Chapter 412: That Beach

Crack! Raising his Lee-Enfield rifle, a British soldier shot a German who was firing continuously with a G43. He ducked back down into the trench, worked the bolt, ejected a spent cartridge, and chambered a new round. As one of the few veterans in this coastal defense battalion, he envied the rifles the Germans carried, the ones that could fire nonstop. But all he had was his Lee-Enfield.

He raised his rifle again, leaning against the trench wall and taking two deep breaths to steady himself. He stood up again, aimed at a running German soldier, and pulled the trigger once more.

Crack! The shot rang out, and the enemy soldier carrying an MP-44 assault rifle fell to the ground. Then came the unique, terrifying sound of a German machine gun, a sound he had heard at Dunkirk. Bullets slammed into a nearby concrete structure, kicking up a cloud of white dust.

He watched as three British soldiers were hit and fell in agony. The Germans had a clear advantage in firepower; that was the lesson he had learned from his one and only engagement with them in Belgium.

He worked the bolt again, chambering another round, then steadied his breathing and stood up once more, aiming at a charging German soldier. But this time, he never got to pull the trigger. A bullet from the distance tore through his cheek. It entered at the cheekbone, taking half his face and his ear with it as it exited.

His head slammed against the opposite wall of the trench, but the British veteran did not die instantly. He looked up at the blue sky and white clouds and thought of distant Dunkirk, of his company commander who had been shot through the chest by an enemy sniper. He tried to cry out, but only blood and air bubbled from his mouth. He wanted to call for help but couldn’t sit up. The men beside him watched him struggle, their eyes filled with panic.

Not far away, a German sniper put away his special scoped rifle and, following a dozen grenadiers, leaped from their trench and began to advance. They were only a few dozen meters from the British trench line, and after a short charge, they jumped into the ditch that had been occupied by the British soldiers.

The British soldiers inside tried to raise their weapons to fight back, but the veteran German grenadiers riddled them with their MP-44 assault rifles and G43 semi-automatic rifles. A nearby British machine-gun bunker was turned into an oven by a German flamethrower. The British soldiers inside let out pig-like squeals, which were quickly silenced.

This was the last line of defense on the British coastline. The German landing force had clearly broken through the British defenses, with only a few scattered strongpoints where British troops were still putting up a futile resistance.

The German naval air arm, whose arrival the landing force had been desperately awaiting, finally joined the fray. Stukas shrieked down from the sky, blowing the bunkers not marked with German flags to pieces. The British resistance became feeble, and the German soldiers began to mop up the remaining pockets of resistance one by one.

The Air Force’s Stuka Type 2 attack aircraft flew over the coastline. They were under orders to destroy the British artillery positions in the rear. As the bombing became more accurate and the number of German planes increased, the British long-range fire began to collapse. After suffering devastating losses, the Germans had finally established a firm foothold on the coast.

In truth, the German Air Force and naval air arm were not to blame for their late arrival. That morning, in a desperate attempt to cover their beach defense forces, the Royal Air Force had fought with unprecedented courage and paid a price tantamount to annihilation.

The 170 P-36 fighters from nearby airfields had sortied in full force. Ignoring their losses, they engaged in a brutal dogfight with 40 of the German naval air arm’s Fw-190D fighters. The first wave of German fighters sent to secure air superiority was forced to return to their carriers after their pilots had completely exhausted their ammunition.

It wasn’t until the second wave of Fw-190D fighters arrived over the battlefield that the Royal Air Force was completely driven from the skies over the landing zone. In fact, to say they were “driven out” is not quite accurate. Nearly all 170 British fighters were shot down. The local British air force had fought to the last man and machine before finally ceding their sky.

The British anti-aircraft positions also fought back with uncharacteristic ferocity, no longer holding back to conserve their strength. This caused unprecedented trouble for the German air force. Seventeen Stukas and three Stuka Type 2s were shot down, along with five Fw-190D fighters. The nearby anti-aircraft positions were also wreathed in smoke, having lost seven or eight-tenths of their strength.

On the beachhead, the first Panzer III tank finally rolled onto the British coast. The tank provided cover for the infantry as they charged up a small road, where they destroyed an anti-aircraft gun and used their main cannon to overturn a nearby British machine-gun bunker.

With tank cover, the German grenadiers regained their confidence, and their attack became smoother and more rapid. By 10 AM, they had firmly secured the beachhead and were beginning to organize units to attack deeper inland. Approximately 20,000 elite German soldiers had landed on the British coastline and were advancing toward their designated objective: Norwich.

The second tank, the third tank… units of the German 5th Light Panzer Division were slowly being brought ashore. These tank crews, who had swept through Belgium and northern France with the 7th Corps, were less famous than Rommel’s men, but German commanders knew that this division, one of the first panzer divisions ever formed in Germany, was an absolute battle-hardened force.

Far away in Norwich, at the headquarters of the British IV Corps, General Powell, the commander of the 2nd Army Group in the Norwich area, was on the phone with General Montgomery. His troops had been thrown into chaos by the German paratroopers the night before, and he still had no word from the V Corps, the unit defending the beachhead.

“Yes, General Montgomery, my troops cannot support the beachhead at this time. If we launch a counter-attack towards Bacton now, I fear my forces will run into the main German landing force moving south…” General Powell was known for his defensive skills and cautious nature. He felt that they should not launch a rash counter-attack without knowing the scale and specific location of the German landing.

In fact, although Bacton was not far from the landing site, the garrison there, apart from hearing the sounds of cannons and seeing large numbers of German planes, had not yet reported being attacked. This made the cautious Powell unsure of the Germans’ exact direction of attack. He speculated that the Germans were landing closer to the Netherlands and Belgium, at Great Yarmouth.

“I recommend that I send the 4th Division east to reinforce Great Yarmouth, and the 14th Division north to relieve Bacton,” he said to Montgomery. “The only armored unit nearby, the 9th Independent Armoured Division, should attack the beachhead now and push the Germans back into the sea.”

Montgomery, of course, did not know that large numbers of German paratroopers were operating to the north and east of Norwich, nor did he know if Powell’s forces were strong enough to push the German landing force back into the sea. Nevertheless, he ordered his subordinate, Powell, to launch the counter-attack. He knew that if they didn’t immediately deprive the Germans of their landing site, the follow-on German forces would be far more than Britain’s new recruits could handle.

The airfields near Norwich had been all but destroyed by German bombers, and the remaining ones were useless without any fighters. The Royal Air Force was ordered to converge on Norwich from all directions, hoping to regain the crucial air superiority over the battlefield, but they were intercepted by even more German fighters and suffered heavy losses.

By 11 AM, the Royal Air Force had lost a total of 290 fighters over Norwich, nearly half the total number of RAF aircraft in southern England. But the German Luftwaffe still held firm control of the air, desperately defending their status as the aerial masters of Europe.

At 11:05 AM, the third major German air raid descended on Norwich. Under the clear sky came a full 170 “Butcher” strategic bombers, along with 120 Do-217s and 70 Stukas. These planes bombed the roads and railways from Norwich to Bacton, Great Yarmouth, and Lowestoft, catching the British IV Corps, which was crowded on the roads, and inflicting immense frustration.

In reality, the British IV Corps was not far from the German landing zone; they were practically on its doorstep. But due to fierce resistance from the German paratroopers and the destruction of roads and bridges, they had been unable to cover this short distance in two hours. Most of their troops were still near their starting points. And by this time, the German landing force had completely secured its foothold on the beach.

Powell had no choice but to request reinforcements from neighboring units. However, Churchill still did not dare to easily abandon the defensive lines near Dover and Brighton, fearing a German feint. What if the second wave of landings was at Dover? This was a carefully laid trap by Akado. After the German landing began, he sent an open-coded message to Mussolini in Rome, declaring that Germany would launch a second landing in the Dover area to strike directly at London.

This was a masterful deception, making the feint seem real and the real seem like a feint. It all depended on whether Churchill would believe it. Churchill, already terrified by the Germans, ultimately agreed with Montgomery on a compromise: Montgomery would take his single armored corps north to support the IV Corps in defending Norwich and pushing the Germans back into the sea.

Montgomery agreed to this plan for a simple reason: the problem was not how many troops to send to contain the Germans, but how many troops could reach the battle area in time under the attack of the superior German air force. Sending more men would be useless; it would only provide more targets for the Luftwaffe. So, he agreed to Churchill’s plan to split their forces and led his armored corps north without hesitation.

At that same moment, the 5th Panzer Division of the German 5th Panzer Corps had fully landed on the British beach, and over 30,000 German soldiers were safely ashore. The SS Akado Youth Division began a fierce assault on Bacton to their right, while the 1st Marine Division was positioned near the main road to Norwich, intercepting the desperate attack of the British IV Corps’ 4th Division.

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