Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 154: Foreign commanders using Spain as conceptual battleground.

Chapter 154: Foreign commanders using Spain as conceptual battleground.

The map was lying.

It showed arrows.

Blue for Republicans, red for Nationalists.

It showed roads, elevations, depots.

What it didn’t show were the fires still burning in the fields where towns used to be.

It didn’t show the bodies slumped in ditches, tied at the wrists.

It didn’t show the smoke rising up from bombed water towers.

Guderian didn’t look at maps anymore.

He looked at details.

Every morning, at 0400, a French PAP team passed through a dry gully southeast of Lécera.

Every evening, at 1830, a supply column refueled under the cover of an abandoned schoolhouse, ten kilometers north of Teruel.

And every third day, a gap appeared just a sliver where the French moved too fast to replace its own shadow.

Guderian aimed to slip into that gap.

"Phase III begins now," he told his men.

"We stop hunting his doctrine. We let it lead us to his blood, to his backbone."

That same night, Moreau climbed from a foxhole and adjusted his headset.

The signals were quiet now, by design.

Radio use had dropped to less than ten percent.

His PAP units moved in whisper-range only finger taps, hand signals, single-word commands.

Teruel was five days away on foot.

The city itself was of little tactical value but it was symbolic.

Holding it meant hope to the Republicans.

Losing it would fracture their propaganda machine.

Franco’s southern columns were already massing in the hills.

Moreau’s orders from Paris had been direct.

"Teruel must hold. Show presence. Show steel."

So he advanced but not in straight lines.

His troops moved through ravines, dry canal beds, collapsed farmhouses.

On August 15th, Guderian launched his advance toward Zaragoza.

He didn’t lead with tanks.

He led with men

A column of Legionnaires dressed in captured Republican gear rolled north in battered trucks.

They carried forged papers, fake PAP radio traffic, and field medics who knew how to speak in French with rural accents.

They passed three villages before anyone even asked questions.

The fourth village resisted.

A few farmers recognized insignias beneath the paint and fired rifles at the lead truck.

What followed wasn’t a firefight.

It was an execution.

By the time Republican militia arrived, twenty-three villagers lay dead.

Four were children.

The Legionnaires were gone.

That evening, Esteve flew recon through a smoke haze left by scattered brush fires.

His biplane engine coughed once, then caught.

He tilted over the Ebro Valley, squinting through his scope.

"Convoy. Mixed. Civilian lead. Republican flags. Wait..too clean."

He adjusted the lens.

"No armor. No rear guard. No flanking units."

He pulled hard right.

"That’s not a supply column. It’s a gun barrel wearing a mask."

Near Zaragoza’s southern rail belt, Guderian’s spearpoint was already in place.

Twelve tanks, four halftracks, and six artillery tractors embedded behind walls, farm debris, and disguised bunkers.

The actual strike came at 0500.

Republican lines held for eight minutes.

Then the artillery walked forward range by range, straight into the workers’ district.

A cluster of defenders holed up inside a printing house were buried alive when the roof caved in from indirect fire.

Moreau wasn’t there.

He was already en route to Teruel.

But he heard it.

The comms came in coded panic.

"Zaragoza industrial zone compromised. We lost the east tower. Rail node burning. They’re not just attacking....they’re inside."

Moreau made a decision.

"We split again."

Renaud looked at him. "Split? Again? We’re already thin as threads."

"They want Teruel and Zaragoza. So we give them both. We burn the threads." freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

South of Teruel, under cover of night, six French PAP cells moved as one.

They struck a bridge south of La Puebla with thermal charges, collapsing it just as Franco’s armored column began to cross.

The lead tank dropped like a stone into the ravine.

Its crew never had time to scream.

The next two tanks reversed but caught fire from a waiting flamethrower team tucked behind a broken well.

Rifle fire erupted along the ridge.

Spanish militia units young, barely trained fired down into the chaos.

Guderian’s southern reinforcement wave was now bottlenecked.

But Guderian was not idle.

Two of his "reflex teams" had tracked the movement.

One spotted Moreau’s demolition crew on infrared sensors barely visible, just silhouettes in fog.

He sent two fast-moving artillery units and a squadron of truck-mounted mortars to cut off the escape route.

The battle broke at 0240.

PAP leaders used hand mirrors and flares to coordinate fallback.

They tried to climb the western ridgeline but the reflex teams had pre-sighted the switchback trails.

Mortars struck home.

A five-man PAP party disappeared.

One soldier, barely alive, dragged himself fifty meters before bleeding out on a jagged stone path.

His name was Bernard.

Moreau would later find his helmet, split down the center.

Esteve flew at dawn.

His arm still in a sling.

He shouldn’t have been flying at all.

He circled low over the Teruel basin and radioed in coordinates.

"Enemy shift detected. Guderian’s re-centering. Pulling armor from Zaragoza to reinforce the southern pass. He’s gambling."

Moreau listened, eyes fixed on the ridgeline ahead.

"If he’s gambling," he said, "then so are we."

He turned to the sappers beside him.

"We collapse this slope. Right here. We wait for his trucks to pass, then we bring it down."

They worked fast eight men, thirty minutes.

Charges planted under a rotten bluff.

Trigger wires buried in dry grass.

At 0900, the first Nationalist trucks rolled in infantry carriers, heavy with gear.

At 0904, the hillside exploded.

Rocks poured like water.

Trucks crushed.

Men screaming.

A tank flipped sideways and ignited, the ammunition inside cooking off in bursts.

Moreau stood behind a ridge, rifle ready.

No words.

Just a breath.

Then he and the PAP team moved, vanishing into the trees.

In Zaragoza, Guderian received the damage reports and pressed a gloved hand to his forehead.

"Losses?"

"Two trucks. One Panzer. Twenty-three dead."

"And Teruel?"

"Franco’s column delayed. French resistance now embedded in ridgelines."

Guderian said nothing for a while.

Then

"He’s not stopping us. He’s slowing the clock."

The officer nodded. "He’s not fighting for ground. He’s fighting for timing."

In Madrid, the Soviet observers once again cabled Moscow.

"Zaragoza: Guderian advancing with high civilian losses.

Teruel: French command (Moreau) preventing encirclement by disrupting logistics.

Civil war no longer defines front lines. Foreign commanders using Spain as conceptual battleground. Each strike serves thier own doctrine over national objective."

At dusk, Moreau sat beside a ruined cattle barn, his boots muddy, his eyes unreadable.

Renaud approached, tossing a pack of stolen cigarettes on the table.

"We’re not winning," Renaud said.

"No."

"But neither is he."

Moreau nodded once.

"He’s not trying to win Spain anymore. He’s trying to prove he can make it dance."

"So what do we do?"

Moreau looked toward the southeast.

"We take Teruel. And when he turns to meet us, we vanish again."

In the far north, Guderian stood atop a captured Republican guard tower.

A mechanic below worked on a Panzer with sparks shooting into the dark.

He looked at the dark sky, deep in thinking

Guderian didn’t speak for a long time.

Then, quietly.

"If he takes Teruel before I take Zaragoza... we’ve lost this test."