Chapter 86: Retreat
Soon parting with Lobachev, Yuri took Arseny and several of his guards, and without caring about the danger of their horses galloping in the snow, they rushed to Sychevka as fast as possible. They had to get there before the dozen or so Germans in Soviet uniforms, otherwise the situation would become out of control.
Starting from the resting area in the forest, Yuri and his party hurriedly traveled for more than eight hours before finally arriving at the highway post outside Sychevka.
At the highway checkpoint, Yuri showed his credentials to the soldier on duty at the checkpoint and asked the soldier to use the checkpoint's phone to immediately contact his superior commander and tell him to assemble the team immediately and wait for orders.
Afterwards, Yuri led his men into Sychevka and went straight to the headquarters of the militia stationed there.
The militia stationed in Josevka was under the direct command of the Moscow City Defense Command. Its commander was a young man named Gerasim Gramovich, with the rank of captain. When he heard the news brought by Yuri, his first reaction was that it was impossible, because according to previous news, the nearest German troops were still in the area west of Toropchina. In such heavy snow, how could they suddenly appear on the east bank of the Vazuza River?
However, Yuri ignored the captain's reaction. As the combat staff officer of the 16th Army, he directly took over the command of the militia detachment and asked Captain Grasim to obey his orders.
The first thing to be solved was to install explosives on the Lobyskoye Bridge in preparation for blowing up the bridge connecting the two sides of the Vazuza River at any time. At the same time, the German squad that infiltrated the east bank had to be annihilated to prevent them from harassing the rear at a critical moment. As for other things, Yuri could no longer take care of them.
Judging from the current situation, Yuri believed that he had the biggest advantage, that is, the German vanguard did not know that their actions had been discovered. Therefore, the tactics they adopted to seize the Lobyskoye Bridge were still sneak attacks, and he could catch them off guard.
Then he organized his team: Captain Grasim's militia unit currently had 347 soldiers. Although these militiamen were not elite, they had received basic combat training and their combat skills were much better than those of the new recruits. What surprised Yuri the most was that there were two 57mm anti-tank guns on the bridge foundation on the east side of the Lobeiskoye Bridge. These were previously assigned to this place by the city defense army.
After sorting out the existing resources at hand, Yuri also had to consider the possible means of attack that the German army might take.
The Lobyskoye Bridge is a steel bridge built in 1925 with a width of 12 meters. Yuri considered that when German tanks passed the bridge, they would mostly march in one or two columns.
In response to the situation at the Lobyskoye Bridge, Yuri decided to adopt Katukov's anti-tank combat method in his previous life, that is, to first attack one or two tanks in the front row of the marching German tank column, and then destroy one or two tanks at the rear of the column. In this way, the entire tank column could be paralyzed.
To adopt such a combat tactic, the first thing to do is to choose the best position for the two anti-tank guns. He ordered the militia under the command of Grasim to drag the two anti-tank guns to the buildings on the east bank of the bridge. One was set up in a residential building less than 200 meters away from the bridgehead, and the other was set up in a water mill close to the river beach. The water mill had a wide view and was strong enough because it used a stone structure.
To be on the safe side, Yuri ordered his soldiers to bury more than a dozen mines at the bridgehead on the east side of the bridge to prevent German tanks from directly attacking the east side of the bridge.
While making these arrangements, Yuri also issued orders to withdraw the sentries on the road and instead set up an ambush in the defensive camp on the east side of the bridge. He planned to concentrate his forces first to destroy the German sneak attack force, and then lure the German tank forces across the bridge.
But Yuri, who was full of confidence at this time, could not accurately predict the progress of the war, so that what happened later was completely out of his battle plan.
Just after Yuri made the battle arrangements, a dozen German soldiers who tried to sneak attack and seize the bridge entered the bridge defense area along the road. They were wearing Soviet uniforms and led by the German commander who spoke Russian and had Soviet captain's epaulettes, and swaggered into the militia camp.
Yuri was in the temporary command post in the jungle on the east side of the river bank. He soon heard gunshots coming from the camp. However, a few minutes later, Captain Grasim came running in with an excited look on his face to report the situation: this German squad had been annihilated by his soldiers. They killed 7 German soldiers and captured 8 prisoners, while none of his men suffered any casualties.
Up to this stage, Yuri's combat arrangements were still going very smoothly. He was very happy and went to the camp to check on the condition of the prisoners in person. He found that none of the 8 captured prisoners could speak Russian, and the only German commander who could speak Russian had been killed in the previous battle.
The prisoners could not speak Russian, which meant that Yuri could not understand their overall plan. Most importantly, he didn't know how to notify the follow-up German troops to come and seize the bridge. Yuri was a little dumbfounded.
Fortunately, the soldiers found a signal gun and two signal flares on the killed German commander, which was probably the way they contacted the follow-up troops later.
With a tentative attitude, Yuri ordered Captain Grasim to lead the troops into combat status, and then asked the soldiers to hold signal guns and send signals to the other side of the river.
When a flare flew into the sky with a sharp whistle, Yuri looked at his watch. It was 2:13.
After the signal flare was sent out, Yuri looked through the telescope and saw a tank coming out of the jungle on the other side of the river. The tank drove directly onto the road and headed towards the bridge, but just as it was about to reach the bridge, it stopped again, the top cover of the turret opened, and a soldier got out of it, walked onto the bridge on foot, and headed straight towards the east bank.
At this point, Yuri realized that his plan had failed and the Germans had not been fooled. He believed that there must still be German tanks and even a certain number of infantry in the woods on the other side of the river.
Whether the German army was acting too cautiously or there was an error in the way they sent signals, the ambush could not be carried out, and the only option left was to fight a head-on battle.
Seeing that the walking German soldier was about to reach the east side of the bridge, Yuri gave the order to open fire.
The first sound was the roar of the anti-tank gun. A shell was fired from the residential area at the bridgehead, targeting the tank parked on the west side of the bridge. It was an armor-piercing shell, which directly hit the flank of the tank turret. After penetrating the armor, it was likely to ignite the shell inside the cabin. Amid the huge explosion, the tank's turret was lifted more than ten meters into the air, and after landing, it rolled into the woods.
Almost at the same time when the tank was blown up, the German soldier walking on the bridge was hit by bullets from the opposite side. He fell on the bridge and was probably killed on the spot.
The battle began, and this was also the first battle in the Battle of Mozhaisk Line in the Battle of Moscow.
…
The sound of gunfire was heard nearby, and even in the stone mill, he could still feel the ground shaking. But based on past experience, Yuri could sense that the scale of this conflict was not large. In other words, the situation might not be as bad as he predicted, and the number of German troops coming for a surprise attack should not be large.
Climb up the wooden stairs to the mill's machine room, where the mill's wind wheel is located. There is a window that connects to the outside and faces west, from which you can observe the situation on the other side of the river.
"Comrade Lieutenant Colonel," Captain Grasim was standing at the window looking across the river when Yuri entered the engine room.
"What's the situation? Are there any movements of German tanks?" Yuri asked as he walked over quickly.
"Not yet, but there are German infantrymen trying to force their way across the river on the ice," said Captain Grasim.
Yuri walked to the window and looked towards the river. He saw several German soldiers climbing back from the riverbank on the opposite side of the river. Behind them, the originally frozen river surface had broken, and from the messy snow it could be seen that it was caused by an artillery shell.
Yuri understood that the defending Soviet soldiers must have discovered the German intention. The experienced artillery commander ordered the gunners to fire at the river, blowing up the ice on the river, thus ruining the German intention.
"Well done," Yuri praised, picking up the binoculars hanging on his chest and looking towards the jungle area across the river.
Just as Grasim said, there were no large-scale German tank activities on the other side of the river, and the shelling of the Soviet positions should have been carried out by the mortars carried by this small group of German troops.
Although the size of the team that ambushed the German army was not very large, Yuri was also very clear that since the German advance troops had arrived at the Vazuza River line, their main force should follow closely, and no one should underestimate the mobility of the German army.
Considering that the Soviet defensive forces on the Vazuza River line had not yet been fully in place, even if they were hastily engaged in battle, they would be unlikely to stop the German attack. Yuri thought that he should perhaps suggest to the army group command and Rokossovsky to make changes to the previous defense plan, withdraw the troops that were gathering on the Vazuza River line, and redeploy them on the line from the Gzati River to Holm.
