< World War II - River of Fire and Blood (8) >
September 25, 1941
Near Minsk, Belarus – Vicinity of Barysaw
The T-34’s main cannon spat fire.
“Get down!”
The moment she heard it, Karina’s animal instincts took over.
She shoved the first private she was supporting and threw herself to the ground.
An instant later, a shell screamed past where they had been and exploded.
“Ugh…”
“Get up, you idiot! You’re about to get an eternal rest!”
Karina hauled the groaning private to his feet and started running again.
But with a dozen T-34s bearing down on them, it seemed like a futile gesture.
Thanks to her Fatherland, which had eagerly built her up, the Soviets had slandered her as the ‘Witch of Warsaw’.
The thought that an enemy sniper hero would hardly be granted a clean death upon capture sent a chill down her spine.
Should I ditch this guy and make a run for it now?
The thought surfaced so naturally that she bit her lip.
But then again, could a human really outrun a tank?
If you spend your life killing, you have to accept that you might be killed one day.
She felt sorry for her family and a certain rookie major, but she quickly made her decision.
However, just as she steeled her resolve and reached for the rifle slung over her back, a squadron of aircraft streaked over their heads.
---
Wolfram von Richthofen looked down at the Polish soldiers, one of whom was struggling to run while supporting a limping comrade, and chuckled.
“Oh, taking care of a comrade in this mess? How admirable.
A friend like that deserves some salvation.”
Then he turned his head and licked his lips at the sight of the T-34 armored unit pursuing the routed allies.
“It’s a bit of a shame it’s not an incendiary bombing, but—”
Soon, the autocannon on his aircraft, a Ju-87 Kanonenvogel, roared to life, spewing a torrent of shells.
The recoil was so powerful it temporarily made the aircraft difficult to control, but Richthofen just let out a cheerful laugh.
“Hahaha, this has its own kind of kick to it!”
The lead T-34 was struck on its upper armor by the merciless autocannon fire and fell silent.
Plenty of his subordinates—especially Galland and Mölders—had begged him to stop flying missions as the Chief of the General Staff, but his creed was that an air force that doesn’t fly isn’t an air force.
So, he was out on another sortie today.
While the Bf109 fighters intercepted the Soviet Air Force covering the armored unit, the Stukas and Hs123s were pouncing haphazardly on the T-34s that had been advancing with such vigor.
Richthofen smiled with satisfaction as he looked down at the T-34s scattering in panic.
This should have bought enough time for the friendly forces to reorganize.
Schacht’s judgment in requesting preparations for trouble in Belarus had been spot-on once again.
Sometimes it felt like that guy could see the future.
Richthofen stuck to a fleeing T-34, turned one more into a heap of scrap metal, and then banked his plane.
“This is Condor.
I’m returning first. I’ve done enough to save face with Schacht, so go soothe them a bit before you come back.
Over.”
-Condor, this is Dolfo.
Can you really talk like that, as the Minister of Defense? Over.
At Adolf Galland’s chiding remark, Richthofen scoffed.
“Ha! We’re on such terms I've even punched him in the face!”
---
September 27, 1941
Central Belarus (Western Soviet Union), Bobruisk – The Front
With the Luftwaffe’s support barely averting the crisis, the Army Group North Commander, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, quickly rallied his routed units and tried to establish a defense line stretching across the urban area of Minsk and the Bialowieza Forest.
However, Ivan Konev’s rapidly reorganized forces crashed down on them again, and Kluge’s defense line wavered precariously before being pushed back.
The decisive battle for the Belarus offensive shifted to urban warfare in Minsk.
And at that moment, Colonel General Hans-Valentin Hube’s unit, having just disembarked from a railroad in Bobruisk and begun a mad dash toward Minsk, encountered the Soviet Army.
“Why are those damn commies here?! What about Minsk? The Polish Army?”
“M-Major, sir. Please calm down.
We came to save Army Group North, not the Polish Army.”
“The Polish Army are allies too! In any case, we just need to smash the Soviets, right?”
Clemens Fleck was burning with more fighting spirit than ever before.
To think the day would come when he would see his competent but notoriously lazy superior officer so fired up.
The only problem was that it stemmed from extremely personal feelings…
“Ka— I mean, our allies are desperately fighting, waiting for salvation! Charge, charge forward! How can you sleep when our isolated allies are waiting! Caffeine will do the sleeping for you, so shut up and advaaaaance!”
Clemens was practically living off stimulants and Schoka-Kola, his eyes bloodshot as he screamed into the radio.
Of course, whatever Clemens’s motivation, when the battalion commander who always won his fights despite his usual laziness started leading the charge from his own armored vehicle, his subordinates fiercely followed.
As General Hube’s other subordinate echelons joined the charge, the Soviet forces, who had just been about to encircle Minsk and establish their own defense line, were caught off guard and shattered at every encounter.
Clemens’s mechanized infantry tore through the positions of the Soviet troops, who were scattering in panic at the much-faster-than-expected arrival of German reinforcements.
“We'll race to Minsk faster than anyone, differently from everyone else! No one can stop us!”
-Yes, sir!
Vinrich Behr looked with pity at the man who ‘used to be’ his respected superior, now in a frenzy and shouting encouragements into the radio, and began updating the operational map.
The adjutant was disappointed in his superior again today.
---
September 28, 1941
Central Belarus (Western Soviet Union), Minsk
“Comrades, you have committed the sin of shaming the Union as reactionaries.
This is a crime punishable by death, but you must remember that by the mercy of the Comrade General Secretary and the Party, you have been given this chance to stand here! Fight for the Union! Defend the Motherland!”
While the political officer delivered his fervent speech, the members of the 13th Penal Battalion shoved and clamored in front of a truck.
“Be thankful to the Comrade General Secretary for giving you the chance to wash away your sins and devote yourselves to the Union! You will all repay that opportunity, even if it costs you your lives!”
The men standing on the truck were carelessly tossing Mosin-Nagant rifles to whoever could grab them.
“Th-Thank you, Soviet Ura!”
Those who received a single, shabby rifle shouted praises to the Union and headed for the front, waiting only for the order to commence the offensive.
As the number of rifles on the truck dwindled, the struggles of the penal battalion members, desperately reaching out for a gun, turned violent.
“H-Hey, that’s mine!”
“What bullshit, it’s mine!”
In the squabble over the insufficient number of rifles, any semblance of comradeship was nowhere to be found.
It felt like just yesterday that they were part of the Union's elite armored units, driving T-34s.
Now, here they were, fighting like dogs over a single rifle.
Nikolayevich, once Enrique Líster’s adjutant, watched the squalid scene with sunken eyes before turning his gaze to the fanatical party members tirelessly waving the red flags of the Soviet Union.
He, too, had once joined the army to seek fame and fortune. For what? For that damn Union.
What was General Líster doing now?
Was he trying to score points by grinding more subordinates like him into the front lines?
Or— No, it was a pointless thought. Nikolayevich quietly mocked himself.
It would be a lie to say he didn’t resent him, but he knew their fate would not have changed much even if Líster had stayed with them.
In the time he was lost in thought, the rifles on the truck ran out.
Immediately, the party members and political officers herded the penal battalion members toward the front.
“Advance, advance! Fight for the Union!”
“C-Comrade, we don’t even have guns!”
“Get one from the front line!”
“Th-That's absurd…”
Nikolayevich was also pushed toward the front empty-handed.
Toward the urban area of Minsk, where the Allied defense line had been established after grinding countless lives into it.
As everyone fell into a dead silence, a political officer raised his pistol.
A moment later, a gunshot rang out.
“Commence the attack, Soviet Ura!”
“Soviet Ura!”
“Ura, Ura!”
Red flags waved frantically.
The penal battalion members, armed with a single rifle or nothing at all, were forced by the friendly machine guns aimed at their backs to charge into battle.
Soon, the roar of artillery began, and shells started falling everywhere.
“U-Uwaaaargh!”
“Aaaargh!”
The air was filled with nothing but screams, explosions, and shrieks.
Nikolayevich also ran like a madman.
The penal battalion members were thrown in like meat shields, followed by political officers with pistols, and behind them, the regular army.
Retreat meant certain death.
There was only advancing.
“Uraaaaaa!”
As they began to approach the urban area proper, gunfire erupted from building after building and from the defense line.
“Aack!”
“Uwaaaargh!”
The penal battalion members, running frantically, were torn to shreds by the horrifying net of fire from the machine guns.
The rifles they had been fighting over just moments before fell into a sea of blood, and whoever picked one up dropped it again in a matter of seconds.
The sound of bullets cutting through the air, the roar of falling artillery.
Dust covered his body.
It became impossible to distinguish between screams and shouts.
Without any signal, the running penal battalion members began to take cover in craters and behind wreckage.
They learned instinctively that it was the only way to survive.
Nikolayevich was lucky enough to pick up a nearby Mosin-Nagant rifle and quickly took cover.
However, the ones who reacted immediately to the lead penal battalion halting were the political officers.
Only the most problematic or belligerent political officers were assigned to the penal battalions, and they jumped in among the cowering soldiers, screaming at the top of their lungs.
“What are you all doing, advance!”
“The enemy fire is too strong!”
To the penal battalion member who replied tearfully as bullets ricocheted off the wreckage he was hiding behind, the political officer answered with his pistol.
“Hiik!”
“Go! Charge! For the Union!”
“I-If I go now, I’ll d….”
The pistol roared, and the poor victim’s words were cut short.
Having made an example, the political officer shrieked, his eyes bloodshot.
“Charge! Chaaarge! Soviet Ura!”
“U-Ura—!”
Forced to run out, they were again exposed to the Allied net of fire.
Countless men were turned into tattered wrecks and fell before they could advance even a few steps.
Nikolayevich was also forced out by the political officer’s pistol.
“
Huk, huk, heok!
”
He could hear bullets repeatedly zipping right past him.
“Soviet Ura—Uk!”
The bullets didn't spare the political officer who was proving his loyalty to the Party.
He collapsed on top of the very penal battalion members he had just sent to their deaths.
The political officer, who couldn’t even close his eyes, was reduced to just another equal slab of meat.
Glancing at that, Nikolayevich ran toward his next target—a piece of wreckage—when he felt a searing pain in his leg.
“Aack!”
He practically tumbled into the wreckage.
“Plague on it… damn it… this fucking…”
It burned like fire, but thankfully, it was just a graze.
Nikolayevich, who had been running frantically, gasped for breath that had risen to his chin from tension, and then burst out laughing at his own relief that he hadn’t been shot for real.
“Hehe, hehehe, hahahaha—”
He laughed endlessly amidst the rain of gunfire and explosions.
His former subordinates, who had been charging toward his position, fell in droves.
A poor soul shredded by a machine gun collapsed to the ground, and even as he coughed up blood, he tried to crawl toward where he was, only to lose the light in his eyes before he got far.
And still, the gunfire never ceased.
Nikolayevich saw a Stuka fly over his head, strafing the friendly forces that were trying to advance.
As he leaned against the cover, watching the countless men die and fall, unable to reach even the point he had, he felt his sense of reality slipping away.
Is this just a war game? A fictional war, played with flags.
To wage a war like this with living human beings… can this really be reality?
“This is suicide!”
“R-Retreat, we have to retreat!”
Finally, the penal battalion members, who had done nothing but stack up corpses, began to cry out.
“What nonsense is this! Advance! Soviet Ura!”
But as always, a political officer pointed his pistol at them.
And then, the desperate struggle of men pushed to their absolute limit began.
A gunshot rang out.
The political officer looked down at his own chest with an expression of disbelief.
“This reaction…
keoh
….”
Beginning with the political officer who collapsed before he could finish his sentence, the Soviet Army, which should have been charging the enemy line, began to commit fratricide.
But that, too, was brief.
The penal battalion members who killed a few political officers were soon massacred by the bullets of other regular Soviet troops, and those who couldn't bear it and tried to flee were exposed to the Allied net of fire and died instantly.
No one mourned them.
No one gave their deaths any value.
Their only funeral song was the roar of the battlefield, the desperate shrieks of men, and their own screams.
Nikolayevich stared at the gruesome scene and muttered quietly.
“Soviet Ura.
…Fuck that…”
He slowly closed his eyes.