Although the bad weather and strong air currents made the paratroopers of the 8th Guards Airborne Army who took medium and small transport planes very unhappy, what kind of general led what kind of soldiers.

How can the famous and bearded subordinates have cowardice?

After calling the 11th Air Force to carry out an air strike on Kairouan, the 8th Army took the lead in launching an attack formation. Since each Guards Airborne Corps also had an army aviation division, there were only two divisions of the paratroopers.

Gao Zhanshan commanded the 22nd and 23rd Guards Divisions of the 8th Army to deploy on the alluvial plains below the Arras Mountains, and divided the troops into two routes, one to attack the British positions in the direction of Dashuichi, and the other to attack the high ground on the south side of the ancient city of Kairouan.

As one of the four holiest sites in Islam, the local Islamic population has repeatedly protested against the entry of Commonwealth troops into Kairouan Medina. Tunisians believe that seven Hajj pilgrimages to Kairouan are equivalent to Hajj to Mecca. The presence of British troops would destroy the famous mosques and bring war to defile the "world of Allah".

After repeated protests by the Islamists and several bloody clashes, the fanatical, stubborn Islamists won concessions from the British. The British army was forced to build the barracks on flat land southwest of the Great Reservoir of Agrabid.

It turned out that the British army was a rare time to be "soft-hearted" in the colonial area and sent itself into a desperate situation.

The 22nd Division of the 8th Guards Army was blocked on the high ground south of the ancient city, and the British Valentine 6-pounder gun, which was easily portable British heirloom and could be dragged by horses and even manpower, once again showed its miraculous ability, firmly suppressing the paratroopers of the 22nd Guards Division, which lacked the ability to return fire with heavy weapons, under the high ground.

On the other hand, the 23rd Guards Division went much more smoothly. Using the cover of the olive grove, a brigade of paratroopers approached almost two hundred meters outside the British barracks before being discovered. In a hurry, the British troops on the artillery position fired several 6-pounder guns flat to attack the paratroopers who were too close, but they knocked down the wall of their own barracks, accidentally wounded many comrades, and at the same time opened a way for the Allies to blow up an assault.

After the landing of the Dongying Paratrooper Division, the process of assembling was not all smooth sailing. Having never carried out a large-scale airborne mission, although after the surrender of Japan and the reorganization of the paratrooper corps, they underwent a period of training in the South Seas, but compared with the Guards Airborne Army, there was still a big gap in experience. Coupled with the lack of communications equipment, at least 1,000 paratroopers of the two divisions did not arrive at the designated assembly point within the specified time.

But it was these Dongying paratroopers who lost contact with the division headquarters that actually touched the ancient city of Kairouan by mistake. Due to the language barrier with the Tunisians, coupled with the beard and fierce look that are quite common among the Islamists, after being separated from the large army, the paratroopers who thought they were in danger couldn't help but pull the paratrooper assault rifles in their hands.

The sudden gunfire only angered the surrounding Islamists who were determined to protect the holy site. Although they had no weapons in their hands, they only used sticks and clods of earth to fight the paratroopers, but the power of loyalty and fanatical faith made them brave enough to face the heavily armed paratroopers and actually forced the group of paratroopers back a dozen steps.

An officer in the ranks, wearing the rank of major, was the first to come to his senses and shouted at the paratroopers who were constantly retreating, to the effect that a bunch of waste was actually scared off by unarmed Africans! Shoot, this is not the territory of the Grand Alliance, they are our enemies, shoot, kill them.

"Click, click, click......" DH-41 Han 41 type paratrooper assault rifle unique low recoil sound sounded continuously, the paratroopers are still humane, and did not use the massacre mode of continuous fire, but shot the most arrogant Islamists in the crowd in a single burst shot.

"Baga! Are you a bunch of? They are enemies, enemies! Kill them all! ”

The sound of the burst finally came together, like the sound of bean-sized raindrops falling on paper umbrellas, and all the paratroopers pulled the trigger and did not let go until all thirty bullets were fired in a shuttle.

When the soldiers in the khaki uniforms in front of them were not the British soldiers they could scare away with sticks and slogans, but a group of real devils, the Islamists who were still able to stand scattered and fled, but at least nearly a thousand people had fallen in a pool of blood.

This massacre is referred to in the internal materials of the Grand Alliance as the Battle of the Ancient City of Kairu: the 1st Eastern Ying Paratrooper Division, in the ancient city of Kairu, eliminated the British colonial forces that were preparing to reinforce the defenders of the Highlands, and left the Commonwealth defenders of the Highlands isolated and forced to withdraw from their positions. In this battle, Major Seiichi Isotani of the 2nd Parachute Division of Dongying was recorded as a second-class meritorious service because of his calm and outstanding on-the-spot command.

The internal records of the army are still relatively credible, and the British defenders, who were suppressed by the 22nd Guards Division on the high ground south of the ancient city, and who were bearded and temperamental, heard the dense gunfire coming from the ancient city. The British commander judged at the first time that they were flanked by the front and rear! In this case, the British simply could not hold this height.

Twenty minutes later, the attacking troops, who were suppressed by British fire, suddenly found that there was no movement on the high ground. After feeling the high ground on both sides, I found that the British army had withdrawn.

This battle made the proud bearded man cry and laugh. The new commander of the 7th Army in the rear, Ning Shu, asked how the battle was going, and the tall beard who was depressed replied angrily: "Continue to lie in the forest to raise your fart/shares, Lao Tzu can deal with these ghosts!" ”

- Ning Shuxin was rubbed by a tree branch when he landed in the air, and scraped a hole in the back of his pants.

By 10 a.m. on the 16th, the Allied paratroopers had taken full control of Kairouan! Of the more than 6,000 Commonwealth defenders, more than 1,000 were killed, more than 3,000 surrendered, and less than 2,000 troops fled to Tunis.

The number of missing and killed in the Guards Airborne Corps and the Dongying Paratrooper Company participating in the battle was no more than 500.

After Ning Shuxin settled in the "Three Great Gates" mosque in Kairouan, he sent a telegram back to the headquarters as soon as possible. Guided follow-up troops do not have to be airborne, they can land at a military airfield outside the city of Kairouan.

From 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Kairouan Airport became busy, and the remaining fighters of the Allied air force desperately intercepted, but could not prevent the transport planes of the Allied air force from landing at Kairouan airport. A J-42 Raptors squadron has firmly controlled air supremacy over Kairouan.

With the arrival of follow-up troops, Kairouan has become a transport station for the Allies to break through the Tunisian coastal defenses. It was not just the paratroopers who were transported through the air corridors, and the Allied forces played a decisive role in the battle.

When the Tyrannosaurus Rex transport plane transported the warrior tanks of the Airborne Army and the 75 mm caliber self-propelled guns of the Yushen, Ning Shuxin and Gao Zhanshan were no longer satisfied with being the airport guards, and before nightfall, more than 100,000 troops had been assembled in the Kairouan area. The Multinational Force had deployed almost all of its defenders along the coast, and the Allies had taken advantage of the emptiness in the interior.

The commander of the Mediterranean Front of the multinational force, the British, General Alexander, immediately ordered the 2nd British Dragoon Brigade and the Setlan Cavalry Division of the Soviet Union to attack Kairouan at full speed, hoping to take advantage of the weakness of the Allied airdrop of heavy equipment, and the British armored forces would be crushed in one fell swoop and recapture Kairouan Airport.

Otherwise, if the Allies airdrop hundreds of thousands of troops in, what kind of coast will they hold? was directly made dumplings by others.

The distance between Sousse and Kairouan was only forty kilometers, a distance of just over an hour for the Cromwell cruisers of the 2nd Dragoon Brigade and the Sedlan Cavalry Division.

The 8th Guards Army, which had just obtained its own paratrooper tanks and self-propelled guns, had just left the city and was about to go to Port Susey to explore the limelight, and the bearded man met the British army head-on.

This was the first head-to-head confrontation between the last British cruiser tank and the Han Army's paratrooper airborne light tank. It was also the only time in World War II that both sides faced off in an armored duel dominated by light tanks.

The 28-ton Cromwell vs. the 16-ton warrior are not in the same division. Cromwell's "6-pounder gun" could certainly penetrate the relatively weak armor of the Warrior, but the Warrior's 75mm smoothbore gun was also enough to destroy the seemingly formidable British Land Cruiser.

Moreover, the Guards Airborne Army did not lack anti-tank weapons, paratroopers operating behind enemy lines and lacking sufficient heavy armor were equipped with Shenfist 82 mm rocket launchers, which can be operated by two people, and the armor-piercing projectiles fired by portable weapons that can be operated by two people can easily penetrate uniform armor below 120 mm within 150 meters.

Therefore, the Guards Airborne Army, which had a small number of tanks, still bravely faced the British armored forces.

This battle was later known as the "Dance of the Light Cavalry" in military history, and the commanders of both sides used suitable tactics to apply the strike power in their hands to the extreme.

The bearded man used more than 30 "warriors" as bait and "Yushen" self-German howitzers to cover them with artillery fire, inflicting great casualties on the British dragoons.

The British commander also gave full play to the advantage of a large number of tanks, broke through the blockade of the Han army's self-propelled howitzers in a high-speed assault, and fired at the warriors at close range, making up for the disadvantage of the British tank artillery's too little power, and using the protection of its own armor, for the first time after the two sides declared war, they gained the upper hand in the tank hand-to-hand combat and destroyed most of the "warriors".

Although the two paratrooper divisions of the 8th Guards Army were forced to retreat to the city of Kairouan under the onslaught of British armored forces, and lost the paratrooper tanks that had just been transported by the "Tyrannosaurus Rex", the 8th Army was not a loser, and they destroyed no small number of British Cromwell tanks.

More importantly, the "Dance of the Hussars" bought time for the Allied defensive deployment at Kairouan, preventing the airdrop troops from being routed by British armoured forces.

With the arrival of the Allied G-41B "Brute Dragon" and D-4 "Strike Eagle" carrier-based attack aircraft, the British Dragoons and the Setlan Panzer Division, which had no tigers in the mountains and monkeys called the king, quickly changed their roles and became the targets of abuse.

The uncontrolled rockets on the attack aircraft are the big killers of the tank, and if any defeated pilot is encountered and attacks the tank with a light ground-to-ground missile, then Cromwell is even more of a cup.

That's no longer a question of destruction, but: how far the barrel can fly, how big the fireball can be!