Chapter 60 Civilian Mission

this……

Stopped and looked at the scene in front of him, Lin Neng's thoughts were a little short-circuited.

This time, "Yanker" neither brought them to the dangerous frontier position nor brought them with an unknown "black car". The group finally arrived in front of a house on the back of the hillside. There were about fifty or sixty civilians gathered here, some gray-haired, hunched over, and crutches, and seemed to have to breathe for a while after walking a few steps; some turned pale and had to rely on support from others to stand; some were still in swaggers and had no ability to move themselves at all. Such a group of elderly, weak, women and children with difficulty had their feet, with large and small suitcases and bags on their feet. Two carriages were parked near the woods, and the people sitting on them were either colorful on their heads or bandages on their arms, while the remaining small amount of space was used to ship whole bags of food and bundled bedding.

It is said that a normal population of such a town should be close to or reach a thousand people. Apart from young and middle-aged people who joined the army and went out to work, there are still hundreds of old, weak, women and children. Perhaps as Lin En had previously guessed, most civilians had already evacuated before the Soviet army approached. The rest were either inconvenient movement or attached to their hometown and placed their hopes on the German army being able to resist the enemy's attack. Unfortunately, the situation in the empire had long been declining. The invincible and mighty army in the early stages of the war was affected by the two fronts. Even if there was a claimed solid line of defense, it could not stop the Soviet army's offensive.

Looking at people's anxious and helpless expressions, Lynn guessed his new mission: escorting these civilians from the front line.

In the past PC games, escorting civilians to retreat to the rear was not entirely easy task. The road was often full of difficulties and obstacles, and even evil enemies came to snipe. Once the number of civilian losses exceeded the limit, the task was declared to fail. Now, these people are living people with flesh and blood in front of Lynn. Personal safety is only one aspect. They have to consider their fatigue and hunger along the way. Even if the task fails, there will be no chance of s/l. Thinking of this, Lynn looked around and in addition to the five soldiers brought by "Yanker", there was also a small team of German soldiers who arrived in advance. They had a total of 9

Only two people wore steel helmets, and the other seven were all wearing bandages on their heads or "plasters" on their foreheads, or wearing field caps, caps, or simply naked. Except for the fireheads carrying cookware, the others carried weapons, but there were no strong firepower outputs such as machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers. It can be seen that the officers were interested in selecting light wounded personnel from frontier positions to perform low-intensity escort missions. As long as the defense line along the river is not broken, they need to be wary of air strikes by Soviet aircraft. Of course, the luggage packages that cannot be loaded by the carriages also require these soldiers to help share.

After a while, another German officer brought six soldiers who were "slightly injured but not off the line of fire", and then a major issued an order to all personnel, including civilians and soldiers: civilians must obey the arrangements of soldiers, and soldiers must do their best to protect the safety of civilians. The destination of this trip was Konisburg forty kilometers away.

Yes, Konisburg, one of the last fortresses of the German army in East Prussia at the end of the war. Lynn was sure that he heard it correctly. In his impression, in order to evacuate as many civilians as possible from the area that was about to be occupied by the Soviet army, the German Command launched a large-scale maritime retreat code-named "Hannibal" in early 1945. The civilians were finally removed to a million, and the German Navy also exhausted its last family. Unfortunately, history was always written by the victors. Although the overall scale of this retreat operation reached three times the size of the Dunkirk retreat, it was deliberately downplayed and forgotten by the Soviet Union and the British and American allies. If it were not for military fans who were more deeply studied, they might not know its name.

According to his memory of the Battle of East Prussia and the Great Retreat of "Hannibal", Lynn could confirm his time, location and the situation of the war. However, he did not expect that he would personally experience the epic retreat so soon, full of tragic and sentimental retreat, and his thoughts suddenly became a little messy again.

If you can successfully arrive in Konisburg, will you board the ship with the civilians or return to the front line?

After experiencing the most cruel war tempering, although Lin En has not yet reached the level of putting life and death aside, he has also taken his personal life and death a lot. In fact, no matter whether he boards the ship and evacuate the former or returns to the front line, as long as he is still alive, he has to continue to fight against many difficulties. There may be a thousand possibilities in the future. No matter where he takes, he will face it with the calm attitude as much as possible. But how sad is that kind of despair to fight to the death even though he knows the ending?

"Set off!"

He reminded some precautions in a tone of joy and sorrow. The unknown major of the National Defense Forces waved his hand and then watched the people lined up in a loose column along the road with calm eyes. According to the number of people, a soldier was responsible for two to three civilians. This ratio sounded very high, but the reality scene made people see the hardships of the road ahead: the soldiers were more or less injured, and on average, each person had to take one or two more luggage. Considering the physical strength of the elderly and children, their burden would only increase but not decrease along the way.

The arm scratch was already fine. After most of the day of rest, his physical fitness was recovered a lot, so Lin En took the initiative to help the civilians carry two suitcases. Although they were not as heavy as the big box carried by the "Dark Night Warrior", one of them was as important as 20 kilograms, and probably all contained the most important and precious items that civilians thought were the most important and precious - gold, treasures, antiques, and rare calligraphy and paintings, and classic works. Thinking of the book, Lin En naturally remembered the bookstore diagonally opposite the church. The books in the room were a lot of spiritual wealth. Just looking at the situation in the town, most of the houses near the church were destroyed, and the small bookstore might not be spared. Suddenly, I remembered the old man in the bookstore. Lin En looked around in the loose team for a while, and finally saw the stylish white goatee at the end of the team.

The old man was still dressed in a simple outfit, but he didn't wear glasses. He carried a small suitcase in his right hand and held a three- or four-year-old child in his left hand. On the other side was an "old woman" wearing a large plaid-colored shawl. She pulled the hem of the shawl with her right hand, so that her head and face would cover her as much as possible in the shawl, and her left hand was carrying a canvas bag similar to a modern travel bag. At first glance, the three people were positioned like grandparents with their young grandchildren. Lynn turned around and grabbed a box under her armpit, freed her left hand to help the old man, and directly applied the sentence in "Daily German Sessions" to say:

"Hello, sir, I'm glad to see you! Can I help you?"

The old man had noticed Lynn long ago. When he heard him speak, he replied curiously and comfortably: "Oh, it's you, Danish! Thank you, I can do it myself!"

Judging from the posture and movements, the old man's physique is quite strong. In fact, two carriages containing luggage items are walking behind them. Although the carriage is very full, there should be a place to put a small suitcase down.

"Your son's son?" Lynn didn't know what to say in German "grandson", so he had to replace it with the simplest logical pronoun. He looked down at the child, his tender face looked red because of the cold, he wore a gray velvet hat, a slightly larger tweed jacket, and a pair of small and exquisite brown leather shoes. The whole match was a typical European boy.

"It's the granddaughter! The son's daughter!" The old man looked at the child kindly. She looked up at Lin En timidly, and suddenly a "Dad" popped out of her mouth.

The old man quickly explained to Lynn: "Uh, sorry! Her father is also a soldier, so..."

"Oh, it's okay!" Lin En smiled and reached out to touch her head, but the little guy shook his grandfather's hand and rushed forward, hugging Lin En's right leg tightly with both hands, shouting in the child's unique crying voice: "Dad, don't leave, don't leave..."

Lin En was stunned, and then felt a sense of sorrow. He bent down and gently stroked the back of the child's head with one hand. The thin hair under the velvet hat had a feeling of a hundred times softer than cashmere. The smell of the hat and clothing was light, not only different from the fishy smell of European adults, but also reminded Lin En, who had been in the smoke of war for several days, and his distant childhood was reminded of his distant childhood.

"I'm so sorry!" said the old man in a helpless tone: "Her father died in North Africa in 43 years, and she couldn't figure out what was going on. She missed her father very much, so..."

"It's okay! Uh, what's her name?" Lynn made this question with some difficulty.

"Cacili!"
Chapter completed!