Steel Soviet Union

As the division commander of the leading division, Malashenko had to do a lot of things personally, so much that even if our comrade, the division commander, got on the captured Kraut train and started maneuvering across the theater, he couldn't be idle.

"This is a detailed casualty report. This is a list of all the ammunition, fuel and supplies our division has left so far. This is the list of materials and evidence of Nazi crimes seized yesterday. This is what Karachev wrote to you. I haven’t read the report yet, it should be the recent consumption of medical supplies in the field hospital, I guess.”

"This is the equipment loss summary report of our division in recent times. It took a long time to finally complete the statistics. I have roughly read it and it is detailed enough. Which one do you want to read first?"

In a passenger carriage in the middle of the train, Malashenko, who was sitting face to face with Comrade Political Commissar, was frowning at the piles of documents on the table in front of him. He really didn't expect that he had accumulated so many. The gadgets were waiting for him to review and sign. Even Lavrinenko, who was sitting next to him, couldn't help laughing when he saw the sad expression on Comrade Teacher's face.

"What am I talking about? You ask him to conquer the German stick physically. He is a good player. He thinks he is second and no one thinks he is first. But you want him to do his homework. I am not bragging. His level may not be as good as mine. "

"Ah"

Seeing that even the political commissar was being made to laugh, Malashenko, who felt a little embarrassed on his face, couldn't help but keep talking.

"Bullshit, just keep talking nonsense. You are better at homework than me. If you are really better than me, let's switch. You will be the division commander and I will be the deputy division commander. How about I give you a hand? Come and try it. "

"Don't don't don't"

Seeing Malashenko feigning anger, Lavrinenko, who was smiling, quickly held a lit cigarette between his fingertips to signal surrender.

"You have won. Isn't it enough for me to surrender? Are you still a division commander at our level? You will probably make a mess of the leader division and be invited to Lubyanka Street to drink vodka. Please forgive me, this job is still yours It’s appropriate.”

"You're a wise boy."

Leaving the battlefield filled with artillery fire and smoke, even if it is only a short strategic maneuver, Malashenko and his comrades who are closely united around him can always find a way to be happy in the gaps between life and death battles. , even if you don’t have fun, you have to find ways to create some fun and laugh.

This guy, that's it. If you are unhappy all day long and only know how to fight and kill, you will turn into a cold-blooded monster sooner or later. If you want to be a flesh-and-blood person, you still have to find some way.

"Then let's take a look at this first. Come one by one. There's still plenty of time anyway."

The train passed through the rear of the frontline troops in the area already occupied by the Red Army, advancing into the distance at a speed much slower than that of later high-speed trains in the 21st century. (っ◔◡◔)っSo Malashenko is indeed right. Before arriving at the destination, he still has plenty of time to read one by one these documents and reports that must be reviewed and approved by him personally.

The first thing Malashenko picked up was a not too thick report handed over by Comrade Political Commissar. It was a list of the equipment that the leadership division had lost in recent times.

The time span of this report is not short, starting from the time when the leader's division left Warsaw and began moving southward for maneuvering operations, and continued until the end of the Auschwitz raid. All equipment losses in the recent period were summarized in detail. , waiting for the teacher and comrade to take a look.

But as soon as Malashenko looked down the list and flipped through two pages, some slightly exaggerated figures made Malashenko's newly relaxed brows frown again. It couldn't be said that he was unhappy, but Words that were definitely not happy came out of his mouth right after.

"Why are the losses so high? Combat losses are normal and acceptable, but are non-combat losses a bit too much? This is almost as good as the second half of Operation Bagration. The intensity of our fight in Poland was so high ?”

As Malashenko said, the battle losses on the attrition list are actually quite normal. In terms of the scale and intensity of the battle that Malashenko understands, the losses reflected in the list are not high, and can even be said to be high. It is beautiful, and through increasingly tacit and quantitative synthetic combat cooperation, the battle damage of technical equipment has been reduced to a very low level, which is worthy of recognition.

But apart from the normal combat losses, the non-combat losses are really surprising.

There is no other reason. The 15% non-combat loss of technical equipment can be said to be too high and a bit scary.

How to understand it specifically?

To put it in more down-to-earth terms, if the Leader Division currently has 400 tracked armored combat vehicles of various types available for combat, but after some non-combat losses occur, the 400 tracked armored combat vehicles of the Leader Division will be The number of vehicles has to be reduced by 60, leaving only 340 vehicles that can be used to smash German sticks.

No matter how wealthy and heroic the leader of the division is, the non-combat loss of a total of 60 tracked armored combat vehicles is still painful.

In other words, this is thanks to such a tyrannical leader-level unit as the Leader's Division. If you put aside an ordinary Red Army tank division, even if it is a Guards unit, it is enough for the unit to withdraw from the battle if the 60 vehicles are stopped before the battle begins. Okay, how many cars do you have in total? 60 vehicles can’t be put into battle, so what’s the point? It would be no exaggeration to say that the entire tank division was disabled.

Although Malashenko saw in the follow-up report that most of the 60 non-combat losses could be repaired, there were only 8 vehicles that could not be repaired and had to be left there and handed over to the follow-up friendly forces for processing, and were permanently removed from the technical equipment list of the leader division.

However, Malashenko, who has been busy with combat command recently and has hardly paid much attention to equipment support and logistics, is still puzzled. He can't figure out the root cause of such high non-combat losses. At this time, the political commissar who coordinates all matters under the division headquarters naturally needs to explain a little.

"Let me ask you a question first, comrade division commander, do you know how many tactical maneuvers we have traveled in the past few days since we left Warsaw?"

""

Malashenko, holding the report in his hand, was stunned when he heard it, and subconsciously looked at Lavrinenko beside him, and found that this guy was also blinking his eyes and looked more confused than himself. It seems that the deputy division commander, who is also on the front line commanding the troops to fight the Germans, doesn't know much better than the real division commander, so don't expect him to give a more accurate answer.

"Well, about 300 kilometers? It should be about the same???"

The political commissar who heard this just smiled helplessly and shook his head. The division commander, who was busy commanding the war and had no time to care about other things, did give the wrong answer.

"To be precise and specific, it should be a full 481 kilometers of the map distance, most of which are off-road mileage, no roads to go, and some situations require detours, so if it is changed to the actual journey, it is at least about 600 kilometers."