Chapter 1077: Dog

“Report, Comrade Marshal! The vanguard of the German F Army Group has just captured one of our positions, right here…” A Soviet major general, clutching his steel helmet, walked to the table beside Zhukov and Vatutin, pointed to a spot, and said, “We are mobilizing forces to counter-attack.”

“Counter-attack with infantry?” Zhukov frowned but did not immediately reject the suggestion. Vatutin had no choice but to give another bitter smile and answer, “Yes, with infantry. To be precise, it’s just plugging the gap with human lives… We have too few tanks available, so we can only use a large number of untrained infantry to delay the German offensive.”

In order to grind the battle to a stalemate, the Soviet guard units in the Moscow defense zone were losing nearly ten thousand soldiers every day. It was by relying on this method of fighting to the death that the troops here had held on until Zhukov’s forces arrived. It could be said that they were using their own lives to buy a chance for their motherland to survive.

Tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers had given their precious lives on one position after another. They would launch sneak attacks on the German positions at night, to retake the positions they had lost during the day, and then, in the daytime, they would be retaken by the German army, and at night, they would continue to fight for them… Every inch of land here was not easily won by the Germans, but its ownership was only finally decided after countless battles between the soldiers of both sides.

“Don’t counter-attack today,” Zhukov said after a moment’s thought. “Wait for three days. In three days, a batch of tank units will arrive here, and then we will launch another large-scale counter-attack to take back our land.”

“Tanks? Comrade Marshal Zhukov, with all due respect, the German positions are not so easy to retake. Even if you concentrate your tanks for a counter-attack, you will in the end, due to heavy losses, be driven back,” Vatutin said, his expression grave, as he tried to persuade him. “Based on our past experience, tanks and anti-tank artillery are more effective in an ambush in a defensive role.”

Zhukov knew that he had been too emotional. He did not dare to use his elite tank units in this kind of hopeless counter-attack again. After all, he had tried it once at Kursk, and at that time, the cards in his hand, and his chances, had been much better than now.

And yet, at that time, his southward-advancing group, with its hundreds of thousands of crack troops, had just run into one of the German army groups in the southern theater and had been completely stopped in the wilderness of Kursk. The entire Caucasus region, which he had originally intended to retake, had become a distant and unrealistic dream.

“But now, what else can we do?” Zhukov felt a wave of exhaustion. He really wanted to find a chair and sit down, because he felt that the endless strength he had had in the past was now draining away. The development and improvement of the German army had made it impossible for him to see any hope of victory. And to maintain a war that was destined to be lost was the most exhausting thing for a general. Because in this situation, it was not the body of these generals that was being tormented, but the spirit.

“We are developing some new anti-tank methods, for example, something similar to the German Panzerfaust anti-tank rocket launcher. And also large-caliber rockets that can be fired directly from the ground,” Vatutin said, as if he had seen Zhukov’s sense of powerlessness. He spoke to console him. In fact, he had also felt this kind of debilitating feeling. He knew, as a commander on the battlefield, that feeling of powerlessness and distress, to be able to only struggle in vain, and to be unable to lead his troops to victory.

Speaking of which, his eyes lit up, and he forced a smile. He said to Zhukov, “We are also training hounds, to have these clever little fellows send bombs under the German tanks. They are very smart. A simple adaptation can give these military dogs the ability to carry out their mission. We have already put this superweapon into actual combat, and the response has been quite good.”

On the Soviet defenders’ position, a dozen or so hounds were, at this moment, at the pull of their masters, squatting in the trenches, preparing to carry out their last glorious mission. As these companions, who had grown up with the Soviet people, there was no doubt about the affection between them and the humans.

But in this war where even human lives were no longer valuable, at this moment where people could die a wretched death at any time, their hound friends also had to give their own lives for this sacred war. A group of female soldiers, without a word, knelt on the ground, and tied the backpacks, which they had sewn and which were now filled with explosives, onto the backs of these hounds.

“Bernard! Bernard! Don’t move! Don’t move!” a young soldier, who was holding a hound’s leash, said, stroking the neck of this very strong hound, while at the same time comforting his somewhat agitated beloved dog. He gently groomed his companion’s fur. After saying just a few words, his voice choked, and tears streamed down his cheeks and fell to the ground.

With a heavy pack on its back, which did not belong to it, this hound, named Bernard, shook its head anxiously. It then quieted down and licked the back of its master’s hand with its tongue. It knew that it was about to complete a mission—to drill under a very large-looking thing.

As long as it drilled under and stayed in its position, its master would feed it with delicious food when it returned. This was the only thing Bernard remembered in his mind. The experts who had tried every means to make him learn these actions called this a conditioned reflex.

“Is the first anti-tank squad ready?” a Soviet officer walked over from one side of the trench and asked these special soldiers who were preparing to go into battle. He knew that the hounds that were being held on their leashes would not answer his question, so he put his gaze on the people who were holding the dogs.

“Sir… I can’t bear to part with my companion,” a female soldier who was holding a dog replied to her superior, crying. But the officer could only look at the person who was speaking, and then walk to the next soldier.

These dogs were the only anti-tank weapon he had. To train these dogs had even wasted the fresh meat that had been rationed for a long time. Although he would have preferred a few 76mm anti-tank guns, his superiors had only given him these dozen or so dogs to deal with the German tanks.

The counter-attack was about to begin. The position that the Germans had taken, no matter what, could not be given up. So a thousand Soviet soldiers were fixing the bayonets to their rifles, and all the weapons they had in their hands that could be used against the enemy’s tanks had to be brought out to cover this crazy counter-charge.

“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want to pin the lives of a thousand soldiers on your dogs either,” this Soviet officer replied helplessly to this question. But as he replied, he had his back to the female soldier who had asked the question.

In the distant, gunfire began to grow dense. With a shout from a soldier not far away, swarms of Soviet soldiers jumped out of the trenches. They held their weapons, shouted the slogan “Long live the great leader, Comrade Stalin,” and began to walk, step by step, towards the German position.

“Comrades! The time to test us has come! Follow me!” this Soviet officer shouted, drawing the revolver from his waist and waving his arm. The female soldiers behind him, and the men nearby, just like them, raised their weapons, shouted, and stood up from their shelters.

And behind them, a dozen or so special soldiers, leading their dogs, were protected by some tall soldiers and were walking slowly towards the distant German positions. They saw the flags flying on their flanks, saw the faces that were just as young as their own.

Suddenly, a soldier fell backward, his body hitting the ground like a sandbag. The people who passed by went around him. The people who passed behind could see the hole in the fallen soldier’s forehead, and the blood that was constantly flowing from the back of his head. Of course, what every soldier who passed could not forget were the blue eyes that were unwilling to close.

“German assault gun!” a Soviet soldier, not far away, knelt on one knee, one hand on his rifle, and the other pointing at the distance, loudly reminding his comrades. From time to time, bullets flew past him, and it looked very dangerous. At his kneeling feet, two Soviet machine gunners were firing fiercely with their machine guns, covering their friendly forces as they charged the German positions.

“Left flank! German armored target! Where is the anti-tank team? Where is the anti-tank team? Get up here, attack! Attack!” this Soviet officer shouted, paying no attention to the bullets that were flying past him, as he yelled at the so-called Soviet anti-tank team in the distance.

It was clear that the battlefield, which was filled with flying bullets, had made these pets, which were usually in their homes, a little panicked. These hounds, with their bombs, were somewhat hesitant, shaking their bodies, and looking back at their masters. They didn’t understand why this seemingly ordinary game, and its reward, had suddenly become so dangerous and terrible.

“Bernard! Do you remember the training we did?” the young master said, kneeling on the ground. He had unfastened the collar from his beloved dog’s neck for the last time. He patted his beloved dog on the head, his hand stroking its ears and neck. When his palm touched the bomb on its back, he trembled, but in the end, he pulled the safety ring on it, and then pointed in the direction in front of them. “Go! Bernard!”

And so this large, black dog, like a black bolt of lightning, began to weave through the crowd of the attacking Soviet troops. It ran forward with all its might, its sharp eyes searching in the chaotic environment for that large, familiar thing. In just an instant, it had charged out of the crowd of Soviet troops and into the no-man’s-land between the two armies, which was filled with flying bullets.

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