Chapter 842: An Important Scene

That was one of the few buildings in Smolensk that was still standing. It was also, in the minds of all the Soviet soldiers defending the city, a temple that would never collapse. Every brick and tile there was soaked in the blood of Soviet soldiers, and every stone was mottled with bullet marks.

After a burst of rapid gunfire, just across the street, a German machine gun nest had already established a firm foothold. A dozen German soldiers, following an armored car with a machine gun turret, slowly rounded the street corner, the 20mm cannon on the vehicle mercilessly reaping the lives of the Soviet soldiers.

Several Soviet soldiers, carrying their weapons, ran across the street. The German bullets swept across with them, kicking up a cloud of white smoke from the ground. As the smoke rose, all but the leading Soviet soldier were shot through the body and fell in the middle of the road.

People were dying every minute. To run from one side of the street to the other would cost the lives of several, even a dozen, soldiers. The water and electricity supply in the Soviet-defended city block had already been cut off. The Germans had even used heavy artillery to destroy many of the large residential areas to prevent the Soviet soldiers from using them to station troops. As the battle progressed, the situation here grew worse and worse.

The resistance was on the verge of collapse because most of the communication lines had been destroyed. The German Stuka II bombers had accurately bombed the positions where the special forces had deliberately provoked a fight, easily destroying many Soviet command nodes. This tactic had even caused the Soviet units to temporarily lose effective control over their subordinates, allowing the Germans to easily divide them and defeat them one by one.

But the Soviet army, which had already lost its unified command, was still holding its ground with its instincts. They fought the Germans repeatedly for every street, every city block, not giving up until the very last man. After all, there were tens of thousands of main force Soviet troops here, and they truly represented the desperate courage of the Soviet elite.

Unfortunately, it was an unwise thing to pit flesh and blood against the Germans, who were armed to the teeth with steel. The German army, using the superior firepower in its hands, drove the Soviet army out of the rooms and buildings they were defending, methodically clearing out the stubborn Soviet soldiers in all of Smolensk.

“Kurys! See that building? We’re going to plant the battle standard on its roof! You take your men over there! I’ll arrange for machine guns and rocket launchers to cover you! Understood?” a company commander said, leaning against the corner of a wall and pointing to the tall building in the distance. What this building in Smolensk was, was impossible to verify now, but it had withstood the hail of artillery fire and had not yet collapsed.

In the courtyard of this building, by a trench, a Soviet soldier’s Maxim machine gun was spitting a hot tongue of fire. He and his assistant gunner were trying to stop the German troops from crossing the street. Not far in front of him, the ground was already littered with the bodies of his own Red Army comrades.

At this point in the battle, there was simply no time and no one had the energy to deal with the cold corpses. They treated the bodies of their comrades and their enemies as the dirt beneath their feet, paying them no mind, firing calmly by their side, not even looking at the corpses whose expressions were twisted in pain at the moment of death.

“Over there! Over there! The Germans are coming! German infantry are approaching! Watch out!” the assistant gunner screamed, pointing to two German soldiers who were charging over, crouched low. Not far from him, two soldiers who had been firing their rifles continuously quickly turned their muzzles. After all, their responsibility was to cover the flank of this heavy machine gun.

Crack! A gunshot rang out. A bullet, from who knows where, hit the assistant gunner in the head. Blood instantly splattered everywhere, and the Soviet heavy machine gun also stopped firing. The German snipers seemed to be everywhere in this city. They were striking at the Soviet morale, and also eliminating a large number of Soviet soldiers, often opening up a new front for the German offensive.

In some of the barricade battles, a single German sniper had even successively killed more than a dozen Soviet machine gunners, forcing the Soviet defenders to finally give up the fight for these barricades. The Soviets also had some snipers who participated in counter-sniper operations, but unfortunately, due to their absolute numerical inferiority, these snipers did not achieve the same dazzling combat record as their German counterparts.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! The heavy machine gun roared again, cutting down a German grenadier who was trying to get close. But this machine gun position was not destined to be arrogant for long, because on the other side of the street, more Germans were waiting for what they wanted.

Three war correspondents were setting up their camera equipment behind a concealed low wall. Beside them, several German soldiers were also loading ammunition into their Panzerfausts. These reporters were from the German propaganda department, specially here to film a documentary about the war.

The camera shook in the hail of bullets, aimed at two German soldiers. One German soldier shouldered a prepared Panzerfaust and adjusted its angle, while the other was doing the same. A German observer next to them was shouting numbers, telling them to get ready to fire. The scene looked very tense.

At the command, the two of them simultaneously poked out from behind the low wall. The Panzerfausts on their shoulders also flew out one after the other. A cloud of white smoke erupted from the rear of the tube-shaped Panzerfausts, obscuring most of the camera’s lens. From beginning to end, the reporter holding the camera had only filmed the two anti-tank rocket launcher operators beside him, not even daring to try and poke his head out to film the situation on the other side.

But even so, they still had an unfortunate accident. A bullet hit the steel plate of the Panzerfaust that was protecting the face of one of the German soldiers. It struck the edge of the iron plate and ricocheted off, leaving only a shower of sparks. The German anti-tank soldier who was firing was so scared that he fumbled and dropped his weapon, hitting the dirt.

“Damn it! Someone’s been hit! Someone’s been hit!” a reporter screamed, dropping the camera in his hands. The camera, which had fallen to the ground, accurately recorded his panicked appearance. Unfortunately, the photographic technology of this era could not record sound at the same time.

“It’s nothing! I’m fine!” the German soldier who had hit the dirt reported, and then slowly leaned against the low wall and sat up. “That bullet almost hit me! God bless!”

On the Soviet machine gun position opposite them, a cloud of black smoke from an explosion was already rising. After the German army had received heavy weapon support, they had, of course, easily destroyed the Soviet fortifications. Two German officers reminded the reporters who had come from afar that they could now film in that direction, so the two cameras began to turn their angles, aiming their lenses at the place they had not dared to aim at just now.

In a place piled high with sandbags, a thick black smoke was billowing. An MG42 machine gun set up in the distance by the Germans was firing fiercely, covering the advance of the German troops. Tracer rounds drew straight lines as they swept towards the direction of the Soviet defenders, looking very dazzling. A dozen or so German soldiers, crouching low and carrying their rifles, ran quickly past the camera lens. They braved the hail of bullets and charged towards the distant building that the Soviet army was holding.

“My God! This is real combat! This is a real battlefield! It’s so shocking! So shocking!” a reporter shouted excitedly, standing up. He had seen the shocking footage he had filmed. His fame in the Berlin photography world was definitely just around the corner.

A bullet, from who knows where, hit him in the chest. The bullet passed through his right shoulder, near his chest, shattered his bone, and flew out his back with a spray of flesh and blood, splattering all over the face of another reporter. Before he could even cry out, two German soldiers had already tackled them to the ground.

“Are you crazy? This is a battlefield! If you stand up, your head will be blown to pieces!” the German officer who was receiving these reporters shouted, holding his helmet and cursing. “Medic! Medic! There’s an idiot who’s been hit!”

“I’ve been hit? Why can’t I feel any pain? Have I really been hit?” the reporter whose face was splattered with his comrade’s blood shouted, fumbling at his body, trying to find where he had been shot. His voice was already trembling. It seemed he felt he was about to die.

The German officer held this fellow down and shouted at him helplessly, “If you had been hit by a bullet, you wouldn’t have the chance to be fumbling all over yourself. It was your comrade who was hit! You idiot.”

The photographer who had been hit, however, did not scream. He just looked in terror at the people who were surrounding him. He felt something flowing from his shoulder, but he couldn’t feel where his arm had gone. He reached out with his left arm and grabbed the sleeve of a German soldier, saying, “Am I going to die! Am I going to die!”

“You’ve been hit in the shoulder by a bullet, but your life shouldn’t be in any danger… You guys, help him press down on the tourniquet! Press down! Hard! The blood is spurting out!” a medic at the side said as he treated the wound. “Tell me your name. Tell me about your hometown!”

“My name is… alright, help me pack up my camera. The footage in there is very important! I want to go back to Berlin! You can prove that this footage isn’t staged, that it’s a real combat scene!” the photographer said, his eyes wide as he gave his instructions.

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