With a long hissing sound, a large-caliber shell fell, followed by a loud bang, and dust began to fill the air.

The Germans had completely encircled Moscow, which had become an island suspended in the German sea.

The explosion passed, and black smoke billowed up into the sky, and in the trembling of the earth, the outer wall of a building began to collapse, revealing the structure inside.

Not all buildings will be reduced to rubble after an explosion, and many will stand stubbornly and stubbornly refuse to fall.

If these homes are gone, they will become bunkers in the ruins, and they will become the commanding heights and observation points that the Soviet and German armies have repeatedly fought for.

A Soviet soldier swept away the dust in front of him with his hand, then squinted his eyes to see through the gap in front of him.

Every street and every building, the Soviet and German troops had to fight over it repeatedly. So there's not an inch of land here, it's safe.

Of course, except for the occupied zone behind the German army, which was indeed relatively safe, the German army was steadily fighting, and few Soviet troops could infiltrate behind the German lines to cause trouble.

The cracks in the walls were made by shells, and with such cracks, he could observe the Germans without risking his head out.

After all, risking your head to poke your head out to observe is easy for German snipers to see and take out.

If you look at it from the outside, there is just a half-collapsed building with mottled bullet holes in the walls, but inside there is a platoon of Soviet troops stationed.

It was precisely because of the garrison that the Germans did not control this good commanding height.

Similarly, it is precisely because this place is not bad that the two sides have had two fierce battles around this commanding height.

The first time the Germans successfully occupied the area, and then the Soviets launched a frantic counterattack, where the Germans lost at least 20 people and the Soviets lost at least 30 people.

And here, it's just a ruined building that has collapsed more than a half. It's not a valuable place, or even a good place.

"It's time for today's shelling to end, right?" A Soviet veteran walked over and handed a teacup to the soldier who was on guard.

It is still warm boiling water, and it is not easy to enjoy this treatment.

Moscow has been cut off from water on a large scale, and civilians are risking their use of water to go to designated water supply sites. The waterworks here are in ruins, and the reservoir is already in enemy-occupied territory.

Without a water supply, drinking water would have to be boiled before it could be drunk – and if it wasn't clean, it would cause diseases such as malaria, which would be more than worth the cost.

Therefore, in order to ensure their own health, the Soviet army would often boil boiling water before drinking it - but this habit wasted a lot of fuel, which made the higher command organization very dissatisfied.

Despite this, despite the dissatisfaction of their superiors, the Soviet soldiers still went their own way, which was what little comfort they had left in the brutal war.

"Thank you." Taking the teacup, the sentry soldier smiled and thanked him, then took a sip with the teacup in both hands, and a warm current entered his chest.

"You're the fastest soldier I've ever seen, and you're already an old fellow here." The veteran found an ammo box and sat down, then spoke.

The survival rate of the Soviet army's reinforcements on the front line is simply pitiful, and any soldier who can survive a few battles will be recognized by everyone.

Everyone knows that it is not easy for recruits to survive, so they are willing to take extra care of it.

It is precisely in this way that the Soviet army was able to accumulate more and more skilled soldiers under the premise of continuous losses in replenishment.

"To be honest, I wouldn't want to be here for a minute if I had the choice." The soldier drank the water from his teacup and said with a wry smile.

The veteran nodded in agreement and said, "Yes, I was a florist, at least 3 months ago, I was a florist...... Who would have thought that now I am a soldier? ”

The people who fight here rarely communicate with each other, because you can't tell when the friends you make will turn into a corpse.

One second they are telling jokes to each other, and the next second they can only hold each other's arms to find each other's heads, which is not a comfortable process.

Therefore, people here choose to be silent, not to talk to other people, and not to be painful and sad when their comrades die in battle.

"Are you a gardener? I really didn't see that you really were a good commander, and if it weren't for you, I would have died yesterday. The soldier who was on guard was surprised and said in disbelief.

In yesterday's battle, he survived as he obeyed his orders, but two self-proclaimed recruits were beaten into a sieve by bullets. So he admired the platoon commander in front of him and thought he was a good commander.

"Every day you live here, the more you know how to survive." The veteran was the commander of these Soviet soldiers, the platoon commander of this infantry platoon. After he finished speaking, he asked, "What about you?" What do you do? ”

"I'm a prisoner." The sentry seemed to be reminiscing about the past, and said to the veteran: "Labor Camp No. 49 in Siberia, that is the worst place I have ever been. ”

"Reformator's? I heard that there are some counter-revolutionaries there, what are you guilty of? A conspiracy to subvert the country? The veteran seemed to be interested, and continued to ask.

Stalin ordered that some prisoners be commuted from serving their sentences, and then armed prisoners were sent to the front for attrition.

There were more than 200,000 such soldiers in the Soviet army, but now there are not many people left in the encirclement of Moscow.

Soviet inmates from all over the world were petty thieves and political prisoners in labor camps.

The Soviet Union had too many political prisoners in the era of Stalin's rule, who were serving sentences in Siberia and other regions all the time, and they were willing to do anything for the sake of freedom.

"You may not believe it, but my mother's cousin was married to a white bandit commander, and I didn't even know there was such a thing when they arrested me......" The young man smiled bitterly, and then said, "My father was a Red Army commander who committed suicide because of this incident. ”

It is impossible to say how many people were affected by the purge. However, in order to deal with some officers in sensitive parts, it is very common to set up clever names.

The veteran didn't know if what the young man in front of him said was true, at least he felt that what the other party said might happen. He really didn't know which was the real hell, the distant and cold labor camp or the damn battlefield in front of him.