Shuklin felt that the second object that hit him was this half of his body, and those wide eyes made his mind blank for a moment!

The man was dressed in the same clothes as himself, and Shuklin didn't know what he was thinking, and his right hand reached for the pistol in the holster at his waist—for he felt that the owner of those eyes was still alive, and that his eyes were staring at him!

But the damn pistol didn't seem to be able to pull it out, and that simple action of an unknown number of times was harder than anything else at this moment, and Shuklin felt as if it had been a century long! In fact, this moment was not long at all, that is, just two or three seconds, and when the lieutenant's right hand finally held the handle of the T33 tightly, he still did not pull out the gun in the end. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

Although those eyes were still staring at him, they lost their luster in just a moment, and there was no need for the lieutenant to help him!

At this moment, Shu Kelin was about to crush his teeth, grabbed a handful of mud on the ground with his left hand, and slammed his head into the ground a few times! Ignoring the dirt and rubble flying everywhere, he shifted back, put his hand on the man's face, and helped him close his eyes.

The short burst of heavy artillery covering shelling seemed so long to everyone that at last, the artillery fire thinned out and began to stretch back.

Shuklin was the first to jump up and shouted: "Are there any still alive?!" Get up for me and push the cannon forward! ”

kept shouting a few times, and the artilleryman could move plus himself and 5 of them, "Granov, Valekin, Glebov, Ryzov, push the cannon further, Lao Tzu wants to give these fascists a taste of cannons fighting bayonets!" ”

The lieutenant was roaring, and he didn't even bother to pick up the hat that had been dropped, and several people pushed the cannon forward!

This position is scrapped, and even the angry Shuklin will not fire here - there are also duds that have been sunken in the ground, and the vibration of the cannon will kill the rest of the people!

The infantrymen were all looking up, and the commander was nodding. With just this artillery fire, the forward assault detachment lost almost a company!

Seeing that the artillerymen were pushing the artillery to their side, the German machine-gun bullets kept hitting the ZIS-3 baffle, sparks splashed everywhere, and the infantry immediately organized fire to suppress it.

The shell went into the chamber, and there was no time to dig the hoe pit, Granov lowered himself back and jerked the fire rope!

The flanks of the church were hit with a loud bang, and a single shell cut off two fire points hidden behind the sandbags! Watching a rocket fired from the opposite side roar down more than ten meters away, blasting two soldiers into the sky, but the others didn't have time to hide at all, and kept suppressing the shooting with the weapons in their hands!

The shadow of an airplane passed by Shuklin, but no one noticed that there was a plane flying overhead, and Shuklin himself acted as a loader.

Suddenly, there was a dense explosion in the woods more than a hundred meters ahead, like hundreds of grenades being thrown at the German positions at the same time! This explosion suppressed the German fire, and the opportunity of the assault battalion came, and the infantry continued to rush forward, and within a minute they had already rushed into the trench in front of the church.

Either he was killed by a bullet the moment he appeared in front of the trench, or he swept the remaining German troops in the trench on the trench!

When the first wave of Red Army commandos leaped into the trenches, there was not a single German soldier alive except for the corpses.

Just now, a Pi-2 high-speed bomber came to help in the battle, dropped two cluster bombs, and hundreds of small bombs swept a large area of German positions!

However, cluster bombs can completely tear people on the surface, and they are not very lethal to people in the trenches and bunkers, and the German firepower is only weaker, and the bullets fired at each other "sizzle" against the snowy ground!

This short ten minutes of attack and defense would have terrified the armies of any Western country, but the troops on both sides held on, and the two stubborn troops fought bravely regardless of their own casualties!

At this time, a situation appeared on the left flank that caught the commander of the Red Army almost a little by surprise, and a group of German troops rushed over in a sector under the cover of several armored vehicles!

Shuklin: It was too late for them to turn the muzzle - they all pushed the cannon to the side of the infantry, on the attack arrow!

Relying on cannons and trees, Granov, Vallekin, Glebov, and Rezerov quickly took off the assault rifles on their backs and fired fiercely at the Germans rushing up from the left flank!

How good this would be if the cannon would be to the south, but it was too late! Fortunately, all towed artillery artillery of the Red Army carried their guns on their backs during combat and could be used as infantry at any time!

Shuklin was not stupid enough to shoot at the enemy more than 100 meters away with his pistol, jumped out of the trench, picked up an assault rifle next to a German corpse and fired back, and ran out of bullets in a long shot.

A Red Army sergeant on the side threw him two magazines, loaded them and worked!

The mortars in the rear had already detected the danger of being flanked from both sides, and turned their artillery fire to pour shells on the Germans on the left flank, and the whistling shells temporarily stopped the rapid advance of the German troops.

Granov and Rezeoff emptied three magazines, threw their guns to the ground, jumped behind the cannon in two steps, and shouted with the gun carriage and moved the cannon 90 degrees!

Glebov was half-lying on the ground, and in three seconds he only found a high-explosive shell, and it didn't matter so much, it was stuffed into the chamber with a "clang".

"High-explosive shells, reloaded! There are no armor-piercing shells! ”

Three half-track armored vehicles, two of which were already lying on their stomachs, one of them was hit by a rocket, and the other was directly hit by an 82-mm mortar shell, leaving only a pile of stumps and minced flesh in the car! But the MG34 machine gun with an armored baffle on the third armored car has caused a lot of damage to this side, so we need to kill him as soon as possible!

The distance is 120 meters! Granov immediately adjusted the angle of fire, removed the starting lever, and did everything for the sake of speed!

In the huge roar, it hit instantly, and the violent explosion tore through the thin armor of the armored car, and even killed several German soldiers on both sides!

However, Granov also paid the price for speed, and the whole person was knocked out by the cannon shield that was violently pushed backwards, and he lay on the ground for half a day before he got up!

His face was ugly, and his brows were locked together.

"Look at what, reload!" He shouted at Glebov, who was glaring at him.

After reloading and firing directly, the shell flew into the middle of the German army 150 meters away - this time Granov used a fire rope, he felt that he had broken at least two ribs just now, and it would be glorious to use the firing rod again!

The counter-assault of the Germans was contained, and at least one platoon of the Red Army rushed up from the rear of the left flank and beat the Germans back!

Several of the artillerymen turned their guns again, and the infantry captain in the trench was bleeding from his head, but still alive, and he shouted at Granov: "Blow up the wall!" Wall! “

After countless bullets and dozens of mortar shells and cannon high-explosive shells, there were few firepower points on the church building, but if you want to capture the church, there is a wall of incredible thickness in front of the assault force - there are rockets on it that leave a hole, but people can't get through it at all, they have to rely on artillery!

The large iron gate on the wall was still there, and the Germans had put a lot of sandbags behind it, and they couldn't rush in—and they couldn't rush into—they couldn't rush there, but it was facing the gate of the church itself, behind which the Germans had also purchased a machine-gun emplacement.

With two loud bangs, a large gap was blown open in the pale yellow wall. Seeing that the passage had been opened, the infantry rushed out of the wall in one go, dividing into two columns and hiding on both flanks of the gap.

The first soldier who tried to rush into the gap was immediately knocked down, and the dense bullets smashed the gravel everywhere! However, the machine gun was blown up a few seconds later with a loud explosion of shells, and Granov once again cleared the way for his comrades in the infantry with shells.

Dozens of soldiers rushed into the interior of the church wall, and a group of soldiers, after killing three German machine gunners at the door, blew open the large wooden door of the church with a cluster grenade and rushed in!

A fierce battle unfolded in the hall, and a few of the Germans guarding the church were still alive and descended from the top to the lobby, and the bullets fired from the fully automatic weapons in the hands of both sides smashed the hardwood benches!

In just a dozen seconds, the commandos cleared the hall, not bothering to look at the golden and luxurious frescoes and sculptures in the church hall, and the commandos divided into two teams and rushed to the top of the tower through the side door.

A minute later, the entire church was in the hands of the commandos.

The task of the assault battalion was to take St. Peter-Paul's Cathedral and the area west of it, and then provide artillery instructions for shelling.

Outside the church, Shuklin was shouting to Valekin: "You go to the top of the church and indicate the target!" As he spoke, he took off his glasses and handed them to him.

"Yes, Lieutenant!"

The sergeant ran into the church with his assault rifle on his back, he was a veteran, he never made a mistake in indicating the direction with gestures, and he could estimate the relatively accurate position without a gun mirror? (The artillery mirror is still behind, and the German 150mm grenades have already been blown up in pieces.) ）。

Entering the church, finding the door and running up to the third floor in one go, the infantry brothers were already using machine guns to suppress fire four or five hundred meters away, and the Germans a few hundred meters away were not polite, scattering machine gun bullets and splashing mud all around.

There's no other place here, and if you lean out and indicate the direction, it won't take long for you to become a hornet's nest! When I turned around, I saw a large hole on the left side of the tower, which had been blown out by a cannonball.

Valekin got out of the hole and finally found a good position to see the park and half of the city in the distance.

Vilnius is beautiful against the snow, but the smoke from the explosions everywhere is as unsightly as a slash on a landscape painting!

Kneeling on one leg and observing with his glasses for a few seconds, he put it down, stretched out his right hand and gave him a thumbs up alternately and closed his left and right eyes, Valygin still preferred to use this simplest way of measuring distance, rather than using the scale in his glasses.

Looking down, the brothers had already dug the hoe pit, and Comrade Lieutenant was looking at him with his neck tilted.

The shouting was inaudible, and Valekin gestured with his hands.

Schuklin was looking forward to it, and the brothers behind him had sent another 15 boxes of shells half a minute earlier, which was not much, but enough for the Germans to eat!

"Target southwest, dense position 320, distance 1150 meters, mortar position!" Looking at the observer's gestures, the lieutenant shouted orders to his subordinates.

Granov endured the terrible pain in his chest and adjusted the angle according to the lieutenant's words, and the speed was very fast.

"High-explosive bombs, one test shot!"

"Reloaded, high-explosive shells!"

After a quick look at the roof of the building, Valekin found a few targets worthy of shelling: compared to the machine guns, the German mortars were the most threatening to the side of the church - just in the woods on the other side of the park, Valekin could see the faint green smoke. At least 10 or more artillery pieces can form a green smoke of this scale, and the German heavy artillery positions should be farther away, and nine times out of ten that they are so close to the line of fire are mortar positions.

I don't know where they're shelling now, but when they drop the muzzle of the cannon and head to the church, they'll have to be reimbursed for everything!

There was a loud bang, and Valekin on the roof of the church saw the impact point more than a second later.

"The bearing remains the same, the impact point is 50 meters forward, ten shots!"

Shuklin looked at the gesture overhead and ordered again.

This time, the gunners were very fast, and in less than a minute, all 10 shells were fired in one go!

Valekin then observed with his glasses that there was an explosion every five seconds on the entire German artillery position, two particularly violent, apparently with ammunition detonation - it was finished.

、、、、、、

Assault on the war room of the headquarters of the Third Army, and the battle reports from the front were constantly reported.

Lin Jun has returned here, and Lieutenant General Pulkaev briefly explained the situation, "Our tank unit that is assaulting in the direction of the airport has rushed into the airport and has taken control of that area, and is developing in depth. However, the resistance of the two main divisions attacking the city was very great, and the Germans launched several counter-assaults. To the east of the Vilnya River, especially south of the public cemetery, the German panzers were counterattacked, and the infantry returned to their positions three hours earlier. ”

"I have sent thirty tanks to support this area, and it is imperative that all the cities on the west side of the Vilnya River be completely occupied before nightfall, and that the river be forcibly crossed at night!" Lieutenant General Pulkaev said, pointing to the map.

Vilnius is located at the confluence of the Neris and Vilnya rivers, and most of the city is on the west side of the Vilnya at the confluence. The Germans have not yet blown up the two bridges over the Vilnya River, but it is estimated that they will not hand over the bridges to themselves, and they have already planted explosives, and the troops must be prepared to force the crossing at night.

At this time, a communications officer reported that the road bridge over the Nereis River leading to the opera house on the south bank of the city exploded violently, breaking into three sections, and two piers were completely destroyed!

There were originally two bridges over the Neres, but they were both blown up when the Red Army retreated last year, and the Germans have so far repaired only one of them.

The Germans would have blown up the bridge at a critical moment, and although the two bridges on the other river were still there, they were obviously not counted on.

"Now the battle on the north side of the river is almost over, and after nightfall, we can lean our 203-mm heavy howitzer regiment up again, and tomorrow we will support the urban assault with direct artillery fire."

Of course, Lin Jun agreed with the commander's opinion: the north side of the river is a factory area, and the Germans have given up the troops that are still holding on to the north bank, and they should soon clear out the remnants of the enemy.

Heavy artillery support across the river, this effect will be very good, and the losses of the attacking troops will be much smaller.

There were also reports from the air force units of the army group asking whether it was necessary to bomb the target on the top of Mount Gediminas before nightfall.

Pulkaev looked at Lin Jun, and Lin Jun nodded: "With heavy bombs, don't have other estimates." ”

Gediminas Hill is actually a small hill, on top of which stands the red octagonal castle of Gekiminas, on which there is a three-storey ancient tower, which is the commanding height of the whole Vilnius, if you stand on the ancient tower and look into the distance, you can see the whole city.

The castle is steeped in history and cultural value, but it is also very strong! The entire castle is a fortress, Lin Jun doesn't want it to become a strong fortress like the eastern fortress of Brest Fortress, then he doesn't know how many lives will be needed to fill it!

Heavy artillery could destroy the fort, but it would be slower - tomorrow the troops would approach the Gediminas hill, and the bombing would be best before the attack, so that the Germans would not have time to reoccupy the top of the hill and lay defenses, but now the German artillery observation post was 100 percent in the tower of the castle, and the more it existed, more Red Army soldiers would die for it.

In addition, at least one infantry regiment can be deployed on the top of the castle and the mountain, and the Red Army does not use heavy weapons to estimate that it will not be able to capture it with an infantry division, Lin Jun can only think about the lives of the soldiers - use bombers to completely destroy it!

"If someone scolds me in the future, let him scold him!"

No one on the side of the Red Army would know that on the top of Gediminas Mountain, including the German troops stationed in the castle, there were only two companies, and there was only one platoon of observation posts in the huge castle!

Originally, there were heavy troops stationed in the castle of Gkeminnas, but the German commander thought that the Russians who had gone crazy often did not estimate any ancient buildings, and this was the conclusion reached in the battle for most of the year: anyway, it would be bombarded by heavy Russian firepower, and instead of waiting for the troops to be bombed, it was better to withdraw the troops from the seemingly impregnable fortress as soon as possible, and then send them when the Russians had finished bombing.

What would Lin Jun think if he knew about the Germans' arrangement now? Maybe you won't think much about anything - if it blows up, it will blow up, and it will be blown up anyway.

Sometimes, no matter what the decision-maker chooses, history will give him some ironic results and comments, and no one can help it. It seems that the Allies in the West have encountered a similar situation in the mountains of Italy in history - the Battle of Cassino Mountain has received a historical irony, but this irony of the Allies has no choice!

The Allies were faced with the Stav Line, a preset German line of defense across central Italy, held by Army Group C under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring. The center and commanding height of the Gustavus Line is Mount Cassino, and at the foot of the mountain there is a small town - the town of Cassino, and at the top of the peak of Mount Cassino there is an ancient monastery founded in the Middle Ages - the Monastery of Cassino, which is one of the famous monuments in Italy.

The Allies were faced with a situation where the Cassino Mountains were holding Highway 6 and the railroad to Rome, and the Allies had to take the Cassino Mountains if they wanted to advance on Rome!

As a result, Mount Cassino and the surrounding peaks eventually became the focus of contention between attackers and defenders.

At that time, the defense of the Cassino Mountains was the German 14th Panzer Division, which was somewhat unworthy of its name and consisted mainly of infantry. At the same time, the German 1st Parachute Division was also transferred to the Cassino area, which has a strong mountain combat capability. The Allied forces on the Cassino Mountain Front consisted of soldiers from several countries: India, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, 5 American divisions, 5 British divisions, 4 Free French divisions, and 3 Polish divisions.

The German defensive positions in the Cassino Mountains were quite strong, the positions were basically camouflaged behind the rocks, and the artillery observation points were set up at various commanding heights to provide aiming bearings for the German artillery. And behind the mountain, the German mortar regiment could at any time deliver a fatal blow to any target around Mount Cassino!

The Abbey of Cassino is located at the summit of Cassino, a commanding position overlooking the entire Cassino Mountains. The second battle broke out on 15 February, and in the first battle the Allies suffered from the accurate and heavy German artillery fire, believing that the German artillery fire was so accurate that it had used the monastery as its artillery observation post.

After a fierce debate in the Allied command about the preservation of the ancient building and the consideration of the soldiers and the victory, B-17 bombers finally attacked on the 15th, dropping a bombshell that completely razed one of the oldest monasteries in Europe.

The Allies feared that the Germans would use the Abbey of Cassino as a strong point of support, but the Germans did not fortify the monastery at first, but only converted a cave under the monastery into an ammunition depot. Now the monastery was in ruins, but the Germans had no scruples, and the 15-foot-thick walls and ruins became a strong support point for the German army!

Since you don't have a choice, let's do it!

But is it still true that the Germans have "no scruples" when they really fight? Replacing it with any qualified commander would turn the monastery into a fortress and not allow its own soldiers to make unnecessary sacrifices.

If the B-17 hadn't blown up the Cassino Monastery to the ground, the Allies would have suffered even more losses if they had tried to conquer it!

There were British commanders in the Allied forces who believed that no one would survive the heavy bombardment and overwhelming shelling, just as the Germans believed that the Brest Fortress would not withstand the bombardment of their artillery. But the Allies were confronted with German paratroopers at Cassino, and Hitler's "Green Devils" crawled out of the rubble and dealt a hard blow to the Allies!

Exchanging an ancient building for a soldier's life is worth losing a single person, at least Lin Jun, who has fought with a big knife and a bayonet, thinks so.

Human life is so fragile in the face of war, "life is precious, love is more valuable, for the sake of freedom, both can be thrown away!" "For the sake of justice and freedom, for the sake of life, the ancient buildings will be abandoned, and it is a big deal to rebuild them when the opportunity is right in the future.

、、、、、、

At the Panevez airfield, 120 kilometers away, 16 Peter-2 dive bombers of two squadrons were preparing for a sortie at the runway. Half of these bombers have been slightly modified to carry a heavy bomb weighing nearly a ton under the belly! The other eight were ordinary models, with 250 kg of bombs on the inside of the wings on both sides, and 100 kg of bombs in the magazines behind the engine nacelles.

These planes were specially prepared to bomb fortified targets in the city of Vilnius, and now they have received orders to bomb the old castle of Gekiminas on Gediminas Mountain!

Ordnance crews pulled heavy heavy high-explosive shells out of ammunition trucks and hung them up on the bombers. In the roar of the engines, 16 Peter-2s roared into the air in a two-stand unit, slowly climbed high and flew to an altitude of 3,000 meters, heading to the southeast.

St. Peter-Paul's Cathedral, now a once-magnificent church, is in ruins, but the decorations and statues in the hall are basically there. More than half of the benches had been moved to the side, and it had become a makeshift aid point.

The wounded could not be evacuated in time, and could not stay outside to drink the northwest wind, and were carried into the church hall. The benches that remained were turned into hospital beds, on which the immobile wounded lay down. Ambulances treated wounds to the wounded, and the moans of the wounded could only be heard overhead and outside, accompanied by the sound of cannons, gunfire, and explosions.

An artilleryman was helped in with his hands on his chest, bent over, and it was Granov.

Outside the church, nearly 50 more shells were fired, but now they were a little overwhelmed: cold sweat broke out on their faces, their hands were trembling, and they couldn't aim anymore.

Shuklin asked Rezeov to replace Granov, and asked the infantry comrades who carried the shells to send him to the church for the medics to see.

A medic was disposing of the arm of a soldier with a severed hand, who got up and left, and went up to the tower again—he was a machine gun shooter, and one arm was going up to carry the chain box.

"Sergeant, what's the injury?"

As soon as the medic was done, he had to sit down with his chest covered - although it was dangerous for those who looked at the "tattered and broken arms and legs" in the war wounded, it was this kind of chest covering that was the most troublesome.

The medic had heard of people pretending to be wounded because they were afraid, and even self-harmed, but the artilleryman in front of him had a cold sweat on his face, and he had a big problem at first glance, "Don't be an internal hemorrhage!" ”

Internal bleeding from war wounds is uncommon, but if it is a turn, it will be nine deaths, and most of them will not even have time to be sent to the rear field hospital.

Ragnov sat down, and the vibration of this sitting made him grit his teeth in pain, "There may be a few broken ribs, so that the retreating cannon shield will be hit." “

It's okay to be able to speak, and helped the sergeant untie his coat, and the winter jacket and pullover inside were cut directly with large medical scissors.

Boy! A big black blue on the chest!

At this time, Ragnov was shirtless and shivered with cold. The medic probed back and forth, from top to bottom, with his hands, and then took the bandage from his coat pocket.

"I couldn't die, I had two broken ribs and I didn't get into my lungs. Tie you up with bandages and splints and you'll be fine in two months. ”

Splints are used to prevent the casualty from bending over, unlike splints used for limb fractures, in order to immobilize the broken bone.

Granov gritted his teeth in pain and tied them tightly. But by the time the bandages were finished, it really didn't hurt much. With the help of others, I put on the scattered clothes again, and got up to leave.

"You artilleryman, don't carry shells, you'll die! Also, find a military doctor as soon as possible to take a closer look at you. The medic said.

"I'm an aim, I don't have to carry shells." With that, Granov turned and left—the artillery was still waiting for him outside.

(A small outburst, ask for a monthly pass, hehe.) (To be continued.) )