British Army Private Abuguel. Fromm panted up the steep dirt slope and climbed over the ridge, behind which was an empty plateau, where an alternate airfield for the Royal Air Force had been abandoned, but the trenches and fortifications that had been dug were still there, giving him a temporary place to stay.

The senior soldier grabbed the weeds on the slope hard, pushed his tired legs hard, and climbed up tenaciously, as long as he climbed over this mountain beam, he could be saved, that was his only way to survive. Fromm flipped the strap of the Lee Enfield MKI rifle up again, the heavy rifle was now even heavier, and his marching backpack, which felt like he was carrying a solid piece of iron, his shoulders were sore from the straps, and his arms felt a little numb.

A shrill whistling sounded like some kind of high-speed bug.

"Oh my God, they're catching up." A soldier shouted sharply, and the British soldiers who were climbing the dirt slope panicked, and the frequency of climbing with their hands and feet began to increase, and some soldiers began to unload their equipment from their bodies, backpacks, rifles, bullet bags, and infantry shovels, everything that was thought to slow down their escape was abandoned, and all kinds of equipment and weapons were thrown everywhere on the hillside.

Fromm was not prepared to abandon his rifle, he kept in mind the words of the squad leader, do not throw away your equipment at any time, or you will regret it. Although he didn't know what the squad leader said about regret, he still decided to listen to the old soldier's words, for a soldier who participated in a major war, it was his reason to be able to come back from the battlefield alive.

The squad leader was not as lucky as he had last time, and just fifteen minutes earlier, a 20-millimeter machine shell had cut the forty-nine-year-old sergeant major in two, and instead of struggling for as long as in the novel, the veteran almost immediately died.

It happened just too fast. Fromm still feels a little unrealistic. The gray German tanks roared out of the night like legendary monsters, the British infantry was completely defenseless, the perimeter of the makeshift camp was in vain, the checkpoints and machine gun barriers were about to collapse at the touch of a button, and the German infantry followed the tanks along the road and attacked all the British targets they encountered.

Folkestone's defensive strength was impressive, with two battalions of Army units stationed here, as well as a Navy coastal artillery battalion. With two 233-mm shore defense guns and 24 25-pounder army howitzers, the fire is extremely ferocious.

Folkestone is also a very good commercial port, and in size it surpasses the Port of Dover, the two places are less than eight miles apart, geographically speaking, if Dover is the key to England, then Folkestone is the doorknob of England, and the two complement each other and are horns of each other. Rely on each other.

The terrain of Folkestone differs from that of Dover, which is full of ditches, and it is located on a gentle hilly terrain with many wide terraces, and the city is built on a sloping land. Stretching all the way to the sea, there is a natural beachhead in the harbor, flanked by high ridges and chalk cliffs like Dover and St Margaret's beaches.

With plenty of flat land, it is a better place to be used as a trading hub than Dover. The city has a railway dispatch center and shunting yard, which is an important transfer point for the British coastal railway, from which trains from Dover are transferred. Access to the north-south trunk rail system provides direct access to London and northern UK towns.

On the outskirts of the city there are also two medium-sized military airfields and a radar station, which are responsible for the regional air defense of the Dover area. However, after the start of the war, as the end of the Luftwaffe's care, Folkestone's airfield and radar station were bombed indiscriminately day and night, and the speed of repair of the airfield could not keep up with the speed of destruction by the Germans. The radar station was completely destroyed, and according to the Germans, there were no two stacked stones on top of each other on that land.

The coastal fortress was badly damaged, two heavy guns were blown up in their fortification, fortunately the coastal artillery reacted in time, and most of the howitzers were transferred to the air defense tunnel, which was able to survive, but the losses were still inevitable, and the number of guns was only twenty, but the ammunition reserve was enough for these guns to fight for a while.

The infantry battalion was hit harder, the Luftwaffe destroyed the barracks on the outskirts of the city, and Stuka accurately attacked the surrounding pillboxes built along the intercity road, even though the garrison carefully painted these bunkers with camouflage paint and hung camouflage nets, but the Luftwaffe did not hesitate to blow the semi-concrete bunkers to pieces along with their camouflage.

The Germans attacked the city's supply warehouses, burning all the military supplies stored in the warehouses along with hidden gas bombs, while also causing a massive fire in the city, with two of the city's busiest neighborhoods burned to the ground.

The citizens began to flee the city in gangs, and the garrison itself was in a state of anxiety, unable to control the situation at all, and when they turned back and began to pacify the people, they found that only half of the residents remained in the city, and the remaining half had already embarked on the road north.

What worries the garrison is that the half of the people who left included the entire wealthy class and upper class of Folkestone, and the resources they took with them accounted for more than eighty percent of the city's material reserves, while the burden of living materials for the remaining half of the residents was naturally pressed on the local government and the garrison.

This was what the British Army's 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions faced when they arrived at Folkestone, the passenger train carrying them entered the central railway station, the soldiers were accommodated in the nearest barracks, and the sappers and logisticians began to unload supplies and equipment from the trains with the help of the railroad workers.

Although the Fifth and Sixth Infantry Divisions occupy the number of two divisional units, in fact each division is composed of a light infantry brigade and an artillery battalion, and the total number of soldiers in each infantry division is about 8,000, of which more than 2,000 are the logistics units of each battalion and brigade, more than 1,000 are brigade-affiliated artillery companies and anti-tank artillery batteries, with eight six-inch howitzers and twelve 2-pounder anti-tank guns, and the remaining 4,000 people are riflemen, divided into four infantry battalions. Each infantry battalion also has a battalion-mounted artillery platoon and an anti-tank platoon equipped with four 18-pounder infantry guns and three 2-pounder anti-tank guns.

This is the latest infantry division in Britain after the Battle of Dunkirk, these two infantry divisions are composed of the original remaining troops and the re-conscripted reserve troops, which is already a rare elite in the existing British army, most of these soldiers have undergone more than a year of technical and tactical training, which has also added many veterans who have participated in World War I, these reserve veterans have valuable combat experience, although it is only the First World War, but experience is experience, No matter how you say it, it's better than those rookie soldiers who haven't even seen blood.

Due to the large number of personnel and equipment. The two infantry divisions were still busy unloading and relocating troops until midnight, and then the German heavy artillery bombardment began, and the first salvo of the heavy artillery group, which had already determined the firing parameters, overturned the cement batteries at both ends of the harbor, and a full 50-meter-long breakwater disappeared into the sea, along with an anti-aircraft machine gun company and searchlight platoon attached to that section of the seawall.

The railway station was hit in the third round of shelling, and the artillerymen and logistics, who were busy towing the heavy artillery, were still wondering about the loud noise in the distance, because no one heard the sound of planes flying in the air, and the air defense sirens were not sounded. This is clearly not an air strike.

While the soldiers were still speculating whether there had been an accident, several large-caliber heavy artillery warheads smashed into the crowd with a whistle-like whistle of a train. Then came the second and third waves of bombardment, and by the time the British soldiers reacted, everything was irreparable. The station and shunting yard became a crater of flames, ammunition constantly exploded due to the high temperature of the barbecue, tracer bullets flew in the air like fire meteors, and large-caliber grenades exploded into fireballs tens of meters high. All kinds of steel shrapnel and debris were thrown into the air several hundred meters into the air, and then smashed like a torrential rain on the heads of the officers and men who organized the fire extinguishing around the station.

German heavy artillery began to shift their firing targets, and they began to bombard barracks and office buildings in the city. An infantry battalion of the 5th Infantry Division, which had entered the Cherryton Street Barracks to rest, had just had time to assemble its troops, and a heavy artillery warhead hit the neatly arranged infantry phalanx, and a battalion of infantry was killed on the playground, except for the poor people in the middle of the crater, who had been torn to shreds, and many of the dead soldiers did not see any external injuries at all, these people were naked, only the feet were still wearing low-top leather shoes, and the violent shock wave tore off their uniforms, and shattered their internal organs through their bodies, Acute haemorrhage and organ failure cost them their lives within half a minute.

The commander hurriedly ordered all troops to withdraw from the city, but in the panic, it was impossible to contact the subordinate troops scattered in the half-seated city. Eventually, when the remnants of the two infantry divisions withdrew from the city, they found that the two elite infantry divisions that had been mighty and majestic were now only two incomplete infantry brigades.

Many of the soldiers lost their way during the retreat, and some of the troops had disappeared into the city forever. The city government organized citizens to bring hot tea and coffee to the army, and both soldiers and civilians watched the fantastic fireworks display in the distance with sad faces.

Throughout the day the next day, the 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions were busy gathering troops and supplies. Some of the logistics wagons did not enter the city, and due to the limited space on the platform, they stopped on the transfer branch outside the city, which was a blessing in disguise, so that the two infantry divisions would not be in the embarrassing situation of running out of food the day after arriving at their destination.

Most of these wagons are made up of clothing and canned food, which happens to be the most needed at the moment. Food and clothing were distributed to the survivors and soldiers and citizens, and everyone felt a renewed sense of hope, and as long as they had food and clothing, they had the basic guarantee of survival.

Eventually, the city government and the council decided that they were going to lead the surviving citizens to retreat to a safe rear after tonight, and that all administrative power and public property in the area would be transferred to two infantry divisions.

The surviving citizens did not dare to return to the city, who knows if the frenzied Germans will open fire again, last night's shelling has already scared their courage, who has ever seen a single shell blow up a block? Well, the smoking craters in the center of the city are proof of that.

These civilians have been housed in a bunch of homes on the outskirts of the city, many of which are vacation homes for wealthy people, and their owners may have fled to the United States or Canada, and it is not a shame to break the locks on these doors.

The British infantry divisions set up makeshift camps along the roads outside the city, and they built a decent camp out of the remaining tents and some rudimentary building materials.

A battalion of the local garrison was set up on the outskirts of the city because it was responsible for the patrol of the perimeter, and they also defended two strategic reserve warehouses, only to find that one of them was full of woolen military uniforms, and the other was full of barbed wire.

Now the British Army is not lacking in woolen uniforms, as the world's number one woolen country of the army, their uniforms have always been known for their thick materials and high quality, looking at the new uniforms in this warehouse, the officers and soldiers silently turned around and locked the door again.

The barbed wire fence was immediately put to use, and the sappers cut down an entire grove, drove a ring of wooden stakes around the camp, and then densely wrapped it around the barbed wire, finally making the camp a little more military, and no longer looking like a refugee distribution center.

The good news came one after another, the superiors had re-established contact with the Kent County Command Post, and the other party told them to calm down, London had already known their situation here, and was deploying supplies and personnel, and reinforcements would arrive with supplies during the day tomorrow at the latest.

The officers and men of the two infantry divisions finally breathed a sigh of relief, and most of them were optimistic that the crisis had passed, and as long as they got through tonight, everything would be in a good direction.

After a humble dinner, the infantry battalions arranged the night guards and patrols on the periphery, and the rest of the soldiers went into their respective camps, because they had not closed their eyes all night last night, and today they had been busy all day, and many people were exhausted, and soon fell asleep, and the camp was full of snoring, and it was a peaceful scene.

But the peace did not last long, and when the moon was dim, the Germans came...... (To be continued......)