On June 22, 1916, the first day of the opening of the curtain of the Chinese army's "Bear Slaughter" operation, Chelyabinsk, the forward headquarters of the Chinese Army's Northern Front.

Through the windows in the tent, the east was already full of light, and the west was still shrouded in boundless darkness, and from time to time there was a faint and almost auditory hallucination.

Under the dim kerosene light, Marshal Wang Zhi, the commander of the front army, sat at the map table in the center of the tent without saying a word, taking out his pocket watch from time to time and glancing at it, the expression on his face was between anxiety and numbness, as if what was coming was not the battle report of the front line, but the bloodthirsty poisonous monster.

On this day, on a frontal front of more than 100 kilometers from Kershtrim in the north to Kunderlawi in the south, the Northern Front deployed only seven infantry divisions, four cavalry brigades, and one brigade-level armored detachment, with a total strength of less than 180,000 troops, equipped with 550 artillery pieces above the brigade level -- of which only 40 were heavy guns of more than 150 millimeters, less than 100 armored combat vehicles and self-propelled guns were available, and the total number of planes that could be put into the front line by the First Air Group was less than 100.

At the northernmost point of the front, between the foothills and the plain north of the town of Klitm on the Chelyabinsk-Yekaterinburg railway line, the 3rd Cavalry Corps (under the jurisdiction of the 12th, 13th, and 14th Cavalry Brigades) was deployed under the 3rd Army, which was responsible for monitoring and alerting the enemy on the Yekaterinburg side and covering the right flank of the main attacking force.

In the northern part of the front, the 2nd Infantry Division of the 4th Army and the 14th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army were directly commanded by General Chu Qing, commander of the 4th Army, and the first stage of the task was to seize the forward stronghold on the left flank of the enemy's main defense line - the town of Karabash under the Yurma Mountain.

In the middle of the front, with Chebarkul, 70 kilometers west of Chelyabinsk, as the forward base, the commander of the 3rd Army, General Zhao Minhe, directly commanded the 7th, 10th, and 12th infantry divisions of the 3rd Army, with the support of 5 tank companies and 1 self-propelled artillery company, launched a surprise attack in three directions, and the task of the first stage was to seize three forward strongholds in the center of the enemy's army, from north to south: Turgoyak, Mias, and Heixi Town.

In the southern part of the front, with Kunderavi, 85 kilometers west-southwest of Chelyabinsk, as the forward base, the 20th and 22nd Infantry Divisions under the direct command of General Zhao Feixue, commander of the 1st Army, concentrated on attacking the forward stronghold on the right flank of the enemy's main defense line -- Ustnova under the Kruglaya Mountain.

At the southernmost point of the front, in a vast area south of Chelyabinsk to the Kazakh steppe, only the 4th Cavalry Brigade, which was subordinate to the 4th Army, was on alert to cover the left flank of the main attacking force.

At first glance, this seems to be a full-line push and a lack of focus, but in fact, Mias, the center of the battle line, on the South Ural railway line from Chelyabinsk to Samara, is the key point of this general offensive, and for this reason, Zhao Minhe's Central Route Army will devote 60 percent of the infantry, 80 percent of the artillery and chariots, and plan to break through the defensive stronghold group east of Mias and capture the town of Mias within 48 hours.

Wang Zhi, who had inspected the entire battlefield from an airplane, knew very well in his heart that the theater was densely forested, the mountains were undulating, the canyons were winding, and the rivers and lakes were criss-crossed, and it was difficult for a large corps to perform maneuvers, and only by throwing in small units of troops in batches and in batches on the entire front, patiently looking for weak points in the opponent's defensive line, and then putting in a strong reserve force in one fell swoop, would it be possible to achieve a breakthrough.

However, time is pressing, and the troops and weapons that can be put into the front line in the short term, as well as the combat materials that can be reserved for the campaign, are very limited, and it seems that a "breakthrough" can only be an extravagant hope, not to mention that the main task given by the base camp to the front army is to contain rather than defeat the enemy in front of them.

If you want to contain as many enemies as possible with limited resources, you have to try to bluff and make the enemy feel the pressure they deserve. It's just that the fake is the fake, and as the attacking forces gradually approach the enemy's core defensive areas, the true state of our army will sooner or later be revealed. If the enemy in front of him had moved a large force to the Orenburg side before the decisive victory of our Central Second Army, then the Northern Army would have been defeated, no matter how many towns it had captured and how many enemies it had annihilated.

The sky was bright, and the morning sun broke through the fog on the horizon of the Great Plain of Western Siberia, and Wang Zhi had a hunch that this day would be very long.

……

80 km south of Orenburg, the railway town of Soli-Iletsk, the forward headquarters of the Central Asian Front of the Chinese Army.

Liang Tianhe stood in front of the tent of the headquarters, holding a cup of hot coffee in his hand - double the milk and sugar, and looked all the way to the north, on the other side of the Ural River that could not be seen below the horizon, hundreds of tons of steel and explosives from thousands of cannons were ruthlessly ravaging the land of Europa.

Yes, the Urals, the boundary river separating the two continents of Asia and Europe, crossed this river, and the Central Asian Front of Liang Tianhe even fought through Asia and invaded Europa.

But here, it's only the edge of Europa, the edge of the edge, it's still far, far away from the center of Europa, the German Empire.

The task of the Central Asian Front is to make this distance no longer far away as soon as possible, and the first step in this task is to annihilate the heavy Russian army group in front of Orenburg.

The Central Asian Army's combat plan this time can be described as a "right hook" with one blow, that is, the left flank and the center feint to attack and contain it, the right flank breaks through and outflanks the enemy, and the most rear-end three-way combined attack to divide and annihilate the enemy.

In order to realize this operational attempt, the Central Asian Army deployed 10 infantry divisions, 10 cavalry brigades, 6 armored brigades, and 1 brigade-level armored detachment on a 120-kilometer front, from Ostrovnoye in the upper reaches of Orenburg to Gorodishhe in the lower reaches, with a total strength of nearly 300,000 troops, and was equipped with 1,100 artillery pieces above the brigade level -- including 200 heavy guns of more than 150 mm -- more than 600 armored combat vehicles and self-propelled guns in service, and the total number of aircraft that could be put into the front line by the Second Air Group was no less than 250.

The attack forces of the Front were organized into five clusters, namely the center, the left flank, the right flank, the assault and cover clusters.

The central cluster under the command of Lieutenant General Du Beiwei, commander of the 8th Army, was based on the 15th Infantry Division, and its mission was to carry out a diversionary attack on the positions around the city of Orenburg in the center of the enemy's defense line and attract the attention of the defenders on this side.

The task of feints on the left flank was the left flank cluster under the command of General Qian Lan, commander of the 5th Army, with the 11th, 13th, and 17th Infantry Divisions and the 31st Cavalry Brigade as the backbone. In order to increase the effect of the feint and focus the enemy's attention on this area as much as possible, Liang Tianhe specially equipped the group with a whole battalion of the latest "Iron Leopard" medium tank - this is actually the old trick successfully used by the Northern Army in the Battle of the Arkut River to break through the enemy's Irkutsk fortress defense line.

After the feint attack on the left flank group achieved the desired results, the right flank group under the command of the commander of the Praetorian Army, General Yan Meng, carried out the main attack with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Janissaries Divisions from the river area between Vyazovka and Oslorovnoye, and the 31st "Iron Leopard" medium tanks of the 2nd Independent Tank Battalion were to provide support for the 2nd Janissary Division, which was responsible for the key assault mission.

When the right flank group successfully breaks through the enemy's river bank defense line and completes the erection of the pontoon bridge, the assault group under the command of General Lu Kaiping, commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, will quickly cross the Ural River, surpass the right flank group and quickly advance to the enemy's depth, first march in a northwestern direction for 60 to 80 kilometers, cross the Oren River from Sakmara, 30 kilometers northeast of Orenburg, turn southwest here, and capture Calgara, the enemy's rear railway junction less than 40 kilometers away from Sakmara, and cut off the rear road of the main Russian army on the Orenburg side in one fell swoop. The victory is decided.

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