"Sir, where are we going?"

"Bridge!"

"Shall we bypass the British army in front, then?"

"No!"

"Can we rush through?"

The officer, who didn't like to answer questions, turned his head to look at the soldier next to him, who was very willing to ask questions, and then turned his gaze back to the soldiers opposite. The armored car was very bumpy a lot of the time during the journey, and a considerable number of soldiers were initially prone to motion sickness and vomiting, although this symptom gradually disappeared with the increase in the number of times they took the car, but over time these people also developed the habit of keeping silent in the car, and it seems that this officer was also one of them.

In the compartment of the Trojan armored personnel carrier, which is about the same size as a regular truck, 10 infantrymen sit in two rows facing each other, with boxes of ammunition in the middle. The four walls of the carriage are half a man high, 8 mm thick steel plates, and there is a water-cooled Makqin on the top of the cab and on each side of the cabin, plus the armor that protects the cab, fuel tank and tires, the whole car is much heavier than a normal truck.

"Maybe!"

Although the officer had participated in tank armoured assaults in the Battle of Lodz-Warsaw and had participated in the battle with his armoured assault group after this landing, this was the first time he had participated in such a single squad to completely penetrate the opposing line. Perhaps only a master like Guderian, who specialized in the performance and tactics of tanks and armored vehicles, would dare to develop such a bold plan of action.

"But even a fierce bear wouldn't dare to enter the wolves alone!" The questioning soldier still didn't give up, and the other soldiers were already unhappy to talk to him, and everyone sat with their backs against the wall of the carriage with serious expressions, and the rifle butts in their hands were pressed down on the floor of the carriage.

"Ahead into the British-controlled area, everyone pay attention!"

The simple words came from the tanks at the front of the convoy and quickly reached the tanks at the end of the convoy, where the soldiers in the armored vehicles checked their helmets again and loaded their bullets. But before the convoy had engaged the British, there was a sudden rumbling of cannon fire in the rear, and the sound of a pianist's fingers skimming from the highest note to the lowest note on a keyboard was like a pianist's fingers, and in the blink of an eye, the ears of the people were filled with the dense and oppressive sound of explosions.

Several soldiers on the armored car held on to the steel helmet and poked their eyes out of the compartment, a large or small fire ball continued to rise on the flat ground and hills in front, it seemed that all the large-caliber field guns and heavy howitzers of the German army were opening the way for this convoy, and the shelling scene of a large number of artillery always seemed so exciting, and this was originally an era of cannons, machine guns and trenches, and the appearance of tanks and planes could not completely take away the role of artillery on the battlefield.

Under the ferocious artillery fire, even the earth trembled slightly, and the air seemed to heat up rapidly. High in the air, two massive gray zeppelins resembled the eyes of German artillerymen, directing their artillery fire to extend backwards in the direction of the convoy.

In a short time, several naval warplanes skimmed over the convoy at low altitudes, and the infantrymen only had to look up to see the striking Iron Cross under their wings.

Amid the sound of heavy shell explosions and the sound of air, the small convoy continued to move north in the slightly muddy snow, and the infantry sitting in the armoured car compartments lowered their heads and opened their mouths wide, and their armoured vehicles were bumped more violently by the artillery fire, and the road ahead began to become potholes.

After the baptism of artillery fire, the temporary bunkers and trenches in the area controlled by the British army became dilapidated, and the ground was full of British soldiers killed in the artillery fire, and damaged guns, carriages and other equipment could be seen everywhere. However, in order to make the British army disappear in this vicinity, artillery alone is not enough. After the discovery of this German armored unit, British rifle and machine gun bullets continued to fly in from all directions, and the yellow figures of British soldiers were faintly visible in some of the remaining trenches and bunkers, on the hills, and even in the craters of German shells.

For ordinary bullets, the German tanks and armored vehicles are not frightened, and the chances of the British army's pitiful anti-tank guns being deployed here are also very small, and the only thing that can pose a threat to the convoy here is the British grenades, a few divisional field guns, and a very small number of bullets that can be lucky enough to hit the vital parts of the armored vehicles from hundreds of meters away.

The armor on the walls of the car was hit by bullets again and again, and the grenades and small-caliber shells of the British army exploded near the convoy from time to time. The tanks used their own guns and machine guns to suppress the British fire outside, the machine guns on the armored vehicles were also roaring desperately, coupled with the bombing and strafing of their own fighters, this armored convoy was like a battleship bravely moving forward in the sea.

"Sir, are we going to Bonemouth?"

"Yes! But before we can do that, we need to take a bridge! ”

"Bridge?"

"Yes, Fording River Bridge!"

One of the interlocutors was a second lieutenant in the British army, and the other was an ordinary private. They were on a westbound train, and on the flatbed car they were in, two large water tank-like objects were covered in canvas.

"I heard that the Germans are very good tanks, can they beat our little nomads?" Through the thick canvas, the private could feel the hardness of the object inside with his hands, and from the outside, the big creature was about 2 meters tall, more than 3 meters wide, and nearly 7 meters long.

"I think it should be!"

In the opinion of this ensign, the "nomad" is an extremely surprising weapon, which has an offensive and defensive power that is incomparable with ordinary armored vehicles (in 1855, the Englishman J. Cohen made the first wheeled armored car by installing a machine gun and armor on the chassis of a steam tractor, and obtained patent rights, but this armored car failed to be practically applied). In 1899, the Englishman Sims installed armor and a machine gun on a four-wheeled car. In 1900, Britain threw armored vehicles into the ongoing Anglo-Boer War in South Africa.

The vast majority of British officers and soldiers had not yet seen the German tanks, and British researchers only knew about their appearance and performance from the French battlefield.

As early as the outbreak of the Great War, when the British Army Colonel Swinton visited Hankey, the secretary of the National Defense Committee, he suggested that weapons and armor plates be installed on the American Hotel tracked tractors, so as to make tracked armored vehicles capable of off-road to deal with German machine guns, as well as to make up for the lack of off-road ability of armored vehicles, and the weapons installed on such vehicles include machine guns and artillery, which can play a good role in both attack and defense.

Henkey immediately reported Swinton's idea to Secretary of War Kitchener, and it happened that the Germans had first dropped tanks on the Western Front in order to capture Verdun, and this new weapon immediately aroused great interest in various countries, especially Britain and France, which were at war with Germany. The British War Office then established the "Tracked Combat Vehicle Committee" and appointed Colonel Swinton as the head of the research on this weapon, and at the same time gathered a large number of technicians involved in the research and development of armored vehicles, including Colonel Crum, a veteran officer who had been engaged in the research of armored vehicles before the war. At about the same time, the French also set up special research institutes, and before the defeat and surrender of France, British spies obtained a considerable part of the research and design materials from the French, and the British Navy even sent submarines to smuggle several French experts who studied anti-tank guns and tank armored vehicles into the UK.

As the German offensive approached, the British War Office accelerated the research progress of this new weapon while making full preparations for war. Due to the high secrecy of this project, Germany, although it knew that the British were working on weapons similar to tanks, knew almost nothing about the situation with such weapons. Although domestic resources had reached the point of scarcity, the British still rushed to produce a batch of prototypes before the German landing, but like the "Eagle" fighter, the "Little Nomad" was rushed into battle without sufficient testing and refinement.

Even the midday sun doesn't give people a sense of heat in winter, and in the other flatbed cars in the middle of the train, more than 100 British soldiers are sunbathing next to piles of canvas, and on the roofs of other cars, there are anti-aircraft battle positions made up of sandbags and machine guns. After a lunch of canned food and bread, the soldiers were mostly lethargic. On the Southampton-to-Dorchester rail line and over the Fordin River Bridge, dozens of other trains are running fast, some from Taunton and then changing at Dorchester, and some directly from Southampton.

These trains, some loaded with infantry, others with large quantities of artillery and ammunition, occasionally overtook a regiment of cavalry advancing along the railway line. On the road, not far from the railway line, groups of infantry and horse-drawn wagons with cannons moved at a relatively slow pace, interspersed with a small number of trucks full of soldiers.

Although the marches varied in their methods, speeds, and compositions, they all had a common purpose: to make their way to Bonemouth via the Fording River Bridge. Above them, an occasional British reconnaissance plane flew at low altitude, and now all the British aviation could do was conduct a small reconnaissance on the premise of avoiding contact with the Luftwaffe.

After the departure of the German fleet from Cherbourg, there had been no planes over the Fording Bridge for a long time, and the strange battle continued under this sky with only clouds and flying birds. The attack and defense fought for only half of the town, and a dozen heavy artillery pieces could completely raze the place in a few hours, but both sides invested tens of thousands of infantry, and the battle was extremely fierce and brutal.

At the intersection west of town, the attacking and defending sides had been facing each other for nearly half an hour across the streets in the north-south direction, during which the intense gunfire had hardly ceased for a moment, and occasionally British small-caliber shells and German mortar shells fell, and the streets were littered with debris such as broken bricks, glass, and wood chips, and in some places even corpses began to stack up.

For the time being, the Germans have 12 Firebirds, 136 Mauser 1898s, 6 mortars and N grenades, as well as 9 professional snipers, including 1 Super Ace and 3 Aces. If the British had made a few more charges like before, the remaining five men would likely be crowned aces here. (At the suggestion of Chen Tian, the World War I standard formulated by the War Department made 50 people a trump card, and more than 100 people were promoted to super aces, and this standard will be appropriately raised after equipping a special sniper rifle and opening a sniper academy)

After the war, the British called it the "Death Crossing" and the Germans called it the "Sniper Bonus Point".

At the street end to the west of this intersection was an English-made 57-mm rapid-fire gun, and next to it lay several British soldiers with no weapons in their hands, who appeared to be the gunners of this gun, and there was still half a box of shells behind the cannon, and there was not even a single empty shell case on the ground. Obviously, the cannon was pushed here and didn't fire a single shot.

Despite hunting three gunners and forcing the British to bombard the opposite house with that cannon so far, Hildeland's mood was not very good. With so many peers on the street grabbing business, the speed at which he improved his record slowed down a lot, and the new record of 450 people who had planned to reach 450 by the end of this battle now seemed a little hanging. The morale of the British army was already showing signs of declining after suffering heavy casualties, and although on average each German paratrooper shot less than four British soldiers, the British lost more than half of their troops.

Where Hildrand was now was fresh and clear-sighted, and the snow beneath him kept his mind clear, the only thing he worried about was the occasional shell that fell nearby. He held a gun in his right hand and his left hand in front of the scope to prevent the lens from reflecting, and the few British soldiers who were still struggling and moving on the ground on the street had been removed by the medical guards holding white flags, and after three successive failed charges, the British officers and soldiers seemed to retreat to the two streets they had occupied to brew a new attack.

From above, Hildeland's grey uniform stood out against the white roof, and the only shelter on the roof was the stubby chimney next to him. After surveying the street, he slowly moved back behind the chimney.

In a few alleys behind Hildeland's house, Major Shields assembled nearly five hundred paratroopers, all with bayonets on their guns, and they were the first German soldiers in the defensive battle of Fording to use bayonets in hand-to-hand combat.

"Don't worry, although the British army is very numerous, the width of the road here is limited, and they can't spread it all at once! Even when we fought with the Russians, we were not left behind, and the British were even less so! ”

Shields encouraged the soldiers with the principle of "the brave wins when they meet on a narrow road", and he himself held a rifle with a bayonet in his hand. After the Battle of Bialystok, many officers and men of the East Prussian Regiment would proudly talk about several of these hard-fought bayonet battles, after all, their opponents were the Russian army, which was said to be the strongest in bayonet warfare.

Although the British attempt to use artillery for close fire support at the entrance of the street was destroyed by German snipers, the British artillery at the entrance of the town, grenades on both sides of the attack and defense, and the German army's own mortars caused serious damage to most of the houses at the entrance of the street, several houses that had collapsed or were in a semi-collapsed state, and the German soldiers guarding the houses were either killed or wounded or forced to retreat. The firepower of the blockade was much lower than it had been at the beginning, and the last wave of British charges was only one breath away from successfully capturing the area.

More importantly, Lieutenant Colonel Garris was no longer able to deploy more reserves to support the battlefield here, two regiments of British cavalry and a train had arrived from the direction of Southampton, and now the cavalry was slowly approaching the town of Qiaodong, and the troops and artillery brought by the train were being unloaded one after another.

When there was a faint buzz from the east, Shields and his soldiers looked up at the sky with expectant eyes, even if it was just a German reconnaissance plane, they would be very happy, and Hildeland on the roof turned sideways to look for the maker of the roar of the aircraft engines, but then flying over them was a literal British reconnaissance plane, with a rudimentary fuselage, grass yellow livery, and logos on the wings and fuselage, none of which were worthy of the Luftwaffe.

Hildrand raised his gun slightly to point at the British plane that was moving away, and he could see the figure of the British pilot from the scope, and the distance of more than 300 meters was also within his range. Two seconds later, Hildrand fired a shot in anticipation, but the scene he was waiting for did not appear, and the British reconnaissance plane still staggered forward, and soon began to turn right and circle. Even the title of Super Ace did not allow him to shoot down a plane with a single rifle.

The young shooter suddenly felt extremely lost in his heart, and the hearts of the paratroopers below were also clouded with an ominous cloud.

Hush......

The shrill whistle suddenly broke the temporary calm in people's hearts, and British and Canadian soldiers poured out from everywhere at once, and the street several meters wide was suddenly crowded, and taking advantage of this opportunity, four or five gunners quickly ran behind the cannon at the corner of the street. A gunner had just struggled to open the bolt, but his chest was pierced by two bullets in an instant, he wanted to find something to support his retreating body, but he tripped over a corpse on the ground, and finally could only helplessly stretch out his arms and fall backwards, falling on this sun-drenched but extremely gloomy street.