Capítulo 120: Chapter 42 The British launched an attack
At the beginning of August, the weather was supposed to be the hottest of the year, but the Isle of Wight, known as the best leisure resort in southern England, lived up to its reputation. Under the refreshing sea breeze from the English Channel, the daytime temperatures rarely exceeded 32 degrees Celsius. The strong winds blowing from midnight to noon swept away the excess heat from the ground, abruptly lowering the surface temperature to 25 degrees Celsius. Such fluctuations made the German soldiers, who had recently been sunbathing on the French coast wearing tank tops, experience firsthand the unpredictable weather of England!
In a field about 6 kilometers south of East Cowes Harbor, young Air Force Lieutenant Oliver Scoob leaned against a pine tree, silently watching German paratroopers and SS troops vigorously wielding their tools under the sunlight. Like moles, they dug out one strange and ugly trench after another from the originally flat and fertile land. This scene reminded him of a photo he had seen in his childhood: German soldiers wearing pointed helmets, sitting numbly in trenches filled with mud and water, completely unaware of when the war would end.
On the back of the photo was written "1916, France."
East Cowes, at the end of the line of sight, was originally a lively port. Yesterday at noon, when the Germans launched a ground attack, there were still some buildings there, either intact or with only a few holes in the walls. But in less than a day, it seemed to have been hit by a high-intensity earthquake, with only piles of ruins visible from afar, devoid of any signs of life!
The surviving British civilians and prisoners of war had long been moved by the Germans to the Newport Harbor area. The wounded could only receive the most basic treatment. In this way, Lieutenant Scoob always felt that the war was somewhat different from before. Whether it was because the great leader was still expecting a change of heart from the British people, or because Colonel Hans Logan himself was a kind commander, Lieutenant Scoob, as a small soldier, could not know for sure.
Gently wiping the Mauser rifle in his hand, equipped with a high-powered sniper scope, his already quite precise marksmanship achieved a new breakthrough. In just yesterday's battle, this young officer who had never attended sniper school managed to kill 11 British soldiers and wound 5 others. At this rate, as long as he could hold on until the end of the campaign, even if he couldn't break the astonishing record of Simon Haiye from Finland, who killed 542 Soviet soldiers with his rifle before withdrawing from the fight in 1940, becoming a top sniper in the German army would not be difficult!
Unable to light his cigarette after two failed attempts with the matches, Lieutenant Scoob stubbornly lit the third one, cupping his hands to protect the flame from the gusts of cold wind blowing from the sea. The cigarette lit up, and the familiar tobacco smell quickly dissipated in the air, and his tense nerves relaxed once again...
Killing the enemy was satisfying, but the fierce artillery fire from the British fleet, as if to destroy the world, made every German soldier, including Lieutenant Scoob, deeply troubled. In fact, among the German soldiers, there had long been a saying: urban warfare is a sniper's paradise, while trench warfare is a sniper's grave. That is to say, the complex environment of urban warfare favors snipers to leverage their advantages, while in trench warfare, the flashes of gunfire are prone to attracting enemy counter-snipers or even artillery fire, and a few inexpensive shells are enough to neutralize a highly trained sniper ace!
"Feeling homesick?" With a cigarette in his mouth, Lieutenant Scoob casually asked the young man sitting beside him, a young airman first class named Ruden Walter, who also carried a sniper rifle. Only 19 years old, Walter had been appointed as Lieutenant Scoob's assistant by the commanding officer just yesterday, a testament to the fact that Colonel Logan, who had worked with his older brother for many years, indeed appreciated his abilities and complied with his wishes. Instead of appointing him as a platoon commander or assigning him to a clerical position in a relatively safe staff office, he gave him a good rifle, a loyal partner, and the freedom to act.
In other words, Oliver Scoob stayed here entirely out of his own volition.
"No, I don't miss home, I'm not afraid of the British, and I'm not afraid of death either!" The young marksman replied, drawing a pattern on the ground with a twig, perhaps only he understood the meaning of it.
"When you return to your hometown wearing the Iron Cross, you'll be a hero admired by all!" After saying this, Lieutenant Scoob suddenly felt that he hadn't found the right words of comfort, but it didn't matter. He wasn't cut out to be a commander in the first place!
After some random thoughts, he advised somewhat disjointedly, "Whatever happens, it's best to stick close to me!"
"Yeah, I know!" The young airman replied. Before being assigned as the assistant to this young lieutenant, he was the best marksman in the first company of the model airborne division, but his record had yet to be opened since stepping onto the battlefield.
Before he finished smoking, the annoying whistling sound came from the north again. Although the narrow strait hindered the progress of the British landing forces, it couldn't stop the bombs from flying from the sea. Light cruisers, destroyers, and various types of coastal artillery ships bombarded the German positions. From the Dunkirk evacuation to the counterattack on the Isle of Wight, Britain seemed to be a country with no shortage of ships!
"God bless!"
With solemnity, Small Scoob made the sign of the cross on his chest, bowed his head, and returned to the trench that was just over a person's depth. In this damp and muddy place, even the Iron Cross First Class medal on his collar couldn't escape the ubiquitous mud stains.
Rudon indeed stuck closely behind Small Scoob, staring blankly into the distance under the intense and precise British shelling. During the daytime, the airspace around the Isle of Wight was not solely occupied by the British; those detestable British warships were "having fun," and a squadron of Stukas quietly flew from the south of the Isle of Wight. As they approached the coastline, they suddenly began to climb: 2000 meters, 3000 meters, 4000 meters, finally disappearing into the greyish-white clouds.
Although the British warships' bombardment had lasted less than fifteen minutes by now, far from thoroughly sweeping through the German defensive positions, with the appearance and disappearance of the Stukas, the direction of the ship's artillery quickly shifted. Black clouds began to form in the sky over the strait, and scattered dots composed a giant freckled face!
The greatest allure of war lies in no one being able to predict who will be smiling the next second. After a moment, the screech of the "Black Death" began to disdain all other sounds of the world— the roar of British ship cannons, the shrill whistles of British ships avoiding collisions, and perhaps even the endless sound of the wind. Even though they were kilometers away, German soldiers concealed in the positions could still witness the graceful dives of the Stukas and the white columns rising from the sea, everyone grateful for the might of their own air force, shouting in their hearts:
"Let the bombardment come more fiercely and joyously!"
In the blink of an eye, seven Stukas completed their bombing runs and pulled up again. They deliberately circled around and flew over East Cowes Harbor, causing a flurry of chaotic firing from the British novices and rookies.
When the Iron Cross emblem under the wings came into view—although only for an instant—the German soldiers in the trench cheered ecstatically!
The sea was filled with rolling smoke, perhaps one British warship had been hit, perhaps two, perhaps three, but the British Royal Navy would not be weakened by such losses. The true elites were still deployed in the tumultuous waters of the northern seas, guarding the most important sea routes of the German Navy to the outside world!
Several minutes later, a group of British fighters flew aggressively from the direction of Portsmouth Harbor. It was said that Southampton Airport had been raided by a swarm of German dive bombers in the afternoon, and many British fighters and bombers had been destroyed on the ground, so for the time being, the British aircraft supporting ground operations were coming from the east and northeast.
Unable to intercept the German Stuka formations, the British fighter squadrons confronted the incoming German fighter squadrons. Over the past two days, both sides had demonstrated their aerial combat skills too many times, to the point where soldiers from both Britain and Germany had mostly lost the initial novelty and had evolved into pure spiritual support for their own air forces.
The fluctuating buzz continued for twenty minutes, with losses on both sides, and no clear winner.
After about ten minutes, another group of German dive bombers came from the south and coincided with the British bomber formation coming from the north. Although they were hostile, they did not engage in combat like the fighter aircraft did: the German bombers bombed the British fleet shelling the opposite shore, while the British bombers dropped bombs on the German positions hindering the advance of the British troops into the depth. When the fighter aircraft from either side came to investigate, these bombers adorned with Iron Crosses or circular emblems quickly withdrew from the battlefield.
Such a fierce stalemate was truly reminiscent of the German Commander-in-Chief Hans Rogan's phrase "meat grinder in the sky." Years later, even historians described the Battle of the Isle of Wight, which lasted for a long time, in such terms in their official records!
Intermittent shelling continued until 4 p.m., and the return to a calm world didn't last long. An unpleasant whistling sound came, and every time this happened, those poor souls who had reflexively developed their coping mechanisms since infancy had to find a place to deal with their small problems.
Using a small step dug by a sapper, Oliver Scoob climbed up to the top of the trench to take a look: the British forces landing in East Cowes Harbor couldn't resist launching their attack!
The roughly arc-shaped German defensive line, starting from the Maedena River to the west, extending eastward for 3000 meters before turning southeast, finally reaching Streples about 5 kilometers from Wooton Harbor—each support point of the defense line was about 3 kilometers away from the Newport Harbor area, and the entire defense line could also be regarded as the outer defensive circle of Newport! Small Scoob's current position was one of the many support points in the direction of the German forces, with a flat terrain about 500 meters wide in front of the defensive line, equipped with an ample number of MG-34 machine guns and infantry mortars in the position. There were also two special bunkers with only the turrets of Panzer III tanks visible, while the mobile force consisting of Panzer IV tanks and half-tracked armored vehicles equipped with mortars was deployed about a kilometer behind this support point under the cover of a small hill!
On the battlefield of 1940, such a configuration was almost perfect, but only "almost"—due to the fact that the paratrooper units were equipped with a large number of "Panzerschreck" anti-tank rockets, and the first batch of landing forces of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler also had a large number of tanks and armored vehicles, conventional anti-tank guns and mines were considered secondary materials and were not prioritized for transport to the island. In addition, the Isle of Wight lacked extensive forests, and the trenches hastily dug by German infantrymen, although over two meters deep, were easily collapsed in front of the large-caliber artillery of the British!
The most troublesome thing was yet to come. To coordinate with this attack, the RAF was mobilized once again. Perhaps wary that the large formations were intercepted by the Luftwaffe at great cost every time they crossed the Channel, they organized the "obsolete" Gladiators into small formations of two or three aircraft each, carrying small bombs to fly low, bomb, strafe, and then quickly withdraw. Although the aerial combat performance of these biplanes was far behind the mainstream of the era, they were still capable of harassing the German infantry in positions with weak anti-aircraft firepower!
In addition to the non-professional anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of the infantry, the entire defense line had only about a dozen 88mm anti-aircraft guns scattered among various firepower support points. However, they were mostly concealed within the positions, with their upper parts tightly covered by camouflage nets, belonging to the kind that refrains from revealing its firepower until it's absolutely necessary.
Spotting a Gladiator with four machine guns flashing nearby, little Skov quickly lowered his head and shrank back into the trench. Despite the combat experience of the paratroopers and SS soldiers here, when these despicable Gladiators strafed low along the trenches, cries of agony still echoed where their bullets struck.
In such a situation, the soldiers in the trenches had no time to discern whether the explosions came from bombs dropped by British planes or from shells fired by British tanks advancing on the ground. It wasn't until officers loudly shouted, "Get into position, prepare to fire," that the German soldiers returned to the top of the trenches.
In sight, more than a dozen tanks surged forward, with approximately two thousand British infantry closely following behind. The front line had advanced to about a kilometer from the defense line!
What did two thousand people mean?
If they stood in a very dense formation, a small half of a football field could accommodate them, but if they marched quickly through the fields with a distance of 5 or 6 meters between each person, the scene looked quite spectacular!
Boom! Boom!
The close-range sound of artillery caught little Skov's attention. He strained to look and saw two 88mm guns positioned at this firepower support point firing, their muzzles on the horizon pointed toward the rumbling tanks advancing slowly. For the German soldiers who had not participated in the battles of Alamanni and Monken, seeing these two ugly giants initially sparked curiosity—deploying heavy anti-aircraft guns at the front lines was still a rare tactic in 1940!
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