Chapter 61 Failure
Brovary, formerly the Brovary Municipal Office Building, now the seat of the Military Committee of the Southwestern Front.
Comrade Khrushchev sat behind his desk with a gloomy face, staring at the phone in front of him. Just a moment ago, he had just hung up the phone to the People's Commissar of Defense Georgy Makmilianovich Malenkov, who called on his own initiative because he needed a batch of guns to arm the citizens of Kiev who volunteered to join the battle.
As a political opponent, Malenkov gave him a very impolite reply. He actually said that the existing weapons should give priority to the battle in Leningrad. As for Kiev, he suggested that Khrushchev organize people to make weapons himself, such as spears, bayonets, Molotov cocktails and so on.
Of course, what annoyed Khrushchev the most was not this incident. What annoyed him the most was the damn, sweet-mouthed bastard, Ukrainian People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Sergiyenko, who actually went behind his back to Stalin to complain about Khrushchev, so much so that Stalin called Khrushchev scolded him, criticizing him for not fulfilling his duties and failing to boost the morale of the Southwestern Front, which led to the entire Southwestern Front's terrible performance in the war.
Traitor, damn traitor, Comrade Khrushchev hated traitors the most, so he planned to promote Comrade Sergiyenko, who loved to tell tales, for example, to send him to Piryagin. The German army was launching a fierce attack on that place, and the soldiers there needed an experienced committee member like Sergiyenko to accompany them.
After silently making up his mind, Khrushchev's anger was slightly calmed. He looked at the alarm clock on the table. It was already 6pm. Well, Comrade Major Yuri Arkhipovich, who made him feel more comfortable, should have launched a counterattack against the Germans, right? Why hadn't he received a call from him until now?
Khrushchev was a little unhappy, but then he thought, Yuri is a cautious person, he should want to report to him after achieving certain results? Yes, that's right. Thinking of this, Khrushchev became happy again, and he was going to call and ask in person.
When Yuri received Khrushchev's call, he was in a half-collapsed building on Manevkovsky Street in Berezna, analyzing battle reports sent back from the front line with a group of brigade commanders.
Yuri was lucky. It seemed as if God heard his expectations. It started to drizzle yesterday and didn't stop until this afternoon. Not only that, by dusk, thick fog had spread along both sides of the Desna River, and visibility was only a dozen meters. Obviously, this was a godsend for the Soviet army that launched the offensive.
The battle started at 5:40. In order to make the battle sudden, the 34th Brigade did not carry out artillery strikes on the German positions. Instead, it directly ordered the soldiers to be divided into small teams, taking advantage of the cover of fog, to launch a sneak attack on the German positions.
According to Yuri's plan, the assault troops of the 34th Brigade will launch an assault on the German army from two directions: one direction will be launched from October Square in the east of the city, and after breaking through the German positions, it will advance towards Shuvorov Village. The other direction will be launched from Kirov Street in the west, and after breaking through the German positions, it will attack towards Duvorov Collective Farm No. 11.
Yuri's main intention was to encircle the German troops gathered in front of the northern city of Berezna through attacks from two directions, and at the same time, destroy the German artillery positions in the area of the Duvorov Collective Farm No. 11.
With a main intention, there will naturally be a secondary intention. Because of the fear that the battle in the north of Berezna would fail, in order to give Khrushchev a relatively satisfactory answer, Yuri also prepared a plan B, which was a surprise attack on Shors, about 27 kilometers northwest of Berezka. To be precise, it was a surprise attack on the Lyubitenoye railway station in the southern suburbs of Shors and the nearby Punosanpol Bridge across the Desna River.
In order to realize this extremely risky sneak attack plan, Yuri selected 120 most experienced soldiers from the entire brigade , equipped them with the best weapons, and found more than 20 sets of German uniforms and two soldiers who could speak German. These soldiers were divided into two teams. After the battle of Berezna started, they took advantage of the fog and used kayaks to secretly cross the river upstream of Berezna to carry out this risky mission with a low success rate but a super high mortality rate.
In fact, in Yuri's plan, blowing up the Punosanpol Bridge was the key to this sneak attack mission. Although its practical significance was not great, I believe that for Khrushchev, being able to blow up a key bridge in the German-occupied area had far greater political significance than annihilating two or three German companies in Berezna - even if the German army only needed one day to build two or three pontoon bridges on the river.
The battle north of Berezna was intended to attract German troops near Berezna, while the attack on Lyubitenoye railway station was intended to attract German troops near Shors. Yuri's real intention was to blow up the Punosanpol Bridge. This was his complete battle plan.
Even with a complete plan, elite soldiers, and the perfect cover of foggy weather, if this still cannot achieve the goal, then Yuri will have no choice. After all, he is only a brigade commander and has no ability to launch a large-scale counterattack against the German army in the Berezno direction.
One advantage of being a commander is that you don't have to fight in the battlefield like ordinary soldiers, but this also restricts the commander's vision. No commander can accurately grasp every detail of the battlefield. Many times, war is a gamble, and any seemingly insignificant accident may lead to a disastrous defeat or a chance of survival.
Sending out two attack teams was like releasing a kite with a broken string. Yuri had no idea what the outcome would be. The only situation he could grasp was the front battlefield in the Berezna area.
The fog affected both sides of the war, but the impact was obviously greater on the German army because they had no plan to attack the city of Berezna. Faced with the sudden attack launched by the Soviet army, they could only passively defend, and the fog caused the front of their positions to lose the buffer effect they should have.
Yuri deployed a whole regiment of troops in the attack direction of Kirov Street, which was the main attack direction in the battle in the Berezna area.
After the battle started, the Soviet troops attacking Kirov Street made rapid progress. In less than half an hour, they broke through the German defense line and successfully repelled the counterattack of a German tank company. By nightfall, the Soviet troops had pushed the front line to the suburban town of Shetanovye. A group of defeated German troops held their ground in a grain warehouse outside the town. Two powerful machine guns caused heavy casualties to the attacking Soviet troops.
At 6:40, four Soviet reserve reinforcement tanks arrived. With the support of the tanks, Soviet soldiers broke into the warehouse and killed all 43 German soldiers who were entrenched in the warehouse.
At this time, fierce fighting was still taking place in some areas of Kirov Street. The Soviet army also encountered the same troubles as the German army had encountered when it attacked. The German troops stranded in the buildings, relying on the cover of the ruins, fought stubbornly like trapped beasts. It would not be an easy task to clean them out in a short time.
At 7 o'clock in the evening, when it was completely dark, Yuri ventured to the front line in the western city under the cover of darkness for an inspection, and the results of the inspection made him very worried.
Although the Soviet vanguard had advanced to the town of Shetanoyev in the northwest suburbs, the German troops stationed in the western part of the city were just stunned in the previous battle. Although their front line was broken, they did not retreat. Yuri was worried that once the Soviet vanguard attacking Duvorov Collective Farm No. 11 was blocked, and at the same time, the German troops defending the western part of the city were reorganized, his western offensive force would be surrounded by the German army.
On the eastern route, the troops responsible for launching an offensive towards Shuvorov Village made Yuri even more angry. This Soviet army launched an offensive against the German army from October Square. After nearly two hours of fierce fighting, they only advanced less than 2 kilometers to the outskirts of the city, and the casualties were somewhat outrageous. The most hateful thing was that at 7:20, the German army launched a counterattack near the Ministry of Internal Affairs Building on Red Flag Street. Two tanks assigned by Yuri to the troops in this direction were destroyed, and a cannon was also taken away by the Germans.
What made Yuri feel most uneasy was that the German army in front of the Soviet position launched a fierce artillery attack on the Soviet position at 7:14, and then at 7:30, officially launched an attack on the Soviet position.
If the front position collapsed, the assault organized by the 34th Brigade would become a joke, which is the so-called losing the rice while trying to steal the chicken. Yuri would not only lose the troops on both attacks, but would even have to give up the defense of the urban area north of the Desna River and retreat to the south bank of the river in disgrace.
At 9 o'clock in the evening, at the temporary headquarters of the 34th Brigade set up at the Workers and Peasants Wharf in the urban area, Yuri sat behind a desk with a grim face, his two bloodshot eyes staring at a map in front of him.
"Comrade Major Yuri Arkhipovich," said the muddy-faced political commissar Demel hurriedly across the desk, "Gorsky's troops must be ordered to retreat, otherwise..."
"Boom!" With a loud bang, a shell exploded somewhere outside the house. Amid the violent tremors, dust fell from the roof and covered the entire map.
Demel shrank his neck and subconsciously glanced at the broken window covered with newspapers. Then he continued, "Otherwise, our defense line will collapse."
