Chapter 215
Yuri's application to Moscow was quickly approved. When delivering the telegram, the signalman emphasized that the approval was signed by Comrade Stalin himself. In addition to the approval, Comrade Stalin also emphasized one point - "Comrade Lieutenant General Yuri Arkhipovich, the unit you are currently commanding is the Fourth Ukrainian Front. Please remember why the unit you are commanding is named 'Ukraine'."
Yes, why is this front named "Ukraine"? The number of a front-level unit cannot be named randomly, it has a specific meaning and symbol, and Yuri, the chief of the Operations Department of the General Staff, is of course very clear about this.
The reason why the headquarters named the four major fronts fighting on the southern front "Ukraine" was to announce to the outside world that these four heavy military groups of the Soviet Red Army would end the German fascist occupation of Ukraine.
Stalin mentioned this matter before the battle was launched. His purpose was to tell Yuri and the commanders of the four major Ukrainian fronts that this battle was not only about the liberation of Ukraine, but also about their own destiny. If the battle was fought well and won, medals and military ranks would be a piece of cake. But if they lost the battle and failed, they might not be able to keep what they have now.
…
On the north bank of the Molochnaya River, in front of the German Melitopol bridgehead, the defensive zone of the 123rd Infantry Division.
The 123rd Infantry Division did not originally belong to the Southern Army Group commanded by Manstein. It originally belonged to the 16th Army of the Northern Army Group and was transferred from the northern front only half a month ago to strengthen the defense of the Southern Army Group.
Compared with the 304th Infantry Division of the former German Ninth Army on the left wing of the German army, the 123rd Infantry Division is relatively well-staffed. However, its current strength is less than 6,000. As for the 304th Infantry Division, it has less than 3,000 troops and is a crippled infantry division.
Despite the serious shortage of troops, the German fortifications were very solid. The defensive zone of the Melitopol bridgehead was more than 40 kilometers wide and nearly 20 kilometers deep. There were two layers of circular defense lines inside and outside the defense zone. On the outer edge of the defense zone, there was a long trapezoidal cross-section anti-tank trench. This anti-tank trench was five to six meters wide and nearly four meters deep, with more than one meter of water underneath. In the direction of attack that the Soviet armored forces might choose, a large number of mines were buried.
The personnel bunkers inside the fortifications are also very sturdy, and the concrete covers on top of the bunkers can effectively defend against attacks from medium artillery.
Although the Soviet army had kept the front line calm for more than two months, the German army from top to bottom, whether officers or soldiers, knew one thing very well, that is, the Soviet attack could come at any time, and according to the Soviet offensive pattern, once they launched an offensive, it would definitely be a crazy attack like a tidal wave.
The broad Molochnaya River looked like a coiled python in the night, dark and deep, with a hideous face, giving people the feeling that it would jump out and hurt people at any time. Of course, the river would not jump out to hurt people, but the Soviets on the other side of the river would jump out to hurt people.
Three o'clock in the morning is the darkest time of the night and the time when dawn is about to begin.
As the roar of the motor suddenly came from far away, white papers like snowflakes fluttered in the night sky. These white papers were exactly the same, no bigger than a palm, and were printed with German.
Leaflets like this have been very common in recent times. The German text printed on them calls on German soldiers to return to Germany or surrender to avoid losing their lives in the final attack of the Soviet Red Army.
In the trench, a German soldier with an obviously childish face stretched out his hand, caught a flying leaflet, and deftly folded out a flying bird with both hands. When he was pinching the bird's belly with two fingers and preparing to throw it over the trench, he suddenly felt the ground beneath him tremble violently.
"Be careful of the artillery..." Someone in the trench shouted amid the tremor.
But before he could finish his sentence, an ear-piercing whistle suddenly sounded in the night sky, and then a shell exploded in the trench. A broken figure rose into the air in the flames and fell on the mud outside the trench like a torn sack.
"Hiss..." A sharp whistle sounded on the position, but it was soon suppressed by the dense artillery fire. The entire river beach position seemed to light up in an instant, with flames and explosions everywhere. One artillery shell after another swept across the position like a plow, and everything exposed was blown to pieces.
The calm Molochnaya River was boiling. The surface of the river seemed to be on fire, with bright lights reflecting. The waves stirred up by the explosion soared into the sky, and the water splashes could even reach more than ten meters in the air.
Looking across the river in the light of the fire, one could see countless Soviet soldiers rushing down the river beach among the dead trees in the burned jungle, pushing all kinds of ferry boats into the water, and shouting as they rushed towards the left bank of the river.
Facing the Soviet artillery fire, the German firepower on the riverside defense line launched a counterattack. Bullet tracers covered the river like a spider web. From time to time, Soviet boats were overturned and blown to pieces by the artillery fire, and from time to time, German firepower points were blown away and crushed by the Soviet artillery fire.
After more than half an hour of attack, the Soviet army finally established a narrow landing site on the left bank of the Molochnaya River, after the water was almost dyed red. Then, a row of pontoon bridges transported by trucks appeared on the river beach, and closed boats were pushed into the water under the German artillery fire...
As the sky began to brighten, mist was rising from the surface of the Molochnaya River, and four or five military jeeps slowly pulled up to the shore.
Yuri put on a flannel military cap, bent down and got out of the jeep. Before he could stand firmly , he looked at the three floating bridges on the river.
On the floating bridge, tanks were passing by quickly, and the exhaust gas from the exhaust pipes filled the river surface for a long time, as if a layer of dark clouds had condensed on the river.
From three o'clock to six quarter, the Soviet troops responsible for crossing the river took more than three hours to break through the German army's solid river defense line and advance nearly five kilometers into their defense zone. This result made Yuri very satisfied.
At present, the gap torn by the Soviet army on the Molochnaya River has a front width of no more than 4 kilometers, and the front line is not stable, but Yuri did not hesitate at all. He directly ordered the 4th Guards Cavalry Army to cooperate with the 19th Tank Army to cross the river and advance rapidly into the depth of the German defense zone, bypassing Melitopol and heading straight for the Dnieper River line.
The results achieved within three hours were paid for with countless lives. The 52nd and 159th Infantry Brigades of the 28th Army, which were responsible for the beach landing operations, were completely crippled and had to withdraw from the battle sequence and move to the rear for adjustments.
However, such a price was obviously worth it. The German army's rapid breakthrough of the Molochnaya River defense line created very favorable conditions for the Soviet army's subsequent operations. The German army could not redeploy its defense line in a short period of time. As long as the subsequent offensive could keep up, the headquarters' combat plan to force a crossing of the Dnieper River on the move would be possible.
The road conditions on the river bank were very bad, and it was unlikely that the jeep could continue to move forward. Yuri looked out on the river bank for a while, watching the tanks quickly passing through the pontoon bridge. He couldn't help but walk down the river bank and stopped a tank that was waiting to cross the river.
This is a T-34 tank, numbered 497, belonging to the 3rd Guards Mechanized Army. The commander is a young man named Abram Vitalievich, who is only 22 years old this year and was once a tractor driver at the Victory October Farm in Yekaterinburg.
Although the young man is young, he has been in the war for two years. In the Battle of Kursk, he commanded his team to destroy four German tanks and was awarded the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union.
During the conversation, Yuri learned that the young man had five brothers in his family, and he was the youngest one. His four older brothers had all been killed in previous battles, two in Smolensk, one in Kuban, and the other was killed in the Leningrad counterattack not long ago.
The young man now has only one wish, which is to command his tank all the way to Berlin.
Tank No. 497 passed the pontoon bridge over the river in a bumpy manner. Yuri sat on the edge of the turret, looking at the bright red water under the bridge, all the way to the other side of the river.
On the river bank, Yuri lit a cigarette for himself, and in the pungent smell of horse and tobacco, he watched the tank column rapidly moving towards Melitopol. In the sky, formations of Soviet fighter planes flew past.
Behind the riverbank, the anti-tank trenches built by the German army were being flattened. Trucks equipped with tracks were dragging several destroyed tanks out of the anti-tank trenches. The soldiers responsible for cleaning up the battlefield were busy moving almost charred bodies out of the tank compartments.
Ignoring Arseni's obstruction, Yuri followed a track made by tank tracks and slowly walked towards the trenches built by the German army. There were deep pits caused by shells everywhere along the way. Just when he was about to reach the outer edge of the trench, a German body cut into two parts appeared in the mark made by the track tracks. The tank tracks rolled over the German soldier's lower abdomen, cutting his upper and lower body into two parts.
The squeezed out internal organs and blood dyed a large area of soil red, and only the face lying on its back was pale.
This German soldier held a bundle of cluster grenades in his right hand, but the fuse was not pulled. It was estimated that he wanted to use the bundle of grenades to blow up the Soviet tanks, but he failed in the end.
After years of fighting, such scenes no longer caused Yuri any discomfort. He squatted down beside the corpse, picked up a paper bird pinned to the German soldier's shirt pocket, shook off the dirt on it, and threw it hard towards the distance ahead.
