My own war game

Chapter 145: Victory Escape
Ukraine, Lokhvitsa region.

A bush by the river moved slightly, and a telescope popped out from a hidden place.

"Dawali, the news is correct, there really is a floating bridge here!" An excited voice came from the bushes.

"Speak softly, we don't know the reason for building the pontoon bridge yet. Maybe it's an enemy conspiracy." Another rougher voice took over.

"Whether it's a conspiracy or not, this is our chance to break out!"

"Dawali, we are scouts, not commanders. Whether to break out from here is a question for our superiors to consider."

"What about down there?"

"I will continue to hide here. You go back and report to the commander. Remember, report objectively and don't add your own subjective judgment."

From the conversation, we can roughly judge the identities of the two lurkers - Soviet reconnaissance pioneers.

They were part of the remnants of the 37th Army and were ordered to look for a crossing point along the river. However, the river was in its flood season at that time and the turbulent river was not suitable for swimming. The only few small boats were not enough for nearly 3 troops to complete the crossing.

Just when they were in despair, they discovered that the Germans were building a pontoon bridge and were making rapid progress.

At the beginning, the commander couldn't believe that the Germans would make such a low-level mistake. It was only after the scouts repeatedly confirmed that they finally believed that there really was a "way home" here.

There was about one division in the surrounding area, with about 600 men stationed on the pontoon bridge.

opportunity!

Although there are risks, this is definitely a one-time opportunity!

Senior commanders quickly reached a consensus and concentrated all firepower to capture the pontoon bridge in the shortest possible time, and then the entire 3 people forced a crossing.

In order to achieve this goal, the Soviet army collected almost all weapons and ammunition and concentrated them on the troops responsible for the attack. The performance of the assault company responsible for launching the first attack determined the success or failure of the operation.

The German army had the advantage of terrain and could not fully launch an attack to seize the pontoon bridge, so the Soviet army needed to use a small number of elite troops to complete this task.

The German machine gun positions and the mortar positions on one side could cause huge casualties to the advancing infantry, but the most threatening one was a big guy - an 88mm Krupp general-purpose anti-aircraft gun. Although this high-powered and high-rate-of-fire thing was invented for air defense, it would be a nightmare for all assault troops once it fired horizontally.

The Soviet army was ready to attack. Two hundred carefully selected elite Soviet troops were lurking near the pontoon bridge, ready to launch an attack despite huge casualties.

At this moment, the sound of an engine suddenly came from the road.

A Horch 901 off-road vehicle drove towards the pontoon bridge alone without any escort. A man in the uniform of a senior German officer was sitting in the passenger seat.

The sudden change caught the soldiers off guard. A Soviet shooter hiding in the dark pointed his gun at the off-road vehicle, but was stopped by his companions.

Their mission was to seize the pontoon bridge and they could not lose sight of the big picture because of other things. The car quickly arrived at the bridgehead. After a brief exchange with the people in the car, the officer guarding the pontoon bridge immediately stood at attention and saluted each other, then shouted to the surrounding soldiers to remove the roadblocks and let them pass.

The Horch 901 off-road vehicle was about to drive onto the pontoon bridge, but at this moment, a communications soldier with a walkie-talkie on his back ran over, shouting something and waving his hands.

Before the other soldiers could react, the people in the off-road vehicle suddenly threw several black objects into the crowd. One of them rolled into the checkpoint nearby with thick smoke, and the other one happened to be thrown under the 88mm gun.

BOOM!!!! BOOM!!!! BOOM!!!! BOOM!!!!

A series of explosions occurred at the German outposts, and the unprepared defenders were instantly killed or wounded. The 88mm Krupp gun was directly destroyed on the spot.

Thick smoke billowed into the sky.

The Horch 901 off-road vehicle roared in the smoke, crashed through the roadblocks and rushed onto the floating bridge!
The German soldiers behind suddenly woke up as if from a dream. Some of them picked up machine guns and fired at the rear of the car. Bullets hit the rear of the car and sparks continued to fly.

There was chaos near the floating bridge! Gunfire continued to ring out!
The Soviet commandos in charge of the attack were stunned.

what happened?

The Germans fighting themselves?

Although he didn't understand why, the commander knew that the opportunity had come.

Snapped!Snapped!Snapped!
Several flares rose into the sky, and the commander waved his gun and shouted, "For the Soviet Union! Davari! Follow me!!"

Woohoo~~~Boom!!! Boom!!!
The concentrated mortar shells rained down on the defenders of the pontoon bridge, and two hundred Soviet soldiers, acting as a suicide squad, launched a charge while howling!
The sound of gunfire resounded through the sky. The defenders of the pontoon bridge were a little dazed after being hit by the bomb. By the time they reacted, the Soviet suicide squad had already rushed to a position less than 100 meters away.

The two sides were fighting each other, and the Soviet follow-up troops also began to charge, and blood mist rose on one side of the pontoon bridge!
The flames and explosions dyed the sky red, but He Chi and his companions fled without a care in the world, and the driver stepped on the accelerator to the bottom.
-
On September 9, the command center of the German Second Panzer Army in Kiev was attacked by a bomb, paralyzing its entire command system for nearly an hour.

During this period of time, the German copper-cast and iron-cast encirclement was in great chaos because the German troops received completely contradictory orders, causing the joints of the defense line to loosen.

The remnants of the surrounded Soviet 40th, 21st, 38th and 6th Armies found an opportunity to break out in batches by dividing into small groups of less than a thousand people, and eventually successfully evacuated more than people.

In the Lokhvitsa area, 30,000 people led by Kirponos, commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front, unexpectedly captured a pontoon bridge that the Germans had just built, and a series of senior generals including himself escaped, including Stalin's future successor.

Strangely, neither the declassified intelligence within the German army nor the military history documents of the Second Panzer Army mentioned that the then commander-in-chief Guderian had issued an order to build a pontoon bridge here.

It was not until the end of World War II that Guderian revealed to the public in his memoirs why the German army let about 5 Soviet remnants escape when they had an absolute advantage in the Battle of Kiev.

"At some special moments, the role of one person is even equivalent to that of an entire armored division." "If anyone knows where that guy is, please tell me. We had an unfinished discussion back then." These were the words of Guderian, then special adviser to the West German Army.

Twenty years later, a Hollywood film company shot the second 007 film based on this memoir: "Bridge", and the filming company made a fortune, but that was later.

(End of this chapter)