USSR 1941

  Chapter 75 Recruits

   Then rest on another line of defense for two days, and then stick to it for another day, rolling over and over again... Every soldier fights every battle with the hope of leaving the battlefield alive, so they are willing to unite and fight the enemy.

  Otherwise, no matter how hard you try, you will die in the end, and you will easily have the mentality of breaking the jar and giving up, or even going to extremes to rebel and surrender.

  In fact, people are all the same, but the high-level Soviet Union does not understand these and blindly requires that every soldier can be stationed on the ground to fight the enemy desperately, which is obviously unrealistic.

   "Good advice!" Admiral Kirponos nodded and said, "As I said, you are much better than those staff officers who have studied in military schools!"

  Shuerka couldn't help but blush.

This is not the way he thought of. It should be Liao Yaoxiang who pioneered this tactic. He commanded the Chinese Expeditionary Force to use this "roller" tactic to defend and retreat while facing the superior force of the Japanese army in Burma to prepare for the follow-up line of defense. Buy time.

After the meeting, Shulka and Major Gavrilov took a jeep back to the station... To be precise, it was not a jeep but a car. The Soviets painted the civilian car in army green and threw it into the army for officers to use. Give it the name "GAZ M1" Officer Command Vehicle.

   Such vehicles are not capable of off-roading, and the seats are difficult to adapt to the needs of the battlefield, especially the bad roads everywhere in the Soviet Union, so they were quickly replaced by "GAZ 61, 67" and so on.

"You're amazing, Shulka!" Major Gavrilov, who was sitting in the co-pilot's seat in the bumpy car, turned around and handed Shulka a cigarette, and said, "I'm still waiting for you." I thought you would think that the 'cabinet camouflage' tactic was just luck, but I didn't expect another 'space for time'!"

   "It's still luck, Major!" Shulka leaned forward cautiously, shielded the wind with his palm and lit a match to light cigarettes for the major and himself.

  The major laughed after lighting his cigarette: "Maybe, we really need luck now!"

   After a pause, the major said again: "What do you think, Shukaka?"

   "What do you think?"

   "For this war!" Major Gavrilov said: "Or Kyiv, do you think we can stop the German attack?"

   "No, you can't!" Shulka replied shaking his head.

   "How can you be so sure?" Major Gavrilov was a little surprised: "Even if we have 'camouflage' and 'space for time'?"

   "I think so, Major!"

   "Why?" asked Major Gavrilov.

   "I'm talking nonsense, Major!" Shulka said: "I don't know, maybe it's because of intuition, or because of fear, I always think we can't hold Kyiv!"

   Major Gavrilov laughed: "Don't worry, Shulka! We will hold Kyiv, we have more troops, ammunition, and other things than the enemy! We will hold it!"

   But Shulka knew that this was not the case, and even he knew that Major Gavrilov was not sure, otherwise he would not have asked the question.

   Shulka sighed, and cast his eyes on the wilderness outside the car window, but he was thinking about what Major Gavrilov said just now.

  Major Gavrilov is right. The Soviet army has more troops and supplies in Kyiv, as well as a steady stream of reinforcements from the rear. They have the strength to stop the German Army Group South.

  The problem is that... the German Central Army has penetrated deep into the Soviet Union's hinterland and crossed the Pripyat swamp. Guderian's armored forces would take Kyiv from the belly as long as they turned south, so there was the largest encirclement battle in history.

  So, sometimes Shulka wonders, is all this work done by me? !

   So what if you gain time?

   So what if you successfully break through again and again?

   What's the use of consolidating Kyiv's defense?

  In the end, Kyiv will still be unable to escape in a larger encirclement, and of course Shulka is no exception.

   But what can Shulka do?

  Convince Admiral Kirponos to retreat?

  Admiral Kirponos is not ignorant of retreat. In history, he has requested retreat time and time again, but was rejected again and again. The famous general Zhukov also asked the Southwest Front Army to withdraw in time, but was dismissed on the spot.

  Thinking of this, Shulka could only shake his head so that he would stop thinking about things beyond these abilities. He could only take one step at a time and try his best to make this battle more beneficial to the Soviet army.

   Another thing that keeps Shulka busy is his new platoon leader.

If it's just a platoon leader, it's nothing, because his platoon leader is actually similar to the squad leader. After a few battles, there are more than a dozen people in the platoon: 6 people in the first squad, 4 people in the second squad, 7 people in the third squad, plus him. This platoon leader... has a total of 18 people.

  The problem is that the superiors think that the 333rd regiment has repeatedly made military exploits, so they plan to add personnel to make it a heroic regiment and a model regiment.

   This is not a problem at all. No one would dislike replenishing personnel. The hero group and the model group are also so-so. Although the pressure will be greater after going to the battlefield, it also means that they can get supplies first.

  The problem is that these supplementary personnel are all recruits from Kyiv.

  Major Gavrilov once protested against this: "Comrade Artyomenko, if the 333rd regiment is to be made into a model regiment, how can we replenish these recruits?"

  Artiomenko is the new commander of the 27th Army, with the rank of major general. He was originally the commander of the 95th Infantry Division.

"Major!" Artyomenko replied: "It is now a state of war, and the battle situation is very tense. Do you think any unit will be willing to give you well-trained soldiers? What's more, after these soldiers are assigned to your unit, Can I adapt to your command? Know that we may be on the battlefield soon!"

   This is true, soldiers need a process of adaptation, and even commanders need to adapt to their soldiers, but there is obviously no time for this now.

Major General Artyomenko patted Major Gavrilov on the shoulder: "Although those who joined the 333rd Regiment were recruits, they were brave people because they were from Kiev. It was spontaneously organized in Kyiv, I believe you can command them well!"

  So, a group of recruits who didn't even have complete military uniforms entered the 333rd regiment.

   Shulka's platoon was divided into fifteen people, and there were nearly half of the recruits in the entire platoon.

   Moreover, they are obviously not all organized to join the army in order to resist the invaders, as Major General Artyomenko said.

  Because on the first day, Shulka discovered that a recruit was selling lighters to them.