novelAbuy Chapter 30 "Free Purchase" by the River
Chapter 30 "Free Purchase" by the River
On the battlefield, there is something more terrifying than the collapse of faith—that is, the loss of control over faith.
For these soldiers of the 19th Panzer Corps, the tragic image of their commander, stained with "blood," brandishing a Luger pistol and attempting to charge at enemy tanks, was more inflammatory than any Nazi commissar's mobilization order.
What they saw was not a coward trying to escape, but a war god prepared to die for the empire.
This scene injected a lethal dose of psychotropic amphetamines into the already collapsing defense line.
"Protect General Guderian!!"
"Hold them back! Don't let the British catch up!!"
The chaotic screams turned into hysterical roars.
These German soldiers have gone mad.
God has not abandoned them; God is bleeding. So the only thing believers can do is to use their own flesh and blood to build a breakwater, buying God even a second of time to evacuate.
The infantry, who should have been routed, stopped retreating as if possessed.
A machine gunner with a broken leg strapped himself to the frame of a half-track vehicle. In his final moments, he gripped the trigger of his MG34 and unleashed a barrage of pointless bullets at the oncoming B1 tank until the tracks crushed him and the machine gun into a bloody pulp.
Even more extreme, several sappers, holding freshly retrieved anti-tank mines, attempted to strike the detonator with their shovels without a fuse, hoping to destroy Arthur's tank along with it.
boom--!
Clumps of blood mist exploded in the rainy night.
Although this suicidal ambush could not penetrate the armor of the B1 tank, the splattered blood and flesh did indeed obstruct Arthur's view.
"Damn it! These mad dogs!"
Arthur stared at the enemy cursors on the RTS map, which, instead of decreasing, were frantically gathering around him like a swarm of lupus erythematosus, and slammed his fist on the steel plate in front of him:
"They don't care about living or dying! They're risking their lives to buy time!"
Guderian's tragic performance was a success. He transformed these rational Prussian professional soldiers into incomprehensible religious fanatics.
What was originally a relaxed and enjoyable "zero-dollar purchase" instantly turned into a bloody brawl where you were stabbing each other in the back in a quagmire.
Every second of delay increases the risk of being surrounded by the main German forces.
"call……"
Arthur took a deep breath of the damp, cold air thick with the smell of gunpowder, forcibly suppressing the anxiety in his heart. The last trace of human compassion vanished from his eyes, which now appeared somewhat sinister.
Since there's no way to bypass the obstacle, the only option left is to format it.
"Attention all personnel. Operational plan changed."
"Remove all firing restrictions. Repeat, remove all firing restrictions."
"I take back what I just said. Now, forget about stealing the car. Fire all the high-explosive shells out of your guns."
His gaze swept over the German strongpoints still firing wildly, and he delivered his final verdict:
"Completely erase everything that is still moving in your field of vision."
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The four B1 heavy tanks, having received permission, instantly shed their hypocritical masks and transformed into true killing machines.
The 75mm vehicle-mounted howitzer, which had been somewhat restrained in order to avoid accidentally damaging vehicles, now began to fire indiscriminately at close range.
High-explosive bombs with massive charges slammed into the German ranks like hammer blows. The makeshift defenses made of flesh and blood crumbled instantly in the flash of the explosions. Limbs and torsos mixed with dirt and weapon parts were thrown high into the air by the blast waves before falling like raindrops.
The four coaxial machine guns, with their densest crossfire, tirelessly harvested the lives that jumped out of the trenches like lawnmowers.
This was an asymmetrical massacre.
It was a 30-ton steel monster unilaterally crushing carbon-based life forms.
five minutes.
Only five minutes had passed.
After the last MG34 machine gun, which had been oblivious to its fate, was blasted into parts by a single shot from the Verdun, the entire camp finally fell silent.
All that remained was the hissing sound of rain hitting the scorching cannon barrels, the dying groans of wounded soldiers, and the crackling of burning wood and corpses.
The mud on the ground had turned dark red and was so sticky that it was difficult to move.
Arthur glanced indifferently at the RTS map. The densely packed hostile cursors, resembling erythema, finally went out completely in the grim grayness.
"Safe zone established!" Lieutenant Jeanne's excited voice came through the radio. "Sir, this place is ours now!"
"very good."
Arthur glanced at the RTS map; the densely packed red enemy markers had all disappeared. In their place, the screen was filled with golden markers representing unclaimed resources.
He opened the hatch, letting the cold rain lash his warm face.
"Attention all personnel! Battle phase over!"
Arthur's voice boomed through every vehicle on the radio, "Now it's time to get the goods! Be quick and stylish! We only have twenty minutes!"
"Start ordering!"
With this order, the originally serious military operation suddenly changed its tone and instantly turned into a crazy "battlefield free shopping" frenzy.
Dozens of Scottish infantry and engineers from Stirling's battle group jumped off their trucks. These soldiers, who had been cooped up on the outskirts of Dunkirk for far too long, now rushed into the German vehicle parking area like a swarm of locusts that hadn't eaten for three days.
"My God! Look at this treasure!"
Major Ryder was the first to rush under the awning. He completely abandoned his usual rigid British gentlemanly demeanor, and ignoring the muddy ground, he pounced on a brand-new gray tank like a lovesick man seeing his dream lover.
That was the Panzer III Ausf. E.
Although it seemed somewhat outdated on the Eastern Front later, in 1940 France it was the "Porsche" in the eyes of armored troops. Not only did the Germans like it, but the British were also envious.
It had a streamlined turret, a long 37mm gun, and a torsion bar suspension system that made all the British and French tank crews, whose bones were being shaken to pieces, drool with envy.
"Miller! That one! That's mine!"
Major Ryder pointed at the Panzer III tank, which still smelled of factory paint and had its muzzle shroud still on, and yelled, "Nobody can take it from me! I'm going to drive it back to London! I'm going to park it on Regent Street and pick up girls!"
"Stop yelling, Major! You're acting like a country bumpkin who's never seen the world."
Arthur jumped off the Verdun, tapping Ryder's helmet with his cane, making a crisp sound. "But you have good taste. This thing is definitely much better than our Valentine tank."
He turned around, looked at the two abandoned Panzer III tanks with their hatches wide open, and immediately gave the order:
"Miller! Take a few brothers who know how to drive and check those two No. 3s! Take everything that's drivable! We need their radios—they're the kind of things that let you talk to God!"
"Yes, sir! Mission accomplished!" Miller saluted excitedly and led a few veterans into the driver's compartment of the German tank.
"Hey, you engineers over there! Forget about those damn canned goods and biscuits! Those are for the refugees!"
Arthur pointed at several soldiers carrying German field rations and yelled, "Go drive those Sd.Kfz. 251 half-tracks! We need those to haul infantry! Those are real troop carriers, not those death-dealing trucks the council issued!"
"And there's the tanker truck! Connect the fuel pump!"
Arthur kicked the German fuel tanker truck next to him that was marked "Flammable." "Fill up our B1s! Use the German high-octane gasoline! Don't be shy, fill the tanks until they overflow! This is General Guderian's treat!"
This was an extremely efficient, extremely professional, and extremely greedy plunder.
The soldiers had a clear division of labor: some were responsible for guarding, some for refueling, some for taking the MG34 machine guns off the half-tracks and keeping them for themselves, and some even took the toolboxes and first-aid kits from the German vehicles.
Sergeant McTavish, a seasoned veteran, made full use of his keen sense of smell.
He led two men, braving the lingering smoke of battle, and charged directly into the 19th Armored Corps command tent, which had been half blown away and was now leaking rain.
A few minutes later.
The Scottish tough guy ran out carrying a beautifully crafted mahogany box, his wrinkled face beaming like a blooming chrysanthemum, even his large beard trembling triumphantly in the rain.
"Young master! Young master! Look what good stuff I've found!"
He ran up to Arthur like he was showing off a treasure and opened the wooden box with a "snap".
Under the pale beam of the tactical flashlight, the Spanish cedar wood lining inside the box gleamed with a warm luster, and the unique woody scent mixed with the rich aroma of tobacco wafted out.
Inside, twenty top-quality hand-rolled Romeo y Julieta cigars were neatly stacked.
This is the most authentic "double crown" size in Havana—the same size favored by that stubborn fat man at 10 Downing Street in London.
Each one was encased in an exquisite silver aluminum tube, and the gold-stamped "Havana" lettering on the deep red waistband shimmered in the rainy night with a kind of extravagance and arrogance unique to the aristocracy of the old era.
Beside the wooden box was a bottle of red wine that had only been sipped. Although the label was a little dusty, the awe-inspiring French words were still clearly legible: Château Lafite Rothschild, 1924.
"This was found on the command table in the biggest tent! It must have been left by a high-ranking official! The map on that table was even still warm!"
McTavish said with a self-satisfied air, his face full of smiles.
Arthur didn't rush to speak.
He extended his slender fingers, elegantly picked up a cigar, and gently smelled it.
In an instant, a rich aroma, a blend of Caribbean sunshine, aged oak barrels, fermented tobacco leaves, and absolute power, rushed straight to the top of my head, instantly overpowering the nauseating smells of gunpowder, earth, and corpses around me.
As the heir to the Sterling family, this taste was all too familiar to him.
In London's gentlemen's clubs and in family castles in the Scottish Highlands, this cigar is a standard after-dinner treat, a background aroma accompanying stock market fluctuations and political intrigues.
But that was so long ago, it felt like a lifetime ago.
Since the original owner of this body was besieged in that damned place, Dunkirk, two weeks ago, this young master, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, has been completely cut off from food. He has to chew on corned beef as hard as shoe soles and smoke cheap cigars that are spicy, pungent, and even mixed with sawdust, like a private of the lowest rank.
During his fourteen-day hellish journey, he almost forgot that he had once been a respectable person.
Now, however, he, a British nobleman, has to resort to a brutal robbery in a German general's tent to reclaim his way of life.
"Romeo and Juliet... or rather, a special edition."
Arthur gently stroked the silky texture of the tobacco leaves on the surface of the cigar, an artwork crafted by a top technician on his lap.
"It seems that although our General Guderian is a workaholic who only knows how to push forward, his taste is indeed quite refined. Even on the black market in Berlin, this kind of thing is a hard currency that only the Nazi high command can afford."
As he spoke, he pulled an expensive sterling silver Ronson lighter from his pocket.
Click. Click.
The flint produced a few pitiful sparks, but no flame. The oil was gone.
This is much like the current situation of the British Empire: sophisticated and expensive, but failing at crucial moments.
"Sir."
Immediately, a soldier with excellent eyesight approached and handed over a windproof lighter with a skull and crossbones symbol that he had just retrieved from a German corpse, and diligently lit it.
call--
The rugged orange flame of the windproof lighter danced stubbornly in the wind and rain.
Arthur lowered his head slightly and, using the flame from the enemy, lit the enemy's cigar.
He took a deep breath.
The spicy yet mellow smoke swirled in my mouth, releasing a long-lost aroma. It instantly dispelled the chill of the rainy night and soothed the fatigue and anxiety that had been building up in my nerve endings over the past few days.
At that moment, Arthur Sterling was no longer a disheveled breakout commander; he reverted to being the all-powerful London tycoon.
"Well done, Sergeant."
Arthur slowly exhaled a puff of smoke, watching it dissipate in the rain, his eyes becoming hazy and dangerous.
He casually grabbed a handful of the remaining cigars from the box and distributed them to Major Ryder and Captain Durand, who had been watching with drooling eyes.
"Try everything. Don't be shy."
Watching the two officers accept the cigars as if they were sacred relics, Arthur pointed to the ruins behind him, his tone filled with pride:
"This is the private collection of the 'father of Blitzkrieg'. After smoking this cigarette, even if we're surrounded the next second, we can still stand tall and brag to God for the rest of our lives—we not only beat up Guderian, but we also stole his cigarette."
At this moment, Lieutenant Jeanne, who had been standing to the side, also subconsciously reached out her hand, seemingly wanting to taste this top-tier trophy as well.
However, Arthur pulled his hand back as if he had been electrocuted, and then closed the lid.
"No, no, no, Lieutenant, put your hand down."
Arthur shook his head seriously, a mischievous smile playing on his lips:
"This isn't your kind of slim, menthol-flavored women's cigarette. This is a thick, black Cuban monster, the 150mm howitzer of the tobacco world."
He pointed to the thick Cohiba in his hand and said in a tone only a man could understand:
"This is a man's toy. Because it's so powerful, if you're not careful, it can turn your charming French voice into a broken gong and make you smell like a guerrilla who's been in the jungle for a week."
"To protect the only flower in our convoy, you should go and smoke one of those elegant slim cigarettes."
"..."
Jeanne's face, which had been flushed with excitement, froze. She quickly withdrew her hands, then rolled her eyes at the ungrateful commander without any politeness, muttering something in French that was something like "megalomaniac" or "damn Englishman."
"Ha! You're right, sir!"
"That's right! This is a man's pleasure stick!"
Major Ryder and Captain Durand, along with several nearby soldiers, burst into laughter.
……
04:30 AM.
This frantic night raid lasted a full hour.
A pale, fish-belly white began to appear on the eastern horizon. The downpour had finally stopped, but it was replaced by an even thicker morning fog. The sea breeze carried a chill that seeped into one's bones.
At the edge of the RTS map in front of Arthur, a large number of glaring red cursors were converging like a tide.
Clearly, the fleeing General Guderian was not idle. He had already made contact with the main force of the 1st Panzer Division in the rear and the Kleist Panzer Group on the flank.
The behemoth, wounded by the blow, is awakening from its slumber. Countless tank engines are roaring, and a massive, all-encompassing encirclement is being unfurled toward Ahe.
"Time's up."
Arthur glanced at his watch, then threw the half-smoked, expensive cigar into the mud and crushed it out with the sole of his boot.
"All vehicles, evacuate immediately! Take all spoils! Don't leave the Germans even a single screw!"
Ten minutes later.
A convoy that could be described as the most bizarre, eclectic, and arrogant in the history of World War II slowly drove out of the German camp and onto the Ahr River Bridge again.
The original four B1 bis heavy tanks, which were like mobile fortresses, remained at the core, protecting the center like a mother hen.
In front of and behind them were four Panzer III Ausf. E tanks that had just changed hands.
These elite German warhorses now looked somewhat comical—the black Iron Cross insignia on their carriages had been hastily painted over by engineers with paint buckets, replaced with a crooked, illegible red, white, and blue color scheme that only God and the Scots themselves could decipher. That wild painting style was practically a violent insult to Prussian aesthetics.
Behind the column, instead of the long line of rickety trucks, came six Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track armored vehicles and three Opel Lightning trucks, which looked particularly heavy because they were filled with high-octane gasoline and ammunition—this was the essence of Arthur's streamlined operation, with the rest of the junk left on the other side.
For the infantrymen, it was like going from economy class to first class.
Those Scottish infantrymen who used to be crammed like sardines in unprotected Opel trucks, constantly worried about being hit in the rear by stray bullets, and suffering from osteoporosis from being jostled around on hard benches, are now comfortably nestled in the leather-padded seats of German half-track vehicles.
They stroked the well-made MG34 machine gun on the chassis as if it were a lover, feeling the smooth suspension of the half-track chassis as if it were gliding on the muddy road. They were all so happy that they couldn't stop smiling, and some even hummed Scottish tunes.
This is no fleeing caravan; it's clearly a Viking pirate crew returning home laden with spoils.
"This suspension! This shock absorption! My God!"
Major Ryder was sitting in the turret of the stolen Panzer III tank. Wearing the throat communicator that still held the warmth of the previous German commander, he was so excited he was incoherent on the radio:
"Arthur! Can you feel it? It drives like a Rolls-Royce in central London! No of that jarring, jarring vibration that makes your insides rip! And the radio is so clear, I can even hear their breathing!"
"Stop lamenting, Ryder. That's German technology, not yours."
Arthur remained seated aboard the Verdun. Though he appeared calm, he secretly rejoiced as he looked at the clearly displayed friendly positions on the RTS map—thanks to the captured radio network.
We've finally said goodbye to that damned primitive era where "communication was basically done by shouting."
The convoy once again set foot on that ancient stone arch bridge.
When the last looted half-track crossed the bridge's center line and safely reached the north bank, Arthur stopped the Verdun.
He did not leave immediately, but opened the hatch and looked back at the opposite shore for a long time.
In the morning mist, the German camp was still burning, with black plumes of smoke shooting straight into the sky, as if to put an end to this crazy night raid.
"Saving engineers".
Arthur's voice came through the radio.
"Detonate."
Major Ryder hesitated for a moment, then said tentatively over the radio, "Blow up the bridge now? But sir, if we keep this bridge, what will happen when the Allied forces counterattack later..."
“No buts, Major,” Arthur interrupted him. “Stop dreaming. The counterattack is years from now. Now, the show is over, and we’re closing up shop.”
"Besides, I need to give General Guderian a way out, don't I?"
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