Through the discussion of the military directors of the Western Front, the result was an analysis of the entire enemy situation. This is the ability to grasp the entire military situation for the sake of victory, and this is an indispensable condition for accomplishing the task.

The outer positions in the Ardennes area had been cleared before, because Eisenhower's Yang Mi was fighting to defend the trapped beasts and did not allow the German army to complete the encirclement of the Ardennes area, and now everything was ready, and the first to appear was the German elite paratrooper units.

In the late autumn of 1941, the war was approaching the German mainland, and the American and British allies swept through most of Western Europe and invaded the German border. The Allies suffered heavy losses in Belgium and the Netherlands, followed by the Allies in the Ardennes.

In order to coordinate with the actions of the large German forces, the German Western Front Command planned to use paratroopers on the night before the official offensive to parachute into the rear of the Allied forces to occupy a bridgehead, first, to cut off the Allied ground communications and block their reinforcements, and second, to create chaos in the rear of the Allied forces and receive a large force attacking from the front. The operation was codenamed "Eagle".

At the beginning of November, the command of the German Western Front appointed the battle-hardened von Frank in the paratrooper unit. Morality? Colonel Haight commanded Operation "Eagle". At the beginning of World War II, German paratroopers descended from the sky and launched a number of surprise attacks: the first large-scale airborne operations in Denmark and Norway were written; Airborne capture of all Dutch airfields to provide a guarantee for the rapid occupation of the Netherlands by German troops;

Raid on Eben, Belgium? The fortress of Emar set a record for the most daring airborne operation in World War II; The Battle of Crete is counted as the only siege in World War II in which a predominantly paratrooper unit was conducted.

These airborne operations provided an important guarantee for the victory of the German "blitzkrieg", therefore. Colonel Haidt was thrilled by the long-awaited airborne mission, and he saw Operation Eagle as an honorable battle to restore the prestige of the German paratroopers.

Haidt immediately set about forming a 3,100-strong paratrooper commando. Years of conquest have caused great losses to the veterans with airborne experience, and he had to barely find some officers and non-commissioned officers in the 2nd Airborne Corps, which was seriously understaffed, which was the only remaining elite paratroopers in Germany, and even the three paratrooper divisions in Li Mo's hands were also trapped on the Soviet battlefield at this time and were forced to be used as infantry.

This, combined with the bad weather in the Ardennes in autumn, the difficulty of parachuting at night and the inexperience of transport pilots, made it a major challenge to carry out the parachute accurately. To this end, Haight came up with a solution: in the airborne area, the bomber first dropped an incendiary bomb to indicate the location; The route is indicated by ground searchlights along the way from the departure airport to the airborne area, and where there are no searchlights, tracer shells are fired from anti-aircraft guns; When paratroopers are airborne, flares are dropped by transport aircraft. Ensure the accurate landing of paratroopers.

November 9th. Haight's paratrooper assault team assembled at Artun for pre-airborne preparations. On the 11th, they received a specific combat mission: at 3 o'clock on the 16th, before the main offensive of the German frontal forces, they were airborne in the area of Balagmichir in the direction of the attack of the 6th SS Panzer Army. Capture and hold local road intersections. Respond to frontal attacking troops. 190 Junkers-52 transport aircraft are used as air transporters. The departure airports are Paderborn and Lipstadt airports in Germany.

On the night of the 15th, because some of the trucks responsible for transporting the paratrooper commandos did not arrive in time, half of the paratroopers could not arrive at the departure airport on time as planned. Operation "Eagle" had to be postponed. At dawn on the 16th, the German Army Group "B" launched an attack on the Allies in three directions, and the armored division of the 1st echelon immediately broke through the Allied defense line. Haight, who was worried that there was nothing to do about this, received an urgent order on the afternoon of the 16th, and the SS 6th Panzer Army was suddenly blocked in the attack, and the paratrooper commandos were airborne to meet them as originally planned.

At 0:30 on the 17th, the first batch of 100 Junkers-52 transport planes carrying the paratrooper commando took off, and under the guidance of ground searchlights and anti-aircraft guns, they arrived over the predetermined area at 3 o'clock and parachuted. However, after the first group of transport planes, the searchlights along the route were turned off and the anti-aircraft guns stopped firing tracer rounds, causing the subsequent groups of transport planes to lose guidance and deviate from the course. Some of them flew over the Allied anti-aircraft artillery defense area, encountered intensive artillery interception, and 10 were shot down. The rest of the transport planes were scattered in formation, and with winds over the Ardennes exceeding 6 meters per second, about 200 German paratroopers found themselves in Bonn, 50 kilometers away from the target, and only 1,450 of them finally reached the target.

There were only 1,450 men, and there was also an attack, and Haight landed accurately with the first transport planes to Baragmichir, and by 8 a.m. on the 17th, he had gathered only 150 men and a mortar. With too few people, Haight ordered his troops to hide in the woods and wait for the other paratroopers to arrive. That night, the remaining 1,300 people finally arrived one after another, but all the communications troops and radio stations disappeared when they landed in the air. Unable to make contact with Command, Haidt nevertheless decided to capture the intended target. As a result, more than 1,450 German paratroopers, under the command of Haight, used FG-42 paratrooper rifles and MP-40 submachine guns to attack the Allied garrison near the intersection of the Balagmichir road, taking the opponent by surprise.

The sudden appearance of the German paratroopers made the Allies at a loss, and the "click-and-......" gunfire rang out continuously, the Allies fell in pieces, and the "boom" grenade explosions came and went, and the Allies were completely blinded, and the German paratroopers annihilated the Allied forces on the position in a very short time and successfully occupied the position.

By the morning of the 18th, the Balagmichir road junction was completely under the control of the German paratroopers. Coincidentally, it was a company of the Allied 92nd Airborne Division that was attacked, of which more than 40 people were captured by the Germans. But many German paratroopers were also wounded in the battle, and their lives were in critical condition because they did not have any medicines. In order to give the wounded a chance to live, Haight summoned the captured Allied troops and asked them to bring the German wounded back to the Allied positions and treat them.

When releasing Allied prisoners of war, Haidt wrote a letter to General Taylor, commander of the Allied 92nd Airborne Division (it was only adapted from an infantry division, but it was actually an infantry division. ）。 The letter reads: "Your Excellency fought with me in the Carentin region of Normandy, and from that time I learned that you were a brave and bold general. Now I will return all the prisoners of war I have captured, and at the same time hand over our wounded to you. I would appreciate it if you could give them the treatment they so desperately need! ”

General Taylor later managed to properly accommodate the German wounded, and even at the critical juncture of the German army's heavy encirclement, the Allied 92nd Airborne Division's infirmary still provided them with attentive medical care.

Haidt knew that the release of Allied prisoners of war would inevitably provoke a major Allied counteroffence, and he ordered his men to immediately set up defenses in the Allied garrison and in the woods on both sides of the road. A few hours later, the Allied troops of the 92nd Airborne Division, rushing to reinforce Bastoni, launched an attack on Haight. (To be continued......)