Ocher is a small city adjacent to the railway artery. It was built due to the inherent road leading to the Ural Mountains and began to prosper due to the completion of the railway.
Like many cities along the railroad, Ochier has nothing particularly outstanding.
It was originally a small settlement, with only a little over 10,000 urban residents today. Even so, according to Soviet standards, it was a city.
Just two days after Balzen and his two close comrades arrived in the safety of Tula, they received orders to go to the Ural region to serve as division commanders of the newly formed troops.
The sudden heavy responsibility aroused everyone's ambition. In Balzen's view, perhaps the only benefit of the war was that it gave former junior officers like him the opportunity to rise quickly.
To successfully serve as a division commander? First of all, you must have experienced the test of cruel war. If you don’t have necessary and dangerous combat experience, how can your superiors feel comfortable with your subordinates?
The 324th Infantry Division, this is the designation of the unit led by Balzen.
By mid-September, the recruitment of new recruits had been completed, and the infantry division had reached a huge lineup of more than 9,000 people.
These nine thousand people are the core strength of the infantry division. The army will continue to increase its manpower, but most of the increases will be non-combatants and precious technical units such as communicators and artillery sighters.
There were even more than 200 health workers composed of female soldiers joining them.
Balzen, he was not picky at all about the personnel composition of his army.
After a whole year of fighting in the horrific purgatory-like battlefield, he understood one thing.
Rigorous training will definitely turn a group of ragtag soldiers into a roaring elite, even if there are many female soldiers in the team.
He and two old comrades, Lavlendi and Yevgeny, took over brand-new troops.
How new is it?
Three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and a special anti-tank battalion temporarily formed the combat core of the army.
It was not until September 20 that all the more than 9,000 recruits received the most basic light weapons, namely more than 6,000 Mosin Nagants, more than 2,000 submachine guns, and 600 various machine guns.
The equipment he obtained was not very outstanding at all, and he also learned that the newly formed infantry divisions now mostly have such equipment.
If there is anything outstanding, it is the more than 200 anti-tank guns and more than 100 official version RPGs received by the troops. As for the number of warheads, it is really quite good.
The 324th Division is currently the most common field force.
It was a hastily built infantry division. Some of its officers were veterans of other units, and most of its soldiers were recruited members of collective farms in the Perm region, as well as some city residents.
Until the end of September, the hard equipment available to Balzen's army was twenty 45mm combat anti-aircraft guns, thirty 76mm field guns, and ten 122mm howitzers.
This situation is indeed very abnormal, so it is really difficult for Balzen to accept.
After all, he has become a real division commander, but he only has so few troops at hand? He clearly remembers that the infantry division he first served in had a total strength of more than 15,000 people. He even knew that the 284th Division at the beginning of its establishment had a total strength of more than 15,000.
The number of troops was as many as 17,000.
One division in the past was enough for two divisions now.
What exactly caused this situation? Balzen didn’t understand and didn’t think much about it.
In fact, just before the war broke out, the Soviet army formulated a new way of organizing its troops.
A standard infantry division should consist of three infantry regiments and two artillery regiments as the combat core, plus an air defense battalion, a chemical defense battalion, an engineer battalion, a special anti-tank battalion, a direct reconnaissance battalion, a communications battalion, and a logistics support regiment.
The total strength of the headquarters security battalion and health team is about 15,000 people.
The former 284th Division was the last unit formed before the war broke out, so it was established directly according to the new standards.
In principle, the Soviet army certainly hopes that all division-level units will start new formations. The war is coming too fast.
However, war is the only criterion for testing an army in peacetime.
The past year of war has proved that the huge infantry division is not suitable for the Soviet army at least. The major reason is that the Soviet army’s communication system is relatively poor. One headquarters has to command multiple regiment-level units. However, the Soviet army
The radio implementation was extremely poor.
The headquarters cannot effectively command such a large number of troops, so the infantry division is always unable to achieve the combat effectiveness as expected.
Zhukov, Vasilevsky and others all saw the shortcomings of the establishment of large corps, so the revised new establishment standards were implemented for a large number of newly formed troops, as well as for the old troops that were withdrawn and disabled.
Now, a headquarters can only command up to four regiment-level units, and in many cases only three. This is like a fat man who has become quite flexible after successfully losing weight.
But Balzen is still eager to command more troops. Now he always feels that he is carrying the certificate of a division commander and traveling is simply the responsibility of strengthening the brigade.
He also clearly realizes the most important thing.
It's not easy to be a division commander! The superiors give up to two months, and a group of ordinary citizens must turn into a combat-ready force. Regardless of whether they are ready or not, they must carry weapons and go to the battlefield.
What is the battlefield? Balzen knows it all too well.
Countless comrades have died, and even for veterans with rich combat experience, death comes suddenly. For him personally, he is not afraid of death at all, he only hopes that if he dies in battle, he can die heroically.
Balzen has long forgotten what fear is, and he has no fear of the battlefield. However, facing a group of new recruits under his command, their eyes are full of speculations about the battlefield, including fear, suspicion, and resistance.
Still eager to try.
No matter what their attitude is, now they have accepted the call of the country and the people to fight against the invaders and even sacrifice their lives for it. It is everyone's responsibility and obligation.
If you want to train a group of ordinary people into an excellent army in a short period of time, what is an excellent army? In Balzen's view, his old boss General Berekov, who personally guided the reconstruction of the 284th Guards Division, is a textbook "
Excellent troops".
"This time I also become a division commander. I just want to train a strong army and make a great contribution in the next battle!"
Balzen had this kind of mentality. At the most serious level, he was serving the country, but at the most small level, he wanted to use practical actions to refute General Berekov's objections to him.
Yes, Yang Mingzhi always felt that Balzen and his ilk were just battalion commanders, leading regiment-level units and had forgotten how to fight.
Nowadays, even if he is a battalion commander at the beginning of the war, as long as he survives on the front line for a year and makes some military exploits, it is reasonable for him to be suddenly promoted to division commander.
How to command a division? Balzen had an excellent teacher.
The 284th Guards Division, which launched military operations at the end of June, is the best template.
Balzen felt that General Berekov needed three magic weapons to achieve a series of successes. First, rigorous physical and technical and tactical training for soldiers before the war. Second, special weapons and equipment that are different from ordinary troops. Third
3. Excellent communication system.
Which of these three points is the most important? Of course, rigorous physical training!
In Balzen's view, equipping the troops with self-produced high-performance RPG weapons and catfish rocket launchers gives the troops strong anti-tank capabilities, but if the enemies are all pure infantry, the effectiveness of these weapons will be compromised.
Putting aside these, the best weapons equipped by the 284th Guards Division and the 233rd friendly parachute brigade are semi-automatic rifles such as the SVT40. There are also a large number of captured German mg34s in the army. At least in terms of ordnance, the Soviets in the swamp
The Army and other Soviet armies only strengthened their infantry weapons. As for the heavy artillery, there were only twenty captured 75mm field guns that lacked ammunition. After the shells were quickly exhausted, they were just a pile of scrap metal.
What really allowed the 284th Guards Division to achieve repeated military exploits was Berekov's "Spartan" training of the army.
Soldiers must be able to run with heavy loads in order to develop strong mobility. Every soldier must strengthen target shooting training in order to quickly develop qualified marksmanship.
There is another key point. According to the 1939 version of the "Infantry Drill Code" that has been in use for three years, the smallest combat unit of the army is the infantry squad. Here, Balzen made decisive adjustments.
The smallest combat unit should be the "combat team"! An infantry squad should be subdivided into three groups. Whether attacking or retreating, the three groups form a triangular formation, advancing and retreating together as an "iron triangle".
After becoming the division commander, Balzen had no complaints, but he was extremely anxious. Especially the Red Star, a newspaper mainly facing the army, was distributed for soldiers to circulate. It always introduced the importance of the Battle of Stalingrad and the heroes.
The greatness of the characters.
While the newspapers boosted the fighting enthusiasm of the new soldiers who had never fought in any battle, what Balzen got was anxiety about the future.
Therefore, at the second assembly meeting of the entire division's soldiers, Balzen used the loudspeaker to speak bluntly to everyone: "If you go to the battlefield without rigorous training, you are just militiamen who have taken up arms. In order not to
If you can survive the most brutal battle in the far future in large numbers, I must train you in an extreme way."
Balzen's core meaning is "sweat more in peacetime and bleed less in war", which is also the core military training philosophy Yang Mingzhi taught him.
The rigorous training begins!
After Balzen became the division commander, he quickly issued a series of orders. For example, the daily running exercise became a five-kilometer march with heavy loads. In the evening, there was another five-kilometer march waiting for everyone.
For most of the new recruits, they were engaged in very heavy physical labor before they were drafted, and most of them could adapt. As for those who could not adapt, Balzen dismissed them without even thinking.
If you are not qualified for long-distance raids, you will be a drag on your troops.
There is a good place for these people who are not good at running. They are sent to the artillery regiment to do the hard work of carrying artillery shells.
Balzen's operation gave some opportunistic people an opportunity. They deliberately showed their discomfort during training, and when they were sent to the artillery regiment, they appeared lively and vigorous, as if they were born for artillery. In reality? These guys are really smart people.
, they understand that as artillerymen, the probability of survival on the battlefield is by no means low.
The troops went through three weeks of intense training in this way, not only Balzen's 324th Division, but also his old comrade Lavrenti's 322nd Division and Yevgeny's 323rd Division.
This is not surprising at all. Lavrenti and Yevgeny were the core officers of the 284th Guards Division after entering the swamp. Either one of them could even represent the 284th Guards Division.
Even in a sense, Lavrenti and Yevgeny just accepted thousands of new recruits. As long as they trained these people according to the old method, after a while, there were two "284th Guards Division" in a distant and peaceful place.
Cloning was successful in the Ural region.
Everything is proceeding in an orderly manner, and as time goes by, Balzen becomes more and more satisfied with the results of his training.
The only ones who are dissatisfied here are probably the senior officers of the Ural Military Region.
After all, the Ural Military Region is currently responsible for the recruitment and training of a large number of new troops. There are three newly formed infantry divisions. Their training models are very different, and this difference is also made actively by their division commanders. To the surprise of the military region commander, they
The training standards of the troops are almost the same, and they all seem to be good measures.
There was no one who made irresponsible remarks among the commanders of the military region, because the three division commanders were all senior veterans of the 284th Guards Division. Now, the senior commanders of the three of them were already Stalin's guests.
Time has finally entered October, and it is snowing throughout the Perm region, including the city of Ocher, which is located on the edge of the region.
In the huge recruit training camp hidden in the forest, the soldiers did not care about the snowfall. They were still immersed in training amidst the sound of gunfire.
Now, Balzen has begun a more radical new type of training, simulated battlefield training.
Everything is just like Yang Mingzhi training new recruits in the swamp. As a veteran soldier, Balzen already knows how his old boss trains new recruits. Even if he is copying cats and tigers and imitating generals' methods to train soldiers, he estimates that he will not be able to train new soldiers again.
After a month, the troops will be almost fully trained.
One month of stable training period? Will the superiors really tolerate themselves training troops for another month? If so, the newly formed 324th Division has really received Stalin's favor.
It's not that Balzen doesn't understand the current situation. The information he learned through various channels shows one thing. A large number of troops will be trained for a month, and then they will be sent to the battlefield to rotate out the incomplete old troops. For this matter
Balzen also personally called the military district headquarters in Yekaterinburg, claiming that "short-term training and entering combat is to use the recruits as cannon fodder."
His words were rude, and the commander of the military region himself did not give much reply. The core meaning was: normal officers all know that recruits need to be trained for at least six months to be qualified. The threat of the enemy forces various places to not have enough time to train.
This is a fact!
The current German army, although their army training time is not as long as the Soviet Union's "mass-produced mobilization troops" who were sent to the battlefield after one month of training.
Before the war, new recruits of the German army had to undergo sixteen weeks of training. Now, the German army has shortened the time to twelve weeks.
Even so, the training time for German recruits is longer than the Soviet army's five-week crash course, which is objectively one of the major reasons why the current casualties of the German army are less than that of the Soviet army.
Balzen then asked no more questions. He could understand the considerations of his superiors, and he was not satisfied with the situation.
He had already thought of the terrible scene. On the vast white snowfield, an infantry division launched a brave attack. However, the soldiers who lacked training rushed towards the enemy's position with their passion. They had great courage.
, as a result, after repeated attacks more than ten times, one mobile force was finally exhausted and had to retreat to rest.
Of the 10,000 troops before the battle, probably less than 4,000 were able to withdraw alive. The war was fought like Tannenberg more than 20 years ago.
If they had gone through rigorous training, the situation would be very different.