[Crossing] Beacon Fire Dragon Line

New wind, snow.

The clouds are dark and dark, and the world is cold.

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops scattered like beans on the white Ardennes plain, stretching for 450 miles.

Sheng Rui held an M1A1 carbine and followed Harold to patrol around the camp.He is now an official soldier and is required to participate in all routine military operations.

As a sign of becoming a regular, he got an oval metal medal strung on a chain.This thing is commonly known as a "dog tag", with his name, the number of the unit he belongs to, and other data engraved on it.

Many soldiers hang crosses or other sect logos on dog tag chains. Sheng Rui has no religious beliefs, so he punched out the one-euro coin that he always carried with him and hung it on it.In order to avoid unnecessary trouble, he used a file to grind away the "Federal Eagle" pattern on the surface of the coin, and engraved his own name in seal characters.

"Damn, it's so fucking cold." Sheng Rui stomped his feet and cursed.The knee-deep snow creaked under his military boots, and the bitter chill penetrated through the field uniform and invaded every inch of his skin.

"Go faster, just go faster." Harold exhaled whitely, and looked back at Sheng Rui, who had his head and face tightly wrapped and only a pair of cat eyes hiding under the helmet.

Sheng Rui is naturally shy of the cold like a Siamese cat.The winter in Philadelphia is very cold. During the years of studying in Wharton, he burned incense every day in winter to pray for heavy snow to block roads and school holidays, so that he could hide under the covers and not go out.As a result, God always only accepted half of his requests, and it was snowing heavily but the school was not on holiday, so every time he walked from the apartment to the parking lot, he seemed to die once.

In order to divert Sheng Rui's attention from the cold, Harold said: "By the way, have you heard the cross-service broadcast? They said that we have lost the battle and are retreating."

Sheng Rui nodded.He didn't listen to the radio, but he knew what was happening: Germany had launched a massive counteroffensive in the Ardennes.

The German side called it the Battle of the Rhine, and the more familiar name for later generations is the "Battle of the Bulge", that is, the Battle of Ardennes.

Sheng Rui looked up at Bastogne in the northeast.In a few days, the famous 101st Airborne Division will arrive there.He thought back to the plot in Band of Brothers.This is his favorite American drama, and he has watched it many times, but he never thought that he would be so close to them one day.

Five horses galloped through the mountains.

The horseshoes stomped furiously on the flying snow, and a gust of wind swept through the icy forest.

The people on the saddle are all dressed in field gray SS M44 field uniforms, steel helmets, rifles on their backs, and light blue borders on the shoulder straps.The two stars and two stripes on the collar badge of the person in the front show that he is a warrant officer.

When approaching the station, the warrant officer suddenly reined in the horse's head and made a "stop advancing" gesture behind him.

A few hundred meters away, the original location of the barracks was in ruins.The wreckage of the vehicle, still blazing, lay on the ground, surrounded by corpses in SS uniforms.

The facts are obvious: during their mission, the entire logistics battalion was wiped out.Perhaps only half of their class survived.

"Sir, what should we do?" The recruits looked at their young warrant officer in bewilderment.

"Give me the map. We move to the nearest unit," said the warrant officer.

While the warrant officer and the sergeant were looking at the map, a recruit saw that there were still some supplies left, so he ran over and wanted to put them on horseback and take them away.

The warrant officer noticed his movement and shouted urgently: "Don't move!"

It's too late.With a loud bang, he touched the hidden explosive fuse.

The snow was a little less in the evening.

Sheng Rui clapped his hands and leaned against the wooden board behind him.Their squad was in charge of guarding the barn where the prisoners of war were held tonight.It held several SS prisoners, captured during the fighting of the previous few days.They were all young, and one of them asked them for a bowl of water and thanked them very politely.

In the past few days, a more sensational news than the German counterattack spread like a tide among all the nearby American troops: the SS "Battle Group Piper" massacred more than 80 American prisoners in Malmedy, Belgium.

Along with the spread of this news, there is also a word of mouth order: kill the SS.

The 328th Infantry Regiment even issued a written order directly:

"All SS and paratroopers will be killed as soon as they are found, and no prisoners will be left. (No SStroopsorparatrooperswillbetakenprisonersbutwillbeshotonsight.)"

However, Sheng Rui's 334th Infantry Regiment did not receive direct instructions, so they still guarded these prisoners of war.

Harold was smoking a Lucky Strike, chatting with the rest of the class.

"Tell you, the big stick is not big at all." He compared the length of three to four centimeters with his thumb and index finger.

"Nonsense! Have you seen it?" someone questioned.

"Saw it in the shower together at boot camp in London." Harold fought hard to defend his statement.

Another soldier interjected, "I haven't seen one, but I've heard something about it." He made a nasty joke about sticks, "Didn't German soldiers carry condoms with them? Once the big stick caught a prisoner and found a case. Then—well, you recruits don’t listen to it, it’s not good.” He pretended to be mysterious and lowered his voice to whisper to Harold, and he could hear Harold laughed loudly, and slammed the handle of his rifle against the barn door behind him: "Say, should we check with these German guys?"

Two military policemen patrolling in the distance heard the laughter and shouted: "Hal, shut up! If you laugh again, you will be sent to a court-martial!"

Harold had a bad laugh, which was well known throughout the regiment.There has always been a saying in the regiment: There are three most terrifying sounds of death on the Western Front, the scream of the Ju87 Stuka bomber when it dives, the hiss of the MG42 heavy machine gun when it is strafing, and any kind of Harold's laughing sound. Voice.

Harold immediately cursed back: "Fuck you! I—"

He stopped suddenly.He saw a figure.

The man was nicknamed "The Old Crow" because he liked old crow whiskey.Now, with a Hudson in his hand, he was walking slowly towards the barn.

When the two gendarmes saw him, they fell silent, turned around and walked in another direction.

Harold took off his cigarette and stood up, raised his chin to Sheng Rui: "I'm going to patrol. Ray, come with me."

Sheng Rui also stood up.The old crow brushed past them without even looking at them.A weird smile froze at the corner of his mouth, and a phosphorescent light flickered in his pupils.He went straight into the barn.

Harold took Sheng Rui far away before looking back and sighing.

"That man, something is wrong here." He pointed to his head. "He was a very good man until his brother was killed by the Germans. The Malmedy affair must have irritated him again."

From far away from the barn came the sound of submachine guns firing, floating like a lonely ghost in the snow.

Sheng Rui lowered his eyes, not letting his sight touch the flickering fire.

Harold raised his arms and patted him on the back hard, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.Both fell silent, listening to the snowflakes falling.

Amidst the rustling, Sheng Rui vaguely heard another voice.He pricked up his ears alertly.

"Hal, did you hear anything? It seems to be coming from our defense line." The US defense line is too long, so every place is very weak.

After a few seconds, Harold heard it too.It was the sound of rapid hoofbeats.

Following the sound, a horse suddenly jumped out of the night.

"Damn it! It's the German!" Harold saw the uniform on the other side, shouted, and raised the rifle in his hand.

Instead of dodging, the horse charged straight at them at full speed.

Because it was so abnormal and too fast, Harold's brain didn't react for a moment: Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!Is this horse startled?

But he immediately came to his senses, it wasn't that the horse was startled, but a premeditated surprise attack, because the rider on the horse didn't move at all, with his left hand holding the bridle, his legs clamped around the horse's belly, and the Stg44 assault rifle in his right hand. aimed at him.

"Damn!" Harold only had time to shout the word before he was shot in the right arm and fell to the ground on his back.

All this happened in the blink of an eye, Sheng Rui didn't even have time to open the insurance of M1A1, the other party was already in front of him.

However, he didn't know if it was an illusion, but he felt that the rider's movements seemed to be slightly stagnant suddenly.The horse was as fast as lightning, and ran past Sheng Rui, followed by four other horses, and they had already run [-] meters in the blink of an eye.

It wasn't until this moment that Sheng Rui felt a shiver of fear creeping up his back.If that person's Stg44 was dialed on the burst, then he and Harold would have been dead on the ground in the shape of honeycomb.It is not an exaggeration to say that the moment just now was a brush with death.

"Damn, hell, shit!" Harold pressed the gunshot wound on his arm, bared his teeth and kept cursing, "Ray, are you alright?"

"It's okay. He didn't hit me, maybe he ran out of bullets." Sheng Rui helped Harold up.

Upon returning to the camp, Sheng Rui heard that their defense line had just been forcibly broken through by a cavalry squad.The witness's description was the same as what Sheng Rui saw: there was a sharpshooter leading the way, followed by four horses, one of which seemed to be carrying a person.And the shooter only hit people in the limbs, no one was seriously injured.

After rushing through the American blockade, Qi Han glanced back.Behind him, all four horses followed.Nightingale led Herman's horse, and Herman was tied horizontally on the horse's back. The broken leg was tightly tied with a hemostatic bandage and cloth strips, and the blood was frozen.

He was a little relieved, and continued to gallop towards the field hospital ahead without stopping, but his thoughts slipped quietly to another place——

Just now, when passing by one of the American soldiers, he saw a pair of cat-like deep amber eyes.

Although he knew that it was common for Westerners to have dark eyes, his heart still skipped a beat at that moment.

No, he can't be here.He should be living a peaceful life in Rome, thousands of miles away, instead of suffering from the flames of war here.

Qi Han collected his mind and sped up his speed.

Herman's life was ultimately not saved.

He struggled day and night in the field hospital.Because both the medical battalion and the logistics battalion were taken away, there were no medicines and supplies, and the medical soldiers were helpless, so they could only try their best to stop his bleeding.Finally they carried him to the morgue ahead of schedule and called in the chaplain.

Before dawn the next day, he died.