Chapter 60: Counterattack
There was almost no light in the unlit room. This was a basement without any windows, so naturally not a single bit of light could get in.
Breathing heavily, Yuri rolled off Olga's soft body, reached out one hand to the head of the bed, groped for the location of the desk lamp, and pressed the switch with a click.
The murky yellow light instantly filled the entire room. Almost at the same time, the entire basement shook violently, and the dust on the roof fell down like a light rain.
"Pah," Yuri spat out the saturn in his mouth, looked at the wooden roof, muttered something and then turned to look at Olga beside him.
Olga, who had just experienced a storm, looked a little lazy at this moment. She lay there with her hair fluffy, her cheeks flushed, and her pair of light blue eyes seemed to contain a pool of water, which was extremely attractive.
Perhaps sensing his gaze, Olga turned over, leaned over to kiss his sweaty thigh, and said in a sweet voice, "Are you leaving?"
"Well," Yuri retracted his gaze, got out of bed, and said while looking for his shoes, "We have to go to Bobrovica today, so we have to leave early."
Finally finding the pair of slippers that had been kicked under the bed, Yuri put them on, stood up and said, "You sleep a little longer. I'll go wash up and leave right away."
"Well, be careful on the road." Olga reminded him again, then turned over, leaving Yuri with only her enchanting and seductive back.
Different from the previously arranged room, perhaps because he noticed the improper relationship between Yuri and Olga, the capable Arseni arranged this basement specifically for Olga.
Generally speaking, the environment in the basement is not very good, but at this time, it is obviously much safer to live in a basement. What's more, this basement is equipped with a bathroom and toilet, and there is electricity supply 24 hours a day. Relatively speaking, this is equivalent to a luxury villa in peacetime.
He washed his body as quickly as possible, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and shaved his beard. After about 20 minutes, Yuri left this place that fascinated him.
From the basement, there is a narrow passageway leading upwards. This is not the air-raid shelter prepared by the army before the war, but a civilian warehouse. The passageway is more than ten meters long, and after exiting, there is a three-story building on the street. The German artillery fire had already turned this building into ruins, and only a pile of broken walls remained.
As soon as he came out of the basement passage, a rain shelter made of military uniforms appeared above Yuri's head. Then, he heard Arseni's voice saying, "Comrade Major, the car is ready. I also prepared a breakfast for you, which is also in the car."
Yuri didn't say anything, just nodded, and turned his sight slightly to see the jeep parked not far away. A dozen meters away from the jeep, a Soviet patrol team of twelve people was walking in the rain.
“Whoosh…Boom!”
Just as Yuri was about to step towards the jeep, he heard the whistling of a shell breaking through the air. Then, a huge explosion was heard nearly thirty meters in front of him on the left. Concrete fragments, mud, and rain were splashed everywhere by the explosion, and some mud spots even splashed on Yuri.
In the past two days, the German offensive on the front has slowed down, but their artillery bombardment has never really stopped. From seven in the morning to six in the evening, one or two shells would be fired almost every once in a while, but it was unknown where they would land.
The officers and soldiers of the 34th Brigade , including Yuri, had long been accustomed to such bombardments . Just like the Soviet patrol team, they did not even stop, but just did their work step by step. As long as they saw this scene, most commanders would understand that this unit composed of new recruits had matured after a period of fierce fighting. When they heard the whistling sound of the shells, they were no longer panicked, but could accurately judge the approximate landing point of the shells.
There was a misty drizzle in the sky, and the rugged road covered with broken bricks and stones was difficult to walk on. In the cracks between the bricks and stones, there were also some leaflets dropped by German planes.
With Arseni's help to shield him from the rain, Yuri walked carefully to where the jeep was parked. When he was about to reach the side of the jeep, he saw the patrolling soldiers stopped beside the ruins of a dilapidated building and caught a few soldiers who were picking up German leaflets in the corner outside the building. Yuri stopped and looked over there with a frown. After a while, he saw the soldiers picking up the leaflets cut the leaflets that seemed not to be wetted by the rain into small pieces, and the patrolling soldiers put away their guns and continued patrolling.
Facing the leaflets dropped by German planes, Demel, as the political commissar, issued an order strictly prohibiting soldiers from picking up and hiding them, but this order was not well executed. This is not to say that Soviet soldiers were interested in the content of the propaganda, but that they liked the paper quality of the leaflets. For them, cigarettes rolled with German leaflets were more smokeable than those rolled with newspapers. It is estimated that these soldiers just now also violated the ban and sneaked out to pick up cigarette paper.
In fact, with the advancement of the German army in Ukraine and Belarus, especially the implementation of a series of policies in the occupied areas, both Soviet soldiers and ordinary people were no longer interested in the Nazis, the so-called liberators.
At the end of July, the German army, which had just occupied western Ukraine and Belarus, implemented a series of unpopular policies in its occupied areas. In Belarus, the Germans set up a logistics department led by Wilhelm Kube. At the end of August, the German army under the logistics department posted notices everywhere in Belarus, stipulating that every village and town would be responsible for security affairs by the village head and town head appointed by them. If one German soldier was killed in a village or town, they would shoot two villagers in retaliation. If a road or bridge was destroyed, at least three villagers would be killed. Also in August, the German army in Ukraine began to kidnap young and strong people from the local Ukrainians and transport them to Germany as cheap labor. They also used Ukrainian women to dig trenches for the German army. In order to ensure the food supply on the front line, they also robbed food in western Ukraine.
The implementation of these policies greatly disappointed Ukrainians who were originally dissatisfied with Moscow due to famine and hoped to be liberated by the Germans. When the Germans captured a city, the crowds wearing Ukrainian national costumes and holding flowers disappeared, and the number of people fleeing to the east suddenly increased. Correspondingly, the desire to fight among Ukrainian soldiers in the Soviet army began to rise, and the actions of the guerrillas in the German-occupied areas became more and more successful.
Yuri knew that the Southwestern Front was still facing a dilemma with no way out, and the great rout he was familiar with in his previous life would most likely happen again. But as a participant in this war, he knew that from a macro perspective, the Germans had actually lost their strategic initiative at the same time as they launched the Battle of Kiev. The southward advance of Guderian's German army at least gave Moscow a chance to breathe. The German army's victory in the Battle of Kiev might indeed be considered a great victory, but at the same time, the price they paid for it was that they would never be able to capture Moscow.
Two days ago, when the inspection team visited Berezna, Khrushchev revealed the news that the Supreme Command and the People's Commissariat of Defense had already dispatched a large number of reinforcements from Siberia and the Far East. These troops were already on the way. As long as the battle in Kiev could be delayed until mid-October, the Southwestern Front would receive a large number of reinforcements.
Yuri knew very well that among all the Soviet armies, the best in terms of tenacity and fighting power were the elite troops stationed in Siberia. They were stationed in semi-frozen areas with harsh conditions all year round, and their willpower was unmatched by ordinary soldiers. Most importantly, as the largest exile area in the Soviet Union, in order to ensure stability there, the Siberian garrison was also very well equipped, and the same was true for the Far East Army established to deal with the old enemy Japan.
Of course, Yuri also knew that the Supreme Command would not transfer these troops to Kiev, because Stalin's primary goal would always be Moscow. Sometimes, Yuri even thought that the entire Southwestern Front was deliberately abandoned in order to contain the German army and reduce the defensive pressure in the direction of Moscow.
Well, Yuri has no right to comment on these strategic issues now. For him, the first priority is to replenish his troops, and then launch a larger-scale assault on the German troops in the area north of Berezna tomorrow afternoon.
The person in charge of driving was still Arseni, this young man who had just been promoted to second lieutenant by Yuri. He gave up the opportunity to lead a troop alone and shamelessly asked to continue to stay with Yuri - he was a smart man.
The drizzle outside the car continued to fall. The climate of the Dnieper Lowlands has its own rules. It is now mid-September and the season has entered autumn. After each rain, the temperature will drop by several degrees. The highest temperature measured by the Operations Department yesterday was 13...7 degrees. With this rain, the temperature will most likely drop below 10 degrees tomorrow evening.
Temperatures below 10 degrees will already make people feel chilly, which is definitely not a good thing for the German army who are only wearing summer clothes. However, for the 34th Brigade that is about to launch an offensive tomorrow, this is a very favorable condition.
Now, Yuri hopes that the rain will get heavier and last longer. If the rain does not stop by tomorrow afternoon, the road conditions in the suburbs north of Berezno will become extremely bad, which means that the German army will lose its greatest reliance on high mobility.
