Rows of flares, rising into the air, illuminated the night sky and the earth in the darkness. In these flickering lights, it is possible to faintly distinguish the attacking Soviet and Austrian lines. The artillery was roaring, the Russians seemed to never run out of shells, and the fire preparation time before the attack was much longer than the normal artillery preparation of the German-Austrian army, and the fire density was also very large.

The entire Austro-Hungarian defensive position seemed to have been overturned with an iron plow, and there were craters scattered everywhere.

Karadzic felt like he was about to break down. When faced with the charge of dozens of Soviet tanks, an infantry member looked so weak and helpless, without anti-tank weapons, and the rifle hitting the tank shell was a ring, except for a little spark, there was no real effect at all. The number of tanks in Soviet Russia was greater than that of the German-Austrian side, and in addition to the signature KV-2 and T-34, there were more T-28 and BT-7 fast tanks. On the Kuban front, the Soviet army invested 5 armored corps and 6 separate tank brigades with a total of more than 7,000 tanks, while the German-Austrian forces on this line had only 4 armored corps and more than 4,800 tanks.

In each battle, the infantry group had to rely on the full cooperation of anti-tank trenches, mines, anti-tank guns and infantry anti-tank weapons to resist the enemy's attack with great difficulty, which also caused huge casualties to the front-line infantry.

Karadzic could only cower in the trenches and resign himself to his fate. He didn't want to die, and sometimes he had the urge to give up the trenches and flee, but those "cowards" who were frightened by the enemy's tanks and fled regardless of the slightest bit of the "cowards" lost the cover of the trenches, most of them died under the enemy's bullets, and the few remaining ones would also be shot by the gendarmerie behind them.

The previous anti-tank training was of little use, and no soldier was willing to brave the hail of bullets outside to break out of the trenches. Jump onto an enemy moving tank, then stuff an anti-tank grenade between enemy turret mounts. This kind of training had little practical effect on the battlefield, and the infantry preferred to crouch in the trenches and wait for death.

In fact, no soldier on the battlefield would have thought that he would die, and although everyone knew that casualties were inevitable, they would always imagine themselves as the lucky ones who survived. Everyone stayed on this purgatory-like battlefield. There wasn't much despair, but instead I kept praying for the beginning of the counterattack.

As time passed, the number of Soviet tanks hit by anti-tank fire on the way to the offensive increased, but the flow of people who were like diving was still rolling forward, and the Soviet army was fanatical "Ula! Ulla! "The shouts seemed louder than the gunshots. As the Soviet infantry began to charge, the soldiers who had taken refuge in the trenches were driven into dangerous firing positions.

The Austrian position suddenly burst into gunfire, and bullets with tracer light poured down towards the front of the position like a torrential rain, and the crowd of Soviet soldiers in the attack suddenly stagnated, and the charge was temporarily stopped. Soviet tanks swimming outside the anti-tank trenches launched a fierce counterattack against the anti-tank fire from the Austrian positions. The Su-76 or Su-85 self-propelled guns that followed also began to stop moving, implementing fire suppression.

Clusters of fireballs quickly rose from the front line of the Austrian trenches, shrapnel flew sideways, and many people were hit and killed before they could dodge, and the firepower of the Austrian army weakened instantly. In the firelight, Karadzic witnessed the anti-tank men of the platoon, hidden on the side, crawling on the ground and firing at the Soviet tanks with bazookas. The rocket, with a tail light, accurately hit the side of the tank. That Soviet tank was destroyed. A large flame was raised, and then it burned.

But the brave anti-tank soldier was immediately blown up by the counterattacking Soviet tank, and his whole body flew into the air. The limbs were scattered, and the blood splashed was shocking.

"Our position is critical! The position is critical! The enemy is breaking through, ask for immediate support, ask for immediate support! "In the anti-artillery hole behind him, the communicator in the platoon kept shouting for reinforcements. But the battle had been going on for almost thirty minutes, and Karadzic was already feeling hopeless.

At this moment, there was a roar of engines behind him, and the Bolgars next to Karadzic laughed and shouted: "Oh my God, our tanks." They're finally here! ”

Hawke grabbed the machine gun and jumped back into the trench, and then a tank ran past where he was, and these own tanks didn't care, the tracks creaked and creaked, and they rumbled over the trench overhead and rushed forward. Karadzic saw a large blur of organs and flesh stuck to the tracks of a tank, which had basically been left over from the corpses of his own people.

"OMG!" He couldn't help but cry out.

More Austro-Hungarian tanks rushed out of the woods, some of them intercepted the retreat of Soviet tanks and infantry, and the Russian offensive soon collapsed.

About 2,000 German-Austrian tanks rushed out of their positions, roared forward, surrounded the Soviet 8th Panzer Corps, and then began to divide and annihilate. For this large-scale war of annihilation, the wolf-bred generals sacrificed two divisions of infantry and gradually led the Russians into the encirclement they had set up.

The Russian 8th Panzer Army collapsed in a matter of days, and the Kuban steppe was littered with burning tank wreckage, some of which belonged to German-Austrian troops, but more Russian. The T-28 and BT-7 of the Soviet army could not withstand the attack of the Deutsche Mark IV tank and the Austro-Hungarian PT35 tank equipped with 75mm L50 guns, although the performance of the KV tank and the T34 was basically the same as that of the German-Austrian tank, but the number of their equipment was less than 400 units, and they could not play a role in such a large-scale tank duel.

A massive counterattack began like lightning.

The infantry team followed behind the tank group in pursuit of the fleeing Soviet troops, and for the next day Karadzic seemed numb and had no deep memory, relying only on his primitive survival instinct to follow behind the billowing dust kicked up by the tanks in front of him, mechanically charging, shouting, and shooting at an object belonging to the Russians.

The constant sound of gunfire and explosions around him seemed to blur his memory, and only occasionally he remembered some unbelievable scenes on the battlefield: human organs scattered here and there in the bombed-out bunkers - long broken intestines hanging from a stake, charred corpses next to blown tanks or armored vehicles, tree stumps that had been blown off and still burning, villages with ruined walls and smoke everywhere......

The entire banks of the Kuban were burning, the Soviet resistance had been destroyed, and the German-Austrian steel torrent was rolling forward unstoppable. The entire defensive system of the Russians had become disorganized, and they had to retreat with all their might to the desolate fields of Kalmykia behind them in order to reorganize the new defensive line.

However, the German-Austrian armored forces, which were well versed in the essence of blitzkrieg, did not give the Russians time to readjust at all, and with the cooperation of the air superiority of the air force, they advanced with all their might.

The Russian army collapsed, and the 136th Division where Karadzic was located alone captured more than 30,000 prisoners of war, and the German-Austrian army of only 250,000 people launched a frantic attack on the defense line between Krkessk and Stavlopol, which was defended by nearly 500,000 Soviet troops, and the German 14th Panzer Army and the Austro-Hungarian 8th Panzer Army, as the main assault force, opened a gap nearly 50 kilometers wide in the Soviet defense line, and began to attack non-stop on both sides, and has been expanding the results.

During three days of almost uninterrupted fighting, the German-Austrian army almost fell into a state of frenzied euphoria, and the outnumbered Russians were frightened by this frenzied attack. Nearly a million Russian troops were forced to retreat, and on March 26, three days after the counterattack was launched, the German-Austrian forces advanced 210 kilometers and recaptured Stavlopol, which had been reduced to rubble. (To be continued......) R1292