Chapter 481: Tunnel

Beside a massive crater was a pile of rubble from a collapsed building. On top of this pile of rubble was a small British defensive position. Two British machine gunners were lying prone in the ruins, watching a crossroads in the distance.

Their uniforms were long since tattered, and they wore civilian gray woolen overcoats. They were wearing suit trousers and looked no different from partisans. In recent days, the German offensive had become less fierce. It seemed that Rundstedt was more interested in starving out London to reduce the casualties of his own troops.

The supply lines had been cut off long ago. Only the stockpiled ammunition was somewhat guaranteed. According to Churchill, a good soldier could always find something to eat in the ruins. They had found something, and so they had survived.

In fact, the food had run out. Anything edible had been scavenged three times over by civilians, refugees, and the army. One can imagine what was left. A few days ago, the Germans had distributed food in the areas they controlled, and many refugees had gone to receive it. A chance to live, it seemed, was now much more important than the hatred of a fallen nation.

Two Stuka Type 2 attack aircraft flew overhead and dropped their bombs not far away. There were fewer and fewer places in London worth bombing, so in recent days, even German planes had become a rare sight. These grim reapers of the sky now frequently visited the southernmost parts of Britain, destroying the war potential there.

“Hey! Look over there! The Germans are attacking,” one of the men said in the silence. The assistant gunner nudged the dozing machine gunner with his elbow. Hearing this news, the machine gunner immediately became alert and tightened his grip on his weapon.

He centered his sights on the first German soldier in the lead. This soldier was hunched over, moving slowly and cautiously through the ruins, occasionally observing his surroundings. But from the looks of it, he clearly had not spotted the British machine-gun position aiming at him from not far ahead.

Rat-tat! Tat-tat-tat! The British machine gun opened fire. The bullets hit the German soldier in the front, then swept over and took down the one behind him. But the German soldiers following were clearly very experienced. They quickly dropped to the ground, minimizing their casualties.

Crack! A German soldier who had spotted them returned fire with an old Mauser 98k rifle. The bullet struck the rubble not far in front of the assistant gunner, sending up a shower of debris. Soon, alerted by their comrade, several German soldiers had located the British position and began to return fire fiercely with their MP-44 assault rifles and G43 semi-automatic rifles. Bullets whizzed past the British soldiers, instantly suppressing their machine gun.

Two German soldiers got up from the ground, dragged their wounded comrade back to the corner of the street. The wounded German let out a series of screams. The two British soldiers, under a hail of bullets, retreated from the other side of the ruins. Two hand grenades soon landed on their former position.

Boom! Boom! Two huge explosions threw up stones and rubble. The Germans used the cover of the blasts to charge up the high ground and began to search everywhere for the British soldiers who had ambushed them. But below the ruins, the two British soldiers had already slipped into a sewer, and were climbing down a rusty ladder back into the sprawling network of underground tube tunnels.

They hadn’t had time to retrieve their machine gun, so the two British soldiers casually drew their pistols. The underground was not safe. After more than a month of bitter fighting, the Germans were becoming more and more familiar with the city. They had more professional special forces squads than the British. These units might only be considered elite soldiers in a frontal engagement, but in this kind of complex environment, they could be called experts in urban warfare.

Many British soldiers had been killed in attacks by these German special forces squads while trying to escape through the sewers or the underground system. So the British soldiers, who were now also familiar with the German tactics, were very careful. They moved cautiously through the city, trying to avoid being killed by their own side or by the Germans.

The two men, one after the other, moved with difficulty through the dim tunnel. The slight sound of their footsteps was piercingly loud in the empty space, but they had to endure this deadly noise, because only by constantly moving could they escape the pursuit of the Germans on the surface.

A few days after the British began to lay mines in the sewers, the Germans also began to lay mines in the places they had been. This had turned the dark and eerie sewers into a treacherous minefield that neither side particularly liked. No one could confirm the absolute safety of any particular area, because you never knew if a British mine was buried right next to a German one.

So the Germans rarely operated underground. They had no patience to play a rat-like war with the British. They blew up some sections, garrisoned a few important intersections with a small number of troops, and used the most efficient methods to compress the British’s room for maneuver.

On both sides of the dark tunnel, a black gun barrel was pointed at the approaching British soldiers. A German special forces soldier, his face smeared with black paint, squatted there like a rock, not making a sound. Behind him, a similarly equipped teammate held his gun, also aiming at the uninvited guests who had stumbled into their defensive perimeter.

They had entered this section of the underground the previous evening, responsible for covering the engineers as they cleared some of the mines laid by the British and then taking control of the area. This would close off the last unknown underground area in this occupied zone and cut off the possibility of the British using the tube tunnels for infiltration.

But it seemed they had still missed two British soldiers. These two were probably British partisans who had infiltrated two days ago. The German special forces commander leading the team raised the corner of his mouth slightly. It seemed there would be another small harvest today.

The British assistant gunner was also a veteran familiar with this area. As he and his comrade were running, he noticed that the atmosphere was not right. By the time he habitually stopped, he could already see, in the faint light from the distance, the gun barrel pointed at him.

He gave a bitter smile and was about to raise his hands. But the machine gunner behind him saw his gesture, was clearly taken aback for a moment, and then subconsciously tried to turn and run. The first British soldier saw his comrade’s movement out of the corner of his eye and immediately knew things were bad. So he quickly gripped the pistol he had not yet thrown away and raised his hand to fire back.

Crack! Crack! The gunshots rang out. The Germans had clearly not given them a chance to resist. The two British soldiers collapsed in the tunnel, clutching their wounds and struggling. In the street fighting in London, the Germans did not like to take prisoners, because it wasted a lot of precious time and could bring them trouble. So they were more accustomed to shooting any target that posed a threat.

The gunshots echoed far in the tunnel, but for people who were already used to this sound, it was no different from the sound of eating or farting. This kind of sound could be heard every day, every hour, every minute, even every second. It was as commonplace as snoring.

Near a tube station lit by a kerosene lamp, a simple defensive position had been built from scrapped tube carriages and some debris. Dozens of British soldiers heard the gunshots from the distance and warily raised their heads, looking in the direction the sound had come from. Not far behind them were dozens of cots, filled with wounded men.

To the side were crowded the civilians of London. They did not have the courage to die with the Germans, nor were they willing to surrender. So they could only huddle together like this, awaiting their final fate. Most of these refugees were women and children, so even Churchill had not forced them to go to the front to die.

Less than a hundred meters behind this defensive position was the entrance to a downward staircase. Below was the deepest underground air-raid shelter facility in London, and living inside was the commander-in-chief of the London garrison, Churchill.

In front of him hung a defensive map of the areas currently controlled by the British forces. His current position was less than 300 meters from the front line to the north. The Germans simply did not know his exact location. Otherwise, with his current defensive strength, it would only take a few attacks for the Germans to reach him.

“It has been confirmed. The unit that broke into the southern suburbs belongs to the A Army Group’s 1st Infantry Division. They have no intention of entering the city center; they are just cutting off our last supply line,” an officer reported to Churchill, pointing to the map. “The Germans in the east have captured one of our reserve ammunition depots. The ammunition inside was destroyed by the garrison, but our reserve ammunition is now even scarcer. Therefore, the counter-attack planned in the north has been cancelled.”

“How long until the Germans get here…” Churchill didn’t seem to care much about the counter-attack. His spirit was listless, and he asked his confidant officer slowly, “If we hold out for another five days, will the Americans declare war on Germany?”

Would the Americans declare war on Germany? In recent days, Churchill had asked this question almost every few hours. He was concerned about the newly erupted German-Soviet war on the Eastern Front, about the situation in North Africa, and even more about whether the Americans would enter the war. He paid no attention to the Battle of London, which was happening just a few hundred meters away. The most frequent order he gave was: “Hold on for a few more days.”

But in recent days, most of the news he had received had been bad. On the German-Soviet front, Germany was victorious all the way. Rommel had begun a counter-attack in North Africa. The Americans were still on the sidelines. The miracle he had been hoping for did not seem to have happened. The Germans had won on all the battlefields he had regarded as turning points.

Just a few days ago, Liverpool had surrendered. The keels of two aircraft carriers had been destroyed by British engineers. But a destroyer flotilla had ultimately surrendered and been taken over by the Germans. Now, Britain was completely cut in half, divided into a northern and a southern part. The northern British government had already begun peace talks with Germany, and the southern British government was now left with nothing but a pile of ruins.

Published: 2025-08-29T02:31:02.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-11-25T14:23:45.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c481-tunnel-137600607

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