The soldiers who were the first to rush across the stone bridge finally encountered the German soldiers who were rushing over.
The assault force organized by Kovpak used submachine guns for hits, and its short-range combat effectiveness was extremely high. The barrages from MP8, MP40, and Bobosha directly killed more than a dozen enemies who were first reinforced.
The vanguard troops had already entered the first street and alley, and immediately began to expand their results.
The soldiers rushed into the houses one after another. Because they had just fought in the city of Mozyri yesterday, the soldiers had accumulated a certain amount of experience in urban warfare. Enemies could be hidden in any room, so by default all rooms contained threats.
The soldier opened the door with his kick, and then swept the house indiscriminately. This move actually caused some civilian casualties.
Petrikov is not a German military camp at all. Before the Soviet attack, there were still more than 600 original citizens living here. They had to serve the German army reluctantly, but now they have become cannon fodder in the war.
In the current war, innocence or not is meaningless. Civilians appearing in the wrong place at the wrong time are seeking death, because even the Soviet army will not refuse to fire just because there are civilians in the city who are being held hostage by the enemy.
.
Fortunately, the soldier who discovered this problem immediately reported it to the squadron leader in charge of the assault.
The Soviet army finally stopped violently breaking down doors and shooting wildly. Peaceful residents were found in the city. After the soldiers broke in, they began to give priority to driving civilians out of their houses.
More than 400 soldiers and more than 200 enemies fought in three streets.
The battle came so suddenly that the German commander did not know the strength of the enemy's troops or the specific identity of the enemy.
The tactics of the Soviet army are very clear!
Kovpak was too lazy to think too hard, and his final tactic was only one - a pincer offensive.
"You guys, you are just bullying civilians. In a real battle, you are a bunch of idiots!" Kovpak was very happy that the enemies he was currently facing were stupid.
The assault squadron held back the enemy head-on, and the rest of the troops immediately began to scramble to pass from the stone bridge. Whether the battle can be resolved quickly depends on the control of time.
Ten minutes into the battle, 1,400 people passed the stone bridge. Behind these people, there were 3,000 people queuing up!
The German defenders were compressed in the core area of the town, and their commanders gradually realized that the enemy was trying to outflank them from both flanks.
"Oh my God! Who attacked us? The guerrillas? Could it be that they escaped from Mozyr and decided to attack us!" The German company commander guessed the fact and finally understood his terrifying situation.
In critical moments, his sense of responsibility as a soldier of the Third Reich drove him to bravely make a call, but unfortunately no one answered.
The company commander suddenly remembered that maybe in yesterday's battle, the guerrillas had completely destroyed Mozyri's wired telephone equipment, and maybe all the telephone poles in the city had been chopped down and burned.
"Signal Corps! Where is the Signal Corps? Come and die!"
"Company Commander! I'm here!"
The company commander ignored the telegraph operator's panic, grabbed him by the collar, and ordered: "Send me a telegram to the division commander. The Russians are attacking Petrikov and the city has been lost!"
The German correspondent was quite capable. It was not until he finished sending the information that the German company commander officially issued an order to his troops, and only his troops, to abandon the city and retreat, even though he did not receive any information from the division headquarters.
information.
After all this procrastination, the German army's last hope of retreat finally turned into despair.
The only way for the defenders to break through is to the north. However, the tactical characteristic of a pincer offensive is to converge the two wings to block the enemy's retreat and achieve tactical encirclement.
After all, there were only a little over a hundred German troops in the garrison, and the rest were "Oriental Volunteers" with armbands. These puppet troops were really defeated at the first touch. Even facing an enemy as terrifying as a tiger descending from a mountain, they decisively gave up on themselves, knowing that resistance was a sure thing.
They threw down their guns and raised their hands in the air, shouting in Belarusian: "We surrender!"
Are they puppet troops?! The Soviet soldiers were not surprised when they found out. Many even realized from their black clothes that these people were traitors to the great motherland.
Since they raised their hands to surrender, it seemed inappropriate to kill them on the spot. Therefore, Kovpak's troops basically did not trouble these surrendering traitors anymore.
It was this act of not killing prisoners that gave other puppet soldiers the serious illusion that this group of guerrillas was benevolent.
The puppet army collapsed quickly, and the remaining German army was unable to support itself. Besides the strength and firepower of both sides, the Soviet army had an overwhelming advantage.
Not all German troops will fight to the end. After all, the defenders of the city are logistics troops. After discovering that they were surrounded on all sides, many people did not listen to the company commander's orders at all. They also threw away their guns, raised their hands and shouted loudly in German: "No.
shot."
The battle actually ended at 7:15, and the entire battle process was very fast.
The German commander was trapped in a two-story building. He and the last five soldiers fought stubbornly for a while. The guerrillas who finally came downstairs used cluster grenades to blow up the building and fainted.
The heavy company commander then tremblingly raised his bloody hands to surrender.
The town was completely occupied by the Soviet army. All the civilians who were found, as well as all the surrendered enemies, were gathered in one place. They were closely guarded by soldiers with live ammunition. There were men and women among these people, and they did not know their respective destinations.
Seeing the black muzzle of the gun and the shining bayonet, there was only endless fear.
Only those German soldiers knew the consequences of surrender. If the guerrillas would eventually kill them, it would only mean that they were unkind. After all, they had just resisted resolutely and now they had turned into corpses. Their survival instinct drove them to raise their hands.
surrender.
Unlike other people, German soldiers have a consciousness of death. After all, as soldiers, they have already thought of death when they join the army. How can they join the army without such a consciousness?
Kovpak took long strides and crossed the stone bridge with confidence. Standing on the bridge, he looked around and saw that the rushing Pripet River had already overflowed the bridge piers?
"The rainfall in this area is amazing! Maybe it's raining more in Pinsk?"
Balzen urged: "Don't wait any longer. We should follow the plan and quickly search the town to collect available supplies, and..."
"And look at the prisoners of war we captured. There are some traitors to our great motherland among them. So you won't have any objection to my order to shoot them, right?"
"Of course I have no objection," Balzen said categorically. "In extraordinary times, normal interrogation procedures are not necessary. Traitors die, it's that simple."
Kovpak nodded. In his heart, he had already sentenced the surrendering puppet troops to death. As for the surrendering German soldiers, he would directly shoot them one hundred times.
Because the intensity of the battle was not great, most of the buildings in the town were intact, and the furnishings in the houses were also intact. The light rain continued to pour, and Kovpak personally went to the small square in the town and saw the crowd huddled here.
"What's going on? There are still women here?"
Rudnev, who crossed the river first, explained: "Our army found more than 300 civilians. I briefly inquired and they are the citizens here. As for the others, they are the surrendered enemies."
"Okay! Can you separate the civilians from the enemy?"
"certainly!"
Rudnev said a few words to the soldiers, and the crowd was quickly divided into three groups. The frightened civilians were pulled aside, and then the Soviet army interrogated the puppet soldiers and German prisoners.
Kovpak was surprised to find that the puppet troops standing here in black were twice as many as the German troops. He thought of the mass grave he had just discovered and thought, maybe the puppet troops were heavily involved in the massacre.
middle.
At the same time, Balzen has reorganized his team, and Natasha and Igor have also returned to the team. As officers and soldiers of the 6th Army, everyone obeys the orders of Commander Balzen and is currently just a group of spectators.
How did the friendly forces treat this group of prisoners?
"They will all be killed," Natasha asked quietly with her head slightly raised.
"Traitors will die, of course." Igor explained, "As for the Germans, I guess our friendly forces will also execute them."
"This... shouldn't be right? Don't German prisoners of war have some use?"
"Maybe our friendly forces don't think so. My dear, what's going to happen in a while will be bloody. Please stay away."
"Okay." Natasha said no more, and hid behind the tall Igor with a gun on her back.
What happened next was indeed bloody, and could even be described as cruel.
Kovpak and Rudnev were filled with anger because of the mass grave incident just now. The murderer must be the enemy and puppet here. As commanders, they must use some special means to make the hundreds of soldiers watching,
Understand how hateful and pitiable the enemy is.
Kovpak shouted: "Those people wearing black clothes and armbands, are you Belarusians? Do you want to survive?"
Originally, this group of puppet soldiers who were sitting on the ground soaked and waiting to die immediately became energetic after hearing these words, as if they had a glimmer of hope. They shouted in unison in Belarusian, "We want to live."
After Kovpak silenced him with gunshots, he ordered the soldiers to pick out five puppet soldiers, and then gave each of them a barrel of gasoline. (The gasoline was a material that had just been seized. Since the troops did not have oil-burning machines, they were thrown away.
It’s a pity that he was immediately punished by the Soviet army)
After receiving the gasoline, the originally dull puppet troops suddenly turned into five ferocious beasts. They roared, carried gasoline barrels, and poured gasoline on the German prisoners of war.
Are the guerrillas going to be burned at the stake? The German prisoners suddenly fell into mourning, while a few continued to sit with their legs curled up, demonstrating to the guerrillas with wide-eyed glares.
Finally, the German company commander whose hands were injured stood up angrily and shouted in German: "Stop it! We are Wehrmacht soldiers! We need the protection of the Geneva Convention, and you must ensure our personal safety. What you are about to implement
Action, completely inhumane!"
What this man said was completely understood by Kovpak through the translation of the German-speaking soldier.
He asked rhetorically: "The German army massacred thousands of Jews in the forest, and their graves have been discovered by our army. Is this all done by you?"
The German army did not hesitate at all and decisively claimed this "great achievement". "We are soldiers, and we must carry out the orders of our superiors. We were ordered to eliminate the Jews in the city, that's all. We are real soldiers. As far as I know,
A real soldier will not mistreat enemy soldiers."
Kovpak understood this man's excuse. Of course he didn't come here to listen to the German army's nonsense. This group of German soldiers had already admitted that they had killed those civilians, and now they were talking about "the need to carry out orders from superiors."
"Sex" is really ridiculous.
Kovpak did not think that this group of German prisoners of war had any value in keeping alive. Compared with another group of traitors, this group of *** demons were the first to be annihilated, even if they had surrendered. He handed a lighter to a puppet
In the hands of the soldiers, the puppet soldiers threw the lighter with a weak flame over without hesitation.
More than forty German prisoners of war were covered in gasoline, and quite a few of them were on fire, turning into wailing flame monsters. Immediately afterwards, three machine guns opened fire at the same time. Indeed, not a single Soviet soldier was left alive, and all the German prisoners of war turned into burning objects.
The body continued to burn in the light rain.
Igor could clearly feel that someone was tugging at the back of his shirt. It was Natasha. She must have been curious to see the terrible scene just now.
Yes, the ending of the German prisoners of war was really tragic. As the saying goes, those who kill must kill themselves. Kovpak avenged the death of thousands of civilians two months ago.
The killing is not over yet.
Those puppet soldiers thought that by killing the German soldiers, they had handed over a surrender certificate to the guerrillas, and they all imagined that their lives were guaranteed.
Balzen looked at the group of burning corpses. As a veteran of hundreds of battles, he was deeply shocked. Even the execution of prisoners of war was not as brutal as what Kovpak did. He especially noticed that the executions of traitors were
, is about to start.
In this regard, Balzen had no choice but to express his opinion to Kovpak, so he whispered in his ear: "I have no objection to your execution of the traitors. Do you still want to use cruel methods, such as burning them to death? I think so.
Let's just shoot him."
"Don't worry, the process will be quick."
The puppet army's illusions were quickly shattered, and they were shot to death without being drafted. The more than seventy surrendered puppet troops were instantly turned into corpses.
After all, the guerrillas are different from the regular army. After executing all the enemies and puppets, Kovpak said to the worried Balzen: "Your unit has a formal army group designation, but we have no designation at all. At present, we are pure guerrillas.
The laws of the regular army don't matter to us.
This group of enemies killed so many Soviet citizens, and they committed serious crimes. This is my punishment for this group of murderers, I hope you can understand."
Balzen patted his shoulder and said, "Okay! In fact, we can leave one or two alive so that they can tell us about the German defense situation in this area. Wouldn't it be better to provide a prisoner of war camp or other location for execution?"
"This..." Kovpak was speechless for a moment. He and his men were almost blinded by anger. When they realized that they could use the "tongue", it was too late.
"Okay! It seems I didn't think it through well. But we have to continue to attack westward. It won't be too late to use prisoners of war after we destroy that town."
"I hope so. I hope the German reinforcements will not pursue us. Comrade, I must remind you that we will definitely be exposed in this battle." (To be continued)