Chapter 460: Highway

Boom! The cannon on the tank’s turret roared once again. Painted in a rather ugly spring camouflage pattern, the numbers on this German Tiger tank’s turret were almost illegible. But if one were to get close and look carefully, they could still make out the number 113.

This tank had once belonged to the number one tank ace of the German army. The number of enemy tanks it had destroyed was enough to equip a reinforced tank battalion. And the commander of this tank was a ruthless killing machine. At this very moment, he was raising his binoculars to confirm his gunner’s kill.

“Around 910 meters! One KV-1 heavy tank! Hit! Target completely destroyed!” he shouted. “Armor-piercing, load. Alice… watch out for the infantry to the front! They are firing at me!”

As he was directing the tank to continue firing, a bullet struck the hatch behind him, sending up a shower of sparks. The Soviet forces to their front were firing in his direction, and some Soviet soldiers were raising their rifles to take aim.

“I’m reloading! One moment!” Alice said, feeding an ammunition belt into the chamber. With a clatter, she worked the bolt and re-aimed at the Soviet infantry in front. “Alright! Leave the front to me!” As she spoke, she squeezed the trigger, and a hail of bullets sprayed out, cutting down the Soviet infantrymen over two hundred meters away.

Alice then began to traverse the machine gun, and the dense fire from the MG42 swept across in a fan shape. The dozens of Soviet soldiers within this arc were all knocked to the ground, and the enemy’s fire was instantly suppressed.

Rein poked his head out to continue observing the movements of the distant Soviet army. The flanking maneuver of the Red Army had clearly failed. On three sides, about 20 Soviet tanks were burning and smoking, disabled by the edge of the woods and on the highway. Not a single Soviet tank had managed to cross the road. Of course, the Soviet infantry had indeed crossed the road, but they were pinned down by the machine guns of several tanks and had already lost nearly 200 men.

This small asphalt road, which the Germans called Highway 9, had become a graveyard for Soviet tanks. The wrecks of these Soviet tanks, smoking and burning, made the place look no different from hell. If you added the bodies of the Red Army infantrymen lying on the ground, the Soviet army had already paid a heavy price to advance just two kilometers.

“Marcus! Pop smoke! The flanks will withdraw first. Baumann! Keep reversing, and turn after we disengage! 115 and 114, you go first,” Rein commanded, estimating the time as he directed the battle. He felt that, with the experience of the last engagement, the Soviet artillery would likely arrive earlier this time, so he decisively gave the order to retreat.

Marcus wasn’t joking this time. The smoke dischargers on his tank immediately spewed thick white smoke, engulfing his tank in just over ten seconds. The several German tanks once again began their withdrawal. After two consecutive ambushes, his company had racked up a kill count of about 45 enemy tanks.

Boom! Sure enough, not long after their tanks had begun to withdraw, the first shell from the Soviet artillery landed on the original German tank positions, only a few dozen meters from the last tank to begin its retreat, number 111. However, the Soviet artillery apparently did not conduct a creeping barrage; the shells landed densely around the German ambush position.

“Rein! Your instincts are getting really sharp,” the commander of tank 114 couldn’t help but exclaim as he watched the enemy shells landing one after another a hundred meters behind them. “I’m more and more impressed with you.”

“That’s why I gave up being a company commander to be his subordinate,” Marcus chuckled, as if the praise were for him.

“Baumann. Check the remaining fuel,” Rein said suddenly in the shaking tank, ignoring the jokes and flattery.

“Half a tank left,” the driver, Baumann, quickly replied.

“All units, turn around. We’re going back in!” Rein said with a smile, pressing his throat microphone. “See that small patch of woods? We’ll rest there for fifteen minutes, top off the tanks with the spare fuel drums, and then launch a counter-attack.”

“I knew it! It’s always exciting with you!” Marcus laughed loudly, as if he couldn’t get enough of the action. “Counter-attack! Counter-attack! Let’s get those son-of-a-bitch Soviets!”

Soon, with the roar of their engines, the five German Tiger tanks turned back the way they had come and, near the highway, ran straight into the remnants of the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Regiment, which had stopped to rest.

When the exhausted and weary Soviet soldiers watched in horror as the five German tanks crashed through fences and low walls, charged out of the rice paddies, and stormed into the resting place of the Soviet tank unit, they finally understood just how naive they were in the eyes of the German tankers.

Having sent out no scouts or reconnaissance patrols, the Soviet attacking force had never imagined that the German tanks would return. Most of the Soviet tankers had left their vehicles and were relieving themselves or cooking. This unit had not even assigned a single tank for guard duty. Everyone, including the regimental commander, was completely unprepared.

And so, a slaughter by the German tanks began. By the time Raine received the call on the radio ordering him to withdraw and hand over the front to the reinforced German grenadiers, he and his five tanks had already fought their way back to the highway, destroying 29 Soviet tanks.

In this battle, which came to be known as the Battle of Highway 9, five German Tiger tanks, using the most classic tactical arrangements, destroyed 74 tanks of the attacking Soviet force. On average, each tank in the 1st Teaching Company had destroyed nearly 15 enemy tanks.

In this battle, the German panzer unit first set an ambush in the woods. After successfully ambushing the Soviet armored force, they quickly withdrew and set up another ambush near Highway 9. The Soviet Red Army, due to their lack of battlefield experience, once again blundered into the German ambush and suffered heavy losses.

Subsequently, Rein decisively withdrew, then unexpectedly led his mere five Tiger tanks in a daring counter-attack. The Soviet force, which had assumed the Germans had withdrawn to set up yet another ambush, was caught completely off guard and was repulsed by a German panzer unit that had been at a numerical disadvantage throughout the engagement. Not only did they suffer heavy losses, but they also ceded the highway and the surrounding area they had just captured.

From this battle, it was clear that, although both were elite units, the experience gap between the 502nd Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion and the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Regiment was enormous. Although the Soviet unit did not rout despite its heavy losses and showed a very high level of fighting spirit, in the face of the experienced German army, it was merely a matter of increasing their own casualties.

This battle was reported by the elite Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army to the frontline high command. Khrushchev was excited for a long time at having finally located the position of the elite German panzer force. He ordered the nearby 1st Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Tank Army to pour into the rear of the German positions, to seek out the main German force and force a decisive battle.

In the evening of April 6th, the battlefield, which had been raging all day, showed no signs of calming down. The Soviet forces, taking advantage of the fact that the German air force could not operate at night, launched another offensive high tide. They poured, in their hundreds and thousands, into the breached German positions, hoping to expand these breakthroughs. But they found that the German forces on the flanks seemed to have been prepared for them. After several hours of fighting, the Red Army had failed to widen the breakthroughs by even a fraction.

And at this moment, on the operational map at the Soviet frontline command, the German defensive positions presented before Khrushchev were becoming more and more regular, and more and more terrifying. The entire pre-set defensive line was beginning to show a regular, jagged, crenellated shape. Only then did Khrushchev realize that the German positions he had broken through earlier had probably been intentionally ceded to him by the enemy.

“Their defensive positions… why are they in this shape?” Khrushchev muttered to himself, looking at the map.

“Commissar… these troops of ours that have entered the enemy’s positions… what if the enemy begins to encircle them from the flanks?” a general at his side advised.

“This…” Khrushchev clenched his fists, seemingly struggling with an internal conflict. He did not want to give up the positions he had already captured, nor was he willing to admit that his offensive would be in vain.

But in the end, fear won out. He was afraid that his wrong decision would lead to a fatal loss for the main force of the Red Army. The troops under his command were the elite forces that the Soviet Union had painstakingly accumulated over many years. If they were lost at the front, he would probably be eaten alive by Stalin when he returned to Moscow.

So, Khrushchev sent a telegram to Stalin overnight, hoping that Stalin could give him, a half-baked military commander, some advice, and also to shift some of the responsibility, so that if a problem arose in the future, he would not be in too passive a position.

Of course, Khrushchev also issued an order at the same time: at dawn the next day, the troops would begin to withdraw, build defensive works on the flanks of their current occupied zones, and ensure that their forces would not be encircled and annihilated by the Germans. As for the rest of this long night, Khrushchev decided to maintain his offensive posture and see if he could make some progress. What if this strange defensive shape was just a coincidence?

And so, in the dark night, the Soviet soldiers and their frontline commanders were waiting for the dawn, because at dawn they could begin a limited withdrawal to make their dangerous flanks more secure. The German troops were also waiting for the dawn, because according to their pre-arranged counter-attack plan, the first light of dawn would be the bugle call for their counter-attack against the invaders.

On this long night of April 6th, everyone was waiting for the first ray of dawn, waiting for the moment that would decide their fate.

Published: 2025-08-26T05:13:03.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-11-17T05:29:24.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c460-highway-137361725

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