Chapter 704: The Distant Bridge
Some ordinary Chechens began to flee for their lives, but Russian troops were on all sides, and the only way out was the Kaman Bridge, which became the focus of contention between Chechens and Russians.
Two hours after Dudayev's death, a fierce battle broke out over the bridge, because the Chechens, who wanted to withdraw from the city, launched one desperate and more death-filled charge on the wide bridge.
After Dudayev was killed, the first to prepare to retreat were the mercenaries gathered by the Chechens from all over the world at great expense, and they fought only for money.
Now that the financier is dead, they have no reason to stay in Grozny, and after confirming that Dudayev is really dead, they began to retreat without hesitation, not even the slightest hesitation.
However, the three directions of the city are surrounded by Russians, and their only way out is the Kaman Bridge in the north.
The Russians, who occupied the bridge, brought two high-powered searchlights from the rear and erected them on the bridge, constantly shining on the bridge deck and the river, looking for anyone who might sneak across the river.
Yu Yang told Williams how to cross the bridge with the signal flag, so there were also Russian soldiers guarding the positions on both sides of the bridge, and this group of Russian soldiers had night vision devices and infrared equipment in their hands, so they could clearly see whether anyone was going to take Yu Yang's route and sneak across the river.
As time went by, the sun finally woke up from the long night, and the number of mercenaries gathered in Qiaonan became more and more, from a dozen people at the beginning, to more than 300 now, as well as the Chechen people who continued to gather, as well as some Afghan volunteers and militants, and finally the number came to more than 500 people, and this number will become more and more with the passage of time.
When they saw the Russian soldiers waiting on the other side of the bridge, they were filled with despair, and some of them began to look for boats to go down the river.
But they scanned for a week, but they did not find any means to cross the river, originally Dudayev had destroyed all the boats on the river in order to prevent the Russians from crossing the river and blocking their retreat, and now there was not even a single log on the river.
In the end, some Chechen militants who couldn't help but were ready to attack, and when they retreated, they still drove a few cars, wanting to use the vehicles to forcibly storm the bridge!
Moreover, this group of Chechen soldiers did not charge directly towards the bridge without brains, but captured some Chechen civilians, planted bombs on them, and let them drive to the bridge, and they drove far behind.
These ordinary Chechen people watched in horror as their soldiers strapped bombs to their bodies and made them drive to the bridge, screaming in despair, but there was nothing they could do but drive and shout loudly.
The four sedans drove the road, and the vehicles followed by the Chechen militants carefully hid behind the cars, and several Chechen soldiers held detonators in their hands, and as soon as the vehicles reached the sides of the front of the car, they immediately pressed the explosion button and blew a gap.
In the face of life and death, these Chechens hardly care whether these people are their own or not, as long as they can survive, they may even tie up their parents in cars and let them die.
The soldiers guarding the bridgehead saw that there were vehicles rushing the bridge, and immediately opened fire without hesitation, and the four vehicles were four targets, and the machine guns set up at a high place continued to strafe at the four vehicles, and the drivers were directly killed, and these vehicles stopped directly in the middle of the road.
The first group of people who rushed the bridge died, but the militants behind them parked their vehicles behind the vehicles and began to shoot at the Russian soldiers, but unfortunately, they had too few bunkers, only a few vehicles, and the militants hiding behind the cars did not last long, and they were all killed.
But the charging action of this group of soldiers opened the mode of death charge, and more and more Chechens appeared at the bridgehead, making the bridgehead crowded, and the Russian soldiers on the other part of the bridgehead used mortars and some simple small-caliber artillery fire to bombard the Chechens south of the bridge, and the bridgehead was killed and wounded.
Charge, non-stop charge, people with cars drove the vehicle, stepped on the accelerator to the end, and wanted to rush directly over regardless of it, but on the other side of the bridge, there were more and more Russian soldiers, and within a few hours, dozens of armed helicopters were transporting back and forth, and the number of Russian soldiers at the bridgehead had come to more than 300 people, more than 300 people had all kinds of weapons, and armed the back of the Kaman Bridge into a hedgehog, and there was no difference between wanting to rush the bridge and sending him to death.
In one day, the Chechens paid more than 300 lives and still could not cross the Kaman bridge, hiding in the position south of the bridge shivering, when it was dark, some Chechen militants began to want to secretly cross the river, or cross the bridge, but still all were neutralized by Russian soldiers.
When the sun shone on the Kaman Bridge the next morning, there were more than a hundred more corpses on the bridge, and the Russians fought all night and paid a certain number of casualties, and by this time, the bombardment had already begun.
Large-caliber shells flew everywhere, some of them landed near the south of the bridge, so that the thousands of people gathered here began to panic, and the militants kidnapped some of the people and wanted to use the flesh of the people as cover and rush over themselves, but the Russians told them with bullets that the Chechen people had no value in their eyes, and if there was only one bullet.
After a shell landed in the center of the south of the bridge, killing dozens of people, the panicked crowd finally panicked, and some Chechen civilians wanted to leave the dangerous city early, looking for some simple logs, then ran under the bridge, and then walked to the middle of the river to break through the thin ice and want to drift down.
A group of people went into the water, giving the Russian soldiers a chance to shoot targets, but because of the large number of people, the river collapsed near the middle first, and more than a dozen people fell into the icy water, and then the bullets of the Russian soldiers broke the thick ice on the edge, and more and more people fell into the water.
The temperature of more than ten degrees below zero, after people fell into the water, they could not climb ashore in time, all were frozen to death in the river, and all morning, dozens of corpses on the west side of the bridge were frozen on the river, but there were still people who wanted to try to cross the river, but they still did not succeed.
Over the course of three days, the Chechens left thousands of corpses at the head of the bridge and the river on either side, and the corpses on the Kaman bridge made impassable for vehicles, while the corpses under the bridge merged with the river, making it impossible to distinguish between the river and the corpse pit.
The entire area around the Carmen Bridge became a purgatory under Dante's Divine Comedy.