"Battle alarm!" the platoon leader shouted at the top of his lungs. His voice was particularly loud in the silent night, but he was worried that his shout would not wake up the sleeping soldiers, so he blew the whistle hanging around his neck hard. whistle. The sharp whistle sounded throughout the entire position.
As the whistle sounded, the soldiers who were awakened from their sleep rushed out of the shelter one after another with their weapons in hand and ran towards their respective shooting positions amid the shouts of their squad leaders.
Seeing that all his soldiers had entered the shooting position, the platoon commander lay beside Grisa and reported: "Comrade company commander, all the first platoon are in position."
"Everyone listen to my command!" The light on the position was too dark. Except for a few soldiers around him, Grisa could not see where the other soldiers were, so he raised his voice and shouted to the left and right: "Get ready to fight! "
Immediately after his shout, there was a sound of pulling gun bolts all around. Grisa turned to the signal soldier squatting behind him and said: "You find a safe place to hide and fire a flare every two minutes. Do you understand?"
"Understood, comrade company commander." The signal soldier agreed, bent down and ran away.
When the new flares rose into the air, the soldiers lying in the trenches were stunned when they saw the water in front of the position filled with German soldiers moving towards the position. They originally thought that the so-called battle alarm was just a sneak attack by a dozen or twenty German soldiers. However, more than two hundred enemies appeared in the field at this moment. Some new soldiers who had never fought before felt frightened and their bodies began to suffer. Trembling under control.
The German commander who was staying by the river saw that his actions were discovered by the Soviet army. While ordering the troops who were wading through the water to speed up, he ordered people to establish a machine gun position on the river bank and started shooting at the Soviet position.
Listening to the bullets whizzing past their heads, some new soldiers were so frightened that they squatted in the trenches, while others turned around and prepared to escape from the place. Fortunately, they were caught by the veterans beside them, and they were beaten and scolded to let them go again. Returning to his position prevented the appearance of deserters.
Grisa used the light from the flares to silently calculate how far away the German troops were from their position. When the enemy was still 150 meters away from the position, Grisa yelled: "Hit~~!" After shouting, he took the lead in firing a shot at the enemy with his pistol.
A pistol shot at such a long distance has no lethality at all, but the sound of the gun is the signal to fire. Suddenly, gunfire sounded like exploding beans on the position. Whether it was machine guns, rifles or submachine guns, they all fired at the enemy at the same time.
Hearing the sudden sound of gunfire, the German soldiers who were marching hard in the water immediately sped up and started running. They all knew in their hearts that in such deep water, they could not lie down on the ground and hide. In that case, they would be drowned even if they were not killed by Soviet bullets. If you want to survive, you must rush forward faster and rush into the Soviet position as quickly as possible.
Since the army had replenished a large number of soldiers after occupying Kursk, Grisa's company had as many as 400 soldiers. At this moment, the platoon blocking the enemy on the position has more than 100 soldiers, one more than the friendly army. There are many people in the company. However, except for dozens of veterans, the rest were all new recruits. Even though these recruits had served as militiamen or received military training, they seemed panicked when facing the charging enemies. Although they fired desperately at the enemies, However, few bullets hit the target, and they only opened the water around the German soldiers as if they were boiling.
The soldiers who were still operating the machine guns were all veterans of the army. They used the captured G34 machine guns to shoot wildly at the rushing enemies, knocking them down in pieces in the stagnant water. Without them, the German soldiers might have rushed to the position and started close combat and hand-to-hand combat with the soldiers in the trenches.
Seeing that the firepower on the Soviet position was too fierce, the Germans turned around and ran back if they continued to charge forward, only to die. Seeing that the enemy had abandoned nearly a hundred corpses in the water area and retreated, a platoon leader said loudly to Grisa: "Comrade company commander, we are here, you should go back to the company headquarters first. Don't worry , we must block the enemy’s attack.”
Grisa saw that although the enemy had been repelled, there were still enemies crossing the river from the other side. He was worried that it would be difficult to hold the position with just one platoon of soldiers, so he returned to the company headquarters and summoned the other two platoon leaders. , assigning combat missions to them. Later, he called the brigade headquarters and reported the battle that took place here to the personnel on duty there.
The gunshots rang out in the south of the city woke Sokov from his sleep. He sat up from the cot, rubbed his eyes and asked Belgin, who was also surprised: "Comrade Political Commissar, did you hear the gunshots coming from outside?"
"The gunshots were very intensive." Although Belkin was now a political worker, he had also been a military cadre before. He only listened for a while and then said to Sokov: "It seems to be coming from the south of the city. Could it be that it is coming from the south of the city?" Is the enemy attacking the position of the 2nd Battalion and 1st Company?"
Sokov bent over and put on his boots and strode outside: "Let's go, Comrade Political Commissar, let's go to the headquarters and find out whether there is a battle going on in the defensive positions of Grisa Company."
Arriving in the war room next door, Sokov asked the busy staff: "What's going on with the gunfire outside? Where is the fighting taking place?"
A staff officer quickly straightened up and reported to Sokov: "Comrade Brigade Commander, I have verified that the position south of the city was attacked by the German army and a battle is ongoing."
Knowing that it was indeed the area defended by Gryza, and a battle started with the enemy, Sokov couldn't help but feel nervous. He quickly asked: "How is the situation now?"
"The enemy's first attack has been repelled by our army." The staff officer replied: "The casualties of the troops were not large. Only a dozen soldiers died and 20 were injured."
"Get me connected to the forward position immediately," Sokov told his staff, knowing that in order to get a comprehensive report, he could only ask Grisa in person, "I want to speak to Lieutenant Grisa in person."
After the call was connected, Sokov heard Grisa's voice coming from the receiver and immediately asked impatiently: "Lieutenant Grisa, give me a detailed report on the battle that took place there."
"Comrade Brigadier, the situation is like this. More than half an hour ago, a sentry reported to me that he heard something coming from the river, so I rushed to check..." Grisa said on the phone, After introducing what happened to Sokov in detail, he said: "Currently, I have mobilized the second and third platoons to prepare them to support the first platoon at any time."
"Well done, Lieutenant Grisa." After listening to Grisa's report, Sokov expressed his approval, and then said: "Don't worry, you are not fighting alone, I will provide you with the necessary help. .”
After ending the call with Grisa, Sokov used another phone to call the artillery company. He said to Porochenko who answered the phone: "Comrade Lieutenant, the position in the south of the city is being attacked by the enemy. I order you to immediately send artillery observers to establish observation posts to provide them with the necessary artillery support."
Just after assigning tasks to his men, Rotmistrov called from his army headquarters. He asked on the phone: "Lieutenant Colonel Sokov, my men reported to me that Towards the south of the city?"
"The German army sent a unit to quietly cross the Tenebra River and tried to sneak attack the position of the 2nd Battalion and 1st Company. But when they were crossing the river, they were discovered by our vigilant sentries, so their sneak attack turned into a strong attack ." Sokov said into the microphone: "Due to the timely response of the commanders and fighters of the first company, the enemy's attack has been repelled, but our army's casualties were not large."
"Lieutenant Colonel Sokov, we are friendly forces." Rotmistrov said with a smile on the phone: "If you need it, just call me and I will provide you with the necessary help."
Hearing what Rotmistrov said, Sokov immediately made a mental calculation: the terrain there was not conducive to the use of tanks, but after the tank army received supplies from the warehouse, it would have two artillery battalions. If With their cooperation, it would be enough to form artillery fire that could destroy the German attacking troops. Thinking of this, he quickly said into the microphone: "Comrade General, the terrain in the south of the city is not conducive to the use of tank troops, so I hope you can provide artillery support for our troops to eliminate all the German troops crossing the river."
Regarding Sokov's request, Rotmistrov was silent for only a moment before agreeing: "No problem. I will let the artillery director contact your artillery company commander to discuss ways to coordinate operations and jointly eliminate the special forces." Enemies by the Niebra."
After the first wave of German attacks were repelled, the German commander did not hastily launch a second attack. Instead, he contacted the other side by radio and asked the other side to send several mortars in preparation for suppressing the Soviet positions with artillery fire. machine gun firepower, covering the infantry to attack again.
After waiting for about half an hour, five mortar groups were sent from the other side. The German commander said to these artillerymen: "Your mission is to destroy the Russian machine gun fire points and cover our infantry charging towards the Russian positions."
A gunner waited for the commander to finish and then asked cautiously: "What about the Russians in the trenches? Do you care about them?"
"Judging from the battle just now, they are all new recruits, and their shooting is not accurate at all. The only troublesome thing is their machine guns. Those machine gunners are obviously veterans, and their guns are very accurate. Our first When an attack failed, two-thirds of the soldiers fell under the muzzle of the machine gun." The German commander said to the mortar crews with a serious expression: "Therefore, you must do everything you can to destroy the Russians' Machine guns, reduce the casualties of our soldiers. Do you understand?"
"Understood, Your Excellency, Commander." Several gunners replied loudly and quickly: "We will definitely eliminate all Russian machine guns."
After setting up the mission, the machine guns that had been silent for a long time on the river bank started clicking again, and dense bullets flew towards the Soviet positions in the distance. The soldiers sitting by the river also stood up and waded into the water towards the Soviet position with their guns in hand.
The Soviet position remained silent until the German skirmisher line was no more than a hundred meters away from the position, when a platoon leader blew his whistle vigorously and issued the order to fire. The entire position suddenly crackled again, with rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns all firing at the same time.
The recruits in the trenches gained some confidence after repelling the first wave of German attacks. Facing the rushing German soldiers, they were no longer so panicked. Their shooting gradually began to be accurate. From time to time, groups of German soldiers fell under their volleys of guns.
But what caused great casualties to the German army was the five or six G34 machine guns on the position. Their long dark red flames were like fire whips desperately beating the German skirmishers, knocking down one German soldier after another. on the ground.
When the German mortarmen saw that the Soviet machine guns had indeed caused a lot of casualties to the attacking troops, they each selected a target and shelled them.
In the first salvo, none of the shells hit the target, and several pillars of mud shot into the sky at the front and back of the trench. Seeing that the first round of shooting did not hit the target, the gunners adjusted their shooting elements and fired again. This time the salvo achieved results. After the explosion, a machine gun was blown into piles of hot parts. The sacrificed machine gunner lay in a mess near the crater.
"Great." The German commander couldn't help but cheered when he saw that the mortars had destroyed a machine gun fire point, and then ordered: "The Russians have four machine guns left, shoot them all out immediately."
The soldiers who acted as machine gunners on the position were all veterans. After seeing two or three machine guns destroyed by German artillery fire, they immediately realized the seriousness of the problem. They no longer dared to stay in a fixed position like before. Instead, they used guerrilla tactics. After shooting a bullet chain, they immediately moved their position so that the German mortars could not destroy the target in time.
Although a row of soldiers fought tenaciously, the German troops were getting closer and closer to their position. After approaching the position, the German soldiers immediately started shooting with their weapons, causing certain casualties to the soldiers in the trenches.
Seeing that the enemy was getting closer and closer to his position, the platoon leader felt that the situation was not good, and quickly picked up the microphone and reported to Grisa: "Comrade company commander, the enemy has rushed to a place only fifty meters away from our position. I I’m worried that I won’t be able to hold on, so I’m asking for support, asking for support.”
"I understand." When Griza heard that the German army was approaching the platoon's position, he cursed the platoon commander secretly in his heart, and then said into the microphone: "Comrade Second Lieutenant, don't panic, hold on, I'll send someone right away." Troops are going to reinforce you.”
