The herald, as if anticipating Niyazov's surprise, stretched out his clenched left hand and reached out to Niyazov and Alyosha, who arrived later.

On the herald's palms were five or six small fingernails-sized, or glued with blood, or covered with black-red rust steel balls.

"This was sent by the battalion commander to me. The battalion commander said that this is a new type of mine for the Chinese, which will fly into the air and explode and cause great damage to the infantry. The casualties of our personnel are mainly caused by such mines with steel balls. ”

"Fly into the air and explode?" Alyosha asked in surprise.

Seeing the herald nodding affirmatively, Alyosha's face turned a little pale at the thought of the bullets and fragments that rained down like hail.

"Boom" Another explosion came from the front. Alyosha couldn't help but shudder.

Niyazov glanced at the soldiers who were still a little restless and sighed slightly.

Moscow is still a little too anxious! Several armies transferred from Europe were better, but the Far Eastern Special Army was wounded in Manchuria last time, and the newly formed troops were only replenished in June, and there were many new recruits. In particular, many grass-roots officers have very little experience, and they are all promoted from the ranks of soldiers, rather than as in the Tsarist period, when grass-roots officers are graduates of non-commissioned officer schools and have high military qualities.

It was still a little early in time for these troops to rush to the battlefield. If you train for another year, it will be much better.

But despite this, Niyazov was still very confident that this attack on North Mongolia would be victorious.

This time it was no better than Manchuria, and the Soviet army was completely prepared to fight. With the support of hundreds of planes and tanks, as well as thousands of large-caliber artillery pieces, the 400,000-strong army will have a considerable advantage not only in the face of a local warlord in China, but also in the face of the entire Chinese political axe.

He alone was assigned a mountain artillery battalion and a tank company, and with such strong firepower, he was fully confident that he would defeat a division of the squadron [***] with only small artillery.

It's just that although he is not afraid to play against a whole division of the [***] team, he has a headache for the Chinese mine array. The main problem is time, having served in the Far Eastern Special Army for a long time, he knows the Siberian climate well, and because of the weather, he cannot afford to delay it. He understood very well that Blyukhel no longer used the means to further confuse the Chinese, but chose to attack as soon as possible.

Niyazov grabbed the steel ball in the herald's hand and looked at it carefully, closed his eyes and thought about it, still a little worried, looked at the sun that was almost overhead, and decided to go to the front to take a look for himself.

The ranks of the vanguard battalion were in shambles, two tanks had fallen crookedly on the side of the road and were already burning, and from the riveted armor with grinning cracks everywhere, and the wreckage of the truck that had been blown up to the shape of the explosion, it could be seen that the Chinese's new mines were indeed very powerful, and the dozen or so large pits with a diameter of two meters were even more revealing.

The medics were nervously bandaging the wounded, and some of the new wounded soldiers were howling loudly in pain out of fear, which made the situation on the battlefield extremely miserable.

The head battalion commander ran over and reported that it was the Chinese who detonated the pre-planted mines.

Looking in the direction of the head battalion commander's finger, the hillside on the left side of the road was already full of Soviet soldiers, and a search was underway. Apparently, the Chinese were hiding on the hillside and used electric detonation to detonate their mine array.

Niyazov looked to the right, where there was also a platoon of Soviet troops on the hillside.

Seeing that the head battalion commander did not only pay attention to the left side where the Chinese were infested, but ignored the safety of the right side, Niyazov nodded slightly with satisfaction.

I saw that dozens of sappers in front of me were gathering together, talking in a dazed and whispered voice, and peeking at themselves nervously from time to time.

"Why don't the sappers clear mines?"

The commander of the vanguard battalion reported with some nervousness: "The battalion engineer platoon has organized mine clearance, and although the sappers have found and removed mines that can be found by Chinese, there is still an sapper who stepped on a mine in the safe area that has been detected, and now the sappers dare not come forward to detect it again." ”

"It was they themselves who accidentally stepped on the mines of the Chinese, is this also the reason why they did not carry out the order?"

Alyosha, who came later, stared at the sappers in front of him and said in a gloomy tone.

The head battalion commander had a bitter face, and hurriedly handed over a blackened and deformed fragment in his hand.

"This is the fragment of a mine that the sappers have just stepped on, and this kind of mine seems to be undetectable by our mine detectors."

Niyazov took the fragments, fiddled with them in his hands and looked at them carefully, scraping them with his fingernails.

The shard was clearly not metal in terms of hardness and luster, but it wasn't wood or stone in terms of texture, something he had never seen before. However, it is clear to Niyazov that mines made of this material are indeed not easy to detect, since current mine detectors can only detect mines with metal shells. However, the mines still had to be cleared, and his troops had to move forward, even at some sacrifices.

Seeing that Alyosha was also stretching his neck to look at the debris in his hand, Niyazov handed the debris to Alyosha and was about to give the order to continue demining.

From the back of a Don hippopotamus that came running from behind, jumped a divisional staff officer. The staff officer told Niyazov that the division commander was not satisfied with the pace of advance of the vanguard regiment. And paraphrased the original words of the division commander, "Now there is a vacancy for the position of battalion commander, and if Niyazov wants to become a battalion commander, he will not object." ”

Niyazov smiled bitterly, took the fragment of the mine of unknown material from Alyosha and handed it to the staff officer, saying: "The Chinese have planted a large number of mines, we have lost two tanks and three trucks, and the casualties are very large. This is a fragment of a mine planted by the Chinese, which is different from what we are used to and cannot be detected by sappers. In order to ensure the safety of the follow-up troops, I will need a little more time. ”

Alyosha puffed up his chest and interjected: "Please tell Comrade Division Commander that in order to liberate the Mongolian people from the hands of the Chinese [***] lord as soon as possible, the Red Army soldiers are not afraid of sacrifice, and we will use people to make a trip, and we must also open a way for the large army as soon as possible." ”

To fight a war, people must die, and even many people will die, and the big scene of a sea of corpses and a sea of blood was experienced by Niyazov during World War I, with tens of thousands of casualties a day, which was very common in World War I. However, even so, Niyazov was very reluctant to casually let the soldiers sacrifice their lives.

It's just that at this time, he can't say much. Niyazov gave an order to the commander of the vanguard battalion to the sappers to continue demining. At the same time, the herald was ordered to transfer the regimental engineer company to participate in mine clearance.

After the herald left, Niyazov suddenly felt a hint of danger looming.

Since joining the army, he has had this feeling many times on the battlefield, and it is precisely because of this keen feeling that he has escaped death several times.

Niyazov looked around nervously.

At this moment, he suddenly saw a flash of reflection from the obvious sunlight on the metal in the bushes on the right slope more than 100 meters away from the road......

(To be continued)