At a small mill outside Colernano, Dino Horvath and his soldiers ate a simple field dinner in a bunker dug in the afternoon. This Irish paratrooper combat squad consisted of 14 soldiers, and after a day of fighting, paid the price of 2 killed, 1 seriously wounded, and 1 missing, but fortunately, the ammunition consumption was replenished in time, and from the afternoon, the coalition transport planes landed and took off on the potholed runway of the field airfield on the outskirts of Belluno, bringing reinforcements and combat materials to the paratroopers.

Thanks to the coalition's strong air suppression and air transport capabilities, and to be more precise, the new United Kingdom's well-developed aviation industry and strong military reserves, the coalition forces provide sufficient firepower support for the airborne troops, and are able to send support troops to the airborne area at a rate of 20,003,000 troops per hour after the battle line is stabilized. By about 6 p.m., there were more than 28,000 allied fighters along the Piave River, consisting mainly of the Royal Irish 1st Airborne Division, the leading ace airborne force in Europe, and the Austro-Hungarian "Lightning" Assault Division, which was a lightly armed combat force that used transport aircraft as carriers to carry out rapid maneuvers.

After a day of fierce fighting, 11 towns and 46 villages along the Piave River, 96 fell into the hands of the coalition forces, and in the city of Belluno upstream of Piave, the coalition ground forces had joined up with the airborne troops, thus establishing a strong bridgehead. This meant that the 600,000 troops on the Italian border line were caught in the front and rear of the coalition forces. The Italians had only two options to escape the siege and annihilation: either regain access to both sides of the Piave River, or evacuate by sea using the southern port of Weynick.

In terms of costs and consequences, the first route is obviously more feasible than the second day, after all, the coalition forces have only more than 13,000 paratroopers in the early stage of airborne operations, and on average, no more than 600 troops are used to attack and occupy a town, and there are often only one platoon or even one or two squads attacking and occupying villages, while the Italian army has stationed at least 100,000 horses and horses within 30 kilometers east of the Piave River, and they can not only quickly draw tens of thousands of troops to counterattack backwards, It can also mobilize the regular army and reserve troops deployed in the area to respond, and give the coalition airborne troops a "pie".

As the last rays of the setting sun disappeared into the western sky, there was a sudden loud bang on the river. The crowd followed the prestige, and saw that the bridge leading from the city of Colernano to the other side was shrouded in a large cloud of gunsmoke. Obviously, this was an active blasting carried out by the coalition airborne forces to prevent a counterattack by the Italian army.

Not long after the bridge was blown up, gunfire could be heard faintly on the other side. Horvat climbed up to the mill to observe and ordered his soldiers to prepare for battle. Their current armament includes a 792 mm G43 general-purpose machine gun, seven 56 mm STG45 assault rifles, one Hubert semi-automatic sniper rifle, and one 1944 50mm bazooka, which are powerful enough to crush half a platoon of the Italian army, and after field replenishment, they are equipped with three bases of ammunition, which should be more than enough to defend the positions given the consistent performance of the Italian army in mobile warfare.

Not long after, the reconnaissance troops sent by the coalition airborne forces to the opposite bank waded across the river and returned to the west bank. During the dry season, most of the middle and upper reaches of the Piave River could be passed on foot, so it was naturally impossible to stop conventional tracked vehicles, and there was not much advantage in river defense. In fact, the reason why the allied airborne operations were able to succeed quickly was that the Italians did not expect that the allied forces would carry out large-scale airborne operations in the Piave River valley behind the border defense line, knowing that there were lofty mountains and mountains in between, and the most elite mechanized troops of the Irish seemed to be unable to exert their strength at all, and according to previous combat experience, if the ground forces could not tear through the frontal defense line in time, the airborne troops alone could not win the battle. Moreover, the arrival of the new United King** in Austria-Hungary at this stage is only a few hundred thousand people, and only a small proportion of the Italian-Austrian border battlefield with a million troops does not seem to be enough to play a decisive role, then the land part of this war should be conducted in the most familiar way for the Italian and Austro-Hungarian army units

"Attention classes! The enemy has approached the river bank and may attack at any moment, and our task is to hold the position and never allow the enemy to gain a foothold on the west bank of the river! "The full-time communications officer in the platoon brought real-time combat orders from adjacent positions.

"Which troop is on the other side?" Horvath asked.

"According to the scouts sent by the battalion headquarters, it is the 19th Infantry Division of the Italian Army, a front-line unit!" The communications soldier dropped this sentence and hurried to the next shift.

In this time and space, the auxiliary equipment configuration standard of the new United King ** team is equal to or even exceeds that of the German ** team, and portable wireless walkie-talkies and knapsack FM walkie-talkies have long become the standard equipment of mass equipment. Under normal circumstances, the wireless walkie-talkies of infantry units are distributed to the platoon level, and the FM walkie-talkies are issued to the company level, while the combat load of the airborne troops is lower than that of light infantry units.

"Gentlemen, you have all heard it, we are facing the Italian front-line troops, maybe some long-established ace division, we must not take it lightly, think that the Italians are easy to deal with" Horvath did not finish speaking, and suddenly a string of bullets came from the opposite bank, and when they whizzed overhead, the crisp sound of machine guns came.

“g43？” The oldest private in the class was amazed at the voice.

Horvath pricked up his ears to make a closer look, and then explained: "It's not the original G43, but the Italian copy of the Beretta 46 machine gun, except for the caliber, it is no different from the G43." I heard that it must be the elite Italian troops that can be equipped with this kind of weapon, because the production is not large, and there is still a big international dispute over patent rights. To put it bluntly, this is a technique that the Italians learned by stealing teachers! ”

A barrage of bullets flew over the forty or fifty-meter-wide stretch of the river, and Horvath and his soldiers hid in foxholes, quietly watching the situation on the other side. Soon after, the Italian mortars also joined the ranks of fire suppression, but in the night this kind of fire appeared more blind. After about twenty minutes of strafing and suppression, there were no casualties or loss of weapons and ammunition in Horvat's squad, and everyone was like a spring, ready to deal with the enemy's attack.

Catching a glimpse of a number of figures on the river beach on the east bank, Horvath reminded his soldiers in a calm and powerful voice: "Pay attention to the preparation for shooting"

After a while, several flares rose into the air, and the positions on the west bank of the river burst into dense gunfire, and Horvath shouted "fire" while using the light of the flares to "name the enemy" with the assault rifle in his hand.

In sight, the Italian soldiers in Italian steel helmets and camouflage combat uniforms were shot like cute turkeys one by one, and then fell backwards with their heads back, and even so, the people behind were still walking out of the bushes one after another, and many were shot almost as soon as they stepped on the river beach. This monotonous and shocking scene lasted for more than ten minutes, until it was discovered that their machine gun and mortar fire could not suppress the enemy on the opposite side, and his soldiers were suffering heavy casualties before they could cross the river, and the Italian commander called off the attack.

As the gunfire died down, Horvath had no time to think about it, and leaned sideways into the foxhole, grabbing bullets from his cartridge packets and expertly pressing them into the empty magazines as he cautiously probed to see what was going on on the other side. When the surface of the river and the banks on both sides were illuminated by flares again, the dense corpses of the Italian army made his heart tremble: an Italian infantry unit that was elite enough to be armed with Beretta 46 general-purpose machine guns, fought like moths to fire, was it not enough to prepare for the battle, or did the tactical literacy not change for many years? You must know that since the end of World War II, Italy's military investment has always ranked among the top six in the world, the size of the army is second only to Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan and Austria, and the quantity and quality of modern weapons and equipment have surpassed the aging Austria-Hungary, so it is known as the "third military power in the alliance camp".

The initial attack was severely defeated, and the Italians did not move for more than an hour, followed by intermittent artillery fire that lasted nearly two hours. In the face of field artillery firepower, which was much more powerful than mortars, Horvat's squad suffered casualties again, and they suffered unprecedented mental impacts.

After a series of tosses, the time was approaching midnight, and the shrill sound of metal tracks was heard on the opposite bank. Horvath counted the men and ammunition, and incidentally told the machine gunners and bazooka hand cameras to act, while the rest of the combatants prepared themselves. As expected, the Italians then launched a second wave of the offensive led by dozens of tanks.

This time with chariots carrying the line, the Italian troops quickly crossed the previously blocked river beach. In the process of wading across the river, the engine of the tank made a dull roar, the long-barreled 75-mm tank gun constantly bombarded the positions on the opposite bank, and the vehicle-mounted machine gun was also repeatedly strafing, which made the Italian offensive unprecedentedly vigorous.

Under the light of the flares, the angular silhouette of the Italian P43 tank was unmistakable.

Although it has shaken off the backward image of the Italian tank full of rivets, and its performance has reached or exceeded the average level of the main vehicle in service in the great powers, the P43 is far from being strong enough to dominate the battlefield. At a distance of less than 100 meters, as long as the AI-made Type 1944 individual rocket launcher hits, it can basically ensure a breakdown, and two to three hits are enough to achieve a destructive effect. As a result, the Italian offensive was quickly halted in the Piave River, the Italian infantry was killed and wounded, the survivors retreated, and only a few P43s engaged in the battle were able to retreat to the west bank

(End of chapter)

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