France Fights On (English Translation) - Thread II - To the continent!

[Wings]

October 16th, 1943

Operation Rumyantsev-TBT
Sublimation
Ukraine - The weather remains poor throughout the battlefield. A gift from heaven for some, unpleasant setback for the others, the rain hinders considerably the air operations. On the other hand, the ground fighting continues!

Sector of the 1st Ukrainian Front - The LIX. ArmeeKorps has finished to cross the Viliya and is rushing towards its new defense line. Kurt von der Chevallerie is lucky : his future position is not on the axis of progression of Rumyantsev-TBT - which explains without any doubt that he is relatively spared by his pursuers.
For the III. PanzerKorps, the ordeal continues. Under a real deluge - of water, fortunately for him - Werner Kempf gives up holding the ground (thank God, the VVS remain on the ground!). Now that the Landsers have left, we head west and see what happens! Walter Weiß, worried about the survival of his only large armored formation in the area, agrees. And while waiting for Manstein to send him the promised reinforcements, he even gives Kempf the time to stop wherever he wants - but not further than Brody, all the same, in order to guarantee a semblance of a front line until the return of the II. SS-PanzerKorps. Kempf's three divisions continue to retreat in haste, with no less than three mechanized corps at their heels. In the rear, the 7. Panzer (Hans von Funck) multiplies the delaying actions, with the support of the 203. StuG (Hauptmann Gerhard Behnke). However, nothing very fierce - before midnight, the last panzers have already passed Vychnivets. The Panzermänner do not know it, but they have lost the 1st Guards Armored Corps (M.E. Katukov) on the way, who spend the day trying to cross the Horyn river without succeeding in a time frame compatible with the envisaged encirclement... No luck - especially since the 9th Guards Army is still far behind (up to 20 kilometers depending on the sector!).
Obviously, the mud literally absorbs the energy of the Red Army, and fatigue prevents it from properly exploiting the magnificent opportunity it has created. The Stavka would it have presumed the forces of its fighters? Perhaps, if we believe Vassili Grossman, who painfully follows the Soviet advance, without forgetting to call upon some literary hyperbole along the way.
"The staff of the front moved to the village of Lanitsvi, barely 30 kilometers from the front. Monstrous mud. Without the help of Roudnyi, I would never have managed to drag my suitcase from the airfield to the headquarters. Advancing through the mud requires an enormous physical effort from the men and, for the vehicles, consumes in a few hundred meters the gasoline for hundreds of kilometers. The whole plain is filled with the roar of vehicles and tractors that pull themselves out of the mud. The roads are several hundred meters wide.
However, the Germans retreated in great disorder. Mobile teams* have cut off their communications, supplies and liaison."
Further south, and past the great gap of Kolodne - where the 2nd and 3rd Airborne Corps progress - the situation unravels in Ternopol. After a full-scale assault, the city is finally taken by force and falls definitively into the hands of the Red Army. Ivan Muzychenko's veterans make great use of the numerous "pineapples"** provided by the lend-lease, happily blowing up every corner where the Germans were hiding.
The Soviets thus take possession - once again - of the ancient Polish colony, ravaged by the fighting... as it had been in 1917, during the retreat of the tsarist troops. The ghetto created by the Nazis was liquidated long ago. 90% of the city was destroyed by the successive offensives. Of its ancient monuments, only the Exaltation Church (16th century) - which was already used as a refuge during the invasions of the Tatars, is intact. But the church of the Dominican monastery (18th century), the church of the Nativity (16th century), the palace (a princely residence of the 16th century which had the formidable privilege to be used as a defensive bulwark over the streets that ran along the Seret...) everything has disappeared or is destroyed to various degrees. The city will recover with great difficulty from the Great Patriotic War***.
But it doesn't matter - while Muzychenko completes his cleaning, the Soviet tanks continue their maneuvers around the ruins that Ternopol has become. The 1st Cavalry Corps (V.V. Kryukov) met almost no opposition in Plotycha. By Velyka Berezovytsya, the advanced elements of the 1st Armored Corps (P.G. Chanchibadze) clash on the western bank of the Seret with the troops retreating from Pidvolochysk.
The outcome of this encounter battle is undecided.
At the beginning, the T-34s logically cuts some rumps to the retreating infantry columns, which allow the Soviets to envisage another easy victory during the day.
However, the decided intervention of the 905. StuG Abt (Major Jobst Veit Braun) - supported by the 371. ID (Hermann Niehoff) - then allows the forces of the 141. ID (Heinz Hellmich) to counter the dispersed points of Porfiry Chanchibadze, then to force them to withdraw piteously under the rain. The armored general, who could already see himself routing the equivalent of a whole fascist army, will draw a legitimate frustration from it... The story of this engagement - of modest importance, but with a sadly undecided result - goes back to Konstantin Rokossovsky, who draws two conclusions.
First, the Axis recovered better and faster than expected south of TBT - it is to be expected that the resistance in this area will harden as the troops returning from Bar arrive in the area. Second, its own forces are now too dispersed and worn out to advance in all directions. As a result, and given that the first T of TBT has now been reached, there is no longer any reason to pursue the south. The 3rd Army and 4th Guards Army - and the accompanying armored corps - will simply maintain the pressure by holding the flank. The outcome of the operation is to be decided in the center, on the road to Brody. General Antonov was once again right.

Sector of the 2nd Ukrainian Front - The long cohort formed by the 2. PanzerArmee and detached elements of the 8. Armee continues its way to the Zbruch, softly pursued by the 2nd Ukrainian Front (bordered would be a more accurate term), but insistently harassed by the Partisans of Sydir Kovpak. The latter find here a perfect opportunity - albeit a very risky one - to waste the time of the fascist enemy, while proving once again their value. Ambushes, attacks and isolated shootings are thus multiplied, provoking each time bloody reprisals.
At the head of the column - it is very expected! - the II. SS-PanzerKorps reacts with its proverbial delicacy, by systematically machine-gunning any gathering and by making run in front of it the inhabitants rounded up along the way in order to proceed to a demining which is, to say the least, artisanal.
Behind them, the Hungarian armed forces apply an even simpler procedure: in the literal sense! Each village is burned, each work of art (however modest in the region...) is destroyed, every food reserve is confiscated and every "Resistance fighter" is shot. The Honvèd has no more reason to be tender with the Ukrainians since it now leaves, doubting that she will ever come back. And then, it always acts under the eye of the Wehrmacht - and in particular Walter Hörnlein, always quick to point out weaknesses or incompetence. The Magyars are not in a position to raise their heads after the events of the last few weeks. In this game, some are proving to be more... energetic than others - if several Hungarian commanders are trying to limit the damage (by pragmatism as well as humanity!), others are distinguished, unfortunately, by their taste for revenge, strongly tinged with national socialist ideology. Among them, we find of course Colonel Ferenc Szász and his 19th ID, about whom we have not heard the last...
Moreover, and while the exactions are already multiplying on the road to the debacle, the Germans also have some scores to settle among themselves. Thus, the Gestapo wastes no time to send emissaries by plane to retrieve General Erwin Jaenecke - the head of the now almost-defunct IV. AK of the Kessel in Bar, who had been arrested by the SS on direct orders from the Führer.
In addition to the latest disaster - for which, of course, someone must be held responsible - Jaenecke undoubtedly paid for his realism, and in particular his multiple calls for the withdrawal of the 2. PanzerArmee since... the battle of Vinnytsa, last November!
Removed from his command and to be court-martialed, Jaenecke was lucky, compared to his comrades: his prosecutor is Heinz Guderian. He decided to work with a wise slowness, then will manage to have him discreetly acquitted at the end of December... General Jaenecke will thus experience a relatively peaceful end to the conflict - even though he was eventually expelled from the army on January 31st, 1944. But after the German capitulation, the USSR did not fail to seize him so that he could explain the multiple war crimes committed under his command! Sentenced to death in 1945, the German general finally saw his sentence commuted to 25 years of hard labor in the Gulag. He was released in 1955 and managed to cross into West Germany to end his days in Cologne, in 1960.

Blood in the Carpathians
"Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni"
Suceava sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North) - The good weather is gradually returning to the battlefield. In the mud and puddles, the 2nd Armored Corps continues its advance and reaches Bulai, effectively threatening to envelop the entire Suceava region - and especially its defenders, the 50. ID and the 190. StuG, which were already retreating on foot towards the city.
Carl Hilpert fears a catastrophe, because he is unaware of the extent to which Ivan Lazarev is isolated (his corps is the only Soviet mechanized formation of the area, and it is at least 10 kilometers ahead of the 47th Army!). Hilpert has no other choice than to ask his chief, Karl-Adolf Hollidt, the immediate withdrawal of his LIV. ArmeeKorps on a new line based on Moldova and the mountains of the Gura Humorului region. This will lead to a cascade of the adaptation of the device of its neighbors, the XLVIII. AK and XI. AK - which will have to move back respectively 35 and 15 kilometers due to a crying lack of reserves.
Unless, of course, Wilhelm List finally decides to engage the 17. Panzer, which continues to do nothing at Gura Humorului, waiting for a new communist action that does not come. With a little acidity, Hollidt bluntly says on the phone: "Unless you prefer the Russian tanks to come to Schilling?" This is the obvious - but the constant crisis of nerves that has shaken Rastenburg for a month, as well as the fear of being accused of insubordination or defeatism, paralyzes the chain of command. List does not have the character of a Manstein, quick to dispense with the advice of his superiors - he gives himself until tonight to think things over... but nevertheless allows the 17. Armee to redeploy as it sees fit,
provided that it maintains the connection with the 11. Armee in the south and with Chernivtsi in the north. He also puts the 17. Panzer on alert, just in case, while asking Hollidt to maintain the pressure on the left flank of the Reds with the help of the rest of the LIV. ArmeeKorps (321. and 339. ID). To do this, he also offers him the 228. StuG Abt (Hauptmann Wilhelm von Malachowski), who had recently arrived and was finally going to leave Târgu Neamț to support the 339. ID (Martin Ronicke).
- The battle will take place in front of Moldova - hold Fălticeni and let the Reds advance. We will then draw them into a battle of annihilation with the divisions returned from Bar and the 17. Panzer, and then we will crush them.
This plan - as Prussian as ever - is as good as any other. Better still, it saves time and blood against ground... But it also risks not pleasing the higher-ups, if the OKH ever gets to know about it.
In the meantime, the Wehrmacht therefore deserts the Suceava and Dolhasca regions as well as that of Pașcani - a movement already well underway the day before, in all discretion, in order to retreat in coordination with the left wing of the 11. Armee. The HG SudUkraine thus abandons the strip of flat land between the Russians and the Carpathians. Nothing very dramatic for the Reich... In the evening, the 47th Army enters Suceava unopposed, raising the red flag over a Romanian town once again, before continuing on to Ilișești. With a reservation, however: Filipp Zhmachenko has only limited resources at his disposal (by Red Army standards!) and must tuck in on all sides against an enemy certainly in retreat, but whose jolts can always be feared. Its infantry does not go beyond Șcheia, in the southern suburbs of Suceava. As for Lazarev's tanks, they are already in the vicinity of Zaharești and rush without encountering any opposition towards Gura Humorului...
.........
Roman sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - Faced with an ever more determined enemy and reinforced by the action of the VVS, Riße's 225. ID completely breaks down in the hills of Făurei and routed towards Piatra Neamț, covered by the 20. PanzerGrenadier (Georg Jauer), which opposes with its old Panzer IIIs against the Soviet infantry and its accompanying tanks.
A year ago, this might have worked... But not with the 3rd Armored Guards Corps on its left, moving up from Hoisești to flank the retreating German soldiery. What does it matter that Panov's machines are few and far between after having crossing Moldova! For the first time in a long time, they are qualitatively very superior to the panzers, which are literally cut down on the plains, only compensating for their inferiority in armor and weaponry by the quality of their optics or by a better tactical coordination (and still, there too, the gap tends to narrowing!).
In danger of being defeated in open country and having in any case no reason to hold on to the ground, Georg Jauer tries to continue to cover Riße while moving off on his own initiative towards Piatra Neamț. He now plans to create a traffic jam there: after all, the entrance to this valley, which opens onto the Carpathians, is only 1,500 meters wide. The land is partially urbanized and the Bistrița River flows through it. So the Reds will have a hard time to overflow here! And then, who knows, it might awaken the solidarity of the 17. Armee, or attract reserves of the HG... In the evening, the front line is located between Dochia and Izvoare, but evolves rapidly.
.........
Bacău (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - Unlike Suceava or Roman, the Red Army here seems to get bogged down in a street fight of little interest, which destroys the city without any gain. The intervention of the 376. ID of von Daniels is decisive. Now assured of his right, which retreats slightly but no further toward Măgura and Dealu Mare in order to take advantage of the counter-slopes, the 215. ID is decidedly holding on to Bacău.
True, the 62nd Army now holds about half of this city of 40,000 people. But each block of ruined houses has to be torn out with great difficulty, under a rain of shells - the planes of the VVS, required further north, can hardly be seen. And the poor V. Anestin astronomical observatory, built in 1911 in order to search for the stars, is now mainly used as a point of support for the artillery... It changes hands twice during the day, while bravely resisting the explosions that shake it at irregular intervals****.
In short, Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South is behind schedule, and not for much.

HG SouthUkraine HQ, Brașov (Transylvania), 17:00 - With infinite regret, Wilhelm List finds that he still does not have permission from Rastenburg to mobilize the armored reserve stationed in Comănești. The OKH - that is, Hitler - keeps his eyes fixed on the actions in the Ternopol area (for Bar, however, it seems that there is a slight improvement...).
Consequently, although he did not go so far as to request the activation of the 15. Panzer and the 560. schw Pzr Abt, the Oberst von Freyend once again tells the head of the HG SudUkraine that these mechanized formations should be engaged "only as a last resort, once all other possibilities have been exhausted and after express validation by OKH, considering the serious political consequences that this decision would imply".
Understood... And speaking of last resort, what about the 17. Panzer, still in Gura Humorului? There, indeed, von Freyend must agree that it is more complicated... But the idea of drawing the Slavs into a battle of annihilation - whether in the corridor leading to Vatra Dornei or in some other insignificant valley in Hungary - has something that will appeal to the higher-ups. "I'll talk to General-FeldMarschall Keitel about it and get back to you."
Obviously...

Constanța - Another VVS raid - this time it's the big port on the Black Sea that is targeted. About 200 Tu-2s arrive from the open sea, escorted by the fighters of the Red Flag Fleet. Not that the port has now so much strategic value - with the closure of the Bosphorus by the Allied fleets in the Mediterranean and the Soviet naval superiority in the Black Sea, maritime traffic is not really what it was. But the Russians hope to provoke once again the FARR, who were forced to defend the city, its port facilities (including several food warehouses!), its shipyards and the ships under repair.
Successful bet: the Romanian air force dispatches 17 IAR-80Bs and 32 Bf 109Gs (i.e. the main part of the 3rd Fighter Flotilla) to harass and make the Reds give up. The latter does not give up and the raid costs them 21 bombers and 8 fighters, for limited damage to their target. But the FARR lose 7 IAR-80s and 5 Bf 109s, so precious in these times.
In order to compensate for these losses, it will be necessary to consider merging the 3rd Flotilla with the Gruparea Aeriană de Luptă, the force formerly deployed in Bessarabia. More experienced, it has many aces in its ranks. The 25th victory of Capt. Alexandru Serbanescu, leader of the 9th Fighter Group, a living legend of the FARR and respected even by the Germans (!), is a meager consolation... All the more so as the person concerned was shot down in flames. Even if he was able to parachute, the communist propaganda will soon announce his death, as well as the complete destruction of his whole unit. Enough to sting him!

* Grossman is probably referring to the Partisans, reinforced by paratroopers who had been inserted for several months.
** The American offensive grenades, round in shape, are so called in opposition to the Soviet "sausages", more elongated.
*** Today, even if many of its monuments have been more or less rebuilt, Soviet urbanism has left its mark on Ternopol, making wide furrows in the urban fabric with the sickle, affirming the pre-eminence of industry and automobile traffic over commerce and vacationing. No less than four major roads now cross the city from east to west and one of the most important, Stepan Bandera Avenue (sic...) can easily be described as a six-lane highway. The recent attempt to reduce traffic in the heart of the city has not yet borne fruit.
**** Fortunately for him, his basic structure is that of a water tower! From up there, the soldiers can look down on the whole city from 25 meters and can see the Saint-Nicolas church (XIXth century)...

 

[Wings]

October 16th, 1943

Italian Campaign
Italian front - A flat calm, hardly disturbed by various patrols and reconnaissance operations.

Greek and Balkan Campaign
Return to the country
Thrace (north) - This is officially the end of the Bulgarian occupation of Thrace: the units of the 2nd Army cross Komotini without stopping, while the strip of land still under Slavic rule is shrinking quickly*. Major-General Hristov has had radio contact with his superiors in Sofia the day before, and "they" clearly indicated to him that there was "no longer any reason for his troops to stop before they have reached their destination."
It is thus a hasty evacuation that the Greek inhabitants contemplate with contempt, who note that a cohort of civilians accompanied the soldiers and that no pursuer pointed to the horizon. The Hellenes, who have kept an ancient taste for tragedy, will draw some acid comments.
Indifferent to the gossips, the Bulgarians obliquely move towards the mountains of the north, and the Lozengradtsi pass. Six hundred meters of unevenness and fifteen kilometers of narrow and sinuous road! Fortunately that the allied aviation is totally absent. It is a long and pitiful column which hurries with difficulty under the autumn sky. As for the SS of Beckerle, not really reckless, they are now in the lead, to the great displeasure of the Bulgarians.
Further east, in the region of Alexandroupoli, the few Bulgarian officials and other personnel still in place have been ordered to decamp by estafettes. They will pass through Orestias and along the Turkish border - which they will avoid, however, coming too close to. Any risk of unpleasant encounter with possible allied soldiers will thus be spared.
.........
Thrace (south) - More or less informed of Montgomery's plans (at least those relating to the Hellenic national Hellenic territory) by general Panagiotis Spiliotopoulos, king George II takes upon himself to contact Tsolakoglou personally in order to invite him to put even more ardor to the task. For the sovereign, always anxious of the risks of communist agitation and fearing a rebellion after the war, it is imperative that it is the royal army that liberates the national territory, and that it liberates it as quickly as possible, without giving time to possible local "liberation committees" to form. The unpleasant episode of Amphilochia - among so many others, concretized or narrowly avoided - remains in the memories of many.
Thus rammed, the military promises to advance "like the Athenians after Marathon, and of day and night if necessary!" He takes the opportunity to ask his government to provide him with additional transportation and fuel. George II promises that he will speak directly with Monty on this subject. But the king of Greece will obtain neither the means, nor even the interview in question - Spiliotopoulos knows the character of his chief and feels well that such a step could be fatal to him... He will thus defer the official request until it becomes useless. What will not delay, because the evzones at to a hell of a pace !

Preparations
Balkans - The planes of the Air-Marshall Tedder take off again, after several weeks of reduced activity.
No bombing mission is scheduled, but many fast F5-As fly at high altitude over Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and even Serbia. The Luftwaffe, bled dry in this sector, does not try to intercept them - and the double-tailed birds fly too high for the Flak.
.........
Albanian-Kosovan border - SOE "Musketeers", as well as several other French and British officers, cross the border with Yugoslavia. They thus enter in enemy territory, even if in this region of the world, the limit between zone controlled by the Axis and by the Allies is blurred and fluctuating - at least as much so as in Indochina. McLean's men have much to do: estimate the real (and not claimed!) strength of the maquis, train and supervise the cadres, instruction in the use of the new weapons... and above all negotiation with the leaders concerned on the scope and date of a future concerted operation.

* In this area, the coastal strip is less than 25 kilometers wide.

 

[Wings]

October 16th, 1943

Languedoc and Provence - Heavy rains fall on the Hérault. It rains less in the Ardèche, but enough to considerably hamper air support. The Ardennais have to joke - "Ah, so here too, it rains, like at home, finally!" - They make little progress, content to occupy positions abandoned the day before by the Germans. Opposite, the 243. ID, which continues to arrive, deploys as a collection element for the 189. RD. In the plain near the Rhône, the legionnaires report the arrival of a new enemy unit.

 

[Wings]

October 17th, 1943

British Embassy in Cairo - Resumption of discussions between the "White Prince" Barbu Alexandru Știrbey and Sir Miles Lampson, now reinforced by His Excellency Ernest Charles Lucet. Delighted with this entry into the fray - which brings back some rather fond memories, for Știrbey did a good part of his studies in Paris* and got married in Switzerland - the Romanian envoy is keen to immediately put his new partner at ease, adopting a very friendly attitude towards the Frenchman, full of attention. All this under the phlegmatically stoic gaze of the British man, who would like to avoid having to start from scratch, especially to please the Continentals.
Obviously, even if he welcomes with pleasure the assaults of friendliness of which he is the object of, Lucet is not fooled and does not delude himself about the present situation. The prince is simply trying to gain time: he is still waiting for the instructions that should be transmitted to him via Ankara, but which have suffered "regrettable delays in transmission due to technical problems" (MI5 is working hard to decipher them!). Of course, he also tries to play the nice French friend against the evil Anglo-Saxon imperialist who had come to capture the interests of France, by reminding us of the good old days of the Little Entente, organized against the Germans (as well as against the Soviets!) and which was once strongly supported by the Romanians**. It is true... But here's the thing: the simple fact of holding this meeting here, in the precincts of a property of His Most Gracious Majesty, says something about the reality of the power of the Republic, for the time being and as far as this region of the Globe!
In these conditions, playing for time also suits Lucet: he needs some time to obtain more means and information from Algiers, while making the City's donkey go round and round (the word would have come from very high up). An attitude that does not let surprise somewhat the Romanian, who hoped for a little more energy! And the talks continue very civilly under the palm trees...

* In particular at the Faculty of Legal Sciences.
** In February 1933, Nicolae Titulescu - the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time - had even drafted an organizational pact giving the whole a perennial international structure going beyond declarations of intent. But the proposal never gained consensus and was forgotten after Munich...

 

[Wings]

October 17th, 1943

Burma Campaign
Operation Tiger
The fighting continues all day in Moulmein, where the 14th Indian Division progresses from house to house, sometimes at the cost of heavy losses. The defenders did not have the time to destroy the railroad line and, above all, if the road bridge is blown up, the railway bridge is intact, thanks to an individual exploit: Sergeant Singh, of the 15th Punjab Rgt, went alone to defuse the explosives under the fire of two machine gun nests. These two bridges had been voluntarily spared by the RAF during operation Damascus.
At the end of the day, the fighting ends with the assault of a final redoubt. But the Japanese are bad losers: in the middle of the night, a Ki-21 raid, guided by the flames which ravage several districts of the city, come to bombard the ruins.
.........
In the delta of the Salween, the 5th British ID has to do a lot against the 9th Japanese Division. The latter retreats but make the British pay for every inch of ground, in spite of a strong air support. In the center of the front, the Indian divisions, supported by armoured vehicles, push back the 12th Japanese Division, but without achieving a decisive breakthrough. Finally, on the extreme left of the Allied position, the 1st Burmese Division receives the order to reach out to the Chindits of the 77th Brigade. This movement threatening the Japanese with an overrun, the 7th Army staff decides to "realign".

Operation Tigertooth
After the previous day's fighting, the 77th Brigade continued on its way. The day is unremarkable, with at most a few clashes. The Japanese fighter force is active again, prohibiting once more any parachute drops during the day.
However, in spite of the increasingly bad sanitary situation, the morale is high at the end of the day, when the Chindits finally make radio contact with the forward elements of the 1st Burmese Division.

Operation Manneken Pis
Somewhere in Northern Thailand - At dawn, the Public Force sets out again and, in spite of its guides, it again makes a "navigational error". Supposed to return to Burma or to China, its trucks turn towards the town of Wiang and continue towards the North-East, the Mekong... and Laos. Isn't the important thing that they leave Thailand?
At the end of the day, the column presents itself at the border post of Chiang Khong, at the edge of the river. The gasoline starts to become low and the Mekong is wide, but the solution is found: on the Thai side of the river there is a large gasoline depot and several ferries capable of transporting the Dodge trucks and the Jeeps of the Belgians.
Alas, a new problem arises: the depot and ferries are guarded by a Thai battalion that seems to take its mission very seriously. Its chief curtly declares to the emissaries of General Gilliaert that he is not the subordinate of the general-governor who has signed the documents they present to him and that his orders are to offer the gasoline that he keeps and the services of the ferries only to the Royal Army. He and his menare ready to die to defend the property of the King and the Thai People.
Night falls, interrupting the negotiations. As the Public Force deploys, the Thai battalion ostensibly takes defensive measures, even accumulating explosives near the gasoline tanks and boats.

Indochina Campaign
The Hanoi revolt
Hanoi, 07:00 - The night's fighting gradually calms down. The Vietnamese - Du Kich guerrillas - who are holding the houses of the Boulevard Armand-Rousseau and the barricade at the corner of Rue Harmand are trying to rest.
The first sign of the Japanese attack is a mechanical noise that echoed between the bullet-riddled facades. A Chi-Ha type 97 tank advances in the Boulevard Rialan, preceding a cautious infantry that leaps from porch to porch, from corner to corner.
The 57 mm gun opens fire on the barricade, then on the houses - its shells exhausted, it will continue to support the infantry with the fire of its 7.7 mm machine gun.
Behind him, the soldiers move forward, the FMs firing at the windows while a few suicidal men rush forward to throw grenades into the rooms. Behind them leap other soldiers, bayonets fixed. We clean house by house, floor by floor, room by room, with method. It is a bloody and nightmarish task, especially since the Vietminh have laid booby traps, homemade mines, in many doors and sometimes in the staircases or the ceilings. Moreover, they escape through concealed passages to reappear in buildings that were thought to be secure.
12:00 - Two Warhawks join the party. Coming in low from the roofs, they strafe the streets to the north, in a sector in Japanese hands.
In the afternoon, seeing the little results of their assaults, the Tenno soldiers withdraw. They set up their own barricade with bamboo spikes across boulevard Rialan. On Rue de Pavie, they crucify a dozen corpses, a sinister warning for the rebels.
.........
Tuan Giao, 08:30 - A Ki-46 flies over the ruined locality, just to keep an eye on the area. After taking pictures, it left for Hanoi without any trouble.
To the great satisfaction of the Japanese intelligence experts, the development of the photos do not indicate any evolution on the ground deserted by the enemy.
20:30 - Since nightfall, the destroyed base has been frantically moving. By the torches and hurricane lamps, shovels, picks and other tools are working to repair the damage while axes and machetes are working to create access through the vegetation. Before the first light of dawn, a lot of work has been done.
However, another team follows the first one and takes care to erase all traces of the work thanks to camouflage nets and painted wooden panels made from aerial photos taken after the Japanese raid of October 11.th After the fake cannons and the fake fortifications of Dien-Bien-Phu, the Bo-Dois camouflage a soon to be operational airfield into a destroyed and abandoned airfield. Everything is done to convince the Japanese in the idea that their bombardment had rendered the place definitively unusable, and the fighter patrols are instructed to let the Nipponese reconnaissance photograph what they want in the vertical of the airfield.

New Guinea Campaign
Salamaua-Lae Campaign
Battle of Roosevelt Ridge - It is quite rare for an officer to be in command at a battle at a place that bears the same name as him. This is the case today with Lt. Col. Archibald Roosevelt, fifth son of President Theodore Roosevelt. His name forced him to write to another President Roosevelt, the current one, in order to be able to participate in the war other than in an office, far from enemy bullets.
But he wanted to do so, to finally command his men in combat, like the ancestor whose first name he bears, a hero of the Revolutionary War. During the First World War, a wound had prevented him from realizing his dreams of glory; he had suffered, despite the medals he had received for his brilliant actions, the Silver Star and the Croix de Guerre.
Finally, this time, as head of the 162nd Regimental Combat Team, he will show all his qualities, he says to himself. Especially since his men are supported by the 2nd Btn of the 1st Marine Parachute Regiment, under the command of Lt-Colonel Victor Krulak.

Sino-Japanese War
Operation Zhulin
Wuhan (Hubei) - New Ki-51 sortie, this time focusing their deadly attention on the southern and western districts of Wuchang.
But it is in Hankou that the insurgents are the most daring. They manage to take the Japanese defenders by surprise, elements of the 116th Division who have arrived six days earlier and who think they have been given a quiet sector of the city, the Resistance fighters seize the area of the former foreign concessions; only the Japanese consulate building, which is solidly defended, resists. The insurgents take over the raw materials of the Xiechang match factory, at the eastern end of the Japanese concession, and convert the premises into a workshop for making homemade grenades.

 

[Wings]

October 17th, 1943

Operation Rumyantsev-TBT
Sublimation
Ukraine - The weather is clearly improving - it is not yet the sun, but the clouds are getting less and less visible, as well as the showers. Of course, this does not necessarily facilitate the life of the fighter on the ground - the slush is still sticky while the bombardments resume.

Sector of the 1st Ukrainian Front - On the Viliya, the LIX. AK is now well in place - even if it has to give up holding on to Pidkamin', for fear of finding itself in the path of the enemy's offensive. Indeed, this one is now obvious. And Kurt von der Chevallerie cannot afford the luxury of letting one of his divisions be charred for the sole pleasure of holding an insignificant village in Ukraine, when he already has to defend 60 kilometers of shoreline! However, by its only presence on the whole northern flank of the device, his corps forces the Red Army to garrison the banks of the Viliya - and thus to blunt little by little the point of its attack. The Fascist does not give up therefore, he adapts... alas! Konstantin Rokossovsky undoubtedly thinks the same, forced to leave facing von der Chevallerie the 4th Armored Corps (A.G. Kravchenko), the 5th Guards Army (F.N. Remezov) and the 2nd Cavalry Corps (A.G. Selivanov). This is not enough to stop the assault, but it is still annoying.
Especially since in the area of Zaliztsi (25 kilometers west of Vychnivets), the III. PanzerKorps has stopped retreating and is now preparing for a confrontation. Werner Kempf - in agreement with Walter Weiß and according to a strategy validated by Manstein himself - wishes to take advantage of the bottleneck constituted by the upper courses of the Bug, the Seret, Styr and Ikva rivers. These four rivers form a ring 8 kilometers wide and 15 kilometers long - hardly! It is thus here, in the south of Brody, that the German will deliver a battle on the edge of the vast woods that stretch out in the Markopil-Pidhirtsi-Pidkamin triangle. For this, III. PzK has only three very tired armored divisions at its disposal, which total a small hundred vehicles (97 precisely, including 43 Leopards), reinforced by the 26 surviving StuG of Hauptmann Gerhard Behnke (203. StuG Abt). This is not much!
But the Reds are undoubtedly somewhat scattered while advancing in the great Ukrainian plain, banner in the wind, sure of their triumph... And the III. PanzerKorps sees reinforcements arrive today : the 42 Pz-VII Panther of the 39. Panzer-Regiment (Oberst Otto Büsing) ! These brand new beasts make a strong impression - even if two of them already seem to be out of order due to a fire in their mechanics. No matter - they certainly represent a substantial help, which we hope will be decisive.
And that's not all: the Luftwaffe - quite absent from the skies these days, everyone has pointed out - has also promised to be there in force on the day in question. It even claims to be able to subdue the Soviet armor. We'll see!
Meanwhile, on the other side, the wave is coming. Scattered, as Manstein predicted, but nevertheless powerful: 1st Armored Guards Corps at Lopushne, followed by the 1st and 2nd Mechanized Corps at Dzvynyacha and finally the 9th Guards Army at Bodaky and Lozy. The infantry, which advances heavily along the Horyn river, is preceded by armored vehicles spread out in front of it for almost 20 kilometers.
However, Nikolai Pukhov's army will probably soon try to accelerate - it will not want to be left behind while its flanks are now assured. Indeed, on its right, it is already covered by the forces holding the banks of the Viliya, while on its left, the 2nd and 3rd Airborne Corps (M. F. Tikhonov and V.A. Glazunov) just reach Ditkivtsi and Ihrovytsya, thus approaching more and more the banks of the Seret and the town of Zaliztsi. The paratrooper comrades have a light foot! It is also true that they are more trained and less tired...
Finally, further south, in the region of Ternopol, according to the instructions of Rokossovsky (confirmed by Zhukov, who knows well that Stalin's objective is the Bug, nothing else...), the 4th Guards Army of Ivan Muzychenko stops the expenses, after having pushed back a little more in the plain the remnants of the former defenders of the city. The information provided by the Partisans are formal: the fascist reinforcements arrive soon. However, after Ternopol, there is no crossroads or locality of importance before 50 kilometers - useless, therefore, to expose oneself for nothing.
With the 3rd Army and the 5th AC (which still had to border the Fascist withdrawal from Bar), the 4th Guards undertake to reconstitute a front west of the Seret. Its route is to follow more or less the Zaliztsi-Dovzhanka-Strusiv line, with the 1st Cavalry Corps on the right at Tsebriv and the 1st Armored Corps on the left west of Myshkovychi. That is to say a strip of 10 kilometers wide on average... it is not much, but it will certainly be useful later.
On the other side, the German elements, lonely and tired by the fighting as well as by the retreat that they have just led, let it go. The 371. ID is positioned in the center in front of Ternopol, with the 141. ID more to the south at Nastasiv and the 905. StuG Abt between the two... for the sector north of the 371. ID, more people will be needed.

Sector of the 2nd Ukrainian Front - The said people are coming soon. The II. SS-PanzerKorps has been relieved of all support tasks for the 2. PanzerArmee (or what remains of it). This is now the exclusive role of the 132. ID as well as - to a certain extent - that of the Panzergrenadier GrossDeutschland, which acts as a rear guard. There is no reason for the SS to wait for the bulk of the troops, who were dragging themselves between Solobkivtsi and Nova Ushytsya, delayed by the terrain, the destruction to be carried out or the terrorist attacks.
Paul Hausser and his men, tired, lacking ammunition, but still and always victorious (the pursuit of Kuz'myntsi is of course an unfortunate exception) hurry to cross Yarmolyntsi and head towards Sataniv and the Zbruch, covered by the debris of the Kampfgruppe that has come to support them. If they hurry a little, they will be in the region of Ternopol within 48 hours. Too late to participate in the coming battle, of course. But nevertheless early enough to serve as a last resort if things turn out badly for Kempf, even if it means going back another 65 kilometers to Brody. However, even from the point of view of the Schutzstaffel fanatics, this is a scenario that it would probably be best to avoid...

Blood in the Carpathians
"Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni"
Suceava sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North) - The Red Army is advancing with redoubled energy while the 17. Armee - which is simply readjusting its position in order to cope with its lack of resources - now seems to be in full retreat towards the Carpathians. This does not astonish Fyodor Tolbukhin: would the Fascists be so badly off that their lines collapse at the first flick of the wrist? Obviously, he doubts it - but forced to continue anyway, he doesn't let it show... The Soviet forces continue their advance, in the face of an opposition that evades them in the direction of the Moldova.
Zhmashenko's 47th Army thus reaches Ilișești, thus approaching the new line of the LIV. AK, now entrenched in the woods south of Varvata. The 50. and 339. ID are reinforced by the 190. StuG Abt, while (this is new!) the 306. ID (Karl-Erik Köhler), from the XLVIII. AK (Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach), is deployed on their left, at Arbore.
As for the 2nd Armored Corps, further south, it cuts straight towards the Moldova, which it reaches in the late afternoon, at Drăgoiești and then Berchișești. Ivan Lazarev does not need to cross this river to reach his objective - feeling well covered on his right by Zhmachenko and on the left by... the German retreat, he simply obliques to Gura Humorului, to the west. In front of him, the VVS multiplies the aerial reconnaissance, to try to see more clearly. But for the moment, they have not identified, straight ahead, a 17. Panzer now on maximum alert.
.........
Roman sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - If in the north, things are going on according to predictable modalities, therefore a priori controllable, the southern wing of the 11. Armee, on the other hand, kept on slipping, pushed back towards the Carpathians by the blows of the 4th Ukrainian Front. The 225. ID seems close to dissolution and the 20. PanzerGrenadier of Georg Jauer is definitely no match for the mass of the 14th Army and the 3rd Guards Armored Corps - Georg-Hans Reinhardt and his subordinates are content with delaying actions...
The Panzer IIIs hurriedly withdraw across the Bistrița while the grenadiers blow up the crossing points at Roznov and south of Piatra Neamț, after gaining some more time on the Cracău. As planned the day before, it is in Kreuzburg an der Bistritz (the "fortress of the Cross on the Bistrița", a predestined name!) that they will fight a last battle before withdrawing for good in the Carpathians.
On the other side, the Soviets are as surprised as in the north at the weakness of the reaction - the 14th Army, led by Valerian Frolov, always cautious because of his experience, simply forces the Cracău lock and cleans the banks between Girov and Roznov, while being careful to cover himself against a possible backlash inflicted by the XI. AK (17. Armee) from Bodești or Tupilați. So it is Mikhail Panov's job to open the road under the bombs of the Bf 110s of the ZG.1, which try to cover the Axis withdrawal, escorted by the Bf 109 of the I/JG.4. Nine 110s and four 109s are shot down, in exchange for 21 red star fighters - clearly less than two to one, the VVS continue to improve. By evening, the T-34 are in sight of their objective - but their crews already suspect that the night will be long...
.........
Bacău sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - Continued butchery in the city, where the 215. ID is still holding on, while the 62nd Army is advancing steadily northward while trying to give itself room to move westward, toward Luizi-Călugăra, in order to pretend to threaten Onești. Vladimir Kolpakchi does not know it, but this area is defended only by the 191. StuG Abt "to the red bull" (Hauptmann Alfred Müller)... Certainly, these tanks are themselves on their way to Piatra Neamț (they will drive all night to Ardeoani before taking the back roads to Săvinești), but the duo 15. Panzer and 560 schw Pzr Abt will take over from Comănești. This means that the Axis believes that it has nothing to fear here...
In summary, the small diversion of the Soviet does not take: on the right of the 215. ID, the 376. ID continues to fight foot to foot, simply giving up a few insignificant inches of ground to the wooded reliefs that form a basin around Bacău. Thus, against all expectation, the 62nd Army seems to have stuck on its own: it must now force the Bacău lock against all odds in order to pretend to continue northward and assist the 14th Army in its capture of Piatra Neamț... or give up, almost in front of its starting positions.
A misconception no doubt - but the furious assaults of the frontovikis will not change anything: the Axis still firmly holds the northern third of the city.

HG HQ Sud-Ukraine, Brașov (Transylvania), 16:00 - Still depressed by the turn of events in his sector of the front - not to mention the war in general! - Wilhelm List receives another call from the OKH. As promised, it is the Oberst von Freyend. And he apparently has good news!
"Heil Hitler, Herr General! The Führer has just authorized the engagement of the 17. PanzerDivision at Gura Humorului, as part of a stand-off battle. The latter should be followed by a counter-attack of your left flank on the Soviets with the help of AA Kissel, which should join you shortly. You are therefore authorized to switch troops from the XLVIII. AK from the Chernivtsi sector to the south, in order to prepare this annihilation fight - to gain time obviously, because the forces coming back from Ukraine will probably not be immediately operational. They will have to be content with taking over...".
Obviously, List can only thank with a smile that he is finally being allowed to do what he has been urging for the past two days. Initiative, responsibility, trust, delegation... In short! It remains to settle the thorny case of Piatra Neamț.
"You proposed an intervention from the south by your own reserves. It is therefore not necessary to detach more resources for the time being - especially while we remain in uncertainty as to the attitude of the Communist forces on the Danube. There are other things in progress..."
An enigmatic silence follows - Freyend will say no more. Then, suddenly, with a curious mixture of sincerity (or is it compassion?), he continues: "We are counting on you, Herr General. Catch the Slavs in a trap at Gura Humorului, destroy them and present their remains to the Führer. Then we'll have arguments to repeat the operation... elsewhere."
Certainly - win or perish. And if, by any chance, it was to win, we might allow him to win somewhere else. Wilhelm List thanks him and takes his leave, before calling Karl-Adolf Hollidt.

Brăila - The Soviet air offensive - for the moment as effective as it was costly - marks a brief pause, in order to allow the crews as well as the machines to breathe (even the brilliant collectivist mechanics need maintenance from time to time!). The VVS are now content to strike around the town of Brăila, a Danubian port close to the front and also serving as a center of operations for the cavalry corps of General Gheorghe Rozin. All day long, the Pe-2s and Sturmoviks harass the communication routes and troop concentrations. The price paid is not less high than usual (about fifteen aircraft), but the VVS thus maintains a high level of insecurity on the 3rd Romanian Army's front while limiting the risks. The FARR, also tired of the previous day's fighting, does not react in force - a classic day on the Eastern Front...
At least, this could have been the case if, at nightfall, a particularly bold Bf 109 of the 9th Fighter Group had not dropped a safe-conduct on an advanced VVS airfield, inviting the Reds to come and see that this formation and its leader, Captain Serbanescu, are still alive and kicking. This afternoon, Serbanescu is was even more explicit: during an alert, he jumps in an available Gustav, before climbing to provoke a marauding Mig-3U formation, shooting down one (his 26th victory!) and then returns to land as if nothing had happened. Clearly, the Forţele Aeriene Regale ale României do not like to be considered as a negligible quantity - neither by their allies, nor by their enemies!

 

[Wings]

October 17th, 1943

Italian Campaign
Italian Front - The men of the 356. ID are in good spirits: they know they are facing Italians, who, although they had proved to be good fighters, are only minor partners of their main enemies.
So the Germans are very surprised when their positions on hill 520, near Route 65 north of Florence, are violently attacked. This unexpected blow comes from the Alpini of the 1st Rgt of the 4th Mountain ID Cuneense. The fighting lasts all day, giving the men of the Cuneense the opportunity to improve their technique of guiding the air force by radio - all in Italian, as these are the first war missions for the 4th Stormo! The P-39s, which fly very low to show their roundels before going to attack their objectives, are greeted by thunderous "Italia!"
In the valley, the large village of Vaglia is in sight.

Greece and Balkans Campaign
Return to the country
Bulgarian-Greek border - With the arrival of the first units of the 2nd Army, the Domishte Pass is considered secure by the Sofia staff. The following days, as they arrive, the various regiments will go to position themselves on the roads and ways of the sector. As for the plain east of Haskovo, it is considered to be protected by the powerful force covering the Turkish border, which will only have to extend its position by about twenty kilometers. All this obviously for form's sake.

Greek-style liberation
Thrace (liberated sector) - The soldiers of Brian Horrocks' XIIIth Corps see the first evzones of the 2nd Greek Corps (5th and 13th ID, 1st Armored Brigade). However, "see them pass" would perhaps be more appropriate: they hardly stop to greet their allies, before resuming their route under the harangues of their officers. Under the mask of their usual reserve, the officers of the British corps can't help but observe with concern the Hellenes' anger towards the fleeing Bulgarians. Thus, a commander of the 5th ID (Georgios Stanotas) declares that it would be necessary "to put to death the traitors who have soiled the Greek language by daring to learn Bulgarian". Exactly the answer which had been made on the Acropolis to the emissary of Darius during the Median wars - emissary whose interpreter was thrown from the top of the hill ! This does not augur well for a reconciliation between the two countries, thinks General Messervy as he packs his bags to continue to serve His Most Gracious Majesty in Burma, where he is to take command of the 7th Indian Division.

Preparations
Balkans - Reconnaissance flights continues over Axis positions and communications. Because of their generalized nature, the staff of Army Group E cannot deduce anything significant about possible future enemy movements.

Bulgarian affair
Deceptive appearances
Sofia (embassy of the Reich) - Again summoned in the territory of the Reich by Adolf Beckerle, =general Marinov spends an unpleasant moment undergoing recriminations and threats from his German master. The unpleasant and embarrassing questions follow one another like the shells of an artillery bombardment. Couldn't we maintain the illusion of a resistance in Thrace in order to immobilize some Allied troops in this unimportant sector? And what motivates above all the anger of the SS, is that the "special units" could not even start their work in the area of Komotini and Alexandroupoli! The enemy troops still seem far away!
However, the Bulgarian has courteous answers to all the reproaches. The eyes respectfully lowered, he finely argues by invoking successively the extreme exposure of his men in a plain, the absence of possible reinforcements, the total control of the sky by the Allied air force (whose bite the Germans had experienced - including in Bulgaria) and finally... the arrival of the troops of the 2nd Greek Army Corps reported by the scouts! As if the British slowness was only related to logistics and the Bulgarians did well to withdraw.
More political than military, Beckerle grumbles in anger - but he cannot oppose anything to these technical arguments of an unstoppable logic. Moreover, he is always forced to deal with this miserable Slav, for lack of any other competent interlocutor. He finally concludes: "The Reich expects better from you, General Marinov! And I personally expect better from you in the coming months, to defend your lands against the Jewish activities, while I am struggling to obtain armor and airplanes for you - to replace the ones that that traitor Regent stupidly threw in our way, we must remember! I will not tolerate that enemy troops enter Bulgarian territory!"
Again, Marinov pretends to lower his head to avoid the chop - but he smiles inwardly. Of course, the national territory will not be invaded... he knows something about it! Mumbling some frightened apology, he replies: "I understand your disappointment, Herr Beckerle. But understand that I have recovered our poor Bulgarian army in a pitiful state, not as it was three months ago. I am forced to deal with the consequences of the disaster caused by my predecessors, you see me really sorry and ashamed!"
With his eye on the clock, the SS man replies, "It is indeed appalling. Especially for the Jews, Gypsies and other Thracian sub-humans. Fortunately, we are much more efficient elsewhere in Europe... In short, you may leave, General Marinov!" The Bulgarian salutes and takes his leave.
Finally alone in his den, SS-Obergruppenführer Beckerle respectfully dusts the bust of Adolf Hitler on the mantelpiece, which seems to judge his every move. For a moment, he wonders whether the supreme guide would have had, not his wisdom (for he obviously has it), but his patience. Finally... On reflection, if the insufficiencies of Marinov are glaring, Beckerle does not see any serious reason to fear a duplicity on his part. How could he communicate with the Allies, when the regent himself did not really manage to do so during his pitiful rebellion? And why would the British trust him?
No, this Slav is just a fool, like all his kind. Beckerle notes to recall once more the chancellery in Berlin, because of this armored brigade thing. Marinov might need it very soon, with the British... or rather the Greeks... at the gates of his country.
A few blocks away, alone in his private car, the said Marinov finally risks a discreet smile. The hardest part is done on the German side too. Now we have to bow our heads and wait - for the sake of the country. However, one sentence intrigues the general... what did this arrogant Teuton mean when he spoke about the efficiency of his cronies elsewhere in Europe?

 

[Wings]

October 17th, 1943

Languedoc and Provence - The rains which continue allow everyone to position themselves quietly.
In Ardèche, the Allies gained some ground at the cost of furious fighting. The reports indicating the arrival of a new infantry division in this sector are worrying. The small Belgian brigade does not have the means to break through on its own; the offensive is therefore halted because it is necessary to free the 15th DBLE as soon as possible. The latter has to cross back over to the other side of the Rhone, it is now the only large unit in reserve of the French army corps. For other actions, it will be necessary to wait for the arrival of the 5th DB and the 13th DBLE, scheduled for the beginning of November.

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Val Cavallina (near Bergamo) - The CLNAI had asked for the sending of a military advisor. It took a long time, but finally, at the end of a parachute, the 54-year-old Raffaele Cadorna, veteran of the Italian-Turkish War, the Other War and the (first) French Campaign, arrives. He was the head of the cavalry school of Pinerolo at the time of the armistice, but was fortunately in the capital at the time of the Bloody Christmas, because he was expected to become the next commander of the Ariete armored division. In the chaos of the fighting at the end of December around the Italian capital, Cadorna held his position with dignity. Recently transferred to the paratroopers, he was sent to Northern Italy where, assisted by Captain W.O. Churchill (no relation), of the SOE, and Major André Sérot, from the French "services", he ended up being promoted to the position of Commander-in-Chief of the CVL that he has come to advise!
Unfortunately, as usual in Northern Italy, nothing is simple. Indeed, the organization chart of the brand new CVL includes different strata. To the "assistants" allies of the CVL's commander, there are two deputies, the shareholder Ferruccio Parri and the communist Luigi Longo. And Cadorna will have to prove himself to be respected! This is due to the CNLAI's distrust of the royal government, even if the king is no longer the same and the government is now a coalition team composed almost entirely of CNL members.
It is also perhaps due to the simple name of Cadorna. Raffaele's father, Luigi, was commander-in-chief of the Italian troops during much of the Other War and, like a Nivelle in France, his name is associated with the repeated attacks characteristic of the First World War. General Luigi Cadorna was the target of a troop song that said (among other things): "General Cadorna became a military cart driver - There were no more mules, he hitched his wife" or alternatively - "And instead of a donkey he had Victor-Emmanuel - General Cadorna wrote to the Queen: - "If you want to see Trieste, you will see it... in postcard" (...) - General Cadorna, he sleeps, he drinks, he eats - The poor soldier, he leaves and doesn't come back."

British Embassy in Cairo - Barbu Alexandru Știrbey finally receives the instructions from the National Democratic Bloc - which, under the impact of the Soviet offensive in progress, are, alas, without appeal. He therefore announces, with the sad rigor of one who is only doing his duty: "Gentlemen, my compatriots are willing to comply with the demands of the United Nations: occupation of the territory, unconditional commitment of the Romanian army on the side of the Red Army, free movement of the Red Army on our territory. They also propose to form a government of national unity under the authority of a personality... close to the king but not compromised with the dictatorship - although already benefiting from a great experience in international negotiations.
- Well, that's great news!" says Sir Miles Lampson, happy that these long days of effort are finally coming to their inevitable conclusion.
- Do you have any idea of the personality in question?" asks Ernest Charles Lucet.
The White Prince answers nothing - but his silence is eloquent, especially since he wears a modest look that did not suit him. A statesman, who has not governed since the 1930s, known internationally and... close to the royal family*? Clearly, Știrbey himself is a remedy acceptable to all - and especially to the Western powers, on which it is hoped to rely to moderate at least somewhat the appetite of the Soviet ogre.
The Briton concludes with a smile: "We take note with pleasure of these new elements. We will notify our respective governments as soon as possible, to define the next steps, as well as the practical modalities of a possible collaboration.
- By the way, Sir Miles, may I ask you when the mission of your services will arrive in Romania? I should be able to inform my partners as soon as possible, so that they can make the necessary arrangements.
- Probably in about ten days - if I believe the services concerned... and provided that our French friends provide the necessary personnel in time.
One more stone (discreet but annoying!) in the garden of these Froggies. In the evening, Lucet will directly contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that the DGSS gets more involved and sends an experienced agent for the delicate mission that is coming...

* Very close - during the period when he was King Ferdinand's personal adviser, Știrbey had frequented Queen Mary a great deal. And some observers found that certain features of Princess Ileana were noticeably reminiscent of those of the White Prince...

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Villa of the Conducator (Băneasa, northern suburb of Bucharest) - Ion Antonescu finally has some good news: in addition to "the victorious defense of Gura Humorului" (at least, that's what Radio Berlin is saying), the Wehrmacht finally announced itself willing to give up some armor to the Romanian army. Alas, these are vehicles intended for accompanying the infantry: we are talking here about 12 French B1 bis tanks equipped with a flame thrower instead of their 75 mm gun, to better burn the red infantry. This tinkering previously equipped the 102nd Flamethrower Tank Battalion, deployed in Ukraine; the latter will surely have received since then more modern - and German equipment*!
Of course, it is better than nothing - but the Conducator is not fooled: it is only third hand equipment, whose main interest is to maintain the German-Romanian cooperation. But the Germans still need him. This is a good sign...
As for the machines, they will join the 1st Corps, in order to support the valiant infantry defending the Siret. With luck, they will probably allow it to hold on a little longer.

* The Romanians were not told that many of the crews of this battalion (and of the other armored support formations) had been taken to make up for the losses of the standard tank units.

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Burma Campaign
Operation Tiger
At the headquarters of the Japanese 7th Army, morale is very low. The ammunition reserves are almost exhausted: the road between Tavoy and Thailand is not enough to supply the front, where the consumption of shells and cartridges of all calibers is staggering. Worse, the Thai government has made it known that it would be happy to provide food for the Japanese Army, but that it would be preferable to find another route to deliver ammunition.
A new supply route is being established from Singapore, but it is not yet fully operational. The transport ships that operate along the coast cannot fill the gap.: since October 10th, two coasters have managed to pass, but the RAF Beauforts torpedoed two others.
It is therefore decided to withdraw to the south of the river that runs through Ye. The city itself will be left to the Allies, as it is located on the northern bank. On the southern bank, the Japanese will be able to entrench themselves on hills that will make good observatories for the artillery.
Finally, at this point, the plain is narrower, which will shorten the front line to be defended. The first division to fall back will be the 9th. During this time, the rest of the army had to hold on without retreating.
On the allied side, we try to reorganize after the progress of the previous days. The 5th British ID is out of the delta area, but is unable to advance, the 8th Indian Division spends the day in mopping-up operations and the 19th Indian Division just manages to re-establish contact with the Japanese 55th Division. At Moulmein, the 14th Indian Division is licking its wounds, after several days of exhausting urban fighting. And like on the Japanese side, even if to a lesser degree, the supply is not so easy to follow!

Operation Tigertooth
October 18th marks the end of the operation. The survivors of the 77th Indian Brigade, all slimmed down and exhausted, most of them sick and many wounded, finally join the
55th Brigade. Tigertooth was an undeniable success, even if its influence on the main battle was probably not as decisive as a Hollywood film would have you believe.
The first lesson to be drawn is the validity (at least on this ground) of the concept of penetration of the enemy's rear, and the possibility of supplying the troops by air. However, Major-General Wingate (he had just been officially promoted) and Colonel Cochran agreed that a specific air unit was needed to ensure success, a specific and autonomous air unit was needed, including fighters, transports and even bombers. The latter were missing in this operation as well as the penetration of the 3rd West African Brigade. This is how the 1st Air Commando was created, intended to support the Chindits in their future operations and associating squadrons of the USAAF and the RAF.

Operation Manneken Pis
Chiang Khong, on the Laotian border - "The situation was delicate," Auguste Gilliaert told Jo Gérard. "The Thai battalion looked ready to fight despite the disproportion of the forces and we absolutely needed this gasoline and these containers! It was Chiang who allowed us to draw our plan. Of course, his name was not Chang, but that's how we had nicknamed our interpreter, you can imagine that we had all read The Blue Lotus, before the war! He had befriended us. In a few days, he had become quite a beaver, he had lost his French accent and started to use some typical Belgian expressions.
So Chiang, seeing my perplexity, addressed me, smiling as usual: "General, I don't understand your difficulties." I exploded: "Well, verdomme, either I slaughter them, but these zots are going to kill me and the whole brolly by setting fire to some of the gasoline and tanks, or I'll be sherped, forced to abandon half of my vehicles and to cross the Mekong on tiny fishing boats!"
His smile widened: "Nenni, general! The battalion commander has orders to GIVE his gasoline only to the Royal Thai Army. But he is not forbidden to SELL his gasoline to European tourists, nor to RENT his tanks to them.
I felt like he was talking to a slightly silly child. I stammered, "Six thousand five hundred tourists? Armed to the teeth?"
Then he laughed outright: "Oh, my general, Laos is a dangerous area! Better to be in a group and armed... une fois. "
Well, believe it or not, but it wasn't nonsense, and it worked like clockwork! I even got a bill for gas and bin rentals!
.........
It will take twenty-four hours so that all the "tourists" of the Public Force to cross the Mekong.

Indochina Campaign
The Hanoi Revolt
Hanoi, before dawn - Under the cover of night, a section of Japanese soldiers commanded by a lieutenant and coming from the boulevard Bobillot reaches the corner of Rue de Pavie and boulevard Gambetta. There, the Japanese stopped for a while.
Indeed, some houses on the south side of Pavie are in the hands of the Viets.
The soldiers cross the road in small groups before ambushing in the narrow Rue du Captaine Pouligo. The fourth batch has passed when a single shot is fired. Nobody is hit, but the Nipponese interrupt the maneuver, even more tense, pointing their guns in all directions. The night is dark, only the fires still ravaging the southern part of the city bathed the houses in a vague orange light. Brave as they are, the new samurai of Great Japan grit their teeth, waiting for another shot.
Then they hear muffled voices speaking in Annamese. There are at least two people, who must not be very far away, perhaps in the block of houses between voie 162 and rue de Beylie. The silence returns. No doubt, on the other side of the street, they thought it was a false alarm. The lieutenant approaches one of his men and, with a tap on the shoulder orders him to pass in his turn.
The group goes through without a hitch, as did the next group. More than half of the men have now passed. Of course, the chance cannot last any longer. As the eighth group sets off, several shots ring out. In the darkness, no bullets are fired, but the clatter of the projectiles shows that this time, it is indeed them that one aims! The men swear and start running.
Confirming that the Japanese have been spotted, a heavy fire breaks out. The bullets ricochet off the walls, riddling the façades with whistling. Lanterns light up, cries of alarm are heard.
But the Japanese have taken precautions. The lieutenant and his men are covered by another section. The lights that have just been unmasked are as many targets. Grenade launchers and FM force the Viets to take cover, and the Japanese soldiers take advantage of the situation to escape in the direction of the former military hospital.
"Furu ike ya..." (An old pond...) asks a voice. It is the beginning of a poem of Basho. The lieutenant answers later: "Kawazu tobikomu" (A frog jumps). From inside comes the sound of doors being unhinged before they are opened.
The section enters a dark hall. They are greeted with a warm welcome - them and moreso the ammunition, food and water with which each arrival is loaded. The small garrison was at the end of its rope. The leader of the group of survivors, a Sgt, quickly explains to the lieutenant their ordeal. For a week they have been trapped here, isolated. It is impossible to go out or even to get a drink from the river - in any case, many corpses have been rotting there for days.
Outside, calm has returned... for the moment.
.........
The day breaks and the sun slowly moves towards noon. Apart from brief gunfights triggered on one side or the other by various movements, everything is quiet.
11:00 - Aircraft engines are heard, then explosions quite far away, sirens, flak fire. Once again, allied bombers hit the hydrobase. It is over in less than half an hour. A simple visit of bad neighbours to maintain the tension and to score some points. The daily life of the capital since the beginning of the uprising.
.........
13:00 - Once again, airplane engines fill the sky with their roar. This time it is a motley mix of Japanese aircraft - bombers, ground support aircraft and even a few transport planes whose crews are throwing hand bombs through the doors, while fighters strafe the houses and streets.
The attack is concentrated between Boulevard Armand-Rousseau and Rue du Sergent Giac.
The explosions follow one another, powerful and numerous. The Japanese soldiers, who had been waiting for this attack, jump out as soon as the bombs stopped falling. The maneuver of the veterans of street fighting in China is executed with great mastery. Two troops attack simultaneously, one by the boulevard Rousseau, the other by Rue Beylie.
They are greeted by gunfire, but the FMs deployed as cover respond with hellfire, supported by grenade launchers. The explosions muzzle the defenders. The first difficulty comes from a veritable bunker made of wood and sandbags erected at the corner of Rue de Chéon. The FM installed there take the street in enfilade. A first soldier is sawed in two as he stands up to throw a grenade. Another runs and dives into the shelter of a pile of rubble, narrowly avoiding the burst that was intended for him. He manages to throw his grenade accurately, silencing the Viet FM. Shouts and groans are heard. The operator of a machine gun empties a 6.5 mm magazine into the doorway, spraying the interior well. The groaning stops.
Meanwhile, the garrison of the former military hospital, reinforced the night before, makes a sortie. The Japanese easily overturn the positions already turned and make a carnage by shooting at the fleeing men.
Shortly afterwards, new Japanese planes come down on the labyrinth of unnamed streets south of Avenue Balonna, strafing everything that moves.
.........
The urban war is a confrontation in a civilian environment. The bombs kill civilians, women, children, old people. The panic has reached the non-combatants (if they exist), who flee to the west of the city. But at the corner of Rue du Sergent Larrivé and voie 260, a type 94 Te-Ke is in the way.
Its armament is limited to a 6.5 mm machine gun, but that is more than enough against unarmed civilians. When its fire subsides, the street is littered with corpses. The armored car starts up and moves forward, not caring that some of the bodies it crushes are still moving.
.........
In the area of the physical education school and the match factory, the Japanese soldiers are met with little resistance. This assault was also preceded by an intense aerial bombardment.
From a window of a bombed building, obstinate shots are fired, while elsewhere, the Du Kich guerrillas retreat. Some of them linger to try to reason with the lone gunman. They find a fierce young woman who simply asks for ammunition for her rifle. Her husband, hit in the stomach, is dying in the kitchen. They too are victims of a bomb that blew away half the apartment, two little girls lie in the rubble of their little room, their bodies horribly intertwined.
.........
15:00 - A new air wave falls on the southeast of Hanoi. This time again, the planes precede a massive attack. Supported by three Chi-Ha type 97 medium tanks, numerous Japanese soldiers emerge from the rice fields and converge on the small indigenous houses at the edge of the city. While the 57 shells pound the Vietminh positions, the sound of engines fills the sky again, but this time it is allied aircraft.
Surprised in the open, the Japanese soldiers suffer heavy losses. The three tanks are particularly targeted and do not resist to bombs and shells. As soon as the planes leave, the Vietminh come out of their trenches. Very few are armed with rifles, most of them have only clubs or abatis sabres; many of them fall, but they are too many for the Japanese survivors and soon they can seize weapons and equipment from the dead.
.........
17:00 - The Japanese assault stalls. It had failed in the south and in the west, the Vietminh establish a new defensive line along the road to Hue. Violent fighting continues around the square on Avenue Balonna. The Viets have built a veritable redoubt of sandbags and debris there. The grenade launchers barely scratch its defenses. On the roofs, lone snipers target the Japanese officers.
To finish, the Japanese charge, but by risking themselves in the open, they play the game of the defenders and the two FM of the redoubt put down many soldiers of the tenno. With an insane courage, the survivors hold on, with bayonets or grenades. The fight lasts nearly an hour. The defenders win by a very small margin.
.........
At night, the results are mixed for both sides. Each one boasts of a great victory. The Japanese have freed their encircled garrison and driven the "rebels" out of several districts. However, the Vietminh managed to push them back at several points and inflicted serious losses.

New Guinea Campaign
Salamaua-Lae Campaign
Battle of Roosevelt Ridge - Company E of the 1st Marine Parachute Rgt. advances painfully through a heavy and gloomy jungle. For several days, a heavy rain has been falling continuously for several days. The soggy ground has turned into a infamous liquid mud.
The objective of Captain Marconi's men is a simple mound of earth that rises only to a few feet above this infernal forest. The problem is to find it! In the middle of the trees, you can only see things by having your nose on them. The vegetation stops the sun rays, plunging the ground of the jungle in a quasi-darkness. The maps show only the most obvious landmarks, rivers and mountains. The rest is smeared with green with a few names here and there. Only the compass is left... and luck.
In these conditions, fear is omnipresent. We constantly fear an ambush.
The Japs are there, not far away. That's for sure. But where? In front? Behind? On the left? The right? Somewhere, the units making their way through the tropical rainforest look like convoys on the ocean, watched by submarines.
The head of the column passes a pile of large rocks when suddenly the scene seems to shatter. A grenade explodes, but no one is hurt. Private O'Hara reacts instinctively, releasing bursts from his Thompson in the direction of vague silhouettes that move among the shadows. Two Japanese soldiers roll to the ground. Nevertheless, other grenades are already exploding, and they are taking a toll on the marines.
By now, a heavy firefight has broken out. Sergeant Beck reacted before Capt. Marconi, ordering a platoon to deploy around the Japanese position.
The men stray to the left, guided by the sergeant. Marconi orders the other Marines to bring their MGs into action and open fire to attention of the enemy and fix them.
But the sergeant's turning movement is met by a second group of Japanese covering the first. In the scuffle, Beck takes out three Japanese with his Thompson, but a grenade explodes near him, seriously wounding him. One of his men picks him up and carriesd him to the middle of E Company's position. A medic rushes over, but Beck, spitting blood and cursing, is in agony.
Three other men had been killed, in short, the case is looking bad.
Marconi hesitates and ends up calling the radio, hoping that the station still works despite the humidity. The radio man in question, a corporal, takes shelter behind a tree. Holding the earpiece in one hand, he repeats the company's call sign over and over again to signal the ambush. Taking him by the shoulder, the captain asks him to call for air support. After several minutes of difficult exchanges through the static, the radio man makes a face that needed no explanation.
Nothing will come. Given the cloudy weather and the difficulty of locating enemy positions in the jungle, the airmen are not going to risk bombing blindly.
During the discussion, the fighting continues and obviously, the marines do not have the upper hand. Captain Marconi orders his men to deploy on a wider front and cover their movements using the MGs and machine guns so that their fire can bring down some heads in front. The paramarines are an elite troop, but their US M1 rifles, while light, lack power. Opposite, the Japanese have ambushed themselves between the rocks that form a natural fortress and where they have set up grenade launchers and MGs.
After four hours of confrontation, Captain Marconi is in a grim mood. His marines have not advanced a step. The jungle resounds with intermittent gunfire, with brutal outbreaks spiced with grenade throws. However, Marconi has no choice, he must attack and attack again until the enemy is repulsed. An orderly retreat is impossible, to retreat would be to invite the Japs to fall on them in the back.
His orders set the Marines in motion. They advance cautiously, supported by the company's collective weapons, taking advantage of the blind spots they had previously spotted. The Japanese understand: the Yankees have not given up! So, according to their manual, they counter-attack, which the Americans dared to hope for, because in this way, at least, they no longer need to flush out their opponent, and in this short-range combat, the machine guns of the marines give them a deadly advantage.
Twice again, the marines attack, despite the grenade launchers and the MG and despite counter-attacks that end in hand-to-hand combat with bayonets.
In the evening, the Japanese are disheartened and leave behind an exhausted enemy.
The Marines won... At least they conquered a corner of the jungle. A great victory!

Sino-Japanese war
Operation Zhulin
Wuhan (Hubei) - It was the turn of the allied air force to weigh in the balance: 23 P-38 of the ROCAF attack the airports of Nanhu and Wangjiadun (nine Ki-43, one Ki-51 and one Ki-15 were destroyed on the ground) and the Japanese barracks of Wuchang. During the night, an attempt by the insurgents holding the Hanyang arsenal to supply weapons and ammunition to their comrades in Wuchang, on the other side of the river, fails when the boats are spotted by the Japanese and quickly sunk by cannon.
.........
Huanggang, Hubei - The situation finally breaks down. A joint assault by the 78th and 167th Divisions manages, at the cost of heavy losses, to break through the Japanese lines.
Above the front, the control of the sky is bitterly disputed between the ROCAF and the Imperial Army Aviation. A formation of 6 Ki-51 and 11 Ki-43 is intercepted by 14 P-40s as it approaches Chinese positions; the engagement ends with two "Sonia" and two "Oscar" shot down against two Warhawks. Another P-40 is hit, but its pilot manages to keep his aircraft in the air long enough to parachute behind the Chinese lines.

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Operation Rumyantsev-TBT
Condensation
Sector of the 1st Ukrainian Front (Battle of Brody) - Even if the calm has now returned - or almost - from the banks of the Viliya river to the ruins of Ternopol, the Soviet offensive in Ukraine has a final surge, as Mikhail Katukov's tanks approach the lines of the III. PanzerKorps.
Well informed by the VVS (because the weather is good again!), the Soviet general suspects that the battle awaits him - even if he ignores of course all the recent reinforcements received by the Germans and their plans. On the other hand, Katukov knows that, less than 10 kilometers behind his 1st Armored Guards Corps, the powerful combined force of the 1st and 2nd Mechanized Corps is ready to support him in case of a hard blow, and that he also has to support him almost all the 16th Air Force (which now only has to worry about this sector...). If the Fascist has finished fleeing and wants to confront him, so much the better! He will finally be crushed, the Red Army will only have to continue until the Bug and the border in October 1939.
On the other side, the Wehrmacht judges - with accuracy, for once - that it is illusory to try to take the Red by surprise. Kempf therefore deploys his forces in a fan-shaped pattern, in order to cover all possible axes of enemy penetration. In the north, the 7. Panzer (Hans von Funck) holds the woods west of Pidkamin' (the most obvious route up to Brody) with the support of the 203. StuG (Hauptmann Gerhard Behnke). In the south, the 8. Panzer (Gottfried Frölich) - a very damaged formation and whose command has just changed - defends the area around Markopil'. Finally, between the two, in the gap separating the two woods, the 6. Panzer (Wilhelm Crisolli) is waiting in Penyaky; it thus serves as operational reserve with the Panther of the 39. Panzer-Regiment (Oberst Otto Büsing).
At 10:15, the cannon is already firing towards Pidkamin'. The Red Army does not try to avoid the confrontation - on the contrary, the 1st GAC is about to strike. Behind them, the tanks of Mikhail Solomatin and Vasily Volsky are ordered to accelerate, closely followed by the 9th Guards of Nikolai Pukhov... What history will call the battle of Brody - to simplify and for lack of other more remarkable places - has just begun.
According to the current Soviet doctrine, which requires the rapid concentration of the strong on the weak in order to break the balance of the opponent's system - the 1st GAC splits in two in order to hit the previously identified axes of progression: Pan'kivtsi and Shyshkivtsi (respectively on the left and on the right of the entrenchments of the 7. Panzer).
The two armoured brigades (T-34/85) split up and charged towards the enemy. They are reinforced in the north by the self-propelled gun battalion (SU-76, SU-122), and in the south by the heavy armored battalion (SU-152, KV-85). Katukov was not born yesterday - he anticipates stronger resistance at Shyshkivtsi, which leads him to send his KV-85s there. He nevertheless keeps in reserve his battalion of heavy self-propelled guns (SU-85).
Around Pan'kivtsi, the assault starts according to the manual - taking the 7. Panzer, the infantry attacks behind a rain of rockets, well covered by the VVS. Hans von Funck spends - as was to be expected... - a very bad moment, sacrificial victim of the strategy decided by his leader. But for Kempf, the plan works: the Soviets split up to force the passage and he already sees the possibility of fragmenting and destroying his opponent in detail before his reinforcements join him. Consequently, the 6. Panzer and the Panthers hurriedly go to strike the Russian left wing before going north to defeat the right wing, held for the moment by the 7. Panzer. Their southern flank remains covered by the 8. Panzer. Of course, such a maneuver somewhat disregards the adaptation and reaction capabilities of the opponent... but does the German have a choice?
Stalin's Falcons are quick to spot the column on the move: 73 armored vehicles and twice as many half-tracks have difficulty to go unnoticed in the plain. Especially that, strangely enough, some of them are already blazing, without even being touched! The Il-2 are hurrying to dive, covered by MiG-3U and Yak-9D/T facing the Bf 109 of JG.52. On the ground, the panzergrenadiers of the 6. Panzer are still stuck in an infantry combat against the Bolshevik. Finally, the new wildcats of the Reich face the finest flower of the red armored army, in the valleys between Shyshkivtsi and Pidkamin'.
Facing the KV-85, the Pz-VII Panther proves to be faithful to its promises: fast, very well armored and carrying a formidable 75 mm Kwk 42... But its finish remains very imperfect, its delicate mechanics lacks terribly of reliability and several of these new panzers burst on fire spontaneously. Moreover, the armor of some of them breaks under the impact of the Soviet shells! And as they sometimes have difficulties to maneuver... However, the threat is considered serious enough for the SU-85s to be sent to hunt this curious feline, both racy and lame.
During this time, while the fight lasts already one hour, the 7. Panzer is forced to engage a retreat towards the south, covered by the machines of the 203. StuG. Hans von Funck has lost almost two thirds of his thirty surviving self-propelled guns, while Behnke has hardly more than fifteen StuG still operational. Impossible, under these conditions, to continue to hold, especially since their mission - to disperse the Reds - was already accomplished.
It is therefore less than thirty tanks that begin a withdrawal of about 6 kilometers to Zharkiv, in the center, leaving the Panther and the 6. Panzer to support alone the bulk of the fight. The latter continues for another half hour, for an uncertain result or at least too slow - so, in the long run, to Kempf's disadvantage, while the 1st Mechanized Corps is approaching at high speed, marching with cannon...
At this moment, as the last of von Funck's armor retreats under the cover of the smoke and that his grenadiers abandon their positions under the cheers, the Luftwaffe pulls out its secret weapon to try to force the decision against the forces of Katukov. These are 24 Henschel 130, which have just reinforced the air groups of the Schlachtgeschwader 77 (wing regrouping the former StG.77, SchG.1 and SchG.2).
.........
"The Henschel 130 was the ultimate avatar of the Hs 129. The latter had only seen the light of day in a few examples, the 14M engines manufactured by the Gnome & Rhône factories, willy-nilly put at the service of the service of the Occupier, having proved to be much less numerous than hoped for and especially lacking reliability*.
From the start, the Hs 130 was therefore, unfortunately, only the second-best solution to a second-best solution: the resuming of an aborted project abandoned since the summer 1940 because, on the one hand, of the incapacity of the RLM to equip it with powerful enough engines and, on the other hand, of the confidence that continued to trust the Ju 87 Stuka despite the setbacks suffered because of the Allied fighters and even flak in Greece and the Balkans. This is surprising, especially since the Luftwaffe had suffered substantial losses in this theater. However, this return of experience had been rejected by Berlin, because judged "not significant". The Yugoslavia campaign had been too short to draw lessons from it. As for Greece, a small mountainous country on the edge of a sea dominated by the enemy, it obviously did not resemble the plains of the Soviet Union! Let us add to that the traditional contempt of the Germans towards twin-engine assault aircraft - reinforced by the unfortunate experience of the Breguet 693 of the French campaign... - and it is easy to understand why the aircraft was neglected.
Nevertheless, facing the T-34 and the KV-1, the obsolescence of the venerable Junker 87 appeared soon as painful on the Russian Front as in front of the Westerners, in spite of the exploits of Rudel and others. The lack of ground attack aircraft in the Luftwaffe quickly became so critical, that some even proposed to restart the production of the Henschel... 123, the predecessor of the Stukas, whose last examples had been produced at the end of 1942! The German industry, reputed to be so efficient, succeeded in equaling the inefficiency of the Italians, who were forced to keep the CR.42s on the line until the summer of 1942...
The Hs 129 had been hastily taken out of the boxes, and an attempt had been made to make it fly by all means - or rather with all the available engines. It is finally the Argus 411 which was retained - not powerful enough but available in number (and especially not sabotaged). Two Argus 411 giving 400 horsepower less than two G&R 14Ms, it was still necessary to lighten the armor of the unit, renamed Hs 130 and sent to the front in spite of more than mixed feedback from the pilots who tried it.
Temporary annoyance, they said at the RLM, where they did not despair to re-engine the aircraft in due time (once again!) with BMW Bramo 323 or even Jumo 211**. Certainly,
but in the meantime, we had to deal with a real calf, which had a lot of difficulty to exceed 350 km/h!
Finally, after the first disastrous deployments, this lame duck was removed from the front lines. We continued to see Stukas on the Eastern Front until the end, incompletely replaced by Fw 190Fs." (K.F. Daniel, in Le Fana de l'Aviation n° 503 : Un barrage contre la marée rouge : la Luftwaffe sur le Front Russe, de Septembre 1943 jusqu'a la fin, January 2014)
.........
Obviously, after the surprise effect - the Russians are not used to seeing fascist twin-engine planes attacking their armored vehicles in low-level flight - Göring's novelties have to face a wall of light flak. Very quickly, they suffer heavy losses against MiG-3U and Yak-9 of Serguei Rudenko, which pounce on the intruders like hawks on a flock of fat pigeon. Out of the 24 aircraft engaged, 9 will not return. It will obviously be necessary to bring out the Stukas...
But all the same : between the Panther guns and those of the Hs 130, the 1st GAC has lost almost a hundred machines and it starts to retreat. Werner Kempf has no choice - it is now or never! The 6. Panzer and the 39. Pz Rgt advance towards Pidkamin to annihilate the left wing of Katukov in retreat, before trying to lock in a the victors of the 7. Panzer...
Meanwhile, the heavy burden of covering the right flank of Wilhelm Crisolli remains with the 8. Panzer - which has only 24 panzers in line! Gottfried Frölich wastes no time in maneuvering to reposition himself in the woods between Palykorovy and Styborivka and prepares his infantry for what he senses will be a bloody delaying battle in the style of the one Hans von Funck had fought at the beginning of the morning. All the same - armored divisions reduced to playing the role of infantrymen in cover! What a decadence...
The blow he is waiting for is not long in coming: while the 1st GAC seems to be gradually moving between Pidkamin' and Pan'kivtsi - a little longer, it could be cut off from its rear, pushed back towards the sources of the Ikva and routed - the two mechanized corps finally enter the fray, attacking the German forces on a 10 kilometer front! Faced with this power, the 8. Panzer threatens to break and Werner Kempf has to adapt in haste. What he does with brilliance by moving back his center (6. Panzer and 39. Pz Rgt) while advancing a little his left (7. Panzer and 203. StuG) while his right (8. Panzer) backs up by itself - Gottfried Frölich has no choice... Thus, in order to absorb the Soviet blow, the German device releases its pressure on Katukov's forces and pivots before starting a uniform withdrawal towards a north-south line between Chernytsya and Zvyzhen'.
In the following hours, playing with the terrain as well as with the enemy feverishness, the III. Panzer finally manages to soften the blow by retreating to the height of Perelisky. Certainly not victorious, but not really defeated either, Kempf lost 71 machines out of the 163 he had at the start... A miracle, considering the ratio of forces. He destroyed "only" 132 Soviet tanks, a very poor ratio for the Panzerwaffe - and his retreat allowed the Reds to open the door of Brody. It is thus one more defeat for the 8. Armee.
Informed, Walter Weiß orders the III. PzK to retreat to defend the banks of the Styr and Bug between Lopatyn and Zolotchiv, while on the left wing of the 8. Armee, von der Chevallerie will have to stretch his LIX. AK to maintain the junction with the 6. Armee... To the right of the III. PzK, the II. SS-PzK of Hausser will have to ensure the link with the trio 141. ID, 371. ID and 905. StuG, which hung on in the region of Zboriv, in front of Ternopol and to the left of the 2. PanzerArmee.
On the Soviet side, too, we are counting... Certainly, the Red Army is once again victorious, but its points are more and more blunt, while the supply becomes difficult in the mud and the rain which threatens again, as well as the rapid advance through a territory devastated by the fighting. The 9th Guards Army is exhausted, the 1st GAC isreduced to 41 operational tanks, and the 1st and 2nd Mechanized Corps only have a hundred or so tanks between them! It is obvious that the 1st Ukrainian Front will not be able to afford a second victory like this one... And the risk of a flanking attack by fascist reinforcements gathered in urgency the devil knows from where - risk always possible in case of a new breakthrough, even though it would not be possible to exploit it anymore! - is really not worth it.
Also, while asking firm instructions to Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky adapts his device in order to prepare to stop the expenses. Victorious, the 1st GAC remains on the battlefield, while the 9th Guards advances a little more towards Busk, in order to secure the area and reach the sources of the Bug. As for the two Mechanized Corps, they go up to Brody - undefended or almost - to affirm the success of Rumyantsev-TBT. This will allow to conclude the Suvorov-Kutousov-Rumyantsev series on a high note and to prepare 1944.

Sector of the 2nd Ukrainian Front - To each his own drama... While the last illusions of the 8. PanzerArmee finally reach the Zbruch, thus folding almost all its remaining forces on the territory of the former Polish republic, Hans-Jürgen von Arnim is now in charge of a vast sector from Terebovlia (south of Ternopol, where the junction with the 8. Armee is located) to Khotin (where the III. Luftwaffen-Feld-Korps of Job Odebrecht took over to defend the Kamianets-Podilskyi region). That is to say 110 kilometers... and to do this, he only has three very tired army corps (including 2 Hungarian!), without any armored reserve except the debris of the 23. Panzer-Division (Nikolaus von Vormann) and the 2nd Hungarian Armored Division (Ferenc Szász) - which had already proved its inefficiency, at the cost of heavy losses!
Well... it's not all doom and gloom. The 2. PzA is finally out of its salient and its lines are now largely supported by a large river, which will not be easy for the Reds to cross. In addition - but it is better not to say it too loudly... - we approach Romanian Transcarpathia... or Hungarian (it depends on the point of view!). The Partisans will be less present.
In summary, for the survivors of the 2. PanzerArmee, the most difficult days seem to be over - at least for the moment. Which is not a bad thing, considering the events in progress in the neighboring countries! Moreover, at the same time, the Armee Abt Kissel passes the Prut to join urgently its 17. Armee. Strangely - the bad tongues will persiferate - it is not late this time...

Lubyanka (Moscow) - While people are slaughtering each other on the front, Lavrenti Beria is putting the finishing touches to his program to eliminate those responsible for the assassination of General Nikolai Vatutin. These "fascist and bourgeois separatists" have been poisoning the radiant relations between Moscow and Kiev for far too long.
Developed with the best specialists in repression of the NKVD (which has no shortage of them) and with prominent figures in the Ukrainian SSR - including Nikita Khrushchev, of course - this multi-stage plan foresees the suppression of all deviants and other supporters of terrorist groups in Ukraine as early as this winter, as well as the deportation to Siberia of the population who sympathized with the enemy - those who collaborated the most with the fascist hydra - who will eventually be replaced by Russian settlers. This operation will continue thereafter, in stages, as the Soviet territory is liberated.
This territory includes the region annexed by Warsaw in 1921, where the fate of the "original" nationals remains uncertain, to say the least. Although... at the rate things are going, by the time the Red Army arrives, the Fascists will have solved the problem! To carry out this ambitious project, everyone will be put to work, even the Partisans! And massive means are already planned. One speaks of at least two cavalry divisions provided by the NKVD, that is to say 35,000 men. This is to say that the threat is taken seriously. And then, after the recent massacres committed in the Volyn region, Moscow could also claim - quite cynically - to be doing justice to the Poles...
Finally, in order to start on the right footing, Beria intends to begin his cleanup with the easiest and closest - and the least wise, too, because he has managed the feat of rallying everyone unanimously against him, or very nearly so - none other than Taras Bulba-Borovets and what is left of his remains of his UPA.

Blood in the Carpathians
"Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni"
Battle of Gura Humorului (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North) - Late at night, in the vicinity of the crossroads of Păltinoasa (a handful of kilometers in front of Gura Humorului), the Panzer III, Panzer IV and Leopard of the 17. Panzer clashed head-on with the T-34 of the 2nd Armored Corps, a little earlier than planned by the staff of the 17. Armee and under conditions which are not those of a strict defense, but rather of a sudden counter-offensive. Indeed, Walter Schilling, a traditional cavalry officer (he has served in this arm since 1920!) does not see the point of lining up his precious machines in the middle of a corridor to defend an insignificant town of 4,000 inhabitants***, thus losing the advantage of their tactical know-how and allowing the enemy to crush them with artillery and aviation. Doing this, he ignores the orders of Karl-Adolf Hollidt, who ordered them to wait for the intervention of reinforcements arriving from the north to encircle the Soviets...
The fact is that after an ambush of which are victims the first elements of Ivan Lazarev, the panzers counter-charge with their sabers, for an encounter combat where their maneuvering qualities will finally be able to fully express themselves. Lazarev, informed of the situation in his headquarters (a simple converted Gas truck parked in Berchișești), quickly understands the danger. His 2nd Armored Corps, ventured to the entrance of the corridor from which the adversary emerged, is indeed very scattered. His 99th Tank Brigade is already engaged at the vanguard, the 26th holds his left towards Moldova, where the arrival of enemy reinforcements reported the day before by the air force was feared (these were the 339th ID and the 228th StuG, which came up from Fălticeni). As for the 58th Motorized Rifle Brigade, it goes into the woods further north, where it has to wait for the arrival of the 47th Army to hope to maintain at least some continuity of the front.
The 2nd AC thus has only one reserve formation to oppose the enemy counter-attack: the 169th Brigade, on old T-34/76s. A unit not really reinforced since the fighting in Moldavia... And yet, we will have to make do with it - at least until the infantry arrives, while the Germans' is there - the 50. ID is pushing in the woods of Varvata against the motorized riflemen, and the 339. ID marches north to the sound of cannon. Improvised actions take place in the wake of Schilling's charge - but very real actions, and which already threaten the Soviets with encirclement. With the courage of despair, the 2nd AC therefore undertakes to defend and then retreat to Berchișești, to find the rest of the Russian forces. Behind, Filipp Zhmachenko marches his own troop to come to Lazarev's aid as quickly as possible - he should not be accused of neglecting his partner: it would be a mess and the NKVD would be interested in him again.
In the morning, the Russian tanks retreat 8 kilometers and lose 87 of theirs, in exchange of only 37 German tanks (mostly Panzer III). The arrival of the 4th Air Army of Comrade Verchinin and the artillery fire of the 47th Army allows to calm down the game a little: the panzers are forced to take shelter from enemy fire and relax their pressure on the 2nd Armored Corps.
From his headquarters in Bistriþa, Karl-Adolf Hollidt is furious: Schilling's impetuosity had made him lose his opportunity! The AA Kissel has just crossed the Prut again at Chernivtsi to join its 17. Armee! Still 24 hours, and it would have been possible to throw all the XLVIII. AK on the red flank and to... Anyway - it's too late now. Faced with the arrival of a now very wary 47th Army now very suspicious, the 50. ID and 306. ID break their teeth. As for the 339. ID and the 228. StuG, their adversary (the 26th Tank Brigade) evade them; and when the duo goes into the openin the plain, it is to be assailed by a cloud of Sturmovik.
In short, the coup is stale. If, tomorrow, the Reds go back to the assault, it will be a face to face, without maneuver. A fight of attrition. A loser-loser combat, but where one of the opponents - the German - will lose even more than the other, as always in such circumstances... And all this, for a simple little valley where the Moldova river flows.
As for Walter Curt Gustav Schilling, it will not even be possible to reprimand him and discuss why he launched his counter-attack so early - he was killed in battle by artillery fire. This is definitely not a lucky day for the 17. Armee.
.........
Piatra Neamț sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - The situation of the Soviet forces here is very different from that of their comrades on the northern wing of the operation: in fact, they complete the rout of the elements of the 11. Armee that were trying to block the road to Gheorgheni. Beaten, clubbed, knocked out, the 20. PzGr bursts under the assault of the 3rd Guards Armored Corps - precisely the fate that the 17. Panzer did not want to risk to undergo - and it retreats in catastrophe towards Bicaz, while the 225. ID is now definitively discarded south of Roznov.
Well covered behind him by Frolov's 14th Army, Mikhail Panov can finally engage in the Carpathians, in pursuit of the enemy. The T-34s pass in front of the turnul Ștefan**** for the propaganda photo, before continuing westward and reaching Pângărați.
As for the 191. StuG Abt dispatched by Georg-Hans Reinhardt, it would not arrive in Roznov until late in the day - far too late to intervene, especially with the Bistrița to cross...
.........
Bacău sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - Ordinary day in the ruins of Bacău - the Soviet infantry advances under artillery fire, the German retreats little by little, blasting everything behind it, while the VVS come to drop their quota of explosives on the part of the city still considered to be held by the Fascists (considered only - with such intertwined lines, accidents are inevitable). After its disappointment of the previous day, the 62nd Army gives up maneuvering. It is thus by pushing heavily towards the north that it reaches the main east-west axis of the city (today's Unirii Boulevard). The whole thing, as usual, at a terrible cost.

Bucharest - Relaunch of the Soviet strategic air offensive against Romania, this time at night. It is the former Ford Romania factory that is targeted - for a long time seized by the regime, since 1939 it has been converted from the production of civilian vehicles to military trucks. The Pe-8 and Il-4 strike almost without opposition, apart from the fire of a tenacious anti-aircraft fire that shot down three of theirs. Indeed, the Romanians hardly have any night fighters! As for the FliegerFührer Schwarzes Meer, it has for this task only the three Staffeln of Bf 110 of the II/NJG.2, which must stick to two main missions: closing the Heimat road and protecting the Ploiești refineries. In this context, the local industries are obviously not considered a priority by the Luftwaffe...
Dropped from a great height, the 500 kg bombs (five of the four-engine planes even carried each a FAB-5000 bomb of 5 tons!) shake the foundations of the buildings, which will not resume production any time soon. Unfortunately, they also devastated several housing estates, causing about a hundred civilian deaths.
Later, when the red stars have already gone back into the night, a reflection would strike more than one official in office - including FliegerFührer Joachim Bauer: why don't the Soviets strike more at the road infrastructure or the oil installations?

Romania - "After three days of transport by train and then by simple march, in the middle of the uninterrupted and rumbling flow of the Red Army, we finally arrived at destination: Cahul, on the rear of the Odessa Front of General Petrov, and alongside General Shamshin's 6th Guards Armored Corps*****. Our old adversaries, our new comrades - the welcome was cordial, thanks to the benevolent and warm mediation of our political staff and especially of Colonel Mircea Haupt, who organized a small ceremony for the integration. Even if we did not go to the front immediately - the cannon was already was already thundering, but much further north! - our faces would travel around the world and illustrate the leaflets regularly dropped on the lines of the 3rd Romanian Army.
Taking up one's post, setting up the camp: the traditional routine of the infantryman, while waiting for the training or a possible operation." (Farewell my country... once again, Vasil Gravil, Gallimard 1957)

* At least four aircraft equipped with Argus 410 engines (Hs 129 A-V0 to V3) have flown for sure. The version with French engines was to be called Hs 129 B - six aircraft at most would have been produced. It is not certain that they all took the air, the crash of the first, due to a failure of the two engines, having the personnel in charge of testing them...
** Re-engineered models that would have given the Henschel 130 B and C - which never left the drawing board.
A project with the Isotta-Fraschini Delta engine was even evoked, but this one was never finalized, the Milanese workers being just not as eager as those from Lyon to work for the Reich. Let us point out in passing that, to add to the confusion and taking into account the obvious resemblance between offspring and ascendant, the Hs 130 is sometimes called Hs 129 C !
*** 6 000 before the war - the deportations have passed by...
**** The Stephen the great tower - a 15th century fortified bell tower of medieval elegance.
***** Formerly the 9th Armored Corps, honored for its behavior during operation Molot.

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Italian campaign
Italian Front - The attack of the Cuneense, the day before, surprised everyone... including Clark's staff, because the Italians attacked on their own stocks. The Italians presented the affair as "a skirmish that got out of hand". Not fooled, but faced with a fait accompli, the general staff orders that the expenses stopped as soon as Vaglia is taken, which is only less than a kilometer from the Italian front line.
On the ground, the second battalion of the Alpine regiment attacks to the west, along Route 103. It reaches the first houses of the village in the late afternoon.

Greek and Balkan Campaign
Return to the country
Thrace (Bulgarian border) - The last soldier of General Hristov's 2nd Army crosses the Domishte pass shortly before noon. Contrary to what we will see later in conflicts that also led to both precipitous and definitive evacuations of a region, no one deliberately slowed down his march in order to go down in history as the last Bulgarian soldier in Thrace. Except for some unfortunate stragglers striving to reach the Greek-Bulgarian border, sometimes along the Turkish border, the retreat from Thrace is over.
"If the departure of the 2nd Army and its return to the national territory of Bulgaria (which is still its territory today) without any real military incidents, it was unfortunately not the same on the civilian level. Forgotten and sacrificed on the altar of the new neutrality, expiatory victims of the dubious and opportunist policy of Sofia, the Slavs of Thrace could hardly but follow the movement in dramatic conditions. In total, during the month of October 1943 alone, no less than 150,000 Bulgarians and Slavs will leave their lands and homes to be "repatriated" by their own means in a country that most of them had never known. This sad episode, which will obviously have its share of tragedies - notably in Serres and Drama - will be in a way the prologue of the other displacements of population to come until the end of the conflict and after it. The exodus of the Bulgarians from Thrace caused about 5,000 documented deaths, if one adds to the deaths of the exodus itself those of the famine that ravaged the ranks of the refugees during the harsh winter of 43-44.
Today, the actions of this period, especially those of the 16th Division of Col. Strashimir Velchev's 16th Division, remain a subject of controversy. His supporters see him as a good Samaritan who prevented a bloodbath by "his energetic actions," while his detractors describe him as an opportunist who has tried every means to favour his own ethnic group - even if it means betraying his mentor Trifonov, trying to influence the fragile strategy of his government and fanning the flames of civil war. The truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes. For, in those dark and confused hours, there was no one in Bulgaria (annexed or not) able to foresee the evolution of the conflict as we know it today. Undergoing the events, the Bulgarians of the White Sea (that is to say, let us recall it, of the Mediterranean) and their champion will certainly have tried until the end to protect themselves, sometimes in a way that morality reproves now, but that it would not have necessarily condemned in the circumstances of the time. Beyond these considerations, the crimes of the 16th Division remain in any case a good notch below those committed by the Occupiers... or by some Allied units during the liberation of Northern Greece, Albania or Yugoslavia.
There remains the tragic case of the Jews (or reputed Jews) of the region, poor victims of Nazi barbarism during the final hours of the Occupation. Here again, estimates vary and the figures that emerge from the chaos of events are uncertain. Drama, Serres and Akarpo are only the macabre figureheads of a vessel that would have led to the death of almost 2,500 souls. Not all of them seem to have been victims of the SS - the settling of scores and other "political" disappearances seem to have multiplied as soon as it became possible to attribute them to patent assassins, but they were very convenient. Even Adolf Beckerle, during his trial, was not able to put forward a figure to quantify what he persisted in calling "various disturbances linked to the partisan war". This says it all, when one knows the propensity of the Nazis to count everything!
In any case, the painful - but undoubtedly inevitable - episode of the evacuation of Thrace was the first stain on a previously unblemished Liberation of the Balkans. And the Allies were just beginning to see for themselves the ethnic, religious and community subtleties of the region, which we will see were critical for the future. Even today, the case of the Bulgarians of the White Sea remains a controversial subject between Greece and Bulgaria, regularly raised by Bulgarian politicians who are more interested in collecting the votes of nationalists than in defending the interests of the survivors. For its part, the Greek government has always refused to accept any responsibility on this issue and, as a result, refuses to even consider the possibility of an official apology. In Athens, the official doctrine remains that the Slavs left their lands of their own free will." (Robert Stan Pratsky, The Liberation of Greece and the Balkans, Flammarion, 2005)

Redeployment
Liberated Thrace - In accordance with Richard O'Connor's instructions, i.e. Montgomery himself, the units of the XIII Corps begin to move towards Salonika for redeployment. The Tommies hope to enjoy a well-deserved rest, before an inevitable new assignment.

Special envoy
Serbia - In the night, a decommissioned Stirling bomber painted entirely in black flies over the wooded mountains of the Ivanjica region. Passing well above the peaks, the pilot observes several small lights on his right. It is there... After a wide turn, the heavy four-engine plane makes a unique passage above a rough square delimited by the lights. Several rounded shapes stand out from the long fuselage, before parachutes slow down their fall. The lights will be extinguished before they hit the ground.
As soon as the packages fall to the ground, a multitude of shadows emerge from the thicket, untie the lines, fold the silk and drag the heavy containers to safety. As the hum of the plane fades away, a last package arrives in turn, rolling to cushion the impact. Several Partisans help the man out of his parachute before leading him under the cover of the trees.
Witold Krymer has arrived at his destination. Special SOE envoy to Josip Broz "Tito", he has to negotiate the latter's participation in the future insurrection prior to Market-Garden. A delicate mission. Because the date of the launching of the operation depends directly on the possibilities (and the agreement!) of the leader of the Partisans. It is impossible to force his hand, as McLean and his men are currently doing with other leaders in Albania and Kosovo. In other words, in Syntagma Square, in Athens, people are impatiently waiting to hear from the Pole.

 

[Wings]

October 18th, 1943

Provence - It is under a typically Provencal storm that the 3rd Moroccan Tabor Group lands in Toulon. In the next few days, this unit will move to the south of Entrevaux, in the Alpes Maritimes, at the junction of the 9th DIC and the 4th DMM.
In this sector, the Moroccans will face the 281. Grenadier Rgt of the 148. ID.
In the Ardèche, the rain that continues to fall, albeit less abundantly than in the previous days, is welcome for the Germans of the 243. ID who can continue to move into their new positions without worrying too much about the Allied air force.

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

British Embassy in Cairo - At the hour of the wolf, Sir Miles Lampson's diplomatic services send an encrypted but uncoded dispatch to Ankara to the services of Sir Hughes Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen - to be transmitted to the Romanian contacts of Barbu Alexandru Știrbey, who will know how to make the connection with the National Democratic Bloc in Bucharest. That same night, other dispatches have already left for Algiers and London. It remains for ministers Blum and Eden to coordinate, with the agreement of their respective governments, to officially inform their American and Soviet partners of the Romanian cease-fire offer. This while at the same time, the partners in question are discussing in more or less good faith and with more or less energy with the services of the Conducator Antonescu!
As for the White Prince, while waiting for a possible (and still very unlikely) return to Bucharest, he remains obviously the guest of His Majesty in Egypt.
.........
Ankara - Sir Hughes Knatchbull-Hugessen, the United Kingdom's ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, has received the cable from his esteemed colleague Lampson. After having taken personal note of it, he instructs the most discreet of his attachés to transmit the missive to the Romanians, then he records in his archives and according to his some observations or personal reflections on what he understands of the negotiations in progress with Bucharest. He then carefully locks the whole thing up in his safe in his trunk and then goes to bed, leaving his Albanian valet Elyesa Bazna to tidy up the office before turning off the light...

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

Spitsbergen - The cruiser HMS Suffolk, accompanied by the destroyers Offa, Oribi and Orwell, arrive in Barentsburg. Although mounted in a hurry, operation Locomotive is a complete success... in the face of a complete lack of opposition. The Allied squadron lands a Norwegian company and reembarks the dead and wounded from Citronnelle. Several small convoys of supplies follow.
.........
A last aspect of Citronnelle will be discovered only many years later.
Hopen Island is a thin strip of land (35 km long and only 3 km wide at the most) which emerges from the North Atlantic to a hundred kilometers in the southeast of the main archipelago of Spitsbergen. For once, coordinated with the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe took advantage of the attack against the archipelago to send a He 115 seaplane based in Kirkenes to land an automatic weather station on Hopen. This one will function until exhaustion of its batteries without being detected.
.........
The German operation will have no long-term consequences. In the history of the Second World War, it constitutes a rare example of a "political" operation, explicitly designed by the German Admiralty as an advertising action for the Führer.
As S. E. Morrison wrote, "Dönitz decided to prove the utility of his surface fleet and to give it some exercise by wiping out the Allied installations in Spitzbergen (...) A single destroyer could have completed the mission easily."

Citronnelle, aftermath
Citronnelle did not mark the end of the war for Spitsbergen. Indeed, during the next six or eight months, U-boots approached the archipelago several times, to land weather teams or to bomb Allied installations.

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

Burma Campaign
Operation Tiger
It is the 12th Japanese Division's turn to drop out. It passes behind the positions of the 71st, which had been strengthened by recovering the troops it had left along the coast. The armor of the Calcutta Light Horse charges toward Karokpi to open the road for the 8th Indian Division, but feels like they are running into empty space.
To the east of the front, the Japanese 55th Division - at least what is left of it - moves through the mountains to cover the end of the retreat. The 1st Burma Division and the 19th Indian Division can only follow at a distance without catching it.

Operation Manneken Pis
Chiang Khong, at the Laotian border - In the late morning, a small Ki-15 "Babs" reconnaissance discover the Public Force crossing the Mekong.
In the afternoon, six Ki-51 "Sonia" escorted by as many Ki-43 "Oscar" present themselves with clearly bellicose intentions, but General Gilliaert took his precautions. Coming from Dien-Bien-Phu, eight Mustang I of the 340 Squadron of the Aéronautique Militaire were keeping a watchful eye. They put the enemy on the run, shooting down three and losing only one P-51 (the pilot was able to parachute out, he was recovered by the Belgian-Congolese troops).

Indochina Campaign
The Hanoi revolt
Hanoi - During the day, several clashes take place between the planes of Epervier and those of the 3rd Hikodan. Three Japanese fighters are shot down against a bomber and an allied fighter, but the aggressive posture of the "Wild Eagles" and the advantage to fight near their bases allows them, in the morning, to render a B-25 raid ineffective. Also, at the end of the afternoon, they disrupt an attempt of the "Rebels" who are still holding a part of the city of Tonkin.
Moreover, the 3rd Hikodan received some reinforcements from Japan. Indeed, Indochina was once again seen with interest by Tokyo. This change of attitude was due to its strategic position: Indochina became necessary to send reinforcements by air to Malaysia, because Thailand, at least officially, can no longer play the role of a staging ground for fighter planes. The Japanese pilots even regain some morale: "Every day that I see ending seems to me to be a victory, since the enemy could not eliminate me and thus the next day offers me an opportunity to defeat him. As long as we are active, the Westerners cannot isolate our comrades who are fighting foot to foot to keep control of Malaysia, and therefore of Indonesia and the oil wells necessary for the development of our country. The message of the general staff transmitted to us by the chu-sa is clear: we are counted on to break the ambitions of the enemy" (diary of sho-i Keitaro Urashima).
.........
On the ground, clashes continue sporadically in some parts of the city. At the end of the road to Hue, a group of Japanese soldiers who had been pushed back during the fighting of the day before take refuge in a building apparently deserted. By misfortune, the Japanese discovered the young Nguyen Thi Ngoc, a young girl who had been acting as liaison between different Vietminh groups and had hidden there a short time before to escape a bombing raid, as she had just left the building housing the Du Kich group commanded by her fiancé, Tran Quam Qhong, across the the street.
Alerted by cries that are all too explicit, Tran Quam Qhong orders a sudden assault. The Nipponese, well entrenched and better armed, welcome the Vietnamese with heavy fire. Wounded, Tran Quam Qhong collapses and is abandoned by his comrades who flee. Sergeant Himata, who is in charge of the small group of Japanese, orders that the wounded man be fetched, thinking that he could provide them with useful information.
When the prisoner is dragged into the house, some Japanese have already resumed their occupations and the cries of Ngoc, martyred by three of them, fill the place.
The young man manages to get away from the soldiers who are surrounding him. He throws himself into the room where his fiancée and her tormentors are and, taking out a grenade from his belt, pulls the pin. In this small room, the explosion is fatal to the five people present.

New Guinea Campaign
Salamaua-Lae Campaign
Battle of Roosevelt Ridge - It has stopped raining and, through the tears in the canopy, a gray and sad sky can be seen.
The scouts guide the marines along a narrow trail stop - a bridge has just been discovered a bridge not far away. Lieutenant A. Cowel and Sergeant K. Talbot confer for a moment. Company F of the 2nd Btn has taken the lead of the Americans but the lesson of the previous day has not been forgotten. The place is favourable to ambushes, they have to be extra careful. A platoon is therefore sent forward, while the rest of the company deploys and sets up their collective weapons.
When the Japanese attack, no one is surprised. However, those who had set up the ambush had thought it through. Some of the Japanese elements are posted opposite the bridge, on the other bank, the rest being on the same bank as the Americans, along the road, so that they could cross fire at the bridge. The Marines suffer some losses but they retaliate energetically and Lieutenant Cowel sends a platoon to push the Japanese positions on his side of the river. But further upstream, the enemy has another bridge that allows them to quickly bring in reinforcements. The attack fails and the marines are forced to withdraw.

Sino-Japanese War
Operation Zhulin
Jiangxi Province - The 200th Armored Division, this time supported by 12 P-40s of the ROCAF, turn the Japanese defensive system on its two flanks. Leaving the 30th Army to overcome the debris of the 216th and 217th Japanese Regiments, it reaches Nanchang at the end of the day.

Anhui Province - Fighting rages between the New 4th Army and the 17th Division, but General Peng is aware that his forces, which were very effective in guerrilla warfare, are at a disadvantage in a conventional engagement. At nightfall, he orders a northwestern retreat.

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

Operation Rumyantsev-TBT
Condensation
Sector of the 1st Ukrainian Front - After having driven all night without encountering any opposition, the 1st Mechanized Corps (M.D. Solomatin) finally enters Brody, having left the 2nd Mechanized Corps (V.T. Volsky) to secure the western approach to the city. By the way, the tankers of the 2nd MC had the happy surprise to cross, on the road to Chervonohrad, a small village named... Berlyn*. The recapture of this former German colony of the XVIIIth century does not change the course of the war, but it is enough to make one smile and to inspire two or three cartoons in the marching papers.
The frontoviki can afford to rest - given the attitude of his leaders, he already suspects that the offensive is finally over. Rumyantsev (TBT or not) appears as a resounding success: 270 kilometers in one month! The 1st Ukrainian Front of Konstantin Rokossovsky signs the second best performance of the year, and the strongest progression against the Germans. The future is bright, as we finally reach the borders of the Union. And this is probably only the beginning - because in view of the state of the Fascists, no one can imagine that the summer of 1944 will resemble the massacre of 1943 on the road to Kiev.
On the other hand, the 8. Armee is recovering as best it can, hoping that the Reds will not attack again too quickly. The III. PanzerKorps - still reinforced by Büsing's Panthers, at least those that did not burst into flames - continue to retreat to its new line of defense in a hurry. He is delayed in his movement - an unexpected and unpleasant circumstance - by the multiple mechanical problems of the beautiful new panzers of the 39. Panzer Rgt. Indeed, it seems that, if the engine of the Pz-VII does not always catch fire, its transmission almost systematically breaks after 150 kilometers! It is not much for a machine supposed to operate! All this is of course duly noted by whom it may concern, and in particular by Otto Büsing - who will not forget to send very quickly his report on the supposed new mount of the Panzerwaffe.
As for the II. SS-PanzerKorps (Paul Hausser), it has finally reached the region of Ternopol and is now heading towards Zboriv, in order to counter any new push towards Berejany and the Carpathians. An unlikely eventuality, it is true - but the Bolshevik proved that he know how to surprise and the state of HG SudUkraine does not allow to take any risk. The SS must cover its flank until Manstein sees it more clearly - only then they could leave to face those despicable French and stupid Americans, on the sweet lands of Provence...
As for Vassili Grossman, he continues to roam the front, looking for quent testimonies on the most recent battles. And in Pidkamin', he collects them from the victorious tankers of the 1st GAC.
"The enemy was counter-attacking in groups of ten to fifteen tanks. But we were serene and morale was good. Can you imagine what it would have been like in 1942! There are no forests here, and we didn't have time to create shelters to sleep in. Frost, wind, mud, we had it all.
But now the men want only one thing: to move forward." However, like too often in the Great Patriotic War, the drama is not far away... "Telephone operator Tupistsyn was killed. He was running the wire to the forward command post which was marching with the infantry. He was carrying a coil in one hand and a grenade in the other. He said, "I may not be young anymore, but my legs will carry me well to Berlin." But he didn't make it." Nevertheless, under a large blue sky fortunately returned, the advance of the Red Army now seems irresistible: "Now the sun is getting hotter and hotter and already light clouds of dust are floating behind the trucks. A thin captain with a swarthy face, the sides of his capote covered with a parched layer of earth, red, brown, gray, breathes with delight this dust and says smiling: "Oh my! It was really terrible this slush. Next to it, this scourge of war that is dust is more soothing than all the spring flowers. Today's dust seems to us to smell deliciously good." A few days ago, this same steppe was full of the piercing howl of one-and-a-half and three-ton trucks, five-ton Yaz**, tractors, tracked transport vehicles, Dodge and Studebaker. They roared in a furious effort to tear themselves away from the thousands of suckers in the mud and keep up with the infantry, their raging but helpless wheels throwing up slimy clods, turning empty in ruts as slippery as oil. And thousands of sweaty men, and gnarled, pulled them with clenched teeth, pulled during the day, pulled at night, under a heavy, oppressive, thrice-cursed rain, the huge vehicles behind the advancing troops.
Who will tell the greatness of the exploit of our people? Who will write the epic of this movement never seen in the world, of this advance day and night, without a moment of rest? The infantrymen marched, carrying on them one and a half times their usual load in ammunition***, they marched in their soaked jackets, heavy as lead. A cruel north wind whipped them and the jackets froze, stiff on the body like stakes, as if made of tin. Some cushions of a pound of mud stuck to their boots. Sometimes they didn't go more than a mile an hour, so painful was this path. There was not a dry and safe place for dozens of kilometers around. To take a breath or to put on their shoes, the soldiers sat down in the mud. The mortar men walked alongside the riflemen, each carrying half a dozen bombs, hung with strings on their backs and chests. "It doesn't matter," said the soldiers, "for the Germans it's even worse. For the Germans it's the end."
It is true - for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, the Red Army is now certain of its victory. Although it will obviously not be for this year.

Endgame ...
Kremlin, 17:00 - "You are finishing, Comrades! We said the Bug, not the sources of the Bug! And the Fascists are not destroyed, only... heavily molested!"
Faced with this predictable altercation, the two most famous representatives of the Stavka do not say a word. They know that when Stalin is making such vague reprimands, it is because he has nothing serious to reproach. So he's happy - even if he won't admit it. Moreover, their arguments concerning the supply and replenishment of troops are unassailable - not that these kinds of considerations bother the Marshal much, but even he knows when there is nothing more to be gained from a situation. Especially since these days Ukraine is no longer his main concern, but rather the capitalist advance in southern Bulgaria.
In the end, it is not too surprising that he gives his marshals the go-ahead: "I authorize the end of Rumyantsev-TBT. In spite of everything, the operation is concluded on a form of success of which I can only congratulate myself****. Alexandr, have the reports written, make sure that the formations are replenished and offer me promotions. Georgi, since your front is at rest, you're going on an inspection tour in Moldova, to monitor the progress of Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni. The Fascist should not be allowed to recover, now that Tolbukhin is the only one to advance. And then ... I noticed that the air from the front did you good!"
Curious remark from the Vojd - and certainly not gratuitous, even if it seems, as it often does, wrapped up in kindly considerations for the health of his interlocutor. Stalin has ideas in mind. Ideas that will probably reveal themselves soon.

Blood in the Carpathians
"Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni"
Gura Humorului sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North) - After the failed ambush of the previous day, and despite the fact that the 17. Panzer is now without an assigned commander (Schilling's replacement is reportedly on his way from Germany), the 17. Armee is now on the offensive, in an attempt to salvage what it could from the opportunity it has just wasted. The 2nd Soviet Armored Corps ventures out on its own, like a mouse in a trap - it is enough to wait a little longer to be able to break its neck! And even if the thing was obviously much more quickly said than done, the disappointment is not less great in Hollidt's HQ.
From now on, it is the XLVIII. AK of Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, coming from the north, which tries to advance on the flank of the 47th Army and in the direction of Suceava, while the AA Kissel has already painfully undertaken to relieve him in the area of Rădăuți (the 328. ID is one of these two formations). At the same time, the 17. Panzer and the duo 339. ID and 228. StuG also advanced towards the same objective, respectively from the west and south.
On the other side, the Soviets - and first of all Ivan Lazarev - become aware in retrospect that they have come very close to the blade of the reaper. Also, whereas the business seems well engaged in the south towards Piatra Neamț, they obtain from Fyodor Tolbukhin, not the stop of the offensive but at least the authorization to consolidate their positions around Suceava along a Pătrăuți-Stroiești-Bosanci arc. In order to refocus before a new advance, of course... but especially while waiting for the arrival of Zhukov, who is just on the plane to Chișinău. Filipp Zhmashenko's 47th Army begins to advance step by step retreat to the east, covered on its left by the 2nd Armored Corps. The latter is again assembled and more at ease in the plain as it is protected by the rain of steel that the Sturmoviks of the 4th Air Force are pouring down.
Faced with this unusually reasonable attitude, and under the fire of the guns and planes of his adversary, Hollidt can do little better than to limit the movement. His only unit able to break through, the 17. Panzer, no longer has a commander - the result is a kind of lull in its ranks...
As a result, Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North is doing rather well for the moment. Even if, in the end, the success of Mikhail Panov in the south is the main reason why Tolbukhin is able to stall! This poses besides, by the way, a serious problem that everybody pretends for the moment to ignore in the 4th Ukrainian Front's staff: if the conception of VD-G (as it is called in the offices) has planned two axes of offensive, it is also to disperse the reserves and to facilitate the breakthrough. If, tomorrow, the operation were to continue with its southern component only, the Fascists would thus have no difficulty in concentrating their forces to repel the assault, or even to try to flank the attackers... In truth, one could even fear that in the long run, VD-G South would end up running the same dangers as those which have been threatening VD-G North!
.........
Piatra Neamț sector (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - But for now, the offensive to Gheorgheni continues, with the ease of success - and even if Valerian Frolov notes with regret that he has less air cover than before, because of the events towards Gura Humorului. The 5th Air Army (S.K. Goriunov) of the Odessa Front cannot compensate - it is too far away, and its presence is also required on the Danube in order to maintain the pressure on the Romanians.
So we have to make do with it - and continue to advance cautiously. But not too carefully either, the HQ in Moscow scolding that there could not be delays everywhere on the front...
Also, with the formidable privilege of being the only formation to really advance according to the initial plan of the offensive, the initial plan of the offensive, the 3rd Guards Armored Corps goes further and further into the wooded valleys of the Carpathians, in pursuit of a 20. PzGr.
By evening, Mikhail Panov is in Tașca - delayed, as was to be expected, by numerous cleaning and other clog removal tasks, so easy to create in this encased area... Marx be praised, behind him the 14th Army still firmly holds the entrance to Piatra Neamț, facing the debris of the fascist defenders - and also facing the fire department that comes up from the south. The 225. ID and the 191. StuG Abt are now trying to push in the direction of Girov, following the Cracău. For the moment, without any success.
.........
Bacău (Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni South) - While his superior is becoming increasingly annoyed by this bloody trampling that has already lasted five long days, Vladimir Kolpakchi launches a new assault in order to seize finally and for good the ruins of this cursed city. The 62nd Army is not supposed to stay there - it is supposed to support the 14th Army in the south, and ensure the left flank of the Piatra Neamț breakthrough. Under these conditions, its delay could well have catastrophic consequences if it were to be prolonged.
Thus, when a full-scale assault follows a bombardment worthy of the Other War, brought up to date by the addition of a carpet of bombs graciously offered by the Tu-2 of comrade Constantin Verchinin, the 215. ID starts (finally!) to retreat and to abandon the city to the communists. It is about time... In the evening, the Germans finally leave the bottom of the Bacău basin, to redeploy to the outskirts (the 376. ID in the mountains to the west, the 215. ID towards Hemeiuș, further north), thus abandoning an unworkable pile of rubble to frontovikis completely wrung out by the effort involved.

Craiova - A slightly more classic day for the VVS, who today are content to hit the local marshalling yard. Led by a big formation, bypassing as usual the defenses of the capital through Transylvania, the raid also benefits from the presence of multiple swarms of fighter-bombers roaring further east and attacking several signal boxes on the Bucharest-Ploiești rail line. The whole of these actions are of course aimed at disrupting the oil and food supply to the Romanian capital - which may well need both this winter.
The attacks cost the Soviets 11 bombers and 17 fighters, against only 10 Axis fighters - 7 Romanian and 3 German. A score more unfavorable than usual for the Falcons of Stalin... It is that, if the multitude of raids has somewhat dispersed the Romanian defense, towards Ploiești the JG.4 is still watching out!

Insistence
Kremlin - "And I suppose that Comrade Tolbukhin will soon go on the attack again, won't he?" Stalin asks with the falsely detached air he is known for when something upsets him.
Facing him, the Stavka, represented by Marshal Vasilyevsky and General Antonov - but without Zhukov, who left for Moldavia in a hurry - can only agree if, obviously the 4th Ukrainian Front will not relax its efforts, it is now absolutely not guaranteed that Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni North will lead to something concrete. However, Vasilyevsky does not try to justify what is already beginning to look like a failure: "The fascist troops sent to Bar returned faster than expected. This was due to the intervention of the SS and also - paradoxically - to our immense success in this region, which forced the forces to retreat as quickly as it was shameful."
- It is that we had to strike harder and earlier. And now we must insist! For Romania is hesitating, Comrades, and she is watching us. If she sees us hesitating too, how do you expect her to switch to our side!
The Vojd's hand falls on a pile of papers, while the tobacco comes out of his pipe in double volutes - two clear signs of discontent. After a short moment of hesitation, he resumes energetically: "Speaking of hesitation - what exactly is the Odessa Front doing? This dear Petrov is counting the reeds in the Danube delta?"
A doubly formidable question.
If the Odessa Front does not act, it is primarily because Stalin had initially expressly asked that one should beware of any overly hostile action towards the Romanians - always in the hope of not rushing them too much and of not pushing them into a desperate resistance. Obviously, he has changed his mind since then - or he pretends to have forgotten.
But in both cases, it is useless to make him think about it.
As for Ivan Petrov, he is a man who is not exactly in favor with Stalin. It is true that he recently won an important success with Molot, but the Vojd never fully forgave him for the loss of Odessa - and even more for surviving it. It is true that Petrov (it is said) attempted to commit suicide when he was evacuated by submarine from the fortress which was succumbing... But no matter, he had failed. And, as a former seminarian as he is, Stalin is someone who absolves very little.
In any case, his suggestion is perfectly clear. Antonov answers without batting an eyelid:
"We are already studying the modalities of an intervention of the Odessa Front on the lower Danube, as soon as possible. Its launching will depend on the observations on the course of Vatra Dornei-Gheorgheni that will be formulated by Marshal Zhukov."
Stalin expected no less. So he lets his staff get back to him. Quickly.

* In fact, there is not the slightest allusion here to the Prussian capital, but the deformation of the word "berly", which was used to describe the gaffs used to cross the marshes by boat. Or perhaps of the word "berline" - name given to the stagecoach serving the local post office...
** The Yaz 210 G was a Soviet-made six-wheeled truck, obviously favored in the articles of the Krasnaya Zvezda. Even though Russian drivers much preferred the capitalist Studebakers...
*** A precaution intended to compensate for foreseeable supply difficulties...
**** It is hard to imagine him congratulating anyone else anyway!

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

Italian Campaign
Italian front - While street fighting begins in the Vaglia basin, the 1st Italian Alpine Battalion climbs the slopes of Monte Morello, just east of the town, supported by the divisional artillery and the Airacobra of the 4th Stormo. Its objective is hill 600. In fact, there is no question for the Italian commanders to leave the village under fire from the Tedeschis positioned on this hill.
Little by little, the resistance weakens and the Germans withdraw to hill 650, a little further north, on new positions that have already been set up.

Greece and Balkans Campaign
Precautions and worries
Nis - The multiplication of reconnaissance flights over the positions - but also the rear - of the 12. Armee naturally worries Alexander Löhr and his chief of staff, Hermann Foertsch. Salonika fallen and its port surely soon restored, the allied armies will certainly resume their advance. Of course, in the Mediterranean, the hottest spot remains Provence... but they are also fighting in Italy - the Balkans are likely to follow.
The two men therefore agree to order the units on the front to withdraw, but also to reinforce themselves by dissolving their reserve battalions. These units, which are a of a Germanic specificity that goes to the exact opposite of the "Supply Depot" mentality in vogue in the U.S. Army*, allow the training and integration of new recruits when they arrive at the front. An interlude that was often very useful, because the prolongation of the conflict leads to an inevitable decline in the physical quality or initial training of the new arrivals.
But the constraints of war being what they are for the Reich, the Heer is terribly short of manpower in the Balkan sector. And in the event of an enemy offensive, a small unit of recruits hastily thrown across the Allies' tracks would not change the outcome of the battle. The "young" ones will thus go up in line with a minimal preparation. It is up to the veterans of their units to show esprit de corps, if not of comradeship, by completing their training during the periods of inactivity.

* Until the end of the conflict, the US Army treated its personnel in a purely accounting manner, ignoring the integration of the new arrivals - which was certainly a major factor in the terrible losses suffered by the new GIs during the Italian offensives. Isolated on a front of which they were ignorant of the codes, despised by their comrades who saw them as potential dangers, and facing the indifference of their hierarchy, too many "rookies" fell stupidly during their first minutes of combat. An American lieutenant wrote during the Battle of Normandy: "Every morning, I saw new soldiers arriving every morning to be evacuated in the evening on stretchers, and I did not even know their names!"

 

[Wings]

October 19th, 1943

Provence - The rain that falls all day on the south-eastern quarter of France limits the operations in both camps.

Reunion
Aix-en-Provence - One hand clutching his cap, the other holding a small suitcase, Corporal Marchevan runs away under the torrents of water that turn the Cours Mirabeau into a flood. The deluge has emptied the streets of its inhabitants and hardly encourages tourism. In one jump, the man takes refuge in the embrasure of an open door.
He drips on the tarnished tiles. Takes the time to risk an eye outside. He had been told...but no, nothing seems to have changed. In here either. The puddle gets bigger, the water follows a crack. Still the same. He attacks the first flight of stairs. The soaked pants stick to the calves. Watch out for the wobbly tile. Yes. Still there, too. Good sign?
Here he is on the second floor landing. He starts on the second set of stairs. Wooden, now. The foot hesitates. Ah yes... The third one has the annoying habit of squeaking! It seems to him that it was cleaner, in his memories. It must be said that with the weather outside, it's darker than in the... He swallows the first few steps in one go, but now, the higher he goes,the more his pace slows down.
Even in the rain, there is no such thing as a street with empty windows.
- Georgette, Georgette! Come quickly! Come quickly! It is the Marchevan boy! Yes, yes I tell you!
- Marinette! Marinette! Go get Aunt Maria!
The door of the second floor creaks and opens.
He doesn't even notice it. With his heart pounding, he stops at the second one. Shit! He expected everything, but not to look like a rookie summoned to the colon... He dithers. Tries in vain to move a wick that turns his nose into a gargoyle.
Good. When it is necessary to go there...
About to knock, he hesitates one last time. Glues his ear to the door. Swallows.
At the sixth knock, the door opens.
Silence.
- Jean?
A breath.
And suddenly, they are one. He has water in his eyes. And fuck the rain.
In the staircase, it conciliates joyfully. Georgette crushes a tear.
He finally tears himself away from her. Three years and three months before, it had been so difficult. At the end of the corridor of the small apartment, two large astonished and worried eyes contemplate the scene. He realizes it, she follows his glance.
- It is Luc... He has just turned three years old.
He crouches down slowly, arms wide open.
- Luc? Luc... I am your father...