Chapter 410: Objective Bite

When Baru and his men reached the suspected British barracks, they found it had already changed hands. The 3rd Company had occupied the nearly empty camp, which contained over a hundred tents, as well as trenches and dug-out latrines. Unfortunately, according to a captured British soldier, the British battalion commander had left with about 30 soldiers half an hour earlier, supposedly heading for the town of Bite.

The good news was that they had located the 2nd and 3rd Companies and found the battalion commander. The entire paratrooper battalion had not suffered the catastrophic losses they had in the training exercises. With about 100 men killed or missing, they had already taken control of the entire drop zone.

By the time Borol arrived at the battalion headquarters, his own company was nearly back to full strength. Ninety-five of his soldiers had found their unit. Considering the typical loss rates for paratroopers, this was already a very successful airborne operation.

“Borol, your objective is about two kilometers away, here,” the battalion commander said, pointing to the map. “This small town is estimated to be garrisoned by at least 60 British soldiers, and as you know, the British battalion commander is in that town. It is now 3:25 AM. You have less than two hours to capture it. Any problems?”

“If I said I had a problem, you wouldn’t give me more men anyway. So there’s no difference between having a problem and not having one,” Borol replied with a smile. “Therefore, I have no problem.”

“See, giving orders to a subordinate like you is a pleasure. Now get your ass in gear! Or I’ll kick it for you!” the commander said, laughing as he tossed Borol a pack of British cigarettes. “At 5:30 AM, the landing force begins their move. Hurry up!”

“No problem,” Borol said with a smile and a nod. He stuffed the cigarettes into his pocket, shouldered his weapon, and left the commander’s HQ. He gathered his soldiers and led the 95 paratroopers down a small path toward their objective.

They soon found that the road had been blown apart. A massive crater, over 15 meters in diameter, was a clear masterpiece left by the earlier German bombing raid. They also found the bodies of a dozen British soldiers and a large-caliber anti-aircraft gun near the edge of the crater.

“Those Air Force guys are pretty damn accurate,” a paratrooper with a G43 rifle remarked, standing beside the corpses. The unlucky British soldiers had been too close to the crater; shrapnel had torn them to shreds and had also twisted and mangled parts of the large cannon.

“If they were a bit more accurate, we wouldn’t have been abused by such dense flak when we were dropping,” Baru snorted with a pout. People are like that, always complaining. But after the complaints, life goes on, the war goes on, and you have to keep breathing.

Soon, the outline of a small town appeared before them. Borol signaled for the unit to take cover, then gathered with Baru and a few other officers to assign attack roles.

“Baru! You take the 1st platoon and attack from the front. If you encounter machine-gun fire, take it out with a Panzerfaust. The 2nd platoon will advance in parallel, here. We don’t need to annihilate them; it’ll be easier to drive them out of the town and finish them off in the open ground behind it. The 3rd platoon is with me, we’ll enter from here. Everyone, stick to the walls! Try not to cross the streets!” Borol said, pointing at the map.

Then he looked at his snipers. “You will select your own positions, but I need you to provide immediate cover for the infantry in front.” In reality, snipers had little range advantage at night. They could only aim by the muzzle flashes of enemy fire, and if they were half as accurate as they were in the daytime, it would be considered good.

Next, he looked at the machine gunners. “I need you to set up here, here, and here, and provide suppressive fire on any visible enemy forces! Understood?”

After all the tasks were assigned, he checked his ammunition, then hunched down and moved to his own position. He waved to Baru in the distance, signaling for them to advance together. Fearing the darkness would affect visibility, he also shouted in a low voice, “Attack!”

Following the command, the German soldiers climbed over the fences and bushes surrounding the town, crouched low, and moved slowly across the grass toward the buildings.

Rat-tat! Tat-tat-tat! It seemed the town’s defenders had spotted them. A British machine-gun nest opened fire, and a German soldier was hit in the chest, crying out as he fell to the ground.

Almost immediately, the German support machine guns behind them began to roar. The unique sound of ripping linen spread through the air as a hail of bullets slammed into the elevated British machine-gun position, silencing it instantly.

The German paratroopers got up and continued to advance, accompanied by sporadic gunfire. It was clear that the widespread phenomenon of airborne troops landing everywhere had thrown the British defense into some disarray. They didn’t know which direction the attack would come from, so they had been forced to spread their forces thin in a circular defense, which wasted their already limited manpower.

In the German paratroopers’ direction of attack, the British had only a dozen or so men. Since most were still using bolt-action rifles, their rate of fire was even more pitiful. After a few shots from the German snipers, the British return fire became even sparser. The German paratrooper unit stormed into the town at the cost of two men killed.

“Clear all obstacles! Fire first, confirm targets later!” Borol shouted. Before setting out, he had been warned: the British had distributed hand grenades to every family as a last-resort weapon, so they were not to show mercy, even to civilians.

He and two men burst into a courtyard, kicked open a door, and pulled the trigger on the group of British civilians huddled together inside. Soon, the room was a river of blood. The single British soldier and the family of six inside were all killed, and the house was declared secure.

The clearing operation was proceeding simultaneously all around. The British finally fell back to the town’s government building for a last stand. The Germans showed no mercy. They used a Panzerfaust to knock out the British machine-gun nest, then charged in with rifles blazing, killing all the remaining British soldiers, who had been stunned by the explosion, as well as the civilians who had taken refuge there.

In truth, German intelligence had overreacted. Although hand grenades and other weapons had been distributed to civilian families in London, Brighton, and Dover, the limited supply had not yet reached the Norwich area. And even if it had, it wouldn’t have been immediately distributed to a small town like Bite. Unknowingly, the German paratroopers had begun a massacre.

Because of this, the small town with a population of about 3,000 lost one-third of its people in a single night. If a few of the remaining town representatives hadn’t bravely gone to negotiate with Borol, the death toll might have been even higher. After learning that the town had not been issued hand grenades, Borol tactfully ordered a halt to the killing of civilians.

At 5:00 AM, the sky was already a dim gray. Apart from two British soldiers who surrendered, all the others had been killed by the German paratroopers. The 67 British soldiers in the town of Bite had resisted for about 40 minutes before being completely wiped out, fulfilling their duty to the British Empire.

“Take this, and spread out all the flags you can find on the rooftops!” Borol ordered loudly, looking at his watch. “Use those special signal flares, and if that doesn’t work, find something to burn to make a big swastika! Hurry!”

5:15 AM was the scheduled time for the German Air Force’s second air raid on the Norwich area. The German paratroopers, having just fought a tough battle, had to get busy again without a moment’s rest. It would be a cruel irony to be killed by their own side’s bombs.

Baru led his men onto the roofs, scrambling to spread a giant German flag on top of the tallest building in town. Others nearby began to unfurl their own flags, though the ones carried by individual soldiers were much smaller.

By the time they had arranged cars and other objects to form a giant swastika, the German bomber formations were arriving in force. This wave included over a hundred Stukas carrying bombs and a hundred Do-217 medium bombers. These planes were flying relatively low to distinguish the intermingled German-occupied zones.

Soon, the German planes dropped their bombs, destroying any targets they could find. The British artillery positions near the beach were the primary targets of this raid. The railways and towns around Norwich were also bombed into a sieve.

The British air defenses around Norwich had never been as strong as those near London, and after two large-scale bombings and destruction by the paratroopers, very little remained. The unfortunate British forces, despite knowing about the large-scale German airborne landings in the Norwich area, had been unable to gather enough strength to launch a counter-attack.

Next to appear in the skies over Norwich were 50 Crusader helicopters that had taken off from the navy’s aircraft carriers. These aircraft, armed with rockets and machine guns and fitted with makeshift armor plates, were being used as gunships. They crossed the British coastline and appeared above the German paratroopers.

Their debut was a bloody one. Two helicopters were shot down by British anti-aircraft fire, a devastating loss of both machine and crew. This weapon, clearly not suited for the front lines, was only making a temporary “guest appearance” and had already paid the price for its transgression.

At 5:21 AM, Montgomery, who had been holding his forces back, finally received the phone call he had been desperately waiting for. The massive, missing German landing fleet had been spotted in the Norwich area.

The novel has already been fully translated up to the final chapter. You can access it on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/caleredhair