ATPnovel Chapter 22 The Execution of Leparadis
Chapter 22 The Execution of Leparadis
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Northern France, beside the D916 highway, Wormhout, Le Paradis farm, May 30, 1940, 21:15, torrential rain, extremely poor visibility (night battle conditions).
The night was as thick as an unyielding blob of ink, with only the relentless downpour like countless cold steel needles, tirelessly stitching the heavens and the earth together.
In the pitch-black, rainy night, the Leparadis farm, which should have been quiet, was now brightly lit by several glaring vehicle headlights. The beams of light refracted a pale halo in the rain, making the bullet-riddled red brick wall appear as white as a stage.
But what's happening on this stage isn't a play, it's an execution.
Da da da—da da da—
A chilling burst of MG34 machine gun fire tore through the roar of the rainy night. This was followed by several piercing screams, then quickly fell silent, leaving only the hissing sound of the two machine gun barrels cooling in the rain.
[Enemy Engagement Countdown: 00:30] [Enemy Engagement Countdown: 00:29]...
The red numbers in the upper left corner of my retina are pulsating at a suffocating frequency; each reduction in the numbers feels like a heavy hammer blow to a nerve about to snap.
The rain poured down harder and harder, as if God were trying to cleanse this cursed land. But even such a torrential downpour could not wash away the pungent, nauseating stench of blood in the air.
In the shadow of a grove of trees on the outskirts of the farm, Arthur stood motionless like a lifeless sculpture beside the command tower of the Verdun. Cold rain streamed down the brim of his helmet, across his cold, expressionless face, and finally into the muddy tracks beneath his feet.
He didn't look at the slaughterhouse illuminated by several blinding searchlights with his naked eye, but stared intently at the tactical map of the RTS system.
There, the dozens of faint green dots that originally represented "friendly forces" were being squeezed into a tiny blind spot—behind a red brick wall of the farm. And around them, the red markers representing the SS "Totenkopf" Division had formed a semi-encircling fan-shaped execution position, like a slowly closing guillotine blade.
[Ongoing War Crimes: The Leparadis Massacre]
[Victims: Remnants of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment]
[Estimated countdown to total annihilation: 00:45]
The RTS system's night vision mode outlines the hellish scene 200 meters ahead with eerie, emotionless green lines, yet it is more breathtaking than any color image:
Under the piercing, white light of searchlights, a group of ragged, even bleeding, British soldiers were forcibly driven to the base of a wall. They had already thrown down their weapons and raised their hands. Some were helping each other up, some had collapsed in the mud from their injuries, and others knelt on the ground, making their final prayers in the pouring rain.
Less than fifty meters away from them, several SS soldiers in black raincoats were skillfully changing machine gun ammunition belts. The dark muzzles of the two MG34 general-purpose machine guns were gleaming with a deathly cold light.
An SS officer—his face obscured by the downpour and distance, but his peaked cap with the silver skull insignia gleaming in the night—waving a Luger pistol and hysterically roaring something over there.
No translation or listening is required.
At this distance, only one language is universal: death.
Arthur knew all too well what was about to happen.
That was the echo of history. It was the infamous Leparadis massacre.
In the original timeline, after the 99 brave soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered due to lack of ammunition and food, they were collectively executed here, right under this red brick wall, by the savages of the 3rd SS "Totenkopf" Division, like garbage being disposed of.
That was a disgrace to the civilized world, and the grave of chivalry.
But now, in this time and space turned upside down by the butterfly Arthur, the hammer of judgment has changed hands.
"Forty-five seconds."
Arthur's voice came through the radio, deep and resonant, like that of a ghost from the depths of the earth.
"They're in a hurry. They want to get rid of this 'rubbish' before Guderian's main force arrives."
He turned his head and looked at the three steel behemoths behind him, their lights also off and hidden in the depths of darkness. They were silent, like four prehistoric Tyrannosaurus Rex holding their breath.
"Since they like darkness, then let's give them real darkness."
Arthur's fingers tapped lightly on the cold armor plates, extending an invitation of death to the group of skeleton soldiers.
"Attention all crews. Do not turn on lights. Do not fire. The distance is too close; firing will injure your own men."
"Just crash into it."
"Crush them."
……
Captain Fritz Konopka wiped the rain off his face, his mood extremely agitated.
In this awful weather, even a lighter wouldn't light. And these stubborn British guys were simply wasting his time. He was ordered by headquarters to clear this area before midnight and then advance towards Kassel.
"Hurry! Drag those that are still moving over here!"
Konopka pointed at a wounded man in the mud and yelled.
Two SS soldiers roughly dragged the British lieutenant, who had lost a leg, and threw him into a pile of corpses.
"For the Führer, for Germany..." Knopka raised his Luger pistol and pointed it at the lieutenant's forehead. "Go to hell, Tommy."
Just as his finger was about to pull the trigger.
The ground did not shake.
The roar of the rain and the thunder perfectly masked the sound of the tracks crushing the soil.
However, a strange, eerie metallic scraping sound came through the wind and rain.
Grana—Grana—
The sound was like something huge and heavy was chewing on steel and bone.
What was that sound?
An SS machine gunner on guard instinctively turned his searchlight around, the beam sweeping towards the dark oak grove on the flank of the farm.
A beam of light pierced the darkness.
The next second, every SS soldier who witnessed that scene felt their heart skip a beat.
At the end of the pale beam of light, the once lush bushes were collapsing like waves.
Immediately afterwards, a huge steel face, covered in slippery tricolor camouflage and adorned with thick iron chains, emerged from the darkness without warning.
It's too big.
Under the cover of night and the eerie light of searchlights, this 2.8-meter-tall Char B1 bis heavy tank looked less like a war machine and more like a mobile tomb that had suddenly come to life.
The lights were not on.
The dark driver's observation window was like a single eye, coldly watching the tiny ants in the light.
"Tanks!!! Enemy attack!!!"
A piercing scream instantly tore through the night sky.
But it was too late.
"Turn! Turn quickly! That's the French B1!"
Captain Konopka's reaction was remarkably swift. As a veteran of the Skull Division, he instantly recognized the monster who had inflicted immense psychological trauma on the Wehrmacht in Stoney.
The two 3.7cm Pak 36 anti-tank guns, which had been deployed on the flanks, quickly turned their muzzles.
At that distance—less than 150 meters—the German gunners didn't even need a scope; they simply acted on instinct, pulling the trigger at the massive black shadow.
boom!boom!
Two bright orange shockwaves from the cannons suddenly lit up the rainy night, instantly illuminating the pale white raindrops around them.
Two expensive 37mm Pzgr. 40 tungsten-core armor-piercing rounds, accompanied by the whistling of death, slammed into the lead ship, the Verdun.
For a regular light tank, those two shells would be enough to turn it into a burning bonfire.
But tonight, the cold, hard laws of physics chose to pledge allegiance to Arthur.
Armor-piercing projectiles travel at extremely high speeds, but in the RTS system's decision-making logic, they have already been labeled as a harmless stream of data. The system mercilessly mocks the German efforts in eerie green font.
Although it was the Pzgr. 40 tungsten carbide core bullet, the only "can opener" in the German arsenal that could theoretically pry open the armor of a heavy tank.
However, in the face of the B1 tank's 60-degree angled cast armor, geometry ultimately triumphed over materials science.
In that instant, these two tungsten-core bullets, representing the pinnacle of German craftsmanship, degenerated into two mere expensive, flying stones.
when--!
A crisp, teeth-grinding metallic clang.
Under the searchlights, everyone could clearly see that the armor-piercing shell struck the 60mm thick, sloped upper glacis armor of the B1 tank, exploding into a dazzling burst of sparks.
Then, it was bounced away.
The warhead, carrying extremely high kinetic energy, traced an irregular crimson trajectory in the air, like an angry meteor, spinning as it flew into the night sky before finally disappearing into the vast rain.
The second shell struck the turret ring's shield, producing a crisp "clang" sound, but without even leaving a dent.
The so-called "army knocking brick" didn't even manage to knock off the paint on the door on this rainy night.
"This is impossible..."
The SS loader stared in despair at the unscathed steel monster that hadn't even slowed down in the slightest, so frightened that he dropped the shells in his hands into the mud.
"keep going."
Arthur squeezed next to the cockpit, which reeked of engine oil, and felt the steel behemoth beneath him tremble slightly.
The two muffled thuds transmitted through the heavy armor didn't sound like artillery fire at all; they sounded more like an angry but powerless debt collector banging on a steel gate that could never be opened, with half a cheap brick in hand.
"They've finished knocking on the door."
"Now, it's our turn to go in."
"Full speed! Crash through!"
At Arthur's command, the roar of the engines of the four B1 heavy tanks finally drowned out the thunder.
They no longer hide, no longer sneak around.
Four blinding headlights suddenly lit up at the same time!
Four beams of snow-white light, like four sharp swords, instantly turned the tables, piercing through the SS positions and exposing the hunters who had been hiding in the shadows to the intense light.
"Aaaaaah!"
The German soldiers, accustomed to the darkness, were blinded by the sudden bright light and instinctively raised their hands to shield their eyes.
In that instant of blindness, the Verdun crashed into the farm.
It ignored the fleeing infantry and charged straight at the Pak 36 anti-tank gun that had just been firing.
The German gunners tried to push the cannon away, but the iron behemoth, weighing several hundred kilograms, seemed to have taken root in the mud.
Creak—Boom!
The B1 tank's high front end directly sits atop the gun's shield.
There was no explosion, only the chilling sound of metal shattering. Under the weight of 31 tons, the exquisite Krupp cannon instantly turned into a twisted disc. The gunner, unable to escape in time, didn't even have time to scream before he and his weapon were crushed into the half-meter-deep mud.
This is a pure, primal aesthetic of violence.
There were no fancy tactics, no complicated maneuvers.
It's heavy. It's hard.
Immediately afterwards, the "passengers" on the back of the tank took action.
"Surprise! Motherfuker!"
Sergeant McTavish emerged from the shadows behind the turret, his Thompson submachine gun spitting deadly fire under the headlights.
Da da da da—
Eight British infantrymen aboard the four tanks, along with the tanks' machine guns, created an impenetrable net of fire.
The SS soldiers who tried to rush forward and throw cluster grenades fell like wheat before a combine harvester. Rain washed away the bloodstains on the ground, forming red streams.
Captain Durand's toes instinctively reached for the firing pedal of the 47mm gun, but he immediately realized that the dark gun barrel was already empty.
"Out of ammunition? No problem."
He let out a sinister laugh from inside the cramped single-man turret, a release of pent-up rage. His finger slammed into the trigger of the coaxial machine gun.
"Is this how you treat prisoners of war?!"
Sizzle sizzle—!!!
The 7.5mm Reibel coaxial machine gun emitted a terrifying howl, like tearing tarpaulin.
At a distance of less than fifty meters, a dense barrage of tracer rounds lashed the driver's cab of the German half-track vehicle that was attempting to reverse and escape, like a fiery red whip.
There was no booming sound like a high-explosive bomb, only the crisp sound of bulletproof glass shattering and the muffled sound of metal being drilled through.
The German driver didn't even have time to scream before he was riddled with dozens of 7.5mm bullets in an instant. The out-of-control half-track skidded violently like a drunkard and crashed headlong into a pile of ammunition on the side of the road.
boom--!
The detonated ammunition box sent up a huge fireball, the only warm hue in the pitch-black rainy night, illuminating the terrified, contorted faces of the surrounding SS soldiers, turning them deathly pale.
……
At this moment, the British prisoners of war under the red brick wall were stunned.
They originally thought they were going to die.
At the very moment that SS officer raised his gun, Major Ryder had already silently recited his last prayer.
But now, God seems to have descended upon the world with a different face—a face forged of steel, spewing black smoke and tongues of fire.
"What is that...what is that?"
A young private asked, trembling, as the Bible fell from his hand into the mud. He stared blankly at the steel behemoth that was crushing a German anti-tank gun into the mud like it was crushing a plastic toy.
Using the light from the burning half-track, Major Ryder squinted his eyes, which were covered in blood.
That iconic towering profile, that unique hull-mounted gun design, and that yellow-green camouflage...
"That's a Char B1...a French tank!"
An incredulous gasp erupted from the crowd.
"My God! It's the French! They haven't surrendered yet?"
"I've never found these snail-eating guys so agreeable before! Not even when I was on vacation in Paris!"
"Long live France! Kick their asses hard!"
The previously lifeless group of prisoners of war instantly erupted in jubilation. The sheer joy of escaping death made them forget their wounds; some waved their arms, others wept with joy. In their minds, perhaps some unknown heroic unit of the French army had stumbled upon this place after getting lost.
But then, Major Ryder froze.
Because when the tank codenamed "Verdun" rotated its turret, the beam of its searchlight swept across the back of the turret.
There, in the shadow of the engine cooling grille, sat several figures.
They weren't wearing the iconic Adrian helmets or the baggy overcoats typical of the French army. Instead, they wore flat, sharp-edged Brodie helmets and carried not MAS-36s, but the incredibly familiar Thompson submachine gun with its vertical foregrip—an American weapon used by only a select few elite British units.
More importantly, a red armband flashed by in the rainy night on the shoulder of the soldier who was frantically smashing German infantrymen with his rifle butt.
It was a Cold Creek Guards insignia that shone brighter than any medal at that moment.
Major Ryder abruptly wiped the mud and blood from his face, his voice cracking slightly:
"That's our helmet! That's a Thomson!"
He pointed at the figure on the back of the tank who was giving the middle finger to the SS, and roared out the words that sent chills down the spines of every Norfolk Regiment soldier:
"Those sitting up there... are our men! They're the lunatics from the Cold Creek Guard!"
After a brief silence, cheers ten times louder than before erupted. If the cheers before were merely for survival, now they were for dignity and bloodline.
"We're saved, brothers!"
"Those are our men! Those are our tanks!"
It's like you're about to be killed when you discover the police have arrived, and it's your own brother, who's usually the toughest fighter, who crashes into the wall in a stolen road roller.
"Grab the gun! Quick! Pick up the gun on the ground!"
Major Ryder roared, tears welling in his eyes, "Don't just stand there! Help our brothers take down these sons of bitches!"
Someone shouted something, and the previously lifeless group of prisoners of war instantly erupted into a frenzy.
The instinct to survive overcame the pain.
Dozens of prisoners of war who were still able to move rushed frantically toward the German corpses lying on the ground, trying to seize their MP40 submachine guns and Mauser rifles.
This was no longer a one-sided massacre, but a chaotic hunt.
However, at this moment, the roles of hunter and prey were completely reversed.