In the bedroom of the mountain tunnel, Liddell lay on the bed and tossed and turned, his eyes closed and opened, and he couldn't fall asleep. [ads:This site has a new URL,Shorthand method:,.]

The incessant "rumble" sound of "rumbling" along the granite into every corner of the tunnel, like a dull war drum echoing in the ears of every British soldier, and Lieddale was no exception.

Seven days, seven whole days, how long will the German bombing last?

For seven days, Luftwaffe bombers bombed Gibraltar day and night, completely turning the Gibraltar peninsula into a firing range for the Luftwaffe and naval aviation, and endless bombs fell densely on every corner of Gibraltar.

On the first day of the bombing, the British anti-aircraft gunners on the surface positions of Gibraltar confronted the German planes with extraordinary courage, firing countless shells from 40 mm and 90 mm guns into the sky, only to be drowned by 50 kg, 250 kg or even 500 kg of bombs falling from the sky.

In one day, Lieddale lost nearly half of its anti-aircraft guns and gunners on the surface.

On the second day of the bombardment, the surviving anti-aircraft guns and gunners lost another half.

On the fifth day of the bombing, the German bomber group no longer had to deliberately control the flight altitude and drop bombs outside the range of the British anti-aircraft guns, because the British air defense system no longer existed.

Without the harassment of British anti-aircraft artillery, the Luftwaffe bombing was even more unscrupulous.

In someone's low-level taste, German bombers changed targets every two to three hours, and the change was irregular.

Of course, Lieddale did not know about someone's low tastes, he only knew that under the bombardment of the Germans, the minefields of the surface positions were gone, leaving only large and small craters.

The barbed wire fence was gone, leaving only craters of various sizes.

The various light and dark bunker machine gun positions on the surface were gone, leaving a crater in the ground.

All the houses, roads, port facilities, trees, and even the rocks on the hills of Gibraltar did not escape the Luftwaffe bombs, and they all turned to ashes, leaving only craters, craters, and craters.

At this point, Lieddale finally understood what Major General Steiner really meant by the indiscriminate bombing that day. Regardless of whether the Luftwaffe bombed the site or not had British defenses, as long as the site was on the Gibraltar Peninsula, it was covered with aerial bombs, and only one thing was allowed to be left on the surface. That's the crater.

Under this high-intensity and indiscriminate bombardment, radar stations and telephone poles were replaced by craters one after another, and Lieddale hid in the mountains, losing contact with more and more surface positions.

The German bombing sites were unpredictable, and the intensity of the bombing was unprecedented. After two attempts, the logisticians of the British army gave up hope of rushing to repair it.

At the risk of their lives, the telephone lines and radar facilities that had just been repaired by the logistics staff would soon be covered again by aerial bombs and subsequently reduced to nothing.

On the fourth day of the bombing, some logistics personnel of the British army saw that the Luftwaffe had just bombed the middle of the mountain in the evening, and mistakenly thought that this area was temporarily safe, so they took advantage of the cover of night and boldly ran out to repair the line, and tragedy ensued.

Another group of bombers arrived, and after the glaring light of fire and the deafening sound of explosions, there was an additional blood-stained crater on the ground.

Under the bloody complaints of the logistics staff, Liedale soon realized that such emergency repairs were meaningless except to waste valuable engineering materials and soldiers' lives. An order had to be given to temporarily suspend the repair task.

Endure! Be patient!

Liddell covered his head with a quilt to keep out the muffled sound of explosions echoing through the room.

However, after a long-lasting stuffy fart full of rotten egg smell was released, Li Dedale could no longer bear it, and jumped out of bed and shook the quilt vigorously to let the smell in the quilt evaporate as soon as possible.

While fanning the quilt, Li Dedale gritted his teeth and shouted: "Bomb, bomb, I don't believe you can blow up a mountain with aerial bombs, one day." You will send infantry up. At that point, half of the craters will become your graves, and the other half will become pools of blood, at the cost of your lives. ”

Lieddale tossed around for a full five minutes. The smell of rotten eggs in his nose disappeared, and the terrible feeling of being attacked by "biological and chemical weapons" was calmed down, and then he fell asleep on the bed

On the outskirts of Seville, at the headquarters of the Second Air Force, Chen Dao, Marshal Kesselring, and Manstein sat around a square table, patiently examining the aerial photographs on the table.

After more than 8,000 sorties of carpet bombing a week. The 14 bombing areas, which were originally filled with houses, ports, mountains, and woodlands, have become similar by this time, and all of them have become the shape of the lunar surface.

Manstein put down the photo in his hand with satisfaction, and said to Chen Dao and Kesselring: "The surface positions of the British army have been basically destroyed, and I think the time has come for the commandos to appear, what do you think?" Mr. Marshal? General Rosen? ”

"I'm just cooperating with you, if you think the time is right, we'll send a commando team to land, and the Second Air Force will do its best to cooperate."

Albert. Marshal Kesselring lived up to his name as "the Smiling Albert" with his trademark smile on his face.

Manstein nodded to Kesselring, then looked at Chen.

Chen Dao casually threw away the photo in his hand, pointed to the wooden sign on the table and said: "I also think that the time is ripe, just for the sake of insurance, I think we should turn over the sign for two more days to confuse the enemy, and at the same time carry out key bombing of the commando landing area to minimize the risk of the commando landing failure." ”

Manstein subconsciously rubbed his somewhat itchy hooked nose, and then said: "I can accept two days, these two days are just enough to further improve our artillery position. ”

"It just so happens that I can also familiarize my subordinates with the performance of those new weapons, and try to complete the task in one go." Chen Dao said.

The three finalized the plan, and Liddell was turned over for two more days, and two more layers of craters were added to the Gibraltar area.

In the early morning of the tenth day of the Battle of Gibraltar, when the hands had just reached midnight, Lieddale was still asleep to the lullaby of the sound of explosions, but it was a different scene in Algeciras, just across the bay.

Riding on more than 80 motorboats of various types, the Waffen-SS Blackwater Special Reconnaissance Battalion sailed away from the assembly area, like more than 80 sharp arrows fired at Gibraltar on the east coast.

All the hulls of the motorboats are painted in cool shades of black, dark blue or grey, so that there is no reflection in the dark night.

The scouts slumped down in the motorboat, allowing it to carry it abruptly across the fjord.

Major Hegel touched his shaved chin, enjoying the stubble on his fingers.

As a veteran of the three major battles of the partition of Poland, the liberation of Norway, and the conquest of France, Major Hegel felt that he was getting closer to the east coast. His heart was beating faster.

The sudden sound of the motorboat's motors, the hum of the engines of the bomber swarm in the sky, the explosion of bombs on the opposite hill and the sound of a pounding heartbeat formed a wonderful resonance, and Major Hegel felt that every cell of himself was full of blood, and the speed of his mind was unusually active.

The brothers of the Air Force are covering themselves. The brothers of the army were waiting for their good news, and the immediate boss General Rosen and the Waffen-SS brothers were watching him from the harbor behind him, and the Blackwater Special Reconnaissance Battalion was going to take the lead in this battle anyway.

The motorboat formation approached the port on the east coast step by step, until it was about 500 meters away, and all the motorboats turned off their motors one after another to reduce the noise according to the original plan. The scouts paddled to the opposite shore with their wooden oars.

More than 80 motorboats of 500 meters and 400 meters approached the shore silently.

Hegel vividly remembers that the photographs before the bombing showed that the landing site ahead should have been four rows of nearly twenty residential buildings, with warehouses to the north and a complex called the Saborn Hotel to the south.

But under the starlight at this time, Major Hegel could not see a single building in front of him, and all warehouses, residential buildings, and hotels were all a thing of the past, leaving only a pile of uneven ruins.

Major Hegel's command quietly rowed the motorboat to the south of the hotel, where the motorboat was originally used for guests and was now the best landing place for the reconnaissance battalion.

Don't wait for the motorboat to stop at the pier. One by one, the figures leaped out of the steamboat and rushed ashore along the concrete road of the pier, Major Hegel following closely behind.

With so many craters, it's really miserable, and the brothers of the Air Force are really too heavy.

Major Hegel walked on the shore with a deep and shallow foot, staring at the path beneath his feet, lest he stumble into the craters and hurt his ankle.

The Scouts, with their big feet in leather boots, stepping on a hill of rubble and pieces of glass, skirted the wreckage of one building after another, and ran down the streets into the residential areas to the east to expand the landing grounds.

The effect of the Second Air Force's frenzied carpet bombing was remarkable. Major Hegel and his men did not see a single intact building or a single figure for twenty minutes of landing, but only two destroyed anti-aircraft artillery positions along the way.

Major Hegel endured the discomfort in his heart and walked to an anti-aircraft artillery position, and turned around to find two mutilated corpses.

A corpse without a head. A corpse without two thighs looked terrible, and Major Hegel took off his gloves and touched the legless corpse, and the cold and stiff touch came from the palm of his hand.

has been dead for a long time, and no one collects the corpses, indicating that there should be no of their comrades in the vicinity.

This anti-aircraft gun emplacement could not have been only two people. Their comrades either fled or were left dead in the bombardment.

After about five minutes of walking forward in the dark, the tragic situation in the residential area was even more shocking, and the rubble craters blocked the already small streets, and the scouts had to "climb mountains and wade through rivers" and "climb mountains and mountains" on the streets.

The depth of the landing field was large enough that Major Hegel immediately called in the signal corps and asked them to send a signal to the west bank to report the success of the landing.

Receiving information from Major Hegel, the second group of motorboats set off and the reconnaissance battalion of the 5th Waffen-SS Viking Division set out on the journey.

Half an hour later, Major Hegel waited for the commander of the Viking Division's reconnaissance battalion in a dark residential area, and the two sides then divided their respective theaters of war on the map and went their separate ways.

Major Hegel led his men on a further eastward march in a devastated residential area, and as the troops were about to rush out of the residential area, a crisp sound of gunfire suddenly reached Major Hegel's ears.

Major Hegel's heart sank, and he immediately stopped to listen to the sound of gunfire, and then there was a rapid clatter.

The previous gunfire was a pistol, this time it was the sound of an MP40 submachine gun.

Major Hegel immediately sent a herald to inquire in the direction where the shots were fired.

At a T-junction across two streets to the north of Major Hegel, the soldiers of the first company and second platoon of the Blackwater Reconnaissance Battalion were scattered among the rubble, craters, and building wreckage, and kept firing at the windows on the first floor of the wreckage on the left side of the intersection with various weapons, and the flames from the muzzles of the guns were particularly dazzling in the dark night.

The British soldiers on the opposite side did not show weakness in returning fire with rifles and light machine guns, and for a time there was a burst of gunfire in the residential area.

When the herald arrived at the battlefield, he happened to see two scouts crouching in a bomb crater, setting up a Type 41 tank killer bazooka and aiming it at the building where the British soldiers were hiding.

Although the bazooka had just been equipped with a new weapon for the reconnaissance battalion, the co-shooter skillfully loaded the 88mm rocket and then slapped the shooter on the left shoulder.

A flash of fire flashed, and 88mm rockets flew into the window where the British machine gunners were hiding with a fiery red trail.

In the explosion, the flames engulfed the British machine gunners, and the smoke and dust enveloped the building, and the British firepower was instantly weakened.

A scout took the opportunity to rush under the wall of another window of the building, raised his hand and threw an M24 grenade, and the screams of the British soldiers rang out almost simultaneously with the explosion.

A figure with a steel helmet with a pot lid staggered out of the building's door, and then spasmed into a sieve from a barrage of bullets.

"Chase after you, two people have run away."

The exclamations rang out, and the scouts gave pursuit, past the building and toward the east.

Major Hegel soon learned of the battle.

When the second platoon of the company walked to the T-junction, it was suddenly shot by a British soldier, but fortunately, only the pistol in the opponent's hand did not cause heavy casualties to the second platoon.

The gunfire woke up the rest of the British troops, and the battle broke out.

After cleaning the battlefield after the war, the second platoon found six British corpses in that building, as well as a basement with food and ammunition that the British had not had time to take away.

Major Hegel soon requisitioned the basement as a temporary camp headquarters and set up a radio station.

After an unfriendly interrogation of the only captured wounded British soldier, Major Hegel learned that it was the 2nd Independent Brigade of the British Army of Gibraltar that had been stationed in the residential area.

After two frenzied carpet bombardments by the Second Air Force, the Second Independent Brigade could not afford to retreat into mountain tunnels and other fortified underground bunkers, leaving only one company to act as a guard in the residential area.

This company was scattered in the basement of a residential area in a squad, and the Blackwater Special Reconnaissance Battalion was one of them.

Major Hegel sent the limping British prisoner of war to heal his wounds, and then gave orders to his four company commanders.

Destroy the British guard company first, and then advance to the eastern mountains. (To be continued.) )xh118