After receiving the order, Captain Andre, commander of the third battalion, personally led the ninth company to Kursky Street to find the headquarters of the 13th Guards Division that had been established there. When they arrived at the place, Andre found that the neighborhood was unrecognizable. The streets were full of craters, and there were bricks, rubble, and broken walls everywhere. The building where the Rodimtsev Division Headquarters is now turned into a ruins two to three meters high.
The soldiers of the Ninth Company carefully searched around the ruins and found only a dozen non-human bodies. After identification, it was confirmed that Rodimtsev's body was not among them. Company Commander Guchakov took advantage of the soldiers to carry the bodies and said to Andre, "Comrade Battalion Commander, it seems that everyone inside is dead. Do we still need to continue searching?"
Andre stared at the ruins in a daze for a while, feeling that Guchakov was right. Dozens or hundreds of tons of masonry and rubble fell down, let alone human flesh and blood. Even if a tank was placed here, It was also smashed flat. He quickly called the telegraph operator and told the other person, "Send a telegram to the brigade headquarters immediately and report the situation here to them. At the same time, please ask for our next step."
After receiving the telegram from the Third Battalion, Sidorin said to Sokov with a solemn expression, "Comrade Brigade Commander, the Ninth Company of the Third Battalion has arrived at Kursky Street and found the headquarters of the 13th Guards Division. The building has been reduced to rubble, and no survivors have been found.”
"No survivors found?!" Sokov quickly took the telegram and browsed it quickly. He found that the content above was exactly what Sidorin said. The building where the Guards Division's headquarters was located was razed to the ground. After a search, no survivors were found.
Although various evidences indicate that Rodimtsev and his command have been completely destroyed by German shelling, Sokov does not believe this result because he clearly remembers that Rodimtsev was Not long after the Battle of Stalingrad, he was appointed commander of the 23rd Guards Army, and was promoted to the rank of general in the 1960s. How could he die so easily?
In order to find out whether Rodimtsev was dead or alive, Sokov decided to go there himself. He put the telegram on the table and said to Sidorin and Belkin, "Chief of Staff, Political Commissar, General Rodimtsev's life and death are of great importance. We cannot make hasty conclusions. I want to go to Kursky in person." Take a walk down the street and figure it all out.”
The fighting at Mamayev Heights has been fierce recently. As the commander of the infantry brigade, Sokov could not leave his combat post easily. This time he left to investigate Rodimtsev's life and death. Therefore, Belkin and Not only did Sidorin not dissuade him, but they also strongly supported it. Belkin also said to him, "Comrade Brigadier, we are here, so you can go with peace of mind. We will never let the Germans rush to Mamayev Hill."
In order not to attract too much attention from the German army and avoid making himself the target of enemy snipers, Sokov deliberately took off his lieutenant colonel's uniform before departure, dressed up as an ordinary soldier, and mingled with the accompanying guard squad. Left Mamayev Kurgan quietly.
While passing through a smoldering ruins, a German soldier suddenly emerged from the other side of the ruins and collided with Sokov and the others. Neither Sokov nor the Germans expected to encounter the enemy under such circumstances, and everyone could not help but be stunned. Seeing the German soldier subconsciously touching the trigger of the gun, Sokov, who had been marching in a fighting state, kept his finger on the trigger of the assault rifle. When he saw the German wanted to shoot, his gun fired first.
He did not aim to shoot the German soldier in the head as the soldiers imagined, but shot directly into the abdomen. After the German soldier was shot, he immediately screamed, covered his stomach and fell to the ground. The soldier behind Sokov quickly stepped forward and fired two more shots, killing the other man.
As he continued on his way, a soldier asked Sokov curiously, "Comrade Brigadier, why did you shoot the German in the stomach?" He had heard that Sokov was a sharpshooter who could shoot at such a close range. , he could completely aim at the enemy's head and shoot, but why he ended up hitting the abdomen was something he couldn't understand.
"Comrade soldier, didn't you see that the German soldier also had a gun in his hand?" Sokov said to the soldier with a side face, "If I aim at his head and shoot, whether I hit or not is a problem, even if I hit If he hits the target, he raises his body back before he dies, and the bullet fired from the gun may hit one or several of us; and if he hits his abdomen, not only is it easier to hit the target, but also after he is shot , will instinctively bend down so that the bullets in the gun can only hit the ground, posing almost no threat to us."
"Comrade Brigadier," the soldier said with emotion after hearing what Sokov said, "you know so much. When I encounter the enemy again in the future, I will aim at the enemy's abdomen and shoot."
"Comrades," Sokov saw that several soldiers were surrounding him and it was necessary to teach them some combat skills, so he raised his voice and said, "I want to tell everyone, when you see the enemy charging towards you, don't Aim for the head and shoot, but hit their chest and abdomen. Although hitting the head can kill with one shot, you should be very clear that it is difficult to aim, and the hit rate is also low. If you have the time to aim at the head, , you can aim at the chest and abdomen and shoot several times."
The combat experience described by Sokov was deeply agreed by the soldiers around him. Everyone has been on the battlefield and they all know that if you want to survive, you must shoot faster than the enemy. Since the time required for shooting at the chest and abdomen is high, the hit rate is high, so in the future, the shooting will be specifically aimed at two parts.
On the way, they encountered two more small groups of Germans. The soldiers used the tactics taught by Sokov and achieved good results, killing more than a dozen German soldiers, but they also paid the price of one death and three injuries. .
Arriving at Kursky Street, Andrei immediately came up to him after receiving the news, and asked with surprise, "Comrade Brigadier, why are you here? It's too dangerous here, so go back as soon as possible."
Sokov did not answer the question, but stared at the mountains of rubble in front of him and asked, "Although the building was destroyed by enemy artillery fire, the basement should still be intact. Have you found the entrance?"
"No." Andre shook his head and replied simply, "Comrade Brigadier, even if the people we are looking for stay in the basement, we can't rescue them."
"Why?" Sokov asked curtly.
"There are dozens or hundreds of tons of masonry and rubble here," Andrei quickly glanced behind Sokov and then said, "The Ninth Company I brought only has more than seventy people, and the ones you brought There are only about twenty people in the security squad. It is simply a fantasy to ask more than a hundred people to clean up this ruins."
Sokov agreed very much with Andre's statement. Such a large ruin could not be cleaned in a day or two even if a crane was used, not to mention that there was only one he could use now. It is simply unrealistic for more than a hundred soldiers who do not have the tools to move away these masonry and rubble. But how do you get into the basement without clearing the masonry and rubble from the floor?
Seeing Sokov's silence, Andrei struck again while the iron was hot and said, "There are Germans hiding in a building at the end of the street, and there may be their artillery observers among them. If they see us breaking ground here, , they will definitely call for artillery to provide fire coverage to our place."
"Comrade Captain," Sokov waited for Andre to finish speaking, and immediately said with a serious expression, "Since you know that there are Germans hiding in the building at the end of the street, why are you still standing here and not sending people to eliminate them? "
"But, Comrade Brigade Commander." Andre explained with a red face, "The order you gave us is to find the division headquarters of the 13th Guards Division..."
"What, does the task of finding the division headquarters conflict with the elimination of the enemies hiding near us?" Sokov felt speechless for Lao Maozi's one-sided style of doing things, so he decisively ordered Andrei " Comrade Captain, immediately send a platoon of troops into that building to eliminate the enemies hiding inside."
After Lieutenant Guchakov took more than 20 soldiers to the building where the enemy might be hidden, Sokov circled the ruins. He felt that since he could not enter the basement from directly above, could he enter from the side? Find a place to dig a passage in.
After walking around, he found that there seemed to be a window under half of the prefabricated panel on the side facing the street. He quickly called a few soldiers to move the prefabricated panel away. As soon as the prefabricated panels were removed, he immediately saw a one-foot-tall, one-meter-long ventilation window with more than a dozen iron bars on it.
Seeing that there was a breathable window parallel to the ground, Sokov quickly squatted down and looked inside, trying to see if there was anyone inside. Andrei came over and introduced to Sokov, "Comrade Brigadier, there are many buildings in the city that have semi-basements like this, with breathable windows parallel to the ground..."
Sokov looked inside for a while and shouted a few more times, but did not hear any response. He stood up and said to Andrei, who was explaining to himself, "Let the soldiers prepare a few cluster grenades immediately."
Sokov's words startled Andrei. "Comrade Brigadier, what are you doing with cluster grenades?"
"What else can be done?" Sokov pointed toward the ventilation window parallel to the ground and said, "I want to blow this place up."
"What, you want to blow up the ventilation window?" Andre said nervously, "If there are people in the basement, the explosion of the cluster grenade will kill them alive."
"I have looked carefully. There is no one in this basement. The survivors of the Guards Division Headquarters should be in other rooms." Seeing Andrei standing there without moving, Sokov urged, " Comrade Captain, why are you dawdling? Hurry and prepare grenades, we can blow a gap here and send people to search for General Rodimtsev's whereabouts."
Captain Andre agreed quickly, and then told the soldiers standing nearby, "What are you still waiting for? Quickly gather all the grenades on your body and make a cluster grenade to blow open this ventilation window."
