"Watch the roof and fire at that window! 122 blocks the road on the right. "The platoon commander of the second platoon of Panzergrenadiers overwhelmed the white wooden fence and rushed into the streets of Barham.

Zeisler's plan didn't go much beyond the norm, and it was still the standard German infantry attack routine. It's just that the firepower output of the squad platoon is much higher than that of ordinary infantry units, and at the same time, the mobility is beyond the reach of the latter.

The paratroopers sent an assault detachment in advance and, relying on excellent individual skills, lurked a few dozen meters from the Polish artillery positions. Heavy rain and cold guns on the German positions attracted the attention of the Poles, who at this time thought that the Germans on the opposite side had suffered heavy losses and had no strength for a counteroffensive.

The retreat of Clausen's paratrooper company was truly awkward, orange fires were still faintly visible in the cracks of the wreckage of German transports and armored vehicles, the flames in the engine and cockpit were still smoldering, and the rain poured on the hot steel plates turned into puffs of white steam. The corpses of the fallen German paratroopers were scattered around the vehicle, and the wreckage, together with the wreckage, looked like a complete defeat.

The Polish soldiers were in high spirits at this time, and the officers told them that when they had eliminated the remnants of the village and then turned back to clean up the Germans outside the village, victory was a foregone conclusion, and they were just waiting for them to come forward and pick. The Poles could not have imagined that the paratroopers outside had already received reinforcements and would launch a counterattack so quickly.

After arriving at the predetermined location, the lurking paratroopers sent back a signal with a signal flashlight, and the panzergrenadier company began to advance as originally planned. The heavy rain did the Germans a great favor at this time, adding to the suddenness of the German attack, and by the time the Polish artillery realized that something was wrong, the Germans were already within range of the machine guns.

The machine guns of the paratroopers and armored vehicles temporarily suppressed the Polish anti-tank guns with a dense barrage, and the lurking German paratroopers saw the opportunity to launch a surprise attack. Several paratroopers resolutely rushed to the roadbed, using grenades and submachine guns, to eliminate the artillery position that posed the greatest threat to their side in one fell swoop. The successful paratroopers fired two red flares, and the Panzergrenadier Company immediately took advantage of the situation to launch a full-scale attack.

After entering the assault at full speed, it took only a minute for the half-track transporter to speed through the field of five or six hundred meters, and under the frightened eyes of the Polish soldiers, it broke into the defense line on the outskirts of the village and town. The German 251 half-track had average ballistic performance. But these opponents in front of them only had a rifle with a bayonet in their hands, and no matter how bravely they resisted, the most they could do was to make a pit in the steel plate of the hull and scratch some gray paint.

The tracked car collapsed the sandbag bunker, and the German soldiers in the compartment leaned out, armed with submachine guns and rifles, shooting at all targets they could find. The Panzergrenadier Company broke through the defenders' seemingly impregnable line in an instant, and the panicked Polish infantry retreated along the streets towards the north of the town.

"133 turned from the right with paratroopers and blocked the road behind, and 134 followed 133 to act. Pay attention to street corners and rooftops and eliminate all enemies that stand in your way. Over there, do you see that window on the second floor? The platoon commander of the third platoon stood next to the machine gunner, holding an MP40 submachine gun, and he gave orders to his subordinates loudly while pointing out the target for the machine gunner.

The streets of Balham are not narrow, and the houses are sparsely spaced, making it not a town suitable for street fighting. The Poles set up an ambush precisely in this place, which was not suitable for ambushes. The unsuspecting German paratroopers also suffered heavy losses as a result. But now the situation has reversed, and all the arrangements that the Poles had made before have been used on the paratroopers. There is no time for a second arrangement, and even if they do, they don't have that many resources.

Having used up their stockpiled explosives in those traps, Solsky had planned to make a desperate ambush to inflict the greatest possible damage on the enemy as soon as possible, and to try to eat one of the German vanguard at once. Let the British see how valiant the Poles fought and gave a resounding slap in the face to the Brits who humiliated them. If Zeisler's Panzergrenadier Company had not arrived, Solski's plan might have succeeded, but the Germans had come so quickly and the Poles had fallen short a moment before they saw the dawn of victory.

The intensity of the Panzergrenadier assault was beyond the imagination of the Poles. They didn't expect such a swift and swift attack. The tall German armored vehicles didn't care much about small arms attacks, not to mention that the Podhall brigade was equipped with the weapons of the French infantry.

The Betier 1916 rifle, a product after the First World War, was slightly outdated in terms of overall performance, but because of the huge number of productions, it was still the main weapon of the French Army at the beginning of the war, and there was plenty of stock in the ordnance warehouse. These weapons were brought all the way from France to Norway by the Podhall Brigade, and then from Norway to Britain, and finally because of the strange 7.5 mm caliber of France, the British did not hand over these weapons to the Self-Defense Forces, and thus kept the ammunition in stock, and when the entire brigade was reduced to a battalion, the ammunition became abundant, and became the only thing that was not lacking in the Solsky battalion.

The Polish soldiers shot in vain at the gray-and-white armored vehicles under the searchlight, but the bullets were repeatedly bounced off by the machine gun shields and armored hulls, and they found that they could not stop the advance of these armored vehicles, and the situation in front of them began to despair, the morale of the Polish soldiers plummeted, and the soldiers were defeated by the German blows.

The officers had lost effective control of their troops, the Germans acted strictly in accordance with the rules of the village and town, they blocked the road nodes with armored vehicles, blocked the entire street with intersecting machine-gun fire, the searchlights on the cars illuminated the road, crossing the road became a suicide act, the troops could no longer move freely from block to block, the soldiers and ammunition supply lines were cut off, the Polish defense system was cut to pieces, and the carefully set blocking points were surrounded, which were immediately broken by the German grenadiers and paratroopers.

The Germans were unusually cold-blooded at this time, showing no mercy to the enemy, and the roads were littered with Polish soldiers who had been killed, many of them holding white handkerchiefs for surrender. A squad of German paratroopers with rifles with bayonets in their hands followed the main force of grenadiers along the main road in Barham, while collecting the remains of the previously killed paratroopers along the way. They searched the piles of corpses for their comrades, looking for possible survivors, and mending their bayonets when they met a Polish soldier who still had a breath.

The grenadiers remained in the compartments of the armoured vehicles, and under the cover of the vehicles, they fired grenades at the buildings where the Polish infantry were hiding, using rifles to accurately fire at the exposed Polish officers and soldiers. At the same time, heavy machine-gun fire was used to suppress enemy fire points at high places.

The German paratroopers had the opposite style, they were good at close quarters, and they liked to kick open the door, grab a submachine gun and sweep two magazines, or just throw in a few grenades, and then rush up to the second floor with their weapons and do it all over again.

The Polish machine gunners, who were hiding high in the building, had no way to retreat, and they were surrounded by the Germans in firing bunkers. Panzergrenadiers' heavy fire platoon has its own unique means of dealing with such targets, and they are equipped with a vehicle-mounted 37mm anti-tank gun.

This small-caliber anti-tank weapon, nicknamed the "knocker" by the German infantry, has proven to be only suitable for lightly armored targets, and is somewhat powerless against medium tanks in service. The disadvantages of this weapon on the battlefield in France were on full display, and the German infantry were almost accustomed to the sound of her shells hitting the armor of enemy tanks, so they gave her the nickname "Knocker".

At this time, this artillery became the best weapon for attacking enemy machine-gun bunkers. The grenadier gunners happily blew up the fire points on the roof with the accurate little cannon, and the Polish machine gunners, who had long been suppressed by the German machine guns, and his weapons tumbled and slid down the roof and smashed onto the pavement under the eaves.

The grenadiers advanced so quickly that even Zeisler was taken aback. The grenadier company commander was glad to have encountered bad weather, and the paratroopers reported to him that they had found a number of improvised cocktail bottles piled up in a Polish bunker, but it was raining heavily. The Polish soldiers were unable to ignite the weapons, when the paratroopers decisively killed the soldiers. The scene was found covered with damp matches that had been struck.

The platoon commander of the second platoon was the first to arrive at the predetermined position, and he led ten grenadiers to break up the Polish soldiers who were blocking. A group of paratroopers rushed out of the building where they were hiding, and the machine gunners lay on the sidewalk and opened heavy fire on the building at the other end of the street, covering the rest of the paratroopers to join the rescue force. By this time the paratroopers had been besieged for a full forty minutes, and there were only twenty-seven men left in the platoon, and they repelled five large-scale attacks by the Poles. Makes the enemy crush their teeth. At least half a platoon of Poles fell on the street, also inflicting the same number of wounded on the opposing side.

However, by this time they were almost out of ammunition, the last drum of the two machine guns remained, and the rest of the soldiers had only five rounds of ammunition each, if the grenadiers had not arrived in time. They were all ready for bayonet hand-to-hand combat with the Poles.

At this time, the two sides were in different positions, and the Germans regained the initiative in the battle. Zeisler ordered the three platoons of four armored vehicles to make a detour to the road north of the village, and one of the surviving paratroopers 222 armored vehicles moved with the third platoon, the heavy fire platoon blocked the open area to the east of the village, and the paratroopers and the second platoon of panzergrenadiers gradually advanced into the village from the southwest side, and he was ready to completely destroy this hateful enemy in the village.

The Polish troops had by this time lost all their anti-tank weapons and machine guns, and they were powerless to stop the advance of the German armored vehicles. Soon they were driven by the Germans to the southeast corner of the village and retreated to the church of St. John.

Major Solsky had lost his usual composure, and although he thought he was ready to die in battle, he even fantasized that the heroic sacrifice of the Solsky battalion could arouse the blood of the resistance of his Polish compatriots, and at the same time use their sacrifice to accuse the British of fraud and oppression of the Polish army, and he imagined that he would be recorded in the glorious history of Polish national resistance, as those of his predecessors. But when Solski actually faced death, he found that he was no more brave than an ordinary soldier.

Looking at the desperate eyes of his subordinates looking at him, and hearing the terrible screams of the wounded struggling to survive, Solsky suddenly fell into a panic, he suddenly feared that his decision was wrong, he didn't know if this sacrifice in front of him was really as useful as he originally thought, whether his sacrifice was really as glorious as those ancestors.

But soon he stopped dwelling on his thoughts, and an 80-mm mortar shell urged him to make a choice, and at this time the Germans did not directly bombard the church, they only made a warning with shelling.

This beautiful classical building has a long history, and Zeisler did not want to let it be destroyed in his own hands, not to mention the bad effects it would cause, the grenadier company had already violated military discipline, they had killed many Polish soldiers who tried to surrender on the way to attack, and he did not want to add more trouble to himself if it was investigated afterwards.

"Frank, persuade your opponents to surrender, let them lay down their weapons and come out, we guarantee their safety, I only give them three minutes to think about it, and when the time is over, we will immediately launch a full-scale attack, and then we will not accept their surrender again." Zeisler sat in the driver's seat and lit a cigarette under the radio light.

"We have cleared a house and the wounded grenadiers have been properly treated." Feng. Clawson climbed into Zeisler's command car, and Nikl gave him up his place behind the captain's seat.

"Thank you, I've asked Master Chief to persuade those Poles to surrender, tonight is enough, we need to stop and rest."

"Tonight? It was only two hours before dawn, and the regiment had already sent troops from the second battalion to come to support, but we had been beaten badly this time, and we didn't know how to write this battle report. Clawson removed the submachine gun from his neck and hung it on the machine-gun mount on the side.

"Write whatever you want, it's what it is, you don't make any mistakes. By the way, the code name of this Polish unit is Red Dragon, and they have a good name. ”

"Company commander, Sergeant Frank is out, the Poles have surrendered." Captain Nikkor shouted from the sidelines.

Zeisler hurriedly opened the armored cover of the lookout window in front of him and looked out, only to see that the doors of the church were all opened, and the Polish soldiers came out in line with rifles held high, and several Polish officers walked in front of the line, carrying untied belts in their hands.

"Where is your commander?" Zeisler stood in the rain with his chest held high, and the young German lieutenant raised his chin and asked the Polish officer in front of him.

"Major Solsky committed suicide just now, this is his pistol, he asked me to hand it over to you personally." A Polish second lieutenant stepped forward and, under the gaze of the German soldiers around him, handed a pistol to Zeisler's hand.

“VIS？” Zeisler looked at the weapon in his hand by the light of the headlights, apparently a custom-made product, with a white coat of arms inlaid with a red dragon breathing fire in the center. (To be continued......)