Although Vasily, who was attacking from the east with three platoons, was also blocked by the Germans, their situation was better than the frontal attacking troops. The Germans did not dig trenches in this direction, but hid in the house where the original village Soviets were located and shot out from the window.
Seeing this, Vasily quickly ordered the eight MG34 machine guns from three rows to line up and aim at the wooden house more than 200 meters away to shoot. Under the strafing of the MG34 machine gun, the solid wooden walls were broken inch by dense bullets, and the broken wood pieces flew up like feathers. German soldiers hiding behind the windows were hit by bullets, and they were lucky to be beaten into two pieces in half; if they were unlucky, they were beaten into pieces.
There were only more than twenty people in the room. In less than five minutes, half of them were sent to God by the German-made MG34. The remaining soldiers knew that they could continue to resist stubbornly, so they could only follow the footsteps of these people and immediately decisively chose to surrender.
Seeing that the German army had already surrendered with white flags, Vasily left two machine guns to continue monitoring, and rushed forward with the remaining soldiers to capture the prisoners. When a platoon leader came from the south of the village, he was seeing the surrendered German army walking out of the house with his hands high.
Seeing a platoon leader appear here, Vasily knew in his heart that the battle on the other side of the village had also ended, but he still asked habitually: "Is the battle on the south side of the village over? How is the casualties in our company?"
"The battle is over," a row of long men replied in a heavy tone: "More than 30 casualties were killed, seventeen of them were killed, three seriously injured, and a machine gun was lost."
"Where is the battalion commander?" Although the casualties were less than what he had imagined, Vasily was still uneasy. He continued, "He was not injured, right?"
"No, the battalion commander didn't hurt a single hair!" A rank leader shook his head and said in an admiring tone: "Don't look at him rushing to the front of the team, the German bullets seemed to be around him. He was the first to rush to the trenches and used grenades to blow up the German soldiers hiding inside and could not hold on, so he could only surrender obediently!"
After learning that Sokov was safe, the stone hanging in Vasily fell to the ground. He knew very well that once the battalion commander was injured in the battle, no matter what the reason was, he would be blamed. "Where is the battalion commander?"
"The battalion commander took people to the church and was about to rescue all the villagers detained there."
"Three platoon leader," Vasily waited for the first platoon leader, and shouted to the third platoon leader who was standing not far away: "Come to me!"
After the third platoon leader came to him, Vasily ordered the other party: "I will go to the church to meet the battalion commander. The aftermath here will be left to you to deal with."
When Vasily was observing the terrain before the attack, he saw a church made of logs in the middle of the village. He guessed that Sokov should be there at the moment, so he led a soldier in that direction.
When he came to the square near the church, he saw Sokov being surrounded by hundreds of villagers. One of them was well-proportioned, plump and middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf holding Sokov's hand and saying something excitedly. Vasily walked over and stood outside the crowd and vaguely heard the middle-aged woman saying, "...My good brother, thank you for saving the life of our entire village. If you come later, we will be killed by the Germans..."
"Gay women," Sokov, who was waiting for the nagging woman to finish her speech, quickly interrupted, "Actually, you want to thank you, just Xievaloja and Anton. If they hadn't come to report to us in time, we wouldn't know that you were in danger!"
"Valoja, my dear son," the middle-aged woman let go of Sokov's hand, bent down and kissed Valoja who was standing beside her, and kissed him fiercely on his face, "You are good, you and Anton are good, you saved the lives of the whole village."
"Comrade Battalion Commander," Vasily, who was standing behind the crowd, felt that he should take advantage of Valoja's mother and children to rescue Sokov, so he raised his voice and shouted: "I have something to report to you." After hearing Vasily's voice, the villagers around Sokov quickly flashed to both sides, giving up a passage for Sokov.
Sokov walked out of the crowd and came to Vasily and asked, "Captain, what's the situation there? Are there any major casualties?"
"Two soldiers were sacrificed and five were injured." Vasily replied truthfully: "We killed fifteen German soldiers and captured eleven alive."
Sokov not long ago, he learned from Valoja's mother that the SS was the one who massacred the villagers, and the German soldiers he captured were all the National Wehrmachts, and there was not a single SS. So he asked with a lucky mentality: "Captain, are there any SS among the prisoners you captured?"
"Yes, three or four, I can't remember." Vasily turned around and ordered the soldiers who came over to him: "Go back and tell the third platoon leader and take the captured SS here."
After the soldiers left, Sokov asked Vasily: "Do you understand German?"
"No." Vasily said with a red face: "I know two or three words, but I learned it from Asia. By the way, Comrade Battalion Commander, what are you asking about this?"
"What else can I do? Of course, I'm interrogating the prisoners and asking them why they were massacring the villagers." Sokov said disappointed after learning that Vasily didn't understand German: "It's a pity that Asia and Ernst are not here. We can ask them to help interrogate the prisoners."
The German officers and soldiers who were captured during the battle were soon taken over. When they approached the square, someone shouted: "Beat them to death and avenge our relatives!" Then, snowballs and mud smashed towards the prisoners like raindrops.
Although the snowballs thrown by the villagers hit the prisoners, they had to turn around, but some soldiers who accidentally injured the prisoners. Sokov was afraid that the scene would be out of control, so he quickly shouted loudly: "Comrades, calm down, please stay calm!" But the shouts were covered by the excited voices of the villagers. Fortunately, Vasily next to him yelled twice, and the excited villagers stopped.
The captives were taken to Sokov, and a German sergeant walked out of the queue and said in broken Russian: "Mr. Major, we have put down our weapons and stopped resisting. I ask you to give us the treatment we deserve."
When Sokov heard that the German sergeant in front of him actually knew Russian, he couldn't help but look surprised on his face. He looked at the other party and asked unexpectedly: "You can speak Russian?"
"Yes, I'm the translator in Corinth."
Although the Russian grammar of the sergeant was full of errors and the words were not accurate enough, Sokov could still understand what he wanted to express. He nodded and asked, "Sergeant, I can treat prisoners preferentially and give you the treatment you deserve, but please tell me why you are massacring the villagers?"
"Mr. Major, we have not massacred the villagers. We are the National Welfare Forces. According to military rules, we cannot massacre unarmed peaceful residents at will." After a sergeant glanced at the angry crowd in front of us, he replied tremblingly: "It is the SS who carried out the massacre, and it has nothing to do with us."
"It's him, it's him!" An old woman with a short stature and a little hunched back rushed out of the crowd, and pulled out a German soldier wearing a steel helmet from the third row of prisoners, and said in a crying voice: "It was him who brought my husband to the outside of the village to kill him. Comrade Commander, do you want to make a decision for us?"
"You said," Sokov saw from the other party's captain that he was a commando captain, so he walked up to him and gritted his teeth and asked, "Why do you want to massacre the villagers?" After that, he signaled to the German sergeant standing next to him to help him interpret.
Unexpectedly, before the sergeant could translate, the commando captain said rebelliously: "I am also on order!"
"You know Russian, that's great." Sokov stared at him and asked coldly: "What order?"
"The order to eliminate the Jews." The captain glanced at the villagers next to him and sneered: "The Jews are the lowest people and should be completely erased from this world. The order I received was to eliminate all Jews in the occupied area."
"You bastard," the old woman heard the captain say this, and while slamming the other person with her fist, she scolded: "Are you still human? After doing so many bad things, you will definitely be punished."
"They are not humans," Sokov said, gritting his teeth, "They are just beasts with two legs. When dealing with beasts, we must treat beasts." At this point, he said to Vasily, "Captain Vasily, put all the prisoners of the National Wehrmacht into the church."
"What about these SS prisoners?" As the soldiers took the National Welfare Army prisoners and walked towards the church, Vasily pointed at the three SS prisoners standing alone and asked Sokov: "What should they do?"
Sokov glanced at Vasily and said with a normal expression: "Leave them to the villagers to deal with, and the blood debt must be paid with blood."
When Vasily heard Sokov say this, he was stunned at first, and then he understood. He waved his hand to his subordinates and walked towards the other side.
When the captain saw the villagers surrounding him, he immediately realized something was wrong. He rushed up and grabbed Sokov's arm, begging, "Mr. Major, please don't hand me over to them. Please!"
Chapter completed!