"Retreat, Frenchmen, retreat!"

Mitterrand heard someone shouting at him in French, but he still didn't get up, still firing indiscriminately with his M1 rifle - he knew that the Germans had "defeated" and that it was time to go to freedom. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

But the opportunity passed him again, and he was dragged up and dragged backwards, and the man said in stiff French as he ran: "Now is not the time to fight hard, we must get out of here quickly......

Mitterrand turned his head to look at the man, and it turned out to be the platoon commander Fram (that is, Brandt), who had just been promoted to second lieutenant. He was just about to pretend to fall, and then shake off this nasty Nazi, when a loud "boom" came from behind.

Mitterrand hurriedly looked back, and saw that the smoke of the explosion had not yet cleared from the flare-lit battlefield, and in the smoke, a huge T-26 (M-26) tank seemed to be lying on its stomach, and the armor plate on the right side of the front was charred black. It is clear that this hapless tank pressed the Germans with the "Taylor magnetic anti-tank mine". The "Taylor Magnetic Anti-Tank Mine" is a powerful magnetic mine with a charge of up to 5 kg, which is enough to blow through the chassis of the M-26 tank.

However, the 41.9-ton guy has not completely lost its combat effectiveness, and the M2 Browning heavy machine gun on the top of the turret is still firing fiercely. The other M-26 and M4A3 tanks on the battlefield stopped moving forward and began firing wildly with machine guns and artillery.

Along with these tanks were American self-propelled guns and possibly some towed guns. The shelling came quickly and violently, in stark contrast to the "sluggishness" of Soviet artillery on the Soviet-German battlefield. Brandt, who had fought the Soviet-German battlefield, even believed that the level of artillery coordination of the American army was almost on par with that of the German army!

Brandt did not dare to continue running in the face of such fire, and he jumped into a crater that had just been blown out by a shell, perhaps frightened by the heavy artillery fire - veterans of the battlefield knew that the crater was a good place to hide from the shelling, because it was unlikely that two shells would land on the same spot (which would not have occurred if the shelling fire density was not high enough).

While Brandt and Mitterrand jumped into the crater to avoid the shelling, Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzenegger had already directed the armored cluster to retreat to a small lake. Small lakes and marshes are common on the island of Newfoundland, but it's still a colder April and most of the swamps haven't thawed, but the ice on the lakes has melted and is now covered with ice floes, making it difficult to navigate.

A road passes by the small lake, which is the main access to Grace Harbor to the south. Although the terrain of Newfoundland is mainly terraced, not to mention dangerous (attacking from the beach, it is not difficult to move on the platform), there are many places for tanks to pass, but the road is still the fastest, and the American armored and infantry divisions have a large number of wheeled vehicles, which are not suitable for off-roading.

In addition, now that Grayshaven is under onslaught by the Germans, most of the American troops who provide rescue will not choose to pass through the wilderness.

So Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzenegger decided to set up an ambush on the side of the road, relying on a lake full of ice floes, to delay the Yankees again.

While Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzenegger was busy positioning his tanks and tank destroyers, the American shelling stopped again. Brandt and Mitterrand were lucky (they would have been lucky enough to get together) and crawled out of the crater unscathed and continued their retreat. During the retreat, the two men also saw two burning German armoured vehicles and the mutilated corpses of scorching people scattered around, as well as some other damaged weapons and fragments of unknown objects.

Seeing this scene, Mitterrand thought to himself: In the round of shelling just now, the German paratroopers still suffered some losses.

"The French," Brandt said to him suddenly, "don't worry, these losses are nothing, the Americans are still too slow, they are too careful, they don't have the ruthlessness of the Russians, otherwise we will be miserable." ”

His analysis was not bad at all, the American 16th Panzer Division, which was now on the officiating, actually had enough strength to crush the German forces that were blocking them—as long as they lost more than a hundred tanks and two or three thousand casualties.

Not to mention that the Soviet Red Army was replaced to fight, or the elite of the American army, which had fought the bloody battle in the Hawaiian Islands, and the German blocking force had already been defeated. However, most of the elites transferred from the Pacific theater went to the Caribbean theater, and none of the troops that went to Newfoundland had ever been on the battlefield, and even Major General Ross, who commanded the operation, had never been on the battlefield in this world war.

Although he is a division commander of an armored unit, his way of thinking is still positional warfare. Tonight, he also adopted a very war-like "infantry, artillery, and tank combined advance," fighting cautiously, and when he encountered the Germans' "stubborn resistance," he immediately bombarded it with overwhelming artillery fire, and then crushed it with tanks and infantry. In such a steady lay, it only took three or four hours to advance nearly 5 kilometers. Such results were good during the First World War, but they are very conservative at the moment. After all, the 16th Panzer Division is an armored force with sufficient mechanized troops.

"General, we can advance a little faster." Colonel Kabaev, the Soviet adviser to Major General Ross, had been timid a few hours ago than Major General Ross, but now he was bolder.

"Can it be sped up?" Major-General Ross stood on a high ground, crossed his arms as he looked at the tanks and infantry who were organizing an offensive formation on the flat ground below, and asked with a smile, "Isn't it fast enough?" At this rate, it will be possible to advance to Grace Harbor before dawn. ”

Kabaev shook his head and said: "Major General, the Germans don't have many tanks and tank destroyers, about thirty, as long as we are not afraid of losses, we can definitely defeat them quickly, and then it will take another hour to rush to Grayshaven." ”

"Not afraid of losses?" Major General Ross frowned, he had heard of some of the Red Army's tactics on the Soviet-German battlefield regardless of casualties.

"That's right! We still have 55 M26s that can be driven, and the number of M4A3, M10 and M36 is more than 150, and if we concentrate on a wave of assault, we can completely crush the enemy in front of us with a maximum loss of 100 vehicles and 1,000 to 1,500 soldiers. Moreover, most of the vehicles could be repaired, and the Germans did not have 88mm and 105mm guns, so the ability to damage the vehicles was limited. ”

Although this colonel of the tank corps of the Soviet Red Army is very young and a cadre promoted after the Great Purge, after the baptism of the Soviet-German war, his understanding of the German army and the use of armored tactics have reached a very high level. Still, his Orientalized baby face (he's a Kazakh) and GCIST warrior make his words less credible.

"Vehicles are not a problem," Major General Ross shook his head, "but losing 1,500 men in two or three hours is still too much......"

His armored division is not very many, less than 14,000 people, and now it has three or four hundred casualties, and if it is 1,500 more, then the casualty rate in one night is as high as about 14%, which is really too much.

"Major General......" Colonel Kabaev frowned, he really couldn't imagine that a major general's division commander would care about the loss of a thousand, hundred, or less than two thousand lives. Time was of the essence, and if we did not hurry up, Port Grace and Port Cabernier would most likely be occupied by the Germans. ”

While the two were talking, a staff officer of a division headquarters arrived in a jeep and reported loudly: "General, I have just received a report from the military headquarters that the Germans have occupied the port of Calburny. ”

"What?" Major General Ross was stunned, "So fast?" ”

"What about Grace Harbor?" Colonel Kabaev asked busily. "How's it going there?"

"Very critical." The staff officer replied, "The Germans are attacking fiercely, regardless of the dead and wounded!" ”

"Major General!" Kabaev immediately persuaded that "if the Germans take Graceport, they will have 2 available ports...... As soon as we let the ships carrying reinforcements move into Concepson Bay, we are in big trouble! ”

Major General Ross seemed a little hesitant, thought for a while, but shook his head and said: "Port Cabernier is larger than Port Grace, and there is a fishing port called 'Expectation Bristol' nearby, which is estimated to fall into the hands of the Germans soon." The Germans then had two ports at their disposal on the island of Newfoundland...... It doesn't matter if there is Graceport or not, so it's better for us to play it steady. ”

Kabaev sighed inwardly, he knew that the American major general in front of him had made the mistake of conservatism, which is a common mistake of inexperienced but high-ranking "old men...... Now the Americans are afraid that they will be in a bitter battle on the island of Newfoundland!

Almost at the same time, Vice Admiral Fraser, the British Supreme Commander on the island of Newfoundland, had already arrived in Port Grace in the heat of battle on a Fairmeyer B-class gunboat.

The battle in the port area has reached the final stage, and unlike the caution of Major General Ross's 16 Panzer Division, the German onslaught at Graceport can be described as a dead and wounded! Tank No. 4 plunged directly into the street fighting, risking being destroyed by anti-tank fire to get close to the complex held by the American army, bombarding every house with 75mm guns! Their paratroopers were like man-eating beasts in the night, carrying all the bullets and shells that came at them, rushing to the buildings that had been smashed into ruins by tank guns, occupying them, and then no one could drive them away from there.

In just a few hours of fighting, most of the small Grace Harbor had fallen into the hands of the Germans, and the American troops were compressed into a narrow area near the pier, only to rely on the support of 240mm guns on Bell Island, 20 kilometers away, to not be driven out to sea.