Travel through the Qing Dynasty and become emperor

Chapter 1259
"The wailing of the wounded is even more unacceptable, it is simply not a human voice," a Chinese military officer recorded his feelings in his diary. "It was the muffled cry of a wounded beast."

In such an environment, homesickness is even stronger. "Home is so far away and so beautiful!" wrote one wistfully. "It's only now that we truly appreciate how good home is."

On the other hand, the guardians of the city are soberly aware that homesickness is a luxury they cannot afford. "Hello, my dear Palina!" an unnamed soldier wrote to his wife on May 5. "I'm fine, no one knows what will happen. But we will live, We will meet again. The war is hard. You can tell from the news what is happening at the front. The mission of each soldier is very simple: destroy as many enemies as possible, and then drive them back to the east. I miss you very much, but thousands of miles Apart, what can we do?"

The brutal street fighting continued and became increasingly brutal.

"Our army occupies one house, and the enemy occupies another," a battalion commander of a major from China's [-]st Armored Division wrote down the question in his notebook as soon as he arrived in Stalingrad. What kind of role can heavy artillery play?"

It wasn't long before he found the answer.At Zhukov's insistence, the artillery of the Red Army was concentrated in the far-reaching area on the east bank of the Grand Canal. Their purpose was not to bombard the forward positions of the Dragon Army, but to destroy the enemy's communication lines and severely damage the enemy units that were gathering to launch an attack.In order to achieve this goal, a large number of Soviet artillery observers were concealed like snipers on the top floors of abandoned buildings.The Chinese are also very aware of the dangers these people may bring, and regard them as the priority targets of the Dragon Army snipers and anti-tank guns.

As soon as those observation posts noticed that a Dragon Army unit was beginning to build up, the target spotters reported by radio or field phone to the artillery on the east bank.The intensity of the shelling at this time was simply devastating.

"On the other side of the river," someone described, "it seemed that the whole universe trembled with the roar of heavy artillery, and the earth shook."

During the fighting, both sides soon discovered that the most important infantry weapons at Stalingrad were submachine guns, grenades, and sniper rifles.In the Soviet-Finnish War, the Finnish ski troops, who were able to shoot in motion, often caused disastrous losses to the Soviet army.After the war, the Red Army also adopted similar tactics and formed an 8-man submachine gun squad, which could be carried directly into battle by T-34.At Stalingrad, squads of this size proved ideal for close quarters street fighting.Grenades are essential when clearing houses and bunkers.Soviet soldiers called it "cannon in the pocket." In addition, grenades are also very effective in defensive operations.Zhukov ordered the troops to dig holes in the walls of each trench to store grenades so that soldiers can easily access them during wartime.Of course, the lives of untrained fighters are often in danger.A fresh recruit made a mistake and a grenade exploded, killing the company's second-in-command and seriously wounding several others.Others were killed trying to load captured Chinese fuzes into their own grenades, most of which were soldiers from Eastern Europe.

The head of the political department reported to the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front that "more weapons training is urgently needed." For these, the Dragon Army has long been prepared.Their storm commandos successfully inherited the essence of urban street fighting in World War I and the early days of World War II, and their tactics were more efficient.

Another weapon that is extremely dangerous to both the user and the target is the flamethrower.It's horribly effective at clearing sewer pipes, basements, and inaccessible hiding places.The author himself knows that if the enemy finds him, he will be the first target to eat bullets.

Red Army soldiers like to set up some small traps to lure and kill Chinese people. New trap designs emerge in endlessly, and each one seems to be more creative than the previous one, and the killing effect is better.Captain Ilgashkin, a battalion commander, was particularly angry at his inability to fight back Lanxiang's bombing.So he and a soldier, Private Ripa, built their own little flak.They first fixed an anti-tank gun on the spokes of the wheel, drove stakes into the ground, and buckled the wheels on the stakes.Ilgashkin made complex calculations based on the muzzle velocity of the gun and the estimated speed of the enemy plane when it dived.In any case, their careful design still achieved some results, relying on this they got rid of three Lanxiang fighters.

The real anti-aircraft artillerymen are also perfecting their tactics. Lan Xiang enters the altitude of about 5000 feet, and then dives in a half-roll motion, when the air horn carried on the plane starts to scream.The anti-aircraft artillery conducted barrage blocking shots at the two points where Lanxiang entered the dive and changed the dive angle in order to shoot it down.

Another tactic was pioneered by Kurlatsevsky, who soon became the most famous sniper among the various units in Leningrad.Kurlatsevsky took the scope off the sniper rifle and attached it to the anti-tank gun so that he could drive the anti-tank bullet directly into the embrasure of the enemy's machine gun stronghold and take it away in one fell swoop.But Kurlatsevsky soon discovered that mass-produced bullets had an unstable charge, which was not conducive to accurate shooting.You can also be famous with conventional weapons.Bezdiko was the ace mortarer of Bachuko's division, capable of firing six shells into the air at once.The purpose of publicizing these deeds is to make every Red Army soldier worship these top shooters.The slogan of the Soviet garrison is: "Take care of your weapons like you take care of your eyes."

In the Battle of Stalingrad, the center of Zhukov's strategy was the support points made up of strengthened buildings. The soldiers guarding these support points even included some female health workers and female signal soldiers.Sometimes they lose contact with the rear for several days, and supplies are extremely scarce.They had to endure dust, smoke, hunger and, most of all, thirst.The entire city has been without fresh running water since an airstrike destroyed the pumping station last month.The sewage was, of course, undrinkable, and the desperate soldiers had to shoot through the water pipes to see if they could suck out a few drops of water.

At the same time, delivering food to forward positions has always been a problem. A certain anti-tank unit had a Tatar chef from Kazan. He filled a large military thermos with tea or hot soup, tied it to his back, and crawled to the enemy's fire. Frontline positions under control.If the thermos was hit by shell fragments or bullets, the hapless cook would get soaked.Later, the frost became more and more severe, and the tea soup was frozen. "When he came back, his whole body was covered with icicles."

The fronts of the two sides were so intertwined that it was difficult to draw a clear line, and the defense depth of many areas was only a few hundred yards.In this case, the command post is almost as easy to destroy as the forward position.

"It is common for shells to explode above our headquarters," Colonel Dimorfi Naumovich Vishnevsky, commander of the artillery division of the 62nd Army, wrote to a friend in the hospital. It’s all submachine guns, and sometimes it feels like we’re surrounded by Chinese people.” A Dragon Army tank drove directly to the exit of his bunker, “the only exit was blocked by the vehicle body. I and other officers had to dig holes and escape to the In a gully far away, the colonel was badly wounded. My face is all ruined, and now I'm done with women."

Sunday, June 6.The dragon army launched an attack again.This time, their main direction came from the industrial area stretching five miles north of the Kirov Arsenal, including the Kirov Arsenal, the Lazul Chemical Factory, the Red October Metal Factory, the Barricade Weapons Factory, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory.The main defensive measures of the Soviet army were to build anti-tank barriers and lay dense minefields in front of the factory area.

At 6 o'clock in the morning, Lan Xiang's concentrated bombing opened the curtain of the Dragon Army's offensive.One by one Lan Xiang broke away from the formation, screaming and dived rapidly to drop bombs. The autumn morning light cast a black murderous look on its seagull-like fuselage.On the ground, a total of two armored divisions and five infantry divisions of the dragon army attempted to smash the triangular protrusion extending westward from the bank of the Grand Canal in one fell swoop.

After the bombing began, the "Land Warriors" carried heavy supplies and assembled along the undulating hills with gravel on the slopes to the starting line of the attack.They were panting under the weight, their mouths parched from the battle they were about to plunge into.On the left, part of the 72nd Infantry Division advanced towards the barricade factory workers' housing estate, and one man saw "the white residential quarters are well-proportioned, and the tin roofs of the small houses undulate like waves, glistening in the sun." Air strikes for a while Let these houses be set on fire.In the middle of the front, the 24th Armored Division attacked from a small airfield.The 100th Rifle Division attacked the Red October workers' housing estates.In the lower part of this front, the resistance of the 95th Infantry Division was shattered by air and artillery bombardment and returned to the Chinese.

Once again the Red Army showed ruthlessness towards its own civilians.During the battle for a barricade workers' housing estate, a sergeant of the 389th Infantry Division saw "some Russian women rushing out of their houses with packages in an attempt to escape the fire of the dragon army, but were shot by Soviet machine guns behind them." Knocked down."

Tuesday, June 6.The Dragon Army began to attack the apex of the triangle-shaped area controlled by the Soviet Army.The village of Orlovka was attacked from two directions, part of the 4th Infantry Division to the west and the 389th Motorized Rifle Division to the northeast. The Soviet army was at a numerical disadvantage.Yet they resisted desperately.As a corporal of the 60th Infantry Division described in a letter home: "You can't imagine how they defended Stalingrad like dogs guarding their own gates."

(End of this chapter)