Imperial Overlord

The British major general stationed in Jersey put down the phone in his hand, looked helplessly at the staff officer beside him, and said regretfully: "The coastline has been breached by the German army, and there is no force to fight back, we probably won't be able to last until it gets dark. ."

"There are still hundreds of soldiers in the town. If we guard St. Helier, it is estimated that we can last until the night, right?"

The major general shook his head and gave his own judgment: "Even if there is still a battalion of troops, but in the current situation of St. Helier, do you think our resistance is still meaningful?"

Originally, the only support for the British army defending St. Helier was the strong British Royal Navy, and it was judged that the German army captured this small island.

Now that the British naval forces are exhausted, they have been unable to form a repressive psychological advantage over the German navy. This advantage no longer exists, and the pressure that restricts the German army's offensive will also disappear.

Now that the Germans are taking the initiative to attack, and they really dare to attack, relying on more than 2,000 defenders on the island, it is impossible to persist for a long time.

The only chance of persevering was to hold the Germans on the beachhead and then force them to retreat, thereby smashing their attempts to land.

It is a pity that now the German soldiers have established themselves on the beach, and the only chance is lost.

Because of the distance, the German army will continue to wash up on the beach in the afternoon. It is conservatively estimated that there are tens of thousands of defenders who cannot resist such an attack. Failure is a matter of time.

It's not too late for everything... It seems that the surrender is still decent, at least it can save the lives of more than half of the soldiers. If you wait until your own troops are defeated before making compromises, then how many people can be left will only be left to fate.

Therefore, the major general looked at his staff and said, "We have lost at least 100 people, and there are no troops on the beach to fight back. Persistence is completely futile."

When the staff officer heard the Major General's words, he could only compromise: "Send a telegram to Mr. Prime Minister. In addition, try to report the situation we encountered to the mainland as much as possible..."

Although the scale is small, it can even be said to be very limited, but the British garrison has seen a lot of important things from the process of this failure.

On the one hand, the training of the German landing troops can definitely be said to be very effective. Although the landing troops suffered a lot of losses, the attack did not appear disordered at all, and they went smoothly in one go.

On the other hand, the level of the German army's ability to cross the sea is significantly higher than the estimation of the British Army Command. This is definitely not good news, because the entire British mainland coastline needs to be strengthened.

"Go and send the telegram yourself, and try to be as detailed as possible, at least don't let us fight this battle in vain." The major general gave a wry smile, and then asked the staff to send the telegram.

...

In the telegraph room in the British mainland, the army chief of staff, Sir Dill, had his hands behind his back, anxiously waiting for the news from West Zhejiang Road.

Churchill was also on the side. The two had just held a meeting. Dill believed that most of the defense lines on Jersey were built with reference to the local coastal defense line, and they could last at least until noon.

And as long as the morning passed and the Germans could not break through the coastline at noon, it basically meant that the landing failed.

It didn't matter if Jersey was lost or held, Churchill and Sir Dill knew that what really deserved their attention was the speed of the German attack.

"As long as we hold Jersey, the Germans will not easily choose to land on our homeland." Dill explained to Churchill: "Failure will break Germany's confidence, which will be very beneficial to us."

"What if we lose the battle in Jersey?" Churchill asked nervously, looking at Sir Dill.

Dill was silent for two seconds, and after thinking about it, he chose the words to answer: "Then, sir... We are going to strengthen the defense line for a full 300 miles..."

Reinforcing the defense line is not as simple as digging trenches, it requires concrete and sand, as well as a lot of steel and artillery and machine gun weapons.

It is a pity that a large number of steel bars and weapons such as artillery are in short supply everywhere in the UK. If these materials could be found, they would have been invested in the construction of coastal defense.

"Can you change the way to strengthen the defense of the coastline?" Churchill did not give up, and continued to ask Sir Dill.

Hearing the Prime Minister's question, Sir Dill shook his head and gave his own conclusion: "Increasing the number of troops will not help. Now we have one million troops, but the troops that can fight are pitiful."

Churchill interrupted Dill's explanation: "I've heard enough of what you've said, don't stress to me that troops that have been trained for more than eight weeks have combat effectiveness, and the soldiers who went to the battlefield and won the war back then were also Some recruits!"

It’s a pity that we had sufficient logistical supplies back then, and the war was fought on other people’s land, so we didn’t mind sending some new recruits to the front line and letting them spend their lives learning how to fight.

With such an answer in mind, Sir Dill's final words became much softer: "Times have changed, Mr. Prime Minister... Now we can't arm more troops."

Although increasing the number of troops can improve the combat power, there is a limit to this improvement. Similar to the so-called 100 million jade pieces that Japan clamored for at the end of World War II, it is just self-deceiving nonsense.

It is even more nonsense to believe that the U.S. military is afraid of landing too many casualties in Japan. Even if Japan can play a qualified defensive battle on Iwo Jima and Saipan in Guashima, Okinawa, it will consume too many elite troops.

Only a fool would believe that those refugees in Japan who lost their houses and food would really show the tenacity and ferocity of the regular Japanese army.

Therefore, the excuse of the United States estimating that landing in Japan will lose a large number of active troops is undoubtedly just a decent reason for ending the war in a high-sounding manner.

What really made the United States give up landing in Japan is still the United States burying its nails in Asia and playing a strategic card to disrupt the situation in Asia in advance.

Facts have proved that this card was played correctly, and it still plays an unexpected role to this day. It has been holding back the development of the Soviet Union and China since the Korean War, turning Asian geopolitics into chaos.

So it's not that the British didn't want to mobilize more combat troops, but they now found that they couldn't support more troops.

Recruiting soldiers requires the support of food supplies and the training of weapons and ammunition. To maintain these, it takes a lot of real money.

But now, the British local army has begun to worry about the lack of food, and then expanding the army can only dilute and consume the food reserves faster, which is absolutely harmful and useless.

In addition, the European battlefield of World War II was not a low-intensity security battle such as rifles and fortresses. The Asian battlefield mode that relies on light infantry to fight is absolutely self-defeating here.

If the newly formed infantry does not have the support of artillery, heavy machine guns and reinforcement of the anti-aircraft artillery, it will definitely not be able to support it in front of the enemy.

Instead of sending it to the front line to be defeated by opponents and adding chaos, it is better to strengthen a small number of troops in a limited way to achieve a true "combat" level, at least to ensure that there will be no chaos.

Blind expansion and new units will actually have a very bad impact on the high-level commanders of operations. If the combat capability of a division or a regiment cannot be estimated in advance, and the actual situation of an organized unit cannot be accurately grasped, it will affect the entire war situation.

The chaos of command in Germany in the later period of World War II, and a considerable part of the responsibility, was caused by the random formation of various troops, which disrupted itself.

A national division formed later, even a regiment of the regular army can't reach the combat effectiveness. Let them go to garrison positions. These flanking troops lacking heavy weapons will be defeated in a single blow, which will directly lead to damage to the main front troops or even be encircled and annihilated. .

Therefore, to a certain extent, the famous saying that the ancient Chinese ancestors summed up the fact that the soldiers are not many but the essence is very reasonable.

"Food, weapons and ammunition, and even military uniforms and quilts, we can't prepare more." Dill was afraid that Churchill would not believe it, so he added: "Also, the chaos in Canterbury before..."

"Okay! I see! Don't mention Canterbury!" Churchill waved his hand, interrupting Dill again.

The German navy disrupted the British supply line and brought enormous pressure to the United Kingdom. This pressure broke out at the boot camp in Canterbury, which directly led to the vicious incident of the death of more than 30 soldiers in the chaos.

And the impact of this incident is far more than that~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Because of the execution of some soldiers who caused chaos, it directly led to the dissatisfaction of the recruits. This emotion has spread to the surrounding area, causing headaches for Churchill and other high-level officials.

It is precisely because of this that Churchill is so impatient and taboo when it comes to Canterbury. He had been embarrassed enough by this matter, and of course he didn't want to bring it up again.

"Report!" At this time, an officer interrupted the conversation between the two embarrassedly, and handed the message to Churchill: "The message just came from Jersey!"

Seeing the first sentence above, Churchill gritted his teeth with hatred, and almost shredded the telegram paper in his hand and threw it on the ground: "Bastard! Don't they have any sense of honor as a soldier?"

Without looking at the contents of the telegram, Dill probably guessed some of the things mentioned above. It is estimated that the defenders could not withstand the pressure of the German attack and were ready to surrender.

This is obviously not good news. For the British top brass, who were using Jersey to judge the strength of the German landings, things seemed to be moving out of their control. And this kind of uncontrolled development is the last thing Churchill and Dill want to see.