The terrible news was as lethal to the Soviet soldiers as the shelling, and the fear of danger spread quickly, and the officers were doing their best to prevent the soldiers from escaping.

Another day passed, and Newman began to recover gradually. But Newman's head was still dizzy. Newman hid in a corner as long as he could, and from there he heard news from the other mouths that he was surrounded...... The situation is urgent...... Chinese has arrived...... We were surrounded...... The Luftwaffe is flying here to rescue ...... However, they now only heard the sound of Chinese fighters and bombers, and then bombs rained down on all parts of the city.

What's going on now? Almost no one was able to figure it out. Newman remembered that the officers went to the makeshift infirmary and took a roll call, and unless you lost a foot, all the wounded were ordered back to their positions ready for battle. Newman and several wounded, wrapped in bandages, were placed in positions near the front line.

On the edge of the city, which was dotted with roofless houses, their group was reorganized, and Newman recognized Major Herbert among several officers there. The powerful rockets fired by the Chinese were falling not far to their northeast, where the thunderous explosions created an irrepressible sense of panic. Newman still felt very weak, his mouth bitter, and his body seemed to be supported only by his uniform and boots.

Major Herbert began to address them, raising his voice so that they could hear him amid the gunfire. Although he wished to be able to give them a detailed explanation, the rumbling explosions, the passing time, and the Chinese planes that could whizz at any moment made it necessary for the major to speak to them briefly.

The major shouted: "Brave soldiers! We're surrounded...... Our entire division...... All surrounded! ”

They already knew about it, but when they officially heard the news, they were scared. This situation, which has been confirmed by the command staff, must be very serious and urgent. Not far away, they heard the sound of Chinese rockets firing again, and the ground beneath their feet and the air around them were constantly shaken by huge explosions.

Major Herbert continued to shout to them: "But we still have a glimmer of hope. We must concentrate all our forces and charge at a narrow point, which is the only way for them to tear the encirclement, which must be to the west, and we will throw all the soldiers. The success of this breakout depended on the courage of each soldier. We only have one chance, and we have to succeed. Behind the Chinese encirclement, there are already some of our troops assisting us in this breakthrough. I believe that if everyone is true to their duties, we can jump out of the noose that the Chinese put around our necks. I believe that every German soldier here will be able to fulfill his mission! ”

Herbert saluted the German soldiers, and then asked them to assemble and break out.

The companies of the Germans and Soviets were now walking towards the spot where they were going to launch a breakout attack. Many of the wounded also joined the breakout, many of them so weak that it was difficult to walk. Everyone was looking ahead with their tired eyes. These brave German soldiers now look more like a group of exhausted cattle about to be pulled up to the slaughterhouse.

But for now, they have no choice but to attack, or die.

At that time, it was completely impossible to be captured alive by the Chinese army. The increasingly dangerous situation only increased the closer ties of the German soldiers. In this situation, both German and Soviet soldiers took out their last cigarettes to share with everyone, or the chocolates that they had hidden for a long time were now broken into pieces and distributed to others.

Newman now felt his stomach churn again, and he felt a biting chill. Newman tried to find Wolf or some other familiar face, but couldn't find it. They must have been placed in a different starting position now. To Newman, they were like Newman's family. Newman felt very lonely in this group of wounded people, and wanted to find some reason to give Newman some hope. Newman now began to imagine like a veteran a warm, fluffy bed with a silk finish. Before the war, the veteran's life was not very good, but he knew how to comfort himself with dreams, and there were times when his emaciated body lay on the hard ground, but he smiled brightly, at least for those times, he didn't seem to care about the difficult situation, his dreams were far stronger than reality. Newman was untrained in this ability, and Newman's dreams could not silence his hot temples that were throbbing at this time.

To their west, the sky was almost obscured by smoke and dust, and the distant horizon was filled with firelight. Newman wondered, what could it be to set fire to such a vast land?

Some of the smoke-covered soldiers retreated from the west at this time, and their first encounter with the Chinese did not seem to be going well. The evacuated soldiers also brought a number of wounded, but there was no one to take care of them anymore. Their medics packed their things and prepared to break out with them. The wounded lay down in the streets, trying to stop the blood that kept pouring out on their own. Everyone tried to help the wounded, but they could only bandage them with their own clumsy movements. An incredible scene appeared before Newman's eyes, and while they were still stopping the bleeding from a wounded man who had passed out, an obese soldier came to their aid, explaining that he had just thrown out a soldier with a broken knee.

"That guy's voice was so loud that I couldn't stand it," he said. You give me a wounded man who fainted. ”

The street where they are located has not yet been shelled. The battle is raging ahead. To the north of the city, Chinese artillery fire combed through the ruins like a giant rake. While some of the withdrawn men were sitting next to them gasping for breath, the Chinese artillery fire turned to them. The shouts of their officers' orders were drowned out by the screams of the crowd, and everywhere was the sound of soldiers running in search of cover.

These shouts were quickly drowned out by the explosion of shells. Everyone who was still able to stand up ran away from the street. Any raised ruin is a hope of survival. The shells fired by the Chinese smashed heavily on their assembly point, where more than two thousand soldiers had gathered. The wounded who were abandoned in the streets could only struggle in agony. Amid the explosions, they could hear the sound of human bodies being torn apart and falling to the ground after being hit by a shell. The earth around them shook violently, everything around them dimmed, and everything around them shook before their eyes. The wounded and dying were drawing the last traces of their lives on the ground with their fingers, and the veterans who had fought in the battles of Poland and France, thinking they had seen all the horrific scenes, were controlled by a desperate panic. In a pile of rubble not far behind them, a Chinese shell hit the corner where 11 Soviet soldiers were hiding, huddled trembling like a group of children dodging the sudden rain. The shell hit the middle of the pile of soldiers, and the pile of rubble where they had been was was littered with bones and flesh that had been blown to pieces.

Fate once again favored Newman, who hid with three German soldiers on the basement stairs of a roofless house. During this shelling, shells fell on all sides of the house. Broken beams and rubble littered the basement. Their sturdy steel helmets kept their heads uninjured in the raining rubble. When the Chinese shelling ended, they heard the cries of new wounded outside. They looked out, and the horrific scene outside made them immediately shrink their heads, and several people collapsed on the stairs. Someone shouted, "O God! There's blood everywhere out there! Another also shouted almost frantically: "We must get out of here!" ”

The man then ran outside, and Newman and the others followed him. The air was filled with screams of all kinds. Everyone who survived the shelling ran to the west. For them, Seomyeon is always synonymous with safety, and that's where they want to break through. Anyone who was able to stand up now struggled to the west. The wounded, lying on the ground, desperately reached out and tried to pull the soldiers who ran past them. In front of Newman, two haggard-looking soldiers were walking with a dying comrade. How far can you help him go like this? How far before they have to put him down?

Newman couldn't remember how long he had been running through the ruins. The Chinese used 90 mm cannons to shoot frantically at the Germans at close range, and all of them took the wounded with them as much as possible.

In the midst of the chaos, they came to a railroad track littered with train wreckage and the corpses of Soviet soldiers. They scurried over the corpses, as if to escape the horror of death caused by the rain of artillery that had just rained down on them. They continued to run forward, passing a second track like the one before. Some of their vehicles were parked there, surrounded by a group of German soldiers and several tank commanders. They ran straight for several of the officers among them, including Major Herbert. They were allowed to rest in place for a few minutes at this point. To the southwest, there was a huge exchange of fire.

Everyone was subjected to a new round of shelling. Herbert and his two assistants walked among a group of exhausted soldiers.

The Major shouted, "Get up! We have to keep going! Our division has already torn open the enemy's positions! If you don't hurry, we'll all be locked up in this encirclement, so we have to hurry! We are the last troops to break through! ”

The soldiers, already exhausted, rose from the ground again. The officers patted the shoulders of the soldiers who were stronger and who were still pulling the wounded.

"Don't take the wounded who can't walk anymore," the officers said. You'll need to use all your strength in the breakout ahead. Each of you can only save yourselves. ”

They were forced to lay down a large number of wounded, and the terrible end for these wounded can be imagined. Some of the seriously wounded, who were almost dying, struggled to their feet, trying to hide their pain so that they could break through with the uninjured soldiers. The heroism, tragedy and strength of the German soldiers on the road to this breakthrough have gone far beyond the ability of words to describe. Those once cowards suddenly became fearless heroes on this blood-soaked path, but many fell before they were halfway there.

The German soldiers fought their way out of the encirclement in a hellish rain of bullets, and for the next nine hours they jumped from crater to crater and fought along the railway, which was littered with burning tanks and piles of monstrous corpses. Almost half of them fell on the way to the breakout.

Newman later saw only a few lines in the war report mentioning that the surrounded German troops had successfully broken out of the encirclement of the Chinese army, which was indeed true, but the price paid for this breakthrough was not mentioned in the war report.

Major General Huang Botao, commander of the 11th Armored Division of the Chinese National Defense Forces, recorded in his memoirs:

"On June 23, the 11th Panzer Division took up positions between the banks of the Kakama River and Ufa. On the same day, I went to the front to survey the section where the division had crossed the Kakama River in order to coordinate with the 4th Tank Army. But we did not play much role in relieving the troops in Sverdlovsk. On June 24, a Russian tank corps forced its way across the Kakama River on the left flank of the 36th Infantry Division and advanced towards the residential areas of the Russian state farms far behind our defensive positions on the banks of the river. The units of the 12th Panzer Division are still advancing. They were ordered to immediately move to the state farms in order to restore their original position. On the afternoon of June 25, the 15th Panzer Regiment encountered a large number of Soviet tank units near the state farm and stopped the Soviet troops from advancing. ”

"Obviously, we cannot allow the Soviets to stop at the state farms, we must drive them away. As a first step, I set up my command post next to the command post of the 36th Division, so that the two divisions could work closely together. ”

"The commander of the 36th Infantry Division, General Xie Jiqian, asked me to carry out a frontal attack on the state-run farms so that they could be relieved of their critical situation as soon as possible. I think that the terrain there is not conducive to the movement of tanks, and a frontal attack in any case can only repel the enemy, but not annihilate it. I decided to carry out the main assault along the heights to the west and north of the state farms, because it was convenient for tanks to pass; Then he ordered the tanks to insert into the rear of the Soviet army and cut off the enemy's retreat. The 15th Armored Regiment was the main attacker, supported by the 11th Armored Infantry Regiment, while the 10th Armored Infantry Regiment was deployed from the southwest to contain the attack. I placed anti-aircraft artillery and engineer battalions south of the state farm in case the Soviets broke through in this direction. The artillery of the 36th Division was responsible for supporting the troops attacking from the northeast flank. ”

"On the night of June 27, the 11th Armored Division adjusted its deployment according to the order of Marshal Xu Yuanjin, and all units entered the assembly area. At dawn on 28 June, the Soviets were preparing to strike at the rear of the 36th Infantry Division, and we were convinced that the Soviets were in our hands. The 15th Panzer Regiment encountered a long tank column of Soviet mechanized infantry from the north and launched an attack on this column, which took the enemy by complete surprise. When our tanks stormed the column, the Soviets panicked and fled, and the transports caught fire one after the other. The entire column was annihilated by our troops, and the armored regiment of the 11th Division, with the direct support of armored infantry and artillery, advanced to the rear of the Soviet tank units defending the state farm. ”

"The Soviets fought bravely, but their tanks fell into our fire, and it was in vain to try to escape. By the time this short day passed, the Soviet tank corps was completely crushed, and 152 tanks were destroyed. Most of them are 'T-34' tanks. ”

"From June 29 to 30, our division continued to clear the Soviet troops at the Kakama River landing ground. The Xuanyuan Special Field Division occupied defensive positions on the left flank of the 36th Division, and the two divisions did everything in their power to defend the occupied line of the Kakama River, which stretched for 25 kilometers. But the Soviets continued to put pressure on them, and the 11th Panzer Division had to strike again and again to restore the defensive line. ”

"On the evening of July 1, I received the following notification: 'The enemy broke through at two points, Livorsky and Kebnovsky, and the distance between the two breaches was 12 kilometers in a straight line.' I decided to strike back against Livorsky's enemy first. After a night's march, the Panzer Regiment reached the vicinity of Livorsky at dawn on July 2 and annihilated the Soviet units that had broken through. I made this determination because I believed that the defence of the 36th Division was essential to the subsequent operations of the 11th Panzer Division, and that it should be held at all costs. The 36th Division is fully aware of the importance of its mission. The division was determined to deal with every enemy threat, and to resist everything with its own strength, so that our division could counterattack with the strength of the whole division when it did not need to support the infantry with tanks. The commander of the 36th Division, General Xie Jiqian, never panicked and did not call for support from the troops of the 11th Armored Division, even at the most critical moments. This would not have been possible without the two division commanders working together in coordination. In addition, he would meet with me every night to discuss the situation in a comprehensive manner. ”

"After the destruction of Livorsky's Soviet forces on July 12, the 11th Panzer Division moved north. In the afternoon of the same day, after marching 15 kilometers, our division entered the Soviet landing ground in Nizhny Kbnovsky, greatly compressing the Soviet position. ”

(To be continued)