After receiving the order, Captain Andre, the commander of the Third Battalion, personally led the Ninth Company to Kursky Street to find the command center of the 13th Guard Division that was once set up there. After they arrived, Andrei found that the block was no longer recognizable. The streets full of bullet craters were covered with bricks and rubble and ruins. The building where the Rodimtev Division Command was located has now become a ruin two or three meters high.
The soldiers of the Ninth Company searched carefully around the ruins and found only a dozen uninhabited corpses. After identification, it was confirmed that there were no Rodimtev's corpses. Company commander Guchakov took advantage of the soldiers' time to carry the corpses and said to Andre: "Comrade Battalion Commander, it seems that all the people inside are dead. Do we still need to continue searching?"
Andrei stared at the ruins for a while, feeling that Guchakov's words made sense. Dozens or hundreds of tons of bricks and rubble were smashed down. Not to mention the flesh and blood of humans, even if a tank was placed here, it would be smashed. He quickly called the radio operator and told the other party: "Send a telegram to the brigade department immediately and report the situation here to them. At the same time, please tell us our next action."
After receiving a telegram from the Third Battalion, Sidolin said to Sokov with a serious expression: "Comrade Commander, the 9th Company of the Third Battalion has arrived at Kursky Street and found that the building where the command headquarters of the 13th Guards Division has been turned into ruins, and no survivors have been found."
"No survivors were found?" Sokov quickly received the telegram and browsed it quickly. He found that the content above was indeed the same as what Cidolin said. The building where the command of the Guard Division was located was razed to the ground. After searching, no survivors were found.
Although all kinds of evidence suggest that Rodimtev and his command had been destroyed by the German shelling, Sokov did not believe this result, because he clearly remembered that Rodimtev was appointed commander of the 23rd Army of the Guards not long after the Battle of Stalingrad, and was promoted to the rank of general in the 1960s. How could he die so easily?
In order to find out whether Rodimtev was dead or alive, Sokov decided to take a trip himself. He put the telegram on the table and said to Sidorin and Belkin: "The life and death of the Chief of Staff, Political Commissar, General Rodimtev is of great importance, and we cannot make a conclusion hastily. I want to take a trip to Kursky Street in person to figure out all this."
Recently, the war in Mamayevgang was fierce. As the brigade commander of the infantry brigade, Sokov could not leave his combat post easily. This time he left to investigate the life and death of Rodimtev. Therefore, Belkin and Cidolin not only did not dissuade him, but also strongly supported him. Belkin also said to him: "Comrade Brigade Commander, if we have us here, please go with confidence. We will never let the Germans rush to Mamayevgang."
In order not to attract too much attention from the German army and to avoid becoming the target of the enemy sniper, before setting off, Sokov deliberately took off the lieutenant colonel's uniform, dressed himself up as an ordinary soldier, mixed in the accompanying guard squad, and left Mamayev's hill in a low-key manner.
When passing through a ruin with blue smoke, a German soldier suddenly emerged from the other end of the ruins and collided with Sokov and the others. Neither Sokov nor the Germans expected to encounter the enemy in this situation. Everyone was stunned. Seeing the German soldiers subconsciously touching the trigger of the gun, Sokov, who had been marching in combat, always put his finger on the trigger of the assault rifle. Seeing that the Germans wanted to shoot, his gun fired first.
Instead of aiming at the German soldiers in the head as the soldiers imagined, he shot directly in the abdomen. After the German soldiers were shot, they immediately screamed, covered their stomachs and fell to the ground. The soldiers behind Sokov quickly stepped forward and shot twice, killing the other party.
While continuing to rush, a soldier asked Sokov curiously: "Comrade Brigade Commander, why did you shoot the Germans in the belly?" He once heard that Sokov was a sharpshooter. He could shoot at such a close distance and shoot at the enemy's head, but why the final shot was in the abdomen, which made him a little incomprehensible.
"Comrade Soldier, have you not seen the German soldiers holding guns in their hands?" Sokov said to the warrior with a side face: "If I aim at his head and shoot, it is a problem whether I can hit the target. Even if he hits the target, he will raise his body back before he dies, and the bullets shot from the gun may hit one or several of us; and if he hits his abdomen, not only will the target hit the target easily, but after he gets shot, he will instinctively bend over, so that the bullets in the gun can only hit the ground, which will almost no threat to us."
"Comrade Brigade Commander," the soldier said with emotion after hearing Sokov's words: "You know so much. When you encounter an enemy in the future, I will aim at the enemy's abdomen and shoot."
"Comrades," Sokov saw several soldiers surrounding him and it was necessary to teach them some skills in combat, so he raised his voice and said, "I want to tell everyone that when you see an enemy rushing towards you, don't aim at his head and shoot, but you should hit their chest and abdomen. Although it can be fatal to hit the head, you should be very clear that it is not easy 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 a few times."
The combat experience Sokov told me made the soldiers around him deeply agree. Everyone has been on the battlefield and understands in their hearts that if you want to survive, you must shoot faster than the enemy. Since the time period required to shoot in the chest and abdomen is high, then you will aim at two parts and shoot in the future.
On the way, he encountered a small group of Germans twice. The soldiers used the tactics taught by Sokov to achieve good results and killed more than a dozen German soldiers, but they also paid the price of one death and three injuries.
When he arrived at Kursky Street, Andrei immediately came up and asked in surprise: "Comrade Brigade Commander, why are you here? It's too dangerous here, so let's go back as soon as possible."
Sokov did not take this incident, but stared at the mountains of rubble in front of him and asked: "Although the building was blown up by enemy artillery fire, the basement should still be intact. Have you found the entrance?"
"No." Andrei shook his head and replied simply, "Comrade Brigade Commander, even if the people we are looking for are staying in the basement, we cannot rescue them."
"Why?" Sokov asked briefly.
"There are dozens or hundreds of tons of bricks and rubble here," Andrei's eyes swept over Sokov quickly, and then said: "I brought only more than seventy people in the Ninth Company, and the guard squad you brought only twenty people. It would be a dream to clean up this ruins for more than a hundred people."
Sokov was very convinced of Andrei's statement. Even if he used lifting machinery, he could not clean it up in one or two days. Moreover, there are only more than a hundred soldiers who have no tools to use now. It is unrealistic to let them move these bricks and stone rubble away. But if the bricks and stone rubble on the ground are not cleaned up, how can they enter the basement?
When Andrei saw Sokov silent, he struck and said while the iron was hot: "In a building at the end of the street, there are Germans, perhaps their artillery observers. If he saw us breaking ground here, he would definitely call on the artillery to cover our fire."
"Comrade Captain," Sokov, after Andre said, he immediately said with a serious expression: "Since you know that there are Germans hidden in the buildings at the end of the street, why are you still standing here and not sending people to destroy them?"
"But, comrade comrade commander." Andrei blushed and explained: "The order you gave us is to find the command of the 13th Guard Division..."
"How, is it that the task of looking for the division command conflicts with eliminating the enemies hiding near us?" Sokov was speechless about the Russian style of doing things in a straightforward manner, so he decisively ordered Andre: "Comrade Captain, immediately send a platoon of troops into the building and eliminate the enemies hiding inside."
After Lieutenant Guchakov took more than 20 soldiers to a building where the enemy might be hidden, Sokov turned around the ruins. He felt that since he could not enter the basement from directly above, could he find a place to dig a passage from the side?
After walking around, he found that there seemed to be a window under the half-prefabricated board on the side facing the street. He quickly called several soldiers to move the prefabricated board away. As soon as the prefabricated board was moved away, he immediately saw a breathable window that was one foot tall and one meter long, with more than a dozen iron fences on it.
Seeing that there was a breathable window parallel to the ground, Sokov quickly squatted down and focused his eyes to look inside, trying to see if there was anyone inside. Andrei walked over and introduced to Sokov: "Comrade Brigade Commander, there are many buildings in the city that have such semi-basement buildings, and the breathable windows are parallel to the ground..."
Sokov looked inside for a while, shouted a few more times, but did not hear any response, so he stood up and said to Andre, who was explaining to him: "Let the soldiers prepare a few cluster grenades immediately."
Sokov's words shocked Andre: "Comrade Brigade Commander, what do you want to do for cluster grenades?"
"What else can I do?" Sokov pointed to the breathable window parallel to the ground and said, "I want to blow it up."
"What, do you want to blow up the breather window?" Andre said nervously: "If there are people in the basement, the explosion of cluster grenades will shock them to death."
"I have looked at it carefully. There is no one in this basement. The survivors of the Guard Division Command should be in another room." Sokov saw Andre standing there without moving, and urged: "Comrade Captain, why are you still going to be delayed? Get ready for the grenades quickly. We will blow up a gap here and send someone to find General Rodimtev's whereabouts."
Chapter completed!