novelSusiti Chapter 116 The Führer's Wrath and Cigars from Le Havre
Chapter 116 The Führer's Wrath and Cigars from Le Havre
Chapter 116 The Führer's Wrath and Cigars from Le Havre
1940年6月8日，05：30。法国，勒阿弗尔港，H—7区域地下指挥所。
Weather: Cloudy. The air is thick with high concentrations of ozone and the smell of burning corpses.
Heinz Guderian disliked the taste.
That's the distinctive smell left behind after high explosives instantly carbonize reinforced concrete, human fat, and industrial rubber at temperatures of several thousand degrees.
For an armored commander, this is the norm on the battlefield, but today, there's something in that smell that makes his stomach cramp: the lingering taste of defeat.
The military boots bearing the number of the 19th Armored Corps crunched as they stepped on the broken glass and spent shell casings scattered on the ground.
With a grim face, Guderian, surrounded by a group of staff officers and SS adjutants, entered the underground bunker that had been issuing precise instructions until last night.
The ground was already a dead zone.
The Royal Navy's 406mm high-explosive shells not only wiped out two-thirds of the port of Le Havre, but also left a permanent psychological scar on the 7th Armoured Division.
The No. 3 assault gun that was parked at the gate was completely destroyed, leaving only a deep crater billowing black smoke, like an entrance to hell.
"Watch out for booby traps, General." A combat engineer captain nervously stepped in front of Guderian, scanning the door frame with his mine detector. "The British usually leave behind some dirty junk when they retreat."
"Get out of the way." Guderian shoved the engineer aside, his voice as cold as the sea breeze blowing across the English Channel.
"If that guy Sterling wanted to kill me, he would have had plenty of opportunities before. He would have had the battleships raze my command post last night, instead of leaving it until now."
As a commander with top-notch battlefield intuition, he seemed to have read the Englishman's intentions.
The guy on the other side, Arthur Sterling, didn't want him dead.
This strange feeling made him recall that night by the river. Perhaps, that escape from death was not a stroke of luck, but rather a deliberate act of "letting the other party let him win."
But that's what he found most absurd and perplexing.
But then he shook his head, thinking it was highly unlikely.
In war, it's a matter of life and death; no one will deliberately spare any enemy, especially a commander like him, for whom there are plenty of British snipers who want to blow his head off.
Keeping the enemy at home is something only politicians do—like Little Mustache.
He strode into the basement.
There were no corpses strewn across the field as expected, no ashes from burned documents, and not even the panic and chaos commonly seen during a retreat.
The generator had long since stopped working, but through the morning light streaming in through the vents, Guderian saw a sight that struck him as utterly absurd.
Neat and tidy. Infuriatingly neat and tidy.
All the maps had been taken away, leaving only empty nails on the walls. The floor had been swept, and the ammunition boxes were neatly stacked—empty, of course.
The massive oak tactical command table was wiped spotless, free of bloodstains and dust, and even retained a faint scent of cologne.
It was a royal cologne from Jermyn Street in London, with an elegant scent of citrus and sandalwood, a stark and ironic contrast to the hellish stench outside.
"Damn it—" Guderian's adjutant cursed through gritted teeth, "This is an insult to us."
Guderian remained silent.
He took off his dusty goggles and slowly walked to the command table. In the very center of the table sat something.
It was an exquisite mahogany cigar box, inlaid with a silver emblem—not a British military insignia, but an ancient family crest.
There is nothing else besides that.
Guderian stared at the box for a full ten seconds.
As a professional soldier, he felt a strange sense of dread, as if he had met his match.
That Englishman not only calculated the timing of the retreat, the tides and the trajectory of the ballistic missiles, but he even predicted that Guderian would walk into this room.
He reached out and, under the horrified gaze of the engineering captain, slowly opened the box.
There was no explosion, nor were any poison needles ejected.
Five premium Havana Romeo and Juliet cigars lay quietly inside a red velvet lining.
This was Churchill's favorite brand before the war—the famous 7-inch "double crown" size.
Although such luxury items are not completely out of stock in Europe today, due to the strict naval blockade imposed by the Royal Navy, a well-preserved top-quality Cuban cigar remains a highly sought-after commodity on the black market, even more valuable than gold of the same weight.
But what truly made Guderian's pupils constrict was not the cigar, but the box itself.
His fingers traced the fine scratch on the edge of the box lid.
Of course he recognized the box.
That was his private collection.
More than a week ago, during the chaotic night battle on the Ahe defense line, that madman named Arthur not only led his team to raid the front lines of the 1st Armored Division, but also used explosives to completely destroy his beloved half-track command vehicle in the brutal ambush at "Sleepy Hollow".
Now, he has returned the cigar box.
It was perfectly intact, and even had five cigars stuffed inside.
It's a silent boast: "I could snatch it from you then, and I can give it back to you now. Whether it's Haut or Le Havre, I can come and go as I please."
There was a letter under the cigar.
The handwriting above is not scribbled battlefield shorthand, but rather an extremely elegant and fluent German cursive script, the kind of handwriting only those who have received higher education at Germany's top aristocratic academies can produce.
Guderian picked up the letter.
The morning light shone on the paper. At first, he remained calm, but as he read deeper, his muscles began to twitch violently.
To His Excellency General Heinz Guderian, the Armored Corps General, and to my friend whom I never had the chance to meet, Major General Erwin Rommel:
By the time you read this letter, I should already be having breakfast on the cliffs of Dover. I apologize for borrowing your defenses for the entire day. As a token of my gratitude, I didn't blow up the basement; I simply reinforced the outer fortifications, especially the anti-tank ditch, which was indeed dug a bit deep. You're welcome.
Erwin, your 7th Panzer Division is indeed fast, as fast as the wind. But in modern warfare, speed doesn't always guarantee victory. Your supply lines are too slow, your flanks too weak. If I were you, I'd care more about my fuel tanks than my medals. Also, I heard you've always wanted to go somewhere warmer? Well, see you in North Africa then. Trust me, the sand there is better for your tracks than the mud of France, though there's no French wine there.
As for you, Heinz. Your "blitzkrieg" theory is indeed sharp, like a scalpel. Unfortunately, a scalpel usually breaks when it encounters a sledgehammer. This time you've met your match in the Royal Navy; it's not a tactical failure, but a failure in tonnage. Here's a box of cigars for you to calm down. I know you've been under a lot of pressure lately, especially with a boss who likes micromanagement.
I sincerely hope that one day in the future I will have the opportunity to address you as "Your Excellency Field Marshal"—if that hysterical corporal in Berlin allows. After all, a soldier of your caliber should not be buried in the roar of a madman.
good luck.
—Your loyal enemy, AS (Arthur Sterling) June 7, 1940. Deathly silence filled the command room in Jules Havre. Although the adjutant and staff did not see the contents of the letter, they could feel the palpable oppressive atmosphere emanating from their general.
Guderian's hands were trembling.
That was anger, that was humiliation.
"North Africa? That's utter nonsense."
Guderian's first reaction was to scoff, a contemptuous sneer playing on his lips.
Rommel was the commander of the 7th Panzer Division, in France.
And North Africa? That's Mussolini's playground. What does it have to do with the German Wehrmacht?
As for the marshal? He found that even more absurd.
As the father of Blitzkrieg and the imperial blade that swept across Poland and France, who could stop his rise?
His first reaction was nothing more than Arthur's humiliation of him as a "loser".
"Clumsy psychological warfare. Typical and arrogant British humor."
Guderian shook his head, tightening his fingers slightly, preparing to crumple the letter filled with incoherent ramblings into a ball.
As for showing it to Rommel? There's absolutely no need.
That tireless warmonger was busy gathering the remnants of the 7th Panzer Division, his mind preoccupied with how to head south and use the French to wash away the humiliation he suffered in Le Havre at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
But in that instant, his hand instinctively stopped moving.
A sudden chill crept up his spine from nowhere, creeping up his tailbone and into the back of his military uniform, making his hair stand on end.
This Englishman—this Sterling—calculated the moment to halt the attack at the Arle River defense line, and he calculated the timing of the naval bombardment at Le Havre.
He had calculated everything correctly.
What if this is more than just ravings?
What if—what the other person is saying is true?
If this Englishman really knew certain futures that even the High Command in Berlin hadn't had time to formulate—what would that mean?
This is more than just a letter.
It felt like—the opponent was sitting in the audience with the script in their hand, coldly watching them perform their hearts out on stage.
That's not a provocation, that's God's judgment, that's fate.
"General—" the chief of staff asked cautiously, "Should we hand it over as intelligence?"
"Hand it over? Hand it over to whom? The Gestapo?" Guderian turned around abruptly, crumpled the letter into a ball, and clenched it tightly in his palm.
His eyes once again turned fierce, like those of a wounded wolf.
"If Berlin finds out the contents of this letter, we'll only become a laughingstock, or face a military court!"
"Others will think we're afraid of the British, or that we're trying to find excuses for our defeat."
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. Then, under everyone's gaze, Guderian took a cigar from the box. He pulled out a lighter from his pocket and lit it with a click. Blue-gray smoke rose in the basement, mingling with the expensive aroma of tobacco.
Guderian took a deep drag, the acrid smoke making him cough, but he didn't stop.
He closed his eyes, as if savoring the last bitterness.
"That arrogant British bastard—" Guderian cursed under his breath, but there was little hatred in his voice. Instead, there was a complex sense of mutual respect between professional soldiers: "But he's right. A scalpel is indeed afraid of a hammer."
He opened his eyes, threw the crumpled letter into the still-smoking ashtray, and watched it turn to ashes.
"Pass down the order." Guderian's voice returned to its cold tone: "The entire 7th and 10th Panzer Divisions shall withdraw for rest and reorganization. Tell Rommel to take the remaining tanks from both divisions to Paris. We'll settle this score later."
June 8, 1940, 07:00, Brüly-de-Pesche, Belgium.
Codename: "Wolf Valley" - the Little Mustache's frontline base.
It's not the Wolf's Lair; that thing was only put into use after Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Although they both contain the word "wolf," their locations and meanings are completely different.
The battlefield is less than 200 kilometers away, and the Ardennes Forest is shrouded in a damp mist in the early morning.
To prepare for the arrival of the Führer, the villagers had already been evacuated, and the church bells were forbidden from ringing. But beneath this apparent tranquility, a storm was brewing that could destroy the entire Western command structure.
On the massive oak conference table lay the map of the Western Front, a map that would instill despair in the Anglo-French forces even in their dreams. But today, in the upper left corner of this map, where Le Havre was located, a large red and blue pencil mark was drawn across it.
The air in the conference room seemed to freeze.
General William Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command of the Defence Forces, stood ramrod straight, sweat trickling down his stiff neck and into his collar.
Alfred Yodl, the newly promoted general and director of the operations department, kept his head down, staring intently at the tips of his boots as if they were the most interesting things in the world.
In the center of the room, a short man in a gray field uniform stood with his back to the others, looking out at the forest.
That's Adolf the Beard.
His back looked somewhat hunched, and his left hand trembled involuntarily behind his back—a sign of early-stage Parkinson's disease, or perhaps an expression of extreme anger.
"So—" Hitler's voice was initially low and hoarse, but the two generals instinctively stood up straight. They both knew very well that the Führer was now a volcano about to erupt.
"You're telling me Le Havre is lost?"
"No, it's not that it's lost. It's that you failed to catch that British rat, and let the 51st Hill Division swagger home in battleships right under our noses?"
"My Führer," Yodl explained, forcing a smile, "this is because the Royal Navy has deployed the battleship HMS Rodney—our armored forces are out of range of its guns—"
Bang! Hitler whirled around and slammed his hand on the table.
The tortoiseshell glasses were jolted and bounced up, falling onto the map.
"Battleships?! Battleships again!" Hitler's face flushed red, his blue eyes blazing with frenzied rage. "I don't care if they're battleships or destroyers! All I know is that my orders have been ignored!"
He grabbed a pencil from the table, his hand trembling as he pointed to Le Havre, the force almost tearing through the map: "I'm giving Guderian and Rommel four armored divisions! Four! Not four infantry battalions! Four of Germany's most elite armored divisions!"
"And where is he? He's watching a play fifteen kilometers from the port!"
"My Führer, the First and Second Panzer Divisions were not actually deployed in combat," Yodl spoke rapidly, almost interrupting Hitler during his pause for breath, "that was to avoid—"
"Shut up! It's all excuses! It's all lies!" Hitler finally snapped.
He began pacing back and forth in the not-so-spacious room, his roars making the windows rattle: "This is betrayal!"
This is utter incompetence!
He stopped abruptly in front of Hermann Göring.
The Imperial Air Force Commander-in-Chief was sweating profusely as he tried to shrink his obese body into the chair. His white uniform, adorned with medals, was soaked with sweat.
"Meyer!" (Göring had said in 1939 that he would change his surname to Meyer if Allied planes flew into Germany.)
Hitler stared intently at Göring, spitting almost onto the portly marshal's face: "What did you promise me? You said not a single bird could fly out of Dunkirk! And now? Not only Dunkirk, but the gates of Le Havre are wide open!"
"That's a 40,000-ton battleship! Not a destroyer! Where are your Stukas? Where are your bombers? Are they all asleep?!"
"My Führer—" Göring wiped the sweat from his brow, his voice trembling, "There was a thick fog last night—and the Royal Navy's anti-aircraft fire—"
"Enough!" Hitler waved his hand to interrupt him. "I don't want to hear the weather forecast!"
He turned to the other side. There stood the pale-faced Commander-in-Chief Raeder.
"And you! The Navy! We wanted to build Project Z," we wanted to build aircraft carriers, we wanted to build battleships! And what happened? The British brought their capital ships right under our noses and blew our people to pieces like they were at a Thames River yacht party!"
"Is this the glory of the German Navy? Watching the army get slaughtered?"
Hitler was panting heavily, his hand slamming against the Le Havre battle report.
Suddenly, as if remembering something, he abruptly raised his head, his eyes flashing with an almost neurotic obsession:
"Das war ein Befehl! (That was an order!)"
The roar echoed in the conference room, startling everyone into shrinking back.
"The attack on Le Havre is an order! The complete annihilation of the 51st Division is an order! Who gave Guderian the right to halt the offensive?"
No one dared to remind him that just 24 hours earlier, he had personally given the order to halt the armored forces' advance.
In the head of state's memory, mistakes are always attributed to subordinates.
"That Sterling—" Hitler muttered the name through gritted teeth, as if he wanted to chew it up, "that Sterling who humiliated me at Dunkirk—he's slipped away again."
"He stomped my face on the ground and even ground his feet on it!"
"I'm so angry!"
The room was deathly silent. The only sound was Hitler's rapid breathing.
After a long while, Göring finally seized his opportunity. He stood up, his enormous belly protruding, and made an exaggerated gesture of allegiance: "My Führer! Please give me one last chance!"
"My Second Air Fleet is fully armed and ready to take off! Even if it means filling the English Channel, I'll sink that damned battleship!"
"If Sterling gets away again this time, I'll personally pilot the plane to ram him!"
Raeder, not to be outdone, immediately followed up: "The Navy has already moved in, my Führer. All the U-boats are already assembled on that route. And there's the E-boat squadron. That's their only way home, that's the road to death."
Hitler slowly sat back in his chair, picked up the glasses, and put them back on.
His hands were still trembling, but his eyes had regained that devastating calm.
"Go," Hitler waved his hand, as if shooing away a swarm of flies. "I don't care about the process. I only care about the result."
"I want to see photos of the sank USS Rodney. I want to see Arthur Sterling's body floating at sea."
"If you can't do it—" He raised his head, his eyes sweeping over everyone present with a sinister look, "—then you don't need to come back."
""
07:15, Central English Channel, H-12. Royal Navy battleship HMS Rodney.
Speed: 22 knots, heading: west of northwest (290).
Compared to the hysteria in Wolf Valley, this is another world.
A world of steel, steam, heavy oil, and order.
The massive hull sliced through the grey-blue sea, leaving a wide white trail behind it wide enough for a destroyer to navigate. Three enormous triple 16-inch main gun turrets, like three moving mountain peaks, silently pointed forward.
In the captain's private bathroom, Arthur Sterling was immersing himself in a huge enamel bathtub.
-
Hot water. Real, boiling fresh water.
For an infantry commander who had spent two weeks crawling through mud, ruins, and piles of corpses, this was nothing short of a blessing from heaven.
In the rising steam, Arthur closed his eyes.
Beneath the surface, his body was undergoing some unknown miracle.
Those old scars from the Sterling family's childhood riding and fencing still remain, indelible medals of time.
But the gruesome gashes from shrapnel on the Dunkirk beach, the scorch marks from bullets during the breakout in Forné, and the horrifying bruises from being struck by steel bars in the ruins of Le Havre last night—all of them vanished at this moment.
His new skin was smooth and flawless, and his muscle lines were smooth and firm, as if the hellish journey of the past two weeks had never happened to him.
This is a gift from the RTS system to him.
Only the lingering smells of gunpowder, blood, and the stench of French mud stubbornly reminded him of what he had just experienced.
But soon, they were also enveloped by the expensive lavender soap foam, carried away little by little, and dissolved in the boiling water.
"Young Master?" Major Ryder's voice came from outside the door, still carrying that habitual wariness, as if this were a foxhole rather than a battleship: "Captain Dalrymp has sent some clothes. He said your army uniform—well, it probably has more fleas than buttons, and he suggests just throwing it into the boiler to burn."
Arthur opened his eyes, a smile playing on his lips.
He stood up from the water, grabbed a thick cotton towel, and dried himself. Looking at himself in the mirror, he was thinner than he had been a week or so ago, his cheeks were a little sunken, and his eyes were sharper than before, like a newly sharpened knife.
He pushed open the door.
Ryder was holding a brand new uniform in his hands.
Instead of the army's khaki field uniform, it was a white summer dress for a Royal Navy captain.
Arthur put on the crisp white shirt and fastened the gold double-breasted buttons.
This is Captain Dalrymp's spare dress uniform. Although the epaulettes feature the four gold bars representing a Royal Navy Captain, rather than the iconic crown and two Bass stars of an Army Colonel.
Pips).
However, in terms of military rank, they are completely equivalent.
The suit not only fit him remarkably well, but it also perfectly matched his status. It was as if fate had known all along that he would be promoted in Le Havre, and had already prepared this moment of "coronation" on the battleship for him.
Arthur straightened his collar in front of the mirror.
Wearing this outfit instantly transformed him from a mud-covered "infantry ruffian" back into the "Lord Sterling" who drew attention in London's social circles.
That innate aristocratic air appeared even more aloof and elegant against the backdrop of the naval uniform.
"Looks good, young master." Ryder straightened his collar. "But to be honest, seeing you dressed like this, I have the feeling you're about to defect to the navy."
"Don't be silly, Ryder." Arthur put on his navy peaked cap in front of the mirror, adjusting the angle slightly. "The navy beds are too soft, and the food is too good. If I stay here too long, I'll forget how to dig trenches."
He stepped out of the cabin and walked through the narrow corridor.
The sailors they encountered along the way all turned to salute, wishing they could squeeze into the cold bulkheads, their eyes filled with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
This awe wasn't just because of the white uniform that represented the captain, or even because of last night's earth-shattering shelling—something that was just routine for Rodney.
What they truly revered was the unacceptable truth that had spread throughout the entire ship:
The army colonel, wearing a borrowed uniform and walking down the corridor with a cold expression, is the heir to the Sterling family.
To these working-class sailors from Liverpool slums or Glasgow shipyards, the young master's pockets held not bullets, but the entire City of London.
There are even rumors that if this young master wanted, he could pull out his checkbook at any time and buy the entire task force, including the battleship "Rodney" right here, outright, and then use it as a private yacht to go fishing in the Caribbean.
Faced with money and power that can almost distort reality, saluting is no longer just a military rule, but an instinctive physiological reaction.
Moreover, he is no longer just a simple playboy.
In Winston Churchill's passionate, cigar-scented radio speeches, the young man had been portrayed as "a hero of the entire British Empire."
He was the Prime Minister's handpicked "Savior of Europe," the only one who could raise a torch to light the way home for the Allied forces in the darkest hour.
On the BBC, his name was even more famous than that of the royal family.
Arthur boarded the magnificent bridge.
A sea breeze swept over him, causing Arthur to instinctively frown. Captain Dalrymp was standing at the chart table, a cup of coffee in his hand. His eyes lit up when he saw Arthur enter.
"My God, Master Sterling," the captain exclaimed dramatically, "if you walked into the Admiralty in this suit, the First Sea Lord might just hand you a commission on the spot. This suit is like it was made for you."
"Just borrowing it for a moment, Captain." Arthur walked to the porthole and took a cup of hot cocoa from the orderly—a special edition with rum.
He glanced out the window.
On the eastern horizon, the sun had just risen, turning the clouds blood red.
【hint】
[The fire control data link of the USS Rodney has been taken over.]
[Wide-area surveillance radar: Synchronization complete. Sonar data: Network integration in progress.]
Current computing power usage: Stable.
The blue data stream on his retina was like a waterfall, digitizing every waveband and every wind direction of the entire sea area into a transparent battlefield in his eyes.
Arthur took a small sip of hot cocoa, feeling the alcohol and sugar spread through his bloodstream.
At this distance, the war machine implanted in his brain had become completely integrated with the 40,000-ton steel behemoth beneath his feet. It was like a hungry and energetic beast, greedily searching for every possible prey in the sky and sea through the tentacles of radar and sonar.
"How is it going?" Arthur asked, but in fact he had "seen" the answer earlier than anyone else.
Captain Dalrymp's expression turned serious. He pointed to the few faintly visible dots on the radar screen: "This is bad, sir. We're being watched."
"The German reconnaissance planes were Dornier Do-17 flying pencils," they said, constantly hovering in the clouds like annoying flies. They dared not approach the air defense perimeter, but they kept reporting our position.
The captain put down his coffee cup, walked to the nautical chart, and drew a line on the course with his finger: "According to intelligence from the home fleet, Göring has moved all his bombers in northern France. And Raeder's U-boats—the sonar operators heard suspicious echoes ten minutes ago."
"The next hundred nautical miles will probably not be peaceful."
Arthur put down his cup. He walked to the chart table, the place he knew best—whether on land or at sea.
The RTS interface unfolded in his field of vision.
Even on a turbulent sea, the map with its omniscient perspective remained clear.
On that grey-blue sea, countless red lights are converging. A swarm of aircraft in the sky. A pack of wolves underwater. This is a vast net, a death trap woven by Little Mustache at any cost to save face.
But Arthur was not afraid.
On the contrary, his eyes burned with a frenzied fighting spirit.
He witnessed the defeat at Dunkirk, tasted the despair of Fornet, and had just fought his way out of Le Havre's deadly abyss.
But now, the roles of offense and defense have reversed.
He was no longer the infantryman struggling in the mud, but sat atop this battleship, which boasted nine 16-inch main guns and was as tough as a "floating castle."
Behind him, escorting him, was an entire menacing Royal Navy Task Force H.
Want him dead now? Too late.
"Then let them come, Captain." Arthur turned around, his back to the sun, his white naval uniform seemingly edged with gold in the morning light. He took another cigarette out of his pocket, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it.
"Perfect." Arthur gazed at the increasingly dense clouds in the east, a haughty smile playing on his lips. "Our return celebration is a bit lacking in fireworks. Since Goring is so kind as to offer us a ride—"
He looked at Dalrymp, his eyes sharp: "Then we'll give him a real symphony. With your anti-aircraft guns and main guns as instruments."
Captain Dalrymp paused for a moment, then burst into laughter. "As you wish, young master." He grabbed the ship's intercom microphone, his voice instantly echoing throughout the entire warship: "Attention all personnel! This is not a drill!"
"Anti-aircraft gun crews in position! Damage control team in position!"
"Whatever falls from the sky, hit it back!"
"For the King! For Master Sterling! For home!"
As the alarm blared shrilly, the steel behemoth seemed to awaken from its slumber.
The turrets spun, ammunition was hoisted, and thousands of sailors rushed to their battle stations.
Arthur stood at the highest point of the bridge, watching all of this.
He looked at the black dot rapidly growing larger in the distant clouds; it was the first Stuka to come and die.
"Come on," Arthur said softly.
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