Imperial Elite

Chapter 20 will definitely be fine this time!
As Joe jumped off the tank to take the pistol from the Teutonic general and accept their surrender, his face appeared full of victorious pride, but in reality, he was terribly panicked.

God knows, from the moment he joined the army, Joe's principle was safety first and slacking off was the main thing. He would hide during combat patrols and would just lie low without saying a word.

Although Qiao seemed incredibly brave when he rushed into the small village, even sticking his head out from the gap in the vehicle and shouting orders to the crew.

Tell them not to back down, but to go all out, floor the gas pedal, unleash full artillery fire, and that the shells they're saving are for others, only the shells they fire are their own. Fire on any target they deem suspicious, especially buildings; if you think there are people inside, then fire!

Will the Gauls demand compensation for your house, or will the quartermaster ask you for money for artillery shells, or what?!
You say they're everywhere?! Then go ahead and fire everywhere!
In this frenzied command style, as if he had taken some kind of hit, Joe directed the Lucky Bella, carrying a trench reconnaissance team, to smash through the Teutonic resistance like headless flies and crash into the church.

Even before crashing into the church, Joe had already planned that if they didn't surrender, he would just fire a shot from the main gun.

At this distance, the blast from the cannon muzzle alone could wipe out any unlucky souls who got close to the main gun, and the subsequent explosion of the high-explosive shells would also completely wipe out the rest of the people in the church.

If the machine gun turret at the rear of the vehicle can buy them three to five minutes, they will be able to find some maps or something similar in the church. After reversing out, the Teutons, whose commander has been killed, will certainly not be able to hold out for long.

We can just grab someone's tongue at the last minute, and that'll solve the problem, right?!

Even in Joe's wildest fantasies, he never imagined he would stumble into a general's command post, and that the general would actually surrender.

That's impossible! How could that be possible?
Although in the newspapers of Bunitania, these Teutons were portrayed as a group of terrifying savages, with sauerkraut for breakfast, sauerkraut for lunch, and sausages for dinner.

Joe, of course, didn't believe such outrageous propaganda.

How could these Teutons be monsters that eat children?
At most, they are just a bunch of hardened militarists. These more advanced barbarians don't eat children every meal, but they exchange the heads of their fellow villagers for military merits. It's certain that these tough guys won't surrender.

So when the Teutonic General expressed his willingness to surrender, Joe, who had already been on the verge of saying "fire," was somewhat incredulous for a moment.

This unexpected situation caused a hundred thousand thoughts to flash through Joe's mind in an instant. All sorts of situations that seemed like surrender but were actually preparations for a counterattack, which he had seen in movies and games in the past, surged wildly in Joe's mind.

When he went to take the general's sidearm, the general grabbed him and held the gun to his head, demanding that he surrender.

After getting out of the vehicle, someone hiding nearby threw a grenade into the tank, and then when the tank exploded, the general shot himself in the stomach, and so on.

In addition, the Teutonic general's aura of "I would not hesitate to send a thousand men to their deaths just to break through a trench" also made Joe somewhat fearful.

But since things have come to this point, we have no choice but to do it!
Joe tried his best to keep a straight face, hoping that his serious expression would not reveal his fear to the Teutons. He slid down the front of the tank along the cannon barrel and jumped to the ground. Then, he calmly walked up to the general and took the pistol from his hand.

None of the terrible scenarios Joe had anticipated came to pass, which relieved him.

Just as Joe was about to have the Teutonic general order the Teutons outside the church to lay down their weapons, the general's gaze suddenly changed. He excitedly said something to Joe, and after he finished speaking, the Teutons around him also became excited.

Damn it! These Teutons were definitely up to something!

We definitely can't let the tanks fire now. The only option is to take this general hostage as a human shield and then deal with the problem with pistols. Hopefully, what this general just said wasn't, "Leave me alone! Kill these guys!"

Just as Joe was about to make his move, Edward's voice rang out from behind him.

"Sir, this Teutonic General is asking if you are Joe Harrison, the scientist who was forced to go to the front."

what? !

Edward's timely translation of the Teutonic General's words caused Joe to abruptly stop his actions just a second before he was about to take the general hostage.

But then Joe looked at the Teutonic general in front of him in confusion. He had only been in the newspaper once, so how come even the Teutons recognized him now?

"How do you know me?"

Joe asked General Teutonic with a puzzled look.

After Edward translated, the Teutonic general's eyes suddenly lit up, and he then rattled off a string of words to Joe.

"what did he say?"

Seeing the Teutonic General's excited expression, as if he had just said, "I am the Imperial spy Pangolin, General, you are alarmed," he realized that he hadn't said, "How do you know me?"

Sensing something was amiss, Joe turned to look at Edward behind him.

At this moment, Edward's expression was as if he had seen a ghost, which made Joe even more curious about what the Teutonic general had said.

"Edward?"

Edward glanced at Joe, then turned to look at the tank beside him, and finally looked down at himself, his expression suggesting he had made up his mind.

He put down his gun, walked to Joe's side, and whispered to Joe.

“Sir, he said he knows you were forced to go to the battlefield. You have already done right by the king by being able to go to the battlefield. Sending someone as talented as you to the battlefield is the king’s fault. The Teutonic Emperor has already announced in the newspapers that if you surrender to the Empire, the Empire will reward you with a noble title. Now that you are surrendering to the Empire with tanks, he will also speak well of you to the Emperor and give you a manor in Germania. He may even invest in a factory for you.”

Upon hearing Edward's words, Joe immediately understood why Edward had looked at him strangely earlier.

After all, Edward's experience was similar to his own, so while he couldn't say he felt the same way, he could at least feel the same way.

If a Teutonic had offered him such a deal before he joined the army, Joe might have taken his family and gone to the Teutons.

After all, one side ignores your contributions and forces you to the battlefield as cannon fodder, while the other side values ​​your talents and is willing to let you play your role. Even a fool knows which one to choose. If you hesitate for even a second longer, you're no human being.

but!

At this time, in this place, under these circumstances, if I were to believe even a single punctuation mark of his, I would be a fool.

Moreover, Joe was somewhat puzzled by this treatment.

"How did you know about me? And how did your emperor know about this?" After the Teutonic General explained to Joe what had happened, Joe felt he understood completely.

I initially thought the Teutonic Emperor was eager to recruit talent, but it turns out it was just a damn propaganda campaign. Give me back the few seconds of emotion I felt just now, you bastard!
Moved by the captivating moments of journalism, Joe smiled at the Teutonic general.

Seeing the smile on Joe's face, General Teutonic laughed as well, and then Joe raised his pistol and fired a shot at the ceiling of the church.

As the shot startled the Teutonic General, Joe said to Edward.

“Edward, tell this general that if he says anything like that to me again, the next bullet won’t hit the ceiling.”

After firmly refusing the Teutonic general, Joe began to lead his men to disarm the Teutonics.

Even now, Joe is still worried that the Teutons might do something.

Just like in the movies, a Teutonic captain appears, hides while the trench scouts are holding down the general and forcing him to lay down his weapons and disarm. Then, when someone on his side is isolated, he emerges from the shadows and takes out his men one by one. Finally, he blows up the tank with a grenade and becomes a Teutonic hero.

So, with great anxiety, Joe watched as the Teutonic soldiers put down their rifles and removed their belts in the open space in front of the church, but the Teutonic captain did not appear.

When Joe gave the order to lock the Teutons in a barn outside the village, the Teutonic captain still did not appear.

However, when the Teutons were being sent to the barn outside the village, the Teutonic general strongly protested.

After Edward translated, Joe learned that the Teutonic general claimed to know what the Bunitanias had done in the Southern Dark Continent War, and that Joe had promised to treat his subordinates humanely.

Although Joe didn't really know what the Bunitanias had done in the war in the Southern Dark Continent, he told the Teutonic general that because they had too many men, they couldn't take all the prisoners with them.

He was worried about what these people might do after he left, so he decided to leave them where they were.

So they locked these people in the barn outside, and when someone passed by, they would naturally be released.

After hearing Joe's explanation, the general looked at Joe with suspicion, and Joe didn't want to explain anything further.

After disarming the soldiers, Joe now only had one thing to figure out: how to get back.

Those who frequently work illegally in another Slavic dungeon know that what you find on the battlefield is not important; what matters is how you get it out of there.

Looking at the map that General Teutonic had placed on the table, Joe felt his head start to ache again.

Looking at the map, the place I came from is now densely packed with Teutons.

If it were just the Teutonic infantry, it wouldn't have been a problem, but after being overwhelmed by tanks, the general deployed a significant number of artillery units to the front lines.

This left Joe feeling somewhat at a loss.

After all, he could withstand rifle bullets, but as for a proper field artillery piece, Joe felt it was better not to test the quality of this tank, which could have its observation tower torn apart by the shockwave of artillery fire.

After staring at the map and hesitating for a while, Joe decided to take another gamble.

While the fog hasn't lifted yet, I'll circle around behind the Teutons again. After all, the old man was able to be named the Marquis of Champion because of his skill in sneaking around behind enemy lines.

Joe didn't want to touch the command post or anything like that; he just wanted to bypass the now-fortified Teutonic Line and get back to the other side of the front.

In order to move safely behind the Teutonic lines, Joe ordered the captured Teutonic officers to take off their clothes and let the trench scouts and himself, who needed to stick their heads out of the tanks, wear their clothes.

Then they took down the Teutonic flag hanging from the church and draped it over the tank. Finally, they stuffed everything in the command post that looked potentially valuable into the tank.

Since there were still vehicles parked in front of the church, after a brief search, the crew found some gasoline, canned goods, sausages, and other high-end items in the church's underground warehouse.

So the group used the gasoline they found to fill the tank's fuel tank, and then wrapped the sausages in oil paper and placed them on the engine to roast them at a low temperature.

Of course, due to limited space, it wasn't just sausages that were being grilled, but also the high-ranking officers in the command post, except for the general.

Because Joe was afraid of making a mistake, he stuffed all the other high-ranking officers, except for the general, into the tank.

The tank was already crammed with eleven crew members, and then with a bunch of odds and ends of loot, so the remaining space was really limited, and prisoners couldn't be allowed near combat positions like the ammunition compartment and machine gun turret.

So in the end, all that could be done was to have these officers, who were at least captains, sit in a row on the ground, tied with ropes next to the engine, which had been fitted with a heat shield.

After the space inside the tank was arranged, there was simply not enough room for the trench reconnaissance team.

Add a tank, and even if it's a tank flying the Teutonic flag driving alone on the road, anyone with a modicum of sense would realize something's wrong.

So, in order to avoid arousing suspicion from the Teutons they might encounter, or at least to deceive them.

Joe then had the trench reconnaissance team disguise themselves as Teutonic soldiers and drive the three cars in front of the command post ahead of them. Two other men who could ride horses then rode off as if the division headquarters were moving, before leaving the small village.

If the Teutons ask questions, it means that reinforcements are coming from the rear. The division commander is personally escorting secret equipment to the front line, preparing to give the Bunitanias a head-on blow.

This explains why a tank was escorted by two trucks and a general; they even came up with an excuse, showing how meticulous their preparations were!
Based on the Teutonic deployment on the map, Joe planned to first move east for a distance, then south, breaking through the Teutonic defenses at the seam between the two Teutonic forces marked on the map, and returning to his own lines.

After carefully studying the route on the map, Joe felt that his plan was meticulous. He had a map, a compass, and even Teutonics familiar with the area. Although the fog had not yet dissipated, he was sure there would be no problems this time.

"Armor! Advance!"

As Joe stood atop the tank draped with the Teutonic flag and drove back into the thick fog.

On the other side of the battlefield, the Gauls, who had launched a feint attack to support the Bunitalian expeditionary force's offensive, were cursing and complaining in their trenches that the Bunitalians were a bunch of bastards!
(End of this chapter)