Morin returned the salute and then punched Ludwig on the shoulder.
“Alright, cut the formalities with me.”
Morin smiled and said: “Healed up?”
“Couldn’t be better. If I lay in the hospital any longer, I would have gone moldy~”
Ludwig moved his shoulders and shrugged somewhat helplessly: “But to be honest, being sent to serve as a squad leader under you, I’m still a bit unaccustomed… Before, I could at least rely on my rank to order you around…”
“The wheel of fortune turns.” Morin joked, “Besides, you won’t lose out here with me. The instruction unit counts on you as the assault spearhead.”
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Morin’s gaze turned to the three huge tractors.
“It seems your Teutonic Knights cherish these big guys quite a bit.”
Morin looked at the three “Siegfried Type 1s” tied up tightly and joked to Ludwig.
“Can’t help it, these things are too precious.”
Ludwig looked at his own machine and shook his head with a smile.
“Every key transmission joint, every bundle of bionic Magitech Muscle Bundles, has a strict service life…”
“Every movement in a non-combat state is a waste of service life. So as long as conditions permit, we will try our best to use vehicles for transportation to extend their service life.”
Ludwig pointed to the monster-like heavy tractor in front and continued to explain: “This kind of heavy transport truck has actually only begun to be equipped recently, and the quantity is only one-third of the Armored Knights… Besides towing us, they will also be drawn to transport parts of the 420mm ‘Big Bertha’ Siege Howitzer.”
“What about before this?” Morin asked curiously, “How did you transport them when there were no such tractors?”
Ludwig’s expression became somewhat strange. He was silent for a moment before slowly saying: “Disassemble, then pull with carriages.”
“Disassemble?” Morin was stunned.
“Yes, disassemble key parts like limbs, torso, and head, then use a large number of draft horses to pull them like pulling cannons, and reassemble them at the destination.”
Ludwig sighed, seeming to recall unbearable past events.
“That was a true nightmare. Every disassembly and assembly required a whole team of technicians to work for a whole day, and it was easy to cause damage and loss of parts during transportation.”
Morin’s eye corner twitched listening to this.
Good heavens, the Armored Knight’s logistical “characteristics” reminded him of an “old friend” (likely referring to German heavy tanks in WWII like the Tiger).
Through communication with Ludwig, Morin also roughly figured out the daily mobility method of Armored Knights.
Under normal circumstances, long-distance transportation still relied on trains—just like when Leonia took the Armored Knights onto the flatbed trailer of the “Odin.”
As long as the Armored Knight half-squatted, it could be fixed on the flatbed for transportation.
This transportation method could cover 90% of the journey.
For the remaining 10%, besides Armored Knights walking to approach the battlefield after entering the war zone, it relied on this kind of heavy tractor or a large number of heavy-duty carriages in the past for transportation…
Morin now somewhat understood why Armored Knights couldn’t be dispersed to various units for cooperative combat before.
Just the daily maintenance and upkeep of a squad of three Armored Knights plus matching squires, technicians, and supplies thrown there would be enough to cause a headache.
Concentrating them allowed for concentrated maintenance. If completely dispersed, even more auxiliary manpower would be needed.
The transport convoy accompanying Ludwig’s squad finally stopped in a clearing opened up in advance in the garrison.
This was the maintenance area Morin specially prepared for the Armored Knights. The ground had undergone simple hardening treatment, enough to withstand these steel giants that were 6 meters high, 5 meters wide, and weighed about 18 tons in combat weight.
In the center of the clearing, a huge heavy crane stood quietly. That was urgently allocated from the forward base by Grand Master Leonia.
“Alright, then hurry up and ‘unload’!” Ludwig ordered the other two knights behind him.
As he spoke, he climbed onto one of the Armored Knights first, then opened the cockpit armor plate and crawled in.
With a slight fluctuation of magical power, the observation crystal on the head of the originally lifeless steel giant suddenly lit up with a ghostly blue light.
“Hum—”
First, a low energy hum sounded, indicating that the small magitech core inside the machine had been activated.
This “APU-like” magical power output assisted in activating various magitech circuits of the “Siegfried Type 1.”
Immediately after, the radiant crystal internal combustion engine as the main power source was also started, roaring amidst thick smoke.
“Crane ready!”
A magitech technician waved a signal flag and shouted loudly to the crane operator.
The huge boom moved slowly, and the thick steel cable hooked precisely onto the lifting point on the Armored Knight’s torso.
“Lift!”
As the operator pulled down the control lever, the crane roared, the steel cable slowly tightened, lifting that 18-ton steel giant bit by bit from the flatbed trailer.
This was a scene full of power, beauty, and a sense of religion.
Under the sunlight, the huge crane was like a devout believer, awakening their god from slumber and helping it stand on the earth again.
Soon, Ludwig controlled the feet of the “Siegfried Type 1” to step firmly on the solid ground, then stood up slowly with the help of the crane.
Even though it appeared somewhat clumsy when lying down, when the Armored Knight truly stood up and regained that towering six-meter-high posture, that sense of oppression belonging to a war machine returned instantly.
Sunlight shone on its thick armor plates, reflecting a cold light.
The soldiers of the instruction unit around burst into enthusiastic cheers—such a maintenance scene was something never seen before for the vast majority of people.
However, Morin couldn’t smile.
His gaze passed over that mighty steel giant and landed on the logistics convoy arriving one after another behind.
Truck after truck stopped. The squires assisting the Armored Knights in combat jumped off, and then with the help of a small boom, unloaded the power armor used by the squires.
The remaining magitech technicians began to unload a large amount of supplies from the trucks like ants moving house.
Dedicated magitech fluids, spare armor plates, various types of lubricating oil, boxes of maintenance tools, precise testing instruments… and even several large pieces of equipment that looked like mobile workbenches.
“I…”
“…”
Morin looked at the piling supplies and finally couldn’t help but curse in his heart.
He now realized not “vaguely,” but “clearly,” that these three Armored Knights were absolutely an epic logistical nightmare for his instruction unit.
“No way, did it inherit the characteristics of being overweight and hard to maintain from the Third Reich units too…”
This thought couldn’t help flashing through Morin’s mind.
But he also knew that although Armored Knights looked troublesome to maintain, their dominance over other units on the current battlefield was real.
It could only be said that the effect was proportional to the price paid…
“Morin, what’s wrong? Scared?”
Ludwig controlled his Armored Knight to half-squat on the clearing, then slowly slid down from the cockpit.
Seeing Morin’s “worried face,” his tone carried a hint of teasing.
“More than scared, I’m about to cry from fear…”
Morin sighed deeply, then asked: “Ludwig, how long can the monthly expenses of one of your Armored Knight squads feed my instruction regiment?”
Ludwig was silent for a moment, seemingly calculating mentally.
“If not counting combat losses, only daily maintenance and training consumption, and then converted into ordinary supplies…”
His voice sounded again: “Probably… enough to satisfy the various material consumption of the soldiers of your regiment for a quarter.”
“…”
Morin sighed, temporarily putting the logistical problem behind him—fortunately, the special nature of the instruction unit gave them a relatively high priority in logistics.
At the same time, no matter what, the arrival of Armored Knights was absolutely a huge leap in combat effectiveness for the instruction unit.
A reinforced infantry regiment with three Armored Knights as assault spearheads was a configuration other units dared not hope for.
After all, under normal circumstances, various infantry units only cooperated with Armored Knights temporarily.
“Alright, let’s not talk about this…”
Morin adjusted his mindset and said to Ludwig: “You settle down first, familiarize yourself with the environment. It happens that we will conduct a full-regiment live exercise at the end of the month. At that time, we can verify the content of ‘Infantry-Knight Coordination’.”
“Infantry-Knight Coordination? Of course, no problem!”
Ludwig’s voice suddenly became excited. He was also unforgettable about the cooperation with Morin and the others in the urban battle of Amiens.
“Just right, I also want to see what you have trained this unit into.”
In the following days, the instruction unit continued to carry out various training according to the syllabus.
And Paulus was also transferred from the 1st Company of the 2nd Battalion to the Regimental Headquarters.
Besides handling various trivial matters and paperwork of the regiment with everyone, his duties were similar to Manstein’s, also assisting Morin in command as an “Operations Staff Officer” in combat status.
Just as Morin and everyone were immersed in the planning of the instruction unit’s first large-scale “limited event” and couldn’t extricate themselves, good news and bad news also came from Cecilia’s side.
The upgrade and modification of the active 2.5-ton Radiant Crystal Military Truck independently produced by Daimler were basically completed. After passing the military acceptance, production could begin after slightly adjusting the original production line.
After optimizing the suspension system and some other design flaws based on the problems raised by Morin, this radiant crystal truck could run at a speed of 35-40 km/h on common rural dirt roads in Western Europa, and could also force cross-country driving in emergencies.
For Morin, the performance of this truck reaching this level in a short time was temporarily enough.
Anyway, the positioning of this truck was to transport personnel and supplies, increasing the mobility of the instruction unit.
Another 6×4 drive 4.5-ton truck jointly developed by Daimler and Benz also produced the first prototype.
This vehicle had stronger load-bearing capacity and larger trailer space. Besides improving the transport efficiency of the supply train, it could also directly tow or carry 105mm Howitzers, improving the mobility of the entire Field Artillery Battalion.
These two pieces of good news meant that the instruction unit, which could be equipped with motor vehicles on a limited basis, could manage to transform into a relatively mature early motorized infantry regiment.
But the bad news was that the Demag team responsible for developing the half-track armored vehicle fell into a technical bottleneck.