After settling the soldiers, Guchakov left two soldiers standing guard at the door, and then summoned the remaining people to his presence, saying to everyone with a serious expression: "Comrades, starting today, we will live in this village, and then send people to the surroundings to conduct reconnaissance and find targets with value for attack."
Speaking of this, Guchakov deliberately paused for a moment and glanced at the soldiers one by one, and continued, "But there is one thing I need to remind everyone. Except for the corporal who led us here, the rest of the people were not Germans, but Ukrainians who acted as lackeys for the Germans."
"What, are they Ukrainians?" Guchakov's words scared everyone. After a brief silence, everyone began to discuss: "These traitors from the motherland actually serve the Germans."
"I heard that there were some Eastern camps in the German army, and the members were all betrayal prisoners of war, or those willing to serve the Germans."
"This damn traitor is also a disaster to stay here. Let's go and destroy them..."
“…”
Faced with the fierce crowd of the soldiers, Guchakov did not speak, but remained silent. After everyone gradually calmed down, he spoke: "Comrades, I feel the same as you. When I learned that there were traitors who served the Germans in the village, I wanted to destroy them immediately. But it was not possible. Comrades, it was quite easy to kill them. Find a reason to call them all to the barn, and then use the machine gun on the armored vehicle to sweep them all. But in this way, our whereabouts were exposed, which was very unfavorable to our next actions."
After Guchakov finished speaking, the soldiers fell into silence. They were all thinking hard about what Guchakov said, and found that the lieutenant said it was quite reasonable. It was quite easy to kill these traitors, but exposing their whereabouts would have an adverse impact on the subsequent actions.
After a while, a sergeant in the team asked Guchakov loudly: "Comrade Lieutenant, what should we do next?"
"Since we are pretending to be Germans, we must pretend to be a little bit." Guchakov thought for a while and then said, "I just looked at it when I entered the village. Almost all the elderly, weak, women and children in the village. In order not to arouse the enemy's suspicion, we can let the women in the village cook and wash clothes for us..."
"Comrade Lieutenant, I'm worried about one thing." After Samoilov and Guchakov finished speaking, he raised his own concern: "You ask the women in the village to cook for us. What should we do if they spit in the food we eat and soup we drink, or even drown?"
Samoilov's words caused a burst of laughter around him, but the soldiers soon fell silent. They knew that the lieutenant was not alarmist, and as far as they knew, some women who were forced to cook for the Germans did this in private, and they did not want to have special ingredients added to the meals they had eaten or the soup they drank.
"Comrade Lieutenant, then tell me." Guchakov asked Samoilov with some headache: "What should we do to be more like a German?"
"I think it's better not to deal with the people in the village." Samoilov said cautiously: "If the villagers give our soldiers wine to them and they accidentally speak Russian after getting drunk, they will also expose their identity. Therefore, the best way is to use the barn as a restricted area and drive them away if anyone approaches."
"Okay, Comrade Lieutenant." Guchakov thought about Samoilov's words and thought it made sense. If the soldiers were really allowed to contact the villagers, there was indeed a possibility of being exposed. The safest way was to let the soldiers stay in the barn and reduce the risk of exposure: "As you said, except for the team that went out to reconnaissance, the rest of the people were staying in the barn and nowhere was allowed."
"And," Samoilov continued: "I think the people in the village may have contact with the guerrillas outside. We also need to set up secret sentries near the barn to prevent sneak attacks from guerrillas."
Guchakov was a little dissatisfied with Samoilov's concern: "Comrade Lieutenant, you are too cautious. If the guerrillas were to attack the village garrison, they would have come long ago. Although the guerrillas were not good at fighting, it would be no problem to deal with the twenty or so Ukrainians."
"Can you eliminate more than twenty Ukrainians be the same as destroying more than twenty German soldiers?" Samoilov sneered and said, "Maybe someone has quietly left the village and went to the nearby guerrilla camp to inform us."
Guchakov originally planned to refute a few words, but when Samoilov finished speaking, he felt that the other party was very reasonable. For the guerrillas hiding in the forest, it would not make much sense to eliminate more than 20 Ukrainians, but instead it would lead to a clearance from the German army. However, if twenty or thirty German soldiers were eliminated, the nature would be different. Even if they could not stay here and were forced to retreat to the city, this matter could become their great result.
He asked Samoilov with a serious expression: "Comrade Lieutenant, tell me, what should we do if the guerrillas really come to attack? We can't destroy them all, right?"
"We have three armored vehicles. As long as the commanders of the guerrillas are not too stupid, they will definitely not send large troops to attack. Because they lack heavy weapons to deal with armored vehicles, and once they cannot eat us in a short time, the Ukrainians stationed in the village will come to support us." Samoilov said with great confidence: "So, I think they may only send two or three people to throw moor bottles at the barn where we live and burn us to death with fire."
"That's right, Comrade Lieutenant, you're right." After Samoilov's analysis, Guchakov seemed to have seen several guerrillas. After dark, he crawled to the barn and then decisively threw out the mould bottle. He couldn't help but tremble: "If you want to solve the problem of people living in the barn, mould bottles are the most effective weapon."
He asked Samoilov again: "What should we do?"
Samoilov smiled faintly and replied: "It's very simple, comrade Lieutenant, we ambushed and wardled near the barn, and once the guerrillas arrived, they would catch them."
…………
After dark, Samoilov personally took Tavlin and lurked behind wooden stakes to the west of the barn.
Tavlin asked Samoilov in a low voice: "Comrade Lieutenant, will the guerrillas really come?"
"Yes." Samoilov said affirmatively: "What if you were a guerrilla and learned that a group of German soldiers lived in the barn?"
"Is that a word?" Tavlin replied without hesitation. "I will definitely send someone to kill the barn and burn all the Germans who live there."
"You are right." Samoilov nodded slightly after Taflin finished speaking, and said, "I guess the nearby guerrillas must have the same idea."
The two were saying this in a low voice, when Samoilov suddenly heard a sound in the distance, as if it was a slight clicking sound from a person stepping on the dead branches on the ground. He quickly made a gesture to Tavlin beside him and said in a whispering voice: "Don't talk, the guerrillas seem to be coming."
Not long after, the two of them heard someone whispering not far away: "...You two went over and burned the barn with incendiary bombs, and burned all the German devils who lived there to death..."
After the man's voice disappeared, the clicking sound of his feet stepping on the dead branches seemed clearer. It was obvious that someone was speeding up toward the barn. Not much time was going to see two people wearing ordinary people's clothes appear in his sight. They came to a place more than 30 meters away from the barn and stopped. They squatted on the ground. One took out a moor bottle, and the other began to scratch matches and tried to light the rag at the mouth of the bottle.
"Operation!" Samoilov roared at Tavlin, then rushed out with a submachine gun. He rushed to the front of the two men quickly, pointed the gun at them, and said, "Put down what you have in your hands, otherwise I will shoot!"
The man who was slashing a match heard someone talking behind him, turned his head and saw a German soldier pointing at him with a submachine gun. He quickly threw the match he had just lit to the ground, but reached out to touch the pistol on the belt around his waist. Unexpectedly, as soon as his hand touched the pistol, before he could pull it out, something cold was pressed on the back of his head, and then he heard a voice saying, "Take your hand away from the gun, otherwise I will make your head bloom."
The man was pressed by Tavlin's gun and could only leave his hand obediently from his waist. He thought in his heart with annoyance: "How could there be a German whistle here? It seems that our mission has failed."
Seeing the two of them squatting on the ground honestly, Samoilov said to the man holding the moor bottle: "Where are the people you lead? Go and call him over. I have something to say to him."
The man looked up at Samoilov who was talking, and couldn't help but be shocked. He thought to himself: This German speaks Russian so well, and he can simply distort the truth.
Seeing the man squatting on the ground in a daze, Samoilov kicked him in anger and urged him: "Hurry up, call your person in charge here. Don't make too much noise, so as not to be noticed by the enemies in the village."
The man was stunned when he heard Samoilov talk about the enemy in the village. Then he thought of a possibility, and a surprise expression appeared on his face. He said excitedly: "You...you are...yes..."
"Go and call your head over, I have something to say to him." Samoilov finished speaking, turned his head to Tavlin and said, "Comrade Sergeant, put down your gun."
Just one or two minutes later, the man who had just left came over with a middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap, armed belt around his waist and a carbine in his hand. The man came to Samoilov, looked him up and down, and asked, "Which part of you are?"
"This is not a place to talk, so let's go to the barn." Samoilov finished speaking and made a call to the middle-aged man: "Please."
Three guerrillas followed Samoilov into the barn. Guchakov, who was assigning tasks to the soldiers inside, saw Samoilov bringing in three strangers, frowned and asked, "Comrade Lieutenant, who are they?"
"Report to Comrade Lieutenant!" Samoilov reported to Guchakov: "These three guerrilla comrades are preparing to burn the barn, and I have brought them here." Learning that these three were guerrillas who were preparing to burn the barn, the soldiers surrounded them, trying to see clearly what the other party looked like.
The leading guerrillas raised their heads and said to Guchakov: "Comrade Lieutenant, I am the deputy captain of the guerrilla team, can you tell me your identity?"
"We are from the 41st Division of the Guards," Guchakov saw the three men surrounded by his soldiers and was not worried that the other party would escape, so he replied casually: "He was ordered to carry out the mission behind the enemy. Comrade Luzsky, I want to ask, why did your guerrillas attack us?"
"It's very simple. We stayed in the village's eyeliner and secretly came to report to us in the afternoon, saying that there were a group of Germans in the village and lived in the barn." Luzsky looked left and right, and saw that all the soldiers were staring at him, he couldn't help but answered guiltily: "So the captain asked me to take two of them, and take advantage of the night to touch the village, burn the barn with a moor bottle, and burn the Germans living inside to death."
After listening to Ruzsky's statement, Guchakov turned his head and looked at Samoilov and said in a grateful tone: "Comrade Lieutenant, you are still accurate in your judgment. The guerrillas have indeed come to attack us tonight. If you hadn't been guarding outside with Sergeant Taflin, I think we would have been buried in the fire."
"I'm sorry, comrade Lieutenant." After Guchakov finished speaking, Luzsky immediately blushed and apologized to him: "We don't know that the one who lives in the barn is our own people. We are wrong."
"It's okay, comrade deputy captain." Guchakov raised his hand and patted the other party's shoulder twice, and said with a kind look: "You don't know that the enemy is our disguise. You are doing this to eliminate the enemy and better attack the invaders of Faxi Temple."
After resolving the misunderstanding, Luzsky asked tentatively: "Comrade Lieutenant, I want to ask, what are you here to do, and do we have anything to serve you?"
Guchakov looked at Luzsky for a moment and thought, thinking that since the other party was a guerrilla team operating in this area, he must have a good understanding of the enemy's situation. He asked with a smile: "Comrade Luzsky, I want to ask, are you familiar with the nearby terrain?"
"It's all right," said Luzsky proudly when he heard Guchakov's question: "We are locals and are so familiar with the surrounding environment that we are no longer familiar with. Even if we walk with our eyes closed, we will not get lost."
Chapter completed!