Burning Moscow

Section 71 Reconnaissance behind enemy l

The sky is still half dark, and the forest is silent. The only sound that can be heard is the sound of our footsteps in the snow.

The scene I saw just now affected my mood so badly that I didn’t say a word during the march, just mechanically stepping on the footprints of the soldiers in front of me and moving forward.

Lu Jin walked at the front of the team. He stopped from time to time and used the compass to check whether we were heading in the right direction.

Marching in the knee-deep snow was originally a tiring task. In addition, I felt heavy and depressed. I felt too tired to breathe when I walked, so I hurriedly walked a few steps and chased me. Going to Lu Jin in front of him, he asked: “How long have we been walking?”

Lukin stopped, raised his hand to look at the watch on his wrist, and then replied: “Forty minutes, we have walked about two or three kilometers, and the straight-line distance is about one kilometer.”

“Then how long can we reach Jasnaya Polyana?”

“If you go at this speed, it will take about two hours.”

Two hours? ! Hearing this time, my head is big, let alone two hours, I can’t hold on for two minutes. I just saw a fallen birch tree in front of me, so I quickly issued an order to the team: “The troops should stop advancing and rest on the spot!” After finishing speaking, I went straight to the birch tree and dialed three times with my hands. He dropped the snow on it, and then sat down on the cold tree trunk in disregard of the image, panting heavily.

Hearing my order, everyone stopped and looked around for places to sit and rest. Aguminte looked around for a long time, walked to my side, and asked: “Can you sit down here? Comrade Commander.” After seeing me nodding in agreement, he followed my example and brushed off the snow from the trunk. Then sat down. After he sat down, he first laid the rifle with a scope on his thigh, then took out half of the flattened bread from the pocket of the military uniform and gnawed it up.

Seeing him eating with gusto, my stomach groaned very cooperatively. Then I remembered that I had not eaten breakfast today, so I quickly opened the shoulder bag I was carrying and took out a bag of rusks from it. As soon as I took the first bite, I felt that the frozen rusk was too hard, and it was hard to swallow after chewing for a long time in my mouth. I wanted to learn how to learn from volunteer soldiers. Just like them, I had a bite of fried noodles and a bite of snow. Then I bent down and grabbed a handful of snow from the ground, wanting to swallow it in a group. The weather was too cold. I squeezed it for a long time, but couldn’t squeeze the snow powder in my palm into a snow ball, so I just squeezed it directly into my mouth. Unexpectedly, when I entered my mouth, I accidentally choked. I immediately coughed violently, spraying out the breadcrumbs in my mouth. Aguminte leaned his rifle on the tree trunk, reached out his hand and gently beat me on the back, and Restaev, who was sitting opposite, also handed me the water bottle he was drinking.

I took the kettle, and first sniffed the mouth of the kettle to see what was inside. Seeing this little action of mine, Restaev said with a little embarrassment: “Comrade Commander, don’t worry, this pot is filled with water. I never drink alcohol when performing tasks.”

Hearing what he said, I was a little embarrassed. I quickly picked up the kettle and took a few sips from the mouth of the kettle. As soon as the warm water entered my throat, it immediately diminished the feeling of coughing. After taking a few more sips, he washed the remaining breadcrumbs from his mouth into his stomach, and then closed the lid of the kettle, handed it back to Restaev, and said, “Thank you!”

“Comrade Commander, someone is coming here!” Lu Jin’s voice suddenly came from the side.

“Hidden!” I don’t know who yelled in a low voice, so everyone was lying on the snow.

“Which direction did you come from?” I crawled to Lu Jin’s side and asked anxiously.

“It’s southwest.” We have been marching southwest, so when he said the direction, he knew where he was talking. It seems that the place where we collectively lay down just now was correct. The fallen tree trunks just provided us with cover. I peeled away the snow from the tree trunks and the ground, and observed the situation in the forest from the gap with a telescope.

The birch forest in winter is unobstructed, with a wide field of vision, and you can see far away, but I have been watching for a long time, and there is no moving figure. He listened for a while, but there was still silence. I couldn’t help complaining that Lu Jin was making a fuss, maybe he heard the sound of snow falling from the treetops as someone walking.

“Where is anyone? Why can’t I see it. Did you just hear it wrong.” I asked Lu Jin dissatisfiedly.

“It can’t be wrong, I vaguely heard the footsteps of someone walking in the snow.” He answered me with a very positive tone, and then took the telescope in my hand and lay on the tree trunk to carefully observe the movement in the forest.

After less than ten seconds, he suddenly said excitedly: “I saw it. Four people are coming in this direction.” Then he handed the telescope back to me, pointed to the front and said to me: “It’s at ten o’clock. .”

I raised my binoculars, squatted halfway on the snow, and looked in the direction Lu Jin said. Two hundred meters away, there were indeed a few people moving quickly toward this side. I counted, no more, no less, just four people. Because they are blocked by birch trees from time to time, I can’t tell whether they are my own or Germans.

Aguminte didn’t wait for my instructions, so he set the sniper rifle on the tree trunk. I estimated the comparison of the strength of the two sides, and felt that even if these four people were enemies, they could kill them all, so I whispered an order to Aguminte: “Be ready to shoot. I will shoot when I order. .”

I handed the binoculars to Lu Jin, and then ordered several others: “Be prepared for the battle. No one can let go.”

Everyone answered very briefly: “Yes!”

“Comrade Commander!” Lu Jin suddenly called me softly.

“What’s the matter?” I looked back at him and asked.

“It’s our own people, you see, they are all wearing our military uniforms.” As he said, he handed me the telescope again.

“My own person?!” When I picked up the telescope, I still asked in a suspicious tone: “Are you sure you are not mistaken?”

“Yes, Comrade Commander.” It was not Lu Jin who answered me, but Aguminte lying on the side. He closed the sniper rifle insurance, and said in a positive tone: “I can see clearly from the scope, it is his own, and one of them is a second lieutenant of our 316th Infantry Division.”

“I’ll call them over, lest they go away later.” Lu Jin wanted to stand up as he said. I held his shoulder and said in a low voice: “Don’t worry, wait for them to come over. They are in a high level of mental stress at this time, and they might see you suddenly come out, they will shoot you involuntarily.” Lu Jin didn’t insist on hearing what I said. He continued to lie on the tree trunk in his original posture, waiting for the arrival of the four himself.

As the clicking sound of stepping on the snow gets louder and louder, even without a telescope, the faces of the four people can be clearly seen. They were dressed in short brown fur coats, with bayonet-mounted rifles in their hands, and looked around vigilantly as they walked.

When they walked to a place less than 20 meters away from us, a voice suddenly came over: “Hidden!” The four people immediately dispersed and all hid behind the birch trees. After a while, I heard another voice asking: “Comrade Ensign, what’s the matter?”

“There are footprints in the snow ahead, there must be someone nearby.” The ensign who was hiding behind the tree answered the questioning soldier.

“Hey! Comrades!” Lu Jin yelled, but did not stand up hastily.

There was a creak of pushing the bolt behind the tree, and then someone sternly asked, “Who? No one is allowed to move!”

Lu Jin turned his head to look at me and asked for my opinion in a low voice: “Comrade Commander, can I go there?”

“Go ahead.”

Perhaps seeing that there was no answer from our side, the voice of the ensign on the other side rang again, repeating the words just now: “Nothing is allowed to move, only one person is allowed to come over.”

Lu Jin stood up with his hands high and said loudly, “Comrade Ensign, please don’t shoot, it’s your own.” Then he crossed the trunk and walked toward the other side’s hidden birch tree.

“Lu Jin, is that you?” Seeing him walking by, a surprise voice suddenly rang out from the other side. The voice was the person who spoke first. Then I saw a person emerging from behind the invisible birch tree. With the rifle slung over his shoulder, he ran towards Lu Jin quickly. The two quickly hugged each other, and I heard Lu Jin say loudly from a distance: “Isayev, my friend, I’m so happy to see you.”

The meeting of the two friends immediately relieved the guard between the two parties. First, the three people hiding behind the birch tree stood up and slung their guns on their shoulders. Then the people on our side also stood up one after another, and walked over to them across the trunk.

The second lieutenant stepped forward and asked us loudly: “Hey! I said, where did you come from?”

Lu Jin let go of his friend, stepped forward to salute the second lieutenant, and reported loudly: “Report to the second lieutenant, the scout of our 16th Army, who was ordered to come to the enemy’s rear to spy out.”

“Reconnaissance?” The second lieutenant murmured, “There is no enemy here, so what can be reconnaissance?”

“What did you say?” I heard the sentence behind him, and quickly walked a few steps, and asked in front of him: “What did you say? Are you saying that there are no enemies around here?”

He did not answer me but looked me up and down, and then asked coldly, “Who are you?”

“This is the commander of our reconnaissance squad, Lieutenant Colonel Oshanina.” Lu Jin took the initiative to introduce my identity to the second lieutenant.

The second lieutenant blushed with shame, and he hurriedly stood up and saluted in front of me, and said in an apologetic tone: “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, I’m sorry, I didn’t see your rank mark. I am the engineer platoon commander and second lieutenant Firth of the 316th Infantry Division. Tove, I just led the troops out of the encircled circle of fascist bandits.”

“What did you just say?” I didn’t care about the change in his attitude towards me. Instead, I continued to ask the question just now: “You said there are no Germans around here?”

“Yes, Comrade Commander.” He stood in front of me and replied respectfully, “Not only here, but also in the dozens of kilometers we have walked in the forest, we haven’t seen any Germans.”

When I heard him say this, I was stunned for a moment, and then I understood what was going on. The German troops were all moved by roads. The German troops had no time to take care of such inaccessible forests. After a pause, I asked again: “How many people do you have?” As soon as I said this, I felt a little regretful. I felt that I was a bit superfluous. Aren’t they just four people? Why bother to ask.

“We have four hundred people.” His answer surprised me.

“Four hundred…four hundred people?! There are so many people?” Not only me, but the soldiers around me were also very surprised.

“Yes, they are resting three hundred meters away. We are here to explore the way.”