We Lifted from Maub with a plane of 14 paras to capture the NW cps in charleroi. Kobra88 was the pilot and he guided us into town like an expert. A great jump call got us directly over the CPs and they were quickly overwhelmed. Myself and a squad of about four headed south, to the Brewery to capture and hold it at all cost. We knew the germans would be angry about us putting a stop to all of their drinking. I had decided to bring a rifle after reading "Hathcocks infantry guide". The other three guys, nelson and gunny had sniper rifles and zehive had a LMG. Nelson and gunny were killed by a PZ that came to investigate, but not before they had both picked a few advancing infantry off. Zehive decided to press the S ab with a bunch of others that were trying to set up a ZOC, this time was faily quiet for me, 1 EI here and there were easy pickings for my 2nd and 3rd story window vantage point. As we lost the southern ZOC, more and more EI began advancing to my position with each wave repelled by my trusty .303 Enfield. As more inf decided to use the buildings to advance on me, I had a squaddie (usnseab) bomb the buildings around the brewery so I had a clear field of vision out to abour 300m E and SE with the river on my northern flank. One after one they kept coming and I kept changing windows and building stories so they would have to scan every window. Suddenly the town was all axis about a hour into the attack! I was the only flag still allied and I knew it was going to get real hairy. I reloaded one of my remaining 10 round magazines and prepared for the onslaught. As I was engaging targets from 50m out to 400m to the E and SE a EI snuck into the flag building from either the river or across the brige from the North. He captured it as I lost sight of another infantry to my southeast behind a corner. I decided since the city was totally german owned,I was almost out of ammo, and I was the SOLE remaining paratrooper left out of my original stick of 14, to egress to the west. As I came out of my building (still in the walls of the factory) an enemy soldier turns the corner and I dropped to my stomach squeezing off a round and seeing it impact his chest as he slumped to the ground. Thinking to myself how screwed I was, I ran twards the flag building and the exit of the walls. As I am "cutting the pie" I see a german infantry soldier standing smack in the middle and he turned to face me right as I saw him, but he had his rifle down and I diddnt...He never got a shot off and would be my 19th confirmed kill. I had to hide in a berm just West of the brewery until a panzer III of some sort left the near by hillside to my Southwest. I ran to the river and used the river edge as cover and concealment until I came to the docks and jogged around them. I then had to cross the river 2km from the W side of the brewery and run another 1/2km to a quickly arranged extraction point and a waiting truck driven again by my bomber buddy usnseab. We got about 2/3 of the way to merbes and the truck driver CTD'd and I was a little wounded from jumping off the truck before It crashed into some trees. Respawning he returned to pick me up and eventually RTB in merbes 188 minutes after my original spawn in for the 1st para drop on charleroi.
Great fight and in the end ,Thank you hathcock, for your infantry guide. Directly after reading it, applying the new knowlege, this bomber pilot fell in love with the rifle. Anyone looking to improve their skills, hathcocks guide won't steer you wrong...
