Mending the Fence

If an SS officer were to temporarily take command of another SS unit, it would be perfectly reasonable as long as the rank was appropriate. However, Logan belonged to the Luftwaffe's paratrooper unit, and the divide between the Wehrmacht and the SS was anything but trivial.

Logan noticed the hesitation in the other man's expression. "Is there a problem? General Dietrich recently entrusted your anti-aircraft units to my command. The situation is critical, and we must act immediately!"

"But..." Marco Rost seemed to want to argue further.

"If anything goes wrong, I'll take full responsibility!" Logan issued his first order without room for debate: "Order all units to cease fire. They are not to shoot again until I give the command!"

After a final moment of hesitation, Marco Rost nodded to the SS staff sergeant beside him, who relayed the order verbatim to the units on the front lines via telephone.

"Good! Now, can we fire a flare over the front lines?" Logan asked.

"Of course. We can use mortars. The effective range is 400 to 600 meters," the sergeant replied.

"Fire one!" Logan commanded without hesitation.

The SS officer faithfully carried out the order.

Logan then walked to the observation slit and peered out. While waiting for the flare, he asked, "What's your name?"

"Kyle Skorp, sir!"

"From Bavaria?"

"No, Hesse. Wiesbaden, to be exact."

"Ah, I see. Kyle, can you help me get a sense of how many troops and heavy weapons we have left on the front lines?" Logan asked, his tone firm yet friendly.

"Of course!" The SS officer immediately turned to his subordinate. "Hans, follow this officer's instructions and gather a count of the troops and weapons on the front lines. Be quick!"

The soldier, who shared Logan's name, hurried off to carry out the order. Meanwhile, the sound of gunfire on the front lines gradually diminished: those who hadn't received the order due to faulty phone lines were also silenced by the British artillery.

Marco Rost stood to the side, coldly watching Logan wield his newfound authority. He neither interfered nor offered assistance.

After an agonizing wait, the open field ahead was finally illuminated by the flare bursting in the air!

As Logan had expected, the British infantry hadn't advanced within range of the German machine guns. In the light of the flare, he could see over a dozen British machine gun teams using water-cooled heavy machine guns—these were the bait for the attack, leveraging their slightly superior range to effectively suppress the German positions. Further back on the hills, British light infantry guns were faintly visible. These were the real culprits behind the destruction of the German machine gun positions. Beside them, large numbers of infantry were ready to attack!

"Alright, these sons of bitches! Let's give them a taste of their own medicine!"

Logan cursed without hesitation, but the British commander across the field seemed to have noticed the changes in the past few minutes. Under the cover of artillery and heavy machine guns, the infantry, with bayonets fixed to their rifles, began to advance!

"Lent, how many are there?" Logan handed the binoculars to Steffenberg and took a moment to think. As long as they had enough machine guns and ammunition, dealing with a pure infantry assault shouldn't be too difficult. However, after the British "bait tactic," the German machine gun teams on the front lines had likely suffered heavy losses. How were they supposed to fight this battle?

Staying in the bunker wouldn't provide any answers. Logan walked into the trench. The nearby SS soldiers were spaced about one per meter, armed mainly with Mauser 98K rifles. The number of MP38 submachine guns didn't seem unusually high—after all, in positional warfare, the former had a clear advantage in range and accuracy.

"Hey, buddy, how much ammo do you have left?" Logan asked the nearest soldier.

"Haven't used much, sir! How much do you need?" the young SS soldier replied.

Logan, however, answered with something unrelated: "Stay hidden and wait for the order to fire!"

Not far away, an SS soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder picked up an MG34 from the trench (lucky find on the battlefield!). As he pulled the bolt and prepared to fire, Logan immediately shouted, "Hey, do you have a death wish? Wait for the order to fire!"

"But... sir, they're already in range!" The soldier pointed ahead. Under the illumination of the flare, the British infantry were jogging forward, their front line having already passed their heavy machine gun positions.

"Wait for the order to fire!" Logan repeated the command sternly. However, in a trench further away, another German machine gun team couldn't resist and opened fire with a "rat-tat-tat." Unsurprisingly, they were soon rewarded with a "violent diamond pill" (artillery shell) and a few "invincible little darts" (shrapnel). If they were lucky, they might leave a whole corpse; if not, they'd likely become one with the earth!

"Leutnant!" Steffenberg called from the bunker entrance.

Logan rushed back in three strides. "What?"

"The British have committed about an infantry regiment. The good news is they haven't deployed tanks on this front!" the lieutenant reported his observations.

"But their suppressing fire is precise and fierce!" Logan added his analysis.

"Yes, if we can't find a way to deal with those heavy machine guns and infantry guns, it'll be hard to hold off their charge!" Steffenberg said worriedly.

"Not necessarily!" SS Lieutenant Kyle Skorp interjected. "There's a minefield 500 to 700 meters ahead of us. It's planted with 88 anti-tank and regular mines. That should give them a hard time!"

"88? What a lucky number!" Logan thought. If each mine killed ten infantrymen, this minefield should indeed be enough to stop the British charge. But how many mines would actually be effective?

His intuition told him that such a small minefield couldn't be relied upon!

"Lent, you and Girard get all the armored vehicles nearby to the front lines! Mark, Nick, Lensin, head into town and find the colonel or any other commanders. The key is to get tank support!" Logan quickly issued orders to his trusted subordinates.

Shortly after the paratroopers left, the SS sergeant manning the observation slit shouted, "Look, those sneaky bastards! They're bypassing the minefield!"

Logan looked and saw that the advancing British infantry, as if equipped with X-ray vision, were detouring around the open front and flanking from both sides. In the darkness, Kyle Skorp's face was invisible, but his trembling voice revealed his disappointment:

"Unbelievable, unbelievable! Did they already map out the minefield? Ah! They didn't accidentally step on the mines earlier—they did it on purpose..."

"It seems the enemy took advantage of the fighting on the east and west flanks and the heavy artillery bombardment to do some reconnaissance," Logan said, remaining remarkably calm. He was beginning to feel more and more that he was born to be an excellent battlefield commander!

"Ah, Leutnant Logan, I finally found you! Great!" An untimely voice reached Logan's ears.

"Listen, kid, this isn't the place for you to practice your interviews! Bullets don't have eyes. Whether you're a senior reporter or a national hero, one shot and you're done for!"

Logan's words were harsh, and the bespectacled man was momentarily stunned. He quickly said, "Sorry, Leutnant, I'm not here to cause trouble. I'm just... really curious about the hero who led a few dozen paratroopers to take out a group of senior British and French officers!"

"Then watch and learn!" Logan snapped. "And by the way, I didn't lead a few dozen paratroopers—it was exactly twenty, including me! Now only eleven are left, and five of them are stuck in hospital beds. Maybe by the end of this battle, the only ones returning to Germany will be..."

He trailed off, swallowing his words. Whether they lived or died, they'd find out after the battle.