The British private pulled the bolt of the gun, and a golden bullet case pulled out the chamber and rolled and fell on the breast wall in front of the trench.

"Watch out for shelling!" The platoon sergeant roared. The soldiers in the trenches hurriedly held their rifles and squatted down with their heads covered with their hands. The next moment, a series of whistling sounds that tore through the air rang out, and then cast-iron shrapnel as dense as raindrops covered an entire clearing two hundred meters wide in front of the position.

"They're destroying minefields, and all the stumbling wire we've set up is gone." The corporal squad leader spat and lowered his head to shake off the dirt on the steel helmet.

"Stand up, the Germans are going to attack." The platoon sergeant continued to issue orders, and after the death of the deputy platoon commander, he became the highest-ranking man in the trench.

The 2nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers Regiment of the British Army, this historic unit has always only been responsible for the defense of the homeland, so that it was not incorporated into the expeditionary force and escaped the disaster of Dunkirk, but now these soldiers and officers know in their hearts that this glorious old force is in danger this time. Although as the elite of the home army, the soldiers are trained hard and well-equipped, but there is a fatal flaw, this unit has no actual combat experience from top to bottom, and has only participated in some exercises and parades, playing tricks on the table.

But when the battalion moved to the front, the morale of the officers and men in the company was high and confident, and the soldiers thought they were well-trained, not the incompetent parallel traders of Dover, and thought that if they were careful, they would never repeat the mistakes of those guys.

In fact, the Royal Fusiliers Regiment was not in vain, at least in terms of equipment, ahead of most of the army's ordinary troops, not only did the battalion have its own artillery and engineer baggage units, but each company also had a rare anti-tank platoon, although only two two-pounder guns and anti-tank rifles, but it was enough to make the brother troops covet.

However, when these proud soldiers of the British Empire really went to the battlefield, they knew what the cruelty of war was, and how ignorant and arrogant their previous performance was.

In the first encounter, the Germans showed them what a real elite force is. What is called a hundred battles of heroes? It took only half an hour for the German infantry to fully break through the first line of defense they had constructed, and in just thirty minutes, the Royal Fusiliers lost all their anti-tank weapons and almost half of their men, including one infantry company that was completely annihilated by the Germans because it could not retreat too late.

Immediately, the remnants of the British troops withdrew to the second line of defense to rest, and the Germans also temporarily stopped and began to consolidate the positions they had just occupied, because although the Germans had achieved brilliant results, they were not without damage, and under the fierce fire of this British unit, many brave German soldiers fell on the way to the charge.

For the next half hour, soldiers on both sides fired at each other in a messy exchange across a 400-meter-long meadow. The main purpose is not to kill the enemy, but to increase the psychological pressure of the opponent. Although the British soldiers were extremely tenacious, they could not change the fact that the initiative was in the hands of the opponent, they were stuck by the Germans, and the losses of weapons and troops were serious, and there was nothing to be done but passive defense. To add insult to injury, the German shelling broke the telephone lines, they lost contact with the higher command, and the reinforcements promised by the higher authorities were nowhere to be found.

The German Army on the other side didn't care about that. As soon as the offensive forces were regrouped, they immediately launched an assault on the British second-line positions. As is textbook standard, after a preparation for artillery fire, the offensive is in full swing. Follow the practice of daytime positional combat. The German infantry began to release white smoke at the front of the British position, obscuring the view of British machine-gun fire and covering the assault of the infantry assault group.

The British had already suffered before, and knew how powerful the Germans were. However, suffering from the lack of artillery firepower, it was unable to come up with a corresponding countermeasure plan. The British soldiers could only shoot blindly into the smoke field, hoping to cause some hindrance to the German infantry. This approach proved to be ineffective. When the smoke began to dissipate, the British soldiers were horrified to find that the gray figures of the German assault soldiers were already close at hand.

These well-trained German light infantry, moving quietly and quickly in the smoke, did not rush to the front, but cut diagonally through the open space in front of the position, and attacked the relatively weak flank positions of the British army. Finding that the smoke was about to clear, the German soldiers increased the speed of the assault, they ran quickly, and the machine guns and mortars on the German positions began to fire continuously, suppressing the British machine gun fire, which was the greatest threat to their infantry.

Once again, the German infantry offensive tactics worked, and the weakness of the flintlock regiments' lack of combat experience was exposed here, and this time they no longer had front-line artillery fire capable of threatening the light infantry assault.

Although the British soldiers tried desperately to shoot, it was to no avail, only two soldiers of the German commando fell in front of the position, and the remaining squad of infantry roared into the British position. The German infantry showed their superiority in close-range firepower in the British trenches, and soon the British battle line collapsed along with their morale, and the soldiers threw down their weapons and scrambled to crawl out of the trenches and flee to the alleys not far behind.

From this point on, there was no third line of defense in the city of London, and even if there were, it was impossible for these frightened soldiers to continue fighting. The German commander, of course, did not waste the opportunity in vain, and he ordered his troops to pursue the entire line, capture as many prisoners as possible, and seize the weapons and supplies of the other side. At the same time, the battalion commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, a major, reported to his superiors that the Cypriot Corps had broken through the perimeter of the British defenses and entered the city of London.

At this time, Guderian's tank forces also completed the outflanking campaign of the city of London. The vanguard of the 2nd Panzer Division was progressing smoothly in the early stages, and it can be said that the momentum was like a bamboo. The intelligence proved to be accurate, and there was indeed a huge gap in the western defensive line of London. In order to occupy the gap before the British could fill the hole, Major Heisler's armored battalion rushed forward like a raging fire, ruthlessly crushing anyone who dared to stand in his way, and countless peaceful and beautiful neighborhoods outside London were reduced to burning ruins under the tracks and guns of German tanks.

The village and town combat manuals issued by the British army misled a large number of people, and they set traps strictly according to the methods written in the manual, only to find that they encountered a completely unreasonable opponent, and the British National Guard members angrily said that these Germans did not follow the rules and did not follow the routines written in the books at all. The Germans were so simple and brutal that they would blow up the house and the entire neighborhood if they spotted a bullet in a room.

The various traps and barricades carefully arranged by the British sappers basically did not play any role, because there was no corresponding fire cover, and the Germans easily cleared these expensive obstacles one by one without any obstruction.

Major Heisler's tank battalion was not unscathed along the way, at least five No. 2 and two No. 3 tanks were damaged, more than 20 German armored soldiers were killed or wounded, and the Panzergrenadiers also suffered considerable losses. Although the position was then razed to the ground by angry German panzers, the damage was already done, and no amount of remedial efforts could save the lives of the soldiers.

The 2nd Panzer Battalion finally reached the target area within the scheduled time, and Major Heisler led his men to defend in place, repelling five major British assaults, including tanks, within three hours. By the time the follow-up troops arrived, the panzer battalion was on the verge of running out of ammunition, its machine guns were almost depleted, and on average there were only two shells left for each gun, which would have to be used as bulldozers if the British continued to attack.

Guderian's armoured group quickly secured the breach, and he continued to advance along the intercity highway from south to north toward the Thames, using the 2nd Panzer Division as an arrow. After the German armored forces were inserted into the flank of the British defense line on the western front, the western section of the outer defense line of London was now useless and completely lost its defensive role.

Because the western part of the city seemed relatively safe compared to the eastern and southern lines of defense, which were directly facing German attacks, the only people in those positions were a rabble, mainly reservists and Self-Defense Forces, who were responsible for the defense.

When they realized that the Germans had appeared behind them, cutting them off from the city of London, they immediately fell into a panic. Because of the shortage of supplies, these units had no food reserves at all, and they relied on the city of London for daily supplies, and now all the key supply routes were cut off by the Germans, and these people had to run out of food that night.

The British officers were prepared to organize a counterattack according to the orders of their superiors, but these original common people were not ready to buy it at all, in their opinion the battle had been lost, although they swore to defend Britain and defend His Majesty the King, but let them carry rifles and grenades to attack the German tanks, they thought that they were not crazy to that extent, but if the officers were willing to try, they could have waved their flags and shouted for them from afar.

Soon the officers lost control of their troops, and by the afternoon more than 100,000 men had broken up and scattered, and these men did not dare to cross the German line back to London, so they ran to the surrounding towns and villages to take shelter for a while. In their opinion, the battle could not be fought forever, and many of them were prepared to stay there until the war was over, and then return to the city to reunite with their families.

Ask for a monthly pass, now in the New Year's double monthly pass period, vote for one top two, a rare opportunity, I once again ask everyone to vote for the monthly pass in their hands after reading the chapter, thank you for your support of this book. (To be continued.) )