Listening to everyone's words, George understood their mood and thought that morale should be boosted rather than let down.
After thinking for a while, he said.
"Then don't let them pick it!"
With his mouth corner raised to 66 degrees, George said.
"How many shells do we have left?"
In the early morning of December 14, although it was not bright, in the forest southeast of Bastogne, a convoy of hundreds of tanks, assault guns and half-track armored vehicles were preparing for the final counterattack, and everyone was looking forward with expectant eyes.
This is the armored force in George's hands-they are equipped with tanks captured from the German army, assault guns No. 3, assault guns No. 4, hunters, No. 4 and Panther tanks, and even the iron cross on the tank body is not completely covered.
At 5:35 in the morning.
"Dragon roar! Dragon roar! Dragon roar!"
After receiving the order, the radio operator who had been waiting quietly immediately sent a signal to the artillery position, and the signal was immediately transmitted to each gun position.
The artillery company commanders waiting by the phone immediately shouted loudly after receiving the signal of "Dragon Roar",
"Fire!"
The artillerymen who had been waiting for a long time immediately pulled the bolt, accompanied by a series of explosions. Hundreds of huge orange-red flames suddenly rose up in and outside the city of Bastogne, instantly illuminating the sky and the earth, and reddening the somewhat excited faces of the artillerymen. The ammunition man on the side had already picked up the shells and was ready to reload them. Without an assistant, the excited ammunition man picked up the shells weighing more than 40 kilograms by himself.
The 150mm grenade weighing more than 40 kilograms whistled sharply in the air when it flew, like a winter whistle. For the German troops besieging Bastogne in the southeast, at least at that moment, they even felt that it was the sound of mountain wind blowing through the treetops.
But the next moment, the shells whistled over. Those veterans who had experienced hundreds of battles heard the faint whistling in the air and immediately realized the danger.
"Artillery fire, lie down..." Suddenly, an old soldier shouted loudly. Before he finished speaking, violent explosions rang out one after another. "Boom! Boom! Boom!" Hundreds of shells hit the German defense line accurately, and foxholes were blown up to the sky in the violent explosions. Those German soldiers who were starving in the ice and snow all lowered their bodies as much as possible and hid in foxholes to avoid the bombardment. However, today's bombardment was different from the past. After more than ten minutes of fierce bombardment, there was no thought of stopping. With a nearly destructive momentum, it seemed to destroy everything. Foxholes were filled in the fierce bombardment, and many German soldiers were buried alive in the foxholes. "Russians, Russians are coming..." Some veterans who had fought on the Eastern Front shouted excitedly. They had experienced similar artillery fire on the Eastern Front. In the fierce bombardment, thousands of panicked German soldiers were either killed or fled in panic, and were blown into the sky in the artillery fire.
Bombardment!
It lasted for three hours, from five in the morning to eight in the morning. At eight-thirty, the tank troops that had been waiting for a long time attacked, and what appeared in front of the officers and soldiers of the task force armored combat group?
It was corpses everywhere. For the child soldiers of the 26th National Grenadiers Division guarding the periphery of Bastogne, they had never thought that they would encounter such fierce artillery fire. In the fierce artillery fire, countless people were directly frightened and cried for their mothers in the trenches and foxholes. And those veterans who were the backbone thought that the Russians were coming, and they fled everywhere for fear of falling into the hands of the Russians. The armored forces of the task force that fought out under the cover of fierce artillery fire encountered almost no resistance along the way, and were even regarded as their own by the Germans. Just when they were about to greet their own armored troops with a smile, they were attacked by machine guns and tank guns!
There was no way, this tank unit was equipped with all German tanks... In fact, there were more than a dozen American M4 tanks in the city, brought by the retreating American troops, but we won't play with the American troops there... Although in the past ten days, those American troops were their instructors and taught them how to conduct armored warfare.
But teaching the apprentice will starve the master to death, this logic makes sense everywhere...