Chapter 77: Claw Bloodstain (Part II)
On a summer evening, outside a German village that is so ordinary that it is usually difficult to attract the attention of passers-by, the rumbling sound from far and near, sets off the eerie silence inside and outside the village. At the fork in the village, the asphalt road has been blown out of several large potholes, and vehicles can only detour, and the fields around the fork are potholes, as if they have just been deliberately turned over. The simple wooden sign at the fork reads in German in white paint: "57 km to Rostock".
To the east of the village, tracked chariots painted with gray-brown camouflage are the source of mechanical noise, they have formed a V-shaped battle formation early, the combat infantry who stay on the sides and rear of the turret make up for the lack of viewing angle of the tanks with their own eyes, the self-propelled vehicles loaded with artillery have already aimed their muzzles at the village, and when the ambushers appear, they can bombard their hiding places with ferocious artillery fire, and further on the road, the vehicles carrying infantry and ammunition equipment are lined up in a loose line. A large number of vigilant detachments have occupied the hills and forks around the road, and have kept a close eye on the woods, canals, farmlands, and mountains with the highest level of vigilance. In the sky, groups of fighters and strike planes whizzed by, providing support to the ground forces that had been caught in a bitter battle.
Sou! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Without warning, a cold arrow-like sound broke through the air, and its sound instantly turned from thin to dense. Rockets trailing clear tails of smoke flew over the village, and the scene was spectacular. The attacked side had no way to defend or dodge, and a series of explosions ensued over the road to the east of the village. Through the smoke of the flames, the gray-brown painted tanks pressed forward, trying to use their brutal impact to provoke the dastardly attackers. In the blink of an eye, they were unstoppable and unstoppable, and some brave infantry were able to continue to follow their tanks. As a result of the lessons learned from the battlefield, the Soviet tankmen who drove these tanks abandoned the seemingly most direct route and drove their tanks off the main path into the open fields, the powerful steel tanks darting on the dirt and the mud raised by the tracks in a harmonious arc in the air - the traces of these tanks formed another beautiful arc. The nose of their carts, along with the muzzles of their guns, was eventually directed at the village: since the rockets were coming from the west of the village, the enemy would inevitably flee if the buildings in the village were captured or destroyed.
Boom! Boom! A thunderous roar overwhelmed the hustle and bustle of the battlefield, and on the edge of the explosion-filled area, several Soviet tanks armed with 152-millimeter guns opened fire through the smoke and dust. Powerful cannonballs landed accurately into the village, and the wooden and stone farmhouse collapsed in an instant, and the smoke rose and the ground trembled, showing the mighty spirit of the undefeated lion! Such artillery bombardment is like a war drum. Spurring the warriors forward, the advancing tank group quickly crossed the ditch that irrigated the farmland, and the fast-turning tracks could run over the village in the blink of an eye. As the distance approached, the tankmen noticed a number of earthen pits in the fields close to the village. Judging from the shallow mounds of earth at their edges, these pits were neither large nor deep, and somewhat similar to those caused by sub-bombs, but the area and location of their dispersion were so suspicious that the Soviet tank command vehicles radioed the detours to each vehicle. Despite the apparent reluctance to get away on the road, the Soviet tankmen carried out their orders to the letter, for safety reasons. The battle-tested T-34/85 tanks maintained a high speed, with some commanders leaning out and wielding 12.7mm heavy machine guns ready to fire. The combat infantrymen also clung to their submachine guns in their hands, so that they could strike hard at the first moment when the gopher burrowed into the pit.
Since these pits surrounded the village almost to the east, the Soviet tanks could only avoid it as much as possible. Tankers and combat infantry watched curiously as they passed by some of the pits, which did not look like they had been dug by hand, but were so far removed from the size of the foxholes that they could barely accommodate adults curled up on their sides, with no one to be seen in the hundreds of pits. None of the tanks passing by were attacked or run over mines. Judging from the situation, the German troops inserted into this area have not yet had time to build complete combat fortifications, and the Soviet self-propelled artillery that has been engaged in counterattacks is gradually taking control of the situation, and the enemy's rocket attacks are also tending to subside, and perhaps those German vehicles equipped with rocket launchers are already running for their lives. …,
A dull hum came from the air, and a dozen Il-2 attack planes flew in from the east under the cover of four fighters, but they responded to the call for reinforcements not from the Soviet units that had been shelled here, but from the look of Soviet officers and men. These warhawks, which are rare to meet opponents most of the time, flew straight overhead, and there was no hesitation in the slightest.
The Soviet Air Force had no time to take care of this battlefield, and the Germans had no intention of giving it up. Just as a few and a half tanks crossed the fork in the road to the east of the village and approached the edge of the village, a gopher wearing a camouflage-colored steel helmet with large ears came out of its hole. For this long-planned ambush, they had obviously made careful arrangements, and the careful camouflage in the pit was a cover. Even the Soviet soldiers passing by did not notice anything unusual. As the battle began, the German soldiers undisguised themselves and went into battle, firing anti-tank rockets at the Soviet tanks from dozens or even tens of meters away, "Iron Fist", "Tank Killers" and even "Bazooka" went into battle, while other soldiers hunted the fighting infantry on the Soviet tanks with assault rifles and submachine guns. The dense sound of gunfire, explosions, and the screeching of various rocket launchers converged into a single piece that was indistinguishable by ordinary human hearing, and the Soviet tanks in the battle formation, although they had strong armor and strengthened the weak points as much as possible, were like samurai who had stumbled into a snake's den, the sharp sword could not be used, and the shiny armor could not protect every part of the body from the fangs and venom of the poisonous snake. In just a few minutes, the high-spirited Soviet tank group turned into piles of immobile steel and even blazing fireballs, and no one was spared the crew and accompanying combat infantry who left the tank in order to survive!
The Soviet self-propelled artillery groups in the distance could not help the battle on the outskirts of the village, the infantry were still picking up the pieces of the shelling, and the deteriorating traffic caused them to be more than satisfied with the slaughter that had taken place on the tank units, and they could only watch the German infantry retreat into the village from the telescope. In the face of the enemy's sudden artillery bombardment and ambush attack one after another, the Soviet troops lost more than 30 tanks, a considerable number of transport vehicles, and combat soldiers, which can be described as a setback, but this could not completely stop their pace of advancing westward. More than 20 minutes later, a group of tanks replaced the previously destroyed friendly forces as the front line of the column, and several groups of fighters and attack planes were also called in to bomb the German villages adjacent to the forks in the road. After another half an hour, the Soviet tanks rumbled through the ruins of the village, and the combat alert detachment was deployed, and the combat and transport vehicles protecting the mechanized troops continued to complete this difficult and unusual journey, but they could not successfully get out of the 10 kilometers, and a similar scene appeared at the next fork in the road, and this time the German ambush was based on a canal that irrigated the farmland, and used a number of X-7D guided anti-tank rockets with a long range......
The Soviet troops were moving slowly and stopping, and the Soviet units in the encirclement had been subjected to German shelling for several hours. In the central part of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Soviet Air Force had the advantage, but the frequent sorties of German jet fighters made it impossible for them to hold up an impermeable umbrella over the encirclement, and the Soviet attack planes sent to bomb the German artillery were repeatedly attacked by the old German fighters and ground-to-air rockets, and more than 40 of them were shot down in less than a day, and the heavy losses forced the Soviet command to send fighters to hang out, and such air strikes were not enough to curb the combat operations of the German army's mobile firepower. On the periphery of the encirclement, the German army had quietly gathered more than 300,000 heavy troops, and in addition to blocking and delaying the strength of the Soviet army's support troops, about 200,000 attacking troops had been recuperated during the day and were very well prepared for the following night battle. As night slowly falls, the situation on the battlefield is undergoing irreversible changes. In the Eastern and Western camp wars and even in many battles of World War II, the Soviet army performed better at night than its opponents, and for several years, their officers and soldiers did not degrade in terms of combat quality and weapons and equipment, and the reason why they became the weak side of the night battle here was only because they had their feet on German territory!
After the night battle began, the German armed forces used the elite tank battalions of the Reich Guard as sharp knives to attack the relatively weak parts of the Soviet defenses. The SS-style brave offensive soon tore two holes in the Soviet army's improvised defensive line, and the infantry was once counterattacked by the Soviet tank mobile units after entering the Soviet army's fortified area, and the heavy casualties did not shake the German soldiers' determination to fight, they bravely made up for the quality disadvantage with a quantitative advantage, and destroyed the Soviet tanks with a large number of individual anti-tank weapons, and as the battle progressed, the combat effectiveness of the besieged Soviet army was affected by the supply of oil and ammunition, and the crumbling defense line was full of holes. In order to avoid the annihilation of the whole army, the besieged Soviet army concentrated part of its tank forces to break through to the east, and in the area east of Tribses, they were only more than ten kilometers away from the reinforcements, but it was this area of more than 10,000 meters that became a turning point in the weakening of the Red Empire. In the decisive battle, the Imperial Guard's ace tank destroyer battalion defeated the elite Soviet tank unit with the No. 3 assault gun equipped with infrared night vision devices and the pursuer, covering its own infantry to complete a hearty night slaughter, causing hundreds of Soviet soldiers to shed blood in a foreign land.