Chapter 59: Triple-Range Flamethrowers Easily Cleansed Stenford City

The day Lelouch left the front lines to return to the rear was Christmas Day in 1914. By the time he finished coordinating projects with Krupp, Siemens, and others, it was already New Year's Day in 1915.

Therefore, right before his departure on New Year's Day, Gustav had invited him over for a family dinner.

Before he knew it, this was already his second year in this world.

Although the first year had started on October 25th, counting it out, it had only been two months and eight days.

Early in the morning on January 2nd, Lelouch boarded a train and left Düsseldorf.

He should have returned to the front lines immediately, but in reality, he was forced to make a three-day detour and stay in Aachen to temporarily handle some business with the DWM company. Just a few days after he left the front on December 26th, friendly forces on the front lines had encountered new difficulties during their offensive against the city of Stenford and Hill 155 of Mount Kemmel.

Crown Prince Rupprecht, the commander, had already grown accustomed to trusting Lelouch, this "miracle boy," and whenever a problem arose, he thought of consulting him, bombarding him with phone calls over the past few days.

Lelouch had seized every available moment to conceive some cost-effective emergency tactics, and then spent three days at DWM's Aachen factory preparing two little gifts for the British.

As for the specific preparation process, there was nothing worth elaborating on, as these little gifts were not technically challenging.

...

On January 5th, the Ypres Salient front.

After two delays, Lelouch finally returned to the front lines. He had even sent word ahead to inform the commander that he was bringing back a "surprise" for the enemy.

Full of anticipation, the Duke personally went to the Lille railway station to pick him up.

As soon as the train came to a complete stop, the Duke's driver opened the door and motioned for Lelouch to get in.

Lelouch hurried over, initially intending to open the front passenger door, but the Duke patted the seat beside him, signaling for him to sit in the back.

Knowing this was for the convenience of talking business, Lelouch dropped his formalities and calmly took a seat in the back.

"During the few days you were back in the rear, the assault on Stenford and Mount Kemmel hasn't been going very smoothly. Both sides have been locked in a meat grinder of attrition. Although our casualties are manageable and the exchange ratio isn't ugly, we've consistently failed to capture our strategic objectives."

The Duke dispensed with any pleasantries and cut straight to the current predicament.

Lelouch asked, "What is the situation in Stenford?"

The Duke replied, "It is a city after all, not a small town, and a minor railway junction; its defensive strength remains formidable. After repeated bombardments by our heavy artillery, most of the buildings suitable for hiding the enemy have been blasted into rubble. But that fellow Haig must be putting in a desperate effort, continuously sending reinforcements from the west into the city to fight a war of attrition with us.

"Many of the bombed-out building ruins still conceal scattered enemy soldiers. Haig must have pulled the elite of the British 1st Army up here; their morale is much higher than the Canadians and Indians we encountered previously, and they can repeatedly engage us in tug-of-war battles.

"The day before yesterday, we distributed shotguns to our troops for urban combat, and we even swapped some submachine guns from the assault battalions over to the siege troops. While the casualty exchange ratio has improved quite a bit, we simply cannot root out all those rats."

Lelouch nodded, unsurprised.

The British veterans at the end of 1914 still possessed considerable fighting spirit. At that time, many military aristocrats served as junior officers, leading from the front. It was only after this batch of honor-driven aristocratic officers was mostly wiped out that the later British army gradually began to lose morale and easily retreat.

Moreover, the Duke had already broadly outlined these circumstances over the phone.

Having sorted out the threads, Lelouch continued to probe, "How were the results when I suggested over the phone the day before yesterday that you deploy flamethrowers to clear out the urban ruins?"

The Duke spoke with equal bluntness, "We tried it briefly. The biggest problem with the flamethrowers is that their range is simply too short—about the same distance as a fire hose.

"The crucial issue is that portable sprayers cannot provide water pressure as high as a fire hydrant; the fuel drops to the ground after ten meters. You can't even spray across the street to hit the buildings opposite, and it's far too easy to accidentally injure the flamethrower operator himself."

Lelouch nodded. "As expected, it's a matter of range. Fortunately, I stopped by DWM this time and secured a batch of new spraying equipment and fuel. We'll see how they perform soon enough."

...

The Duke was stunned. "So fast? Didn't you just make a two-day detour to Aachen on your way back?"

"Two days is enough." Lelouch patted his chest, pointing toward the freight cars attached to the very rear of the train he had arrived on, signaling the Duke to rest assured.

Though still somewhat incredulous, the Duke was more than happy to wait and see.

...

Many people mistakenly believe that the "flamethrower" is a product of the First World War, but in fact, the device was invented in 1901 by Fiedler, a Demanian fire-fighting engineer.

By 1912, the German army had formed its first flamethrower unit, selecting 48 robust hose operators from the Posen fire department and retraining them from spraying water to spraying oil.

However, according to the original historical trajectory, because the early mobile warfare of the war was ill-suited for flamethrowers, it wasn't until late February 1915 that the German army first launched a flame offensive on the Verdun battlefield.

This was because the Verdun fortress was sturdy enough to be worthy of the flamethrowers' debut.

Now, due to Lelouch's butterfly effect, the debut of the flamethrowers had naturally been brought forward by two months.

The morning before yesterday, the German army first conducted small-scale practical tests with flamethrowers within several encircled districts inside the city of Stenford.

While it did burn to death hundreds of British soldiers and cleared two districts, the flamethrower operators also suffered a dozen casualties.

The flamethrowers, rushed into combat ahead of schedule, clearly still had a few major performance bottlenecks to resolve.

But it didn't matter. Lelouch was back, so these were no longer problems.

...

In the early hours of the next day, the Stenford city front lines.

Two regiments of the 12th Bavian Division were once again thrown into the siege.

The German and British forces were engaged in fierce close-quarters combat among the city ruins.

The German army still held a certain advantage, but it was far from an overwhelming steamroll.

Since the Germans had deployed shotguns and submachine guns, the British forces could no longer hold those relatively solid, intact fortifications. They had no choice but to break down into smaller units, retreating into shattered ruins to hastily reconstruct temporary firepower points.

Days of protracted skirmishing had instilled a deep psychological dread in the German soldiers searching the ruined blocks; they never knew when another sniper shot might ring out from those collapsed houses.

A company commander named Captain Gödler was currently leading a company, cautiously spreading out along the rubble heaps on both sides of Station West Avenue, conducting alternate search-and-advance operations.

At any given moment, only a dozen soldiers advanced in a dispersed formation, while the vast majority of the other soldiers sought cover, setting up their guns to watch all directions.

Despite such caution, after searching house by house along the way and gunning down a few pockets of enemy soldiers from the 1st Canadian Division, the company still encountered sudden, heavy firepower suppression.

The rat-a-tat-tat of Vickers heavy machine guns suddenly erupted, pinning the advancing soldiers down and forcing them to seek whatever cover they could find on the spot.

"Heavy Vickers machine gun positions spotted at multiple locations on the northern section of Station West Avenue! Send the special detachment up to suppress them!"

After observing the enemy situation clearly, Captain Gödler immediately had his battlefield messenger roar out the orders.

Frontline communication in this era relied fundamentally on shouting.

Two minutes later, several clumsy soldiers staggering under the weight of heavy oil tanks rushed over. They were members of the German army's first flame unit, the Redemann Detachment.

They were all former members of the Posen fire department, and their company commander, Captain Bernhard Redemann, had originally been the chief of the Posen fire department.

Upon the arrival of the flamethrower troops at the front, Captain Gödler, commander of the infiltration company, immediately reminded them, "They've once again deployed heavy machine guns in the ruined defenses along one side of the wide avenue. The street is very wide, and two machine guns have sealed off a massive area. Be careful."

The trial deployments over the previous two days had made the officers of the German search-and-infiltration units extremely worried about their own flame warriors. The range of their weapons was simply too short, and maneuvering while carrying the fuel tanks was terribly inconvenient.

Moreover, once hit by enemy machine-gun fire, even if not killed instantly, as long as the fuel tank was pierced, the operator would instantly detonate into a massive fireball.

Yet the few flamethrower soldiers newly deployed today seemed to have regained a good deal of confidence. While observing from a distance to find a firing position, they instead reassured Captain Gödler:

"Don't worry, headquarters has replaced our fuel tanks with new ones; the width of this street is nothing. We'll detour through the interior of the buildings on the east side of the street first, advance to a position just separated from the heavy machine gun nest by a single street, and then open fire with a sudden burst. You just need to remember to fire and provide suppression."

Captain Gödler remained somewhat incredulous, but since his flamethrower-wielding comrades had said so, he very dutifully ordered his men not to expose themselves, but simply to fire blindly toward the enemy-ambushed blocks across the street to attract their attention.

True to form, the Vickers heavy machine guns on the opposite side took the bait, continuously firing frantically toward the street corner in front of Captain Gödler, completely locking down the roadway.

The two sides probed and tussled in this manner for two full minutes, after which a sudden and drastic change occurred.

From two windows within a semi-collapsed building directly across the street from the two Vickers machine gun positions, two streams of fire unexpectedly and without warning spewed forth, shooting straight into the ruins housing the heavy machine-gun nests.

The slick, clinging flames penetrated every nook and cranny, instantly darting into every corner of the semi-enclosed space. Next came a rapid-fire burst of dense screams as a dozen charred, burning figures leaped directly out of broken windows and wall openings, plummeting onto the main street.

A few who were not yet dead simply wailed, rolling frantically in a desperate bid to extinguish the flames on their bodies, but everything was in vain. After thrashing about for three to five seconds at most, they fell completely still.

Captain Gödler and the other ordinary infantrymen were left dumbfounded by the sight.

They had witnessed their own flamethrowers in combat just the day before, but those flames could reach little more than a dozen meters—covering about the width of a three-lane road at best. If you factored in the sidewalks, they couldn't even reach across the street.

Furthermore, the burning oil of those earlier models was terribly thin; getting even a tiny bit on you could be patted out by rolling around a few times.

Today's situation, however, was entirely different. They had watched with their own eyes as their comrades' flamethrowers achieved a firing range of at least forty meters! That was a threefold increase at the very least! And to this day, they had yet to see a single burning enemy manage to shake off the fuel and extinguish the flames by rolling; every single one of those touched by the fire had perished.

German morale soared. Under the cover of the new flamethrowers, they immediately resumed their advance to search and clear the area.

The hardline elite British firepower points that had been interlocked within the streets of Stenford were thus systematically and covertly eliminated across the street, one by one.

The wails wrapped in blazing infernos echoed unceasingly throughout the entire day. It mattered not whether you had ambushed a heavy machine gun or a mortar in the ruins; once discovered and surrounded, it meant swift eradication.

Artillery fire might fail to turn ruins into deeper ruins, but flames could thoroughly scorch every single blind spot where men hid, down to cellars and hastily excavated basements.

In the span of a single day, the British soldiers in the contested zone were utterly wiped out.

When word reached the rear, Division Commander Karl and Commander Rupprecht were once again profoundly shocked.

"What on earth did you tamper with in the flame fuel?" The commander could not help but press Lelouch for answers.

"I merely added a bit of thickener," Lelouch explained with an utterly harmless expression.

"If the sprayed liquid is too thin, it cannot withstand pressure and fails to travel far, quickly dispersing and atomizing due to air resistance—much like pissing into the wind. But if you thicken it, it holds together as a cohesive stream when projected."

The principle was actually quite simple, much like the thickening formula of a Molotov cocktail, making it easy for Lelouch to devise.

To shoot far, it had to be viscous.