In the starry night sky, a C-47 transport plane painted with British army logo mixed in the huge group of aircraft flew northeast. In its cabin, filled with the roar of machinery, 26 heavily armed British paratroopers speculated about an unknown fate. 27-year-old Sergeant Eldegar. Young was one of them, a young man from Lancashire who had served in the prestigious British 1st Airborne Division in 1944 and was supposed to be discharged in the summer of 1946, but the sudden war, popularly known as the "Third World War", disrupted all previous plans. The great cause of love and longing could only be put aside for the time being, and as soon as the mobilization order was issued, Jan returned to the dangerous battlefield with his companions who got along day and night without hesitation......

Nearly two hours had passed since takeoff, and Jan could not be sure how the flight path of the group of transport planes had been determined, judging by the amplitude of the cabin sway, they had made at least two turns in the air, presumably to avoid the area where the enemy's air defense forces were relatively strong, and the sound of anti-aircraft shells was not heard outside the cabin along the way, and the simple silence was different from the unsuccessful airborne combat operation two years earlier.

Seeing the red light near the cockpit blink twice, the platoon commander, Second Lieutenant Brian, shouted, "Check the equipment for the last quarter of an hour"

I remember that at the end of the summer of 1944, when it was still a sunny day, the commander at that time also shouted the same words in the engine room, but not long after his words fell, the black smoke in the sky flashed with the sound of banging explosions, although the scope of the shrapnel was limited, but the airflow in the nearby airspace was still strongly disturbed, so that the transport plane weighing more than ten tons trembled as if it saw leaves in the wind, and raised its eyes along the engine of an friendly aircraft not far away was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, It caught fire, and some paratroopers hurriedly jumped from the cabin door, but only seven or eight people came out, and the plane lost its balance and flipped in a spiral and fell to the ground, and the fate of those who did not have time to parachute can be imagined.

Fighting the dizzying sensation, Eldegar. Jan turned his head to look out of the porthole, the sparse starlight reflected on the huge group of transport planes, and there should be groups of fighters in the air to escort them. As time went on, fears remained unanswered, and Young wondered uneasily: Did the Soviets have a weak defense in depth, or did they leave a huge trap for the Allied airborne forces?

The reason for such worries is that the memory left by the "Market Garden" operation is too bleak, and the scale of the airborne landing of the American and British Allied forces at that time was even greater, but the soldiers at that time did not expect that the German "weakly defended" Netherlands actually had a large number of well-trained SS troops, and their armored forces were close to the size of a full armored corps, and many of them were veterans of the battlefield who had been trained on the Eastern Front, if it were not for the absolute air superiority of the Allies. The Allied paratroopers who were airdropped to the Netherlands could not have known what a dismal fate would be

"Guys, last five minutes, get ready to stand"

The officers in the cabin shouted again, and in front of them was the target area of the airborne landing - Orsha in northeastern Belarus. The city is 100 kilometers away from Smolensk, an important industrial town in southern Russia, and 450 kilometers away from Moscow, the heart of the Soviet Union.

Before parachuting out of the cabin, Jan heard a comrade in front of him teasing, "It's 240 miles to Moscow, guys, goodbye on Red Square."

240 miles sounds like a long journey, but walking on two feet is a long process, not to mention the legendary fierceness of the Soviet troops, a long-cherished wish that neither Napoleon nor Hitler could fulfill with the union of America and Britain?

Young didn't have time to think about it, and his companions in front of him jumped out of the hatch one by one, and finally it was his turn, and he quickly made a cross on his chest, and jumped out with a mixture of firmness and apprehension.

Brave people are not afraid of the psychological pressure caused by altitude and wind, and once the parachute is opened, they take a steady position and carefully observe the situation below. Before taking off, the commander informed them that this time they were going to attack the Soviet airfield in the south of Orsha, which was the largest airfield of the Soviet army in northern Belarus, and the whole regiment of alert troops was stationed in peacetime, and the most basic fortifications were built, and the anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns were changed to flat-firing weapons, which could be called a great killing weapon for the infantry, but fortunately, their fighters and bombers would carry out two rounds of fierce attacks on the airfield before they parachuted, and if they were lucky, the Soviet guards there had suffered heavy losses and had no intention of resisting...,

In the light of starlight and flares, Jan saw a large gray-brown wilderness, saw an obviously lighter airfield, and the runway and hangar were obscured by heavy fire and smoke, and saw the Allied paratroopers falling down like snowflakes, and the Soviet soldiers stationed on the periphery were shooting at the air with various weapons, but fortunately, they were small in number and weak in firepower, so as not to pose too much threat to the Allied soldiers who were densely airborne.

When the A Corps of the Allied Northern Front Operational Group launched a fierce attack on Minsk, the capital of Belarus, 2,662 transport planes took off from the airfields of Poland and Lithuania like locusts around Orsha, with the city as the center, there are 4 Soviet field airfields and 7 large field medical areas within a radius of 30 kilometers, in addition, according to reliable intelligence, there are also a large number of combat material storage points and reserve warehouses here for the use of the front-line troops of the Soviet Belorussian Front. The 14,000 paratroopers belonging to the 18th Airborne Army of the United States Army and the 1st Airborne Division of the United States parachuted at an altitude of more than 400 meters, although they were not fiercely blocked by the Soviet ground fire, but the wind was stronger than expected that night, so that the paratroopers would land in a relatively scattered location, and after landing, they had to temporarily gather up and concentrate on the Soviet airfield and railway station, where a large number of Soviet alert troops were stationed, and there was even an armored unit temporarily stationed near the Orsha city to recuperate, which reached the brigade size in terms of the number of tanks. Fortunately, before the first batch of Allied paratroopers landed on the ground, the U.S. military had already dispatched powerful aviation to carry out a fierce suppressive bombardment of four Soviet airfields, a railway station, and the Soviet tank assembly area confirmed by aerial photography, which greatly restricted the speed of the Soviet army's defense and counterattack.

At the two Soviet airfields west of Orsha, the attack of the American and British paratroopers was unexpectedly smooth, they not only quickly annihilated the Soviet garrison, but also easily captured several Soviet fighters, and the anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns deployed by the Soviet troops around the airports also changed hands to become effective equipment for the Allied officers and men to organize defense, but the bombing of the American fighters damaged the main runway, and the paratrooper commander had to dispatch troops to carry out emergency repairs. At the airfields north and south of Orsha, the Soviets were significantly more defensive, and the American and British paratroopers who landed were met with very tough resistance.

"Watch out for the enemy's defense in place to the east of us, and watch out for bombs"

Hearing this unfamiliar voice, Jan had just unfastened his parachute harness. Some people say that the most dangerous part of airborne operations is the stage when you are hanging under a parachute and drifting in the wind, while others feel that on the contrary, the real danger has just begun when you put your feet on enemy soil. Many paratroopers quickly took out their guns and moved closer to familiar people after untying their parachute bags, and once they had determined a temporary combat position, they did not hesitate to open fire, and the crisp sound of gunfire filled their ears in an instant. There are constantly shaking figures in the line of sight, and there are also constantly shaking figures falling, and the machine guns in the distance are rattling and roaring, although it sounds not as terrible as the German MG42, but the 7.62 mm caliber machine gun bullet can also kill a living soldier in an instant

In his own paratrooper combat platoon, Young was an experienced squad leader who used the Stern submachine gun as a weapon, but he personally preferred Enfield, the pinnacle of this manual rifle, which was the staple of British troops until 1946. With his rich experience, he quickly lowered his posture and prepared for battle, but the nearby Soviets did not abandon the fortifications and pounced on them to kill, and the Stern submachine gun had a decent rate of fire and power in close combat, and the combat range of only 60 meters was embarrassing. Seeing an Enfield falling on the ground on the side, and I don't know which unlucky recruit's egg was left behind, Yang Xun picked it up, loaded his gun, and fired at the Soviet troops in the distance in a kneeling position. The first shot after landing had not yet entered the state, and the surrounding light was really dazzling, and Yang saw that the black shadow he was aiming at did not fall, but ran a few steps and squatted down, and the weapon in his hand was coherently jumping out with deadly bullets. In the crackling and rattling of the guns, the bullets of the Soviet soldiers were fired. Jan hurriedly reloads his bullets and rests his rifle on a protruding rock, and he fires at a laterally moving shadow.

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The butt of the gun nudged his shoulder, his left eye remained closed, and in his right eye, the figure under the crosshair immediately fell unnaturally. …,

Jan quickly pulled the bolt of his gun, but instead of coveting this long-range shot, he paid attention to beckoning his subordinates who had landed around him to assemble and fight. As the number of Allied paratroopers landing increased rapidly, the Soviet garrisons scattered around the airfield gradually lost the upper hand, and they quickly gave up their attempts to divide and kill them on the pretext that they were not firmly established, and retreated to the fortifications built on the hangars and the runway. For the Allied paratroopers, the airborne raid turned into a brutal offensive and defensive battle. On the two-kilometre journey from the airfield to the airfield, Jan and his men listened to the fierce gunfire coming from the direction of the airfield, and the battle at the airfield was more tragic than the rear commanders could have imagined from the beginning - at the end of the battle, there was not much barbed wire left around the airfield, and aerial bombs, artillery shells fired from all directions, paratroopers' grenades, and other weapons combined to cause damage; The defensive positions built by the Soviet army were full of broken limbs, bloodstained wreckage and twisted parts of anti-aircraft guns, and there were many empty ammunition boxes and shells scattered near the gun emplacement, which fully showed that the Soviet soldiers were * out after stubborn resistance; And the closer you get to the hangar and the air defense position, the more the remains of the paratroopers in combat uniforms......

"Tanks of the Soviets"

Before he had rested for half an hour, a panicked voice instantly aroused the worry in people's hearts. Soon, the rumbling of cannon came from the east. Although the American and British armies were also equipped with heavy gliders that could carry tanks, given the complexity of the night parachutes, they did not accompany the paratroopers on the first night's adventure, but were prepared to drop them on the next day, depending on the situation on the battlefield, where the attack vehicles were most needed. If all goes well, the regular armored units advancing from the ground will also come to join the airborne forces in about 48 hours.

The sound of artillery was far away, and the sound of explosions was very close, which also confirmed the fears of the paratroopers. After a while, the sound of machine guns was heard, and an officer shouted as he ran: "The anti-tank men are all going to the east, the Soviets are coming"

Such shouts, together with the figures of the soldiers hurrying away with their weapons on their shoulders, made those who remained panic leave a trace of happiness: at least they did not need to engage the Soviet tanks head-on, and if the troops in the east could not resist, then quickly retreat in the opposite direction.

In a short time, the roar of the tanks came from the silent wilderness, and from a long distance, the Soviet tankers could not wait to use the tank guns, the 85mm guns of the T-34 had a long enough range, but in the absence of flare guidance, their long-range artillery deterrence was greater than the actual damage. Allied anti-tank fighters deployed east of the airfield with their bazooka and PIAT (British anti-tank reflectors) lay in ambush in the wilderness under cover of night, waiting for their opponents to emerge from the darkness. It was a dozen olive-green Soviet tanks and hundreds of Soviet infantry arriving on motorbikes and trucks, who formed the first wave of the offensive towards the airfield. Such a strength was already an overwhelming advantage for an ordinary paratrooper unit, but the Allied paratroopers who landed at this airfield amounted to more than 3,000 people, and in addition to the battle losses, there was also the size of a reinforced regiment. When the tank-led Soviet unit broke through to the vicinity of the airfield, the paratroopers annihilated it in one fell swoop with the tactics that had made it difficult for both the German Tiger and the King Tiger tanks to escape......

A few hours later, it was getting brighter. He took a cigarette in his mouth, struck a match and put his hands together to protect the flames. The cigarette butt lit up, the familiar smell of tobacco quickly drifted through the air, and the tense nerves were relaxed again. Hunting an opponent is full of pleasure, but the prestige of the Soviet army's steel torrent really makes everyone standing here deeply afraid.

"Scared?"

With a cigarette in his mouth, he raised a stunned rifleman beside him.

"No, I'm not afraid of anyone, and I'm not afraid of death" the young paratrooper verbally did not admit defeat.

"When you come back home with the Order of Victoria, you're going to be a hero to be worshipped," Jan encouraged with a smile.

Before the cigarette was finished, the disgusting shout came from nearby again: "Soviet tanks have also been found in the north"

"Soviet tanks are not the devil's mounts"

Jan muttered with some indignation.

Except for a few unlucky ones who got lost during the parachute drop, the other soldiers in the squad gathered around Yang at this time.

The sky has not yet completely changed from dark and dark night to day, and the firepower of this battlefield has become very rich. Those hateful Soviet tanks were galloping through the wilderness, and a squadron of Lal-2s quietly flew in from the east. As they approached the airfield, they made the opposite of the German Stuka dive bombers - they lowered their altitude and flew quickly level. …,

The greatest charm of war is that no one can predict who will keep a smile in the next second. Moments later, a herd of wild horses swooped down from high above with the morning breeze, bringing with them all the sounds that defied the world. Even from a great distance, the Allied paratroopers who landed in the depths of the enemy could still witness their falcon-like agility.

In the blink of an eye, the Mustang dispersed the Soviet attack planes, but they swept over the position in a dashing manner, and the Allied officers and soldiers in the trenches still cheered selflessly

Driving away the Soviet fighters, the Mustang did not turn around and leave, but turned to attack the Soviet tanks that were "crawling" on the ground. The fields ahead were full of craters and smoke, and many Soviet tanks were hit, some of which had already started a fire, but the Soviet steel torrent would not retreat because of this little loss, and the real elite was still persistently engaged in counterattacks

A few minutes later, a group of Soviet fighters flew violently from the direction of Moscow, and they quickly confronted the Allied Mustang group, and the humming sound lasted for twenty minutes, and both sides suffered losses and were indistinguishable from each other.

At dawn, the main forces of the Soviet army, which had arrived from a long distance, finally arrived on the battlefield. To cooperate with this offensive, the Soviet Air Force was again dispatched. Since the elite combat planes were all concentrated on the southern front, they had no choice but to organize some of the old planes listed on the second line into small formations of two or three, carry small bombs and fly at low altitudes, drop bombs, strafe them, and then quickly evacuate. Although the air combat performance of these aircraft was far behind the mainstream of the times, the Allied paratroopers with weak anti-aircraft fire were still up to the task

In addition to the non-professional anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of the paratroopers, the only anti-aircraft guns scattered at various fire support points could be used to defend the entire defense line against Soviet bombardment.

Seeing an I-16 fighter not far away flashing with fire, Jan quickly lowered his head and shrank back into the trench. The paratroopers here are not very experienced, but when these vicious Soviet fighters strafe low in the direction of the trenches, the bullets still wail everywhere they go

In this situation, the soldiers in the trenches had no time to distinguish which explosions came from bombs dropped by Soviet planes and which from shells fired by Soviet tanks advancing on the ground, and they could only lie close to their humble positions, waiting for the fate ......of either repulsing the Soviets or being repulsed by the Soviets.