In the Prosen Army just fifteen minutes ago.
When Major General Witter saw the first rays of sunlight appear in the sky, he breathed a sigh of relief.
At that moment, the chief of staff approached him, saluted, and said, “General, the confirmation is complete. So far, we have two armored battalions that have withdrawn, totaling 90 Panzer III tanks and 44 Panzer IV tanks.”
Major General Witter was shocked and interrupted the chief of staff’s report, “How did we lose so many Panzer IIIs?”
In the Prosen armored battalions, there are generally 70 Panzer IIIs and around 28 Panzer IVs. The current count indicates that more than 50 Panzer IIIs and over ten Panzer IVs were left in the city.
Chief of Staff: “Last night’s artillery shelling damaged many tanks; the commanders of the two armored battalions believe they have driven out every functional tank they could.”
Major General Witter shook his head and gestured for the chief of staff to continue his report.
Chief of Staff: “Six companies from the Armored Grenadier Corps made it out, each company losing about half of its vehicles.”
Major General Witter’s brow furrowed.
The Armored Grenadier Corps of the Busse Division was a large unit, comprising 16 companies, each a large company itself, which included infantry, various weapons teams, reconnaissance, logistics, and totaling over 200 men. Now, two thousand men were left in the city.
There were also accompanying infantry with the armored battalions. By this account, it’s possible that more than four thousand men were abandoned in the city.
The sound of intense gunfire could still be heard from within the city, and since the enemy’s weapons were all suppressed, those gunshots were likely fired by Prosen soldiers.
Major General Witter looked up at the sky to confirm that the sunlight was getting brighter, and then said to the chief of staff, “As soon as it clears up, we must immediately return to the city to help our troops reclaim the occupied city.”
The chief of staff looked hesitant, to which Major General Witter glanced at him and said, “Speak your mind.”
Chief of Staff: “We are an armored division, not adept at urban warfare. We should wait for the subsequent armored grenadier divisions to catch up.”
Major General Witter shook his head: “You’re not aware yet, but our following armored grenadier divisions have been deployed to the north and south flanks. General Boke is preparing to launch a pincer attack on Rocossov.”
“Eh?” The chief of staff was surprised, “Is that so?”
“That’s what the encrypted message the day before yesterday said, didn’t you see it? Oh, you weren’t the chief of staff then, not even a senior staff officer, so it’s normal for you not to know.”
The chief of staff remained silent.
Major General Witter: “In any case, we must return to the city. We have thousands of our brothers fighting there; we can’t abandon them.”
As he spoke, much of the thick fog had dissipated, surely because of the sunlight, the best weapon against heavy fog.
Visibility gradually restored, Major General Witter suddenly spotted something on the distant grassland.
He picked up his binoculars.
Thanks to the superior performance provided by the Zeiss optical lenses, Major General Witter saw the famed T-34 tanks of the Ante Army perched on a distant hill, and these were the big-headed models.
Over the past year, these big-headed tanks had almost become synonymous with Rocossov’s name, so much so that the Prosen Army began to assume they were encountering Rocossov whenever they saw a T-34 with a big turret.
The Prosen High Command had to issue a directive emphasizing that Rocossov would fly a unique red flag and that his command vehicle would use the tactical number 422.
For this reason, Major General Witter carefully checked the view through the binoculars for any tanks flying red flags—but he couldn’t make out the tactical numbers clearly enough to confirm.
Nonetheless, Major General Witter saw an Ante Army officer with a broad back and round waist looking in his direction from in front of the tanks.
He then saw that officer seemed to receive a radio headset from an aide (actually it was a telephone receiver, but it was too far to see clearly).
Major General Witter immediately shouted, “Signal officer, monitor the enemy’s radio frequencies, they might be reporting to their superiors!”
“Yes!”
The signal officer’s voice came from the direction of the communication vehicle.
Major General Witter waited for ten seconds, but when he didn’t hear the signal officer’s report, he prompted, “You haven’t heard anything?”
“No, no one’s speaking on the enemy’s radio channels.”
Major General Witter frowned: “Could they be on the phone instead? What do you think, Hank—”
Suddenly, the major general remembered that his partner, the experienced chief of staff, had already been sent heavenward by friendly fire.
He cursed, and then thinking of the prime culprit, he asked, “Did Colonel Busse make it out?”
“No,” the chief of staff reported.
Major General Witter pursed his lips.
At that moment, he realized that Colonel Busse might just be the most experienced senior officer left in the unit, apart from himself, and his remaining in the city didn’t bode well at all.
Before he could reflect further, the Ante officer in the binoculars returned the communication device to his subordinate.
Had the conversation ended?
What had been said?
Major General Witter saw the officer starting to issue orders to those around him, and soon after, the Ante armored units stationed on the hill began to move.
No, not just the armored units; there was something else!
Major General Witter watched in astonishment as what he had thought were merely taller grasses began to move.
The enemy’s assault guns!
Major General Vitter suddenly realized that he should not have attacked the city, but should have taken advantage of the enemy shifting positions to launch an armored raid.
He turned and shouted, ‘Order the armored troops to spread out in a wide wedge formation! Target the hill to the southeast, begin the attack! The enemy doesn’t have many tanks, just about the same number as our Panzer IIIs! And we have the newest long-barreled Panzer IVs…’
In that instant, Major General Vitter heard the whistling sound in his ears.
He immediately realized the shell was coming towards him, so he dived forward: ‘Get down!’
The shell landed.
It wasn’t the usual artillery strike where shells fall one after another; instead, hundreds of shells fell in an instant.
Of course, Major General Vitter didn’t know this was “time-on-target firing,” but he made a judgment based on past experience, ‘My God, at least ten artillery battalions are firing on us!’
When the division headquarters was shelled last night, Major General Vitter had not been in the area of heaviest fire. He had even thought the objective of the shelling was to destroy defensive positions and had ordered the entire army into combat readiness.
Now, he was right in the place where the fire was most intense.
‘My God!’ he shouted—as it turns out, when you take cover from shelling, you need to open your mouth wide to balance the air pressure inside and outside the skull—so he might as well yell to vent his nervous emotions.
————
Upon hearing the artillery, Colonel Busse immediately ran to the window, lay on the sill, peering out, and indeed saw that the city outskirts were being hit by intense artillery fire.
‘The armored troops are being bombarded; I guess we won’t be getting any reinforcements for a while,’ he turned his head to the captain behind him and said, ‘We’ll have to drive the enemy out of the city on our own.’
Captain: ‘Aside from the personnel on defense duty, we have gathered a hundred men, and we’ve pooled together the submachine guns.’
Colonel Busse moved away from the window and stood up straight in the room: ‘Good, I’ll lead the team personally. We’ve held this position for three days now, and we’re more familiar with the terrain than the Ante People—even though this is their country. Hand me a submachine gun.’
An MP40 was immediately delivered into the colonel’s hands.
The colonel checked the gun, pulled back to see there was a bullet in the chamber, then returned the bolt to position.
A guard handed over a magazine bag, and Colonel Busse cursed upon seeing it, ‘Why is this an Ante People’s magazine bag?’
‘It’s handy,’ the guard said, ‘it’s more comfortable to use than our magazine bags, and it can also stop bullets on the chest. This is the gear used by the Ante troops that entered the city today. We haven’t seen it used by other Ante troops before. We only captured a little.’
Actually, this was a knockoff of our own chest rig, which had been immediately well-received by the infantry. Unfortunately, it couldn’t spread among other Ante units, as they either used the drum magazines of the Papasha submachine guns, which wouldn’t fit into the chest rig, or they used the large bolts on the Mosin-Nagants and didn’t need the chest rig either.
But the chest rig was just right for carrying MP40 magazines.
Colonel Busse frowned: ‘What about that enemy’s suppressed weapon? Did we capture any?’
Captain: ‘We have four here; other units in the city must have sporadically captured a few.’
Colonel Busse: ‘Send one out of the city, make sure the High Command and the Imperial Academy of Sciences get a sample gun.’
As he was talking, he took the Ante People’s gear, about to attach it to his battle belt when the guard interjected, ‘No no, it’s not meant to hang on the battle belt but to be worn on the upper body like a vest. Look, you can even carry grenades here, ready at hand. This gear is brilliantly designed, I think it should be sent back along with the enemy’s weapons.’
Colonel Busse nodded: ‘Then send one back.’
The current Prosen Army gear was still in a state where everything was slung over the shoulder, and anything that couldn’t be slung was crammed onto the belt, so the belts—more precisely, the battle belts—were extremely heavy.
With the guard’s assistance, Colonel Busse finished dressing, then turned to the captain to say, ‘Once we start the offensive, you hold this position, this building must not be lost as a stronghold…’
Suddenly, a bursting noise came from behind Colonel Busse; soldiers cried out in alarm, ‘Look out! The Ante people are coming around from the back!’
Colonel Busse, holding the MP40: ‘First deal with them! Move!’
————
‘Charge, this is the enemy’s firepower support point!’ Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao shouted, ‘If we take this position and set up the machine guns, we can control the main roads in the city!’
This morning, Brigadier General Eugene of the 225th Division had issued an order to halt any advance to avoid friendly fire. However, due to the chaotic situation in the fog, many of the 225th Division’s infantry had not received the order.
Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao’s team was among them, having gotten separated in the fog with his radio operator, so he led his troops forward in a charge.
Indeed, they encountered some infantry from the Guard’s Motorized Infantry, possibly even suffering from friendly fire incidents, but they couldn’t see clearly in the thick fog.
Anyway, Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao gathered up the infantry he encountered, and they charged all the way here.
The recent explosion had knocked down an entire wall, the courtyard doors wide open. Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao, equipped with a spiral clip cutter, was suppressing the enemy by firing at the doors and windows on the other side while charging into the yard.
At this moment, the door on the first floor of the building opened, and a Prosen officer leaped out, wielding a submachine gun and firing at Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao.
The lieutenant colonel was hit immediately, but he struggled to prop himself up, glancing at the enemy’s badge—only to realize he did not recognize the officer’s badge.
After all, The Asgard Knights’ ranks were different from those of regular Prosen units.
Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao raised his gun and fired at the enemy—
The enemy’s body jerked, leaning back against the door frame, struggling to continue firing.
Lieutenant Colonel Xie Miao, under the effect of the bullets, fell backwards and crashed heavily to the ground.
The Prosen Colonel dropped his gun; his body slowly slid down along the door frame.
Prosen soldiers stepped over his splayed legs, charging at the Ante soldiers who had broken through, and a fierce melee ensued.