Chapter 183: Charles de Gaulle

As ‘Mademoiselle 75’ once again unleashed her fury on South Charleroi.

At the Ninth Division’s assault staging area, an ordinary young Company Commander, Charles de Gaulle, had just assembled his company.

News of the first wave’s failure had already spread. Although the specifics were unclear, the look of utter despondency on the faces of the soldiers who fled back from the city permeated the entire unit with an atmosphere of unease.

De Gaulle’s mood, too, shifted from initial excitement and enthusiasm to a state of anxiety. He didn’t know what kind of enemy they were facing in the city that could reduce brave comrades to such a state.

But a soldier’s duty is to obey orders.

When the Battalion Commander relayed the Division Headquarters’ order to launch the second wave of attack, he immediately composed himself and began the pre-battle motivation for his company.

He stood before his fully assembled company and spoke loudly: “Soldiers! The blood of our comrades must not be spilled in vain! For Gaul! Follow me to charge! I will be with you!”

The company’s soldiers let out an earth-shattering roar as usual, which is a common military method for dispelling fear.

As the 10-minute fire preparation ended, De Gaulle took a deep breath, raised his hand, and gestured forward.

He then led his company, following the battalion’s attack rhythm, and launched a new wave of assault toward the city that had become a meat grinder.

The soldiers advanced quickly into the urban area of Charleroi, their feet sinking into the soft, churned earth left by the bombardment. De Gaulle’s battalion was one of the spearheads of the second wave, tasked with breaking through the enemy’s front line.

The closer they got to the city, the more pungent the air became with the thick smell of blood and gunpowder smoke. The moment they stepped onto one of the main thoroughfares in South Charleroi, even a man of such firm will as De Gaulle experienced a massive psychological shock.

He had considered many terrible possibilities inside the city, but the scene before him far exceeded his imagination. This could no longer be called a street.

The entire wide road was almost completely paved with a thick layer of corpses, with not a trace of the original pavement visible. Blue uniforms and red trousers were mixed together, forming a bizarre and bloody carpet. Mutilated limbs, shattered organs, twisted rifles, and the helpless hands of some severely wounded men reaching up into the air… Everything was mixed together, forming a scene straight out of hell.

In some places, the bodies were piled so high that they formed waist-high mounds of corpses. Blood seeped out from the mounds, forming dark red streams that flowed slowly down the street.

“My God…”

De Gaulle and the soldiers around him were stunned into silence, their faces pale, their eyes filled with horror and revulsion. They were soldiers, they had undergone rigorous training, and they were prepared to die on the battlefield. But the sight before them, resembling a slaughterhouse, still caused a massive blow to their morale.

De Gaulle felt his stomach churning, but he forcibly held it down by clenching his fists. He knew that as an officer, this was not the time for weakness.

“Straighten up, all of you!”

“Advance! Do not stop!”

He took the lead, stepping unsteadily onto the ‘carpet’ paved with corpses. A soft, strange sensation from under his feet made his scalp crawl.

The soldiers followed behind him, cautiously moving forward. They tried to avoid looking at the horrors underfoot, simply moving their legs mechanically. The entire battalion advanced in silence down this road of death. Besides the ‘squelching’ sound of feet stepping on bodies and the soldiers’ heavy breathing, no other sound could be heard.

The atmosphere was suffocatingly oppressive.

De Gaulle gripped his revolver tightly, his palms slick with cold sweat. He constantly scanned the dark windows and damaged buildings on both sides of the street, feeling as though countless pairs of cold eyes were hidden there, ready to shoot lethal bullets at any moment.

Yet, to his surprise, the street was eerily silent. They had already advanced nearly a hundred meters without coming under any attack. Had the Saxons retreated? Or had they run out of ammunition?

The thought had barely flashed through De Gaulle’s mind before he instantly dismissed it. This was impossible!

He grew more uneasy the longer he thought about it, his back soaked in cold sweat.

Just then, the lead platoon approached the corner of the street.

“Da-da-da-da-da!”

Without warning, machine gun fire suddenly erupted again from the end of the street and the buildings on both sides!

The instant the gunfire sounded, the lead platoon was struck by an invisible tidal wave, and a large number of men immediately collapsed. De Gaulle watched helplessly as the soldiers of his company were shredded like paper in the dense rain of bullets, blood and flesh splattering everywhere.

“Take cover! Find cover quickly!”

He screamed hoarsely, instinctively diving to the ground and hiding behind a relatively intact corpse. Bullets whistled over his head like rain, creating a sharp ‘swish’ sound, striking the surrounding corpses and walls, sending sparks and dust flying.

The street instantly dissolved into chaos again. Soldiers scurried around like headless flies, trying to find any place to hide from the bullets. But the street was too open; besides the corpses of their comrades, there was no cover at all.

“Get into the buildings! Quick, get into the houses on both sides!” De Gaulle roared at the soldiers near him from his prone position. He knew clearly that staying on the street was a death sentence. The only way to survive was to rush into the buildings on both sides and engage the enemy in close-quarters combat.

Several quick-thinking soldiers immediately responded to his command, scrambling toward the nearest building. However, when they reached the door, they discovered in despair that all the doors and windows on the ground floor had been completely sealed with planks, furniture, and sandbags! They couldn’t get in!

“Damn it! It’s sealed off!” A soldier angrily slammed his rifle butt against a window nailed shut with planks, but the window didn’t budge.

Just as he despaired, a dark muzzle suddenly protruded from a window on the second floor of the building across the street.

“Da-da-da!”

A burst of submachine gun fire swept down. The soldier’s body twitched and he collapsed softly.

The same tragedy was playing out as in the first wave of attack. These Gallic soldiers, trapped on the street, were once again using their flesh and blood to resist the storm of steel created by countless automatic weapons.

De Gaulle lay amidst the piles of corpses, watching his soldiers fall one by one amidst screams, his heart wrenching. He felt like an incompetent butcher, personally sending his men into the meat grinder.

No! This couldn’t continue!

A surge of fighting spirit welled up in his head. He violently rolled out from behind the corpse, drew the revolver from his waist, and fired repeatedly at a firing port on the second floor that was firing.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

The bullets struck the wall, raising a few sparks, but the firing from the port did not stop in the slightest.

“Charge with me! Blow that door open!” De Gaulle, his eyes red, yelled at the few hesitant soldiers around him. He took military explosives from the body of a fallen engineer and desperately charged toward the door of one of the buildings.

Several soldiers, inspired by his bravery, roared and followed, using their bodies to shield him. Bullets continuously whizzed past them. One soldier was shot in the leg after just two steps and fell to the ground screaming. Another soldier’s head was directly shattered by a bullet, splattering red and white matter onto De Gaulle.

But the enraged Company Commander paid no attention to any of it. All that remained in his vision was that damned door, sealed off with sandbags.

He rushed to the door, quickly inserted the fuse into a block of explosive, forcefully wedged it into a gap, ignited the fuse, and threw himself to the ground.

“Boom—!”

A loud explosion sent wood chips, dirt, and bricks flying everywhere. The door, sealed with sandbags and planks, had been violently blasted open, leaving a large hole.

“Charge in!”

The soldiers beside him immediately rushed inside the building. De Gaulle leaped up from the ground and followed closely into the smoke-filled space.

The room was pitch black. The choking smell of gunpowder smoke made it almost impossible to breathe. The moment he rushed in, he felt his foot trip over something, and he stumbled slightly. Immediately following, a burst of gunfire erupted. The muzzle flash from the wooden staircase illuminated the figure of a Saxon soldier.

The soldier in front of De Gaulle was instantly gunned down, but just as the bullets were about to sweep past him, the firing stopped. The enemy was out of ammo! The young Company Commander quickly realized this and instinctively pointed his revolver at the direction where the muzzle flash had just appeared.

“Bang-bang!”

A muffled grunt sounded in the darkness, immediately followed by a dark silhouette mixed with a roar lunging at him. De Gaulle instinctively raised his arm to block.

“Splat!”

The sound of sharp steel entering flesh was accompanied by fierce pain shooting up his arm. Focusing his gaze, De Gaulle saw a blood-stained bayonet plunged deeply into his left forearm.

In that instant, De Gaulle saw the enemy clearly—a young Saxon soldier with a fearless look on his face. The Saxon soldier was cursing in Saxon [German] and attempting to pull the bayonet out to strike him again.

De Gaulle groaned in pain, violently raising his right hand and pressing the muzzle of his revolver against the enemy’s forehead.

“Bang!”

The last bullet in the cylinder was fired. The close-range gunshot left a deafening ringing in his ears. The Saxon soldier’s body stiffened violently, then collapsed limply.

De Gaulle endured the searing pain, yanked the bayonet out of his arm, and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. Just then, the rest of the soldiers from his company rushed in.

“Company Commander! You’re wounded!”

“Don’t mind me! Quick! Occupy this building! Fight them from inside!” De Gaulle commanded through gritted teeth. Despite paying a heavy price, they had finally torn a tiny hole in the enemy’s defense line.

Scenes like this were playing out continuously on the streets of South Charleroi. Although the lethality of the automatic weapons in the hands of the Instruction Assault Battalion had reached a terrifying level, the absolute numerical superiority of the Gallic Ninth Division was now beginning to show.

No matter how fierce the Instruction Assault Battalion’s firepower was, the number of fire points they could set up was limited, and they had to simultaneously deal with attacks from all directions of the city. Prolonged, high-intensity firing not only led to many gun barrels overheating but also resulted in an astonishing rate of ammunition consumption.

The Gallic soldiers, relying on extreme tenacity, just like De Gaulle and his men, endured the storm of bullets by using the constantly falling corpses for cover, inching their way into the city. More and more buildings were breached by them using explosives and brute force. Brutal, close-quarters Street Fighting had fully erupted along the city’s first defense line.

(End of this Chapter)