In the early hours of 20 May, at the southernmost point of the Palpache Isthmus, east of the town of Primorsicki, in the semi-underground bunkers of the 1st Regiment and 2nd Company of the 1st Division of the Honorable Jews.

Captain Rabin sat on top of the grenade box with his back against the wall, his hands on his chest and his eyes closed, enjoying the last hours of sleep before the battle began.

It's just that the excitement of the upcoming battle makes it impossible for him to sleep peacefully, and he has to open his eyes and look at his watch every seven or eight minutes.

Sleeping intermittently until three o'clock sharp, Captain Rabin casually picked up the steel helmet from the grenade box next to him and buckled it to his head, got up and walked out of the bunker, and walked back and forth in the trenches, checking the readiness of every soldier in the company.

Back in the semi-underground bunker, Captain Rabin looked at his watch again, and at 3:18 a.m., two minutes before the battle began.

Next to the observation hole on the east side of the bunker, Captain Pol, an artillery observation post from the Navy, was lying behind scissor binoculars, spying on the movement of the Russian positions opposite.

Seeing Captain Rabin walking up to him, Captain Pol smiled and said, "The Russians on the other side are very quiet, and I apologize for the bad behavior of ruining their sleep." ”

Captain Rabin looked at his watch again.

"One minute left."

Captain Pol also looked at his watch and began the countdown with Captain Rabin.

"Ten, nine, eight····· Five······"

Captain Pol had barely counted to five when Captain Rabin heard a faint roar outside.

"Here comes Stuka······"

As soon as Captain Rabin finished speaking, the roar of artillery suddenly came from the position behind him, mixed with a strange hissing sound.

The rockets dragged black-gray smoke across the sky and landed on the enemy positions on the opposite side.

"Day ·····" Not to be outdone, mortars joined the ranks of shelling enemy positions.

"Ping Pong······ Ping Pong ······" The FLAK 36 88mm multi-purpose anti-aircraft guns also joined the fray, playing the role of cannons at this time, firing high-explosive shells out of the muzzle at an ultra-high rate of fire of 10-15 rounds per minute.

When shells of various calibers exploded, flames and smoke swept through the Soviet positions, the originally neat wooden stakes became crooked and even flew into the air, the barbed wire was torn off, and the bunkers that were originally protruding from the ground were bombarded into huge craters by shells.

The heavy shelling lasted a full fifteen minutes and stopped at 3:35 p.m.

Captain Pol retracted the smile on his face and stared at the watch in his hand to begin the second countdown.

Captain Rabin leaned behind the observation hole and picked up a telescope to check the movement of the Russian positions opposite.

The shelling stopped, but the attack from the air was still going on, and the Stuka dive bombers, the ME-110 fighter-bombers, kept diving, dropping bombs to the ground, each explosion leaving the ground dusty.

Dust and smoke blurred Captain Rabin's vision, but with the experience he had gained from a year's worth of fighting, he quickly spotted something strange on the battlefield opposite.

The Russians' positions seemed to be excessively quiet, as if something was missing.

After careful observation and reflection for nearly a minute, Captain Rabin suddenly found the answer to his question.

Anti-aircraft guns, yes, anti-aircraft guns, where are the anti-aircraft guns of the Russians?

In the face of German air raids, the Russian air force was relatively far away and understandably had not yet reached the battlefield.

However, there is no smoke in the sky that bursts out of the explosion of anti-aircraft shells, and there is no trajectory peculiar to the launch of tracer shells, which is very abnormal.

Amid Captain Rabin's suspicions, five minutes flew by, and Captain Pol's excited voice came.

"The five-minute countdown is over, and it's the Navy's turn to play."

Captain Pol excitedly leaned behind the scissor binoculars.

"Aha······ I saw our seaplanes, they came to give the naval guns a target. ”

The five-minute wait is a deliberately tactically designed routine.

Normally, artillery holes are built in front-line positions, and in the event of shelling, most soldiers, except for observation posts, will take refuge in the artillery holes until the enemy attacks at the end of the shelling.

The five-minute interval between shelling was intended to allow the enemy to mistakenly think that the shelling was over, and to deliberately leave time for the enemy to enter the position through the anti-artillery holes.

However, after a five-minute interval, it was not a tank and infantry attack that descended, but a second round of artillery shelling from the sea.

When Captain Pol excitedly watched the shelling of the Russian positions on the opposite side, Captain Rabin had already determined at this time that there was really no sound and light effect of anti-aircraft guns firing into the air on the opposite side.

Is there anyone on the other side? Or is there some conspiracy?

The shelling from the sea lasted a full twenty minutes, and Captain Rabin entered the trench with doubts in his heart.

No sooner had the shelling stopped, and a creaking and tooth-souring sound of metal grinding reached his ears, and with the shaking of the ground, a behemoth suddenly appeared above the trench, the wide tracks ran over the trench, and the earth crackled into the trench and fell onto Captain Rabin's steel helmet and camouflage uniform.

Elsewhere in the trenches, Minesweeper No. 4 took the lead, and a battalion of E-50A Tiger tanks left the assembly area and rushed over the trenches to the Russian positions.

The Drum Minesweeper attached to the front of the No. 4 Minesweeper rotates at high speed, driving the arm-thick metal chain on it to slap the ground to detonate the mine.

When the Tiger tank drove through the trench, Captain Rabin, who was crouching in the trench, stood up and stepped out of the trench, the whistle in his mouth making a crisp "beep" sound.

As the whistle sounded, hundreds of soldiers of the second company followed out of the trenches.

Captain Rabin led six company soldiers and rushed towards the Russian positions behind a Tiger tank numbered 413.

Although it was not the first time he had seen a Tiger tank, Captain Rabin was struck by the huge size of the Tiger tank, the sci-fi wedge-shaped turret, and the yellow-brown and green camouflage paint on the body.

There is no one on land and no tank of any kind is an opponent of this war behemoth.

After admiring the visually striking Tiger tank, Captain Rabin turned his gaze to look ahead.

The Tiger followed the path opened by the No. 4 Minesweeper Tank deep into the minefield, and the sappers mixed with the infantry group left the Tiger to clear the mines between the passages and open up more space for the Tiger to move.

No, there really didn't seem to be anyone on the other side, the tanks that were rushing to the front were almost driving into the anti-tank trenches, and the expected shells and crossfire did not even appear.

During the entire charge through the minefield, the Tiger tank in front of Captain Rabin did not fire a single shot and successfully rushed to the side of the anti-tank trench.

"Hurry... Hurry..." Captain Rabin shouted.

Two soldiers carried a wooden ladder over the tank and lowered it into the anti-tank trench.

The trench was about five meters deep, and the infantry could only enter it by means of ladders, which were ancient tools.

Captain Rabin went down the ladder to the anti-tank trench, looked left and right, and saw a collapsed trench at a distance of twenty or thirty meters on each side, and the soldiers of the company were entering the trench from the collapse.

It was the task of the sappers to use the landslides to build passages for tanks, and the infantrymen were tasked with providing cover for the sappers and suppressing the Russian firepower on the opposite side.

And where is the enemy's fire? No one has fired until now.

Captain Rabin could only lead his men into the east side of the anti-tank trench, following the communication trench left by the Russians into the trench, carefully groping all the way, but only saw an empty position.

Calling the correspondent next to him, Captain Rabin picked up a new weapon on the correspondent's back, the Siemens SCR-100 walkie-talkie.

This walkie-talkie is an imitation (mountain) of the famous Motorola SCR-300 knapsack walkie-talkie in the United States, and the communication distance can reach 17 kilometers.

With the reports of countless junior officers like Captain Rabin, the news spread all the way from the forward positions to the village of Salabas.

At the headquarters of the Twelfth Army, Admiral Heinrich stared at the map with a frown.

Two infantry corps and a heavily armored brigade participating in the offensive sent separate telegrams with similar contents, the Russians' positions were empty.

"The Russians ran, they were clever and knew how to evade our heavy firepower, but the Kerch Peninsula was long and narrow, they didn't have a lot of room to hide, and sooner or later we would be able to catch them," said the chief of staff, Colonel Busse. ”

Admiral Heinrich said: "At most fifty kilometers to the east will reach the Kerch Strait, and no matter how far they hide, they will not exceed fifty kilometers, and ordered the various units to revise their plans and launch an attack in the eastern depths." Let the Air Force send reconnaissance planes to find the Russians. ”