Thomas. Anton. Pittman is a good lad, and everyone who knows this handsome 17-year-old boy will make such an assessment. Warmth, friendliness, generosity, helpfulness, bravery, self-confidence, self-discipline, devotion of faith, all the good qualities that one would expect to see in one's own child, can be found in this boy.

Pittman had just celebrated his 17th birthday three days ago, and although due to the war, there was only one wheat bran cake without cream at the birthday celebration, and the taste was terrible to death, but Pittman felt extremely satisfied and happy to have a group of close friends around to celebrate his birthday.

Now, the handsome brown-haired boy is carrying a picnic basket up the narrow iron spiral staircase to the top of the clock tower in the main teaching building.

Pittman is a twelfth-year student at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, and was supposed to graduate from the school in another year, but with the current situation, the graduation ceremony must be postponed.

When the news of the Dunkirk fiasco reached China, rumors of the imminent landing of German troops began to spread wildly in society, and in order to calm the concerns of parents, and also in view of the safety of the next generation, all boarding schools on the English Channel stopped teaching, and students were forbidden to continue to stay in schools, so as to avoid mass damage to students due to air raids or other reasons, and add public pressure to the already anxious government and army.

The Duke of York's Royal Military School is supposed to be on the list of boarding schools that must be suspended. However, due to the particularity of this school, it was not closed, and the teaching activities continued until the beginning of August, when the Luftwaffe completely mastered the air supremacy of the southern coastal areas of Britain, and then the school was reluctantly closed, and the last batch of students were evacuated to the northern countryside of Britain.

The main reason why this school is so special is that it has a strong military background, in its era. The Duke of York's Royal Military School is actually a school for the children of the military. Most of the students of this school are the descendants of active duty officers and non-commissioned officers in the British Army, and it has the title of the cradle of army officers, and this school undertakes the education of these military children from primary school to high school, and its graduates with good grades can go on to apply for the Royal Military College Sandhurst and eventually become professional officers.

Because of the background of these students, the school decided to continue to hold classes, because many of the students' parents were serving in the army and could not take care of the children who were sent home.

After the Battle of Dunkirk. One after another, some students with good family conditions were taken back by their relatives, but a large number of students were still stayed, some of the children have been changed to the children of fallen soldiers, the parents of some children have gone to prisoner of war camps on the other side, and some children have nowhere to go except school because their relatives dislike their mothers and remarry.

It was an intolerable waste in the eyes of the school to send these children, who had already undergone a long period of preparatory military education, so after negotiations with the military higher-ups, the school was supported by the local garrison in Dover. The students were able to stay in the school, enjoy the private-level military rations, and receive military training while learning the normal curriculum.

However, with the Luftwaffe's successive victories. The Duke of York's Royal Military School finally came to an end, teaching was stopped, and the junior students were forcibly evacuated to various rural villages and towns, where the government arranged their lives and education.

But. There was still a group of students remaining, about thirty people, all of whom were seniors who were nearing graduation. Most of them are 16 to 17 years old, and they are close to adulthood, well beyond the upper age limit of government evacuation trainees.

Many of them are already alone, with no place to turn to other than school, and although they are old enough to serve, the Army's recruitment has stopped, and it is said that it will not be until late September until the restart.

These students applied to the school to stay and protect the school, and they applied to set up the Duke of York's Royal Military School Student Self-Defense Force, equipping the school with teaching weapons, guarding the school's buildings and property, and providing some help to the Dover garrison at a critical moment.

After some deliberation, the school finally agreed to the students' request, after all, the campus is large, has a large number of valuable teaching materials and equipment, and does need enough manpower to maintain and guard it.

Thomas. Anton. Pitman became a member of the Student Self-Defense Force, his father was an army major, participated in the British Expeditionary Force, and finally surrendered and was captured in Dunkirk, his mother died of illness as early as his childhood, he spent his childhood in his father's barracks, all the relatives in the family emigrated overseas after World War I, before he was able to rely on some of his father's business investment profits to complete his education, but when the news of his father's capture came, those business partners lost contact one by one, and the payment of military pay stopped, He is now living on his family's previous savings.

The formation of the Student Self-Defense Force gave him new hope, because he was able to receive military rations and financial subsidies from some schools, which really relieved him of the heavy burden on him, and he was very satisfied with his current life.

Now he is preparing to take over the shift with his companions, this tower is the tallest building within a radius of five kilometers, so the military proposed that the school send people to watch the tower 24 hours a day, mainly to warn the German airdrop paratroopers and spies, for this purpose the school also specially pulled a telephone line for the bell tower, once there is any special discovery, the lookout can notify the student self-defense force through the phone on the tower to go to check.

Pitman climbed slowly with a heavy picnic basket for his and his companions' dinner and supper, which they were going to be on duty from four o'clock in the afternoon until midnight, the work seemed easy, but it was not very pleasant, the two boys squatted in a narrow attic of only four square meters, blowing the night breeze for hours in a row, and if there was no food to carry it, it would not be able to hold on anyway.

As Pitman climbed the last few escalators, he suddenly realized that something seemed to be wrong, and some viscous red liquid was slowly flowing down the exit of the spiral staircase, down the wall and onto the iron carved pedals.

"Tommy, Tommy. Do you hear me? Pitman shouted loudly into the exit, but received no response from his companions, by which time he could already smell the smell of blood in the air.

"Tommy, what's going on." Pitman hurriedly ran a few steps up to the attic of the clock tower, and in a hurry he didn't notice that the sticky red liquid had trickled up the top iron steps, and the sticky steps made him lose his balance when he entered the door, and when he reacted, he found himself lying in a pool of blood from his companion.

Tommy. Shepard is dead, and the 17-year-old boy, who weighed 150 pounds, was once a regular member of the school team and was the most popular star among girls. Handsome, cheerful, and muscular. Now the face that once fascinated a group of girls has turned gray and white due to rapid blood loss, his eyes are slightly open, his godless pupils are staring at the roof, his mouth is wide open, the corners of his mouth are full of foam and blood bubbles, and his chin is completely black-red with coagulated blood.

He pressed one hand tightly against his neck, the other hand spread weakly to one side, the chest of the uniform was soaked with blood, and a large pool of blood flowed from the floor. Occupying almost half of the small attic, and the other half of the floor was covered with bloodstained handprints and shoe prints, as well as various blood-colored scratches, the boy was obviously in great pain when he died. He struggled in this attic for a long time.

Pitman slowly scrambled to his feet, cautiously approaching the corpse of his companion, who had received some medical training and had visited the school's collection of human specimens. He thought he was prepared for blood and death, but he really faced it, especially when he was dealing with friends with whom he had been spending time and night. He found that his preparation was far from enough.

Pitman slowly moved to his friend's side, he carefully removed his friend's hand on his neck, and immediately saw the cause of his friend's death, Tommy's neck has a huge hole, he can almost see the throat and artery inside, the wound is very terrible, half of his neck was brutally torn open, and ordinary people should have died on the spot, but looking at the marks on the floor in the attic, Tommy's strong survival ** was touching.

Pittman didn't know how the wound was inflicted, as he had never seen a similar wound and it looked like a gunshot wound, but who exactly would shoot at a school tower.

At this time, he suddenly heard the roar of engines in the distance, and it seemed that a convoy was passing nearby. Pittman quickly stood up and ran to the fence of the attic, he grabbed the handrail and looked down, only to see a dozen gray painted armored vehicles rushing towards the school in an inverted V-shaped formation on the side of the road covered with thick bushes and green weeds.

Pittman's favorite part of his days is to flip through military-technical journals, and he recognizes the model of the vehicle in front of him at a glance. "251 armored personnel carriers in Germany, the Germans are attacking the school?" Pittman was stunned by what he saw, and he even began to wonder if he was hallucinating, he really didn't understand how the Germans were here, could it be that Dover had already fallen?

After a few seconds, Pittman was convinced that what he had seen was real, and that all his previous doubts were answered from here, that it was the Germans who had shot Tommy because they were now shooting at him as well. Machine guns from German armored vehicles began to fire at the tallest building, and apparently German soldiers had seen moving figures on the tower. The dense bullets covered the small attic in an instant, and the two-finger-thick oak walls could not resist the fire of machine gun bullets, and the flying wood chips and bullets swept from one side of the attic to the other like a storm. Pittman knelt on the desk where the phone was placed with his head in his hands and screamed loudly, two 7.9mm bullets in front of him, tearing the heavy magnet phone in half.

Pitman screamed in the hail of bullets, curling himself up in a ball, his mind blank now, hoping that this terrible shooting would stop and that he could escape this terrible hell.

"What did the sniper do to block that commanding height, didn't it mean that the target had been cleared?" Zeisler stood in his command car, holding a telescope in his hand to check the situation on the battlefield.

As the paratroopers told him, the local guards were just a group of students who had not yet graduated, and a platoon of four armored vehicles successfully broke through the open field of a hundred meters without any resistance. The enemy did not expect to be attacked by the German army at all, and even the sentries were not arranged, which was a satisfactory start for the first battle of the Panzergrenadiers.

"The second row also burst in. There was no resistance, they had already reached the intended position. The sergeant commander of the company kept an eye on the movement of the second platoon with a telescope, and he saw the communications corps standing on the most armored personnel carrier and began to wave a white signal flag at him.

"The company advances, and the three platoons follow." Zeisler put down his binoculars and waved at another 250 half-track in the company, and the remaining seven armored vehicles in the company formed two rows and began to move towards the campus.

Zeisler left the third platoon with the second platoon, and two of the four Type 251 half-track armored vehicles were heavily armed, one with an 82-mm mortar and the other with a 37-mm anti-tank gun. The second and third rows were tasked with blocking the lateral arteries of the campus. To cut off the escape route for people on campus, they need heavy firepower as support.

After arranging the defensive position, Zeisler took his company's three 250 armored vehicles and rushed into the school's campus, the convoy was inserted into the school's central axis from one side of the main school building, and while guarding to both sides, it was advancing along the central axis in the direction of the school office building at the end of the road, which was the predetermined meeting point between him and the second company, if the troops of the second company arrived there, it would mean that the two companies had completed the encirclement of the school.

The rest is the boring clean-up mission. In this regard, the second company seems to have a lot of experience in this, and seems to be quite happy with it, so Zeisler is also happy to give up space for the other party to play at will.

As Zeisler and his German soldiers stared nervously at the windows of the dormitory buildings on either side, waiting for the expected attack. A company convoy collided head-on with the Student Self-Defense Force.

Dozens of young men in blue cadet uniforms hurried out of a dormitory building with Lee Enfield rifles in their hands, perhaps hearing the sound of machine guns firing at the tower in front of them, but apparently not understanding what was going on.

The students swarmed up to the main road. When they saw the German armored vehicles speeding from a distance, everyone stopped, and they looked at the speeding German armored vehicles with stupid mouths. The rifle in his hand was pointed at the ground, and no one seemed to think to shoot at these enemies.

The Germans were also confused by this scene, and the leading armored car stopped beside the group of students, and Zeisler raised his hand to signal his soldiers not to shoot, and he felt that the other party seemed to be preparing to surrender. So these German soldiers stood upright in the compartment of the armored car with rifles and submachine guns in their hands, and looked at the British in front of them with puzzled expressions.

The students did not know whether the armored vehicle in front of them was a real German product or a counterfeit product used by the British army for exercises. It seems that these guys pretending to be German soldiers are really very dedicated, both the costumes and the props are very realistic, look at the uniforms and weapons, those beautiful medals, and look at the exquisite Type 35 steel helmet, I really don't know where they got such a good thing.

Look at the Iron Cross emblem is really like that, and the number on the body is also very professional, so people can't help but give a thumbs up to the artist.

Students surrounded with rifles, a few daring boys happily patted the smooth shell of the armored car, and a few students interested in mechanics had already crouched down and began to study the load-bearing wheels and suspension structure under the body.

"Are you guys shooting in front of you? Are you doing a drill? The Germans you play are so similar, where did you get this military uniform? The students questioned the Germans in the car.

"Sir, you're wearing a German ensign uniform, it looks so realistic, this was captured from the Germans, you have an MP38 submachine gun in your hand, can you show me?" A student excitedly shouted at Zeisler.

"Hey, this German armored car is the real thing! Parts markings and warning instructions are available in German. ”

"Really? Let me see, where? ”

"Sir, can you let me go up and take a look? I'm not going to mess with it. ”

"Sir, your rifle looks a little new, and I think it might be more realistic if it got some dust."

Poor Zeisler's mind is now full of the chatter of British students, and he has also figured out the situation in front of him, these children don't believe that the German army in front of them is real, thinking that the British Army is disguised in order to act realistically, looking at this group of naïve little Brits, Zeisler doesn't know what to do.

At this time, suddenly a figure in the distance waved his arms like crazy, and ran towards this place quickly, running wildly while hissing and shouting something, and the students on the periphery turned their heads in confusion when they heard the shouting.

"Germans! They killed Tommy, they killed Tommy, they were Germans! Pittman was going mad with a frenzy, he couldn't understand why his friends didn't shoot at the Germans, he shouted and waved his arms at them.

Several students finally heard Pittman's shout, and they turned their faces to look at the German armored car in panic, only to find that the German soldiers on the car had already raised their weapons and aimed them at themselves, and the students gathered around the armored car had already thrown down their weapons and raised their hands high.

A German soldier raised his rifle and aimed it at Pittmann, who was running from a distance, and pulled the trigger in the panic of the students. Glancing at Pittman, who was rolling on the ground with his thighs in his hands, the German soldier put down his rifle and turned his face to the British student next to the car with a hearty smile. (To be continued......)