ATPnovel Chapter 81 Wandering in France
Chapter 81 Wandering in France
Chapter 81 Wandering in France (Long Chapter)
A few seconds later.
In Arthur's RTS view, the shell landed on the riverbank about 30 meters to the left of the No. 1 88 gun position, exploding into a cloud of mud and water.
The German sentry was startled and began shouting.
German temporary camp on the north bank of the Lombats Bridge.
Major Wolfgang Kurz had just crawled into the captured French two-person tent.
A warm, comforting smell filled the air. For a soldier who had spent the entire day trudging through the mud, this was the smell of paradise.
The major sighed contentedly, unbuckled his belt that had bound him all day, and hung it beside his cot. He sat on the cot and began to laboriously kick off his pair of tall leather boots, which were covered in Flanders mud.
"Those damn Brits, they ran fast."
As he pulled off his boots, he inwardly mocked General Guderian's overly cautious nature. The "ghost troops," the "determined breakout"—it all seemed like paranoia now.
The rain outside had stopped, and the camp was quiet except for the sound of the Iser River flowing and the occasional footsteps of a few sentries splashing through puddles in the distance.
Everything seemed so safe, so under control.
Until that piercing scream shattered the tranquility.
"Chirp—!!!"
That sound was all too familiar to any veteran. It was the sound of death whistling overhead, the sound of artillery shells falling.
Major Kurz's hand, which was pulling off his boot, froze in mid-air, and his pupils shrank instantly.
"boom!"
A muffled, loud bang exploded not far from the tent.
The ground trembled violently. The kerosene lamp hanging from the top of the tent swayed wildly, its dim yellow light dancing wildly on the canvas walls. Mud splattered against the tent walls with a series of muffled thuds.
The next second, the previously languid German conversation outside the tent instantly turned into terrified screams.
"Alarm! Alarm! (Warning! Warning!)"
"Sanitäter! Hier rüber! (Medic! This way!)"
Screams mingled with the chaotic footsteps, sounding like faces covered in blasted mud.
Major Kurz didn't bother to put his boot back on. He jumped off the bed barefoot, grabbed the MP40 submachine gun hanging on the headboard, and rushed out of the tent without even putting on his helmet.
A wave of cold, damp air hit me, carrying with it the smell of gunpowder from an explosion.
In the dim light of a distant searchlight, he spotted his disheveled men beside the No. 1 88mm gun emplacement. Several gunners who had been smoking were now lying prone in the mud, staring in shock at the still-smoking shell crater on the riverbank a few kilometers away.
"Damn it!"
Major Kurz stared at the location of the bomb crater, and his heart skipped a beat.
It is only 30 meters away from the No. 1 gun position.
If it deviates by 200 meters, it's an unlucky stray bullet; if it deviates by 100 meters, it's a harassing shot fired indiscriminately.
But thirty meters?
In blind firing at night without line of sight, this is called "near miss." It's not an enemy gunner's mistake; quite the opposite, it's Death's last deep breath as he adjusts his aim.
This is an enemy observation post conducting precision firing!
In that instant, all the sense of superiority brought by the Thuringian sausages and Bavarian beer that had been churning in my stomach, along with the sense of security of being a "conqueror," vanished in the face of this shell, turning into a bone-chilling cold.
What terrified him most was not the explosion of the shell itself, but the unknown.
The shells were right under his nose, and he still didn't even know who his opponent was!
Also, where did this shell come from?
Are they the "rats" that are barely surviving in the ruins of Niupot in the north?
Is it still that ghost army that he once mocked as a "product of paranoia"?
Is it a frontal assault? Or have they already reached our rear?
In this thick fog, his Krupp cannons were incredibly powerful, but unfortunately, he was blind.
"Enemy attack! All artillery positions, enter combat readiness!"
Major Kurz roared hysterically, "They're nearby! Find those damned rats for me!"
Seconds after the first mortar was fired.
In Arthur's RTS view, he saw the shell land on the riverbank about thirty meters to the left of the No. 1 88 gun position, exploding into a cloud of mud and water. The German sentry was startled and began shouting.
The deviation was not significant, and considering that this was blind firing, the Scottish gunners were of very high quality.
"Impact point observation: Correct to the right by 30 (mil), add two strokes (distance increases by 50 meters)."
Arthur's voice followed immediately, so fast it was as if he hadn't thought at all, as if his eyes were glued to the shells: "No need for test firing. Trust me. Fire both cannons simultaneously, rapid fire. Three rounds loaded."
"Smash it for me!"
The gunner gritted his teeth, his correction wheel spinning rapidly: "30 degrees to the right! Add two more strokes! Three rapid shots! Fire!!"
"Thump! Thump! Thump!"
Six shells were fired in quick succession.
The muffled sound of the launch in the distance reached Major Kurz's ears, causing his tense nerves to relax for a moment.
"Rapid firing? So fast?"
Major Kurz paused for a moment, then a cold smile, typical of a professional artilleryman, curled at the corner of his mouth.
Although he worked with anti-aircraft guns, that did not prevent him from systematically studying the theory of indirect fire artillery.
In his understanding, this was completely contrary to the physical laws governing ballistic correction.
If it were the standard German 10.5cmle.FH18 howitzer, this error would be negligible within the range of lethal radius.
But the weak explosion just now gave away the fact that it was a British 3-inch mortar. For such a "large grenade" with only a few hundred grams of explosive, thirty meters is the distance from life to death, and it is simply impossible to cause effective damage.
According to any artillery manual, the enemy observer should be frantically calculating the mil at this moment, and then conducting standard "bracketing"—firing a long-range shell and a short-range shell, taking the middle value, until the impact point is corrected to within five meters, before ordering the entire company to fire.
Even for the most skilled artillery crew, this process takes at least two minutes.
But now?
Less than ten seconds had passed. The smoke from the first shot hadn't even cleared when the enemy started firing rapidly?
It's not like we're fighting infantrymen who are charging out in the open.
"An amateur. Absolutely an amateur."
Kurz made his judgment. This must have been a blind swarm of panicked British soldiers trying to bolster their courage. They hadn't even waited for the observers to reply before stuffing the shells into the cannons.
"Don't panic! It's just random shooting!"
Major Kurz brandished his submachine gun, yelling at the soldiers lying prone in the mud, trying to project a commander's composure: "They're not aiming properly! That's a waste of ammunition! Get back to your positions immediately! Get them—"
He didn't finish his sentence.
He couldn't even produce the syllable in his throat.
Because what came through the air was no longer a single shriek, but a dense, chilling chord of death, like cloth being torn apart.
"Chirp chirp chirp!!!"
The sound was too close.
That's incredibly accurate.
There was absolutely no room left for God to roll the dice.
Major Kurz's cold smile froze into a comical mask. He looked up abruptly, and what he saw in his pupils was no longer the dark night sky, but a row of rapidly enlarging shadows of death.
"This is impossible—"
That was his last thought in this world.
The next second, the laws of physics mercilessly shattered his arrogance.
Six 3-inch high-explosive shells, like a precisely calculated meteor shower, struck the circular fortification of the No. 1 88 gun with perfect accuracy.
"boom-!!!"
This time, Arthur saw a scene on the RTS map that pleased him greatly.
The precisely corrected impact point, as if guided by eyes, directly covered the position of the No. 1 88 gun.
One of the high-explosive shells hit the unprotected 88mm high-explosive ammunition boxes piled up next to the gun position squarely.
"boom-!!!"
A huge orange-red fireball rose into the air from the bridgehead, and the force of the explosion instantly blew the seven-ton cannon, along with several unfortunate people next to it, into the air.
This is the Achilles' heel of the 88mm gun, or rather, all towed anti-tank guns.
It is the culmination of Krupp's craftsmanship, precise and powerful, but also fragile.
That thin shield might be able to block machine gun bullets from the front, and even deflect stray bullets at a distance, but as for artillery shells, sorry, it's not a tank.
Faced with a "top-attack weapon" like a mortar, the 88mm gun's complex hydraulic recoil and recoil mechanism, precision directional gears, and the gunner who was completely exposed were all like meat on a chopping board.
Let alone a 3-inch high-explosive shell, even a light 60mm mortar shell, or even a grenade, as long as it lands in that open gun rack basket, or severs that hydraulic pipe that's only as thick as a wrist, this seven-ton steel monster will instantly turn into a pile of unfireable scrap metal.
Even more deadly was that, in pursuit of a higher rate of fire, German gunners habitually kept piles of 88mm shells filled with high-explosive powder within easy reach. In the instant when mortar shells were flying everywhere, these ammunition boxes became the perfect accelerant.
This is the correct way to use a mortar:
It's not like that idiot Ryder used it to bomb a few insignificant infantrymen in open ground. Instead, it utilizes its unique high-trajectory trajectory to conduct "surgical" top-attack strikes, detonating ammunition to specifically target and eliminate those expensive, cumbersome, and high-value targets without top armor.
Arthur's satisfied voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Well done, Sergeant. One down. Now, all gun barrels turn 5 mils to the left. We'll knock on the next door."
"If Major Ryder were here," Arthur paused, a hint of sarcasm in his voice, "he should kneel down and learn what efficiency really is."
Major McKenzie looked at the orange-red flames rising in the distance, and clenched his fist hard, finally releasing the pent-up anger that had been building up for days.
Just as the fireball reached its highest point...
21:59:30.
As if in response to the explosion, three red flares ripped through the night sky and soared into the heavens from the direction of the ruins of Niupot city.
"Chirp!!!"
The piercing sound of burning magnesium powder mingled with the echoes of distant explosions, turning the rain-soaked ruins a deep crimson.
That was an ultimatum.
It is also the clarion call for the final assault.
In the shadows beneath the N34 highway embankment, Arthur glanced at his watch.
"start."
He said softly.
22:00:00.
In a mere forty seconds, the Scottish artillerymen, as if possessed, crammed the two rows of high-explosive shells, painted yellow, into the scorching hot barrels one after another.
"Thump! Thump! Thump!"
The dull thuds of gunfire echoed one after another.
At this moment, there were no more test shots, no more observations, and the gunners didn't even need to use their thumbs to measure distances.
Because Arthur Sterling was their eyes.
The dense hail of bullets, like meteorites with eyes, slammed into the heads of the remaining three 88mm artillery positions with terrifying precision.
One explosion after another turned those expensive Krupp cannons into twisted scrap metal.
There is no suspense.
Guided precisely by the RTS system, every shell found its destination. The continuous explosions turned the entire bridgehead into a raging inferno. The four once invincible "88mm gatekeepers" were now piles of twisted scrap metal, crackling and groaning in the flames along with the exploding ammunition boxes.
"Feindkontakt! (Make contact with the enemy!)"
"Von hinten! (From behind!)"
The German positions instantly erupted into chaos.
The sirens, screams, and officers' hysterical roars mingled together. The machine guns and rifles that had been pointing south at Highway N34 began frantically trying to turn around.
With the ammunition box nearly empty, the gunner's hand had already reached for the last few shells.
"Stop! Cease fire!"
Arthur's voice suddenly blared in the earpiece: "Save the last five! Don't waste them on scrap metal!"
The gunner froze for a moment, his movements abruptly halting in mid-air.
"Parameters adjusted: 15 mil to the right, distance reduced by 50. See those two MG34s preparing to turn around?"
Arthur's voice was devoid of emotion. In his RTS view, the newly awakened German machine gun positions were frantically turning their guns, attempting to point them at the British infantry rushing out of the city. If these "Hitler chainsaws" were to fire, it would be a massacre of the charging troops.
"That's the real obstacle. Use these last five shots to take out the German machine gunner!"
"Understood!" the gunner roared, quickly turning the crank handle. "15 to the right! Reduce distance by 50! Last five rounds—fire!!"
'
"Thump—!!"
The last few mortar shells traced high arcs, flew over the burning wreckage of the 88mm gun, and landed precisely inside the sandbag wall of the German machine gun position.
The machine gun emplacement, which had been poised to unleash a barrage of fire, fell silent instantly, and the men and their guns were blown into the air.
With this last threat eliminated, a fatal gap appeared in the north bank defenses of the Lombard Bridge.
But the chaos was deadly. The German troops didn't know whether to deal with the shells falling overhead or turn around to deal with the threat from the city behind them.
In the midst of this deadly chaos.
"Buzz!!!"
A weak, even thin, engine roar emerged from the smoke in Niupt.
Two Vickers Mk.VIc light tanks took the lead.
These two small, 6-ton vehicles, which could hardly be considered "tanks" on the European battlefield, were now like two mad dogs. Their tracks crushed gravel and rubble as they unleashed a hail of bullets from their 15mm Bertha heavy machine guns at the chaotic German figures, while leading hundreds of desperate British infantrymen in a desperate charge.
"Up the Guards!"
"Scotland Forever!"
Amidst the deafening roar of the engines, the hoarse roars of hundreds of Scottish madmen erupted.
That wasn't a uniform chant; it was a beastly roar that erupted after days of being suppressed by hunger, fear, and despair.
More than 300 ragged infantrymen, bayonets at their sides, followed closely behind two light tanks, like a khaki torrent bursting its banks, almost outpacing the tanks.
And on the opposite side.
"Gegenangriff! (Fight back!)"
"Lasstsienichtdurch! (Don't let them come any closer!)"
The German response was also astonishingly fast.
Although the 88mm mortar position had been turned into a sea of fire and several machine gun emplacements had been eliminated, the surviving infantry and machine gunners displayed a terrifying level of tactical skill.
Especially when the enemy came into visual range, they immediately organized a counterattack.
A German lieutenant, his face covered in blood, crawled out of the mud pit, grabbed an MP40 submachine gun, and fired a burst at the charging British troops.
"Fire! Open fire! Stop them!"
He roared hysterically, his voice cutting through the aftershocks of the explosion: "Forget those two tin cans! Attack the infantry! Attack the infantry behind them!"
In an instant, countless tongues of fire spewed out again from the previously chaotic German defenses.
Although most of their heavy weapons were lost, even a barrage of fire from dozens of Mauser rifles and submachine guns would be deadly at this distance.
"Clang clang clang!"
A hail of bullets pounded the armor of the two Vickers tanks, sending up a shower of dazzling sparks. The thin 14mm steel plate clanged and clattered as if it would be pierced through at any moment.
British soldiers fell from time to time, their bodies rolling down the slippery slope into the icy River Iser. But many more stepped over the bodies of their comrades, their eyes red, and pointed their gleaming bayonets at the grey figures.
These were the last fangs of a trapped beast; they knew very well that only by crossing that bridge could they have any hope of survival.
Therefore, this is also the most fatal blow.
"Fire!"
Seeing that the time was right, Arthur decisively pressed the microphone.
Da da da da da—!
The coaxial Bertha heavy machine guns of the four leading Matilda tanks roared simultaneously.
This is Arthur's trump card.
At this distance, he didn't need to use the 2-pounder cannon without high-explosive shells. The crossfire from four 7.92mm machine guns instantly covered the German positions at the bridgehead.
This is a massacre.
The German gunners who tried to rush to their positions to operate the 37mm guns were riddled with bullets before they even got a chance to touch the traverse mechanism. Tracer rounds weaved through the night like lasers, cutting down the gray-green figures one by one.
"Don't stop! Keep firing! Use up all the ammo!"
Arthur roared. He even picked up the Bren gun on top of the turret himself and fired a burst at the sapper who was trying to pull the fuse.
The sapper's body jolted violently, and he collapsed beside the detonator, the wire in his hand only a few centimeters long enough to connect.
"For the King! For Scotland!"
On the other side of the bridge, Major McKenzie led his men and rushed up. One of the two Vickers tanks had already been destroyed by the Germans, but it had done its job of delivering the infantry to a nearby position. The rest surged onto the bridge like a tide.
The remaining German soldiers completely collapsed.
Ahead of them were British infantry charging recklessly, and behind them were four impenetrable steel monsters spewing deadly machine gun bullets. The fear of being attacked from both sides overwhelmed them.
"Retreat!" "Retreat!"
"They've run away! The Germans have run away!" Jeanne shouted excitedly.
Arthur didn't cheer. He glanced at the still-burning ammunition truck, his pupils contracting sharply—a German was trying to blow up the bridge.
"Water ghost! That damn detonator!"
His response was two muffled gunshots from the darkness beneath the bridge—the Cold Creek Guard's roll call, swift and decisive, leaving no survivors.
Immediately afterwards, a large hand covered in black mud and moss gripped the slippery bridge railing.
McTavish leaped onto the bridge like a water monster emerging from a swamp. The serrated dagger in his hand was still dripping water, and his other hand held aloft a section of severed black rubber cable, the copper core at the other end still emitting wisps of smoke.
The Scotsman grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth, and gave Arthur a blood-stained thumbs-up.
The moment Arthur saw that broken wire, he felt as if he had finally expelled the stale air that had been building up in his lungs for half a century. The nerve that had been taut to the point of breaking snapped and relaxed with a snap.
"All personnel—cease fire!"
He waved the cane that symbolized command, his movements somewhat stiff.
Then, leaning against the cold armor plate, he laboriously reached out with his trembling hands to retrieve the last cigarette.
"Click".
The lighter flame flickered a few times before finally igniting the tobacco.
He took a deep breath, and the pungent smoke filled his lungs. At that moment, Arthur felt it was sweeter than any cigarette he had ever smoked in the best clubs in London.
22:40 PM, in the center of the Lombard Bridge.
The smoke of battle has not yet cleared.
The bridge was littered with the corpses of German and British soldiers, and the twisted wreckage of the destroyed 88mm gun. The air was thick with the smells of burnt rubber and blood.
Arthur jumped off the tank, his leather boots making a squelching sound as they stepped onto the muddy bridge.
A blood-soaked officer walked towards us. His left arm was slightly injured and held in a sling with a dirty triangular bandage, while he carried a Webley revolver in his other hand.
Major McKenzie.
He looked worse than he sounded. His stubble-covered face was covered in soot, and his eyes were sunken, making him look like a zombie that had just crawled out of a grave. But when he looked at Arthur, he looked like a living person.
Sterling.
McKenzie stopped and looked the young major up and down.
Compared to his disheveled appearance, Arthur looked so clean he resembled a general inspecting the front lines. Apart from the mud on his boots, there wasn't a single trace of blood on him.
"You look fucking enviable." Mackenzie grinned, revealing a set of white teeth—a smile more like a grimace. "I thought you were ghosts."
"We are ghosts who have come to take you home, Major."
Arthur reached out and grasped the dirty, blood-stained hand.
"You can owe me that bottle of port for now. Now, get your men lined up. Put the ones who can move on the trucks, and the ones who can't move on the tanks."
""
"Where are we going?" Mackenzie glanced at the city behind them, now completely dark. "Back to Dunkirk?"
"Dunkirk is closed."
Arthur shook his head and pointed to the pitch-black night in the southwest: "We're going to Saint Valéry."
"Saint-Valérie?!" McKenzie was stunned. "That's south! That's into the heart of France! The High Ground Division is over there, but we only have so few men; going there would be suicide!"
"Staying here is suicide."
Arthur pointed behind him, "The vanguard of the 1st Armored Division is less than ten kilometers away. The 2nd Armored Division will react early tomorrow morning, or maybe half an hour later. If we don't leave, by sunrise tomorrow we'll be like two sardines in a can."
Just then, a Bedford truck riddled with bullet holes, its right front fender missing, and black smoke billowing from its hood, wobbled across the bridge.
To the average person, it's just a piece of junk that's about to be scrapped.
But on Arthur's retina, the moment the vehicle appeared, a striking gold border suddenly popped up on the RTS system interface—an effect that only appears when a "strategic unit" is detected.
[Special Unit Access]
[Unit: Royal Air Force Frontline Mobile Communications Centre (Modified)]
[Core Payload: No.11 High-Power High-Frequency Transceiver/Type-X Dynamic Encryption Machine]
Current Status: Moderately Damaged (HP: 45%) / Core Functions: Unaffected
[Tactical Value Assessment: S-Tier (Extremely High)]
[Special Effect: Connecting to this unit will unlock remote strategic communication access to the "British Isles"]
Arthur's eyes lit up instantly.
It's like playing Warcraft III, where you start with only a few footmen, and suddenly someone gives you a fully operational magic temple.
Inside the bullet-riddled truck bed were not supplies, but boxes of documents more precious than gold to Britain at that time, and several pieces of sophisticated equipment, perfectly intact under layers of canvas protection.
Before the car had even come to a complete stop, Captain Henry jumped out of the passenger seat.
The officer, who had been thinking of burning the codebook before the breakout, was now clutching the heavy, sealed canvas bag containing the Royal Air Force's top-secret codebook that hadn't been thrown into the river.
His face was covered in oil and soot, and he was so excited that tears welled up in his eyes, his whole body trembling: "Sir! Radio! We've brought out the command vehicle!"
He pointed to the enormous machine behind him, its antenna now erected again: "That Vickers tank commander was a madman! He used the tank to stop the German bullets for us! We saved it!"
Arthur strode over to the truck and reached out to touch the cold, damp cargo bed.
In this dead land shrouded in radio silence, this is the throat of God.
"Will it work?" Arthur asked, turning his head.
"Yes! Absolutely! The signal was incredibly strong during the testing!"
Captain Henry hastily wiped the thick fog off his glasses with his sleeve, laughing and crying at the same time, "I can even hear the BBC broadcast! Very clear!"
"Just now—just now London was on the radio looking for us!"
The captain sniffed, handed the headset to Arthur, and his voice trembled with a sense of déjà vu: "It's Prime Minister Churchill. He's giving a speech himself, about the Dunkirk evacuation. He just mentioned us—he mentioned the rearguard, calling us 'the missing heroes of Calais and Nieuport'—"
Arthur took the headphones and put them on his ears.
Accompanied by the crackling of electricity, that familiar, indistinct yet powerful, iconic voice echoed clearly in his ears, cutting through the wind and rain of the English Channel: "—We will fight to the end. We will fight in France, we will fight on the seas, we will fight ever stronger in the skies—"
As Arthur listened to this famous speech, "We Are Fighting on the Beach," a complex smile appeared on his lips.
"A missing hero?"
He took off his headphones, tossed them back to Henry, then looked up at the gloomy northern sky and exhaled a smoke ring: "Very good."
Arthur reached out and grabbed the heavy bakelite microphone.
His gaze swept across the bottom right corner of the RTS interface, where a line of gold text, visible only to him, was displayed:
[UK Admiralty/Whitehall wartime communications channel: 6480kHz]
He didn't need to look through Captain Henry's thick codebook.
Arthur's fingers rested expertly on the frequency adjustment knob, as if the machine were an extension of his own body. He turned it gently, half a turn, then back three notches.
"Sizzle—"
The static and BBC broadcast in the headphones vanished instantly, replaced by a very rhythmic carrier wave signal.
That was a voice coming from the underground command center in London, a frequency representing the highest command center of the British Empire.
This time, it's no longer a passive wait.
Arthur pressed the call button, and the crisp metallic click sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silent carriage.
This time, he took the initiative to contact London.
He took a deep breath and pressed the launch button.
"This is Arthur Sterling, commander of the Sterling Assault Group."
"Report: The garrison in Niupt has returned to their posts."
"Also, tell Prime Minister Churchill—"
Arthur glanced back at the soldiers who were helping the wounded, their eyes filled with renewed hope despite their exhaustion, and a weary smile appeared on his lips: "This is just the beginning. Since he likes heroes so much, I'll bring him back a whole division of heroes."
"Target: Saint-Valérie".
The following morning, at 04:00 AM, on a rural road in Belgium, heading south.
The convoy traveled through the last vestiges of darkness before dawn.
A deafening roar came from behind.
Flames shot into the sky, illuminating half the heavens. The Lombard Bridge had collapsed with a detonation from a timed explosive.
Hundreds of tons of reinforced concrete were thrown into the Iser River, creating a water column tens of meters high.
This not only cut off the pursuit route of the German 2nd Armoured Division behind them, but also cut off Arthur and his men's last escape route.
From this moment on, there is no way back, no reinforcements, only this one road of wandering south.
Arthur sat in the command vehicle, watching the receding shadows of the trees outside the window.
Air Force liaison officer Captain Henry was frantically calling for support from home aircraft in the back seat, but all he could hear in his headset was the static of electricity.
"Stop calling me, Captain."
Arthur didn't even turn his head, and said calmly, "That miser Dowding wouldn't send the flamethrowers this far. The skies over Britain need them more right now than they do here."
"What do we do then?" Henry asked desperately. "What if Stuka comes at dawn?"
Arthur pulled the silver cigarette case from his pocket, popped the lid open, and looked at the last few cigarettes inside.
"Then use machine guns. Use rifles. Use your teeth."
He closed the cigarette pack with a crisp "click".
"Welcome to the 'Wandering France' tour group, Captain."
"Next stop, Saint-Valérie. Hopefully, the scenery there will be better than here."
The convoy crushed the dawn mist, disappearing like a group of lost souls into the vast plains leading into the heart of France.
P.S.: Corrected the millimeter measurement for the 3-inch mortar: 81 is now 76.2, and the previous H-class destroyer measurement is now S.
The destroyer captain has been promoted to lieutenant commander. Thank you for pointing this out, fellow reader.
There will be a chapter tonight.