“And then, once the Nazis actually gain power, those same arrogant Allies finally start to feel some long-overdue guilt about the way Germany was treated at Versailles and turn a blind eye while Hitler gets away with murder — literally — in the abolition of democracy, the deceptive absorption of Austria into the Reich, and outright invasion of Czechoslovakia.” He shook his head, vaguely feeling genuine anger regarding the explanation. “The British and the French declare war on Germany after your lot invade Poland, then do nothing for the better part of a bloody year! They might as well have ignored the Poles and left Hitler alone, for all the good that declaration did… and the whole world war might’ve been avoided in process, or at least postponed. Hitler never wanted a war in the west… particularly not one against Britain: the east was always his objective right from the start. Carl, Hitler may have fooled Germany into allowing him his dictatorship, but the Allies played their part in giving him the opportunity to deceive you all.” Thorne’s voice became quite grim. “Germans aren’t the only ones to blame for where the world is at right now, Carl, and Germans sure as hell aren’t the only ones to suffer as a result.”
“But it’s a German who now holds the best chance of restoring this world,” Ritter conceded with sullen certainty.
Thorne nodded in thanks as much as in agreement, knowing the man had reaffirmed the decision they’d hoped for. “We’ll have you passed back to your lines as they push forward,” he veered off on a slightly different subject and patted one of the large pouches of his webbing. “I’ve a bloody great white flag here big enough to — hopefully — make sure no one gets trigger happy… as soon as the fighting starts, you’ll need to hole up toward the rear lines here and allow the battle to push past.”
“I am glad you’re so certain this is going to work.”
“As certain as I can be… war’s an unpredictable business after all…” Thorne was interrupted at that point as Davids poked his head from the turret of the Matilda and called out to him. He excused himself and clambered up onto the rear decking of the tank. Grosvenor and the rest of the tanks around them were dug in almost to the level of the turret ring, and the hull was now low enough to make it a relatively simple task to step up to the turret.
“You said you had kids?” Kransky asked softly as he stood alone with Ritter. He knew little of the man’s history, but recalled what Thorne had said back at Lyness regarding him being the father of Kurt Reuters in Realtime. He couldn’t help but wonder if that ‘boy’ might’ve been one of those he’d been referring to.
“There’s a young boy and an infant my wife and I have taken into our care…” Ritter began hesitantly, a little surprised by the unexpected question.
“Their own family is dead?”
“Murdered by the SS at their home near my airfield… his mother and sister both…”
Utter shock registered on Kransky’s face as the penny dropped. “Jesus, you’re talking about the St. Charles’ farm?”
“Yes, that’s the place exactly!” Ritter was also amazed. “You know of them, major?”
“I dunno if I should tell you this,” Kransky breathed deeply before continuing “but I was there that night… the night the family was killed.” There was a long moment of silence and intent stares before Ritter’s mind made the right connections.
“Mein Gott, you were the sniper! You shot that trooper.” As Kransky nodded, Ritter acted in a completely unexpected manner and instinctively reached out to grab the American’s hand, shaking it strongly. “You saved the boy that night… probably both of them… of this I’ve no doubt! They’re with my wife’s now, only because you gave him the chance to escape.”
“I didn’t know the kid was okay… I couldn’t hang around to find out,” Kransky shrugged and gave a self-deprecating smile, and in that moment of revelation, his impression of the German officer went from neutral tolerance to grudging admiration. “I’m glad to know it worked out okay. Look after him, okay buddy?”
“If I make it through this day I shall certainly try to do just that.”
“Well, have a little faith there,” the American almost smiled, clapping a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You won’t be on your own when you ‘go over’… I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” He jerked his head back toward the barrel of the huge rifle slung over his shoulder. “You’ve seen what I can do.”
Thorne was back beside them a moment later, his expression quite serious as both of the others looked up and noticed there’d also been a distinct change in the general tension around the tank crew.
“Forward scouts have reported enemy movement near Sellindge… that’s only a couple of klicks down the road.”
“How long have we got?” Kransky asked, his mind and senses instantly sharp and alert.
“How long’s a piece of string?” Thorne asked with a grim smile. “Your guess is as good as mine, but probably no more than five or ten minutes if they mean business.” He glanced about at the surrounding landscape. “Better get ourselves some cover… things might well be about to turn very ugly!”
The defenders waited in tense anticipation as the dark silhouettes of enemy armour began to appear in shadows and glimpses beyond the trees on either side of the A20 coming up from Hythe, staying well away from the road at all times. The approaching enemy were well-trained and conscious of the danger of ambush, and were therefore avoiding any situations that might allow defenders to launch a surprise attack. Most of the civilians fleeing the coastal areas had already struggled past 7RTR’s position that late in the afternoon, although some stragglers were still forced to vacate the road and seek what shelter they could find as the alert was raised.
The howling of enemy engines could be heard here and there overhead, but the lowering cloud cover made the shapes passing by above dark and indistinct: visibility and the weather in general were now so poor that any aerial attack would be almost suicidal. In any case, no one on the ground below was stupid enough to open fire and draw their attention, and without provocation to aid their targeting, picking out the dug-in, camouflaged positions under the trees would be near impossible in those conditions.
Kransky decided to stay well clear of any gun emplacements or tank pits, and instead dragged himself into the lower branches of some nearby trees, seeking a little height to better put his rifle to work. Seated with his head poking out of Grosvenor’s commander’s hatch, Davids noted with surprise that the Australian had slung his own strange-looking rifle and instead produced a small and unusual black device that appeared to be a camera of some sort, although it looked like none he’d ever seen before. Thorne crouched beside him on the hull decking to his right and rested the thing on the turret roof to provide a steady view. It was barely bigger than the man’s hand, with a long tube protruding from the front that Davids assumed had to be some kind of lens, and he also noticed with intrigue that there was a tiny, colour viewing screen set into its backing plate that removed any need for Thorne to stare through the viewfinder mounted in its top edge.
Davids forced himself to return his attention to the danger approaching from the east as the device clicked and whirred beside him, and Thorne took pictures of the distant enemy. The pictures he was hoping to capture on the digital camera might well provide them with intelligence that was useful for later operations, albeit operations possibly staged from the other side of the planet.
“That fancy-lookin’ rifle o’ yours mightn’t be much use agin’ tanks, sir, but I warrant it’ll be more use than takin’ holiday snaps o’ the buggers!” The sergeant observed softly without sarcasm or malice.
“Oh, this’ll be useful enough, sergeant,” Thorne replied with a dark smile, “but I do wish I’d something a bit heavier to throw at the bastards, I’ll admit…”
…like a fucking nuke or three…! He added in sour silence for perhaps the millionth time in the last forty-eight hours, cursing over the discovery not one of them had thought possible in all the months since they’d arrived in that era: t
hat their temporal ‘jump’ back from the future had made the fissile material in all of their thermonuclear weapons completely inert. It seemed that ‘Curly’ and ‘Mo’ — the two remaining B83 weapons they possessed — would work well enough otherwise, but until equipment existed in that era to refine and machine sufficient bomb-grade plutonium, the weapons were no better than a pair of one-tonne paperweights.
German recon units appeared at the distant line of the trees at that moment. Several Weisel light tanks drew to a halt at the edge of the woods as troopers deployed from the rear of a pair of Marder infantry fighting vehicles behind them, spreading out to cover their flanks. With a light mist rising, and poor visibility that was becoming progressively worse as evening approached, it’d be unlikely they’d be able to pick out the concealed British defences across three hundred metres of hazy open fields.
“Years here ahead of us, and the bastards still can’t be original,” Thorne growled to himself, ignoring Davids’ quizzical expression as he zoomed in on the vehicles and took several pictures of each one in turn: to him, the P-1C tanks were instantly recognisable as direct copies of 1980s-vintage British Scimitar light reconnaissance vehicles.
“Never seen anything like those before, sir,” Davids mused uncertainly from his commander’s hatch, observing the arrivals through a pair of field glasses. The infantry vehicles were substantially larger than the light tanks, were armed with a long-barrelled, automatic cannon mounted in a small turret on one side of the forward hull, and appeared to be derived from a full-sized tank chassis of some unknown type.
“SS recon units…Totenkopf division…” Thorne noted clinically, continuing to take pictures as he spoke “…I can see the ‘Deaths Head’ insignia on the turrets.” He grimaced as he took in a trivial piece of information. “Yellow unit numbers… interesting…” He snapped his attention back to the matters at hand. “Those light tanks will be the advanced guard,” he advised Davids. “The heavies won’t be far behind them.”
“CO wants us to hold off until they’re right out in the open… to only fire once they’re within two hundred yards,” Davids explained, relaying the orders they’d all been given. “I just hope the bloody clouds up there keep their bloody aircraft off our heads.”
“You and me both, mister,” Thorne agreed heartily, still staring at the camera’s LCD screen and taking pictures as he watched more light armoured vehicles and infantry spread out across the distant tree line. “Hel-lo…” he growled with slow, emphatic sourness “…here come the ‘big boys’!” His eyes never left the screen as he lowered the zoom momentarily and scanned back and forth, now able to pick out the unmistakably low, squat silhouettes of main battle tanks beyond the trees. The Germans were following standard ‘overwatch’ procedure, and as soon as the first group were in position to give covering fire, the newly-arrived armour and troops would begin to slowly push forward across the open fields toward them.
“Those ‘big boys’ really are… big…!” Davids observed slowly, his voice wavering with uncertainty as his mind registered how large those new tanks actually were… far larger than any he’d ever before encountered, their shape alien and unnerving. The two-piece gun barrels projecting from their flattened, hemispherical turrets were longer than anything the defenders had seen fitted to a tank, German or otherwise, and just the sight of them was enough to place doubt in their minds regarding their ability to fight back.
“Shit a brick…!” Thorne exclaimed softly, the officer’s use of such language surprising Davids as the Australian continued to fire away with more photographs. Although there were some minor differences in detail, he also recognised the heavy tanks instantly, along with the shape of the main gun they mounted.
He looked up over the top of the camera for a moment, as if taking in the ‘bigger picture’ before them, and made an important decision. Lowering the camera and turning it off, he removed the lens and slipped both back into one of the large pockets of his jacket, immediately unslinging his rifle and drawing back the cocking handle.
“Those tanks are too much for your gun, sergeant,” he stated matter-of-factly as he engaged the weapon’s safety, the remark heard by all of the Matilda’s crew and doing their confidence no good at all. “The three-point-sevens can probably take them out… and maybe the ten-pounders from the flanks… but your two-pounder won’t even scratch the paint unless you can shoot ‘em in the arse!”
He paused for a moment, his eyes never leaving the approaching tanks as the rumble of their engines and the squeal of their tracks echoed eerily through the misty air. “I’m pretty sure the gun they’re mounting is an eighty-eight millimetre Flak-36, and I don’t have to tell you how nasty they are! Let your CO know that you guys’ll be able to take out the light tanks and probably the infantry vehicles, but you should leave the big bastards to the heavier guns!” He gave an apologetic grin. “That being said, I’m now going to bugger off! It looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan, and I need to make sure my boy’s tucked away somewhere safe and sound.” He reached out and patted the sergeant on the shoulder. “Good luck, mate, and don’t piss about if things turn savage: that lot’ll cut you lot to pieces, given half a chance!” With that final, less-than-encouraging piece of wisdom, Thorne backed carefully away to the rear of the Matilda while Davids began to pass on his information he’d been given to his commanders.
“Out of that bloody tree, Richard,” Thorne growled sharply as he approached the American’s position, Ritter in tow. ‘Things are going to get a bit bloody nasty right around here, and it might be a good idea to find somewhere a little less unsavoury!”
“I sure as hell don’t like the look of those tanks, buddy!” Kransky admitted, not at all unhappy to be leaving the area under those circumstances. He dropped from the tree’s lower branches, and all three began to make their way west toward the A20, away from the defensive lines. “Never seen anything like ‘em in France: your boys have been holdin’ out on us!” The last remark was directed at Ritter with a fair amount of chagrin.
“From me also…!” The pilot shot back, more than a little bemused. “I’m a pilot… not a grenadier… and I’ve been…” he gave a wry smile. “…‘out of the loop’, I think is the phrase…?”
“You want to watch those sayings!” Thorne advised with a thin smile, breathing heavier as they continued at a fair pace. “That’s the second time you’ve used one of the phrases you’ve heard around Hindsight, and the ‘jig’ will be up very quickly if the wrong people hear you say something like that!” Changing the subject, he nodded his head in the direction of Smeeth. “The town’s only about a klick away across the fields, and there was a church there that may be a good place to hole up and let the battle pass us by… might be worth having a closer look…” There was no chance to speak further, as guns right along the British line suddenly opened up in a shattering crescendo that had all three men instinctively diving to the ground.
“Ahh crap…!” Thorne snarled, rolling over and finding cover behind an oak before peering around from behind the thick base of the tree as the battle began in earnest. “There goes the fuckin’ neighbourhood! Come on… let’s find somewhere a bit less stressful!” He dragged himself to his feet and took off at a crouched run, the other two following on behind and racing to catch up.
Davids had been drawing a constant bead on one of the nearer light tanks as the guns around him fired, Grosvenor also opening her account in that moment as the P-1C they’d targeted almost disintegrated under the shattering impacts of at least half a dozen simultaneous shell hits. The tanks and infantry fighting vehicles caught in the middle of the open fields were cut to pieces, the new anti-tanks shells of the 3.7-inch AA guns proving to be quite capable of punching holes through the thick frontal and side armour of the Panther tanks. Ten-pounder AT guns and dug-in Matildas took on the lighter vehicles accompanying them, many of the crew and troopers killed inside their vehicles as they brewed up under the onslaught of solid shot and explosive, sha
ped-charge shells.
“Light tank… three hundred yards…!” Davids called out, sighting on another enemy target at the tree-line and designating it.”
“On target…!” Gawler confirmed a second later as the turning turret came to a halt.
“Fire…!”
The tank jumped in its pit as her main armament barked and a pointed, two-pound slug of hardened steel streaked away from Grosvenor’s muzzle in a very flat arc. It smashed through the Weisel’s turret front, the light steel and aluminium armour nowhere near thick enough to resist. Both of the turret hatches instantly blew open, followed by fire and smoke that poured skyward as the vehicle rolled quickly to a halt. No crew bailed out.
“Hit…!” Davids crowed, already seeking the next target. “Infantry carrier… two-fifty yards…!”
“On target…!”
“Fire…!”
The gun fired again, and another shell hurtled away down range, punching through the side of an infantry fighting vehicle and this time shattering its engine as it came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the open field. Infantry and crew instantly began to pour from the rear assault ramp, and Grosvenor opened up with her co-axial machine gun, adding its fire to the fusillades of bullets already filling the air across the fields as lines of British Infantry entrenched ahead of the tanks and guns engaged the exposed German grenadiers.
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