Chapter 324: The Girl Who Grew Up

Watching the special anti-tank bomb flying toward his own tank, Rein had no choice but to duck back into the turret and resign himself to fate, because no one could predict whether this bomb could penetrate the armor of a Tiger tank.

“Boom!” A loud roar. The entire Tiger tank shuddered. This bomb had exploded about a meter away from the tank. The huge impact had blown the spare tracks hanging on the side of the Tiger’s turret clean off.

“Bastard!” Rein was dizzy from the violent shaking inside the vehicle. The dirt kicked up by the bomb hit the tank’s hatch, and a lot of it fell into the turret. Many small pieces of gravel hit Rein’s cap, forcing him to pat it a couple of times with his hand.

“What the hell!” Andre was also startled by the sudden explosion. Fortunately, he was holding on to a grab handle on the side and did not hit anything.

Bruce, on the side, was sitting on the ammunition storage box with a look of not knowing what had happened. “Rein, were we hit?”

“Alice! Good shot! Keep aiming at the surrounding targets! Fire! Fire! Fire!” Rein sat up straight, then reached out his hand, wanting to close the hatch. As a result, a bullet hit right next to his palm, kicking up a shower of sparks. Rein only glanced at his own palm after he had closed the hatch and found that he was not injured, only that a hole had been shot in his cuff.

“Alice! Answer me at once if you hear me! I need to confirm you are there!” Rein asked loudly, holding his throat intercom. “Baumann! Accelerate appropriately. Adjust our position!”

“Rat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!” The front hull machine gun was still firing, which let Rein know that Alice was fine. He suddenly remembered the scene of his own first kill. He had also held down the trigger and had emptied all the bullets in the gun in one go.

“Rat-tat! Rat-tat!” Andre, having found his position again, fired the coaxial machine gun. The tracer rounds swept directly toward the French light machine gun nest over there. Soon, a gunner and a French soldier with a rifle were cut down in the trench. And at this time, the German soldiers had already charged into the trench dug by the French army.

“Rein! Rein! The French tanks are charging out! Several S35s! They are firing at tank 115!” Marcus’s voice came in urgently through the headset. “Cover him with fire!”

“Boom!” Tank 112 fired without the slightest hesitation. The shell hit an S35 that was turning. The shell pierced the S35’s fragile side armor in an instant, directly setting the tank on fire.

Soon, tank 115 also opened fire. A tongue of flame shot from the barrel of the Panther tank, blowing away the dust near the tank. The huge recoil made the entire tank tremble. And the French tank hundreds of meters away exploded in response, its turret thrown into the sky. It seemed that tank 115’s luck was good. A single shot had hit the enemy’s ammunition, which was why the enemy tank had suffered an ammunition cook-off.

“Rein! The French tanks are charging out!” Marcus reminded him loudly again in the headset.

“I know! My tank is turning!” Rein replied loudly in the intercom. He then switched the channel and shouted to his own crew, “Baumann, prepare to stop. Andre, fire as soon as you have a target. Bruce, second armor-piercing round! Prepare to load.”

“Boom!” Just as the Tiger tank had come to a steady stop, Andre, who had already aimed at his target, unceremoniously fired his first shell of the day. At such a distance, and after Andre had aimed for a long time, it was impossible for the shell to miss.

And so this shell went straight through the frontal armor plate of the tough French B1 tank opposite, directly blowing the tank up. The 88mm cannon was simply a nightmare for the French tanks. The distance from here to that tank was at least 500 meters, but it did not affect the shell’s ability to penetrate the armor in the slightest.

The technological level of the French and German tanks was too disparate. When the French tanks faced the German 75mm cannon with their thin armor, the feeling of helplessness often made the French soldiers lose their will to fight.

This was a very helpless kind of crushing defeat. The French tanks were more than a generation behind the Germans. If you also counted communications and tactics, as well as air support, then it was not difficult to imagine that up to now, the German army had destroyed 955 French tanks for the loss of 219 of their own, while the air force had destroyed another 412 Anglo-French coalition armored targets.

Of course, saying so much is just to let everyone understand the actual gap between the two sides, which can also indirectly show that the German army was not only technologically ahead of France, but was also a step ahead in equipment. So it wasn’t that the French tanks did not return fire, nor that they had never hit a German tank. In fact, they had even used their own skilled techniques to hit German tanks first on several occasions. It was just that the power of their tank guns was really limited and could not deal with the main German Panther tank.

In contrast, in the fierce tank battle that the two sides had fought in northern Belgium, both sides had lost more than 100 tanks. This time, the French armored forces could be said to be competing fairly with the German army, so the combat record was also very close. In this battle, the French air force had fought to the death and had protected the air security of the coalition forces. And the German army had mostly obsolete Panzer III and Panzer II tanks in their hands, so the French armored forces had immediately regained their confidence and had also fought at the level they should have.

But in northern France, most of the tanks deployed by the German army were the advanced Panther. And Rein here even had the most advanced tank in the world at present, a Tiger. And if you also counted the French air force, which had already lost local air superiority because of its losses and did not dare to sortie, this had caused the French armored forces to suffer hellish losses.

The French infantry began to surrender, and the German infantry were clearing the trenches one by one. From time to time, gunshots were heard. The war was far from over. The German tanks were covering the infantry as they advanced into the city of Amiens. The French were even less adapted to urban warfare than the battle-hardened Germans. The entire battlefield once again presented a one-sided situation.

But unlike in the past, this time the French army did not retreat. After suffering huge losses, they actually still held their ground. It seemed the Allied side had also issued a death order, requiring the French troops to defend Amiens to the death. Because if Amiens were to be lost, then the German army could threaten all the rear transport lines of the Allied forces in Belgium.

Entering urban warfare was a matter for the infantry and assault guns. Rein’s tank platoon was ordered to camp nearby and was responsible for protecting the command post and field hospital that the Germans had set up on the perimeter. In fact, the French army had no strength to counter-attack. This protection work was actually a disguised form of leave.

For Rein, at this time today, his battle was over. So he poked his head out of the tank’s turret and happened to see the radio operator, Alice, climb out of the hull. She turned her head and stared at him fiercely with her big, bright eyes. “You bastard! You made me a killing demon!”

Rein nodded, took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, then smiled. “Then congratulations. You’ve finally become one of us.”

Hearing Rein’s words, Bruce grinned widely from the side.

Alice, growing more and more angry, suddenly took out the P-38 pistol from her waist and pointed it at Rein’s head. “Do you know I just killed people? I killed people! I shot their heads to pieces, and…”

“I know,” Rein said, looking at Alice. “You’ve got a lot of courage. Marcus still doesn’t dare to point a gun at my head.”

“Put the gun down, Alice!” Andre had just climbed out of the turret when he saw the scene before him and immediately advised loudly. “Rein, you should also say a little less… She’s very agitated now. Don’t provoke her.”

“I’m not provoking her! She’s a soldier! A soldier who has to die for the Führer! She almost got us all killed, and now she’s pointing a gun at me because I told her the truth and made her do what she was supposed to do!” Rein sneered. “Go ahead and shoot! If you had the courage to shoot, that dangerous scene today wouldn’t have happened.”

“You bastard!” Alice threw down her pistol, her eyes blurry with tears, and jumped off the tank, running into the distance, crying.

Rein climbed out of the turret, lit the cigarette in his mouth, and murmured, “Women, what a hassle!”

As he spoke, he took the assault rifle from the turret and slung it over his back. This was his habit. When he was on the front line, as long as he left the tank, he would carry his assault rifle. “Baumann, Andre, watch the tank. Bruce, go to the battalion and get some diesel! Fill up our vehicle with fuel. I’m going to see what kind of trouble this woman is going to bring us now.”

“If I were you, I’d sleep with her! All women are like that. As long as you sleep with her, she’ll be completely obedient to you!” Bruce said with a loud laugh as he walked toward the battalion.

“Shut your stinking mouth, Bruce! Or I’ll sew it shut sooner or later!” Rein said, walking step by step with his rifle on his back in the direction Alice had run.

He had not gone far when he saw Alice. She was sitting on a large rock with her knees hugged to her chest. Rein did not go over to her, but instead went around to the side of the rock, leaned against it, and looked at Alice, who was up high. “This was a battlefield just a moment ago. If you don’t want to die, don’t sit in such a high place. A sniper will blow your head off.”

Alice, whose face had been a little greasy, was now a complete mess from crying. Hearing Rein say this, and recalling the scene of herself shooting the French soldier’s head to pieces just now, she immediately felt something churning in her stomach.

“I’m not here to persuade you. I’m just giving you a choice: survive with us, or die right here, right now,” Rein said coldly, a small knife now held reversed in his hand.

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