USSR 1941

Third watch, ask for a recommendation ticket!

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Major Gavrilov was right that the Soviet soldiers lacked medicines.

When Fort Warren occupied the German warehouse, they could actually search for the German medicine, but no one thought about it at the time, they only thought about the most important thing...food.

The wounded died on the third day.

He was only slightly injured...a piece of shrapnel the size of a fingernail pierced through the canvas of the car and stuck on his right shoulder. He didn't realize it at the time, and he still raised his submachine gun and fired at the enemy.

He didn't feel any pain until he walked into the swamp. The soldier didn't take this injury seriously. He even pinched the tail of the shrapnel with his fingers to pull it out, and then found a piece of cloth to bind up the wound.

However, the hot and humid environment and the germs everywhere quickly made the wound inflamed and rotted, and then started to have a fever. When the dressing cloth was removed the next day, others were horrified to find that worms had grown on the wound.

On the third day, when the soldier stumbled and followed the troops, he fell to the ground and never got up again.

What was even more frightening was that on the fifth day, the troops spent the night in a wet forest... The swamp had plenty of water and fertile land. If there was a piece of land with a slightly higher terrain, it would definitely be covered with trees and weeds.

The Soviet soldiers even killed a few hares in the woods, so everyone drank delicious rabbit soup that night.

Early the next morning, the whistle for getting up was blown before dawn.

This was the marching custom established by Major Gavrilov.

In order to have enough time to march, the troops always get up and prepare before the sky is about to light up. They march at dawn and rest two or three times until it gets dark and they can't see the road.

This decision is of course correct, because it is not difficult to imagine that the same thing is happening south of the swamp... The German mechanized troops are aggressively attacking the Soviet army, and the advancing speed is definitely not slow. If Major Gavrilov and his party walk slowly If you go out of the swamp, you will fall into the encirclement of the German army.

When the soldiers were packing their luggage, they found that the three wounded couldn't wake up, and they had died after checking their noses.

This puzzled the medical soldiers, because one of the three wounded was only slightly injured, and it was not normal for the three to die at the same time, so they naturally carried out necessary examinations on them.

As soon as the clothes were lifted, everyone was shocked: the three of them were densely sucked with leeches, and each of them was fat, big and red.

Apparently, these three people let the leeches suck their blood unconsciously in their dreams... When the leeches suck blood, they will inject an anesthetic into the human body, so that people can't feel pain at all.

Several female soldiers screamed and ran around in fright. Agata was also frightened. She kept rubbing her arms and checking whether there were leeches sticking to her body until she was walking on the march.

On the sixth night, when the troops had found habitat and settled in, Major Gavrilov called a meeting of several officers, including Shulka.

The bonfire next to it was burning water, and Major Gavrilov pointed to a point on the map by the light of the fire and said: "Our location is roughly here... If we calculate it by more than 40 kilometers per day, we should have already gone About 250 kilometers!"

This is another troublesome thing about going deep into the swamp... There is no GPS navigation at this time, and the swamp has no obvious landmarks, so it is impossible to determine where you are.

"Now we should make a decision!" Major Gavrilov took the water handed by the orderly, took a sip, and continued: "Should we continue to go deeper into the swamp or get out of this swamp!"

So Shulka understood what Major Gavrilov was worried about: no one knew where the German troops in the south had fought, so it was impossible to determine whether they encountered German or Soviet troops when they walked out of the swamp.

"I think we should keep going!" Lieutenant Venyakov suggested: "If the Germans are marching at the speed of Minsk, they may have already marched to the city of Kyiv!"

Major Gavrilov shook his head and said, "We can't go to Kyiv, because the food is only enough for two days, and it will take at least five days to reach Kyiv... Some of us may be able to get out alive, but At least half of them will stay here forever!"

"Then we have no other choice!" Lieutenant Venyakov said, "Go ahead one more day, and then get out of the swamp!"

"No, we should get out of the swamp tomorrow!" Major Gavrilov said, "Because we can't guarantee that we will get out of the swamp one day!"

The officers couldn't help being silent. This is undoubtedly very dangerous, but they have to admit that Major Gavrilov is right... They must give themselves a little room for maneuver, in case the estimated position is not the same as the actual position, or Lost direction and other reasons, the food is exhausted and has not walked out of the swamp, it is more painful than encountering the German army.

Major Gavrilov turned his gaze to Shulka and asked: "What do you think, Shulka?"

"I have no idea, Comrade Major!" Shulka replied.

In this regard, Shulka really has no say, after all, he can even mistake the northeast and the southeast.

When returning to his bivouac, Shulka racked his brains to recall the details of the war in the southern part of the Soviet Union... The progress of the German Army Group South was not smooth, but the Soviet army still suffered heavy casualties despite being caught off guard. .

Soon, the Soviet Southwest Front Army was ordered to retreat 200 kilometers within 8 days to organize defense.

The reason is that after 200 kilometers there is a line of defense called the "Stalin Line of Defense" by the West. (Note: "Stalin's Line of Defense" is the name of Western countries, and the Soviet Union has never used this name)

This line of defense is the border of the Soviet Union in 1939.

In this era, it was very popular to build strong fortifications on the border. The most famous ones were the Maginot Line in France, the Siegfried Line in Germany, the Mannerheim Line in Finland and so on.

This is clearly influenced by the trench warfare of World War I.

The Soviet Union was no exception. They built a series of terror-fortified areas on the border and connected them with a line of defense... This is the so-called "Stalin Line of Defense".

Originally, the "Stalin Line of Defense" could still play a role, but the problem was that the Soviet Army expanded westward 39 years later and pushed the border to Poland, so the Soviet Army was busy building fortifications on the new border and ignored the "Stalin Line of Defense" Even the equipment of the "Stalin Line of Defense" was moved forward.

Therefore, this highly regarded "Stalin's line of defense" could not stop the advance of the German army at all.

At this time, Shulka calculated and thought that after walking out of the swamp, it would be the location of the "Stalin Line of Defense".