Entente commanders believed that the German attacking force was spent and the Battle of Ypres was effectively over. They were wrong on both counts: the Germans were about to make one last attempt to break through British and French defenses in Flanders and capture the strategic French ports on the English Channel. The final push would come at a place called Nonneboschen, or the Nuns' Woods.
At 6:30am on November 11, the pre-dawn stillness was shattered as the German guns opened up along a nine-mile front, with the shelling continuing to grow in intensity for several hours, followed by the Prussian Guards and German 4th Division advancing through thick mist, pitting 17,500 German attackers against around 7,800 British defenders.
The brunt of the attack fell against the British trenches located amidst three stands of trees straddling the Ypres-Menin Road.
Once again the Germans advanced in close formations, making easy targets for the defenders' massed rifle fire, which hit the ranks of the German 4th Division especially hard, again leading the Germans to mistakenly conclude they were facing machine guns. But on the north side of the Ypres-Menin Road the Prussian Guards made more progress, approaching on the double while the German artillery hammered the British defenses in front of them. Soon the Prussian Guards had forced the British out of some of their frontline trenches, although troops from the 1st Royal Scots and 2nd Royal Sussex Regiments, along with some neighboring French Zouaves, counterattacked and prevented them from advancing further.
With the bombardment reaching its climax around 9am, a renewed German attack located the weak spot in the British lines. With their advance covered by thick clouds of mist, the Germans managed to approach within 50 yards of the front trenches, surprising the defenders, some of whom fled before the sudden onslaught, weakening the British line even further.
As the British defenders were forced to fall back to isolated strongholds, each held by a few dozen men, the Germans pushed forward, making the most progress at Nonneboschen, where around 900 Prussian Guards almost succeeded in breaking through the overstretched British line. The outcome of the battle hinged on pushing the Prussian Guards out of the Nonneboschen woods.
After pushing the Germans out of the woods, the British were able to rush reserves to the battlefield and establish a new defensive line, although a push to recapture their old trenches was called off when it was discovered the Germans had entrenched themselves inside the former British front line. Once again catastrophe had been averted, but only by the narrowest of margins.
As the main phase of the First Battle of Ypres drew to a close, three weeks of incredibly fierce fighting had reduced a large portion of Flanders to ruins, producing eerie and surreal landscapes all along the still-active front.
Meanwhile even as the chances of a strategic breakthrough dwindled, the fighting continued, seemingly with a momentum all its own. On both side ordinary soldiers lived in terror and squalor, as unending rain filled trenches in the low-lying countryside with mud and water.
Due to all these casualties and the lack of access to the manpower of the Raj the United Kingdom on November 28th passed the Military Service Act. This imposed conscription on all single men aged between 18 and 41, but exempted the medically unfit, clergymen, teachers and certain classes of industrial worker.
Ottoman Empire Joins the Central Powers
As the fighting raged in Flanders, two thousand miles to the east the Entente suffered a giant setback with the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, adding a whole new theater of war in the Middle East, where the Turks could threaten the Suez Canal, effectively separating the industry of the British Isles from the manpower of the Raj, as well as Britain's main source oil in Persia. Perhaps most importantly opening a new front by which the Russia will have to fight and the Turkish straits meant the France and Britain could no longer deliver supplies, including much-needed ammunition, to Russia via the Black Sea.
The Young Turk triumvirate which effectively ruled the Ottoman Empire had signed a secret treaty of alliance with Germany back in August, just as the war was beginning – but then dragged their feet when it came to actually joining hostilities, partly because it took so long for the empire's military to mobilize for action, and partly because they demanded eight million Turkish gold pounds from the Germans as their price for entering the war.
By late October the money had arrived and Enver Pasha believed the empire was ready, or at least as ready as it would ever be. Fearing that the Germans might decide to abandon their alliance, on October 24, the Ottoman troops crossed their border with Bulgaria. Strangely it wasn't to attack Bulgaria, like what they did in the last war, but to reinforce the Bulgarians who already had their hands full with Serbia and Romania.
On the same time as well, Ottoman Navy steam into the Black Sea and conduct a surprise attack on Russian naval facilities.
On October 27, the Ottoman Ships sailed from Constantinople, supposedly on a training exercise, and on October 29 the Ottomans reported that the ships had been attacked by Russian vessels without provocation – a total fabrication. This gave him the excuse he needed to bombard the Russian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol, and Novorossiysk.
Pacific
"The President of France called us yellow monkeys so we took your pacific colonies"
-General of the Chinese forces in Indochina to the surrendering French Colonial troops in Saigon.
On 24th of October, Chinese forces conducted their endgame maneuver at capturing the still French occupied part of Indochina, which was around a third of the country, as Siam was in dire need of aid and Siamese troops are now pushed out of Burma and back into the Siamese border.
On the morning of 24 October, Chinese aircraft from captured airbases in Hanoi began attacking remaining French positions on the coast.
On 28th October, Chinese forces of two marine divisions came ashore in Saigon and moved towards the inner City. They only fought limited resistance at the beach head since the French was caught relatively surprised and by the time the French organized troops to push the Chinese back to the sea, they were already well in trenched.
By early afternoon the Chinese force already numbered some 10,500 troops.
At this time a massive force of twelve Chinese bombers and just as many fighters proceeded to bomb. Colonial fortifications in the City were bombed including the city's arsenal, which caused dozens of deaths due to chain of explosions.
On the midnight, after explosions from bombings rocked Saigon, the final battle between the French and the Chinese began. After initial small-arms fire and mortar exchanges, the Chinese resorted to the heaviest artillery in its arsenal, which wasnt that heavy at all. By evening, a large part of the inner city was engulfed in house-to-house combat. And on the following morning, the fighting had driven thousands of civilians onto the streets. A square mile of the city, around the densely populated inner-city Chinese district of Cholon where the French had a stronghold, became a free-fire zone. Artillery and mortars leveled several residential districts of the city, killing hundreds of civilians including some families of the French colonial bureaucracy there and leaving thousands homeless. Fighting from both sides as lacked strategy and relying on brute-force attrition tactics. It appeared that the conflict would be determined by the side which was able to absorb the greater number of losses. Approximately 600 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting.
By the evening of 30 October, fighting had died down. Chinese took possession of most of the city.
After 48 hours of combat, the Chinese with the aid of few infiltration native units began to gain the upper hand. The Governor-general's palace, temporarily serving as Governor-General Albert Jean George Marie Louis Picquié's citadel, was overrun by Chinese marine after a struggle which caused heavy losses on both sides. The Chinese then stormed one of the Indochina's most heavily fortified strongholds, in Cholon. By the time Governor-General Albert Jean George Marie Louis Picquié had surrendered on first of November, the battle was already won by the Chinese. With only portions of French Indo-chine remaining outside of Chinese hands and both Saigon and Hanoi captured Governor-General Albert Jean George Marie Louis Picquié had nothing else to do but surrender.
Jubilant crowds gathered outside the Governor-General's residence shouting "Đả đảo người Pháp" (meaning "Down with the French") as Albert Jean George Marie Louis Picquié signed the surrender of French Indo-china to the Chinese.
With the capture of Indo-China, the Chinese can finally pour in more men and supplies into Siam, turning what was once a trickle into a flood for offensives in Burma and Malaya.
Head Assault Leader Jefferson Wang
He pressed his badge again, as yet he wasn't used to his new rank and badge, that it took him a few seconds to respond to "Head Assault Leader" instead of simply "Junior Assault Leader".
He and a few of his squad mates got pulled out from the fighting Irkutsk, well what left of it anyway. Since the Russians seem to be in short supply of everything except endless spaces of Siberia.
A letter was formerly received by him from high command itself two weeks ago to go here, in Lushun City (Port Arthur) along with a handful of men of his own choosing, for a secret mission. And of course one of those men he chose was his second in command, Chen, although he was very much aggressive and trigger happy, he was a fine embodiment of what a storm trooper should be. And naturally Chen protested, for bringing him to what he considers a "desk job" from a "fun job at the front" but he told Chen it was a direct order from high command. With that he agreed on the condition of being able to bring back his "war booty" which was mostly useless stuff that he found interesting like a badge of a dead Russian General or a piece of a skull of a dead cavalryman.
"Why are we here again sir?" Chen asked him.
"Before we could embark, we must find out the condition of the German Liason Officer attached to our armies in Siberia"
"You mean, Falkenhausen?" Chen replied
"Yes, him."
Chen grunted a bit "No offense sir, but I find him more boring than you." He said as he met the guy a month or so back when he was attached to their battalion. "All he ever does is write notes and ask about our manuals. I tried joking to him once; he didn't even laugh at all or not even a smile. He simply nodded his head."
"Perhaps the joke was lost in translation."
"I don't think so sir, Lieu said that he translated it correctly."
"Head Assault Leader! Sir!" one of the men guarding the prisoner cell door saluted, even though the guy belonged to a different branch of the armed forces he knew that Wang had a higher rank and he heard of the exploits of the storm trooper battalions.
"Standard operation procedure require that you give me a summary of the prisoner, sergeant." Wang said.
"Yes sir" the man acknowledged. "Sir the prisoner is a Caucasian man of unknown nationality, he was captured in the trans-siberian after the some tracks were bombed. And according to the Korean troops who captured him doesn't speak Russian, Manchu, Korean or even Mandarin…."
Chen grunted a bit, this made Wang think that this was probably due to the fact that per their experience at the front most Korean troop's Mandarin proficiency was not that high and was limited to phrases like "Yes, very funny joke" or "are there whores here".
But the guard didn't pay attention to Chen's grunt and merely continued "according to them he was caught ransacking the uniform of dead soldiers and he had in his position drawings of our troop locations. And as we saw the notes for ourselves it also included details of our troop doctrines."
Pausing for a while then continued "The Koreans assumed that he is a Russian Spy, we think so too."
"Very, well sergeant. We will interrogate him ourselves, now open the door." Wang said in reply.
As the door was being opened he could see the excitement in the eyes of Chen, who was probably exited to try hitting someone. It will not come to that if the prisoner would tell them what they wanted to hear, namely the whereabouts of Falkenhausen. How it will happen due to the language barrier was a bit of a problem to Wang.
As the cell opened he could see the prisoner who was tied to a chair with his head being covered by a bag. His clothes were a bit tattered which was probably partly due to the trip here and party to slight punching and kicking by the men.
Chen proceeded to take the bag to show of the prisoner who was probably Russian, or perhaps a British or French. His world froze when he saw the face of the guy.
"Hauptmann Alexander von Falkenhausen!" he exclaimed and he could see the surprise on Falkenhausen's face as he saw him and then relief as he finally saw someone who knew him.
"Get fine food, some wine, new clothing! And a German translator!" Wang said as Chen proceeded to untie Falkenhausen.
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Notice that the British declared conscription which is a lot sooner than OTL
Anyway one more chapter to finish 1909, then ill do the Stargate part for 1909 as well then back to Earth and switch back and forth yearly.
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"Honestly I am loving the great war stuff, btw the Russian re-offensive that they take against the Germans should be drastically affected by them loosing badly to china and the straights being closed. Them having to send assets to east russia rather then them (historically) going to reinforce the west russian front (east german). Just thought I would point that out as I don't think I have seen very much different from history on much of the battles. Also there is The Great War channel on you tube if you ever feel you can't quite remember something."
-Yes, Russian troops west of the Urals are made to fight the Chinese instead of fighting the Germans in OTL. Yeah, there are only few differences, like lack of Indian troops on the British side and fewer Russian troops in the battle field, resulting in more casualties, but those minor differences will snow ball in 1910 leading very different battles by then.
"Interesting idea, would love to read more about it. Honestly I am not sure about the many great details you put into the Great War Arc. Since I am not somebody, like most of your readers, I think, that is interested in the great details of military history, might I suggest, to shorten the details a bit? As far as I am personally concerned, I don't need to know when the Germans farted east, the French peed west and the British took a shxx in the north.
Otherwise a very interesting story."
Ohhh, sorry about that, ill shorten those part later
"You assume we know way to much! This is worse then any history book I have ever read! Half of this might as well be German! Get to the damn point! ANY POINT! This not an empire building story! It is a detailed multi national battle by battle slightly altered but not enough to matter report! Either make some changes that matter! This is in English not Chinese non of this mean anything to use! Hell there are not even any people alive from these event anymore! Detailed minor dead history is pointless! You change nothing! How many history books should i have to read to find your minor pointless changes and the few consequences of it! This is meant to be entertainment not a theses on Chinese history if they had just done slightly better! they have a fucking starship!"
Hahaha!
"And THIS its the point of inflexion. Unlike OTL, Russia NOT only its dealing with the Germans , the Austro-Hungarians and the Turks, but with an Imperial Chinese Army what has a mix of Numbers, Training in multiple levels that is an order or more of magnitude higher than anything in the Russian side, and what has plenty of Ammo, Decent Weaponry and VERY SHORT Logistical lines, unlike the near Pharaonic distance between Vladivostok and the nearest City with troops and supplies available.
In addition, this will start the problems for the British, as they likely will open a front in Egypt/Middle East, in order to try to force the Turks outta the War. As we all know, GB dumped Indians and Asian troops here to reinforce the troops coming from The White Dominions and England on OTL. However now these Indian troops are locked in Asia, alongside the Australians. Meaning that the only parts from what the Brits will draw forces is South Africa, Canada and the Homeland, increasing the losses instead of the Indian Troops."
Yes, Im thinking of something like that :)