xymnovel Chapter 113 The General Orders You to Cease Fire
Chapter 113 The General Orders You to Cease Fire
Chapter 113 The General Orders You to Cease Fire
Night had completely fallen. But for Le Havre, the night was not black, but red.
Behind the German lines, the remaining artillery of the 7th Panzer Division was carrying out a tedious, mechanical, yet extremely deadly operation.
They had to move their positions back.
This was a forced choice.
In the previous exchange, the British 25-pounder field gun demonstrated astonishing lethality, with a range of 12250 yards (approximately 11.2 km/h).
Its maximum range (kilometers) covered the original German forward positions.
To avoid such precise, pinpoint counterattacks, the German artillery commander ordered the positions to be moved back a full 3 kilometers.
This not only increased the firing distance between the two sides, but also created an asymmetrical range advantage.
At this distance, the British 25-pounder can't even touch the Germans, but for the German heavy firepower, it's still within hunting range.
虽然105毫米leFH18榴弹炮的射程只有10.6公里—在此距离已捉襟见肘，只能勉强覆盖外围防线；但真正的主角是那些150毫米sFH18重型榴弹炮。
This Krupp masterpiece has an effective range of 13.3 kilometers.
Those extra two kilometers represent a chasm between life and death—I can hit you, but you absolutely cannot hit me, even if you had the magical ability to make artillery shells have eyes.
With no forward observation posts available to correct the point of impact—previous attempts had proven futile—General Guderian's order remained unchanged: "Empty the stockpile."
The artillery commander divided the map of the Le Havre port area into three huge coordinate grids: A, B, and C. There was no need to aim at any specific bunker, nor to distinguish between fortifications and ruins. All that was needed was to evenly distribute high-explosive shells within this rectangular area.
This is no longer art; it's an industrial assembly line.
A German loader sat on the leg of the gun carriage, holding a mess kit containing cold potato soup and a piece of black bread as hard as a rock.
He hurriedly ate a couple of bites, then put down his lunchbox, stood up, and mechanically took a 40-kilogram 150mm grenade from his comrade. He pushed it into the breech. Locked the gun. Pulled the fuse. Fired. Ejected the spent cartridge case. Reloaded.
It is a numbing, low-frequency vibration.
The shrill whistling of shells cutting through the air stretched out in a continuous stream, like invisible conveyor belts transporting steel and explosives from this hilltop to the city more than ten kilometers away.
The remaining eight 150mm heavy guns, hidden outside the range of British fire, rhythmically poured steel and explosives into the city more than ten kilometers away, like tireless pile drivers.
For the German artillery, this was simply "physical labor" done to avoid transporting heavy ammunition back to Germany.
But for the receiver, it's hell.
Boom! Boom!
At the same time, 19:20, in the port area of Le Havre, at the core of the British defense line.
The ground was shaking.
This tremor is not a violent shaking, but a continuous, low-frequency resonance that makes your bones feel soft.
With each tremor, dust from the underground bunker ceiling would fall like snowflakes, covering the map table.
Major General Fortune stood in front of the observation slit of the bunker, using the light from the explosion to look at the city that had been reduced to ruins.
Every building here has been hit by at least two shells, and some may have been hit by a dozen or twenty.
The streets have disappeared, replaced by mountains of rubble and smoking bomb craters.
The air was thick with concrete dust and the smell of burning, and visibility was extremely low.
"Arthur," the old general turned around and looked at the young man who was calculating something at the map table, "I don't understand."
-
"This place is already a ruin. All the fortifications have been destroyed. Why send engineers to the port?"
"Those men are simply unable to operate under the German heavy artillery blockade. It's suicide."
Arthur Sterling looked up, his finger still pressed on the large blue icons on the map.
His expression remained calm throughout, not at all like someone directing a desperate retreat, but rather like someone plotting a new offensive.
His uniform, stained with oil, was open at the collar, revealing beads of sweat on his exposed neck.
"General, the ruins won't stop the Germans." Arthur pulled a new cigar from his pocket and skillfully cut off the cap with his bayonet. "But the port facilities can."
He pointed out the window to the distant view, where the huge black shadows, faintly visible in the firelight, were the heavy-duty gantry cranes, deep-water berths, and dry docks that the port of Le Havre was so proud of.
"General, if we leave these heavy equipment here, that's not a retreat, that's aiding the enemy."
"Think about it, General. In three months, that Bohemian corporal will surely continue his offensive into the British Isles."
Major General Fortune was taken aback, but Arthur didn't give him a chance to speak. Instead, he looked at the flames and coldly added, "I am not speaking."
"Without these cranes, German logistics would be a complete mess; they could only transport infantry using shallow-draft barges, which was incredibly inefficient."
"But if those gantry cranes were still there—Guderian would have used them to lift Panzer III and IV tanks, or even those heavy artillery pieces, onto landing ships and then transport them to Dover for afternoon tea."
His voice was devoid of any warmth: "This is called asset stop-loss, General."
Seeing Major General Fortune looking bewildered by his theory of "strategic necessity," Arthur suddenly laughed, a hearty laugh, as if he had just pulled off a prank.
This was certainly not the real reason he insisted on sending engineers to work at the port.
Although those heavy industrial machines were indeed priceless to the Germans, everyone in Arthur's time knew that the Berlin Führer's grand "Sea Lion Project" was destined to be a joke.
Three months later, the Battle of Britain would break the backbone of the German Luftwaffe.
Without air superiority, the German "bathtub fleet," consisting of barges and converted cargo ships, would be sent to be fished by the Royal Navy's Home Fleet if it dared to leave port.
Arthur became serious, looked at Fortune, and then scanned everyone present.
"We are in a dangerous situation now, General. Not because we can't win, but because we are too close. Like I said, ruins can't stop Guderian."
"The deadliest moment of the retreat was not on the way, but when we turned our backs to the enemy and tried to climb the boarding ladder."
"What if the Germans hold us off when we board?" Arthur asked Rear Admiral Fortune, posing a crucial question: "If, four hours later, a Royal Navy destroyer docks, and the 7th Armoured Division's tanks are only 200 meters away, General, will the navy dare to open fire then?"
Arthur struck a match. With a soft "hiss," the flickering orange flame illuminated his gaunt profile, stained with grease.
"They wouldn't dare. Because that would kill us all too."
"And what about us? We'll be crowded on the pier and become targets for the Germans."
Arthur flicked out the match, and for a moment the darkness seemed to swallow the surrounding air: "So, we must create space. We need to artificially create a buffer zone that the German tanks cannot cross before we evacuate."
He pointed to the shadows of the huge cranes in the distance outside the window: "I don't care what the Germans do with these cranes, even if they use them to build houses, it's none of my business."
"But now, I need them to fall down."
Arthur made a chopping motion in the air, his tone resolute: "Thousands of tons of steel collapsing on the dock would be the best anti-tank trench."
"I will use this industrial waste to build a steel wall. I will block the main roads leading to the berths, forcing Guderian's tanks and infantry to dismount and clear the roadblocks."
"This will buy us one or two precious hours."
"This is not considered vandalism, General."
"This is called a tactical blockade."
"I care more about whether my soldiers can get back home alive than about these expensive pieces of equipment."
"but----"
Major General Fortune was about to say something more when Major Ryder, who had been standing by the communications station with a furrowed brow, suddenly took off his headset and interrupted the two officers' conversation with a grim expression.
"Sir, an urgent report from the port. It's Miller."
Ryder slammed the receiver down on the table, his voice filled with deep anxiety and helplessness: "I can't work."
""
"Miller reported that German shells were constantly falling on the dock. It was blind firing; they were bombarding the area."
"That salvo just now, the overpressure shockwave from the explosion threw two engineers directly off the crane—"
He fell into the dry dock and died instantly.
Major Ryder gritted his teeth and couldn't help but offer a seemingly reasonable suggestion: "Sir, since we can't get close, why not just have the 25-pound cannons in the rear fire directly? Wouldn't that just blow up those pillars?"
"What will we use to bombard it, Ryder?" Arthur didn't even look up, his fingers still calculating the explosion points on the map. "Our pitiful few 87mm field guns?"
Arthur looked up at his adjutant with the kind of look one gives an "arts student": "Major, that's a truss structure. It's 90% air and 10% steel beams. Our shells will most likely go through the gaps and into the sea, or ricochet off those solid steel pillars."
"Even if you're lucky enough to hit it, the one pound of Amato explosive in a 25-pound shell isn't even enough to tickle this thousand-ton industrial behemoth."
Arthur pointed to the collapse trajectory marked on the map: "And the direction."
"I need them to collapse sideways, precisely hitting the main dock road to block the tanks. If we bombard them, they'll just sink into the sea due to their center of gravity. That would be nothing more than a loud noise, with no tactical value."
Arthur glanced at his watch. 19:25 PM, three hours until the scheduled evacuation time.
If the demolition cannot be completed before the navy arrives, and the physical defensive line cannot be built, then this retreat will be a strategic failure.
"We need to shut the Germans up." Arthur's voice remained calm, but his eyes sharpened. "Give me half an hour. Ryder, tell Miller to have his men ready. I'll give you half an hour of absolute silence."
"How do we try to win them over?" Major General Fortune was stunned. "Negotiate with Guderian? Or pray to God that their cannons will explode?"
Arthur smiled.
He walked to the bulky, high-powered division-level communications radio in the corner, still radiating the residual heat of its vacuum tubes. This behemoth, originally used to contact the rear legion command, had now become a weapon in Arthur's hands.
He patted Lieutenant Jeanne on the shoulder.
"No. We will not negotiate, nor will we pray."
"We'll put on a good show for him."
19:30, underground command post communications room.
Arthur sat in front of the radio and closed his eyes.
On his retina, a pale blue RTS interface unfolded, with countless chaotic radio waveforms jumping around—there were dying British distress signals, shortwave tactical communications from German tanks, background interference from BBC broadcasts, and white noise from atmospheric ionization.
Arthur's fingers fine-tuned the radio's tuning knob. His brain was like a high-precision bandpass filter, quickly filtering out useless noise.
Finally, he locked onto a frequency band with an extremely strong signal originating from a German artillery position behind enemy lines.
He opened his eyes, turned to Jeanne and said, "7.2 MHz. Main frequency of the 7th Armored Division's artillery."
"Are you ready, Lieutenant?" Arthur asked Jeanne.
Jeanne took a deep breath, removed her British-style helmet, and ruffled her blonde hair, as if this would help her better get into character.
She unbuttoned her collar to make her breathing more rapid.
She nodded, her expression instantly changing.
"Props team, get ready." Arthur gestured to the staff behind him.
Several British staff officers, holding empty iron barrels, planks, and hand-cranked generators, stood next to a microphone, their expressions as solemn as if they were conducting a religious ceremony.
As Arthur's gesture came down.
Clang!
A staff officer forcefully struck the iron barrel, simulating the muffled sound and metallic vibration of a close-range explosion.
Sizzle sizzle—
The hand-cranked generator was being turned wildly, producing a loud electrical interference sound.
Another intelligence officer, fluent in German, began screaming in the background: "Medic! My leg! God! Medic!"
Amidst this chaotic background noise, Jeanne switched to the channel.
Her voice changed.
She was no longer the calm and composed French liaison officer, but a German frontline observer in a state of extreme terror and on the verge of collapse.
"Cease fire!!! You damn idiots! Cease fire!!!"
The sound, accompanied by the hissing of electricity, reached the eardrums of the German artillery commander.
"This is the Cheetah observation post! Calling in artillery fire!"
"I'm Lieutenant Helga! Can you hear me? You bunch of bastards!"
Clang! That was a simulated near miss explosion, accompanied by the rustling sound of dirt falling.
"What are you doing? The coordinates are completely wrong! You're blowing up your own people!!"
"We're on the edge of Area A! General Rommel is right here! Right next to my car!"
Meanwhile, inside the German artillery command post, the artillery commander, who was drinking water, accidentally spilled scalding coffee on his crotch, but he paid no heed to the pain.
The name "Rommel" was like a monstrous beast to him.
In the earpiece, the terrified female voice continued to roar, accompanied by realistic background explosions and screams: "My God! Another 150mm round! Right ten meters from the command vehicle!"
"The general's coffee was overturned! The antenna was blown off!"
"If the general were to suffer even the slightest injury, not even a scratch, Admiral Guderian would absolutely send you all to a military court! And execute you on the spot!!"
"Cease fire immediately! Correct your course to the north by one kilometer! Or do you want to die right now?!"
fear.
The most primal fear, stemming from power and hierarchy.
In the strict hierarchical system of the German Wehrmacht, what does it mean to accidentally kill a general—especially a star general like Rommel, who was favored by the Führer and had his own halo?
This means that there is no need for a trial; the military police will simply drag you out and execute you by firing squad in the mud.
Your family will be disgraced, and your name will become a stain.
Reason was completely overwhelmed by fear at this moment.
Moreover, the previous bombing had indeed caused communication lines to become unstable, making it impossible for artillery commanders to immediately verify Rommel's exact location with the division headquarters.
He dared not gamble. Even if there was only a one in ten thousand chance that it was true, he still dared not gamble.
"Cease fire!!!" The artillery commander threw off his headset, rushed out of his bunker like a madman, and roared hysterically at the gunners who were still loading the machine.
His voice was even louder and more terrified than the female voice in the earphones earlier.
"Cease fire throughout the battalion!!! Cease firing immediately!!!"
"Which idiot calculated those coordinates?! We almost killed General Rommel!!"
"Stop! Put down that fuse! Do you want to kill us all?!"
The order was quickly relayed throughout the entire artillery position.
Within seconds.
The deafening roar abruptly ceased. The loader froze in mid-air; the breech was still open, and the propellant charge was only half-inserted. Everyone exchanged bewildered glances, their faces filled with shock and lingering fear.
Apart from sporadic gunfire in the distance, the battlefield fell into an eerie and unsettling silence.
British underground command post.
Arthur took off his headphones and made a "cut off" gesture. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, a feeling of exhaustion from surviving a close call filling the air. Several staff officers who had just been banging on the metal barrels plopped down on the ground, panting heavily.
Arthur looked at Jeanne, who was covered in sweat and whose hands were still trembling slightly, and took out a relatively clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
"Well done, Lieutenant." Arthur's voice held a hint of amusement, the satisfaction of a successful plan. "If there were an Oscar for Best Actress in a Battlefield, I'd nominate you. You brought to life that hysterical portrayal of someone who's afraid to die but still feels obligated to do their duty."
"It seems that the Sterling family's intelligence network will now have a well-deserved mistress."
Jeanne took the handkerchief, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and looked at Arthur with a complicated expression: "You are a devil, Arthur."
You know them too well. You've exploited their loyalty and fear of their superiors to deceive them.
"No, dear lady." Arthur stood up and straightened his collar. "I was just saving them ammunition."
He looked at Ryder: "Ryder, call Miller back. I think they should have some peace and quiet now."
"Tell him he only has thirty minutes. Germans don't take long to react."
"Cut those damn cranes down. I want to see them reduced to scrap metal."
19:35, Le Havre port district.
Without warning, the ear-piercing, exploding sound disappeared.
There was no gradual weakening process; it was just a sudden "power outage."
Miller, lying in the bomb crater, cautiously poked his dust-covered head out.
He didn't know what kind of magic the young master had used, whether it was bribing the German commander or cutting their telephone line.
But he was very clear about one thing: this hard-won tranquility was measured in seconds.
"Move! Stop standing around!" Miller jumped out of the crater, kicked the still-dazed recruit next to him, and said urgently, "You only have thirty minutes! Even if you have to gnaw, you have to bite those iron pillars through!"
"Get the cutting torch! Quickly!"
Taking advantage of this precious window of opportunity, bought with lies, hundreds of British engineers climbed the giant dragon like ants—
Gantry cranes and cranes.
Miller gazed at the towering steel giants, hundreds of meters high, his mind echoing the colonel's stern orders from before departure. The young master had circled every cutting point on the map.
"Don't just bomb like barbarians." Arthur's voice seemed to still echo. "We must use gravity. Gravity is free, and its power is boundless."
"It's not necessary to blow up the entire pillar. Just cut the B3 and C4 support legs to disrupt the balance axis."
"Let physics do the work for us."
Sizzle sizzle—
Several acetylene torches were ignited simultaneously. This was the sharpest scalpel of the industrial age. The core temperature of the blue, high-temperature flame exceeded 3000 degrees Celsius. It danced on the steel, emitting a piercing hiss.
The five-centimeter-thick load-bearing steel beams quickly turned red and softened at temperatures of several thousand degrees, then melted into golden molten iron, dripping onto the dock with a sizzling sound.
This destruction possesses a cruel beauty. It is the self-deconstruction of human industrial civilization.
"Demolition team, get ready." Miller looked at the load-bearing leg, which had been cut two-thirds of the way through, and was only maintaining its fragile balance with the last bit of metal connecting it. He waved his hand, and several kilograms of plastic explosives were precisely placed at the key stress points.
"Detonate!"
Boom! Boom! A dull explosion rang out. It wasn't violent, not even as loud as the shell that had just been fired.
But the effect was devastating.
The heavy-duty gantry crane, which was eighty meters tall and weighed several thousand tons, could no longer withstand the strain.
Squeak—Bang!
That's steel twisting and tearing.
It lost its balance and, like a drunken giant, slowly and irreversibly fell towards the main road inside the dock.
The speed is getting faster and faster.
Boom! ...
The steel behemoth crashed heavily onto the road and into the deep-water berth. A towering wave, tens of meters high, surged skyward, carrying with it flying concrete debris. The massive steel structure deformed upon impact, the twisted beams completely blocking the only path to the berth.
Any tank that wants to get through here must face this wall of sighs made of thousands of tons of scrap steel.
Then came the second and the third.
The deafening crash of the collapsing crane echoed through the port, even more devastating than the earlier shelling. Each crash represented the loss of a strategic asset and the formation of a defensive line.
At the same time, at the narrowest point of the channel leading to the inner harbor basin.
Several old cargo ships and barges that were already abandoned in the port have been tugboated to designated positions. This is the choke point of the deep-water channel. If this area is blocked, no heavy transport ships of 10,000 tons or more will be able to enter the inner harbor loading and unloading area with heavy lifting capabilities.
The engineers opened the sea valve and detonated explosives in the lower deck.
Boom—gurgle—watching the ship slowly sink, the murky seawater flooded the deck, until only the tip of the mast was visible, piercing the sky, completely sealing off this artery leading to the core industrial area.
In the distance, the lookout post of the British underground command post.
Major General Fortune lowered his binoculars and watched the scene unfold. He took off his military cap, his fingers gripping the brim tightly: "That's a French port—I hope they won't blame us."
"Arthur, we are destroying this city with our own hands. We are carrying out a scorched-earth policy on our allies' land. Is this morally right?" Arthur stood beside him, coldly interrupting the old general's lament.
"General, from the moment the 7th Armored Division crossed the Somme, this place was no longer French territory."
"In the laws of war, the nature of an asset is determined by control. In an hour, this place will become a logistics base for the German Wehrmacht."
Rear Admiral Fortune frowned, somewhat worried: "But if the shipping lanes are blocked, how are we supposed to evacuate? How will the fleet get in to pick us up?"
"We don't need to go into the inner harbor, General." Arthur walked to the map and pointed to the location of the outer harbor breakwater. "The destroyers coming to meet us only have a draft of 3 to 4 meters. They will dock at the outer breakwater or be transferred directly in the shallow water using small boats. We only have a little over 10,000 infantrymen, not heavy tanks, so we don't need deep-water berths."
Arthur turned and pointed to the artificial reefs formed by the shipwrecks in the distance: "But the Germans are different. If they want to use Le Havre as a springboard to invade our homeland, they need deep-water channels to dock 10,000-ton transport ships to load heavy artillery and tanks." "Right now, that channel is crammed with shipwrecks. They'll either spend six months clearing it, or they'll just be watching those cranes go by."
Arthur flicked his cigarette ash: "This is called strategic bad debt write-off."
"Guderian wants a deep-water outlet? No problem."
"We left him a stagnant pool filled with tens of thousands of tons of scrap iron."
"By the time his engineers finished clearing the rubble, it was probably 1945. By then, we would have been back long ago."
19:55, forward positions of the German 7th Panzer Division.
General Guderian was standing next to the command vehicle, examining the map by the light of a flashlight.
Suddenly, he frowned.
It's too quiet.
The continuous, background noise-like shelling had been gone for almost half an hour.
For a commander accustomed to the clamor of the battlefield, this silence was more unsettling than the sound of artillery fire.
"What's going on?" Guderian suddenly looked up at his adjutant. "I haven't received any notification that we've run out of ammunition."
The report asks, "Why has the artillery ceased firing?"
"Did they go for tea?"
The adjutant beside him looked equally bewildered: "Perhaps they're cooling the gun barrels? Or are they moving positions?"
"Send men to ask! Now!" Guderian roared, slamming the map onto the hood of the car. "If they dare to slack off, I'll personally kill that battalion commander! This is a critical moment!"
Ten minutes later.
A mud-covered three-wheeled motorcycle sped into the artillery position, kicking up a cloud of dust. The messenger jumped off and stormed angrily to the artillery commander. The commander was sitting on an ammunition box, wiping the sweat from his neck with a towel, looking relieved that he had reacted quickly.
The messenger shouted, "Why did you stop firing?! The general is furious! He's asking if you're all asleep?!"
""
The artillery commander paused for a moment, then looked aggrieved and confused, even somewhat self-righteous, as he retorted, "What do you mean? Wasn't it the general who gave the order?"
The messenger's eyes widened: "Huh? When did the general order a ceasefire? The general keeps asking why there's been no movement!"
""
"Just half an hour ago!" The artillery commander stood up, urgently explaining, "Frontline observation post Cheetah! Lieutenant Helga! She said our shells almost killed General Rommel! Right on the edge of Sector A!"
"She said it was a death order from above, that we must immediately cease fire and rectify the situation! They also said they would send us to a military court! She said the general's coffee was even overturned!"
The messenger's mouth dropped open, his expression shifting from confusion to shock, and finally to pity as if he were looking at an idiot.
He took a deep breath and looked at the commander with the eyes of someone looking at a dead man: "Sir—" The messenger swallowed hard: "First, General Rommel has been eating canned food with the general for the past half hour, right in the command vehicle, five kilometers from the front line. I saw him gnawing on a piece of beef with my own eyes."
"Secondly, our organizational structure doesn't include an observation post called 'Cheetah,' and we don't have any female lieutenants."
It was as if an invisible bolt of lightning had struck the artillery commander on the top of his head.
Cold sweat streamed down his back, soaking his underwear.
He immediately understood what had happened.
He was played. The British treated him like a monkey, taking advantage of his fear of his superiors, and made him stand there as punishment for a full half hour.
During that half hour, he not only stopped firing, but even ordered his men to turn the cannons a thousand meters north to aim at the air!
This humiliation was even more unacceptable to him than defeat.
"Aaaaaah!!!" The artillery commander drew his Luger pistol from his waist, fired several shots into the sky, and roared hysterically, "Fire!!!!"
"Blow those British swindlers to ashes!!!!"
"Fire all the shells! Leave no one alive!!! I want to tear them to pieces!!!"
20: 00.
The fighting has resumed.
This time, the shells, driven by a furious rage, whistled as they slammed into the British positions.
The explosions were more frequent and violent than before, as if each shell carried the rage of the Germans.
But it was too late.
From the direction of the port, a final, muffled thud was heard; the last crane had collapsed.
Everything that needed to be blown up has been blown up.
The port of Le Havre is no longer a port, but a complete steel graveyard.
Arthur stood at the entrance of the bunker, feeling the earth tremble again.
He looked at the steel giants lying in the water in the distance and nodded in satisfaction.
"Looks like the Germans have caught on." Arthur glanced at his watch and said to Ryder beside him, "Their reaction time is about 35 minutes. Five minutes longer than I expected."
"Sometimes the Germans' rigid system is more effective than their tanks."
"Notify all personnel. Withdraw from the core defensive line."
"This level of shelling was just a prelude, their way of venting their anger."
Arthur turned around, his back to the firelight, and looked at the dark, labyrinthine ruins of the city behind him.
His eyes reflected the deep darkness of the night.
"Because from now on, they won't dare to use tanks to charge."
"They're going to send in infantry."