I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 7

“Long live Marshal Budenny! Long live Motherland!”

Half of the 12 divisions under the 1st Cavalry Army commanded by Budenny launched a surprise attack on the railway junction and airfield of Baranovichi under the direct command of Marshal Budenny. 

The other half headed for Minsk to rescue their allies.

The German reconnaissance planes had long flown to the front, thinking that this area was already behind them. 

The rear supply units, left behind by the combat units, only cared about the transfer of supplies between the railway and the vehicles. 

The guards were also negligent in their perimeter defense, looking out blankly until they saw the cavalry units raising dust clouds as they rushed in. 

They reported in panic mixed with screams.

“It’s a surprise attack! A surprise attack!”

The battle was one-sided.

The Soviet cavalrymen spewed fire from their submachine guns. 

Some of the Kazakhs even pulled out their sabers and threw grenades into the makeshift barracks, then slashed the throats of the German soldiers who ran out in shock. 

Unlike the elite troops at the front, most of these were reservists or recruits who had no experience in real war. 

No one thought they could survive a close combat with the Soviet cavalry trained by harsh training.

The operation was simple. 

Since the perimeter was weak, the main force would hit the front while the rest of the cavalry units would flank and encircle them. 

In just a few hours, the German supply depot melted away in the skirmish with the cavalry division, was surrounded, and annihilated.

“3rd Company! 3rd Company! Respond!”

The battalion commander of the guard battalion guarding the airfield and depot desperately tried to contact his subordinates with the radio at his headquarters. 

He had already received a report that red flames and black smoke were rising from the area where the 1st Company was stationed and that contact had been lost. 

He ordered even his staff officers and clerks to arm themselves with supplies and send them to the front. 

Except for two young sentries who were busy shredding documents in a corner, he was the only one left in the headquarters.

Explosions and gunshots shook the base. The floor shook as if a shell had fallen near the headquarters. 

One of the young sentries who was shredding documents staggered and fell to his knees, sobbing.

The battalion commander gave up trying to communicate with his radio that no one answered. 

It’s okay. 

Half of the railway line to Smolensk is still open to Brest-Litovsk, so it might be harder but not fatal.

Rather, it was more fatal for the enemy to expose the current situation of their allies. 

The quantity and destination of supplies reflect most accurately the status and composition of a unit. 

Since about half of Army Group Center received supplies through this depot, it would be tantamount to giving away top military secrets if their supply records were leaked.

“Soldier! Get up. What’s your name and rank?”

“Private Fritz Johannes!”

“Private Eugen Ritter!”

“Quick! Pull yourself together. We have to destroy these documents quickly so that we don’t give our secrets to the filthy Slavs. Hurry!”

The battalion commander encouraged the soldiers and swiftly loaded his pistol from his holster. 

There were only a few dozen planes at the airfield. 

It was not a big loss compared to the thousands of planes they had destroyed in the bombing raids since the start of the war. 

The pilots would probably escape with the help of the guard units. 

Losing supplies and a temporary base was a small price to pay for the victories they had achieved so far. 

He tried to console himself with that thought.

It was hard to estimate the size of the enemy that attacked them. 

He had received reports that they were outnumbered by tens of times, but it was inevitable to overestimate the enemy in a surprise attack.

He felt a bitter taste of blood on his lips. He had been negligent in his defense and caused unnecessary casualties to the sons of Germany. 

He had already reported to his superiors, but there were very few reinforcements that could be sent immediately. 

There was a reserve division under Army Group Center that was fighting in Minsk, but they were tens of kilometers away. 

The armored units had advanced to the outskirts of Smolensk, hundreds of kilometers away.

It would take days to call for any real combat divisions.

“Ura! Ura!”

As soon as he opened the door of his headquarters, he heard a voice shouting in incomprehensible Russian and then a charge cry. 

A Kazakh, notorious for their brutality, cut off the left forearm of one of his clerks who was resisting with a poorly handled pistol. 

He saw the red blood spurt out clearly. 

They were young men who were like sons to him.

He gripped his Walther pistol tightly. 

His hand was sweaty and slippery, but he still had his shooting skills and hit the shoulder of the cavalryman who raised his sword to cut his throat.

“Look at me! You dirty Slav…”

He had spent months on the Western Front during his lieutenant days, rolling and crawling in the horrible trench warfare. 

He had seen his senior sergeant who patted his back when he vomited after killing a man for the first time turn into a corpse by a bullet soon after. 

He had seen a young boy who lied about his age and enlisted for his country go back home as a disabled veteran after his first battle because of a grenade. 

His past days as a soldier flashed before his eyes.

He managed to knock down two Soviet cavalrymen with the six rounds in his pistol. 

But soon enough, before he could do anything more, a submachine gun turned him into a beehive. 

The cavalry captain who recognized his German insignia tried to order his men to capture him alive, but it was too late. 

The battalion commander’s name was added to the list of casualties.

The report would be sent to Kremlin. Perhaps it would also be sent to Wolfsschanze, the German headquarters. 

The Soviet army had succeeded in their first effective counterattack against the German onslaught that seemed unstoppable. 

Would this be the first counterattack that would turn the tide of war? 

Or would it be a futile struggle to delay their doom while they were being annihilated? 

No one knew that.

A large portion of the supplies going to the front was fuel. 

It was obvious if you thought about it. Without fuel, transport vehicles could not move. Without transport vehicles, no supplies could be delivered. 

Horses? 

Horses were still useful means of transportation until this era, and the Germans used horses across all fronts to supplement their scarce truck transport, but an army without vehicles was unimaginable now.

Horses rather required hay and various supplies as fuel and were difficult to maintain. 

They could assist vehicles, but not replace them completely. 

Whether it was to move tanks, trucks, or even keep soldiers warm on surprisingly chilly nights, huge amounts of fuel had to be sent to the front every day.

Bang!

A huge explosion rang out. 

The cavalry unit led by Budenny had completely excluded vehicles for effective maneuvering in the swampy area. 

Even their 122mm howitzers – they only had a few – were pulled by twelve horses each. 

That’s why they had no way or need to transport that much oil. 

They burned all the fuel and ammunition of the Germans.

Unfortunately, most of the secret documents about operations and supplies were destroyed, so they didn’t get much out of them, but they could get some useful information by interrogating hundreds of prisoners they captured.

Budenny listened to the report while eating German sausage cans he looted from the depot with his enemy’s ceremonial dagger. 

The gravy from the sausage cans stained his dusty mustache and made him look quite dirty, but his subordinates didn’t care about that at all. 

Rather, they liked that their esteemed comrade marshal looked like their father.

“Um, um… This is delicious, isn’t it? How’s the reconnaissance?”

“Yes! As you ordered, we formed a reconnaissance unit mainly with captured vehicles and sent them to the perimeter. There are no armed enemy forces in the nearby area. However, several reconnaissance planes have been spotted. They may be the result of some planes that escaped from the airfield and reported to the nearby airfields. We failed to completely cut off their communication during the surprise attack!”

“That’s possible. How can we stop them all? We have to leave as soon as possible and join the relief force in Minsk. Any reports from there?”

He emptied a can of sausage in an instant and rummaged through other looted cans. 

Another subordinate officer started to report to him.

“Sir! According to the current report, we are engaged with the German guard division, and we are having trouble breaking through their machine gun positions in the outskirts of the city. They also requested support as soon as possible.”

Budeney shook his head vigorously. Machine guns, those devilish weapons. 

It was extremely difficult for cavalry to break through them, even if they dug trenches and crouched down. 

It would be easy if they could just cross the vast battlefield and maneuver past them, but it was much harder when the defenders only had to hold a limited point.

“Shouldn’t we have sent all the howitzers there? How many enemy vehicles did we capture?”

“Fifty-eight in total, sir. Six of them are armored vehicles.”

Fifty-eight, not all of them were armored vehicles, but they could still be useful if they attached steel plates to the front or used the armored vehicles as shields. 

He remembered those days. 

He rode a tachanka across the plains of Poland and harassed the reactionary Poles. 

Those days would never come back. 

He was too old, and the enemies ran across the plains with tens of tons of steel instead.

He still believed that tanks could never replace cavalry. 

Horses were magnificent animals. 

His mare was still snorting next to him, cooling down her boiling blood. 

She was a beautiful beast, qualitatively different from those metal slaughter machines.

But in front of machine guns, in front of tank cannons, and in front of steel armor, there was not much that horses and riders could do. 

Of course, they could still find their weaknesses and attack them, and disappear like the wind.

“If I die…”

He suddenly said something else while receiving the report, and his subordinates looked at him attentively. 

There were familiar faces and strangers. The young soldier who followed him from his days as a Red Cossack commander was now a division commander. 

The boy who seemed to have been conscripted from Siberia while riding a horse was doing his duty as a messenger at the headquarters, looking at him with a puzzled expression. 

What was that old man going to say? 

It was understandable. 

Budeney’s glory days were before that soldier was born.

“If I die, I want to die on a horse.”

“Sir! What are you talking about!”

Budeney chuckled and fumbled for his pipe in the pocket of his enemy uniform. 

He lit his tobacco and smoked it deeply while his subordinates looked at him anxiously.

“What are you so gloomy about? We are going to leave tonight. At dawn, we will bypass Minsk and surprise the enemy from the east!”

“Yes sir! Long live the Red Army! Long live Budeney!”

The legendary old cavalry commander took another puff of his pipe. 

His loyal officers listened to every word he said.

“I wonder what’s at the end of that plain. I was so curious when I was young. Now I’ve seen them all. I’ve been to Warsaw as a representative of the Red Cossacks, and I’ve seen the huge Ural mountains that come out after crossing the endless forest. Young man, have you been to Magnitogorsk?”

The young messenger was startled when he was pointed out by his comrade-in-arms. 

He didn’t even give his name or rank, but it wasn’t the time to point that out. 

The steel city of Ural that was beyond description. 

The blast furnaces of Magnitogorsk were something that he couldn’t even imagine in his youth. 

They stood on the foothills of the mountains, bigger than Tsar’s castles, and poured out steel. 

The secretary-general called it the blood of Soviet industry.

“My time… has already passed. And so will the horses.”

“But not yet… Not yet.”

Horses could never be produced in such factories. 

They ran freely on the plains, grazed on grass, and headed to the battlefield when their riders called them.

“Why are you so sad? We are going to rest now. In the morning, we will surprise those fascists!”

“Yes sir! Long live the Red Army! Long live Budeney!”

The legend of the 1st Cavalry Army grew another line in their hands.