Prohibition of Interference. Book 1

Of course, I didn't say everything I knew. The Germans we ran into were one of the forward units of the 125th Wehrmacht Infantry Division. We were already so far into the mousetrap that Uman and its environs have become, that there were no normal escape routes left. To break through to the west would be pure madness. Even if there are Red Army men there, they are only the remnants of defeated and surrounded units. There was also no point in going north, in the direction of Kiev. The place was now packed with German infantry, which was pulling up after the motorized units that had moved forward to Talny. And even if we had broken through there, we would not have had any prospects, because we would have fallen into a new, even larger pocket, which was also already marked with all certainty around the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Three selected German divisions, two of which are tank divisions, are waiting for us in the east, and we have absolutely nothing to gain in this direction. That leaves the south, but there we will at best find units of the 6th and 12th Armies surrounded. Of course, this is much nicer than being taken prisoner by the Germans right away, but it's also pretty bleak prospect.

“Stop panicking, soldier!” said the First Lieutenant, as if trying to kill me with his gaze, but somewhere in the depths of his pupils I saw uncertainty and even fear. The Commander understood that I was right, he understood it very well, but he tried not to show it in front of his subordinates.

“That's right, Comrade First Lieutenant,” I answered, raising my hand to my cap, “We have one way left – to the south. That's where our units should be. At least they'll give us normal weapons. And with two dozen rifles against five machine guns we'll achieve nothing anyway, we'll just lay here all for nothing, without doing the enemy proper damage.”

I saw something very bad in the looks of the First Lieutenant and the Sergeant. I don't even know how it would have ended for me, but then the first Hanomag came out of the woods, roaring with its engine and clanking its caterpillars. I could clearly see a machine gun mounted on top of the cabin of the armored personnel carrier and rows of helmets above the armor.

“We'll finish with you later,” Fyodorov told me, and, ducking down, ran somewhere to the right flank, “To the battle! Squad, fire on the Nazi invaders!”

Well, that was it. Let him throw himself under the tracks, but there are more than a hundred young guys, most of them unarmed! I grabbed my rifle comfortably and looked around. Shots rang out around me indiscriminately, and the unarmed men just lay on the ground, keeping their heads down to avoid the hail of bullets that rained down on our low shelter from two sides – from the motorcycle patrol that had gone forward and the Hanomags that crawled out from behind the forest. German infantrymen were already jumping briskly out of the backs of armored personnel carriers and taking positions in the ditch, clearly preparing for an attack.

“Why aren't you shooting, Nagulin?” the deputy commander roared above my ear.

“I am choosing my position, Comrade Sergeant,” I answered as firmly as possible, “We have to shut up the machine guns, or we'll all get killed here.”

“Fire, soldier! Or I'll shoot you myself!”

“You can shoot me after the battle, Comrade Sergeant, but right now don't get in the way,” I answered angrily and crawled a few meters to the left, where a dust cloud rose from the machine gun burst that had recently rattled on the embankment.

Continuing to test the sergeant's patience was simply dangerous. I closed my eyes for a second to look at the battlefield from above. The greatest threat to us now, oddly enough, was not the Hanomags, but the two machine guns on the motorcycles that passed us by. These Germans were much closer to our position and shot much more accurately than the machine gunners from the armored personnel carriers.

I targeted the motorcycle closest to us, relaxed my arms and shoulders a little, went into combat mode and with a sharp movement I lifted myself slightly above the embankment. The plop of my shot was lost in the crackle of machine gun bursts and rifle fire. I didn't look at the result and immediately hid behind the embankment. Nevertheless, I was spotted, and several bullets struck the rails at once with a rumble.

“One down,” I told the Sergeant, once again taking advantage of the 'view from above', I'll change position and silence the other.”

“Are you sure you hit him?” Pluzhnikov asked incredulously.

“I'm sure,” I nodded affirmatively, “but I don't recommend checking right now. I'll calm down the other one, then it will be safer.”

“He doesn't recommend…” The Sergeant started, but I wasn't listening, crawling quickly to the left.

Shot! A sharp pain jerked my temple, but I didn't even notice it right away. This time the Germans seemed to be purposefully waiting for my head to appear over the rails, though not quite where I actually ended up. But the German gunner showed excellent reaction. I was lucky that it wasn't a bullet that hit me in the head, but a pebble that it knocked out of the embankment. But it rang a very bad bell for me. If I keep getting exposed to enemy fire like this, my glorious journey on this planet may be over before it has even begun.

“It's done,” I nodded to the Sergeant.

Machine gun fire on our flank subsided, and Pluzhnikov peeked out from behind the embankment to assess the situation.

“Three of the four Germans are intact,” he said as he crawled back down, “They're at the machine guns. One is behind the motorcycle, but he's moving – wounded, probably. And you said you took down two.”

“Are the machine guns silent?”

“Silent,” agreed Pluzhnikov.

“Both of them?”

“Both.”

“So I've done my job. Now, Comrade Sergeant, I have a reasonable initiative, but I need assistance. Will you render it to me?”

Pluzhnikov didn't have time to answer. We were interrupted by the distinctive pops of shots from German infantry mortars. It would be foolish to hope that the forward section of the German infantry division would forget to take this compact and very effective weapon with them. The Germans had such a Rheinmetal product in every platoon, and now we had the pleasure of experiencing what it was like, to have 50-millimeter mines dropped on your head.

“Get down!” yelled the Sergeant, obviously familiar with this enemy weapon.

I was lying down, but the Red Army men, huddled in a tight group along the embankment to our right, did not react immediately to the command. For the first time we were lucky and the mines fell short, but continuing to play this roulette game was not just dangerous, but criminal.

“Comrade Sergeant! We need to take the men away. Otherwise everyone will be chopped up! We don't even have individual cells dug, not to mention trenches, and the embankment won't protect against mines. There's a gully between the hills that's a good escape route. And there is a forest there…”

“There was no order to retreat,” the Sergeant cut off, lifting himself up over the rails and firing toward the enemy, “Don't you know the regulations, soldier? The enemy must be boldly and swiftly attacked wherever he is detected!”

I mentally groaned. If anyone here didn't know the regulations, it was the Sergeant and our Commander. So many great guys have already died because of that phrase, that was hammered by political officers into the heads of Red Army soldiers and commanders with wanton ruthlessness, it just made me want to howl. And no one even once remembered that this phrase refers only to OFFENSIVE combat, as the Red Army Field Manual of 1939 says quite unambiguously. What are we doing now? Are we fighting an offensive battle? But I couldn't have a military-theoretical debate with an NKVD sergeant right here, under mortar fire!

The second series of mines flew too far, but the embankment did not cover us on this side, and the cries of the wounded showed that the shrapnel had found its targets.

“I need your help, Comrade Sergeant,” I reminded Pluzhnikov, “We need to silence the machine guns on the Hanomags, or they'll keep pinning us to the ground, and the mortar men have almost zeroed in.”

“What have you got in mind now, Nagulin?” the Sergeant turned to me, rolling down the embankment after another shot.

“Do you see this knoll?” I showed Pluzhnikov to a small hill in our rear, overgrown with bushes and small trees, “I'm a pretty good shot, as you may have seen, and there's a very promising sniper position. I'm sure I'll get German machine gunners from there, and maybe even mortar crews if they're in direct line of sight. The First Lieutenant ordered you to keep an eye on me, and I need a second man to control my surroundings anyway – the Germans are not fools, they can outflank us. Will you help me?”

Pluzhnikov looked like a smart man, though he was severely damaged by the local political system. He didn't hesitate for more than a second – combat puts a lot of things into place in a head.

“Follow me, soldier!”

That was the right thing to do. If you can't prevent a subordinate's insane scheme, you have to lead it!

We quickly covered the distance of 50 meters to the gully. I had time to think that our maneuver might look like desertion and an attempt to leave the battlefield, but the Red Army men and the First Lieutenant obviously didn't have time for us right now. Of course, they should have spread out along the embankment…

We reached the position I had chosen in less than a minute, but in that time the position of our unit had changed dramatically for the worse. Another series of mines fell almost exactly behind the embankment, and the number of dead and wounded increased noticeably. Good thing the Germans only had three mortars, or it would have been over long ago.

“Hurry up, Nagulin,” Pluzhnikov poked me lightly in the back as we climbed the hill. Apparently, what he saw from above did not please him much.

“Yes, Comrade Sergeant,” I answered, raising my rifle.

It was about 400 meters from here to the Hanomags. The German infantry had already deployed in a chain and started moving toward us, shooting incessantly, soldiers strived to help their machine gunners to keep our fighters off the embankment. To my surprise, the Germans never attempted a flanking movement. Apparently, they thought they could handle such a weak enemy without it. Now we'll see.

After another close look at the German positions from above, I discovered where the mortar men had set up. They were doing the most damage to us now, and we should have started with them. Unfortunately, the distant Hanomag was blocking one of the mortar crews from me, but the other two mortars were visible quite well. Of course, I couldn't spot enemy positions by observing the Germans from here, but looking from orbit gave me a lot of advantages, and I was going to make the most of them.

I fired the first three shots almost without pause, two at the crew of the mortar on my right, and one at the machine gunner of the Hanomag in front of me.

The rifle's magazine was empty, and I silently held out my hand for the Sergeant's weapon. He was about to say something back, but he looked at the enemy soldier slumped behind the machine gun and handed me his rifle.

The German infantry mortar crew consisted of two men, so three more of my shots silenced the second mortar and the last machine gunner on the rear armored personnel carrier. I tried not so much to kill enemy soldiers as to damage their weapons, so I aimed more at them. It's not hard to replace a dead machine gunner, but there's usually nothing to replace the machine gun during combat. The same can be said for a mortar, but it is harder to damage with a rifle bullet. In any case, the firewall, which had pressed our squad to the ground had weakened dramatically; all that remained was to silence the third mortar.

“It's time to change positions, Comrade Sergeant. If we've been spotted, the mines will fly here.”

I, of course, was exaggerating. The crew of the third mortar, greatly impressed by the almost instant deaths and wounds of their comrades, stopped firing and also decided to change position, which was only to our advantage. I hoped that the place where they would move would not be covered by the carcass of an armored personnel carrier.

We ran to the right, went back down into the gully, and quickly climbed the next hill. This position was less convenient, but now I could see the crew of the enemy's third mortar. Pluzhnikov loaded my rifle and gave it to me, taking his rifle back. I fired two more quick shots, and the chain of German soldiers, which was approaching our position, was finally deprived of fire support.