Chapter 82 Hot and Sour Soup

"No, we can't go on!" Major General Strike refused to follow Rommel's order.

"This is crazy, General!" Major General Strike said: "Fifteen tanks, and there is no air force cover. It is a miracle to take Tobruk. Going forward is simply suicide..."

"Don't show off to me with Tobruk!" Rommel got angry when he heard this: "It's not your credit to take Tobruk. The First Infantry Regiment completed this almost impossible task independently, and they didn't use it to bargain with me like you did!"

"This is unfair!" Major General Strike retorted: "At that time, I was commanding the troops to fight in Mezhili!"

"In your armored command vehicle?" Rommel raised his head towards the command vehicle outside the door and said sarcastically: "While your soldiers were bleeding and dying, while they were looking for water and bullets from the bodies of their comrades, you were tasting red wine in the captured armored vehicle?"

"The facts are not what you think!" Major General Strike looked at Rommel angrily: "General, I don't want to argue with you anymore. I think we should consolidate our positions now and attack the enemy when reinforcements arrive. Otherwise, we are likely to lose everything!"

Objectively speaking, what Major General Strike said makes sense. The German army is too weak. There is only one division. Although there are Italian troops, they can only be counted as heads and cannot be calculated as combat effectiveness.

Especially at this time, the German army did not have air cover. If the losses were too great during the pursuit, the British army would be killed by surprise. Once the German army was defeated, all the occupied key points and strongholds would lose their meaning... The Italians could not defend them.

But Rommel also had his own ideas. He knew from World War I that the taboo of war was that the enemy and us would engage in positional warfare and attrition warfare. If it developed to that point, the German army, which did not have a numerical advantage, would inevitably fail.

In order to avoid this, Rommel had to take the initiative to attack so that the British army could not stop at a certain place and build a defense line with confidence, otherwise it would be difficult for the German army to achieve such a great result at a very small cost as it did now.

In other words, Major General Stryker saw the reality and his own crisis, while Rommel saw the opportunity.

After a debate, both of them compromised. Major General Stryker agreed to send troops to pursue the British army, but only to occupy the strategic location of the Libyan border area 30 kilometers away.

Rommel was obviously not satisfied with this compromise, but he had no choice, because at this time he only had the 5th Light Division, and no one could replace Major General Stryker.

This also made Rommel secretly determined to drive this disobedient subordinate out of his team.

Perhaps because the First Infantry Regiment had made great contributions in capturing Tobruk, the First Infantry Regiment continued to garrison Tobruk.

This was obviously a good job, because the soldiers could swim in the sea during their rest, and then return to the beach to enjoy the supplies taken out of the British warehouse... Although the supplies in the warehouse had been handed over to the troops as spoils of war, as a reward for capturing Tobruk, the First Infantry Regiment received extra rations sufficient for the entire regiment for a week.

"Extra", so the soldiers could eat canned corned beef in various ways under the envious eyes of other troops, such as roasting it in a fire, or cooking a pot of beef soup...

Qin Chuan was better at this, because compared to the Chinese, the cooking skills of foreigners could be regarded as elementary school students, and the Italians were not satisfactory in this regard, after all, they cared more about pasta than fighting. But any of the eight major Chinese cuisines could kill Italian food in seconds, not to mention other countries that only had hamburgers and sandwiches.

Qin Chuan asked Alfredo to get some peppers and seasonings from the Italian army, and then cooked a pot of hot and sour beef soup with canned corned beef.

The German soldiers were skeptical at first. They didn't believe that the food cooked in this way could be eaten, but after tasting it, they exclaimed that it was magical.

"God, this is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten!" Werner looked at Qin Chuan with an incredible expression: "How did you do it?"

"You saw me do it!" Qin Chuan replied: "It's very simple, isn't it?"

"You know?" The baker drank greedily and said: "After the war, we should cooperate to open a restaurant. I will make bread and you will make this... hot and sour soup. Then we will be very rich!"

"It's really delicious!" Even Alfredo, an Italian who is very picky about food, praised: "If there is such food every day, I will not be afraid of war!"

The soldiers laughed.

However, the enjoyment of the First Infantry Regiment was still far behind that of the Italian army...

During this period, Italian transport ships docked at the port one after another and unloaded supplies, both German and Italian.

German special supplies included ammunition, some cars, sidecars, etc., and occasionally a few Type 3 tanks...I heard that they were all equipment of the 15th Armored Division. After Rommel achieved such a great success, Hitler and Mussolini finally believed that they only needed to work harder to completely defeat the British and drive them into the sea.

Therefore, they also accelerated the reinforcement of Rommel. In addition to sending the 15th Armored Division, the reinforcement also replenished the tanks and armored vehicles lost in the battle for the 5th Armored Division.

Of course, this is just the beginning, and there will be air force and sea force (mainly submarines) later.

However, everything has its two sides. It is precisely because Rommel achieved great success with only a small number of troops that Hitler thought that the war in North Africa would end soon, so he did not take the Malta Island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea seriously... He believed that the German and Italian armies did not need to capture the Malta Island at all, they only needed to suppress it with the air force and wait for victory in North Africa.

But the facts proved that this idea was extremely wrong. The Malta Island is in the center of the transportation route from Italy to Libya... Historically, the British used this island to continuously attack the supply lines of the German and Italian armies, which eventually led to the failure of the African Corps.

This is a later story.

Italy had a lot of supplies, including jeeps, tanks, soldiers, food, etc. The most unexpected thing was the prostitutes who were dressed up in revealing clothes.