"Sir, what should I do? It was getting dark, the plane was about to leave, and the brothers had suffered so much that I was afraid it would be difficult for me to survive the night. www.biquge.info Colonel Carney, the commander of the 505th Regiment, who was injured in his arm and covered in blood, rushed to Ridgway's side and asked anxiously. Half of the casualties were lost in the first half a day, and if it were other American troops, the morale would have collapsed long ago, but the 82nd Airborne Division was the ace division brought out by Li Qiwei himself, and the division commander himself was the first to land and has been commanding on the front line, and the fighting spirit of the people is still quite high.

"Hold on, it will be fine, the second batch of troops will arrive at dawn tomorrow, and we only need to survive these 10 hours." Li Qiwei gasped while looking at the battle situation in the distance through the telescope, "The Germans have lost a lot of money, I think they have lost at least 500 people, and the tanks and artillery have been almost blown up by the army aviation, we can hold on." ”

said so, but Li Qiwei still had some drums in his heart, his troops seemed to be a little more than the opponent, and his combat effectiveness was not weak, but the opponent was able to fight his own side under the fire of the sky attack, which made him still a little unbelievable. Now he was finally beginning to believe what the veterans of the African battlefield were saying - it was better to fight the Germans for a week than to spend a year on the training ground, if you survived. Ridgway was a proud man, but at the same time a man of considerable sanity and objectivity, who believed that if he had swapped places with the Germans, he would never have achieved this effect.

However, admiration is admiration, he should fight or fight, he doesn't think that he has reached the point of exhaustion, and he himself even becomes more and more confident the more he fights. It's just strange that it's been dark for a long time, and the Germans on the opposite side have not yet attacked, so could it be that the enemy also needs to rest because of heavy casualties? That's good news.

However, he did not dare to take it lightly, let alone pin his hopes on the rest of the other party, he believed that he must be prepared to fight night battles, close combat, and vicious battles. While chewing on the K rations commonly used by the airborne troops, he explained to his subordinates in an orderly manner: "The German army is estimated to be adjusting the ranks and drawing up plans, and the first attack will be stormy, everyone must be mentally prepared, but there is no need to be afraid, we can get reinforcements in a steady stream, the Germans have this little strength, and if they fight one less, as long as they persist, the final victory must be ours."

In the night defense we must not gather hedgehogs, which are easily overwhelmed by enemy fire, and we should keep small squads and platoons in battle groups, using recoilless guns and bazookas, and by taking advantage of the rough and favorable terrain to find a way to knock out the heavy equipment of the Germans, which is the greatest threat to us;

Second, all units should maintain unimpeded communication, use your motorola walkie-talkies, find ways to gather your companions who were forced to disperse during the day because of the wrong position of the parachute, and launch counterattacks from different directions, so as to create the illusion that our forces are everywhere to the enemy;

Finally, dare to loitering and shoot, fight at night, dare to fight with the enemy with bayonets, and do not use flashlights and flares, which will soon kill you.

This is the most difficult night for us to endure, and at such a critical moment, officers at all levels must effectively play their role, and the airborne division has always been fighting on the most critical, critical, and difficult battlefield, and it is common for us to be surrounded, and we must instill in our soldiers such confidence -- we will fight stronger and stronger, and the enemy will only fight weaker and weaker, and this will be the first battle in which our 82 Airborne Division will become famous! More than 1,000 kilometers away, hundreds of millions of American people are watching us, waiting for us to create a miracle! ”

Li Qiwei's passion and confidence infected everyone, although the 82nd Airborne Division and its predecessor, the 82nd Infantry Division, have been in the army for a long time, but they have basically not participated in substantive battles, it should be said that the entire US Army has almost never participated in actual combat before the war, although the 82nd Airborne Division has always been a training pacesetter, but it is also a new recruit egg, German veterans today with experience to teach them a lesson, let them pay a heavy price.

Only after the mid-level officers retreated, he quietly told his adjutant: "Send a telegram to Chief of Staff Taylor, tomorrow at dawn I hope that the plane will be able to arrive at the scene first to provide fire assistance, and then his men will come down, all the movements must be fast, he will be a minute earlier and we will be safer, all the preparations must be completed before the early hours of this morning, the soldiers must rest well, and let them write a suicide note, if anyone is afraid of casualties, let him get out of me in advance, the 82nd Airborne Division will not be cowardly......" (Note: Maxwell Taylor was the chief of staff of the 82nd Airborne Division and Ridgway's most successful partner, and one of the two bulls in history became the commander-in-chief of the European forces in the European Union, and the other became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- one division produced two big names at the same time)

Ridgway's guess was correct, the Germans were indeed considering offensive methods, they had never fought such a humiliating battle, the air was full of enemy planes, seemingly never tired of flying in and out, from time to time pouring fire on the ground, the most powerful tank and armored car unit of the Marine Corps, No. 4 tank and armored car units, were blown up, so far only 7 tanks and 4 armored vehicles were available, and the rest were either destroyed by aerial fire or reimbursed by the endless anti-tank fire of the enemy forces on the ground.

The stationary 88mm anti-aircraft guns also suffered great losses, and only one was still usable so far. Originally, this thing was intended to be used to deal with the heavy tanks that the US armored forces might use in the landing, but I didn't think that the enemy came because the airborne division had no tanks at all, and the useless 88mm guns were forced to switch to air defense, but unfortunately there were too many planes, too few anti-aircraft guns, and it became a thorn in the side of enemy aircraft. On the contrary, several Whirlwind anti-aircraft vehicles became the number one contributors today, fighting infantry from the planes and fighting the infantry, and at least more than two companies of the enemy were killed under the fire of four 20mm machine guns.

Even at the height of the Battle of Holm, the Russians did not have such a firepower advantage. So in today's battles, the Germans suffered equally heavy losses, with more than 400 casualties.

Of course, they also keenly discovered that although the US troops on the opposite side had fierce firepower, effective cover, and a rather tenacious will to fight, their tactical command was rather rigid, much like the movements of a classic textbook, and they could not yet be fully understood according to the actual situation.

Fortunately for Ridgway, the German battalions he encountered were not standard Wehrmacht battalions, with 1,000 men in each battalion, and nearly 3,000 men in the three battalions, which was enough to wipe out the first batch of the 82nd Airborne Division and the 505th Regiment to fight. He encountered a Marine brigade, each battalion numbered less than 600, and after deducting the combat losses on the Guyana side, the non-combat attrition that sailed all the way, and the reserves left on the fleet, the actual number of people in each battalion was less than 500, and the total number was only nearly 1,300 men, which was only half of the first echelon of the 82nd Airborne Division. By night, the Germans still had nearly 900 troops and the American troops had more than 1,600 troops.

Lieutenant Colonel Beck was the commander of the battle group, and he summoned the three battalion commanders together to set up the task, and they were also on the K rations—this thing was airdropped everywhere, and the German soldiers soon found that they were better than their own, and the variety was richer, and they feasted in the spirit of not eating for nothing.

A standard K ration has a meal capacity of 12 people, including 12 breakfast, lunch, and dinner, including butter, biscuits, cheese, sugar, jam, instant coffee, chocolate, chewing gum, canned ham, canned luncheon meat, bottle opener, dinner spoon, napkins, matches, cigarettes, etc., and this batch of exquisite goods actually has milk slices and canned beef, which is really unexpected.

As for ammunition, it is even more floating everywhere, and you can pick it up with a pull. Including the Garand rifle and the Browning machine gun were used by the German army, the Garand and G43 rifles were basically half a pound and eight taels, which were worse than the STG43 assault rifles, but unfortunately the latter was too bullet-intensive and would soon be unusable; Although the Browning light machine gun was not as effective as the MG42, the US imperialist 12.7mm caliber heavy machine gun was very powerful, and the skilled German machine gunner suppressed a whole half of the airborne troops with a single machine gun in the afternoon. The Germans also tried to use American recoilless guns and bazooka, and praised the former, but did not speak highly of bazooka because it was not as good as an armored target.

Several veterans who survived the encirclement of Holm commented: "If I could get such supplies every day on the Russian front, I would be able to withstand it for 18 months, let alone 8 months!" ”

"It's a pity that the Führer is not as bold as Roosevelt......"

"Sir, will there be warships coming to support you at night?"

"No, it's easy to injure one's own people by mistake when the black light is blind, and the fleet can't be shelled when it's dispatched. However, General Machar sent me a telegram that the troops would be withdrawn from the island tomorrow night, and that we would have to hold out for another 24 hours......"

Everyone nodded, and today's ferocious aerial fire made them realize that ground troops alone could not hold Bermuda, and that the pistol on the east coast was too close to the continental United States, too provoking the nerves of the Americans. Not to mention anything else, even if all these airborne troops are cleaned up today, the Americans will put more troops tomorrow, and the marines can no longer withstand heavy losses.

"Tonight we will recuperate and prepare for an attack at 10 o'clock, and drive the Americans into the ......sea in one fell swoop," Lieutenant Colonel Baker explained, "Now we have to negotiate a safe way, the enemy obviously has more troops than us, and the will to fight is not bad, and what is more terrible is that there will be new reinforcements at dawn tomorrow, so the attack must be completed in one battle, otherwise it will be very passive, I asked the wounded who were captured, they belong to the 82nd Airborne Division, they consider themselves the aces of the US Army, and we must lose the confidence of this team." (To be continued.) )