Chapter 817: Shelling

Unfortunately, his words had barely faded when a reinforced concrete bridgehead was struck by a heavy artillery shell. The massive shockwave completely destroyed the concrete, shattering the structure into countless stone fragments that rained down on the surrounding positions with a clattering sound.

“Bullshit! You’d better start praying those helicopters take out their big guns, otherwise, it’ll probably only take two more shells to hit the bridge!” Rein stared at the bridgehead in the distance, now a ruin from the artillery strike, and shouted at the special forces commander. “Once they cut the bridge, we’ll have to swim back across the river.”

“One hundred and ten modified Odin helicopters have been deployed in our sector. Minus those that can’t fly due to mechanical failure, plus some that are still on their way from more distant airfields, almost all of them are right in front of you,” the commander of the Viper unit said helplessly. “Now, we can only pray, Captain Rein.”

“I never leave my fate in the hands of others. Ever since a man pulled me back from the brink of death, my name belongs only to him—at least, until the end of the war, it belongs to him,” Rein said, his eyes narrowed, his voice sounding strangely chilling.

After speaking, he strode quickly towards his tank, put on his headset, and pressed the throat mic. “First Company, all tanks, assemble on the east side of the river. The Soviets are shelling the bridge. We are to attack their artillery positions, advance 30 kilometers, and hold the line!”

“Are you crazy? Attacking with just a few tanks?” The special forces captain ran after Rein to the side of the tank. Seeing Rein climb aboard and hearing the orders he was giving his men, he asked anxiously.

“It’s a pity, but by your standards, we often do crazy things. Starting in Poland, there hasn’t been a single normal person in this tank,” Andre said from the side, pointing to his own head as he slipped from the gunner’s position into the turret. “Wish us crazy bastards good luck.”

“Heh, for us, attacking the enemy with just a few tanks is the most normal thing in the world,” Baumann said as he got into his driver’s compartment and started the engine. “We’re good at fighting outnumbered. Very good.”

Alice gave the Viper special forces commander a playful smile before slipping into the tank without a word. The sight of a woman on the battlefield momentarily stunned the commander. He then looked up at Rein. “Hey, you guys can do whatever you want, but don’t you have to consider there’s a little girl in the tank?”

“I’d advise you not to think of her as a little girl. She’s probably killed more people than you’ve captured prisoners,” Rein replied with a smile. “You thought my gunner was exaggerating when he said there wasn’t a single normal person on this tank? I regret to inform you, he was being modest.”

As the Tiger tank roared to life, tank No. 112 also belched a cloud of black smoke. The two tanks, almost one after the other, charged out from the riverbank, rolling over the defensive positions of the German paratroopers.

A voice came through the headset from the 2nd Platoon’s tanks and tank No. 111 across the river. “Rein! We’ve run into a bit of trouble over here. We might not be able to cross the bridge to reinforce you for a while… Some routed Soviet troops are attacking us, a lot of them, and with quite a few tanks.”

“Alright! I understand!” Rein replied over the throat mic. He then opened his hatch, poked his head out, and looked at the grimy German soldiers next to the tank. “Where’s your commander? We need help.”

“Commander! Commander! The armored corps is looking for you!” a German paratrooper shouted from the trench, his head down. From a machine gun position not far away, Borol ran over, holding his helmet and crouching low. He leaned against the road wheels of Rein’s tank, his breathing ragged from the run.

“Do you need a rest?” Rein asked loudly with a smile, looking at the somewhat disheveled Borol.

“What? You’re tired? Need to take a nap?” Borol replied loudly, looking at Rein with a disdainful expression.

“I’m launching an attack now, to break through the enemy’s first line of defense, advance, and threaten their artillery positions. Are you interested in coming along? We need someone to cover our flanks and rear,” Rein said, pointing at a map. This map had been copied from the special forces and had some concealed Soviet artillery positions marked in detail.

Borol was taken aback for a moment, then broke into a wide grin. “You really are a troublemaker! I have to leave men behind to defend, so I can probably spare you 100 men. I’ll lead them myself. Don’t worry about their combat effectiveness. My men can fight better than 300 grenadiers.”

Rein nodded but replied with a cheeky tone, “I think 30 of you would be enough.” As he spoke, the Tiger tank beneath him began to move. Its tracks kicked up the earth and rolled forward continuously. This behemoth easily crossed the trench and drove forward.

BOOM! Another shell struck the point where the bridge connected to the riverbank. The massive force threw up a cloud of earth. The adjacent railway tracks were torn up by the force of the explosion and landed a short distance away, rolling twice. But after this shell landed, the Soviet artillery fire seemed to have paused. It seemed that most of their artillery positions had been annihilated by the German helicopter units.

The German attack had begun. It was a scene no one had expected. Three tanks, two in front and one behind, charged out of the German lines. And behind these tanks, a group of ragged German paratroopers followed. These paratroopers cautiously used the tanks to cover their bodies and launched a fierce attack on the Soviet positions.

For a moment, the Soviet position was in chaos. Many of the concealed tanks behind the shelters didn’t even have crews. The Soviet soldiers on the position were being attacked with impunity by the German tanks. Many of the trenches that had previously belonged to the German paratroopers and had later been occupied by the Soviets had now changed hands again, returning to the German paratroopers.

A T-34 tank charged out of its shelter. Before its turret could even turn to aim at the German tanks, it was pierced by an armor-piercing round. Then the turret, now misshapen, exploded violently. The entire turret was blown into the air by the blast wave and landed much further away.

At the far end of the sky, another German helicopter, trailing thick black smoke, crashed into a forest. The tragic explosion could be seen clearly from a great distance. These aircraft, filled with aviation fuel and with only thin steel plates protecting their engines and fuel tanks, were almost no different from being naked in the face of large-caliber ground anti-aircraft weapons.

But the sacrifice of these helicopters was worth it. They had successfully stopped most of the Soviet artillery positions. The railway bridge still stood across the river. This was a result worth any price.

“Take off! Take off, quick!” At a field airfield, Soviet ground crew were waving small flags, directing two Soviet “attack planes” to take off from the runway. The SB-2 twin-engine bomber was the representative of the Soviet medium bomber, its role consistent with the DO-217 bomber currently used by Germany, but its performance was simply not comparable.

“Damn it, our artillery positions were suppressed by the German helicopters. They couldn’t complete their mission,” a pilot commander complained to a pilot who was preparing to board. “Blowing up that bridge is all up to you this time. Don’t disappoint Comrade General Rokossovsky, and don’t disappoint Comrade Stalin and the people of our motherland!”

Immediately after, another two SB-2 bombers also took off from the end of the runway. The four planes formed up in the sky near the airfield and rendezvoused with another four bombers that had taken off, heading aggressively towards their target, that great bridge that seemed to remain as solid as ever, no matter how much it was damaged.

“Will they be able to complete the mission?” a few Soviet ground crewmen gathered together, watching the planes in the distance turn into small black dots. One of them asked in a low voice.

Another ground crewman looked at the sky and then said with bewilderment, “I’m not too sure, but yesterday the German planes had already bombed our airfields in the western part of the bridge. I hear that to this day, our comrades over there haven’t been able to recover and get a single plane in the air to fight back.”

“I think it should be fine. We’ve sent up a full 10 fighter escorts today. This formation is just going to bomb our own bridge. The Germans can’t possibly stop them, can they?” the last ground crewman said, wrapping his military greatcoat tighter around himself.

In a German airbase, a young man with a head of golden-yellow hair was zipping up his leather jacket. His jacket was a newly produced standard combat uniform of the German Air Force, made of the best leather material, with excellent warmth.

He slipped a small pistol into the holster strapped to his leg and finished his pre-departure preparations. A new recruit of about fifteen, standing beside him, took the mission log from his hand with awe and respectfully pushed open the door of the locker room for him.

On the airfield’s runway, a distinctive Ta-152 fighter was already ready. Several ground crew were signing the inspection log. They had to adjust this plane to its optimal condition so that it could perform all sorts of incredible technical maneuvers in the sky.

“Good luck to you,” the new recruit boy said, standing at attention by the side of the plane.

Closing the cockpit canopy, the propeller of this fighter, with a black tulip painted on its nose, began to spin rapidly.

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