Prohibition of Interference. Book 2. Tactical Level. Макс Глебов

to the enemy – their light was lost in the rain. It was wet, dirty, but at least not too cold. It would be an exaggeration to call the German defense line discontinuous, but there were gaps between the trenches and strongholds. The enemy gradually expanded the Kremenchuk bridgehead, and the Germans did not always have time to equip full-fledged positions. It would be great to hit them now with a couple of tank divisions supported by heavy artillery, but where to get them? The Southwestern Front has almost no reserves, and the forces allocated by the General Headquarters are spent on flank counterstrikes against the advancing Guderian tanks.

      “There's the enemy's machine-gun position ahead – 130 meters forward and 15 meters to the left,” I reported to Sheglov, who had long ceased to be surprised by such revelations on my part, “It's better to go around it on the left. On the right there's a continuous line of trenches, and the Germans do not sleep there.”

      “Got it,” the Captain nodded, changing direction, and we crawled forward, crouching to the ground in the flashes of flares flying into the sky.

      There was regular rumbling all around – the Germans were delivering disturbing fire at the positions of the 300th Infantry Division. Our troops tried to respond, but they were clearly saving shells.

      Since the order to seize a prisoner for interrogation came directly from the headquarters of the 38th Army, the division commander gave Captain Shcheglov a corresponding task. The top brass didn't want just anyone. Ordinary soldiers or noncommissioned officers can not know much, although one can argue with this – exceptions occur, but the probability of coming across such a knowledgeable lower-ranking person is still not too high. So we were ordered to take an officer, and that made it very difficult. The bridgehead is not the Germans' deep rear on the western bank of the Dnieper. Officers don't walk around here alone, and we still have to find them in the middle of the night in pitch black when we have to stick our faces in the dirt after every flash of a flare.

      In fact, there was almost certainly no point in capturing some ordinary infantry lieutenant, either, and I told Shcheglov about this at once. The Captain grimaced, realizing that I was offering him a raid deep into the German bridgehead, but in the end he agreed. I needed to do this for two purposes. First, I wanted to be on the bank of the Dnieper to be able to tell the Captain that I had heard and seen signs of preparations for the delivery of heavy equipment to the bridgehead, and second, I needed a successful operation in order to gain a certain credibility in the eyes of division commander Kuznetsov, otherwise he simply would not listen to me.

      The gap in German positions was explained quite simply. They were cut in two by a ravine overgrown with bushes, with a stream running along the bottom, which was turbid from the mud that flowed down the slopes. This waterlogged place was completely unsuitable for combat operations, and the Germans limited themselves to setting up a dozen and a half mines in the most passable places.

      The computer highlighted these German surprises to me in an alarming orange color, but Shcheglov was not born yesterday either and knew very well, what one could run into in such places.

      “Remizov, move forward,” the Captain ordered quietly.

      The sapper moved slowly deep into the ravine, checking the ground in front of him with a special probing rod, while I was careful to make sure that he would not miss the deadly gift from the Germans in the dark and slippery mud. The Captain looked concentrated, but I didn't feel too much tension in him. Apparently, the commander was confident in his subordinate's qualifications. In any case, Remizov was up to the task. He did not touch the mines he found, but only raised his hand each time and carefully crawled around the dangerous spot. The group followed in his wake.

      There were five of us on the raid. Besides me, Remizov and the Captain, Sergeant Ignatov and Pfc Nikiforov, who were very familiar to me, were with us. The only person new to me in the group was the sapper.

      We traversed the first German defense line for about an hour and a half, and when it was behind us, the scouts looked like big moving lumps of mud. Only the weapons, which everyone was trying to protect, looked more or less clean. But now we could afford to move faster, since there were noticeably fewer Germans.

      Enemy infantry moved in separate groups along some very bad roads leading from the coast to the front line. It looked like the Germans used the night time to reinforce their troops on the bridgehead. There were also horsed antitank guns, and this indicated that not only ordinary boats but also more serious watercraft were involved in the crossing.

      “We must keep going, Comrade Captain,” I suggested softly to Shcheglov, “everything will become clearer near the river, and there are probably officers there – someone has to distribute the incoming soldiers. And here we can search for control points until the morning, and it's not a fact that we'll find them.”

      “Go right, Nagulin,” the Captain nodded toward the nearest group of trees, which seemed a vague blur in the darkness. It was obvious that he really did not want to get into the middle of this snake's nest, but Shcheglov saw no other way to perform the command's task.

      In about 40 minutes we came to the Dnieper. The splash of the oars and the muffled commands in German resounded far and wide in the moisture-soaked air. No one prevented the Germans from crossing the river. It seemed that the command of the Southwestern Front did not consider an increase in the number of enemy infantry on the Kremenchuk bridgehead a serious problem for itself; moreover, it had, by and large, no way to effectively prevent the Wehrmacht infantry divisions from moving across the Dnieper at night.

      We got almost to the shore. I unobtrusively straightened our route, and eventually we came to one of the distribution points for soldiers arriving from the west bank. Not that there were many boats, but they regularly came ashore, emerging from the damp haze. The Oberleutnant, surrounded by a few noncommissioned officers and a couple of dozen soldiers, was in charge of meeting the new arrivals. The boats poked their noses into the shore, and the Germans quickly unloaded and formed a marching order. The local Oberleutnant briefed their commanders, gave the forming columns an escort, and sent them east. That was a real Ordnung.

      One could not even dream of capturing the Oberleutnant as a prisoner for interrogation. He was surrounded by many soldiers the whole time, but even if we had succeeded, his disappearance would have almost instantly turned the river bank into a disturbed anthill, and we would not have been allowed to leave in peace.

      We had been lying motionless for nearly two hours in the wet grass under cover of not too dense bushes and watching the shore. The situation looked like a dead end. All officers arriving by boat went to the front in platoon columns, and attacking such a column with our forces was out of question.

      I knew that German sappers had already built a pontoon bridge to one of the islands closer to their shore. Now this structure could not withstand tanks and other heavy equipment, but light artillery and trucks moved confidently over this bridge. This greatly simplified the task of crossing the infantry divisions, and by and large this bridge should have been destroyed immediately, but our command knew nothing about it yet, and it was only possible to get proof of the existence of this bridge here.

      Judging by the fact that the columns of German tanks continued inexorable movement toward Kremenchuk, the Germans were soon to begin building a bridge across the Dnieper. They were already bringing in pontoons and the necessary materials for construction and storing them on the opposite bank. With such a concentration of forces and means, German sappers could accomplish the task very quickly, and then a very unpleasant surprise in the form of a strike from the south by von Kleist's Panzer Group 1 threatened our 300th Division, the 38th Army, and the entire Southwestern Front.

      “You called me ashore, Junior Lieutenant,” Shcheglov couldn't stand it, “Here we are, then what?”

      “Just a minute, Comrade Captain,” I asked, closing my eyes and concentrating.

      The night and low clouds made it very difficult to see the details, but I did manage to spot a boat heading toward our shore, the composition of its passengers being somewhat different from the rest of the boats. The German officer who crossed to the eastern bank of the Dnieper was not of high rank. By playing with the filter settings, I was able to see his insignia – the Hauptmann. Perhaps it was a company commander, or maybe a battalion-level staff officer. The computer had