Chapter 172 The Rhine River Cleanup (first update, please subscribe)
The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.
This is often the case, although Li Yian enthusiastically wanted to keep the 500,000 chemical shells for himself.
But after knowing his position from his status, he immediately fell into silence.
The artillery shells are in the arsenal on the other side of the Rhine River, which is still under German occupation.
Come on.
Then just wait.
Let’s wait until Patton’s Third Army crosses the Rhine!
While waiting, Li Yian was not idle, but restored contact with Berlin. What was the contact?
It is nothing more than solving two problems-one is ammunition for STG44 assault rifles, and the other is chemical weapons.
Regarding the former, Berlin had no choice. Due to production constraints, even the German army itself did not have enough. Due to insufficient ammunition, the German army even issued an order requiring frontline soldiers to use automatic fire only in emergencies.
But the telegram replied by Berlin still revealed the news that the shortage of ammunition on the front line was a transportation problem. There was a large amount of ammunition in the arsenal in the Ruhr area. As for chemical weapons, the answer is the same - they are all in German-controlled areas.
Although there was not much difference between Berlin's telegram being returned and not being returned, Li Yian still reminded him to pay attention to his own safety and specifically emphasized that he looked forward to meeting him.
In the next half month, Li Yian stayed on the front line, but what was different from before was that he targeted several military manufacturers that produced STG44, MG42 and their ammunition in the command post. Factories were included in the "search plan", including even artillery shell manufacturers.
“What if we, the Allies, stop the demolition machines?”
"Now they don't care at all. What we want is to create a time difference. Our position is between the front line and the rear. When the civilians from the rear who take over the factory come over, it will take at least a week to give the German workers High wages, organize them to dismantle and transport the machines, and transport these machines back to Borneo, which will be of great use!”
As long as there is bread and cigarettes, the Germans will definitely not refuse to help. After all, for them, He said that the most important thing right now is bread. With the help of German technicians and workers, it should not be difficult to dismantle and transport the machinery and equipment.
After all, for those Germans now, the most important thing is bread and nothing else. Moreover, the machines and equipment themselves do not belong to them, but to those German entrepreneurs who will be designated as war criminals.
After thinking about it, Li Yian said again.
“If you don’t have enough manpower, I will transfer some people from North Africa to you. In the past few days, a group of manpower has come from China. Even if they are trained again, they will not be able to keep up with the expedition, but they can still supervise the luck. , in a word, we need these factories! ”
At present, domestic recruitment is very smooth. After all, the Borneo company pays well and directly issues beautiful knives. The news has long been spread in the country, and it has even been widely reported by newspapers.
There were even some young people in the occupied areas who went to the rear after learning the news. After all, no one could refuse the opportunity to receive a high salary.
As for personnel transportation, the monthly transportation capacity of the Hump Route has now exceeded 40,000 tons. It is not easy to carry tens of thousands of people on the return trip.
Manpower, there will be absolutely no problem.
Facts have proved that Li Yi'an clearly overestimated the efficiency of the civilian officers in the United States and Britain who supervised factories and enterprises. After the Allied forces entered the Ruhr area such as Cologne, many enterprises were closed down for as long as a month. In an unsupervised vacuum.
Why is this happening?
Because the civilian officers were worried that there were potential resistance elements in the occupied areas, they hoped to wait until law and order was completely restored before going there, and the offensive forces obviously would not waste their troops guarding the factory.
So the search team that had been following the frontline troops closely created a time lag. Within that time lag, not only tens of thousands of machines and equipment were dismantled, but even the semi-finished products in the factory were also dismantled. Packed and shipped out of the factory. In order to find out which factories were worth demolishing, Li Yian even contacted the U.S. Army Air Force and asked for a thousand pages of German factory and enterprise information. This information provided instructions for the bomber force. Not only The factory's original production capacity, as well as its production capacity after the bombing, would be much easier for the task force to take action with this information.
Just as the intelligence department of the task force was formulating a "search plan" based on all aspects of intelligence, on the evening of March 12, George Patton's Third Army crossed Rhine River.
"Cross the river!"
At three o'clock in the morning, following Li Yi'an's order, more than 25,000 task force members boarded more than a thousand jeeps and trucks and crossed the Rhine River following the footsteps of the Allied forces.
The targeted task force acted very quickly. They rushed into the German arsenal almost immediately, and even gave up searching on the battlefield. After all, the weapons abandoned in the war were placed there. That would not make him run away. No German would take the guns home and be arrested as a soldier.
Compared with the weapons scattered everywhere, what the current search pair wants more are the weapons and machinery and equipment in the arsenals and factories that have not yet had time to appear.
In the following days, the task force swept through almost the entire east bank of the Rhine. Every German arsenal was directly sealed. Not only that, but even the German arsenals were abandoned at the train station. The train was also directly sealed and accepted. After all, compared to transporting cars by train, the efficiency is the highest, especially the transportation of machinery and equipment in factories, which is inseparable from trains.
While the task force was going out to sweep the entire Rhine River, Li Yian came to the arsenal that stored 500,000 rounds of chemical artillery shells. The arsenal was built against the mountains and hidden in the mountains. The German troops guarding here had already I don’t know where they went. Near the arsenal, there are military uniforms and weapons abandoned by the German army.
More than an hour later, after confirming that the arsenal was safe and no chemical poisons were leaked, Li Yian and his party entered the ammunition depot. The shells in the magazine were directly exposed on the fifth-floor ammunition rack. Rows of ammunition racks stretched to the end.
Half a million rounds of artillery shells!
Chemistry!
According to a list found by Cheng Pengan and the others in the management room, there were a total of 500,000 artillery shells in the ammunition depot, divided into three types. Although the poisons were different, the calibers were all 150 mm.
Reaching out to touch one of the artillery shells, Li Yian's mouth corners rose to seventy degrees. With these hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, what would the tens of thousands of Japanese troops in Borneo have to fear?
In fact, he was never worried that his troops would not be able to defeat the Japanese army. Instead, he did not worry about how many casualties the troops would pay. Trying his best to reduce casualties was the most important thing. At least it didn't matter what kind of weapons he used.
Chemical weapons...were used a lot in China in my childhood. Even if I used them in Borneo, I would treat them in their own way.
"Destroy the list, pull out as many shells as you can, and the rest..."
Of course there will be no leftovers, no matter how many shells are pulled away in the end, these chemicals Li Yian will still put the shells into the space and take them away.
How can you enter Baoshan empty-handed?
Just when Li Yian was commanding the task force to load and move away the chemical shells, he suddenly received a report from another search team.
The sudden report made Li Yi ignore the artillery shells in the ammunition depot, but directly led a small team to another place.
Along the way, Li Yian's expression seemed a little unnatural. Sitting in the jeep, he tapped his knees with his fingers from time to time and muttered to himself.
"How could it be, how could it be...is this true?"
Thinking about the discovery of another search team, Li Yian's palms were even sweating involuntarily, but the faint smile on his face and the corners of his mouth raised more than 70 degrees could not be concealed.
(End of this chapter)