By dawn, the two German thrusts probing around Liège—one from the north, the other from the south—were beginning to close around the fortress city like the jaws of a pincer.
During the night, small German detachments had crossed the Meuse wherever engineers could secure a ferry, repair a damaged crossing or throw together a temporary bridge. South of Liège, one such force had reached the western bank and climbed into the wooded heights beyond the river, pushing through broken country where the great fortress guns had difficulty observing them.
The fighting beneath those trees bore little resemblance to the clean movements drawn across staff maps. There were no grand lines of infantry and almost no open ground. Men in field-grey advanced from trunk to trunk while dark-blue Belgian uniforms flickered between rocks, roots and undergrowth. Rifles cracked through the forest, German machine guns answering in short, disciplined bursts that tore bark from trees and sent branches crashing down upon the defenders. Grenades disappeared into hollows with dull thumps, followed by smoke, screams and the sudden rush of boots as German infantry pushed forward through the confusion.
Here, war had been reduced to something brutally simple: find cover, fire, crawl, curse and advance.
High upon one of the wooded ridges stood Captain Grimm von Hauff.
Most men simply called him Captain Grimm, and the name suited him disturbingly well. He was broad through the shoulders, thick-necked and hard-faced, with a close-shaven scalp beneath a reinforced Pickelhaube that sat low over cold grey eyes. An old scar cut diagonally across one cheek toward the corner of his mouth, giving his resting expression the appearance of a permanent sneer. Another smaller mark crossed his brow. He had the look of a dockside thug who had somehow been given an officer's commission and discovered that military discipline suited him better than any street fight ever had.
Grimm watched the fighting with a killer's patience.
There was little fear in him and even less excitement. Mostly there was irritation. Every Belgian rifle cracking somewhere beneath those trees meant another minute stolen from the advance, another squad forced to halt, another messenger carrying word that the enemy had refused to behave as conveniently as Berlin had expected.
A few metres to Grimm's left, a wounded German sat propped against the trunk of an oak while a combat medic cut open his trouser leg and packed gauze into a deep wound above the knee. The soldier groaned through clenched teeth as blood soaked steadily through the dressing, but Grimm scarcely looked toward him. His field glasses remained fixed upon the country stretching away from the ridge.
From this wooded height south of Liège, on the western side of the Meuse, much of the battlefield opened before him. Through gaps between the trees he could see north toward the city itself, its church towers, factory chimneys and rooftops rising beneath a dirty veil of smoke. The southern forts were harder to distinguish, little more than grassy shapes upon distant hills until a gun flashed or another cloud of smoke revealed where one of them stood.
Grimm cared less about the forts for the moment than about what lay farther west.
Between his ridge and the Belgian interior stretched several kilometres of broken country. Wooded folds descended first from the German position, giving way farther out to open fields, scattered farmhouses and pale strips of road. Beyond them, roughly three kilometres away, ran one of the railway lines still connecting Liège with the west.
A steam locomotive was moving along it now.
The engine dragged a long plume of black smoke behind crowded carriages packed with men in dark-blue uniforms. Rifles leaned from windows. Equipment occupied whatever space bodies did not. At intervals the train slowed and Belgian detachments spilled out beside the track, disappearing almost immediately into the woodland and farm country between Grimm and Liège. More reinforcements, more men coming to kill Germans.
But the railway was not what held Grimm's attention.
Beyond it, across another broad stretch of fields and scattered farms, lay one of the principal roads leading west from Liège. At nearly five kilometres the people upon it were reduced to moving shapes, but through his glasses Grimm could distinguish enough.
The road was overflowing with refugees.
Carts laden with mattresses, blankets and sacks of food crept westward beside families carrying whatever possessions could be held in two hands. Women walked with infants against their chests. Children clung to skirts. Elderly men shuffled beside priests and hospital wagons carrying wounded soldiers away from the city. From the ridge the whole procession resembled a great living river draining out of Liège toward the Belgian interior.
And moving directly against that river came soldiers.
Belgian bicycle troops pedalled eastward through the refugees wherever space opened, young men in dark-blue uniforms bent low over their handlebars with rifles bouncing against their backs. Messengers travelled among them. Small military wagons pushed toward the city. Escorts forced paths through the civilians whenever the column became too dense.
Grimm studied the movement for several seconds.
Then his scarred mouth tightened.
To another man it might have looked like tragedy: a city trying desperately to remove its women and children while young soldiers rode the opposite way to defend it.
Grimm saw something else.
An artery.
Liège was evacuating its useless mouths through the same corridor by which it continued feeding soldiers into the fortress belt. Whether the Belgian government intended the civilians as protection hardly mattered to him. From where Grimm stood, the result was the same. Any German gunner forced to engage the military traffic would also have to accept the possibility of killing the people surrounding it.
He almost admired the problem.
Almost.
Behind him and slightly to the right came hoofbeats, shouted orders and the grinding of steel-rimmed wheels through the forest track. Three 7.7-centimetre Feldkanone 96 neuer Art field guns were being dragged onto the ridge by sweating horses and equally exhausted men. The crews wasted no time once they reached the position. Trails were swung around beneath the trees, wheels braced against the earth and ammunition boxes opened beside the guns.
An artillery lieutenant hurried toward Grimm and saluted.
"Captain. The battery is in position and ready."
Grimm gave a small nod without lowering his field glasses.
"How far would you place that railway?"
The lieutenant stepped beside him, studied the line below and judged the distance.
"Approximately three kilometres, Captain. Perhaps slightly more."
"Good."
Grimm shifted his glasses farther west, beyond the railway and the fields beyond it.
"And that road?"
The lieutenant followed his gaze until he found the long column of refugees and Belgian troops moving along it. He hesitated only long enough to make the calculation.
"The road with the civilians and cyclists, sir? Approximately five kilometres."
"Within range?"
"Yes, Captain."
Grimm finally lowered the glasses and looked at him.
"Excellent. As precise as I would expect from an artillery officer."
The lieutenant straightened slightly at the compliment.
Grimm turned back toward the distant road.
"Good. Then lay the guns upon that column. I want the road broken and those bicycle troops scattered."
For a moment the lieutenant remained still, as though uncertain he had heard correctly.
"Captain?"
Grimm lowered his glasses.
"Did I fail to make myself clear?"
The lieutenant's eyes flicked toward the refugees below.
"No, sir."
"Then understand why we are doing it." Grimm pointed toward Liège. "That road is an artery. Soldiers, messengers and supplies are moving through it into the fortress. If we leave it open, those men reach Liège, take positions behind concrete and kill Germans tomorrow."
His voice remained hard and matter-of-fact.
"Yes, civilians will probably die. That is war. If we refuse to do our duty because civilians are nearby, then German soldiers die instead, and somewhere at home their wives, mothers and children receive the telegrams and bury what comes back."
Nobody answered.
Grimm's gaze moved from the lieutenant to the gun crews.
"You were all given a choice when your papers arrived. His Highness made certain of that. You could refuse service before accepting the call. But you accepted it."
His hand settled briefly near the pistol at his hip.
"And when you accepted, you swore yourselves to God and Fatherland until your duty was finished. That oath was not conditional upon receiving orders you found pleasant. Once a man enters these ranks, he obeys his officers or answers before military law for refusing them."
The implication required nothing more.
Grimm looked back at the lieutenant.
"So we cut the artery as deeply as three guns allow, and in doing so we save as many German lives as we can."
A pause.
"For God and Fatherland until death."
The lieutenant stiffened.
"Yes, Captain."
"Good. Now do your job. I will not repeat myself."
The lieutenant saluted sharply and turned toward the battery.
Several artillerymen were still looking toward the distant road. Whatever discomfort remained on their faces disappeared when the lieutenant's voice snapped across the position.
"You heard the captain! Range five thousand! Adjust onto the road!"
The crews moved.
Handwheels turned. Barrels shifted beneath the trees. Breeches opened and shells were lifted into place as the gunners bent over their sights and made the final corrections.
"Battery ready!"
The lieutenant looked once toward the Captain.
Grimm raised his field glasses and gave the order without ceremony.
"Fire to effect."
Far below, beyond the wooded hills, railway and open farmland, the refugee column continued westward without the slightest idea that three German field guns had settled upon its road.
The countryside around them was almost painfully peaceful. Wheat moved beneath the summer wind, farmhouses stood among hedges and orchards, and the railway ran off toward the Belgian interior. Against it all stretched the slow column from Liège: carts, mothers with children, wounded men beneath canvas, old people struggling to keep pace and families looking back toward the smoke over the city they had left behind.
Every few minutes Belgian cyclists came racing the opposite way.
The refugees cheered them as they passed. Women called blessings after them. Old men raised their hats. Children waved. The young soldiers answered with tired smiles and pedalled harder toward the distant thunder, as though speed alone might somehow hold Liège together.
Behind the fleeing population, the southern horizon flickered with war. Smoke climbed above the fortress approaches in tall, dirty pillars. Distant orange flashes marked artillery fire and renewed attacks, while every few moments a faint tremor travelled through the ground.
People continued looking back despite themselves.
Then they walked faster.
Whatever waited ahead was unknown. What waited behind them was not.
A cart driver glanced toward the wooded hills and crossed himself.
God, be with them. Let them hold.
Then, without warning, three distant flashes flickered among the trees.
For a heartbeat, nobody understood what they meant.
A few seconds later, the sound reached them—the rising, tearing scream of shells coming in.
The first round struck beside a hospital wagon, and the road erupted.
Two cyclists disappeared inside smoke, dirt and fragments. One was hurled sideways with half his bicycle tangled around his legs; the other vanished beneath the blast entirely. Shrapnel ripped into the wagon horse, tearing open its flank. The animal screamed, reared against the traces and collapsed, dragging the vehicle onto its side.
Canvas tore away as wounded men spilled into the road.
One struck headfirst and did not move again. Another rolled beneath the overturning wagon and disappeared beneath its axle with a wet crack. A third dragged himself through the dirt with both hands while blood soaked through dressings that had burst open during the fall.
The second shell landed farther back, as the third struck ahead, sending fragments hissing through the column. Stone, wood and iron tore into carts and flesh alike.
For one stunned heartbeat the road became perfectly still.
Then everyone screamed at once.
Mothers seized children and dragged them toward the ditches. Men abandoned carts and sacks. Horses reared against their reins, eyes rolling white while drivers fought desperately to control them. One wagon swung sideways across the road and trapped everything behind it.
A girl sitting atop another cart stared forward in silence, for the wagon ahead of her no longer existed. There was only smoke, splintered timber, severed harness and a red smear across the road where people had been standing seconds earlier.
"Down! Down!"
Nobody knew who was shouting anymore. There was no officer commanding this mass, no formation to maintain and no trench into which everyone could disappear. There were only civilians exposed beneath an open summer sky while German artillerymen five kilometres away adjusted their sights.
High on the ridge, the guns fired again.
Three flashes appeared beneath the trees, followed by three concussions and several seconds of flight before the shells arrived.
One burst among a group of Belgian cyclists trying to force their way east through the refugees. Bicycles flew into the air beside pieces of men. One soldier landed upon his back screaming, everything below his right knee gone, blood pumping from the shredded stump in violent pulses. Another shell exploded beside a family wagon. The horse took most of the fragments across its belly, its abdomen opening almost immediately as loops of intestine spilled beneath it. The animal collapsed screaming and kicked uselessly against the harness while a man beside the wagon stumbled backward with most of his jaw and one cheek torn away. He remained standing for several stunned seconds, hands raised toward what was no longer there, before falling into the road.
The third shell struck almost directly in the centre of the roadway and opened a smoking crater wide enough to halt every wagon behind it.
That was enough to destroy whatever remained of the evacuation's order.
People poured into the surrounding fields, crashed through hedges and clawed over fences. Bags and bundles were abandoned wherever hands released them. Bread, clothes, photographs and household possessions disappeared beneath running feet. Horses tore themselves loose and bolted through the crowd. Wounded men screamed from overturned wagons while attendants who had been helping them only moments earlier fled because instinct convinced them another shell was already coming.
Fear had little use for dignity and even less for fairness.
An elderly man being supported by his son turned toward the distant wooded ridge and raised one shaking fist.
"Damn murderers—"
The next shell burst nearby, and both men disappeared inside the dust.
The son regained consciousness in a ditch with his ears ringing and dirt packed between his teeth. For several seconds he could hear nothing but a dull metallic hum. Then he saw his father lying twisted beside him. One leg had been shattered backward through the thigh, white bone jutting through torn trousers while blood spread rapidly through the grass. The old man's curses were gone. All that remained was a thin, animal moan.
His son crawled toward him and pressed both hands uselessly against the wound. Then he looked toward the distant ridge with tears running through the dirt on his face. There was no German soldier there for him to hate, no face or uniform he could see. Only trees, another distant flash, and the sound of another shell tearing overhead.
The bombardment continued in short, disciplined bursts. Three rounds would fall, then the guns would pause while observers judged the result and corrections were made before another three followed. The shells were not especially accurate, nor did they need to be. A round landing twenty metres from the road could still tear fragments through a wagon or panic horses badly enough to create another obstruction. The guns did as much damage through fear and confusion as through steel.
Grimm had no intention of annihilating the entire refugee column. Three light field guns lacked the ammunition for that even if he had wanted it. His purpose was simpler: break the road, slow the reinforcement traffic and force the Belgians to spend time restoring order.
Gradually, brutally, that was exactly what happened.
Refugees scattered onto farm tracks and through fields. Craters obstructed wagons. Dead horses and shattered carts narrowed the surviving roadway. Belgian cyclists moving toward Liège were forced to dismount and drag their bicycles through ditches, while reinforcement columns farther west slowed as officers struggled to push through their own frightened population.
Five kilometres away, however, none of it looked particularly terrible.
Through Grimm's field glasses the people were scarcely people at all. They were tiny shapes running through fields, dark dots separating from a broken line like ants scattering when a boot disturbed their trail. He could not hear the wounded. He could not smell blood or opened horses. He could not see the girl staring at the wreckage of a wagon or the son pressing useless hands against his father's ruined leg.
He saw movement. Traffic. A military artery beginning to constrict.
The artillerymen around him experienced much the same distance. They understood intellectually what their shells were doing, and perhaps some felt the knowledge settle unpleasantly in their stomachs, but five kilometres was merciful. There were no faces and no screams, only tiny figures moving around small clouds of smoke.
Another salvo landed near the road, scattering a group of cyclists and overturning a wagon beside the ditch.
Grimm's scarred mouth curled into a thin smile.
"Good," he murmured.
He lowered the glasses briefly toward the lieutenant.
"Very good shooting. Well done."
Then he raised them again and watched the road fragment beneath the smoke.
The refugees had not stopped entirely. They were already finding side lanes and paths across the fields. The railway remained active, and Belgian soldiers continued forcing their way toward Liège wherever they could. The disruption was real, but it was not complete.
Eventually the guns fell silent.
The artillery lieutenant approached Grimm from behind.
"Captain. That was the last of the prepared ammunition."
Grimm lowered his field glasses. Far below, the road still moved—slower now, broken into scattered streams and littered with wreckage and bodies, but moving nonetheless.
His smile faded.
They had wounded the artery, but they had not severed it.
And further away in the east, however, the battle was taking a louder and far more deliberate form.
By one o'clock in the afternoon, the German line facing the eastern forts had gone strangely still. Men in field-grey crouched beneath trees, behind stone walls and inside shallow cuts in the earth, checking rifles and tightening equipment while officers moved quietly among them. Bayonets clicked into place. Machine-gun crews made final adjustments. Mortar teams waited beside stacked ammunition. Beyond the concealment of the woods rose the six eastern forts standing between them and Liège.
On the southern sector, much of that attention had settled upon Fort Embourg.
The fort occupied high ground near the Ourthe, its grassy mass rising above broken slopes and wooded approaches. Belgian engineers and civilians had spent the previous days strengthening those approaches as best they could. Two principal trench belts cut across the hillside, connected by narrower zigzag positions climbing toward the fort. Barbed wire lay tangled before them, ugly coils stretched across fields and between trees. Behind the wire waited Belgian infantry, tired from the previous day's fighting but still armed, still frightened and still determined to hold.
The Germans had no intention of giving them time to recover.
At thirteen hundred hours, the assault began.
Aircraft came first.
Fighters swept low across the slopes in repeated passes, machine guns hammering against trenches and exposed positions, while the heavier H-1 bombers remained above them and released their loads against the fort itself. The bombs could not simply tear the buried fortress apart, but they did not need to. Earth erupted. Concrete shook. Observation positions disappeared beneath dust and smoke, and telephone lines were cut again or buried while Belgian officers shouted through a noise that swallowed almost every voice.
Smoke gradually rolled across Embourg like a curtain.
Then the mortars began.
Rounds rose from hidden German positions with dull, repetitive thumps before dropping into the trench belts. They collapsed parapets, shredded sections of wire and forced defenders away from firing positions at precisely the moments German observers wanted them gone. It was not enough to destroy the fort. Germany still lacked the heavy siege artillery required for that.
It was enough to disrupt it.
Then steel began moving between the trees.
Twenty-six Panzer I tanks emerged along three approaches, the main body using the forest road while smaller groups worked forward along two rougher tracks on either side. Their engines growled through the woodland as tracks crushed brush, chewed through roots and pushed aside saplings that had never been expected to obstruct anything heavier than horses and wagons.
They were not graceful machines. Some rocked violently over the broken ground. Others struggled for traction or had to stop while drivers searched for a better route. Turrets swung independently from hulls while commanders leaned briefly from hatches to orient themselves through smoke.
But to the Belgians watching them emerge from the forest, none of those imperfections mattered.
They had never seen tanks before.
For several seconds one young conscript simply stared over the parapet, his rifle forgotten in his hands.
"Mon Dieu…"
Beside him an older reservist spat into the dirt.
"German devils," he whispered. "What have they built now?"
Their officer heard him and turned fear into anger before it could spread.
"Fire!" he shouted. "Aim for the openings! Fire!"
Rifles cracked along the trench line.
Bullets struck the approaching tanks with sharp metallic snaps, flattened against armour or ricocheted away. Machine guns joined them, pouring streams of fire against vision slits, tracks and turret faces until sparks flickered across the advancing steel.
Still the Panzers came.
The men behind the parapet watched in growing disbelief as weapons capable of tearing apart flesh simply failed to matter.
Then the tanks answered.
Machine guns opened first, sweeping the trench lips and forcing Belgian heads down. Their 37-millimetre guns followed with heavier reports that rolled across the hillside. One shell struck a sandbagged firing position and scattered men, bags and earth into the trench behind it. Another landed almost directly upon a machine-gun nest and turned it into smoke, splintered timber and pieces of men.
A Belgian officer rose with his pistol in one hand.
"Hold the line! Hold—"
Machine-gun fire crossed the parapet.
His body jerked several times before he fell backward among his own soldiers, blood running down the wall behind him.
The line did not collapse at once. Some men continued firing. Others remained crouched in place because terror had rooted them more effectively than discipline ever could.
But cracks appeared.
A few soldiers climbed from the rear of the trench and ran uphill. Others followed them. German machine guns found several almost immediately and rolled them down the slope in broken heaps, but the sight of men fleeing was contagious. Small sections of the line began giving way even while neighbouring sections continued fighting.
The Panzers reached the wire.
Coils wrapped around tracks, stretched taut and snapped. Steel posts bent beneath the hulls. The tanks climbed over the entanglements, dragging wire beneath them until narrow corridors had been crushed through what only moments earlier had looked like an impassable obstacle.
German infantry came through those openings immediately.
They followed close behind the tanks, using the machines as moving walls while they climbed the slope in scattered squads. They did not march shoulder to shoulder. They ran, dropped, fired, rose and moved again, always trying to remain beneath the protection of the armoured vehicles ahead.
Not every tank survived the climb.
One took a shell near the running gear. Metal tore loose and the vehicle twisted violently before settling with one track ruined. It did not burn, but it would move no farther. The crew opened hatches and began firing from the crippled machine as though it were now a steel pillbox.
Another simply stopped when something inside its engine failed. Men climbed over the rear deck while mechanics cursed beneath fire, but courage could not repair a broken transmission on the side of a battlefield.
A third was struck hard enough to rock the entire hull. The driver immediately reversed several metres into smoke while the turret swung toward the source of the shot.
The rest continued upward.
By the time they reached the moat surrounding Fort Embourg, roughly sixteen tanks remained close enough to contribute directly to the assault. They halted around the approaches, turrets turning while machine guns hammered at whatever Belgian firing positions could still be seen.
Under that covering fire, the infantry reached the fort.
Men dropped into the ditch, pressed themselves against stone and earth and tried to breathe while bullets passed overhead. Then more infantry arrived behind them until the moat began filling with field-grey uniforms, rifles and grenade bags.
The tanks had brought them beneath the fortress guns.
That was the weakness the Germans had been seeking.
The great Belgian artillery pieces had been designed to command roads, fields and valleys kilometres away. Their heavy barrels could reach across the countryside, but an enemy pressed against the base of the fort existed in awkward dead ground. Cupolas could rotate, yet their weapons could not simply point straight downward into their own moat.
Belgian riflemen leaned over parapets and fired instead.
Several Germans fell back into the ditch. One was struck through the throat and tumbled against the men climbing behind him, blood spreading down the front of his uniform. Another pitched backward from the embankment and disappeared beneath a rush of boots.
It did not stop the assault.
The Germans climbed.
Grenades began flying upward into openings, embrasures and doorways. Some were familiar stick grenades. Others were the smaller round weapons produced by Imperial Weapons Works, thrown low or deliberately bounced from stone so that they disappeared around corners before exploding.
The outer passages filled with smoke.
Then the infantry went inside.
The battle ceased being something fought across hills.
It became killing inside concrete.
Rifles cracked in corridors barely wide enough for their reports to escape. Every shot became thunder. Powder smoke hung beneath electric lamps while frightened men fired toward shadows and movement at the ends of passages.
At those distances the Belgian Mausers became awkward. A defender might fire once, miss and begin working the bolt only to discover that the German he had shot at had already crossed most of the corridor.
Then there was no room left for rifles.
Bayonets scraped against walls. Men collided shoulder to shoulder. Pistols appeared. Knives came out.
And so did the German entrenching shovels.
The folding steel tools had sharpened edges and required almost no room to swing. In the narrow passages they became brutally effective. A short blow could split a cheek or open a scalp. Another could crush fingers around a rifle. One Belgian was struck across the jaw hard enough that teeth and blood sprayed against the concrete before a second blow buried the edge of the shovel in the side of his neck.
There was scarcely room for the dead to fall without blocking those still fighting.
Men slipped upon blood and concrete dust. Soldiers grappled against walls, clawing at equipment straps and throats while comrades tried to stab around them. Some died without ever seeing who had struck them.
Belgian squads attempted to hold junctions shoulder to shoulder, bayonets pointed into the smoke.
The Germans answered with grenades.
A round grenade skipped once against the concrete floor, struck the wall and bounced around the corner.
Someone shouted.
The confined passage flashed white.
The blast struck the defenders almost as one body. One man lost both legs below the knee. Another collapsed with half his face shredded by fragments. The survivors were still stunned when German infantry came through the smoke.
The position vanished in seconds.
Surrender became dangerous in that kind of fighting. A Belgian might throw up his hands only for some movement behind him to look like another rifle being raised. Men were shot while trying to surrender. Others barricaded themselves inside magazines or machinery rooms and shouted for mercy through doors.
Sometimes the Germans accepted it.
Sometimes a grenade came through instead.
The fort was taken room by room.
An hour after the first Panzers emerged from the woods, resistance inside Embourg began to collapse. German squads reached fire-control stations, ammunition passages and turret machinery. Belgian gunners were dragged from their posts, some wounded, some stunned, others still fighting until rifles or shovels ended the argument.
One turret stopped firing.
Then another.
Eventually the great guns of Fort Embourg fell silent altogether.
For several minutes there was only the distant artillery of the other forts and the confused shooting still continuing in isolated chambers.
Then German officers began studying what they had captured.
The machinery remained largely intact.
So did several guns.
Men who understood artillery were brought forward. Surviving Belgian crews were questioned where useful. Mechanisms were inspected, ammunition located and firing data hastily calculated.
Slowly, almost obscenely, the turrets began moving again.
Weapons built to defend Liège rotated away from Germany.
Fort Embourg fired once more.
This time its shells travelled toward Belgian positions.
Across the southern fortress arc, men heard the explosions and at first assumed German guns had somehow moved closer. Then came another salvo from Embourg itself.
Disbelief spread faster than any order.
One of their own forts was firing upon them.
And Embourg was not the only place where Germany succeeded.
Elsewhere along the eastern ring, assaults against Évegnée and Barchon also eventually broke through. Aircraft, mortars, armour and concentrated infantry overwhelmed the defenders after bitter fighting, leaving portions of the Belgian fortress system in German hands.
But the ring did not collapse everywhere.
Fléron remained Belgian.
So did Chaudfontaine.
And Boncelles.
At Boncelles the exposed approaches offered too little cover for the Germans to risk the same method immediately. Fléron occupied ground where the slopes made armoured movement difficult enough that several commanders refused to throw tanks upward simply to watch them stall beneath Belgian guns. Around Chaudfontaine, steep broken country and clustered settlements fragmented the approaches and made coordinated armoured assault equally troublesome.
There the tanks stayed back.
The Germans tried something older.
Mortars began falling across the Belgian positions. Light artillery fired whatever support it could provide. Officers assembled infantry beneath smoke and tree cover, then sent the men forward without armour leading them.
For all Germany's technological transformation, much of its army remained composed of ordinary soldiers trained beneath officers whose instincts belonged to an older age. Tanks were new. Aircraft were new. The doctrine binding them together was newer still.
Infantry attacking uphill behind courage and artillery was something every general understood.
So the grey ranks began climbing.
The terrain compressed them almost immediately. Men attempted to spread apart, but paths, slopes and tree lines narrowed their movement. Then fear compressed them further as soldiers instinctively closed upon those nearest to them.
The forts opened fire.
The first heavy shell landed among the German advance and seemed to lift part of the hillside with it.
Men disappeared inside earth and smoke.
When the dirt came down again, several did not.
Then another fortress gun spoke.
And another.
The hills became killing grounds.
Heavy shells burst among the climbing infantry, tearing whole gaps through the grey formations. One man was thrown high enough that those below watched his body turn once in the air before it struck the slope. Another blast simply erased most of a squad, leaving equipment and pieces of uniforms scattered around a fresh crater.
German field artillery answered desperately.
The 7.7-centimetre guns fired until crews sweated through their uniforms, shells striking earthworks and concrete again and again.
It accomplished little.
The guns were excellent field pieces.
They were not fortress killers.
Their shells struck sloped earth, thick concrete and armoured works designed to survive weapons far heavier than anything the advancing batteries possessed.
The Belgian guns continued firing.
Machine guns joined them.
From prepared positions above the slopes, Belgian crews swept the German infantry beneath long bursts. Men attempting to rise were struck before they reached their feet. Others pressed themselves against the ground and remained there while bullets snapped through grass only centimetres above their backs.
The German advance slowed.
Then stopped.
Major General von Wechtl watched through field glasses as another fortress shell landed among the men below.
His jaw tightened.
"The Belgians cannot stand against us in the open," he muttered. "Put concrete around them and suddenly they become lions."
Another explosion rolled across the slope.
That settled it.
"Pull them back," he ordered. "Reform the brigades. We will not bury an entire division beneath those guns simply to prove we are brave."
The recall moved through the line.
Bugles and whistles sounded while German infantry began withdrawing beneath whatever covering fire remained. It was not a rout. Men pulled one another downhill, carried wounded where possible and abandoned those who could not be moved without killing more men around them.
Belgian artillery continued firing until the targets became too scattered to justify the ammunition.
By late afternoon, the assaults against Fléron and Chaudfontaine had stalled.
Smoke drifted slowly across torn slopes. Bodies lay among shell craters and shredded vegetation, field-grey mingled with dark Belgian uniforms wherever the fighting had come close enough for both sides to die together.
And above them, the forts still stood.
For now.
General Otto von Emmich watched the reports accumulate with an expression increasingly resembling stone.
This was Germany's first great public battle of the war. Europe was watching. Berlin was watching. German newspapers had spent years describing the army Oskar helped build as the most advanced fighting machine on Earth.
If Liège stopped it here, then something more than men and schedules would suffer.
The myth would bleed.
Emmich could not afford that.
Nor could he afford to be remembered as the general who had been given aircraft, tanks and sixty thousand men only to fail against Belgium's first fortress city.
As evening approached he ordered further probes rather than another full assault. Small formations pressed toward the intervals between forts, testing trenches, villages and patches of woodland for weaknesses. Some gained ground. Others were stopped almost immediately.
The result remained the same.
The forts still spoke.
The slopes still killed.
Even Emmich understood eventually that feeding infantry into heavy guns was not determination.
It was arithmetic.
Germany had transformed the battlefield. Aircraft had blinded observers and terrorised infantry. Mortars had broken trenches. Tanks had carried soldiers through positions that men on foot might never have crossed.
But none of those things had made concrete irrelevant.
Liège had not fallen fast enough.
And time was the one resource Germany could not manufacture.
Every hour spent around the Meuse gave France another hour to assemble its armies. Every day bought Britain more time to put men onto the continent and strengthened every defensive position waiting farther west.
So Emmich did what pride resisted and necessity demanded.
He sent his report to the General Staff.
Liège would not be broken quickly by light artillery, tanks and bravery alone.
If Germany intended to tear the fortress ring apart rather than spend days bleeding against it, then it required the one thing the spearhead had outrun.
Siege weight.
Not another battery of field guns, not another regiment, but real fortress artillery. Weapons too heavy to accompany motorcycles and armoured trucks, pieces that moved by railway and required engineers, special carriages and enormous quantities of ammunition simply to operate.
Guns built for one purpose.
To break concrete.
The request went east.
And as the 16th of July began drawing toward its end, Liège still held enough of its fortress ring to continue fighting.
For the moment.
Behind the German front, however, railway lines were already being cleared.
The big guns were beginning to move.