The German artillerymen received a simple order: to shoot all the shells. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoThe troops of the Southern Army Group of the Ming Army, which had been chasing behind, were already very close. If the Allies were not able to join up with Manstein's troops on the north bank of the Don River in a short time, they would be doomed.

By this time, the Allies had made up their minds to abandon everything as long as they could take people away. As for the shells or something, what are you left for? Do you still have to go all the way to Ukraine with shells?

At 5:30 a.m., a long line of orange-red flares suddenly rose from the gloomy sky behind the Allied artillery positions. These orange flares are so conspicuous in the dark sky that they even light up half of the night sky.

The originally silent Allied artillery positions turned into boiling magma in an instant. The muzzles of the black holes spewed out scorching fire, and heavy shells tore through the air one after another, slamming into the city of Rostov-on-Don with a strange and dull whining sound. Tear everything near the point of impact to shreds.

At this time, looking from the commanding heights of Rostov-on-Don towards the opposite bank, you can see that the place where heaven and earth meet outside Batesk on the opposite side is almost as bright as day, and the continuous dense flashing of cannon flames is as dazzling as a chain of lightning. It was the greeting of death and destruction.

Tons and tons of shells smashed into the city, inflicting heavy losses on the city and the Ming troops stationed there. However, the Ming army's reaction speed was extremely fast, and the powerful artillery of the Marine Corps began to suppress artillery fire in almost the shortest possible time.

The situation on the artillery positions of the Ming army was almost exactly the same as that of their counterparts on the opposite side. When hundreds of heavy guns fired intensively, the flames generated by the muzzles looked like chain lightning flashing on the ground from a distance. And the earth was shaken.

The artillery of both sides did not even shift their positions when they shelled each other, which is a very rare thing in artillery suppression and counter-suppression. After all, for well-trained artillerymen, it is an iron rule in training to immediately shift positions after a few rounds.

When the artillerymen entered the position, they would build a number of artillery positions to facilitate the rapid transfer of their artillery. After all, the artillery observation and sighting equipment of this era has been extremely advanced, and even without the use of reconnaissance planes in the sky, the artillery observers on the ground can calculate the approximate direction through various precision tools through the dust, smoke and muzzle flames generated by the enemy's shelling. Then report to your own artillery.

It only takes a few test shots to confirm the exact coordinates of the enemy's artillery positions. When the time came, a dense rain of bullets flew over to destroy the enemy's artillery positions. In order to evade the counterattack, the artillerymen generally moved their positions after a period of fighting. Unless it's a clear idea that you can completely suppress the other person. But this iron law of artillery is invalid today.

The Allies no longer cared about the loss of valuable heavy artillery and hard-trained gunners. If it is not possible to break through today, then there is no point in keeping these guns and gunners. Now that you're determined to do your job, put all your bets on it.

The Allies began to frenzy, and in order to be able to contain the powerful artillery power of the Ming army, they did not hesitate to sacrifice their own artillery units to provide a good attack environment for the attacking troops.

It was snowing today, and the fighters of the Ming Army's army aviation unit could not take off. It was dozens of kilometers away from the coastline, and the Don River was frozen, and the heavy artillery of the Ming Mediterranean Fleet could not provide support. Once the superior artillery units of the Ming army were pinned, the Allied attacking forces would have the best chance. This kind of opportunity was simply a dream for the Allies.

The Allies took this attack very seriously. All of the troops involved in the first wave of the attack were carefully selected from among the various forces. They had only one task, which was to cross the Don River, enter the city of Rostov-on-Don and seize the city.

These officers and soldiers came to the front line by car and received a small amount of supplies. Compared with those colleagues who struggled in the cold wind and hurried desperately with their legs, these selected officers and soldiers were lucky. However, this luck requires them to exchange their lives for it.

After more than 20 minutes of fierce shelling, thousands of German officers and men who had quietly infiltrated the city of Batesk last night immediately rushed out of various hiding points and rushed towards several bridges over the Don River not far away. At the same time, the officers and men of the German army's elite power search force also quietly touched the piers of several bridges.

Although they are not professional special operations forces, the officers and men of the Power Search Force, which belongs to the German armored forces, are all extremely elite soldiers. At about two o'clock in the middle of the night, they quietly set off for the bridge that spanned both sides of the Don and connected Bataiysk with Rostov-on-Don.

The officers of the Allied forces were all professional soldiers, and the German soldiers in particular were almost all members of the army for generations. Their military literacy told them that there must be explosives planted under these bridges to destroy them. It's a matter of course. Or they do.

The reason why the Ming army did not destroy these bridges immediately after the arrival of the Germans was because the Ming army believed that if the Germans were unable to attack, they would have to keep these bridges for their own use. After all, on the south bank of the Don River, there were still millions of troops of the Southern Army Group in the Ming Russian theater. These forces will move north into Ukraine after the end of the Caucasus campaign.

With so many troops and a large amount of equipment and materials, if they want to cross the Don River and go north, they need to have important transportation roads, so these important bridges are not yet time to be destroyed for the Ming army.

Of course, the Ming army is not a fool. They had already placed powerful explosives on the piers of these bridges, and as long as the bridges could not be defended, they would blow them up. Let the Germans climb slowly over the ice, which is covered with a thick layer of snow.

As for how the troops of Army Group South will cross the Don, then we will talk about it later, after all, the battlefield is now more important. Anyway, there are sappers who can build bridges, and now the Don River is frozen and you can walk directly on the ice.

Compared to the surface of the Don River, which was covered with thick snow, the Germans clearly wanted to take the bridge. However, if you want to take the bridge, you have to get rid of the explosives. In the absence of the German special operations forces, the German commanders pinned their hopes on equally elite search forces. (The reconnaissance unit of the armored forces is called the Power Search Force.) Only armored units can be called that, and the rest of the units are reconnaissance battalions. ）

More than 200 German soldiers who volunteered to participate in this operation quietly approached several bridges in the dark at about 2 o'clock in the middle of the night with a temperature close to minus 40 degrees Celsius and with unimaginable perseverance. Then they tried all kinds of ways to climb the bridge piers dozens of meters high to find the explosives placed by the Ming army to dismantle.

Some succeeded, they cut the fuse and dug up the explosives that were still in the snow. However, most of them failed. Many people encountered the Ming army patrol, and were mercilessly shot on the ice of the Don River by the Ming army patrol driving armored vehicles. Some Germans fell from the bridge piers and fell to their deaths, while others were frozen on the road because of the severe cold weather.

In the end, less than 10 of the more than 200 elite German soldiers who attacked returned to their positions alive. And the few survivors who survived were all hit hard. Their bodies were attacked by the bitter cold, which caused great damage to their bodily functions. All three German soldiers who survived the war were tortured to death by a persistent illness a few years later.

The dedication of these Allied officers and soldiers is actually rarely remembered. This kind of thing is the same in any country and in any era. silently contributed everything to their country, but most people no longer remember the officers and soldiers who were covered by the thick snow. Their story ends up with nothing more than an unnamed tombstone.

It has to be said that the bravery and tenacity of the Germans disrupted the plans of the Ming army. When the German infantry and armored units rushed to several bridges, the Ming army quickly detonated the explosives that were preset on the piers. However, only one road bridge was blown into several sections. The other vital two-track railway bridge and a hybrid road-rail bridge were all unscathed.

More than 200 German officers and soldiers, whose names no one remembered for more than 200 years, gave their troops a glimmer of hope to return home. Their efforts have paid off.

The morale of the German attacking troops, who realized that things were turning in their favor, immediately rose. They shouted and poured onto the bridge, unheeded by the dense rain of bullets rushing towards the opposite bank.

Because of human activity, snow is cleared from the city and on important transportation routes. As on these bridges, this greatly facilitated the German offensive operations. The Germans, who gambled everything to break through, used all their strength. They even used a dense charge on the bridge deck.

Nearly 10,000 officers and men of the 44th and 71st Infantry Divisions of the German Sixth Army poured onto the two-track railway bridge under the cover of the 51st and 53rd mortar regiments and intensive artillery fire directly under the group. The tens of thousands of German officers and soldiers shouted and howled, stimulating the last trace of energy in their bodies and desperately rushing along the railway line towards the opposite bank.

The railway bridge is actually not very long, only more than two thousand meters in total. The bridge deck is relatively wide, after all, it is a double-track railway bridge, which can accommodate many German troops passing here. When the black and oppressive German troops surged, the officers and soldiers of the 22nd Regiment under the 6th Division of the Ming Marine Corps stationed on this bridge were indeed a little flustered at first. (To be continued.) )