There was a busy scene outside the division headquarters of Koida. The communications soldiers were setting up antennas and connecting telephone lines. Units in platoons passed through the house from time to time. There were two soldiers carrying assault rifles at the door, watching the surrounding environment vigilantly.
Seeing Sokov's arrival, the two sentries quickly stood attentively to salute. Sokov nodded at them and asked, "Is your division commander inside?"
"Yes, Comrade Commander." One sentry replied respectfully: "The division commander is assigning tasks inside."
When he walked into the command center, Sokov saw Koida and his chief of staff standing by the table and assigning tasks to several commanders with their backs facing the door. Seeing Sokov enter the door, Koida quickly interrupted the chief of staff, trotted to Sokov, straightened his body and reported: "Comrade Commander, our division is arranging combat missions, please instruct!"
Sokov came to the table with everyone's eyes, looked down at the map spread on the table, and then asked Koida: "Comrade Colonel, how do you plan to deploy your defense?"
"Comrade Commander, the front of the defensive position we took over is seven kilometers wide." Koida reported to Sokov: "I plan to place the 562nd and 564th regiments on the front line, and the 568th regiment and the artillery regiment will be deployed on the second line."
"No, the troops cannot be deployed like this." Sokov shook his head and said, "Although our defense front is seven kilometers wide, the enemy cannot launch an attack on such a wide front at the same time. You only need to put a regiment on the only traffic road and block the enemy's way."
Regarding Sokov's deployment, Koida said hesitantly: "Will the strength of a regiment be too thin?"
"Don't worry, comrade Colonel," Sokov said to Koida. "Based on the intelligence that he has, the Germans who attacked your division's defense zone are at best a tank battalion and a multi-infantry battalion. It is more than enough for us to use a regiment to deal with them."
"Since that's the case, I will put the 562nd Regiment on the front line and immediately withdraw the 564th Regiment to the second line."
"Wait a minute, comrade Colonel." Sokov pointed to the right wing of the defensive position and said to Koida: "Your right wing is the 305th Infantry Division. After the cruel battle, the remaining troops are less than 2,000. I am worried that their positions will be broken by the enemy, so I order you to place the 564th Regiment, which withdraws from the front line, and put them behind them. Once the enemy reaches a breakthrough in the defense zone of a friendly army, our troops can also block them in time."
Sokov's arrangement made Koida feel a little dissatisfied. He murmured to himself: He had set up two regiments in the front and was worried that he could not stop the enemy's attack. Unexpectedly, Sokov not only asked him to withdraw one regiment from the front line, but also transferred the regiment to strengthen the defense areas of friendly forces.
Although he had thoughts in his mind, he could only implement the order issued by Sokov unconditionally. Koida called the leader of the 564th Regiment and told him: "Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, have you heard it? Comrade Commander ordered your regiment to enter the friendly defense zone on the right wing and make all combat preparations. After the enemy breaks through the friendly positions, you must stop them at all costs."
At 10 a.m., the German shelling began.
Sokov stood at the observation port of the observation center, raised his telescope and looked into the distance, and found that the location where the enemy was shelled was the area where the 562nd Regiment was defended. He put down the telescope and turned his head to Koida beside him, saying, "Comrade Colonel, have you seen it? Those positions where the Germans are preparing to break through next."
At the beginning of the shelling, Koida carefully checked all the positions on the front of the defense through a telescope and found that the areas under the shelling were indeed positions near the road, as Sokov said. However, those areas without roads were not attacked by artillery fire. It seems that the enemy disdained to waste shells on these unimportant targets.
After the shelling was over, before the smoke of gunpowder was dissipated, the German ground troops launched an attack. The fifteen tanks in front lined up in wedge-shaped formations and rushed towards the position of the 562nd Regiment, and the German infantry trotted behind the tank.
The first battalion commander was Captain Guchakov. His two company commanders, Captain Narva and Captain Yegor, were both Sokov's old subordinates and had rich experience in defense warfare. Seeing that he rushed over German tanks and infantry, Guchakov was not panicked at all. He issued an order to Narva and Yegor by phone: "Don't worry about the enemy's tanks, use machine gun fire to eliminate the infantry following the tanks and isolate them from the tanks. As long as the enemy's infantry is eliminated, those tanks approach our position, and then use a bazooka to destroy them."
When the enemy's tanks and infantry were more than 200 meters away from the position, the machine guns on the position opened fire. The dense bullets avoided the tanks that were opening in the front and shot at the infantry following behind, and in an instant, a large area was knocked down.
The officers and soldiers of the German Sixth Armored Division never dreamed that the Soviet troops they encountered today were different from what they had encountered in the past. The other party did not waste bullets and fire the tanks rushing in front, but were specifically used to fight infantry. The Germans were stunned. As the soldiers fell down, the remaining soldiers hurriedly searched for a safe place and hid to shoot at the Soviet positions in the distance.
The German tanks, which had lost the cover of infantry, were still moving forward in a fierce manner. The tank soldiers still wanted to rush to the Soviet positions as before and use tracks to flatten the opponent's positions. But just as these tanks approached the Soviet trenches, Russian soldiers suddenly emerged from the craters in front of the positions. They did not rush up with anti-tank grenades or holding a bundle of cluster grenades as the tank soldiers were familiar with, but carried a chimney on their shoulders and aimed at them in a half-squat posture. Soon, the tank soldiers saw an object dragging a long white smoke flying out of the chimney and flew towards their tanks.
At such a close distance, the enemy's tanks drove so slowly. There was no reason why those anti-tank players carrying the bazooka could not hit. In this way, in less than two minutes, fifteen German tanks that were still showing off their power not long ago were killed by the Soviet bazooka, and they stopped in place and burned wildly.
Some tank soldiers who escaped from the tank were lucky enough to escape from the tank, while stumbled and fled backwards, were covered by anti-tank soldiers, and were named one by one with assault rifles, and fell to the ground one after another and could no longer get up.
When Guchakov saw that the enemy's tank was destroyed, the infantry began to retreat, and quickly notified Narva and Yegor by phone: "Comrades, the enemy has begun to retreat. I order you to attack immediately and beat them up."
After a while, the soldiers in the trench shouted "Ula", rushed out of the trench and rushed towards the defeated German army with weapons.
Chapter completed!