Chapter 139 The Transfer Order Comes Again

Malachenko, who was sitting by his tank and smoking alone, would never have thought that at this moment, two Soviet Red Army bosses were planning the next battle direction for him.

Malachenko, who had lost count of how many days he had fought in a row, felt as if his whole body was trembling. His right hand, which was gently pinching the cigarette holder, flicked off the ashes like a machine without soul. The comfort brought by cigarettes, the hard currency in the army, still could not completely eliminate the war sequelae left by Malachenko these days.

"The Battle of Yelnya will probably take another month or so to finish if the situation continues. Hitler and Stalin are throwing new chips on the gambling table like crazy."

"The Battle of Kiev should have started by now. Khrushchev, the corn cob, is probably trying to trick Stalin into sticking to Kiev. The German Northern Army Group is probably on its way to encircle Leningrad. Where will I be transferred to if I am still alive after the Battle of Yelnya? Don't throw me a transfer order to Kiev. If that happens, I won't be able to waste my nine lives!"

Where will I be transferred to continue fighting after the Battle of Yelnya? This is the question that Malashenko is most concerned about and constantly thinking about.

According to the war history data published in later generations, the end of the Battle of Yelnya was undoubtedly an important change point in the strategic deployment of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

After this battle, the three German army groups that launched Operation Barbarossa adopted a placement tactic against Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, and then made strategic adjustments to the focus of the next offensive.

At Hitler's personal request, the German Central Army Group divided its main force into two, one to support the Northern Army Group's attack on Leningrad, and the other to support the Kiev Campaign launched by the Southern Army Group.

In order to occupy Leningrad, the cradle of the Bolshevik proletarian revolution, thereby crushing the will of the Soviet military and civilians to resist and seizing the Leningrad heavy industrial base.

Completely clear all remaining Soviet resistance forces in the direction of Ukraine in the south and seize Ukraine's rich strategic resources. As a result, when the German army launched the Moscow offensive before the arrival of winter, it did not have to worry about the Ukrainian Soviet Army Group on the southern flank harassing and counterattacking.

In this way, the next stage of the battle location of Malashenko and his first heavy tank breakthrough battalion, who always appeared in the most intense conflict areas, only had these two possibilities-Leningrad and Kiev.

Compared to being thrown into the largest encirclement in the history of human warfare in Kiev, and becoming a political sacrifice for Khrushchev, the corn cob, to pay tribute to Stalin along with 650,000 captured Soviet soldiers.

Malashenko, who shuddered all over at the thought of this, would rather be sent to fight in the direction of Leningrad.

Although the Battle of Leningrad ended with a temporary end of a draw between the German and Soviet offensive and defensive sides, the German army, unwilling to accept the failure of the offensive, besieged Leningrad for nearly 900 days in the following period, until the Soviet army's counterattack in early March 1944 defeated the German army and its vassal army to lift the siege of Leningrad.

But even if he was besieged by the Germans for nearly three years, it was better than being captured in Kiev and sent to a German prisoner-of-war concentration camp to do hard labor, or even becoming a test subject of some inhumane and cruel experiments by the German army and dying inexplicably.

The attitude and methods of the Soviet top leadership led by Stalin during World War II towards captured Soviet soldiers were enough to make Malashenko, a later time traveler who knew all this, tremble all over.

"Don't throw me into the big iron barrel encirclement in Kiev that I can't escape from no matter how hard I try. If that happens, it will be difficult for me to not want to be a prisoner. My life will be over if I take the blame for being a prisoner. With Order No. 270, I will either go to the Gulag to peel potatoes or be shot in the punishment camp. This is not something I can decide if I don't want to be captured."

After thinking about it and weighing the pros and cons, Malashenko finally came to the conclusion that he must avoid being transferred to Kiev to participate in the next stage of the battle as much as possible.

Just as Malashenko was racking his brains to avoid being thrown into the doomed encirclement of Kiev and becoming a prisoner of the Germans, a transfer order from the army group headquarters instantly brought Malashenko's thoughts back to reality.

"Bring all the troops and equipment to the Reserve Front to participate in the next phase of the operation, and be directly under the command of the Reserve Front Command? Wait, what is the Reserve Front for?"

Malachenko, who is familiar with the entire history of the Great Patriotic War as a time traveler in the future, does not remember the origin of such an unknown Reserve Front.

This kind of second-line troops, which can be heard from the name of the organizational number alone, are not the main force and elite, and it is almost impossible to be remembered.

Malachenko, who was holding the transfer order and thinking hard for a long time, could not remember who was the commander of this unit with the number of the Reserve Front, and where was the combat area and direction in August 1941.

"Don't be a unit that is going to fight in the direction of Kiev, otherwise it will be all over!"

With such an uneasy mood, Malachenko extinguished the cigarette butt in his hand and then started to act. The brutal battles over the past few days have honed Malashenko's vigorous and efficient command style.

Under the strong urging and command of Malashenko and his deputy Lavrinenko, the 1st Heavy Tank Breakthrough Battalion, which was originally in a relatively safe area outside the hotspot war zone and was in a loose rest, immediately regrouped according to the order.

Carrying those old tanks that were damaged and repaired and a small number of new tanks that were newly transported, they began to assemble towards the location of the reserve front headquarters mentioned in the transfer order.

Because the temporary rest point outside the Yelnya war zone is not far away from the location of the reserve front headquarters, the straight-line distance of only a few dozen kilometers is just a matter of stepping on the accelerator for the armored forces.

The railway transportation network controlled by the Soviet army near the entire Yelnya war zone is continuously transporting supplies and ammunition from the rear to the front line and then transporting the wounded. It is not an exaggeration to describe it as busy as a bustling traffic.

In this busy situation where using the railway network for mobile transfer even requires signing up and queuing up to wait for the arrangement of the dispatch train, Malashenko, who was under great pressure from military orders and time was of the essence, simply chose to move the troops across the country and run the dozens of kilometers on his own in order to reach the reserve front as soon as possible to report.