If it was someone else's agitation method, I would at most roll my eyes at him and ignore it. But this was from the mouth of the deputy commander of the front army, which was a completely different matter, knowing that there was a fire pit in front of me, I could only jump into it with my eyes closed.

I sighed secretly in my heart, and then said helplessly: "Comrade Deputy Commander of the Front Army, since you want to go to the front line to inspect, then I will accompany you." ”

"That's right, Comrade Oshanina." Apanashchenko's face showed a smug smile: "I knew that your courage was too good, otherwise you would not be the only female general in our army." ”

It seemed that he was about to walk outside with his leg raised, and I hurriedly stopped him: "Comrade General, please wait a minute, I will ask the guard regiment to send more soldiers to accompany us, after all, your safety comes first." With that, I reached for the phone on my desk.

"I don't need it, I don't need it." Apanashchenko waved his hand and said to me with a big grin, "I came out this time with a platoon of guards, so you don't need to bring any more guards." As he spoke, he raised his hand and looked at his watch, urging, "It's seven o'clock, and in two hours, it will be dark, and we won't be able to see anything clearly." ”

"Well," in this case, any delaying tactics I may use will be useless, so I can only tactfully say, "I will give my lieutenant an account of my work." ”

"Okay, I'll wait for you outside, and I'll come out as soon as the wait is handed over to your deputy." After saying that, Apanashchenko left in a hurry.

"General Danilov, Colonel Bezikov, all the work of the army group during my absence. It's up to you two to take care of it. After hearing the answers of the two. I turned my face to Kirillov again. With a sad face, he said: "Comrade Military Commissar, I will trouble you to report to Commander Vatutin when I accompany Comrade General to the front line for inspection." If anything happens to me, please take care of my son in the future, his whereabouts are known to Marshal Zhukov and Comrade Beria. ”

Hearing this tone from my tuogu, the expression on Kirillov's face suddenly changed. He said with a gloomy face: "Lida, you are just accompanying the deputy commander of the front army to the front line to inspect. There will certainly be dangers, but there is absolutely nothing serious enough to entrust us with the aftermath. Do you say yes? His last words were addressed to the rest of the commanders in the room.

"Yes." Danilov and the others replied with expressionless faces.

Kirillov came up to me, put an arm on my shoulder, and comforted me: "Don't worry, Lida, after all, the main forces of our army group are gathering in the Yakovlevo area, where the Germans have no decent resistance, you go and inspect it." There shouldn't be any danger. ”

I walked out of the headquarters and saw two trucks and a jeep parked at the edge of the forest. The truck was full of fighters. Apanashchenko was standing next to the jeep, and when he saw me coming out, he nodded, turned around and pulled the door and got into the car. I was about to walk towards the car when I suddenly heard a roar of cars behind me, and when I turned my head, it turned out to be my jeep driving out of the forest behind, and when the passenger door opened, Basmanov poked his head out of it and beckoned me: "Comrade commander, get in the car, I'll send you to the front." ”

The first truck and Apanashchenko's jeep drove away, but the last truck was still parked and unmoving. "Comrade driver, drive the car over." Basmanov patted the driver on the shoulder and ordered him: "The truck will not start until our car has caught up with the car in front." ”

As the convoy of four of us drove along the potholed dirt road, I sat in the back seat and was restless, fearing that from the crater on the side of the road, a German soldier with a bazooka would emerge and give us a moment; Or from a distant forest, a straggler of a German tank suddenly burst out and crushed our car with its tracks like a matchbox.

Basmanov, who was sitting in the co-pilot's seat, probably noticed my strangeness, quickly turned around from his seat, and said to me with a smile: "Comrade commander, don't worry, I just took a closer look, and the guards and fighters sitting in the trucks in front and behind are all well-trained, and maybe many of them should be from the Ministry of Internal Affairs." ”

"From the Ministry of Internal Affairs?!" After repeating his words, I asked in confusion: "What about the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will their combat effectiveness be stronger than those battle-hardened soldiers?" ”

My words were said with a hint of anger, so Basmanov was stunned for a moment, and then explained to me with a red face: "Comrade commander, I have heard from the soldiers who survived the border defense battle, but at the first moment of the war, when the ordinary border guards were still running around under enemy fire, the fully formed internal affairs troops, even heavy machine guns, were dragged out, and they were the first to enter the position and launch a counterattack against the invading German army. Therefore, it is most appropriate for the most vigilant internal affairs troops to serve as guards. ”

Seeing that I was slow to speak, for fear that I would not be pleased, Basmanov added: "Although their vigilance is relatively high, fighting regular warfare is not what they are good at, and in battle, the first position to be broken through by the Germans is the position held by the internal troops." ”

"I see." It was the first time I had heard of what Basmanov had said, so it was no wonder that the members of the guard company that Stalin personally sent to me back then were all from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, because of their high vigilance, and if they were there, my safety would have been guaranteed. After I said something blandly, I leaned back and began to close my eyes and recuperate.

I slept for hours, and when I opened my eyes in a daze, I immediately asked Basmanov, who was sitting in the front row, "Major, where have we been?" ”

Basmanov glanced out the window, then replied with a smile: "Report to Comrade Commander, now we are in Beryozovka, and in ten minutes we should be able to arrive." If you look out the window, there are German tanks and artillery destroyed by our troops, as well as enemy corpses everywhere. One can imagine how fierce the battle was today. ”

I looked at the tanks and armored vehicles that were still smoking on the side of the road. Broken cannons. and corpses all over the ground, both those of the enemy and ours. Not far away, there were our commanders and fighters, who were cleaning the battlefield, and they divided the corpses they had collected into two different areas according to the difference between friend and foe.

See this scene. I couldn't help but feel to myself, how good it would be if all the people who were killed were enemies, and all the technical equipment that was damaged were enemies. However, I myself understand that this idea of mine is absurd, and in such a large-scale battle, no matter how advanced our army's weapons and equipment are, how can there be immortals.

"Enemy planes, enemy planes! Air defense alert! I don't know who shouted outside, and then the soldiers who were cleaning the battlefield. I stopped what I was doing and started running around. Look around for a place where you can hide.

I looked down through the car window and saw a four-plane formation of German troops flying in the sky. Perhaps they were targets that had discovered the ground and began to lower the heights. I hurriedly shouted, "Stop!" ”

With my shout, the driver slammed on the brakes. With tremendous inertia, I slammed into the backrest in front of me. However, time was pressing, and I didn't care about my aching shoulder, and shouted, "Hide quickly." Then he pushed the car door open, jumped out, and threw himself headlong into a bomb crater on the side of the road.

As soon as he plunged into the crater, he heard several whistles that pierced the air, followed by several loud explosions. I was so scared that my hair exploded, and just listening to the sound, I knew that the point of the bullet was definitely not far from here. Immediately after that, bombs fell from the sky, and the earth shook like drums in the loud sound of landslides and earth cracking. As soon as the violent explosion stopped, the German plane's onboard machine guns rang out again, and I did not dare to move and cowered into the crater, allowing the blood and stumps to fall on my body.

I don't know how many enemy planes in the air there are, the dense bombs fell one after another, and they exploded violently on the ground, the earth trembled violently, my heart jumped to my throat with the whistling sound, my curled body beat slightly with the explosion, and my chest was shocked to an indescribable annoyance and nausea, which made me a little breathless, like being pressed on the butt of a bear and suffocating it. The thick blood choked me and coughed violently, though I wanted to jump out of my hiding place and quickly escape from this place of death. But I also knew that running around under the bombing of enemy planes was tantamount to looking for death, so in the end, reason prevailed over impulse, and I continued to stay in the crater without moving.

When the enemy planes stopped bombing and strafing and flew away over us, I remained in the crater for a long time, until someone grabbed me by the shoulder and tried to pull me over, and then I breathed a sigh of relief, as if talking to myself and telling the other person, "I'm still alive." ”

I listened to myself speaking in a very small voice, probably from the explosion just now, and I was a little deaf from the shock. I sat up and saw clearly that the person crouching in front of me was Basmanov, and he looked at me with surprise and said: "Comrade commander, it's great that you are still alive." ”

His ears beside me were also shocked and deaf, and he hurriedly raised his voice and asked, "Where is Comrade Deputy Commander of the Front Army?" ”

Basmanov opened his mouth, but said nothing, just helped me up and pointed not far away. I looked in the direction of his finger and saw a group of soldiers surrounding a burning truck, who didn't seem to be worried about the explosion of the truck next to them.

When I saw that those men were the guards who were following Apanashchenko, I couldn't help but chuckle in my heart, and wondered if he had been wounded in the air raid. Hurriedly ran over and, with the help of Basmanov, squeezed through the crowd.

What I feared really became a reality. A second lieutenant crouched in the middle of the crowd, and Apanashchenko lay in the crook of his arm, his body twitching slightly, and there was a large laceration in his neck, and blood gushed out. Although the lieutenant tried his best to hold the wound, a large amount of blood still flowed from his fingers, wetting Apanashchenko's clothes.

"Comrade General, how are you?" I shook Apanashchenko's hand and asked with concern.

The pale Apanashchenko turned his gaze to me, his bloodclot-filled lips twitching slightly, trying to say something to me, but he didn't make a sound.

I turned my head to look at the soldiers on the left and right, and asked loudly, "Are there any military doctors or hygienists nearby?" If so, let him come and treat the deputy commander. ”

"Where are the military doctors, Comrade General." The second lieutenant holding Apanashchenko said with a crying voice: "I have already sent someone to look for it, but there is no military doctor nearby, not even a hygienist. We didn't even have bandages, so there was no way to stop the bleeding for Comrade Deputy Commander. ”

When I heard this, I wanted to stand up and kick the other party, but when I saw Apanashchenko in danger, I forcibly controlled my situation, turned my head and asked the soldiers around me: "Which of you has a clean shirt, hurry up and tear it into strips to bandage the comrade general, and stop his bleeding first." ”

"I've got it here, Comrade General." As he spoke, a soldier next to him took off his backpack, took out a clean white shirt from inside, and began to spread it vigorously. And Basmanov leaned close to my ear and said: "Comrade commander, there is still a truck that is in good condition, we should carry Comrade General into the car and immediately send it back to the rear." Know that every minute counts now. ”

I nodded, motioned to Basmanov to do what he wanted, and then squeezed Apanashchenko's increasingly cold hand and comforted him: "Don't worry, Comrade General, you will be fine, we will send you back to the rear now, you will be fine, you will be fine soon." ”

Apanashchenko smiled at me and struggled to open his mouth to say something, but his body suddenly twitched, he coughed silently a few times, and a long, swarthy stream of blood burst out of the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin.

"Comrade General, he's dead!" The second lieutenant whispered to me.

When I heard his words, I couldn't help but froze. Unexpectedly, half an hour ago, a person who was still alive and well left this world quietly.

Basmanov, who went to drive the truck, did not know that Apanashchenko had died, and after squeezing into the crowd, he happily said to me: "Comrade commander, I have driven the truck over, I can carry Comrade General into the car...... Before he finished his words, he found that Apanashchenko had no life, and the rest of his words were stuck in his throat.

I held Apanashchenko's cold hand and crouched for a long time next to his remains. Only then did he slowly stand up, took off the military hat on his head and paid silent tribute to him, and the surrounding soldiers also stood up neatly, took off their military hats one after another, and paid silent tribute to the sacrificial general. (To be continued.) )