Chapter 866: Timely Replenishment

Behind a collapsed wall, a Soviet T-34 tank was moving forward. It pointed its thickest frontal armor at the German positions, then gunned its engine, pushing over the broken outer wall of the building in front of it. The shattered wall came crashing down, some of the stones landing on the T-34’s mudguards, others on its sloped frontal armor, before rolling off.

After pushing down the wall, the T-34 suddenly opened fire in the direction of the German positions. A shell struck a distant position, exploding in a cloud of thick black smoke. The German attack was suppressed by this suddenly appearing tank.

“An enemy tank is counter-attacking our position! Requesting support!” a German grenadier company commander shouted into his radio. He himself felt extremely frustrated. In his old unit, this was the kind of situation they would have handled themselves. But now he had been ordered to N Army Group to lead a company of new recruits, and facing an enemy tank was not something his company could handle alone.

BOOM! The Soviet tank also seemed to have noticed that the German troops opposite were different from the ones it had encountered before, their combat effectiveness much lower. So it became even more arrogant. What’s more, behind this tank, a second Soviet T-34 charged out. The scene, for a moment, began to favor the Soviet defenders.

“Damn it! Tell the 1st Platoon! Retreat! Retreat!” the company commander shouted to the signals runner beside him. “Contract the defense line! Watch the flanks of the unit! Have the 2nd Platoon hold their ground. They can only fall back after the men of the 1st Platoon have retreated!”

While he was desperately trying to organize his troops to hold their positions, the Soviet army on the other side was also gloomily facing their own problems. Their planned offensive had not even begun before they were attacked by German artillery. Four shells had landed on their starting positions, and an attack that had been well-prepared was thus easily crushed by the Germans.

Although the German army had lost three or four soldiers to the two T-34 tanks, the Soviet side had lost about twenty men in one round of shelling. The position was littered with a swath of bodies. The remaining men were cowering in their simple trenches, not daring to continue the attack.

When two German soldiers fled from their trench and were cut down by the machine gun on the T-34, the German infantry finally broke under the pressure. The casualty figures began to climb steadily. A dozen or so German soldiers lost their lives on the road of their rout.

No matter how much the infantry company commander, who had previously been a grenadier platoon leader, tried to stop them, he could not stop these German soldiers, who had come from Ukraine and other miscellaneous places, from retreating. All he could do was to lead the twenty-odd real German grenadiers in his entire company to do their best to cover the retreat of these new recruits.

The German rout finally stopped after three Panther tanks arrived on the battlefield. An armor-piercing round whistled over the heads of the retreating German troops and struck a distant T-34, turning the Soviet tank, which had seemed invincible just a moment ago, into a bursting ball of fire. This at once restored the courage of the German troops who had thrown down their helmets and armor. After being reinforced by a new infantry company, they charged back to the position they had just lost.

Compared to the veterans, the combat effectiveness of these soldiers was indeed very limited. But even after losing a full platoon, more than 30 soldiers, this company did not have to be replaced, which was a rare thing. At the very least, the higher-ranking German commanders did not have to worry about losing too many troops, because it was very easy to replace them.

N Army Group had received at least 100,000 replacement troops. Before these 100,000 were used up, Küchler did not have to worry at all that excessive attrition would cause his army group to lose its combat capability. Compared to the attrition rate of the frontline units, he was more concerned about when his army group could cut into the city of Stalingrad, because he knew that only by cutting into the city itself would the real test begin.

It was the same chaotic and crater-ridden position. The second T-34 tank had finally failed to withstand the combined assault of the three Panther tanks and had ultimately been turned into a burning pile of scrap iron. And by this burning pile of scrap iron, a newly established German machine gun nest was covering its own infantry as they launched a new attack on the Soviet positions.

The German tanks would not enter the city unless absolutely necessary, to engage the Soviet army in a place where their line of sight was restricted. So the three Panther tanks, after finishing off the two T-34s that had charged out of the Soviet positions, left this combat zone.

This was a tactic now used by the German armored forces, to break up their units into several support detachments to support the infantry in anti-tank combat on the periphery. It was mainly to help the infantry, who lacked sufficient training in anti-armor combat, to take out the Soviet tanks that were participating in the counter-attack.

The Panther tank used the tactic of “hit and run,” avoiding involvement in street fighting and thus avoiding unnecessary losses. The crews of these German tanks were also not elites. Doing so allowed them to effectively accumulate combat experience and to effectively annihilate the Soviet armored forces.

The Soviet troops opposite, worried that the German tanks would suddenly launch an attack, did not firmly defend their positions. When the German army launched its attack, they chose to fall back into the nearby houses, temporarily ceding their positions to the Germans.

A German veteran jumped into an abandoned Soviet trench and aimed his weapon at the retreating Soviets. He pulled the trigger, and the bullets flew towards the enemy, easily cutting down two Soviet soldiers.

It was the same principle as when the Germans had routed earlier and the Soviet tanks had taken the opportunity to pursue them. Often, holding a position did not result in too many casualties. It was only after a rout that the casualty figures would begin to rise rapidly. The Soviet army had abandoned its own positions. Now it was the turn of the counter-attacking Germans to begin their slaughter.

As more German soldiers jumped into the trench and took up firing positions, more of the Soviet troops fleeing into the city were cut down. In just that short while, the Germans had probably killed at least 50 Soviet soldiers. This could be considered to have avenged their fallen comrades from earlier, making the enemy pay an even heavier price.

But the good times did not last long, especially in the brutal street fighting. No one could guarantee they would not be killed in the next second, and no one could guarantee when their luck would run out.

A German new recruit, just like his comrades, had jumped into the trench that the Soviets had abandoned after their retreat. But he had just landed when he stepped on a booby trap that the Soviets had set. The mine exploded, blowing him and his comrade beside him to the ground.

The two poor souls were both wounded. One had lost his right foot, which had stepped on the mine, and the other had been hit in the body by shrapnel. The two of them lay on the ground, crying for their mothers. No matter how much the medics tried to comfort them, it was of no use.

“Make them stop shouting! Use a painkiller! Use morphine!” At this moment, the company headquarters also moved up. The grenadier company commander looked at the soldiers who were moaning on the ground with a frown and said with some irritation. The battle had just begun, and his company had already lost a platoon of men. If they kept fighting like this, in another two days, he could be demoted to platoon leader.

But without an order to retreat from the battalion, he did not dare to give the order himself, so the battle had to continue. What he didn’t understand was that N Army Group’s offensive strategy seemed to have some obvious differences from the usual German tactics. For example, in the echelon arrangement of the attacking force, the two were completely different.

In his old unit, the emphasis during an attack was on deploying the troops as much as possible to leverage the German army’s advantage in firepower density, to encircle and annihilate the enemy as much as possible. Now what he knew was that his own battalion had no intention of deploying at all, but was attacking with one company following another, piled together.

At the very least, he personally believed that to fight like this was to simply trade attrition with the Soviets. As a German soldier who had always avoided this kind of situation, the grenadier company commander couldn’t figure out why this siege battle had to be started in this way, so urgently and at such an inappropriate time. According to his past experience, the German army should have bypassed this place, encircled and trapped the Soviet army, and waited for them to collapse on their own from lack of ammunition and food.

This tactic had, for a long time in the past, been the standard procedure for the German army to avoid urban street fighting. But now the entire German army was doing the exact opposite, fighting a city assault battle with the Soviets head-on, a battle they had once been most wary of.

Although he also knew that a small fry like him could not possibly know what those big shots at the top were thinking, a small person also had a reason to live. He felt that he should not die a muddled death here.

“Company commander! Battalion’s calling!” The signals runner beside him glanced at the two wounded soldiers lying at the bottom of the trench with numb expressions from the tranquilizers, and handed the headset to his superior.

The company commander took the headset. The battalion commander’s voice came from inside. “Your unit will hand over its position to the 2nd Company and withdraw from the position to rest and refit. I will give you 30 replacement soldiers. Your company will rest behind my battalion headquarters and await new orders!”

“Replacements?” The grenadier company commander could hardly believe his ears. Replenishing combat losses for German units was extremely difficult. Units that had suffered heavy losses often had to wait for a dozen or even dozens of days to receive corresponding replacements, and often it was a case of replacing five for every ten lost. A situation like today, where they were receiving replacements almost immediately after suffering losses, was something he had never seen in his year of combat experience.

“Yes! Battalion commander!” He replied quickly, as if afraid the battalion commander would change his mind. This time, maybe things really were a little different.

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com