"Sir, a new order from the regimental commander." A motorized herald stopped Congdapu in his crotch next to the 250 half-track armored transporter at the company headquarters, first raised his hand to salute, then took out a folded official document from the chest pocket of his rubber trench coat, raised his hand and handed it to the lieutenant company commander who was standing in the back compartment.

"Good work." Lieutenant Zeisler took the order from the edge of the carriage, gave a casual military salute, and then opened the official document and read it carefully.

"Please tell the regimental commander that we have arrived at the Celebration Trail, have joined up with the liaison team of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, and are heading towards the Royal Military School of the Duke of York as planned. The second company is making a detour from the North, and when they are in position, we are ready to launch our first tentative attack. Zeisler read the order, refolded it, and tucked it into the map bag behind his waist.

"Yes, sir." The herald saluted the lieutenant again, then twisted the throttle, and the motorcycle made a beautiful U-turn on the spot, rolled up a puff of green smoke, and roared towards the rear.

Zeisler jumped out of the armored car, walked to the front of the car, spread a map on the hood of the armored car, and his three platoon commanders and company non-commissioned officers gathered in front of the car, waiting for the company commander to issue combat orders.

"Is everyone in place? Waiting for the second company to send a signal, the first platoon advanced from the front, the second platoon began to attack in the first platoon and then cut diagonally from the left to the side of the building, and then outflanked along this straight road, and the third platoon acted as a reserve, and with the company's action, according to the intelligence of the paratroopers, it was guarded by a group of cadets with rifles and machine guns in their hands, and maybe some grenades, so that our soldiers should pay attention, do not take it lightly if they think that the other side is some children, and do not forget the lesson we learned when we were in France.

This building was their main school building, and the playground in front of it had some sandbag bunkers and foxholes, waiting until a row took the corner. Concentrate two platoons of mortars and machine guns, block this main road, order the soldiers not to enter the building casually, let the second company in the north do the task of clearing the remnants of the enemy, our task is to open the passage for the follow-up troops, the regimental headquarters ordered us to occupy this campus immediately after the establishment of a defensive line on the spot, block the Dover road, our responsibility is very heavy, so we must take down this school in the shortest possible time, if the other side is stubbornly resistant. and destroy them completely. Gentlemen, get moving. After Zeisler finished speaking, he began to shake hands with his subordinates one by one and wish good luck, and the commanders of the troops trotted back to their units.

While the German High Seas Fleet and the British Royal Navy's Home Fleet were still fighting in the English Channel, a report from the paratroopers was put in front of Admiral Bock. After reading the contents of the report, Bock could not sit still, and he immediately summoned all the staff officers of the headquarters and the regimental commanders of the various landed troops to hold an operational meeting in the conference room at Fort Dear.

The intelligence of the paratroopers is full of weight, and the content is even more shocking. Relying on the surrendered personnel of the British army, they went so far as to reactivate the communication system of the underground command post in Kent, and using the captured British code, they restored radio contact with the troops of Dover and Folkestone. Then they were amazed to find out. The command of the fortress of Dover was completely paralyzed, and the British troops in this area were in a dilemma of command confusion.

The two infantry divisions were at the same level as one armored division, and London did not determine the commander-in-chief of the support army, according to the original procedure. They were all under the command of Major General Mason, the commander of the Dover Fortress, and no one could have imagined that Major General Mason would become a missing person. Even his replacement, the deputy commander, the chief of staff, and the entire theater command were all sealed in the dark underground tunnels with him.

At present, in these troops, the three division commanders are all in the rank of colonel, and none of them is qualified to command the other. They had been in contact with the Kent command post for a while, and as the highest-ranking officer in the theater at the moment, Rear Admiral Les of the Kent command post had taken over the command of the troops.

Although this order sounds speechless, an order is an order, and the troops in the theater finally have a backbone. But the good times did not last long, and when the division commanders, who were impatient to the point of impatience, asked the Kent command post again about the progress, the Kent command post could no longer be contacted.

These troops were a little panicked, seeing that the Germans were about to land, and this side not only lost its unified command, but also lost contact with its superiors, and at the same time lost intelligence and material support.

The 1st Panzer Division had just arrived at the Port of Dover area, and it had not even been able to secure its garrison and supplies, and from last night to this day, the troops had relied on emergency field rations to survive. Due to the almost total annihilation of the commander of the fortress, and the heavy losses of the personnel in charge of logistics and administration, they could not even get a can without written documents and permission from the commander-in-chief.

Wounded soldiers had no access to first aid, and the dead had no one to restrain them, so they could only cover themselves with a military blanket and line up haphazardly on the side of the road covered with rubble. The morale of the troops is declining rapidly, the whole army is panicking, the officers and non-commissioned officers are at a loss, and everyone is full of pessimism about the future, which is a precursor to something terrible.

The officers began to try to send a report directly to London about the current situation of the troops, and to seek instructions from the Army Command, but for some reason, they never received a response. So when they got in touch with Kent again, it was like a lost child seeing their parents again, and they were overjoyed to obey the instructions given by the Kent command post, and without hesitation to carry them out, the paratroopers cleverly ordered them to recall the outer troops, shrink the defensive line, and make way for the Germans to pass smoothly.

The daring German paratroopers even sent a capable squad to infiltrate the British army in the name of the Kent Command Post's front-line liaison group, and they have now been stationed in the division headquarters of the British 1st Panzer Division, and so far there is no sign of being recognized, and they are continuously relaying the information they have collected about the British army's deployment and garrison movements to the German landing headquarters through the Kent command post.

Bock found that his long-awaited fighter had arrived, and that it was no longer possible to keep it guarded, and that the Germans had to react immediately and annihilate the vulnerable mobile force in the intended area before the British could regroup.

Bock understood that he had no time to wait for the next group of troops to land, and that all he could now use was two and a half infantry divisions and an armored division at hand. The Panzer Division lacked an infantry battalion, but it could be supplemented by a tank destroyer battalion that had just climbed ashore, a full twenty-eight No. 3 assault guns, or the latest modification of a long-barreled 75 mm gun, which could penetrate the front armor of Matilda's tanks from a distance of a thousand meters.

Although Bock's personality tends to be conservative, as long as he makes up his mind, he will never look ahead again, and he will do everything to achieve the set goals. Guderian, as the commander-in-chief of the assault forces, Bock gave him command of the front, which could be dealt with on the fly according to the situation at the time. Changing tactics and redirecting the offensive did not require permission from the landing command, and Guderian had full field authority over all units involved in the offensive, and he could remove, detain, or even arrest all commanders he considered guilty at will.

Bock expressed his unreserved trust in Guderian, for which Guderian was also very moved and admired, and after a solemn military salute to Boderian, Guderian left the headquarters with the commanders of the various units.

According to the plan, an infantry regiment of the German 6th Division was to serve as the vanguard. The 52nd Infantry Division followed to clear a passage for the follow-up forces, searching and clearing the various small British strongholds around Dover before setting up a defensive line north of the port area. Seal the retreat of the British army in the direction of Canterbury and London.

Gudri's armor division broke through the passage controlled by the 52nd Division into the Dover area, followed the Forrest Gump road and went straight to the back of Folkestone, blocking the British retreat to Ashford, and squeezing the two infantry divisions stationed outside Folkestone in the direction of Dover.

The two infantry divisions were stationed in the barracks in Port Folkestone. As a result, they were caught off guard by the early morning shelling, and the soldiers and supplies were greatly damaged, and most of the baggage and ammunition had not yet had time to be unloaded from the transport trucks. All of them were reduced to a pile of coke along with those precious trucks.

Now the remnants of the two divisions, which together numbered less than 20,000 men, had retreated to the outskirts of the city, temporarily encamped in the surrounding abandoned farmhouses and villages, and they kept asking the Kent command post to mobilize supplies, claiming that if they were not replenished tonight, the troops might run into a shortage of food.

All the storage warehouses in Port Folkestone have been burned in the shelling, the supplies in the government's underground shelters are not enough to provide relief, and the citizens who survived the shelling are leaving the city with their last belongings, and it is completely impossible to get supplies from the local area.

According to Bock and Guderian's predictions, these two infantry divisions would not be able to put up an effective resistance when they were attacked by German armored forces, and they would obediently press the German baton and be driven to the port area of Dover.

The German 22nd Infantry Division was to fill the gap between Dover and Folkestone, establishing a strong blockade in the north, and they would work with Gudry's Armored Division to shrink the encirclement and eventually squeeze the British mobile forces into a narrow area of 10 kilometers from the port of Dover, forcing them to surrender or annihilate them on the spot.

Zeisler's company had the honour of taking on the responsibility of being the vanguard of the German army in this campaign, and this infantry company, one of the first fully mechanized experimental units of the German army, had abandoned its usual mule and horse vehicles, and now had fifteen half-track personnel carriers and four off-road vehicles, as well as three three-wheeled motorcycles.

They were subordinate to the 6th Infantry Regiment of the 37th Infantry Division, and according to the will of their superiors, the entire infantry division would be converted into mechanized units in the future.

Panzergrenadiers, Zeisler liked the name very much, and he was proud that his company could be the pioneer of this new branch of arms, and the task of the experimental unit was to find out the tactics suitable for this type of unit in battle, to find out its strengths and weaknesses, especially to discover the weaknesses and shortcomings of this unit, and to familiarize the superior commander with the methods and ways of using this unit, to understand it tactically and strategically, so as to pave the way for the future promotion of this unit and the rearmament and reorganization of this unit throughout the army.

"Look, sir!" At this time, Zeisler's company sergeant shouted loudly. Zeisler stood in the carriage and looked out at the sky to the north, where two bright red points of light were falling rapidly.

"It's a signal from the second company. They are already in position, Sergeant Major Franken, immediately fire a green flare. The first and second platoons immediately began to attack according to the plan, and the third platoon followed the company headquarters. Zeisler stood in the compartment of the armored personnel carrier with his chest upright, holding the steel plate on the roof with his left hand, raising his right hand high, and then swinging it forward vigorously. Panzergrenadiers! Advance! ”

With the roar of the engine, the first row of four 251 half-track armored vehicles quickly rushed out of the bushes, and the convoy quickly switched to a sharp formation, and the manganese steel tracks spun rapidly, crushing through the soft soil of the British wilderness, and rushing towards the military academy campus a hundred meters away. The future German Panzergrenadiers met their first battle here. (To be continued......)