The British Army's 5th Infantry Division was not a rabble-filled straw chicken unit, but a well-trained regular army, a point that the surviving officers and men of the 5th Infantry Division had been emphasizing since the war. However, when they were attacked by the Germans that night, they behaved not much different from the rabble.

The camp of the Fifth Infantry Division was a slender flat land leaning on a hill, with an intercity highway on one side and a hill more than two hundred feet high on the other, stretching for five or six kilometers.

Due to the heavy loss of personnel and materials of the infantry division after the heavy artillery bombardment of the German army, the entire Fifth Infantry Division was mobilized to carry out self-rescue operations, and the officers and men were busy rescuing personnel, counting supplies, carrying and transferring equipment and supplies, cleaning up the wreckage and collecting the corpses.

Many of them only ate a combat ration at noon, but thanks to the city government's volunteer service team that brought hot water and drinks to the troops, they would not have been able to provide even basic fresh water supplies.

The division's logistics units were wiped out at the railway station, and they lost most of their transport vehicles, including the equipment and medicines for the entire field hospital, and all the field cooking vehicles.

Although four wagons of flour and rice were eventually saved, as well as a wagon of canned food, which seemed like a lot, it was only enough to support two infantry divisions' basic rations for two days, and the rations had to be strictly limited, otherwise these exhausted and hungry soldiers would have exhausted all the food for you in one day.

Logistics is always the key element of a war, which is also the essence of the German blitzkrieg, the German army is best at breaking through a little and then outflanking the enemy's rear in depth, attacking the enemy's material storage and transfer hub, eliminating the enemy's rear command system, the ultimate goal is to cut off the enemy's supply, in the shortest possible time to destroy the enemy's organization and morale.

A soldier consumes more than two thousand kcal a day. If you enter a combat state, this cost will be doubled. Therefore, feeding a soldier is the first element in continuing the combat effectiveness of the troops, followed by ammunition rationing and fire support in the rear.

If a soldier is hungry, the rate of decline in combat effectiveness is unimaginable to ordinary people, combat is a very physical and mental activity, soldiers can only exert their normal combat ability if they have sufficient energy, there has never been a unit in the world that can still achieve the final victory after running out of food, all the examples of war eventually point to a tragic ending.

Although the British Fifth Infantry Division was not yet in a desperate situation of running out of ammunition and food, everyone could feel the crisis caused by the lack of supplies, and they could only rely on the existing food supplies until the follow-up supplies arrived. These quantities are clearly not enough, and the officers have reminded the soldiers to be prepared to starve. This further weakened the already low morale, and the soldiers began to worry about their future.

After a long day of fatigue, the soldiers finally had a hot meal at dinner, and the field kitchen had cooked a pot of chowder on a campfire with a borrowed cauldron, and the cooks could not get anything better, so they had to stew the only canned lard, mushrooms, and corned beef with rice, but what they did not expect to make was unusually delicious, perhaps because of hunger. The soldiers quickly swept away the whole pot of chowder, and after a full meal, fatigue hit like a tidal wave, and many did not even bother to take off their uniforms, and fell asleep on the marching bed in the tent.

In all fairness. The 5th Infantry Division was indeed a trained regular unit, and the entire camp was planned in full accordance with the standards of the British Army's combat manual, and did not cut corners. Take it out and use it as a template. It took the engineer unit a whole day to set up a camp for two infantry divisions, in every sense of the word. This is all a remarkable achievement.

The battalions and companies of the infantry division carried their own field tents, which was a rare thing to be thankful for in the midst of a series of tragedies, because the troops finally did not have to sleep in the wilderness. In accordance with the regulations, the infantry dug drainage ditches and anti-aircraft bunkers around the tents, filled thousands of five-pound sackcloth bags with excavated earth, and used these earthen bales to build circular firing fortifications and artillery bunkers, covered the roofs with canvas canopies, erected flagpoles, and hoisted rice-shaped flags.

For security reasons, the ammunition was concentrated, and the sappers specially built a circle of earthen bags and set up a ammunition storage point, and boxes of bullets and mortar shells were stacked on top of each other to form square ammunition piles.

The infantry division has lost seventy percent of its ammunition reserves, and these are the reserve ammunition carried by each company itself, that is, the ammunition volume of the two combat bases, which cannot be supported even for half a day when it really enters the operation. In particular, the losses in artillery, the original artillery regiments of the division and the artillery of the battalion suffered very serious losses, especially in terms of ammunition, which could not even reach a base number, especially the heavy artillery ammunition, which was almost all reduced to ashes in the station.

The divisional commanders were so worried about this that they repeatedly contacted London, but the communication was intermittent, and finally they finally contacted the Kent command post, which asked the Kent command post to convey their report, in which they repeatedly stressed the danger of the present situation of the troops, and that if ammunition and food supplies were not obtained in time, the lines of the 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions would likely collapse within a day if the Germans landed at Folkestone within 48 hours.

As a result, that night, in the face of a surprise attack by German armored forces, the 5th Infantry Division could not hold out even for half an hour, and within fifteen minutes it fell into a general collapse.

The attack of the armored forces against the infantry can be called overwhelming, not only in the literal sense, but also in the spiritual sense. The British infantry had no idea that they would be attacked by German armoured forces on their home soil, and they set up standard field camps rather than combat positions. So the soldiers only dug some anti-aircraft trenches and individual bunkers, and there were no trenches and anti-tank trenches on the perimeter, and no one made similar suggestions, because if they did, no one would take them, and they might even be considered mentally abnormal.

Because the British army believed that the threat came from the sea, their combat position should be on the seaside, and this was just a temporary camp, maybe it would become long-term in the future, but that was later. The officers and men were confident that they would be able to defend themselves on the beach, and the camp would never be of combat use.

When the German vanguard tank fired the first shot, the entire attack front of the 224 tanks began to spray bullets at the British camp at the same time, the terrifying rate of fire of the MG machine gun made the gunfire coherent, it sounded like a large wheel saw or similar machinery roaring, trailing bullets with a long flame tail were like a colorful meteor shower on the British tent by the fence, tracer bullets tore through the canvas tent, penetrated the human body, ignited sleeping bags and mattresses, and soon several fireheads burned, Acrid smoke began to fill the camp.

The first British unit to respond was a night guard on the periphery of the camp, which was a machine gun bunker equipped with two Vickers machine guns, which was supposed to be responsible for the night air defense of the camp, of course, no one expected them to shoot down any planes with those two broken guns, but they could use tracer bullets to attract the attention of the Luftwaffe a little, and at the same time they could raise the air defense alarm to give the camp more time to react.

The guard had actually noticed the approaching German troops, the roar of the tank engines and the screeching of the track bearings were very harsh at night, but no one thought that it would be the enemy's army, and the Germans were still learning to gouge on the other side of the channel, and the armored vehicles that appeared in front of them were of course their own. The soldiers at the outpost were very excited to see reinforcements at the most difficult time, and one of the sergeants on duty picked up the phone and prepared to report the situation to the command. As a result, the next second the group of tanks suddenly opened fire, and the soldiers at the post watched in amazement as the hapless sentry was knocked to the ground by the machine gun, and then the hideous tank ran over the poor man.

The people in the sentry were stunned for more than ten seconds before they came to their senses, and they almost thought they were dreaming. Up to this point, they still did not know the identities of the tanks that had opened fire, and the sergeant hurriedly reported to his superiors what they had seen, only to receive a scolding from his panicked superiors.

German machine-gun bullets were already flying around the camp, and the basic No. 4 tanks fired a covering shot at the camp with their short-barreled guns, and the 75mm high-explosive grenades set off a storm of fire in the center of the camp, and the tents were torn apart in the explosion, and the fierce storm lifted the sleeping soldiers in the tents high and smashed them into the burning fire.

The battalion commander was already angry on the phone, and he first complained incoherently, asking why the post did not issue the alarm earlier, and he wanted to bring everyone in the guard post to a court-martial. He then ordered the post to immediately open fire and return fire, and must block the enemy's attack.

The British sergeant tried his best to resist the urge to throw away the microphone in his hand, this order was equivalent to sending himself and his brothers to death, not seeing the black pressure on the opposite side of the group of tanks, so that he could use anything to stop the other party's action. However, the order still has to be carried out, and the issue of the alarm is already a trouble, and if you openly disobey the orders of your superiors and do not return fire when the enemy attacks, it is a serious accusation that will cost people's lives. (To be continued......)