Red Moscow

  Chapter 334 Nameless Town (Part 1)

  When the engineer company blew up the bridge over the Aksay River, Andre and the commanders and fighters of the third battalion heard the huge explosion and the black smoke that had already risen. Seeing that their retreat was blocked by the front, some people will inevitably become panicked, especially the soldiers of the Ninth Company who have been prisoners of war. Some even cried: "The bridge was blown up, we are finished, wait for the Germans to come up , and we shall be taken captive."

   Soldiers who cry will inevitably have a bad influence on other fighters around them. At this moment, Lieutenant Guchakov, the commander of the Ninth Company, came over and slapped the soldier several times without any explanation. After the other party calmed down, Guchakov said angrily, "Don't say that the Germans haven't come yet, even if they come, what is there to be afraid of? Can't the weapons in our hands kill them?"

   "But...but...comrade company commander." The soldier who had been slapped stammered, "Once the two bridges on the river blow up, our way of retreat will be cut off."

"Although the bridge was blown up, we can still move from other places." Guchakov glanced at the soldiers present one by one, and then said: "Everyone pack up your things immediately, we are going to move .”

   In fact, there is nothing to pack. In addition to weapons, soldiers always carry a rucksack. Ammunition, food and some personal items are all placed in it. Say you want to go, pack your things and leave. In less than five minutes, the 200 soldiers of the Ninth Company formed a neat square formation, waiting for the battalion commander, Captain Andrei, to give the order to set off.

   Not long after, the soldiers of the Seventh Company and the Eighth Company lined up in four columns and passed the position of the Ninth Company at a rapid march. Seeing Second Lieutenant Yegor, the commander of the eighth company, passing in front of him, Guchakov specifically asked, "Second Lieutenant Yegor, have you seen the battalion commander?"

   "The battalion commander and the troops directly under him are still behind." After Yegor finished speaking, he waved at Guchakov and said, "Lieutenant Guchakov, let's go first and wait for you in front."

   After a while, Guchakov saw Captain Andrei, leading a group of people walking towards this side. He hurried up to greet him, and asked respectfully, "Comrade Battalion Commander, can our Ninth Company set off?"

Andrei walked up to Guchakov, put his hands on his shoulders, and walked forward with his arms, while saying: "Lieutenant Guchakov, judging from the current situation, the place where our battalion is located The location may have been discovered by the Germans. Now I need your company to stay and cover the retreat of the whole battalion. How is it, is there a problem?"

   Guchakov didn't expect Andrei to let his company stay behind. After hesitating for a moment, he shook his head and said, "No problem, I firmly obey your orders."

"Although your company is responsible for the post-break mission, there may not necessarily be a battle." Andrei said to Guchakov: "Go two or three kilometers further downstream, and there is a small town where your company will act as a blocking force." The task. After the main force of the battalion has crossed the river, I will send the messenger to inform you to retreat."

Guchakov came to the town with his Ninth Company. Due to the rush of time, he had no time to build fortifications outside the town, so he let the soldiers disperse in various rooms, and only waited for the Germans to come and beat them. One was caught off guard.

   Of course, not all houses have his subordinates. For houses where soldiers were hiding, two bricks or an equal number of stones were placed at the door; for houses without bricks or stones, booby traps were placed on the door. As long as the Germans who broke in rashly opened the door, they could be blown to pieces.

Time passed by, but the German army did not move at all. Guchakov, who was staying in the town movie theater, was so anxious that he called the observation post in the east of the town almost every few minutes and asked, "How is it? Is there any movement?"

   "No, Comrade Company Commander." The observation post heard Guchakov's voice and immediately replied: "So far, I have not found any Germans."

   Putting down the phone, Guchakov called a soldier and ordered: "Go to the observation post in the west of the city and ask if the battalion commander has sent someone to notify us to retreat."

Although there is an observation post in the east of the town and an observation post in the west of the town, since there are only two telephones in the company, Guchakov ordered one of them to be installed in the observation post in the east of the town when the communications soldiers were laying the lines. In the company headquarters, I can keep abreast of the movements of the German army at any time. As for the observation post in Zhenxi, it was obviously not as important as Zhendong, so when he wanted to inquire about any news, Guchakov always asked the soldiers to go there.

   Just waiting and waiting, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the roar of tank engines came from the east of the town. This time, without waiting for Guchakov to call, the observation station took the initiative to call: "Comrade company commander, we heard the roar of tank engines coming from a distance. Judging from the sound, there are at least five tanks. "

   "Understood." Guchakov put down the phone, immediately called several soldiers, and told them: "Go out and sound the alarm immediately, so that the soldiers are ready to fight."

   "Understood." Several soldiers agreed, and trotted away from the cinema, and soon whistles came from the street one after another. According to the prior agreement, if the soldiers hear one long and two short whistles, it means that the German army is about to attack, and everyone must be ready to fight.

  After seven or eight minutes, the observation station called Guchakov again: "Comrade company commander, the enemy tanks have appeared in our field of vision. There are six of them in total, followed by two hundred soldiers."

According to Guchakov's idea, the streets in the town are narrow. After the German tanks enter the town, they will find a way to use cluster grenades to blow up the two tanks that opened the way and the broken tanks, and the remaining tanks will be blocked. On the street, let your troops wipe them out. As for the infantry, once they lost the cover of the tanks and did not have the advantage of the terrain, they would at least be severely injured, if not wiped out, in the face of fire from the buildings on both sides.

  Unexpectedly, the German tanks stopped four or five hundred meters away from the town and fired at the buildings in the town. After the two rounds of shelling ended, several buildings on the edge of the town collapsed. Except for a few soldiers who reacted quickly and escaped in time, the rest were buried in the rubble.

  The reason why the German tankers fired was nothing more than seeing that the town was too quiet, so they fired a few shots casually, throwing stones to ask for directions, and unexpectedly blasted out the Soviet soldiers hiding in the building. The German commander saw that the Soviet army was hiding in the town, but there was no firepower to fight back. He thought that the town was just a group of stragglers, so he gave the troops an order to attack.

  The tanks opened the way ahead, followed by the infantry rushing towards the town. When they were more than a hundred meters away from the town, the survivors hiding in the ruins shot at them. The bullets fired by the soldiers jingled on the armor plate of the tank, which did not slow down the tank's movement speed at all.

For the Soviet soldiers hiding in the ruins, the German tankers fired at them with machine guns, and the infantry behind the tanks would stick out half of their bodies from time to time, pull the trigger towards the Soviet hiding place, and shoot the Soviet soldiers who had come forward. Army soldiers fell. ...In this way, the German army successfully rushed to the edge of the town with weak to almost negligible casualties.

  The German commander saw that the resistance of the Soviet army had stopped, and based on his firm judgment, he felt that this was just a straggler. He ordered the tanks to stop outside the town while the infantry scattered into the town to search. The German soldiers divided into several groups, entered the town cautiously, and walked forward along the street.

  A German soldier walked up to a building and saw that the door was closed. He was eager to know whether there were enemies inside, so he grabbed the handle and twisted it, and then pushed hard inside. Hearing a loud bang, the soldier and several nearby soldiers were immediately enveloped in a cloud of smoke. When the gunpowder smoke dissipated, I saw that the reckless soldier had been blown to pieces, while several other soldiers fell to the ground and howled.

   "Be careful, there are booby traps in the building." Not far away, a German corporal said loudly: "Everyone, don't open the door casually."

  But in order to eliminate the Soviet army in the town, even if they knew it was dangerous, these buildings still had to be entered. The German sergeant came up with a good idea. He walked to the side of a building, first smashed the window glass with the **** of his gun, threw the stringed grenade in, and squatted on the ground with his hands folded.

   Soon, there were two consecutive explosions in the room, and even the closed door was blown down. It was a booby trap hidden behind the door, detonated by a grenade. Seeing that this method worked, the German corporal couldn't help being overjoyed. He hurriedly urged everyone around: "Have you seen it? The Russians buried booby traps behind the door, and as long as you throw a grenade in, the mines inside can be detonated."

  The surrounding soldiers, hearing what the corporal said, followed suit one after another. After smashing the window glass, they threw the smoking grenade into it. After some grenades were thrown in, they detonated the booby traps planted by the Soviet army first, blowing away the closed door. But what was unexpected was that two grenades thrown into the house were actually thrown out from the inside and landed in the middle of the German army and exploded, killing and wounding several people on the spot.

Before the Germans could recover, the streets that hadn’t moved at all seemed to come back to life. Countless muzzles protruded from the windows on both sides of the street, shooting at the German soldiers standing on the street, killing them in batches. down.

   "Retreat, retreat quickly!" Seeing that the soldiers were suddenly attacked in the town, the German commander immediately understood that his men were in an ambush, and quickly ordered them to withdraw from the town.

  (end of this chapter)