Arc of Gunfire

Wang Zhong played with the children for a while before reluctantly returning to the door of the manor's main building. Nellie was already waiting there.

Nellie saw Wang Zhong and looked at him first, then locked her eyes on his feet.

Wang Zhong looked down and found that there were a lot of mud spots on his trouser legs when he was playing with the children just now, so he explained: "Just now I played with those war orphans, and it was... this weather, right?"

The muddy season is almost over. As the temperature rises, the wetness of the soil has decreased significantly, but it has not yet dropped to the point where it will not dirty the trouser legs.

Nellie: "Why are you making excuses like a child? I didn't blame you?"

"Uh..." Wang Zhong held back for a few seconds and forced a change of subject, "How do your eyes feel? Do they still itch?"

Maybe the weather was too humid a few days ago, Nellie kept saying that her fake eyes were itchy, so it was reasonable for Wang Zhong to care about her.

Nellie: "It's not itchy anymore. Please change your clothes quickly so I can wash my pants."

"Okay." Wang Zhong nodded, "Where is Liu Xia?"

"In the nursery."

After Lyudmila came back, she stayed in the nursery every day. Even though the "little lion" in the Rokossov family was about to be weaned, she still insisted on breastfeeding.

It was as if she wanted to make up for the milk she had missed before.

Wang Zhong: "I'll go and see..."

"Wait a minute!" Nellie grabbed Wang Zhong's belt and said word by word, "Change your clothes first! Don't wear pants covered with mud into the nursery!"

Wang Zhong sighed: "Okay, change your clothes right away."

Suddenly, he felt a little emotional. When Nellie was not around, no one would control his daily life.

So he said to Nelly: "It's great, this familiar feeling. I miss you every day when you left."

Nelly was stunned, but this dull expression only lasted for a moment, and then turned into a fierce face like the big sister of Balalaika: "Go change your clothes, then take a shower, and you are not allowed to enter the nursery until you finish."

Wang Zhong: "Yes."

————

April 25, Yebao, Ante Supreme Command.

As soon as Wang Zhong entered the meeting room, he saw General Gorky and General Ivan Stepanovich chatting in a corner.

So he also leaned over and asked: "Is there any new news?"

The two generals were smoking, and when they saw Wang Zhong, who didn't smoke, coming over, they tacitly put out their cigarettes together and threw them into the trash can next to them.

General Gorky: "The latest aerial reconnaissance basically confirms your prediction of the summer campaign. The enemy is going to attack you, and they don't hide their intentions at all."

Ivan Stepanovich added: "Because it is too obvious, the command is wondering if they are conducting a deception operation."

General Gorky: "After all, the enemy has been deceived by you so many times, and it is very likely that they have learned something."

Wang Zhong: "But they have no other places to attack except the southern line. The central and northern lines are even more difficult to fight. Especially on the northern line, they have besieged St. Andrew's Castle for three years, but they still can't take it down, and they have been pushed back a lot."

General Gorky: "The swamp helped a lot."

Gorky spent some time organizing defensive operations on the St. Andrew's Castle Front in the first year of the war. Obviously, he has a good understanding of the jungle and swamp terrain in the north.

General Ivan Stepanovich: "As for the central part, we can give it a try, but the front line has been stable for so long. The enemy has solid permanent fortifications, and we have them too. In addition, there are a series of cities in the central part. It is hard to imagine that the enemy will continue to fight against the Abavakhan urban agglomeration after suffering so much loss last year."

Wang Zhong: "So only the steppes of Khazaria are left. The enemy may also think that such a conspiracy to deceive the enemy is meaningless, so they blatantly assembled troops. So how many people did they assemble?"

General Gorky: "The Intelligence Bureau of the Command interpreted the photos and believed that the enemy has added 300,000 troops to your front, concentrated on the vast plains on both wings of Oril."

Wang Zhong: "Is this preparing to give me a left hook? I wonder if the enemy's Marine Corps has any signs of landing from the sea?"

"No, maybe the enemy doesn't know that the United States' carrier-based aviation team has returned home." General Gorky shrugged.

Wang Zhong smiled: "That's because the guys from the United States left their planes behind. The Front Air Force would let these United States carrier-based aircraft go out for a walk from time to time, so the Plosson people thought they were still there."

The United States said that the pilots would go back to exchange for F4U and SB2C, so they left the F6F and SBD aircraft of the VF and VB squadrons. Then, although the TBF was a new torpedo aircraft, the United States, which was rich and powerful, didn't care about these dozens of aircraft, so they also left them.

So now the Ante pilots are flying these planes around the sea every day, scaring the Plosson ships to not dare to go out, and all of them are shrinking within the combat radius of the air force.

Of course, even if Plosson knew that the United States carrier-based aircraft pilots had returned home, organizing landing operations is a complicated matter, and it is definitely not something that can be completed in a few months.

During the Battle of Barras last year, the Ante Army faced the weak Barras Army and prepared for so long.

General Gorky: "It seems that you just need to do your best to block this left hook. It's easier than you think."

Wang Zhong: "Indeed. My troops have been repairing fortifications since March. Before I returned to Yebao, they had used thousands of tons of concrete. Now they will use more."

General Gorky laughed loudly: "The Prosin people probably didn't expect to encounter concrete fortifications on the grassland!"

Wang Zhong: "We also used steel bars, because many of our troops are originally engaged in engineering."

At this time, General Turgenev and a group of senior officers from the headquarters opened the door and came in.

When Wang Zhong and others heard the movement, they looked towards the door together, then turned around and walked towards their positions.

Others chatting around the room returned to their seats.

General Turgenev did not sit directly on the main seat, but asked the orderly to bring another chair and sit on the right side of the main seat. Then the Chief of General Staff, who had been recuperating at home because he was feeling unwell, also appeared. He added a temporary chair and sat across from Turgenev.

Soon, the voice of the palace protocol officer came from outside the door: "Tsar Olga Nikolayevna Antonovna has arrived!"

All the generals stood up together.

The door opened, and Olga walked in with dignified steps. She walked to the main seat and sat down: "Everyone, please take a seat!"

Wang Zhong then sat down.

Olga: "General Turgenev, please introduce the current situation to everyone."

Turgenev stood up: "Everyone, the war has entered its third year. In the first two years, we achieved brilliant victories. Last year we wiped out a total of 1.7 million Prosin troops, and captured 700,000 prisoners alone. , most of which are attributed to General Rokossov.”

Wang Zhong leaned forward slightly and nodded to everyone present.

Turgenev continued: "But it must also be noted that in the past year, 1.7 million of our soldiers were killed, 1.6 million were missing, and 1 million were injured and could no longer return to the army."

The so-called inability to return to the army due to injury means that due to injury and disability, it is impossible to fight again.

When Olga heard this data, her expression became extremely sad, but Turgenev kept a straight face, as if he was reading a series of simple numbers: "This data has been greatly improved compared to last year. We have effectively saved Because of this, the pressure on recruiting troops has been reduced drastically, and we can also give new recruits a longer training time.

"In addition, based on General Rokossov's suggestion after returning from his visit to the United States, we established a veteran rotation mechanism to transfer veterans who have been on the front line for four months to serve as instructors in recruit training camps in various places. He could only return to the front line after teaching for half a year.

"The effectiveness of this current mechanism still needs to be examined. Some troops on the front line have complained that the removal of combat backbones will affect combat effectiveness.

"We have also established a frontline rotation system. We hope that each unit will be on duty at the frontline for four months before returning to the rear to rest."

Wang Zhong was very happy to hear this number, because Ant's casualties were indeed much less than those on Earth. During the counterattack last year, he felt it. Ant's troops grew faster than Maozi, and the combat effectiveness of the troops with the title of Guards was very reliable.

Maybe the Patriotic War in this world can end early.

Turgenev took a sip of water, turned the pages of the document in his hand, and continued reading: "Our current total military strength has reached 13 million, of which two million are deployed in the Far East to prevent the Fuso Empire from sudden attacks.

"The remaining 11 million are basically deployed on the Eastern Front, of which 5.7 million are on the front line and 4.3 million are resting and training."

As he finished speaking, a map of the Eastern Front unfolded behind Turgenev under the power of a motor. He put down the document, picked up a map stick that looked like a knight's lance, and started drawing on the map.

"There are five fronts on the front from north to south, namely the St. Andrew's Front, Beliks Front, Western Front, Shepetovka Front and Rokosov's 1st Khazalia Front.

"Each of our front armies is stronger than the enemy forces we face, and after two years of fighting, our soldiers' quality has gradually equaled that of the enemy. Currently, we only have armored units, and there is still a relatively large gap in the quality of our soldiers between the two sides.

"This is because the enemy's armored forces rarely suffer devastating blows. Their tanks have a large space inside, and even if they are destroyed, half of their members can often survive. But our tank forces always suffer huge losses. Experienced Tank crews often die together with their tanks.”

Turgenev stopped and looked at Wang Zhong: "Only General Rokossov's tank unit has a higher survival rate of tank crews, but even Rokossov's unit was completely wiped out by the 51st Tank Army last year. Example.

"The good news is that with the efforts of General Rokossov, Chairman of the Equipment Committee, our deficiencies in military equipment are about to be resolved. Now we have completely stopped production of the defective T34 two-man turret type. Starting in February this year, the troops will receive The new tanks are all T34W models with three-man turrets.

"And the brand-new tanks will be put into use soon. I can predict that in 916, the situation between the enemy and ourselves will be fundamentally reversed, and our army will completely shift from the strategic defense stage to the strategic offensive stage!"

After the words fell, Olga took the lead in applauding, and the entire conference hall burst into applause.

Because Olga was looking at Wang Zhong while applauding, everyone turned to look at Wang Zhong.

Wang Zhong thought about it for a while, and then he simply stood up and saluted everyone.

Then the applause became even more enthusiastic, as if it was going to knock down the ceiling.