Chapter 1080: Northward Grind

On both sides of a narrow road in the Russian countryside were embankments and drainage ditches. This area was overgrown with knee-high weeds, yet it didn’t feel desolate. After all, the scenery was the same in every direction, stretching all the way to a small town two hundred meters away. The town was as quiet as if it were asleep, as if not a single person was left inside.

In the drainage ditches on both sides, pair after pair of bright eyes stared at this quiet town. A dense mass of German Wehrmacht M35 steel helmets bobbed slightly with the soldiers’ movements, a rather spectacular sight. These German soldiers kept their bodies low, cautiously approaching the town.

With a wave of a German officer’s arm, a dozen or so soldiers at the front, carrying their weapons, leaped out of the drainage ditch and charged towards a low courtyard wall at the town’s entrance. They moved quickly and laterally, terrified of becoming a target for a machine gun or a sniper. In just a short moment, these soldiers had reached their designated position, gasping for breath behind the low wall.

Watching their comrades who were still in the drainage ditch behind them, the soldiers who were already leaning against the low wall began to move around to the sides. They looked for positions to cover their comrades, and then aimed their dark muzzles at the more suspicious-looking places. And behind them, another dozen or so soldiers charged out of the ditch, cautiously rushing towards the road into the town.

Some of the Germans leaned against the walls or the corners of the buildings, then raised their guns to look for any possible enemy targets. They advanced with alternating cover, trying to keep most of their men in a safe, covered state. This was a habit of the battlefield, and also a an experience of survival.

“Flanks! Flanks!” a German officer shouted in a low voice from a distance, reminding his men. More Germans poured out of the messy drainage ditch and ran quickly towards the small town, not knowing if there were any Soviets stationed there. A battle was just this strange. Before the first gunshot rang out, no one knew when this battle would erupt.

“Rat-tat! Rat-tat!” From beside a chimney on the roof of a house in the small town, a Maxim heavy machine gun suddenly began to roar. The bullets swept into the crowd of charging German soldiers, and in an instant, several of them fell to the ground. The other German soldiers quickly hit the dirt. In a flash, whether they had been hit by a bullet or had quickly dived for cover, no one was left standing on the road.

“Soviets! Covering fire!” With the sound of the Soviet garrison’s gunfire, a voice also shouted loudly from the German side. A German machine gun, which had been hiding in the tall grass in the distance, also began to fire fiercely. A dense hail of bullets struck the chimney and the tiles on the roof, sending up a cloud of white smoke.

“Get up! Keep moving! Don’t stop! You’ll become targets!” a German platoon leader, holding his own weapon, was the first to struggle up from the ground. He waved his arm, signaling the surrounding soldiers to follow him and charge into the town.

The bullets danced at his feet, kicking up debris and dirt from the ground. But he seemed not to have noticed, simply pulling the prone soldiers up from the ground and signaling them to quickly move towards the low wall. “Move! Quick!”

At his urging, these soldiers began to pull themselves together. Braving the dense rain of Soviet bullets, they ran to their chosen cover. The Germans who had been the first to enter the small town were also pinned down by the Soviet fire, but they still, gritting their teeth, desperately returned fire in all directions.

A German soldier, leaning against a corner, fired a shot. As he pulled back to work the bolt, he was hit in the neck by a bullet that had come from who-knows-where on his flank. He clutched his neck, from which blood was gushing, and then slowly sat down on the ground, and finally, leaning against the wall, he stopped breathing. And not far behind him, his comrade was still firing in another direction, not even noticing that his companion had been killed.

“Sniper! There’s a sniper!” Not far from this corner, another squad of German soldiers had seen this terrifying scene. A German soldier who was lying prone on the ground shouted, and behind him, another German, holding his own rifle, began to search for that one enemy who was hidden behind one of the countless windows.

The German machine gun team had finally chosen a concealed position inside the small town. They had set up the MG43, an improved version of the MG42, which they held, by a protruding wooden shed. This machine gun used a simpler production process and was even more perfect than the MG42.

The assistant gunner fed the ammunition belt, which had been wrapped around his neck, into the gun. The gunner, at almost the same time, began his suppressive fire. He fired fiercely. The ammunition belt was pulled into the gun as it fired, and the rest of the belt danced, giving it a rhythmic feel.

The tracer rounds struck the thick wall, leaving a dense row of bullet holes. Then these bullet holes extended to the side of the window, tearing the curtains and the window frame to shreds. A Mosin-Nagant rifle had just poked out from there. At least, just now, the owner of this rifle should have still been near the window.

On the chimney of the tall building at the entrance to the town, the dense German bullets had already turned that place into a sieve. The powerful firepower had forced this Soviet machine gun nest to have to move its position. And more Germans, under the cover of this fire, began to charge into the small town. The Germans who were near the low wall at the entrance to the town also began to organize their forces, to infiltrate the two flanks of the small town.

The German platoon leader, who had just been at the entrance to the town, organizing his soldiers to attack, was at this very moment, already behind the low wall. He held up his left hand, put two fingers to his eyes, and then pointed with these two fingers to his right. A squad leader squinted his eyes, nodded, and then led his men over the bushes and into a respectable-looking courtyard in the small town.

These German soldiers passed quickly through the courtyard, and then set up their own defensive positions on the other side. This squad’s machine gun stopped by a large tree, and then, using this tree as a simple cover, they set up their machine gun. Unlike the machine gun team from just now, they were still using the old MG42. It was clear that the newer MG43 was still a new thing and could not be used to re-equip all the frontline troops at once.

They aimed their sights down a wide, long street. Because this was a road that the defending Soviet troops on the main front would have to pass through when they retreated. They would be driven out of the houses in front by the Germans, and then they would have to pass through here to be able to retreat to some other buildings. It was obvious that more andE Germans were already charging into the small town, and the Soviet retreat was already a certainty.

And on the other side of the small town, next to the body of the German soldier who had been killed, shot in the neck, the German soldier who had been firing in another direction had also finally been hit by the hidden Soviet sniper. He twisted his body and fell to the ground, struggled to get up, but in the end, he fell down again. He had not been killed instantly, but was breathing in short, sharp gasps, but surprisingly, he was not shouting or crying.

While the soldiers of both sides were fiercely fighting for the first line of frontal buildings, and were refusing to retreat a single step, in the wheat field on one side of the road in front of the small town, a German King Tiger tank slowly crossed a ditch and drove onto the roadbed. And on its flank, another King Tiger tank was also climbing the slope at a slow speed, hoping to be able to safely climb onto the roadbed.

At the same time, the turrets of these two King Tiger tanks were slowly turning, aiming their dark 88mm cannons in the direction of the small town. Although the German army had already successfully developed the 105mm King Tiger, there was still a huge number of them at the front. For a time, most of the King Tiger tanks were still the 88mm-gun model.

BOOM! With a roar from the cannon, the German King Tiger’s cannon spewed a cloud of thick smoke. A shell flew directly into the wall of that tallest frontal building, easily blowing a huge hole in it. The dust and smoke filled the air, and the Soviet firepower also weakened a great deal.

“It’s the 1st Panzer Corps’ tanks! Hey! Look at those tanks!” a German soldier, who was leaning behind a shelter, his face covered in grime from the Soviet fire, shouted, waving his arm in the direction of his comrades. As he shouted, a second shell also struck that building, causing one of its outer walls to quickly collapse.

The two tanks almost completely blocked the road into the small town. Their thick armor provided good protection for their hull machine guns. These two King Tigers, one after the other, advanced in the direction of the small town, and a large number of German infantry, accompanying them on both sides, rushed into the small town along the drainage ditches.

When the tanks fired again, a building on the flank also had a stroke of bad luck. Several of the Soviet gunmen were directly engulfed in the artillery fire in the building where they were hiding. The huge explosion caused this building to half-collapse. The German army took the opportunity to attack the courtyard in front of this building, finishing off the three Soviet soldiers in a foxhole in the courtyard.

“Attack! Attack! Have the 1st Company’s soldiers enter the small town from the left and try to find the sniper’s position!” As the commander of this infantry battalion, the German officer leaned against the wall of a collapsed building and began to give orders to his men, who had steadied their positions, to continue the attack. “2nd Company, follow the tanks. Cover them so they are not attacked from behind by the Soviets. 3rd Company’s soldiers, you are in charge of searching the buildings that have already been captured. I need to eliminate all risks!”

“Yes, sir!” “Yes, sir!” The signals soldiers of each company nodded, and then ran quickly in the direction of their respective companies.

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