Chapter 938: Dust to Dust

Ancient China had a saying: “A single general’s success is built on the bones of ten thousand.” The West has a proverb: “The emperor’s throne is piled with corpses.” In truth, they all speak of sacrifice from the victor’s perspective. The tragedy is that no one ever cares to explore the fate of the vanquished.

Zhao Kuo of Changping may not have achieved success, but the generals and soldiers who followed him still ended up as a pile of withered bones. So regardless of victory or defeat, where there is struggle, there is sacrifice. And sacrifice often means rivers of blood and fields of corpses.

The battle for the city of Stalingrad had reached a brutal, soul-crushing intensity. The Soviet defensive positions had been sliced apart by the Germans. The Wehrmacht, like a sharp longsword, had cleaved the enemy’s shield in two. Now, a portion of the German forces inside Stalingrad were already setting up artillery positions on the riverbank. The Germans could finally use their most proficient methods to deal with the endless stream of vessels on the Volga.

The Germans had brought two 88mm anti-aircraft guns to the riverbank. Just as they would against tanks, they fired point-blank at the ships on the river. In an instant, the reinforcements and supplies reaching Stalingrad were cut by another third.

The last intact Soviet reserve division was thrown into the fight, desperately trying to retake the lost warehouses and reconnect the sundered lines within Stalingrad. The battle erupted. Row after row of Soviet soldiers, heedless of death, charged the German defensive positions with all their might.

Crack! A Soviet soldier, holding his Mosin-Nagant rifle, aimed at a Ukrainian soldier on the German side. He fired without hesitation. The bullet struck the Ukrainian’s face, killing him instantly in his shelter. But the German’s comrades beside him also spotted the danger and, looking up, saw the Soviet soldier.

The Soviet soldier, panicking, began to work the stiff bolt of his rifle, fumbling several times without success. By this time, the German soldier had already turned his gun, aiming his G43 at him.

Without the slightest hesitation, the German soldier pulled the trigger. The bullet accurately struck the Soviet soldier, knocking him to the ground. But beside this fallen Soviet, a dozen more, with long rifles and fixed bayonets, were shouting and charging towards the German positions.

The machine guns on the German positions roared, spitting fire, sending a dense hail of bullets at their enemies. The Soviets, of course, were not just here to die. Their machine guns also began to join the battle, suppressing the German fire points. The bullets could almost collide with each other. As the German machine gun bullets swept towards the Soviet infantry, the Soviet machine gun bullets also struck the sandbags of the German machine gun nests.

Don’t think the Germans were some kind of invincible cockroaches. Bullets hitting their bodies would just as easily tear a gushing, bloody hole, making them scream as they writhed and died on the ground. The Soviet bullets were just as deadly. A German assistant gunner was hit and fell. The firepower of this machine gun nest was immediately suppressed.

The Red Army soldiers stormed the German positions, and the two sides engaged in the most brutal of hand-to-hand combat. On the ground, already paved with the bodies of Soviet soldiers, everyone, with fixed bayonets and raised shovels, became entangled. High-tech weapons seemed to have no place here. Everyone was using the most primitive methods to kill their opponents.

“Yaaah!” a Soviet soldier charged with his bayonet at a 17-year-old Ukrainian recruit. The other was too slow to dodge, and the bayonet plunged into the gap between the young Ukrainian’s ribs. In an instant, blood soaked the German soldier’s black uniform, staining the dust-covered fabric a more disgusting color.

“Ugh…” The young Ukrainian, his hands gripping the enemy’s rifle, stared at the man who had killed him, blood gurgling from his mouth. He could no longer speak; to open his mouth would only cause more blood to pour out. But he still held on to the enemy’s rifle with all his might, as if unwilling to let his killer have his way.

But soon, a second Soviet soldier who had jumped into the trench charged over. This Soviet soldier also thrust his long rifle forward. The bayonet fixed to its muzzle plunged into the other side of the young Ukrainian’s chest. The two of them pushed together, and the young Ukrainian collapsed to the floor of the trench.

A few meters away, a German soldier was swinging a shovel. From his appearance, you could tell he was not a German soldier either, but a vassal soldier from Ukraine. But he was clearly much more skilled than his comrade. At this moment, he had already finished off the Soviet soldier who had jumped into the trench opposite him.

The head of the shovel in his hand was covered in blood, which was slowly dripping down. But the blood quickly dried in the wind, turning into a thick red paint, painting the shovel a glaring scarlet.

This German soldier glanced at the corpse at his feet, then raised his head, just in time to see two Soviet soldiers pulling their bayonets from his young comrade. He smiled, picked up the Mosin-Nagant from the corpse on the ground, and, with the gleaming bayonet, walked towards the two enemies who had already spotted him.

“What kind of skill is it to kill a kid! Come on! Come at me!” this German soldier from Ukraine roared, and then charged at the Soviet soldier on the left with his bayonet. The Soviet soldier was clearly skilled as well. He parried the German’s thrust with the body of his own rifle and even tried to counter-thrust.

The German soldier, having failed to score a hit, quickly withdrew his long rifle and used the butt to parry the bayonet of the second Soviet soldier. He was fighting one against two and clearly could not win easily. And so he took two steps back, opening up a small distance to look for an opportunity.

But his retreating foot stumbled on the corpse of the Soviet soldier he had just killed. After a stagger, he found that the bayonets of the two Soviet soldiers in front of him were already thrusting towards him. This was the battlefield. No one was foolish enough to pursue any kind of chivalry. “Kick a man when he’s down” was the eternal truth here.

This German soldier knew he could not escape unscathed. So he also, in a last-ditch effort, thrust his own long rifle at one of the Soviet soldiers, trying to kill one of his own murderers before he died. After a brief exchange, one Soviet soldier dropped his gun and fell, and the Ukrainian on the ground was also lifeless.

Pulling his gun from the Ukrainian soldier’s body, the surviving Soviet soldier panted, his eyes bloodshot as he began to look around for his next target. But he only saw one after another of Soviet soldiers jumping into this trench and then quickly leaving.

The sound of “Urrah!” was everywhere. He knew it was the sound of his own unit capturing a German position, the heartfelt cry of a group of soldiers in the joy of victory. He looked at the bodies of the German and Soviet soldiers lying at his feet, worked the bolt of his rifle, chambered a new round, and then, along with the other units, jumped out of the trench and charged towards another distant trench.

The order the Red Army had received was to retake this German-occupied position and to drive the Germans back from the banks of the Volga. Now they were less than fifty meters from their objective. Perhaps they would soon succeed. After all, there were not many regular German troops here.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat! With the sound of gunfire, another volley of tracers flew from the front. Without giving anyone much time to think, the experienced Soviet soldiers had already bent their waists and flattened themselves on the ground, and the standing Soviets were quickly cut down until not a single one was left. The Soviet army began to return fire with the rifles in their hands at the Germans in front. The two sides exchanged fire across a street that was less than 10 meters wide. Bullets struck the walls and the ground, creating dazzling sparks.

The Soviet who had just killed two Ukrainian soldiers lay prone on the ground. He suddenly felt a slight tremor in the earth. He stared in terror at the dust by his hand and saw that some of the small pebbles were indeed jumping. He knew a German tank must be approaching. Otherwise, these ruins would not be “trembling” like this.

And so he squinted his eyes and looked up. He saw a Panther tank he had never seen before, crushing its way forward about twenty meters in front of him. This Panther tank had only two 20mm cannons on its turret. The fierce hail of bullets just now had come from this damn thing.

Before he could even move, this strange Panther, with no main gun, revealed the special weapon between its two cannons. This Soviet soldier didn’t know what it was, but he had a feeling, a strange and desperate impulse.

Soon, a flash of electricity sparked within the new weapon, and then high-pressure gasoline, burning, spewed out, instantly engulfing all the targets in front of the tank. A wide and huge flame devoured everything, burning everything it passed to a scorching red.

The Soviet soldier only saw the flames in front of him grow larger and larger, and then he felt a pain on his face and body as if his skin were being peeled off. He wanted to let out a heart-rending scream, but a searing gas rushed into his lungs. In an instant, he had lost all thought and memory, leaving only a charred carbon, shrunken into a crispy ash stuck to the ground.

This flamethrower variant of the Panther tank continued forward, its tracks rolling over the ruins and rubble. It finally crashed into a pile of smoking, flickering corpses and, with ease, crushed these brittle bodies into true dust.

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