20demayo Chapter 80 Now, listen to that Sterling.
Chapter 80 Now, listen to that Sterling.
Chapter 80 Now, listen to that Sterling.
Defense positions on the north bank of the Lombard Bridge.
The wind direction has changed.
Unlike the garrison in Niupt, who were forced to eat rotten onions, here the aroma of spices and grease mingled.
Major Wolfgang Kurz, the battalion commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, was leaning comfortably against a half-track vehicle used as cover. In his hand, instead of binoculars, was a plate of sizzling Thuringian sausages, freshly removed from the fire.
The scalding hot oil sizzled and dripped into the plate from the cracks in the sausage casing, making a pleasant sound.
Here, war seems to be just a distant background noise.
Beside him, several tank commanders from the 2nd Armored Division sat undignifiedly on ammunition boxes, waving red wine and beer they had scavenged from a nearby French farm.
These conquerors, who had just swept across the continent of Europe like lightning, looked more like they were having a battlefield picnic.
"Homage to our King of the Rapid March," General Guderian.
Major Kurtz picked up a sausage with a fork and waved it haphazardly in the air, his tone a mix of excitement and helplessness: "Because of his damn urgent order, we haven't eaten since noon, dragging these four seven-ton behemoths for almost thirty kilometers, just to help you guard this bridge that hasn't seen a ghost so far."
"Stop complaining, Wolfgang."
A captain from the 2nd Panzer Division clinked glasses with him, the foam spilling onto his gleaming tank assault badge. "After all, Guderian's convinced there's a ghost unit" breaking out north. "I heard they almost blew up headquarters at the A River. We can't handle these ghosts without your big guys."
"A ghost? Don't be ridiculous."
Kurz snorted dismissively and turned to look at the four proudly standing 88mm anti-aircraft guns.
The cannon barrels pointed coldly at the rain and mist in the south, like four silent giants.
"I work in air defense. I know very well what is reality and what is myth."
The major pointed to the eerily quiet road in the distance. Hearing his companion's praise, perhaps because he had drunk too much, he became somewhat smug: "The British Matilda tanks use twin diesel engines, and those things are noisier than tractors."
If they were really nearby, even five kilometers away, we would have heard the tracks long ago.
"But what's here? Nothing but the sound of the wind, not even a fart."
He took a bite of sausage and mumbled, "In my opinion, those British guys are terrified. They're either swimming out to sea or they've already surrendered. Only old man Heinz in the command vehicle is still going crazy staring at the red and blue pencil lines on the map."
The surrounding German soldiers burst into laughter.
But they have enough capital to act recklessly.
Those were four 88mm mortars and a whole company of machine gun positions, with the main force of the 2nd Armored Division behind them, numbering over 10,000 men.
In the mind of any German soldier, this was what it meant to be invincible.
"Let the brothers take turns resting."
Major Kurz waved his hand, stuffed the last piece of sausage into his mouth, and didn't even bother to glance again at the fog-shrouded south: "Just keep two guns on duty. If any British tanks dare to show their faces—"
He let out a burp and patted the warhead of an 88mm capped armor-piercing round next to him: "Consider it an extra dish for our barbecue tonight. Anyway, this cannon hasn't been used yet."
21:55, south bank of the Lombard Bridge, below the seawall.
Night falls.
Although the rainstorm had stopped, the thick fog rising from the sea shrouded the entire Iser River estuary in a state of chaos.
Visibility dropped to less than fifty meters.
For Arthur, this was a gift from God.
Four Matilda I tanks shut off their engines and, with the help of dozens of infantrymen, silently slid to the highest point of the seawall.
The dark muzzle of the cannon peeked out from the weeds of the sand dune, pointing directly at the bridge two hundred meters below.
At this distance, Arthur could even hear the uninhibited chatter of the German sentries at the bridgehead, as well as the crisp sound of lighters being lit.
"Five minutes left."
Arthur glanced down at the luminous watch on his wrist. The second hand was ticking away, each tick feeling like a hammer blow to his heart.
Although it lacks the individual tactical headsets of later generations.
But on the RTS holographic map gleaming with a faint blue light in front of Arthur, everything was clearer than the most advanced communication systems.
Less than fifty meters from the bridge pier, in the reeds on the riverbank, 112 blue dots representing friendly forces were slowly and steadily moving.
The leading point of light is Sergeant McTavish.
This guy also benefited from the "young master's" fame.
If it were before, given his qualifications and his fiery temper, he would at most be a squad leader in charge of ten or so people.
But here, in Arthur Sterling's "Raiders," because of his absolute loyalty that led him all the way from Azheim, he now commands an entire company of elite Coldstream Guards.
This was a privilege granted to him by Arthur, and a reward for his loyalty.
These veterans didn't have an RTS, but they had a piece of paper.
It was a sketch Arthur had casually drawn with a pencil on the back of a can of food wrapper an hour earlier. The drawing marked as precisely as possible every German machine gun post, every patrol route of every hidden sentry, and most importantly—the location of the explosive detonation cable connecting to the bottom of the bridge.
For the soldiers of the Cold Creek Guard, this piece of paper was their Bible.
Although they didn't know how their superiors saw through the fog, their experience along the way told them: follow Sterling and you'll survive; listen to Sterling and you'll win.
"Is the Cold Creek Guard in position?"
Arthur pressed the microphone to his throat and asked in a low voice. His voice traveled through the radio waves to the No. 18 portable radio carried by the communications soldier hiding in the reeds.
A few seconds later, McTavish's low-pitched Scottish accent came through the earpiece, accompanied by the soft sound of flowing water: "This is 'Badger.' The scouts are in the water."
"They're climbing up the bridge piers. It's damp moss, hard to climb—damn, the water's too cold."
But they'll handle the detonator, sir. As long as those Germans don't look down.
Arthur nodded, and the light did not leave the blue dots that were slowly climbing the bridge piers.
He raised his binoculars again and looked at the bridge.
The fog was thicker after the rain, and the huge outlines of the four 88mm cannons were faintly visible in the fog, like four steel monsters that had eaten their fill and were taking a nap.
The Germans clearly hadn't expected anyone to get so close to them from the icy Iser River right under their noses.
Most of the artillery crew members were sheltering from the rain in makeshift tents made of tarpaulin, enjoying grilled sausages and beer. Only a few sentries on duty, wrapped in heavy rubber raincoats, strolled around the position casually, occasionally stopping to light a cigarette to ward off the chill of the sea breeze.
They made a fatal mistake, a mistake that all sides with overwhelming firepower make: arrogance.
They believed in the 88mm mortar's two-kilometer direct-fire range and that no one would dare to attack the bridge covered in a death fan during the day.
But they forgot that visibility was now less than two hundred meters.
At this distance, darkness and fog are the infantry's best friends.
21:55:00, on the edge of Niupot city, behind the remaining stone bridge bunker.
Major McKenzie raised his wrist and, by the dim moonlight, checked the mud-covered Ingersoll watch one last time.
The second hand is ticking. Each tick feels like a hammer blow to my heart.
Behind him, the remaining 342 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Scottish Highland Guards were all ready.
There were no rousing mobilization speeches, no slogans; they were afraid of alerting the Germans, and no one wanted to be riddled with bullets at the very start of the charge. The only sound in the air was the click of bayonets locking into their muzzles.
These Scotsmen, who had been starving for two days and whose eyes were sunken, were now staring intently at the bridge leading to the outside world. There was no fear in their eyes, only a fierce look of someone driven to the brink of despair—the look of a trapped beast about to be released from its cage.
At the very front of the infantry column stood three somewhat comical-looking armored vehicles.
That's a Vickers Mk.VIc light tank.
This small tank, weighing only 6 tons, was the most numerous tank in the British Army before the war, and also the most damaged. Its pitifully thin 14mm armor couldn't even withstand close-range fire from German 7.92mm armor-piercing rounds; and its proud firepower consisted of only a 15mm Besa heavy machine gun and a coaxial machine gun.
This is a complete tragedy of "war zone misalignment".
If you threw this thing onto a distant Eastern battlefield, into the rubber plantations of Malaya or the rainforests of Myanmar, it would be an invincible land cruiser against the Imperial Army's riveted "bean tanks".
Its 15mm Bertha heavy machine gun, while capable of scratching even the paint of a Panzer III tank in Europe, was a death knell for the Japanese Type 94 ultralight tank (the "bean tank"). Those Japanese vehicles, weighing only 3 tons—half the weight of a Vickers tank and with armor as thin as a tin can—would be torn apart like paper by the 15mm tungsten-core armor-piercing rounds.
Even when facing the main force of the Japanese army, the Type 89 medium tank or even the latest Type 97, the Vickers, with its excellent mobility and heavy machine gun that can penetrate 20 mm of armor at close range, is fully capable of fighting back.
After all, the armor steel of Japanese tanks was incredibly soft, and they used an outdated riveting structure. Even if a burst of Bertha bullets didn't penetrate, the flying rivets would turn the Japanese crew inside into sieves.
In Asia, it is undoubtedly the "king of kindergartens".
But in Europe, this is the heavyweight boxing ring.
It was a joke in the face of the German army's 37mm anti-tank gun, or even 20mm autocannon.
It had no anti-tank guns and no thick armor.
In a real European meat grinder, this thing would be a slightly faster "mobile machine gun bunker," or an "armored sardine can," or even less practical than a half-track vehicle.
But at this moment, this is the only "armored assault group" in McKenzie's hands.
"remember!"
Major McKenzie, keeping his voice as low as possible, said to the tank commanders who had poked their heads out, "Don't stop! Whatever's under the tracks, even God himself, run it over! Once you get across the bridge, these tanks will have accomplished their mission!"
"Understood, sir!" The commander pulled down the hatch, and the coughing sound of the gasoline engine starting up could be heard from inside.
In the shadows of the group, that out-of-place figure still clung tightly to his canvas bag.
Captain Henry wasn't carrying a gun. He was gripping the side of a truck with one hand and clutching a bag reinforced with lead with the other.
"Major!"
He yelled amidst the roar of the engine, his voice almost obsessive and neurotic: "Have that truck with the machine gun follow me! If—I mean if I get shot—have your soldiers throw this bag into the river immediately! Or burn it with an incendiary bomb!"
"Even if I'm not dead yet, burn it first! Do you understand?!"
For this Royal Air Force liaison officer, the lives of the entire city might be important, but the Royal Air Force communication codes and radar station blueprints in that bag were the very fabric of the British Empire. Dead men can be replaced, but losing that fabric meant that in future air battles against the Germans, they were already half-defeated before the fighting even began.
Mackenzie glanced at him, but didn't laugh; she simply nodded solemnly.
"Don't worry. If you're still alive by then, I'll personally finish you off with a shot, and then burn you."
"Thank you." Captain Henry paused for a moment, then gave a bitter laugh.
Major McKenzie didn't look at him again, but turned around abruptly and strode to a shallow pit behind the bunker.
There were two 3-inch (76.2 mm) mortars that had already been set up.
Next to it were two open wooden crates. Inside, 24 high-explosive bombs painted yellow lay neatly.
That was all they had left.
The gunner, a bearded Irish sergeant, was staring nervously at McKenzie, his fingers tapping anxiously on the gun barrel.
"Listen, Sergeant."
McKenzie crouched down, pointed at the two boxes of shells, and said in a serious tone, as if he were giving a will: "You only have 24 chances. After that, we'll be left with nothing but bayonets to tear into the German machine gun and artillery positions. So, put your damn ears to work."
He shoved the walkie-talkie into the gunner's hand: "Forget the tactics that idiot taught you. This time, listen to that guy named Sterling. If he says to fire one foot east, you absolutely cannot fire 0.9 feet east. Got it?!"
Just then, Arthur Sterling's voice came through the walkie-talkie.
This time, his voice lacked its previous languor and sarcasm, replaced by the professionalism of a top artillery observer (FO): "Mortar crew, can you hear me? This is an observation post."
"I don't need you to use artillery shells to bombard skirmish lines."
Arthur glanced at the embarrassed Major Ryder beside him, his voice laced with undisguised sarcasm: "That kind of work is for machine gunners. These 24 shells you have are for nailing nails into the Germans' coffins."
"Target: Due south, azimuth 185, range 1600. That 88mm gun."
"Single shot test. Fire!"
The gunner took a deep breath and quickly turned the azimuth and elevation mechanisms.
"Thump!"
A muffled thud. A black shell slid out of the cannon barrel, piercing the night sky, and flew towards the distant bridge.
The silence shattered at that moment.
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