USSR 1941

  Chapter 10 Tanks

   "Would you like a sip?" Okunev secretly handed Shulka a bottle of Vodka, which Okunev snatched from the officers' mess...before it collapsed.

   "No!" Shulka shook his head, he needed to keep a clear head.

   "Don't care what they say!" Okunev said: "They are using this method to declare their courage, and the real brave people don't need to and will not do it at the same time!"

   "I know!" Shulka replied, while looking at Okunev unexpectedly, he couldn't believe that Okunev would say such philosophical words.

  However, he was handsome for less than three seconds, and Okunev revealed his secrets in the next sentence: "I'm not bad at what I said, the lines of "Liberation"!"

   "Oh, yes, it's really good!" Shulka replied.

  Okunev is nicknamed "Actor", which is also his dream.

   At this time the Germans have lost patience.

   "This is your last chance!" A shout came from the loudspeaker: "There are still ten seconds, give up resistance, or we will launch a final attack on you!"

   There was silence for a while and there was no movement, and then there was a countdown: "Ten, nine, ... three, two, one!"

  As soon as "one" was counted, the whistling sound of shells rang out in the air.

  Shuerka instinctively bent down to protect his lunch box... Soon he knew that this approach was wrong, he should not protect the lunch box, but should stuff all the food into his mouth as quickly as possible. Later, he knew that a more mature approach should be to throw away the lunch box and grab the rifle to hide.

"Boom" With the explosion of shells, dirt and dust swept from the air like a sandstorm, and then the German bombers also joined the bombing... The Germans installed a gun in front of the nose of the "Stuka" bomber. An air-powered sounding device, nicknamed the "Horn of Jericho," allows it to emit a piercing screech resembling an air-raid siren as it dives.

  Although this generating device would actually affect the flight quality and speed of the "Stuka", the Germans insisted on doing so.

  Their goal was obviously achieved, because the Soviet soldiers below, including Shulka, couldn't help their feet getting weak when they heard the whistle.

   In addition to the bombs dropped, the Germans also installed sound whistles on the bombs, so that when they fell from the sky, they would make another slender whistling sound.

  The sound is always from far to near, and then there is a loud "boom"...

   This is a nightmare for the Soviet soldiers who endured all this on the ground, because they always have the illusion that the bomb is falling directly above their heads to where they are.

   This caused many Soviet soldiers to jump up and run from their hiding places... They didn't all run away, in fact, most of them moved without a target to avoid being hit by bombs.

   Shulka had the same urge, but he did everything in his power to stay where he was.

  Because Shulka knows one thing clearly: the probability of shells or bombs hitting people directly is very small, and what is more lethal is the scattered shrapnel and the oblique shock wave.

  So, regardless of the chaos and stormy waves outside, Shulka only knew to keep his body down and stay where he was.

   It is of course right to do this, because in the smoke and flying dust, Shulka can often see the running Soviet soldiers being thrown into the air.

   I don’t know how long it took before the sound of the guns stopped. Shulka took out the lunch box under his body and took a look... Mashed potatoes are still mashed potatoes, but there is more soil and mud, and the beans are no longer visible.

Looking up again, I couldn't help but be scared to death. Less than one meter away from me, there was a big gasoline barrel lying in the trench... It was obviously dropped by a German bomber, but luckily it was not caught. Blow it up, otherwise, nothing will happen to Shulka.

Okunev also crawled out of the mud at this time. After seeing the gasoline barrel, the two of them ran for tens of meters along the side of the trench with their guns on their waists. Thinking about it, it was not enough. They ran another ten meters... The gasoline barrels on the battlefield would be detonated at any time, and they didn't want to be burned to death.

   "The enemy is coming!" Someone shouted.

   This is not surprising, the Germans have attacked several times. The strange thing is that there was a "rumbling" sound of the engine in the gunpowder smoke.

  At first, Shulka thought it was the tinnitus after the bombing, or the sound of German cars and armored vehicles.

  Until someone yelled in horror: "Tanks, German tanks!"

Shulka took his eyes off the front sight and looked up a little, and sure enough, he saw several huge vehicles slowly driving out of the smoke. It adds a bit of power.

  6 road wheels, "No. 3" tank, a total of three.

Shulka believes that the reason why the Germans have not used tanks against the Brest Fortress until now, and there are only three, is because their main armored force has bypassed the Brest Fortress and went straight to their first target city: Minsk.

   Leading this armored force is Guderian, known as the "father of armored soldiers" in modern times.

   Shulka is very lucky for this... Guderian's armored forces did not crush Brest but bypassed it, otherwise Shulka would probably be just a piece of meat on its tank tracks.

   But now it seems that there is no difference, because the Soviet army in the Brest Fortress is seriously lacking in anti-tank equipment.

As I said before, the ammunition depots of the fortress were bombed by the German army in a large number at the first time, and the few artillerymen also lost their casualties in the subsequent artillery battles and bombings, so the Soviet army only had some light weapons... They didn't even have anti-tank guns and anti-tank grenades.

  These light weapons may still be effective against the charge of the German infantry, but they are obviously powerless against the 37MM thick armored "Panzer III" tank, which can also be seen from the dead silence in the Soviet trenches.

   At some point, Major Gavrilov was already in the trench. He looked at the tanks with a binoculars, and immediately ordered: "Organize a blasting team!"

  Everyone knows what the blasting team means, that is to use explosives or cluster grenades to blow up tanks at close range.

   This method may indeed work, but it is conceivable that the well-trained Germans, especially experienced in infantry and tank coordination, would not allow Soviet soldiers to approach their tanks easily.

  So, the situation on the battlefield suddenly became very serious... The Germans did not lie, this seems to be indeed the "final offensive".

  (end of this chapter)