Chapter 1063: Everyone is Burning Things

The portrait hanging in the center of the wall was spotless. No matter where Zhukov set up his headquarters, dedicated personnel were assigned to wipe this important spiritual totem daily. Stalin’s grip on the Soviet Union was, in fact, terrifying. This was something that no one who hadn’t personally experienced the Great Purge could truly comprehend.

Zhukov glanced at the portrait on the wall, then strode out of the command room. The car waiting at the door was already running. He settled into his seat and quietly closed his eyes. He hadn’t rested properly in a long time. Now, finally, he could catch some sleep on the road.

The German G Army Group’s offensive had shattered the entire front. Telegrams begging for help and routed troops needing support were everywhere. Countless documents had to be processed, and supplies were in chaos due to the rout. The sheer number of tasks to manage for hundreds of thousands of disorganized troops was unimaginable. Yet, with astonishing perseverance, Zhukov had managed all these trivial matters with great precision, preventing the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops, already facing catastrophe, from descending into command chaos.

But this still couldn’t change the fact that the Germans had broken the Soviet front. The fastest German units had already extended their vanguard’s tentacles behind the main Soviet force, which had begun its slow retreat half a month prior. These rapidly advancing units were on the verge of catching them. For the Soviet main force, desperate to get north, this was the most fatal problem. The reason Zhukov had left his command post in such a hurry was to personally get to the 1st Guards Front and take direct command of Konev’s and Vasilevsky’s troops, to get them to close on Moscow’s position with all possible speed.

His car began to rock slowly. Far behind him, in the command post he was leaving, the remaining Soviet officers had begun to hastily pack up the headquarters. Documents concerning frontline units were tossed into a brazier and burned. For an army on the verge of a total rout, many of these files were now useless.

Many units that existed on paper were already trapped in heavy German encirclements. Some had already been annihilated, their records not yet destroyed. Under the Germans’ rapid advance and pincer movements, far too many established Soviet units had been completely wiped out, with no time to retreat. Their notes, archives, and even their supply requisition records were all on file in Zhukov’s headquarters. But now, these things were useless. No one was ever going to audit where those supplies had truly gone.

In a rout of this scale, it was impossible to account for a single lost man or rifle. Sometimes, hundreds of men and thousands of rifles would disappear, and there was no way to verify what had happened. An entire company might have been annihilated; a thousand men might have surrendered in a single battle. All their weapons, ammunition, and food would vanish without a trace.

The Germans, of course, would have records of what they’d captured. But Zhukov had no way of asking the German logistics department for their data to confirm whether his troops had scattered during the retreat or had simply surrendered. So the pre-war data he had on hand was now almost useless. Even knowing the importance of these files, they still, as per custom, burned them.

Box after box of documents was loaded onto trucks. Safes, various personal campaign items, and even the enormous portrait of the Soviet leader, Comrade Stalin, had to be packed and transported. A soldier rushing past bumped a table. A glass fell to the floor and shattered, but no one paid it any mind. The large, empty cabinets had all been cleared out. The last soldier to enter casually shoved a cabinet over. It hit the floor with a heavy thud, sending dust and the ashes of burned documents scattering everywhere.

By this time, the main German force had already begun its attack on Medvenka, very close to Kursk. However, the force closest to Kursk was not this main offensive, but another German unit advancing north along the Seym River. They had encountered no significant resistance along the way, pushing all the way to the key town of Polevaya, southeast of Kursk, before finally being halted by the Soviet rearguard. The Germans were held at bay in the suburbs, unable to break into the city itself.

This was partly because, as they neared the Kursk core defense zone, the Soviet troops had gradually found their counter-punching rhythm, fighting back desperately from their fortifications in an attempt to halt the German advance. On the other hand, the German offensive, after several days at high speed, had lost some of its initial sharpness. Most of the infantry had reached their limit, with only a few armored units still dragging the flanks forward.

And so, Zhukov left his command post, joining a northbound convoy to flee. He had not chosen to fight to the death with his rearguard, because he had decided from the very beginning that he had to return to Moscow to see Stalin and persuade him to end this war.

Zhukov hoped he could persuade Stalin to sign an armistice with the Germans, to preserve the last drop of the Soviet Union’s blood. As a frontline commander, he could see that the current situation was disastrous. The Soviet Union had, at the very least, lost all chance of defeating Germany. If they wanted to retain any dignity, they had to end the war rationally.

But he knew that persuading Stalin would not be easy. After all, if this war ended in a Soviet defeat, Stalin would absolutely be toppled from his seat of power for his loss of prestige. Yet, Zhukov now had no way to help Stalin reverse this destined catastrophe.

The Battle of Moscow, it seemed, would still have to be fought. At this thought, Zhukov closed his eyes and sighed. Even in his dreams, he could feel the immense pressure of reality. Not far behind him, on the front line, Soviet soldiers were bleeding, sacrificing, and dying in the rout. But he… he could only run, flee like a coward.

Sometimes, reality is just that unfair. While Zhukov was feeling dejected about his own wretched escape, Takemoto Tarō was despairing because he couldn’t escape. The port area he was now defending had become the last line of defense. The American troops opposite him were pouring a dense hail of bullets onto the positions around him.

“Baka! Can’t these Americans rest for a minute?” He huddled as low as he could, clutching his weapon, cursing in the trench at the American bastards opposite him, who seemed to never have to worry about running out of bullets. Squatting in the trench with him was Kimura, whom he had met not long ago. He, too, was holding his helmet and squinting, keeping his body as low as possible, hoping no shrapnel would threaten his life.

“Bakayaro!” Not far away, a Japanese soldier finally couldn’t take the American pounding anymore. He leaped out of the shelter where he was hiding, his rifle with a fixed bayonet, looking as if he wanted to fight the Americans to the death. Unfortunately, he had just leaped out of his shelter when he was cut to pieces by a hail of bullets. This unlucky fellow instantly fell back into his own trench, a mangled corpse.

Major General Ishida stood in a shelter, wiping his officer’s sword with a white silk cloth. His face was expressionless as he peered through a gap in the shelter’s edge at the high ground in the distance, where an American flag was now planted. That had originally been his command post, but it was now a trophy of the U.S. Marines. Ishida didn’t linger on it. He looked for only a moment, then withdrew his gaze. He then looked at his chief of staff, who was beside him. The other man was no longer able to speak to him.

The chief of staff had just ended his own life with his officer’s sword. At this moment, he was kneeling on the ground, his body curled up, his eyes wide with unwillingness. The hilt of the sword was in his chest, but the tip had emerged from his lower back, pointing brightly at the sky.

Looking at this corpse, Ishida saw himself in a little while. His hand trembled slightly, but he still, with a sense of sanctity, swung the sword in his hand twice. This was his nation’s glorious tradition. The Emperor’s samurai could, through this ritual, ensure that their souls would return to their homeland, to rest in heaven. Of course, this ritual had different procedures in the East and West, and in different regions. Some fasted, some made confessions. This kind of belly-cutting, which required a second to deliver a final blow from behind before one could ascend, seemed to be unique to this one place.

Over 18,000 Japanese soldiers on this small island had fought the Americans to the death for eight days, and had been completely shattered into this state. After the Americans had captured the airfield, supplies had been pressed onto the island more quickly and in greater numbers. All of the Japanese army’s counter-attack efforts had been in vain. Up to now, Ishida had not even been able to meet the bottom-line requirement of his superiors to hold out for one month.

In a crater outside this shelter, several Japanese officers were burning their regimental flags and some documents. Some were watching the burning flames, tears streaming down their faces. They had come to this place, thousands of miles from their homes. The result was that they had not been able to witness the rise of their country, but could only gloomily experience their own personal disaster. On the sea in the distance, an approaching American destroyer could already be seen. The naval guns on it were firing from time to time, and the sound of the great guns could be heard clearly even here.

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com