Chapter 884: The Grid Game

A German sergeant hurried to a 150mm German howitzer position and yelled at the soldiers wiping down the cannon, “Urgent orders from above! Adjust the gun immediately, target Sector 22, and fire a half-unit saturation barrage! Now!”

“A half-unit?” An artillery officer stood up from an ammunition box, walked over to the sergeant, and took the order to verify it. He immediately turned and shouted, “Urgent orders from headquarters! Half a unit of fire! Get to work! We can finally let loose this time!”

At his shout, the German artillery unit seemed to spring back to life. The once-quiet position was instantly bustling with activity. Some men began adjusting the gun’s parameters against their firing tables, while others pried open ammunition boxes with crowbars, hauling out shell after shell.

The map in the gunners’ hands was a newly drawn, precise one, with the coordinate parameters of each city block marked out in a grid. Because of this, the German artillery’s saturation fire was remarkably accurate, enough to inflict massive damage on the attacking Soviet forces.

The camouflage netting was carefully removed. Even now, with few Soviet planes left, the German soldiers were still required to strictly follow air defense regulations to avoid unnecessary losses at critical moments. The barrels of the great guns, as the soldiers continuously cranked the handwheels, rose bit by bit, finally pointing to their designated positions.

“Loaded!” a loader by the first gun reported loudly after finishing with the propellant charge. Not far from him, a few seconds later, the loader of the second gun echoed the same line. One after another, the cannons were readied for a salvo. One after another, signal flags were raised by the signalmen. A full 24 150mm howitzers, like silent killers, awaited the order to fire.

“Counter-attack begins!” a frontline infantry commander shouted, looking at his watch. Beside him, an ambushing MG42 machine gun began to roar.

“Counter-attack begins!” The engines were already started, belching a thick cloud of black smoke. The German tank commander closed his hatch, and the Panther tank began to move through the ruins.

“Target locked! I’m diving! Comet 4 is diving!” Thousands of meters in the sky, a pilot in a Stuka II attack plane confirmed over the radio.

“Fire!” On the artillery position, after hearing the order, one after another, small red flags were waved down, and one after another, the great guns let out their roar.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The muzzles spewed dazzling flames, followed by a sky-full of billowing thick smoke, like a violently churning dark cloud, expanding and extending above the cannons’ muzzles, as if to dominate the entire sky. With a violent shudder, the massive gun carriages were pulled back by the recoil, and the entire position was filled with dust. Everyone couldn’t help but squint their eyes.

After this cacophony, a 150mm shell, spinning at high speed, flew out of the rifled barrel, tracing a beautiful arc through the sky towards the already designated Sector 22. The friction of the air made the surface of the shell grow hot.

As air resistance continued to erode its momentum, and as the propulsive force from the exploding gunpowder gradually faded, the shell began to lose altitude, to fall, and finally, it crashed into the ground on a street full of Soviet Red Army soldiers. The fuze was activated, the explosives inside were ignited and detonated. The shell had completed its mission, ending its brilliant and glorious life.

Its life was very short. The countless explosive fragments it created swept through the entire blast radius in less than a second. The ground was easily carved into a huge crater. Gravel and mud, mixed with the dense shrapnel, knocked down dozens of surrounding Soviet soldiers. For a moment, mangled flesh, the source of which was impossible to tell, flew everywhere. The living Soviet soldiers instinctively flattened themselves on the ground.

A second shell struck the corner of a building not far away. The explosion sent bricks and tiles flying for dozens of meters. Dust shot into the air. The sound of the building collapsing made the living Soviet soldiers feel the terror of the apocalypse—and this was just the beginning. The third and fourth shells landed in succession, and the entire area was covered by the German artillery fire. Explosions were everywhere, and the sky seemed to have turned gray.

“Hello? Hello? What did you say? Give me more details! More details!” a Soviet frontline division commander yelled into the phone, berating a regimental commander who was engaged in battle with the Germans. “What do you mean your unit has been scattered? I can hear the German artillery… I’m reporting to the corps commander. You hold your ground! Whatever it takes! Hold your ground!”

He slammed down the phone. A shell landed a few dozen meters from his command post. The entire earth shook, and dust rained down from the ceiling, pattering on the blueprints spread out on the table. He waved the dust away from his face and picked up the phone again.

The German army was nothing like the force they had faced before. If the previous German offensive had been like lukewarm water, then the current German army was a bottle of ninety-percent concentrated sulfuric acid. The two were on a completely different level of danger.

“Comrade Corps Commander! My unit is under a concentrated attack by the German army! Their shells are raining down on my head!” the division commander cried, having gotten through to the corps headquarters, pleading with his superior with infinite grievance. “Requesting support! Requesting artillery and troop support.”

“I hear the artillery! Not just from your sector, but from the 2nd Division’s sector as well. Did the Germans eat gunpowder for breakfast? Why are they so aggressive all of a sudden?” The corps commander on the other end of the line didn’t sound very happy either—which was to be expected. No one would be in a good mood in this situation.

For the past few minutes, the calls he had received had been either requests for support or reports of more casualties. The German artillery was landing accurately on his attacking troops. The entire counter-attack plan was severely hampered, and some positions had even been retaken by the Germans.

Of course, this was not his most desperate moment. Although at this moment this Soviet corps commander felt he was already in despair—in the next moment, his despair, as more German troops entered the battle, turned into utter despair.

One after another, the German Stuka II bombers began to dive-bomb, completely destroying the exposed Soviet units. Some Soviet units had just assembled for their next offensive mission when they were assaulted by these vulture-like German attack planes. The entire unit had no time to disperse and was battered to the brink of collapse by the cannon fire and bombs.

Because the entire city of Stalingrad had been divided into dozens of sectors, in the process of determining attack targets and calculating the Soviet assembly points, the German commanders could accurately judge the approximate location of the Soviet forces. This allowed the German planes and artillery to attack the pre-set coordinates with even greater precision, achieving an astonishing degree of accuracy and density.

When the German Air Force joined the battle to annihilate the Soviet ground forces, the Soviets finally and truly felt the huge advantage the Germans had in firepower. Faced with an integrated air-land, three-dimensional firepower, with planes bombing from above and cannons covering from below, the Soviet counter-attack became a struggle.

The problem was, it was not just a struggle now, but they were also facing a counter-attack from the superior German forces. While the Soviet ground forces were already in chaos and routing, the German armored units appeared for the first time in the street fighting of Stalingrad. Although these tanks did not advance rapidly, they destroyed all the Soviet tanks that had appeared as an assault force.

The German tanks advanced a short distance from their existing positions, and then the German grenadiers occupied the nearby buildings and ruins, retaking all the positions that the Soviets had just managed to capture. One after another, the German national flags were spread on the tops of the buildings, and the German artillery barrage, following the German advance, extended forward.

The Soviet rout became uncontrollable. On the three directions of attack, the troops attacking to the north were pushed back by the most elite SS Panzer Division of the German army. Not only did they suffer heavy losses, but they also lost about 400 meters of defensive depth. The troops attempting to capture the railway station to the west had only advanced 900 meters before they were forced to stop their advance. Then the German counter-attack arrived as expected. In the end, they retreated to their original starting point but had lost a full 3,000 soldiers and 16 tanks.

The situation for the two elite Soviet infantry divisions attacking to the north was slightly better. These units had withstood the frantic attacks of the German troops and had finally, at the cost of 1,900 killed in action, advanced 100 meters. However, compared to before they had launched their offensive, the vertical width of the Volga that the Soviet army had attempted to expand had, on the contrary, been shortened by about 300 meters in the subsequent battle.

A counter-attack operation, just three short hours. From 11 a.m. when the Soviet army launched its offensive, to 12 noon when the German army began its counter-attack, until 2 p.m. when the various fronts gradually returned to calm—the Soviet army had lost a full 7,000 men, and had instead lost some city blocks and positions.

The German army had lost about 1,700 soldiers, including 300 Ukrainian soldiers. This loss made Küchler give up the plan of continuing the assault. He once again replaced the frontline with his three brand-new Ukrainian infantry divisions, continuing to play his boring but very effective grid game.

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