บท 43: Gasoline (Part 2)
Bazel was a man of action. He immediately began directing the troops to carry out the plan.
In Bazel's deployment, the tasks were assigned by platoon, with each platoon responsible for three streets. Bazel himself, along with the company headquarters, took charge of one street, effectively covering the ten streets where the British were advancing.
Once the platoons were assigned, the platoon leaders further broke down the tasks by squad.
In reality, the tasks at this point were no longer assigned strictly by squad due to the heavy casualties the troops had suffered. For example, in Berg's squad... Berg had killed six of his subordinates and was then executed himself, while two others had failed to return from the desert, leaving only one soldier remaining.
This lone soldier had been separated during a sandstorm and, by a stroke of luck, had survived by not following the company in the pursuit of Bushell.
With only one soldier left in a squad, it was clearly impossible to complete the tasks independently. So Kuhn merged him into the third squad... Normally, a German platoon would have four infantry squads plus a 50mm mortar squad (3 men), and with the platoon headquarters (5 men), a full-strength platoon would have 48 men.
However, due to casualties and the lack of reinforcements, they often didn't have that many men. The most common practice was to leave some positions temporarily vacant, reassign soldiers to other squads to form full-strength squads, making it easier to command and coordinate.
The company Qin Chuan belonged to had suffered particularly severe casualties. Often, a platoon had only two squads or even just one. With the mission deadline pressing, Bazel had no choice but to pull in logistics personnel like the cooks to make up the numbers.
"Sergeant!" A few soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders approached Qin Chuan, who was busy moving gasoline barrels. They said, "Captain sent us to report to you. What should we do?"
Qin Chuan glanced at Bazel... This wasn't really Qin Chuan's job. These soldiers should have reported to Kuhn.
Bazel happened to turn around and, seeing Qin Chuan's puzzled expression, responded, "Kuhn isn't here. You assign them their tasks and have them take charge of one of the streets!"
"Yes, sir!" Qin Chuan replied. He pointed to a nearby street and said, "See that street? Your task is to move along that street toward the enemy, but don't engage them. Always maintain a few hundred meters of distance. Our trucks will bring the gasoline barrels to suitable positions, and your job is to move the gasoline into the buildings on either side of the street, poke some holes in the barrels to let the gasoline leak out. Understood?"
"Understood!" The soldiers responded.
"Go ahead!" Qin Chuan instructed. "And be careful!"
"Don't worry, Sergeant!" The German soldiers replied excitedly.
Qin Chuan thought they could handle it because, compared to direct combat with the British, this task was both simple and safe... The British were focused on demolishing the buildings, so the soldiers just needed to keep their distance.
But Qin Chuan underestimated the "courage" of these cooks—more accurately, their curiosity. Although they had been in the army for a while, they had rarely had the chance to actually fight the enemy. Most of the time, they were dealing with pots and pans within 5 kilometers of the front line. This gave them an unconscious urge to see the enemy up close, to feel like real soldiers, even if it meant firing a few rounds in vain.
What they didn't anticipate was that this time they were facing enemy tanks and a large number of infantry, all of whom were highly alert.
The result of the cooks firing from behind buildings... was a massive barrage of shells raining down on their position—tank shells, howitzer shells, and mortar rounds—turning the nearby buildings into rubble in an instant.
Before long, two bloodied cooks were carried back.
"What happened?" Qin Chuan asked.
"You'll need to send someone else to finish the job!" The medic replied. "We only found these two."
Qin Chuan was speechless.
"I can send you more men!" Bazel noticed the situation.
"No, Captain!" Qin Chuan glanced at the street and replied, "Maybe leaving that street untouched might be a better choice!"
Qin Chuan had noticed that the street was long, straight, and had a slight incline.
The operation proceeded smoothly. While the British advanced on one side, German soldiers were busy on the other, moving one gasoline barrel after another into buildings. Before leaving, they punctured the barrels to let the gasoline flow out, and sometimes they left explosive charges next to the barrels. Some of these charges were connected to wires, ready to be detonated.
As the British passed these specially prepared buildings, they didn't notice anything unusual, because they had destroyed the buildings from a distance, causing the barrels to be buried under the rubble.
In fact, if the British soldiers had been more observant, they might have noticed something amiss, like the gasoline slowly seeping from the rubble or the stronger smell of gasoline in the air.
But none of this caught the attention of the British soldiers... The smell of gunpowder and tank exhaust masked much of the gasoline odor, and the British soldiers were more focused on whether there were enemies in the buildings ahead or how to demolish them. The entire unit advanced over 500 meters into the trap, completely unaware.
It wasn't until a tank, while demolishing a building, accidentally pushed a gasoline barrel out from the rubble...
"What's this?" A British lieutenant stared blankly at the barrel in front of him.
At first, the lieutenant thought it was just a barrel that a German soldier had left behind and that the tank had pushed it out. But as he approached and saw the small, deliberate holes in the barrel, with gasoline pouring out like a spring, the lieutenant quickly realized what was happening.
"It's a trap!" The British lieutenant shouted. "We need to retreat immediately!"
But no one listened to him, not even his own men, who looked at him with puzzled expressions.
The lieutenant's rank was too low to have command over the unit, and besides, all the British troops believed this battle was as good as won. How could there be any traps?
"Gasoline!" The British lieutenant shouted frantically. "They've rigged this area with gasoline!"
The British soldiers finally noticed the leaking gasoline barrel the lieutenant was pointing at and suddenly understood.
"Fall back, retreat!" Someone shouted. "Pull the tanks back too!"
However, it was already too late...
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