SWDnovel Chapter 78 Corpses Cannot Talk
Chapter 78 Corpses Cannot Talk
Chapter 78 Corpses Cannot Talk
June 4, 1940, 11:42 AM, Nieuport City Hall underground bunker, Belgium, British temporary defense zone command post.
The air was filled with the smell of rotten onions.
To be precise, it's not just about the taste.
In a corner, several soldiers belonging to the 2nd Battalion of the Scottish Highland Guard Regiment leaned against the damp wall, numbly chewing on a few sprouted, softened purple onions like rats.
This was the only thing they could call "food" that they found in the cellar of a French restaurant next door that had been bombed.
There was no bread, no corned beef, not even a moldy biscuit.
With a crunching sound as teeth bit into a rotten onion ball, the nauseatingly spicy juice spilled out, mingling with the smells of bandages, tobacco, and sweat from the long-unwashed basement. This was the last lunch for this rearguard unit, and possibly their last meal.
Above my head, the ceiling is crumbling.
"Thump—"
""
Dust settled down, landing precisely in Major Mackenzie's already cold coffee.
This wasn't a near miss; it was a routine "knocking" by a German 105mm howitzer.
The German artillerymen outside clearly understood: they could kill people, but they couldn't smash furniture.
Especially the sluice gates that control the water level at the mouth of the River Iser. Once those fragile cast-iron gates are cracked by heavy artillery fire, the backflow of North Sea water will instantly turn this place into a vast expanse of water. At that time, both the tanks of the 2nd Armored Division and this group of Scots will become floating corpses in the River Iser.
Therefore, these landing points are incredibly precise.
The Germans, like surgeons, carefully avoided key water conservancy facilities, only dropping 105mm high-explosive bombs on the edges of insignificant squares or in residential areas that had already been bombed down to their frames.
The enormous explosion traveled through the foundation, causing dust to fall from above, but just enough to prevent the bunker from collapsing.
The rhythm is very steady, occurring every five minutes.
This is Death politely tapping on the coffin lid, reminding everyone in this basement:
time is limited.
Major Alexander McKenzie, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Scottish Highland Guards, didn't reach out to brush the dust away. He simply stared at the murky liquid for a moment, then expressionlessly picked it up and drank it down in one gulp.
The coffee grounds rubbed between his teeth, keeping his mind alert.
"ammunition."
Mackenzie placed the cup on the map covered with red crosses.
In the corner, the quartermaster, his face covered in grease, shrank back, looking at the list he had crumpled in his hand.
"Three-inch mortar shells—just two boxes left, sir. Twenty-four rounds to be exact." The quartermaster's voice trailed off. "Three belts of Vickers machine gun ammunition remain. As for Lee-Enfield rifle cartridges—"
On average, each person would receive five magazines.
"Five magazines," McKenzie chewed on the number, "that's twenty-five bullets. Enough for each of us to die twenty-five times over."
"And grenades, sir," the quartermaster added, seemingly looking for good news. "We found two crates in the previous French warehouse."
"Is there a fuse?"
"----No."
Major McKenzie snorted, a sound somewhere between a sneer and a cough: "Very well. Keep it. When the Germans come in, we can smash their heads with that thing. At least it's made of iron."
The basement fell into a suffocating silence.
Captain Henry, sitting next to the radio, shifted slightly. The Royal Air Force liaison officer looked even worse off than the army officer; his air force blue uniform looked like a rag pulled out of a mud pit, and his left sleeve was stained with blackened blood, some of Henry's own and some of the Germans'.
Unlike the Scottish soldiers around him who seemed to want to dig their fingernails into rotten onions, Captain Henry had no interest in the food in his hands.
His fingers gripped tightly the heavy canvas bag with lead weights sewn to the bottom of his knee.
It was designed to sink to the bottom of the sea in an emergency. But now, this heavy bag contains something more valuable than the lives of everyone in this room—a Royal Air Force air-to-ground communication codebook, and a spectrum diagram of a home radar station that must never be exposed to the light of day.
"We should burn it."
Captain Henry suddenly spoke up, nervously pushing up his glasses. "Major, we should burn it. If the Germans get their hands on this, the entire air defense network in southern England will be turned on them, and the last vestiges of the British Empire will be stripped bare by the Germans."
"Wait a little longer." Mackenzie pulled a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe his Webley revolver with gentle yet heavy movements.
"Waiting for what? Waiting for London to send a ship?"
At this point, Captain Henry suddenly lost control of his emotions.
He suddenly stood up, knocking over an entire row of chairs with a loud, piercing crash: "Don't even dream about it!"
Operation Dynamo is over! That was the last broadcast last night! Those Navy geezers took their destroyers back! Leaving us stranded on this damn beach!
"Sit down, pilot."
McKenzie didn't even look up, but simply pulled the lever, making a crisp click: "We're the expendables. We've known that for three days, ever since we received that rearguard mission. But that doesn't mean we should panic now; that would be playing right into the Germans' hands."
"What are we doing here? Just waiting to die?" Henry gasped for breath. "There's an entire armored division of Germans outside! They're even ordering food on that damned public channel!"
As if to confirm his words, a clear English voice with a heavy Bavarian accent suddenly came through the Bedford radio station, which had been running all along.
Sizzle—
"—Hey? British friends in Niupt, can you hear me? This is the 2nd Panzer Division Prinz Eugen Combat Group."
The German's voice sounded unusually cheerful, even tinged with a hint of leniency—the pity of a victor for these losers: "The sea breeze is a bit strong now, isn't it? I suggest you don't try to swim back. The water temperature in the North Sea is only 12 degrees Celsius; you'll suffer hypothermia within twenty minutes."
"By the way, for lunch today we have freshly baked Bavarian white sausages, served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. If you surrender now, you might still get some while it's hot. After all, you're probably sick of those corned beef cans by now, aren't you?"
Then came a burst of laughter. It was many Germans laughing.
The air in the basement seemed to freeze.
Several young British signal corpsmen quickly lowered their heads and then removed their headsets.
Despair sometimes comes not from the fear of death, but from the pity of the enemy.
When your enemies start caring about your lunch, it means you've lost the right to be an opponent.
You're just a piece of meat on the chopping board.
Tell that German.
Major Mackenzie raised his head irritably, his bloodshot grey eyes burning with the stubbornness of a Scottish Highlander. "To hell with the white sausages. Let him stuff those mashed potatoes down his ass."
"
MacKenzie slammed his gleaming revolver on the table. "Just tell them the same thing, then turn it off. Save the battery. When they burst in, we'll respond with gunfire."
He turned to look at the air force captain, who was on the verge of a mental breakdown: "Prepare the gasoline."
"Five minutes later, they burned the codebook and smashed the radio. The rest of you, fix bayonets."
He paused, glancing at the dust-strewn ceiling above him: "If the Germans dare to step into this place, we'll detonate the sluice gates and drag these bastards down with us to feed the fish."
"We must die like respectable Englishmen."
11: 45.
Captain Henry, his hands trembling, unscrewed the brass clasp of the canvas bag.
A soldier nearby brought over a bucket of yellowish gasoline. The strong odor of the gasoline instantly masked the musty smell from the ground.
Major McKenzie took one last look at the map. On it, the blue circle representing the main force of the 51st Hill Division shone alone in Saint-Valérie, while their location in Niupt was already firmly clamped down by two red pincers—the German 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions.
"It's over," he murmured to himself.
Just a second before the communications soldier's finger touched the power switch.
The 42.5MHz indicator light, which had been silent and was used as a backup channel, suddenly flickered without warning.
That wasn't ordinary electrical noise.
In this electromagnetic domain controlled by high-powered German jamming machines, all public frequency bands were already cluttered with noise. However, in the physical laws of radio communication, only matched crystal oscillators can generate resonance.
42.5MHz is a gray area on the edge of very high frequency (VHF).
It was not on the standard frequency list of the British Army's signal corps, nor was it within the regular scanning range of the German Army's listening posts.
This was a "backdoor" privately agreed upon by the veterans of the 1st Army during exercises on Salisbury Plains—a secret tactical frequency band used specifically for telling dirty jokes under the noses of those strict communications staff, or for saving lives in wartime.
The indicator light's blinking, accompanied by the pointer's frantic swinging, indicates a strong carrier wave.
The noise suppression circuit logo was suppressed.
For a skilled communications soldier, this is not just a signal, but also a physical coordinate:
In this frequency band, radio waves propagate in a straight line. There is no ionospheric reflection, and no beyond-line-of-sight transmission.
Since the signal was strong enough to break through the German electronic blockade, it meant that the source of the transmission was neither in London across the Channel nor in Paris, which was hundreds of kilometers away.
It's right here. Nearby. Just a few dozen kilometers from the end of that straight line.
The communications soldier's hand froze in mid-air.
"Sizzle—sizzle—"
A sharp whistling sound swept past the loudspeaker, causing everyone to instinctively cover their ears.
Immediately afterwards, a sound pierced through the white noise.
It was a man's voice. Young, cold, and unhurried. It lacked the strained, strained tone typical of frontline soldiers; instead, it carried a languid arrogance, as if someone were sitting on a leather sofa in a London club, smoking a cigar.
That standard upper-class accent, the kind that can only be learned through the whipping at Eton College or Oxford University.
"Feed? Are there any survivors?"
The voice said, "This damn Belgian weather, the rain has stopped, but the signal is still so bad."
The basement fell into a deathly silence.
Captain Henry dropped the codebook in his hand with a "thud".
The quartermaster's mouth dropped open, his expression as if he'd seen the can of gasoline and started tap dancing.
Major McKenzie sprang up from his chair, the movement so forceful that it knocked over the empty coffee cup.
"Who?" He stared at the radio, as if it had come to life. "Who's on that channel?"
The communications soldier hurriedly put on his headset, his fingers frantically adjusting the knob.
"Unable to identify, sir! But the signal is too strong; the S-meter (signal strength meter) has gone straight into the red zone!"
He stared at the wildly swinging pointer of the radio compass: "Not in London, not at sea! It's to the south—slightly west! Right behind us!"
The communications soldier looked up sharply, his eyes filled with surprise: "It's Ferney! Sir! The signal is coming from the direction of Ferney!"
The voice on the radio ignored the commotion and continued speaking to itself, with the muffled, powerful roar of a diesel engine faintly heard in the background—clearly, the other side was using a car radio to contact them.
"This is Arthur Sterling."
"Let the brothers in Niubert know. We've cleaned up the trash in Flne."
1
"But I see your watchdogs are still barking."
Major McKenzie felt as if an invisible hand was tightly gripping his throat.
Arthur Sterling?
He had never heard of that name.
But at this point in time, in the direction of Flörn?
That was the First Army's defense zone, but he knew very well that it had been completely overrun by the German 1st Panzer Division. It was a death trap. Any British still there would now be corpses or prisoners of war.
"This can't be—" Captain Henry's face was pale, his lips trembling. "This is fake. This is German psychological warfare. Förner is finished. The 1st Panzer Division is there. This is a Gestapo trick—"
"Shut up!"
McKenzie snatched the microphone from the communications soldier's hand.
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the turmoil in his heart, and pressed the call button: "This is 'Wildcat.' This is Major McKenzie."
He tried to sound like a commander who hadn't gone mad: "If you were a voice actor hired by the Germans, I'd say your accent is very convincing. But my scouts report that Flner has fallen. There are only the tracks of the 1st Panzer Division there."
Mackenzie stared at the radio, as if trying to see through the electrical current to the disguise on the other end: "Even the Royal Air Force has an identification code on this channel. If you can't give me the day's communication password, I'll assume you're a German trying to lure us out of this mess. I'll cut off communications immediately."
This is a trap. And also the final test.
In fact, the garrison in Niupt had long lost contact with their superiors, and McKenzie had no idea what the password for today's interaction was.
He's gambling.
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the radio.
Those two seconds felt like an eternity to the major.
Then, the voice rang out again. No code was given, just a soft chuckle tinged with static: "Code? I don't have any code, Major. And I don't have time for your guessing games."
"But I have a better proof."
"Now, send your men to the lookout post to the south, looking towards Flne."
Arthur's voice paused, then hardened like steel: "See that plume of black smoke? That's the burning remains of an entire battalion of the German 1st Panzer Division. That's my business card."
"The Germans wanted to eat us up, but they lost a few teeth. Now tell me, Major, can a dead man start a fire this big?"
Major McKenzie felt his heart skip a beat.
He doesn't need to send anyone to check.
Just ten minutes earlier, the observation post had indeed reported thick smoke rising from the direction of Furney to the south, even obscuring the original rain and fog. At the time, they thought it was the burning remains of British troops, the smoke signals of the First Army's annihilation.
But now—
If what that voice said is true.
If that black smoke came from German tanks—
"It's him—"
McKenzie turned his head sharply and looked at the soldiers who were looking at each other in bewilderment.
He didn't know who Arthur Sterling was, or what family or honor that name represented. He only knew one thing: a madman, or a grim reaper, had broken through the encirclement of the 1st Armored Division.
Moreover, this Grim Reaper is here to help them.
"My God—"
This Scottish man, usually as hard as rock, had tears welling in his eyes. He covered his face with trembling hands and let out a suppressed laugh that sounded like a sob.
"Someone has broken out—someone has really broken out—"
He abruptly raised his head and roared at the still-dazed soldiers, "What are you all standing there for?! Kick that damn gasoline drum out of there! Those are friendly forces! Whether they're human or ghost, they're here to save us!"
He gripped the microphone, his voice hoarse as he roared, "I saw smoke! Sterling! You son of a bitch! I don't know who you are, but if you come back alive, I'll buy you the best whiskey!"
The radio crackled with Arthur Sterling's signature, reassuring reply: "Alive. And living a vibrant life."
"Wash your asses clean, Major. Hang in there a little longer."
"We're coming right now—to take you home."
At 13:00, on the N34 coastal highway, 3 kilometers from the Lombard Bridge, the relaxed and arrogant demeanor he had maintained on the radio an hour and a half earlier had long since vanished from his face.
Instead, a chilling solemnity prevailed.
He sat on the command tower of the Matilda tank, the cigarette in his hand that had never been lit had been crumpled into a ball of dust.
"Sir, what you said to the garrison in Niupt was like the arrival of a savior."
From the turret below, Jeanne's voice came, tinged with a hint of teasing, "I'm almost moved. Taking you all home?" What a romantic line.
"romantic?"
Arthur gave a cold laugh, raised his binoculars, and stared intently at the bridge shrouded in rain and mist on the horizon: "That's for them to hear. Because corpses don't speak, and I need them alive."
"If they knew what we were facing now, that major would probably just shoot himself in the head to save himself the trouble."
"Is it that bad?" Jeanne asked.
See for yourself.
Arthur, however, looked directly at the RTS system, which was even more direct.
On the pale blue holographic map that only he could see, the only road to Niupot, the Lombard Bridge 1500 meters ahead, was now covered by a blinding red spot of light.
That's not your average infantry red dot.
Those were four huge heavy-duty firepower icons bearing skull and crossbones symbols.
In the system's annotation panel, that line of German data looked like a death sentence:
[Enemy Unit Confirmed]
[Model: Flak36/88mm Flugabwehrkanone]
[Quantity: 4 doors]
[Status: Fully Engaged in Battle]
Arthur felt a chill run down his spine.
If the Panzer III and Panzer IV were the opponents he should have faced in this era, then the 88mm gun was a bug that shouldn't have existed in this era.
The terrifying kinetic energy meant for bombers flying at 20,000 feet was used for a direct shot at a tank, eliminating any possibility of ricochet. At this distance, Matilda's prized 78mm cast armor, at 88...
Against millimeter armor-piercing rounds, they're as brittle as a soda cracker. The Germans will hit them the same way they hit the Type 3 and Type 4 rounds.
"parking."
Arthur's voice came through the team channel.
"All team, stop. Get off the road."
"What's wrong, sir?" a question came from the car behind. "Aren't we on our way to pick someone up?"
"Picking someone up?"
Arthur looked through the telescope at the dark muzzle of a massive cannon, hidden behind the bridge fortifications, slowly rotating its barrel.
The cannon muzzle seemed to be staring intently at his brow through the rain and mist 1500 meters away.
"If we rush over there now, the only thing we'll get is God's punishment."
He took a deep breath and scattered the clump of tobacco scraps into the wind.
"Notify everyone to prepare for battle. But do not show yourselves."
"My plan to spend the night in Niubote tonight is probably going to fall through."
At the limit of the telescope's field of vision, the bridgehead was no longer a simple traffic node, but an intricately woven death trap.
The four 88mm anti-aircraft guns, each with its distinctive cruciform mount, were half-buried behind sandbag fortifications. Camouflage netting draped over their somewhat exaggeratedly long barrels, they stared coldly at the road's edge. The gun crews sat around smoking—the Germans clearly had absolute confidence in their weapons.
On the flank of the giant cannon, Arthur could clearly see several more concealed firing positions.
It was an MG34 general-purpose machine gun mounted on a heavy tripod, its gleaming yellow ammunition belts already loaded. The muzzles were crossed, pointing towards the drainage ditches on either side of the road, creating a crossfire that left no blind spots. Any infantry attempting to charge would be torn to shreds by these two "early versions of Hitler's chainsaws" in an instant.
A German major in a crisp uniform stood in the center of the defensive line. He seemed oblivious to Arthur in the distance, merely conducting a routine inspection of his handiwork.
His white-gloved hand gracefully drew a fan shape in the air along the direction of N34 highway.
That's not a gesture for spotting prey.
That was the hunter's composure as he meticulously set up his trap.
But Arthur had already understood the meaning of the gesture: turn any moving metal box that appeared on the road into scrap metal.
The Germans had already closed the door and set up four cannons that could blast God down, along with a deadly machine gun emplacement.
Arthur retreated into the control tower and slammed the hatch shut, shutting out the damp sea breeze.
"But who says we have to go in?"
He muttered to himself in the dimly lit combat room, his gaze fixed on the blue circle of Niupot on the map, a glint of madness flashing in his eyes: "If I can't get in, then let them out."
There will be another chapter later.