When, when, when...... The clock in the corner of the room struck twelve times, and the young officer sitting at his desk looked up at the old-fashioned clock with a wood-framed glass mirror, frowned slightly, tore a page from the calendar on the table, and threw it into a clump of garbage cans piled with waste paper.

A new page on the calendar reads April 24, 1945.

Giggles!

There was a soft knock on the wooden door, and the officer, still buried his head in the papers under the lamp, said casually: "Please come in!" ”

There was a soft creak, the door opened, and a neat and straight-looking SS lieutenant walked in steadily, standing respectfully: "Sir! Colonel Kasman from the Chancellery has sent an important appointment! ”

"Oh?" The young officer looked a little surprised, and as soon as he stood up, a hurried army colonel walked into the room, and he walked all the way to his desk, and placed a sealed file bag in front of him:

"Congratulations, Lorentz. Colonel Bach! The Reichshead has appointed you as the commander of the city defense of Berlin, a decree of appointment signed by him! ”

"Huh?" The young officer's eyes widened, as if he felt that the other party was purely here to entertain himself, but looking at the other party's serious expression, he had to believe this fact. He hurriedly opened the file bag and took out a thin piece of paper from it, the eagle emblem of the empire and the vigorous handwriting could not be clearer.

"Starting at 0:00 this morning, you can officially fulfill the duties and powers of the city defense commander!" The Colonel turned his head to look at the clock, "I'm sorry, I seem to be a minute late!" ”

"Oh, look at what you said!" Although the young officer's rank was the same as that of the other party, his tone was much more low-key, he put down the paper with a solemn expression and asked softly: "How could the Führer suddenly make such an important decision?" ”

The gray-eyed colonel replied without a smile: "The Führer is very pleased with the performance of the SS night battle unit, he believes that the night battle elite is the most reliable soldier of the Reich, and you, as the commander-in-chief of this army, are more capable of defending the capital of the Reich than anyone else!" Now, you can go directly to the City Defense Command to take up your duties, or you can send someone to summon the staff officers to you, and all the materials will be unconditionally accepted by you, along with the combat units and national commandos currently deployed in the Berlin city! ”

This sounded contemptuous and ironic, and the young officer looked at the colonel in embarrassment, with a look of incessant resignation.

"Alright, Your Excellency Commander, if nothing else, I'll go back to my life!" After the colonel finished speaking, he didn't wait for the young officer to ask anything more, put on his military hat and turned to leave.

"Hey......" The young officer looked at the figure of the colonel leaving, and was a little dazed for a while, and when the adjutant closed the door, he sat down in his chair very weakly, stretched out his hand and rubbed his temples, and said to himself: "The appointment of a colonel under the age of 30 as the commander of the capital's city defense seems to have never been done before in German history!" It's crazy, it's crazy! ”

After chattering for a while, the young officer finally opened his eyes, shook the phone on the table a few times, and picked up the microphone: "I'm Lorentz. Bach...... Give me the Gestapo headquarters, everywhere! ”

On her first morning in Berlin, Lynn woke up from her sleep.

He heard the screech of shells and the dense explosions, one after the other, suffocating!

The weather was no longer as cold as it had been, and the shelter had changed from a trench to an indoor shelter from the wind and rain, but the strong tremor of the ground shaking still reminded him of the first feeling of coming to this era. Everything is like an inextricable reincarnation, repeatedly, after all kinds of tribulations, back to the original point of déjà vu.

Turning over in panic, there was no black crowd of Soviet soldiers outside the observation hole, and experience told him that the shells were coming from outside the line of sight.

Looking helplessly at the soldiers who were still following him, Lynn sighed, tightened his ears, and silently endured the wrath of the enemy's long-range heavy artillery.

It seems that the words in Berlin are even worse than in Oranienburg.

I slept in a daze, and when I woke up again, the shelling was over, but I could still hear the faint sound of gunfire when I pricked up my ears, far from here and very close to Berlin.

As a result of the cross-examination, it was already night when Lynn and the others entered the city of Berlin yesterday, and now they can see through the observation holes in the windows that there are barricades, anti-tank barriers and concrete fortifications everywhere, and the buildings at the railway station, bridges and fork crossings have been converted into defensive support points, and the banks of the canals have been designated as key defense areas. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole of Berlin has been turned into a huge fortification - just as the Soviets did in Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow in the early days, but the fate of both sides was doomed.

Reluctantly tidying up his clothes, Lynn said to his soldiers, "I'll go to the defense area of the 'Nordic' division and see if I can find my old friend!" ”

The soldiers watched their commander leave with trust, and after their years at Fort Oranien, they were perhaps as they did to the "butcher" of Lynn.

The building where they were sheltering was the Army Library in the north of Berlin, where precious books and materials had long since been shipped to the safer south, and the interior of the huge library seemed empty, its solid façade and towering staircase were favored by the Defense Command, and all the windows were reinforced and sealed, leaving only firing holes to form a crossfire with the barricades and underground fortifications on the ground.

As one of the hastily assembled 200 night assault battle groups, the 167th Combat Group may not have been the most prominent, but the growth and performance of the soldiers, coupled with the previous specialized training and the expensive and advanced night vision equipment, should not ignore the role of such a force in urban defense. Therefore, Lynn and his men were assigned a different mission than the other soldiers stationed in the building, and they were incorporated into the night combat commando team of the Berlin Defense Command, and they went out day and night, waiting until it was dark to use their excellent night combat skills under the name of "vampires".

After leaving the building, Lynn headed straight east. Last night, he learned from the officer who was in charge of arranging the supply of military supplies that the new defense area of the "Nordic" division was adjacent to the army library. After the failure of the "counterattack", the elite SS Panzer Division first retreated to Stettin, and after the loss of the city, they held out at Altdam on the Oder for half a month, which was so tragic that the division suffered more than half of the casualties, and then withdrew to Freinwald to rest, where it was replenished in time with some recovered wounded soldiers and naval and air force combatants, and retreated to the Berlin Line a week before the fall of Oranienburg. In the face of the fierce attack of the Soviet troops, this SS unit, which was mainly composed of volunteers from various Nordic countries, fought fierce battles for nearly a week, and only two days ago abandoned its outlying positions and withdrew into the city of Berlin.

Lynn didn't know whether to regret or rejoice in the legendary experience of the "Nordic" division - it was undoubtedly a source of pride to have such a combat experience, but with the brutal casualty figures, no one could be sure that she would have had the good fortune to survive from start to finish. If he hadn't joined the "Vampire" commando, he might have died early, and he would have slowly rotted under the dirt by this time. Because of this, he desperately wants to know if his old boss, the original leader "Butcher", is still alive.

Crossing the street with a triangular anti-tank barrier, Lynn entered a lateral position with roads and buildings, where the soldiers looked indistinguishable from the average SS unit, except that their armbands clearly read "Norland", which is why they were often referred to as the "Norland" division.

The last time I had a quick glance at the field hospital and the "butcher" on the front line, more than a month had passed before I knew it, and Lynn had no way of knowing the situation of the old boss, and even whether he had adjusted the company, so he had to be the same, and asked the soldiers around him "Sergeant Finn of the 2nd Battalion and 2nd Company of the 24th Regiment" as he walked, but most of them shook their heads and said that they didn't know, except for a young soldier who thoughtfully said that the Finn he knew had died a month ago, but he was not a sergeant but a sergeant. Hearing this man say this, Lynn was even more apprehensive, it was not surprising that there were people with the same surname in a unit, and he was unwilling to give up. It took most of the day to continue to inquire along the position, and basically walked from one end of the "Nordic" divisional defense zone to the other, but there was still no gain. Could such a big living person disappear out of thin air?

(To be continued)