and the German machine-gun position is a hundred meters in front of us. If we take this position, the enemy defense in this area will not collapse, of course, but it will be noticeably disrupted. The question is, how long can we last…
“Comrade Captain, I have an idea, but the risk is very high.”
“You want to seize the machine gun, Nagulin?" grinned the Captain crookedly, "I can see it in your eyes.”
I nodded silently.
“If we're going to die, at least we'll have fun,” Sergeant Ignatov said quietly.
“Remizov, you are responsible for the prisoner. Keep an eye on him and let him lie with his face in the ground, or he'll catch an accidental bullet and all will be for nothing. Follow us at a distance of 20 meters. Do not go into the trenches until we have cleared them of the enemy. Then you make a dash toward us and take cover immediately.”
“Copy that!”
“Nagulin, can you fight with your injury?”
“I'm fine now, Comrade Captain.”
“Well, lead the way, Junior Lieutenant, we'll start the knife action.”
Although the Germans had sounded the alarm, they still did not send all their personnel into the trenches in the middle of the night. They strengthened the posts, sent out patrols, but still, soldiers sometimes need to sleep, especially if they have to go into battle again tomorrow. The Germans successfully chose a place for their machine-gun position. The ravine, which stretched from east to west, cut in half a low hill, but it was not even a hill, just a flat knoll. Nevertheless, this height still provided control over the immediate area. The Germans did not dig trenches on the very top, so as not to loom in front of the Russians against the bright sky in the daytime, they descended a little lower, toward the no man's land, and set up a machine-gun nest almost on the edge of the ravine. On the right, a steep and slippery slope protected the machine gunners; it was extremely uncomfortable to be attacked, and on the left the main position of their platoon was located. This seemed reasonable in terms of defense against the enemy who was advancing from the east, but for us, especially given my capabilities, the situation looked different. We were moving from the west, from the German rear, and we could approach the enemy's position unnoticed, using the ridge as cover.
The German sentinel observers, invigorated by the uproar, were serving faithfully. One soldier stood behind the machine gun, the other strode around the trench, occasionally glancing both ahead, to the east, and west, in our direction. The third, and what I assumed to be the most dangerous, was the Feldwebel – sergeant major, who was closely inspecting the terrain in front of the position through binoculars. The trenches and passages zigzagged further to the left, and there were observers in them too, and quite a few of them. An entire squad served as a combat guard, one-third of the entire personnel, and to the left the section of the next platoon started, and there were a lot of soldiers there, too.
The Germans launched rockets and "chandeliers" of flare mines so that first of all, the no man's strip and the first line of our trenches were clearly visible. They did not want to illuminate their own rear, not wanting to make life easy for the Russian artillerymen and mortar men who were taking rare disturbing fire. Nevertheless, they still left the observer behind the crest of the hill, realizing that the Russian saboteurs would move from the second line of their defense. This soldier sat quietly in a small trench on the back slope of the hill, thinking it was almost impossible to see him in the dark. He died just as quietly – I had shown the Captain the position of this enemy beforehand.
Shcheglov gave the command to start the assault when the German trenches were only 20 meters away. This time I didn't take any chances and chose the Feldwebel rather than a soldier behind the machine gun as my first target. A knife that flew in from the darkness entered the German under his left shoulder blade, and he fell forward onto the parapet from behind which he had been watching. The binoculars gleamed in the glow of another "chandelier" and slid down the slope into the darkness below. As it did so, it made a rather loud bang, but it didn't matter – the machine gunner had already noticed the danger, so he became my second target.
20 meters is still a lot for a knife, especially if the target is not attached to the ground. The German dodged it! I don't think he had time to react to my knife throw. Rather, the fate of the Feldwebel told him the only correct course of action. The machine gunner ducked and crouched at the bottom of the trench, and the knife jingled loudly against the MG-34 mounting. The situation was corrected by Ignatov, who had already managed to overcome the distance to the German trench and jumped on the back of the enemy, who had begun to straighten up. I couldn't see how he handled the German, but it didn't take the Sergeant more than a couple of seconds.
Shcheglov and Nikiforov wasted no time either, they were busy working on their goals. There were no Germans left alive at the machine-gun position, but we could not do everything quietly, and the sounds that reached the neighboring trenches made the Germans wary.
A few sharp commands rang out, and some movement began in the trenches of the neighboring squad.
“Throw grenades into the ravine, quickly!” ordered Shcheglov, not forgetting about the Germans sitting in ambush.
I ripped a grenade from my belt, unpinned it and threw the F-1 over the edge of the ravine. I wasn't interested in its fate – I finally jumped into the trench and got to the machine gun. At the same time as the first long burst hit the left side of the enemy trenches and passageways, flares – two white and one red – flew up into the air behind me with a hiss.
A little ahead I saw flashes of gunfire and heard the distinctive crackle of PPSh submachine guns – my comrades had also opened fire. I distracted myself for a second, trying to figure out where we were most threatened. There was no movement in the ravine – our grenades seemed to have fallen well. The Hauptmann prisoner was lying at the bottom of the trench in a fetal position, and Remizov, standing above him, was firing his submachine gun toward the Germans.
The return fire now was still weak and inaccurate, but the enemy was quickly coming to his senses. The main thing that made me very unhappy was some kind of sluggish reaction to our signal on the Soviet side. I couldn't say nothing was going on there, but I wasn't seeing intense preparation for an attack there yet.
When I turned my attention back to the Germans, I saw a very unpleasant picture. The platoon whose position we were attacking had two more machine guns besides my MG-34, and now they were turning toward us. The machine gunners weren't firing yet, for fear of hitting their soldiers in the dark, but I knew that very soon they would figure it out and open devastating fire on us. Another serious problem was the dugout in the second line of trenches. It seemed to be where the rest of the soldiers of the platoon were sleeping, and now they were actively moving, leaving the shelter and obviously coming to visit us.
I heard Shcheglov's command: “Don't let them within grenade throwing distance!”
This command directly concerned me, too, but first I had to do something about the machine guns and the infantry rushing in. I took my last grenade off my belt. The Germans jumping out of the dugout were 80 meters away. Some of the soldiers were already out of the trenches, and some of them were still just leaving the shelter. I chose the trajectory so that the fuse burned out while still in the air, and the grenade exploded over the Germans' heads. It's hard to make a good grenade throw from a trench, but combat mode can do much more than that. My shoulder was sore – after all, my body hadn't fully recovered from the boat ride, and now the bio-implants had to strain my muscles again.
I had no time to follow the flight and explosion of the grenade. I picked up my MG-34 again and found the positions of the German machine gunners. They oriented themselves to the situation and
