The white ceiling is unusually clean, and the sound of birds outside the window gives the place a touch of life. When Wren opened his eyes, everything in front of him was gone, as if peace had been restored to the world and the terrible war had ended.

However, he knew that the war would not end, at least not easily, and the heart-rending pain from the wounds on his body announced that he had not been injured for long, which also meant that he had not been asleep for a long time.

The bed beneath him was brand new, with a strange smell of disinfectant water. The wooden bed has a fluffy cover, the quilt is soft and looks good, and there is a bedside table with a vase next to the bed. He had a clean and tidy room by himself and a small window beside him.

"Captain Wren, are you awake?" a female nurse walked into Wren's hospital room, holding a notebook in her hand, and saw Wren open her eyes, smiled and asked, "It's a great honor to be responsible for taking care of you." My name is Ivana, Ivanna Rita. ”

"I ...... Where is this?" Wren said with difficulty, and he found that his voice was a little out of tune, and anyone who had been in a coma for a long time would feel that he was speaking in a strange voice. He was bewildered by his strange voice for a moment, then looked at the other and waited for an answer.

The female nurse smiled and replied, "This is one of the best hospitals in Kyiv." As an officer wounded you are sent here, and here is generally only for officers. I was transferred from a hospital in Berlin and was the head nurse here. I've heard about you, and you're now a hero for almost all of Germany...... At least one of the heroes. ”

Wren smiled embarrassedly, thinking that the nurse was talking about him preventing the Soviets from outflanking the Imperial Division, but unfortunately he was not able to complete his mission to save the world.

Although the Soviet outflanking forces collapsed, their frenzied assaults elsewhere dealt a heavy blow to the Germans, and Army Group G eventually abandoned the defensive line and the Soviet Red Army entered Belgorod Oblast on all fronts. The Germans lost almost 150,000 men in this battle, of which 70,000 were recruited from the rear and the other 80,000 were the elite of Army Group G.

Army Group G, which suffered heavy losses, not only eventually abandoned large swathes of the occupied territory, but also sent some 30,000 Romanian and 20,000 Italian prisoners before securing its defensive line. In other words, even excluding German losses near Stalingrad, Army Group G lost almost 200,000 soldiers in the area south of Kursk alone.

At the same time, the Soviet Union lost more than 500,000 elite soldiers in order to annihilate these 200,000 Axis soldiers. These soldiers were not conscripts in Stalingrad, nor were they newly recruited, but veterans of several large-scale battles.

The strategic deployment of the German army to the north was completely paralyzed by the Soviet army, and the plan to flank Moscow was completely bankrupt, and some newly established armored units and part of the rear army urgently moved closer to the direction of Army Group G, and barely took advantage of the weak Soviet offensive to plug the hole behind Guderian.

On May 12, the Soviets first recaptured Belgorod on the frontal battlefield, and the city became the first city on the Soviet battlefield to be recaptured by the Soviet counterattack. Although the Soviet Red Army voluntarily stopped its southward offensive after this, it also cheered up all the forces hostile to Germany.

Führer Accardo had to deliver the famous speech "The Banner of Victory is Doomed to Be Red with Blood" at his residence. In order to motivate the people not to be afraid of great sacrifices. According to official German statistics, from the beginning of the Soviet-German war to the present, the German army and its client states have lost a total of 730,000 soldiers. Germany as a whole was not in a state of flux, the reality was much less, more and more people were falling in the war, and the front was becoming more and more difficult and bloody.

The German strategy was frustrated, and the plan to besiege Moscow was completely suspended, and it had to be replaced by a passive reinforcement of the defenses in the Kharkov direction. Army Group O, which had just been formed and had not yet been completed, was barely filled into this line, and the commander, General Reichenau, tried his best to prevent the Soviets from continuing the offensive.

If it weren't for the fact that the Soviets lacked heavy weapons and the losses of armored forces were too staggering, and they voluntarily stopped moving south, the German army might have been in danger of collapsing in the entire southern theater of operations.

Guderian's role in fighting Zhukov to the last moment at any cost in the area south of Kursk was finally manifested ten days later, when the Soviet Red Army lost the power of the counterattack and completely stopped continuing the offensive after taking Belgorod.

Not only Guderian's Army Group G shed its own blood in the attack, but Zhukov's southward offensive group also suffered unprecedented losses in the attack. Just look at the vast expanse of land south of Kursk and the littered tank wreckage to get a clear idea.

The USSR lost about 1700 main tanks in 40 days, and more than 26 T-900 tanks. This shows that among the more than 1,700 tanks lost in front of them, they are all elite KV-1 and KV-1B, as well as valuable T-34 tanks and Stalin tanks. The losses of these tanks were not replenished by the Soviet Union in a short period of time, and Zhukov's offensive group could only watch as the German troops strengthened the Kharkov line, which was close at hand, but there was nothing they could do.

Of course, the losses of the elite of the German armored forces are absolutely unforgettable, the 1st Panzer Army lost 60% of its tank vehicles, more than 390 tanks were destroyed by the Soviet Red Army, and the Imperial Division was even more than four-fifths destroyed. Only 7 of the 41 tanks of the 502 Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion, which served as firefighters, were left, and the German armored units, which were known as invincible in the world, withdrew at Kursk.

The Luftwaffe also lost more than 270 aircraft of all types in this defeat, which became the largest loss of troops in the Luftwaffe since the beginning of the war. Although more than two-thirds of these planes were shot down by Soviet ground artillery fire, the Soviet Air Force was also desperately fighting for local air supremacy, which put great pressure on the Luftwaffe.

Compared with the more than 700 aircraft lost by the Soviet Air Force, the Luftwaffe undoubtedly achieved a tactical victory, compared to the Soviet air defense basically relying on ground artillery, most of the Soviet aircraft were wiped out by the Luftwaffe fighter force. This shows that Germany still firmly holds the battlefield air supremacy, and it also shows that the Soviet Air Force is recovering its strength and no longer allowing a small number of German aircraft to run rampant in the airspace of the front line.

In short, Wren later learned that the Battle of Kursk ended with Army Group G retreating and the Germans defeated. In the entire battle of Kursk, both sides lost a total of 3,210 tanks of various types, almost exactly 1,000 planes were shot down, and more than 700,000 infantry were lost.

The largest battle in human history with the largest number of mobilized tanks ended with Zhukov's victory over Guderian. The Soviet Red Army took the opportunity to counterattack and regain some of the lost ground, but in the end, because the losses were too huge, it was forced to give up the opportunity to expand the gains and completely lose the opportunity to encircle the southern cluster of the German army.

It is not surprising that the Soviets used their last legacy to achieve this result, and it is not surprising that Zhukov took advantage of the period when the German forces were most dispersed to create a local counterattack. Because after all the hype about the great victory in the reconquest of the town, all the Soviet top brass had to rethink a very important question: what would happen to the old and weak soldiers left in the Moscow theater of operations once the German Army Group A attacked Moscow in the front?

"My crew...... Are they all okay?" Wren didn't care about the battlefield situation that he couldn't worry about, he was more concerned about the people he knew, the familiar faces. He knew that at this time he could lie in the quiet rear, instead of nesting in a messy field hospital, and that Germany's strategic posture would not be much worse.

He was more concerned about Alice than how many positions Guderian had lost, and more about Marcus, Andre, and Bruce than about how many German casualties he had......

Suddenly, he remembered Bowman, the man who loved the car like his wife, the feeling of driving the tank smoothly, and his tacit understanding of the reassuring stop-and-shoot shooting.

"Captain Wren, you were only one when you were brought in, and I don't know what happened to the other people you mentioned. The female nurse replied gently, "Maybe they are being treated in other field hospitals, and you may have to look up a lot of documents and forms to find them." ”

They won't be left on the battlefield, will they? Taken prisoner by the Soviets? Maybe they'll be taken back to the hospital safely? Andre and Bruce are still lying in the rubble of the tank, will they be discovered? Wren's mind was in a mess, and it was clear that his current injuries didn't allow him to think about it like that.

"Can you do me a favor? help me find out where my crew is, I'm curious to see what happened to them. Wren had no choice but to stop thinking about it, and instead threw the tricky question directly to the female nurse. Since she was sent to take care of herself, it was absolutely a matter of course to use her properly.

"The survival rate of the armored corps is not high, Captain Wren. If you insist on looking up, I can help you submit your application, but don't get your hopes up too much, because the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. The female nurse whispered and smiled reluctantly.

Wren wanted to tell her that his tank didn't catch fire or explode, but he shook his head slightly and closed his eyes.