Chapter 755: A Gift for the Führer

In the dim basement, a huge explosion landed in the distance, the resulting tremor causing a small amount of dust to fall from the ceiling. This dust hit the blueprints hanging on the walls and piled on the table, making a pattering sound. The light bulb hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth with the vibration, tearing at the shadows of everything in the room and giving the entire basement the feeling of a demonic dance.

Khrushchev sat in his place, holding a teacup and staring blankly. He was less than 20 kilometers from the front line. Every morning, he could hear the rumbling of the German artillery attacking this place. What was even more despairing was that this sound of cannons was getting closer and closer.

The fortress defense system of the Crimean Peninsula had been under continuous development by the Soviet Union, or rather, the former Tsarist Russia, for nearly thirty years. The fortress system here was endless, with tunnels and shelters as common as drainage ditches.

And the area with Sevastopol and Kerch as its core had been built with several upper and lower levels of strong, permanent reinforced concrete fortifications. The mountains were covered with gun batteries and trenches, as well as endless barbed wire and minefields. Some of these defensive systems were very old, dating back to before the First World War. Some were very new, hastily built only after Khrushchev and Voroshilov had retreated to Crimea.

Now, these positions were like coffins, the final resting place for the Soviet Red Army in the Crimean region. They fought here, they died here, and they were buried here by the heavy snow.

The good news was that it was now also snowing in Crimea. Although it was not heavy, it had affected the ubiquitous German Air Force. The clear weather of the past few days had caused the Soviet Red Army to lose a large number of outer defensive positions. Now, almost half of Crimea had fallen into Manstein’s hands. This was inseparable from the German Air Force’s bombing, which was precise to the extreme and terrifying in scale.

Now that light snow was falling and the cold air from the north was moving south, this place also began to enjoy a moment of tranquility brought by the bad weather. The powerful air support of the German army could not be used, and they had to fight a two-dimensional war with the Soviets, similar to the First World War.

A German soldier, holding his helmet, jumped into a trench that looked very well-constructed. This had once been a position of the Soviet defenders and was now a base for the German soldiers to shelter from the wind and cold. At the far end of the trench, on a concealed machine gun position, a German sergeant was observing the Soviet Red Army position not far away with his binoculars.

“Company commander, there’s a very wide minefield in front. If we use sappers to force an attack, the losses will be very heavy,” a scout reported to the company commander and several platoon leaders waiting in the trench, describing the layout of the enemy’s defense. This was clearly a key defensive position for the Soviets, and it was very heavily defended.

The scout pointed to an enemy bunker not far away and continued his introduction: “There are intersecting machine gun positions, as well as anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines covering the front and flanks. It won’t be easy.”

“They said on top that the reinforcements will be here in a little while. I don’t know what kind of troops they’ll send. If it’s just infantry, I’d like to request that we cancel this attack. We at least need tank cover to even try to launch an assault,” the company commander said with some resignation, looking at the simple map the scout had sketched on a piece of scrap paper.

A little while later, their reinforcements arrived. It was a platoon of German soldiers, protecting a squad of sappers. Their weapons were nothing special, just one flamethrower for assaults. But following these soldiers was a strange tracked vehicle. Its turret had been removed, and a strange device was installed on top.

“Lieutenant! We’ve been ordered to support your attack. Can you tell me the tactics? The men I’ve brought are all elites who have fought in trench warfare and can complete all kinds of missions.”

“We are fully capable of a frontal attack. The problem now is their anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines,” the lieutenant, the company commander, said, pointing at the Soviet defense line opposite them and briefly explaining the situation. “It’s the usual crossfire, very few heavy weapons. Apart from the mines being a problem, everything else is relatively simple.”

The platoon leader who had brought the men turned his head and looked at the strange vehicle that was concealed behind a parapet about a hundred meters away. He then said, “The matter of the mines, I hear, can be left to this big fellow. As for the rest, we’ll have to rely on ourselves.”

Soon, the strange tank began to adjust its angle under the puzzled gaze of the lieutenant. This piece of equipment, which was modified from a Panzer III chassis and resembled an engineering tank, looked like an armored crane.

On the rear of the vehicle was a huge winch, around which was coiled a special kind of belt that looked like a water pipe. The sappers on top were using a battery commander’s scope and a level, repeatedly checking the surface information of the surrounding area. They were bustling about, making the surrounding German soldiers dizzy. These veterans, who had been crawling and fighting on the battlefield for more than a year, and the new recruits who had only been on the battlefield for a dozen days, all had no idea what these sappers were busy with.

“What are they busy with? Can they clear mines like this? This makes the dangerous business of mine-clearing look like a child’s game,” a German soldier asked the company commander standing next to him. In the last assault, this company had lost a full 10 soldiers, half of whom had been killed while clearing mines.

The company commander also couldn’t imagine what kind of tricks these sappers were playing. He could only watch as the strange vehicle prepared, bit by bit. In any case, the attack hadn’t started yet, and everyone was usually just bored, gathered together and waiting for new orders. Now that there was a magical object to observe, it was at least a little better than their monotonous life. So this company commander watched with great interest, seeming to be very intrigued by this strange vehicle.

The sappers uncoiled the belt and piled it loosely at their feet, as far away from the surrounding things as possible. After making sure that these strange belts could be quickly unspooled, they connected one end of the belt to the back of the cannon barrel on the strange vehicle. The reason this vehicle was strange was because it only had two such barrels, but no armored turret to protect them.

“Alright! Gentlemen! Prepare to attack! But before that, you’d better protect your ears,” the sapper captain in a distant trench reminded the surrounding infantry with a mischievous smile. “This thing makes a bit of a racket, but it’s very useful.”

He had just finished speaking when, with an order to fire, the barrel connected to the belt spat out a jet of flame. A rocket flew out of the barrel and streaked towards the Soviet position. And as this rocket pulled forward, the strange belt also flew out with it.

The belt coiled on the ground quickly decreased. In less than a second, this belt had formed a curved line in the air, connecting the German and Soviet positions. Its tail was a dozen or so meters in front of the German position, and its tip had flown over the Soviet trench and landed on the other side.

“My God!” The German company commander finally knew what these sappers were doing. They had used a rocket to lay a line of explosive charges all the way to the enemy’s position in one go. This was a terrifying method of mine-clearing, so terrifying that before the enemy had even had time to react, all the mine-clearing work on this side was already complete—and what was more, the cleared path was like a trench, convenient and safe, with simple protection on both sides.

Sure enough, before everyone could recover, one earth-shattering explosion after another began. The explosions continued in a chain from the German side all the way to the Soviet side. The massive destructive force kicked up the earth, sending debris and other things flying into the sky, leaving one large crater after another on the ground.

“Attack!” The German company commander, holding his helmet and thrown about by the explosion, his ears still ringing, his first reaction after getting up from the ground was to shout at his soldiers to begin the attack. Some of the veterans had already leaped out of the trenches, and more soldiers followed, pouring towards that channel.

The Soviets were clearly stunned by this terrifying explosion. Their fire only slowly began long after the German army had launched its attack. But the crossfire from the flanks could not harm the German troops in the trench in the slightest, and the vanguard of the rapidly attacking German soldiers had already entered the Soviet trenches. The entire battlefield became a scene of chaos.

The sound of gunfire gradually became denser. The German soldiers engaged in a brutal slaughter with the disoriented Soviet soldiers in the trenches. But after the Germans had captured a rear Soviet Red Army machine gun position at the cost of four soldiers killed, the slaughter turned into a one-sided massacre. The Soviet soldiers abandoned their positions and began to rout to the rear, while the Germans chased them all the way, until they had occupied all the positions and had killed the last Soviet who refused to surrender.

A national flag was slowly raised on the Soviet position. With another series of explosions, the newest German rocket-propelled mine-clearing vehicle this time fired a two-round salvo, immediately clearing more of the minefield. The arriving German tanks and other equipment began to cross the minefield. Manstein had captured another Soviet military strongpoint.

Taking the battle report from his subordinate, General Manstein signed his name with a blank expression. He then handed the entire report to his adjutant and ordered softly, “Send this victory report to Berlin. Attach my name. Just say that this is a gift from the entire M Army Group to the Führer. At any time, M Army Group stands with the Führer!”

“And sign my name as well,” Manstein’s subordinate, Brauchitsch’s son, said, following up. “All imperial soldiers should forget their own self-interest and fight for the Führer!”

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