Chapter 530 Playing with Mud in the Middle of the Night

Although the ancient Chinese believed that the face reflects the heart, it is too arbitrary to judge people by appearance alone.

It feels that people who can still hold the position of division commander at this age after 1941 will never be as simple as they look. Based on the principle of friendship between comrades and comrades, Malashenko finally decided to try to get to know Division Commander Leonid more deeply.

You don't know if you don't know it, but after asking carefully, Malashenko was shocked.

This Division Commander Leonid belonged to the Western Front like Malashenko during the Winter War last year, but at that time Malashenko was mainly fighting with the German army in the Tula direction south of Moscow, while the infantry division led by Division Commander Leonid resisted the fierce offensive of the German army north of Moscow.

According to what Leonid, the division commander, described to Malashenko, last winter, his division was once so badly damaged that only half of the battalion remained. At that time, he was not the division commander but only a deputy. Even this deputy position was forced into the position after the deputy division commander died.

Speaking of which, Leonid is a ruthless person.

He was directly pushed into the position of deputy division commander not because of his ability, but because all the people who were suitable for this position died at that time, and there was no one else available. When there was really no other way, he was chosen from the tallest of the short people.

About two and a half hours after he became the deputy division commander, the division headquarters was directly hit by a 500-kilogram aerial bomb dropped by a Stuka dive bomber. From the division commander himself to the guards, no one survived. The original location of the division headquarters field command post was replaced by a huge bomb crater.

In this way, Leonid, who happened to be sent to the front line by the division commander to supervise the battle and defend the position to boost morale, happened to become the person with the highest position and rank in the entire division, even though only about half of the battalion of the entire division could still hold a gun.

Leonid told Malashenko that he was very scared at the time. He had never commanded a regiment, let alone a division. Malashenko thought, you said you only had half a battalion left, how come it became a division in the blink of an eye.

But it is incredible that the courage that came from nowhere inspired Leonid to fight to the death, leading the remaining group of tired soldiers and wounded to defend the position. A regiment of German infantry in front of the enemy fought for five hours but failed to break through this last line of defense.

The only thing worth noting is that those German soldiers who were frozen to death would often fall in the snow when launching an attack and quickly get up and continue to charge.

Although the German army's combat effectiveness was seriously reduced due to the freezing, it is an indisputable fact that Leonid, the deputy division commander who was temporarily promoted from the division staff, led his men to hold the position and persisted until the reinforcements arrived and defeated the German army in one fell swoop. The reward derived from this was that Leonid really became the division commander of this division and successfully became the regular commander.

It took less than half a month to go from division staff to deputy division commander and then to regular division commander. Leonid, who received the commission notice, blinked his eyes and felt like he was dreaming. Even now, when he told Malashenko about this experience, he was still surprised as if he was listening to a fairy tale.

"Well, this is another person who died and had no use."

In 1941, when the Soviet army's grassroots units suffered heavy casualties, things like Leonid were not just an exception but happened everywhere.

Malashenko clearly remembered that when he was in Leningrad, he met a Red Army lieutenant who led nearly a thousand people to reinforce another position.

Malashenko was extremely surprised and stopped the car to ask what happened. The lieutenant replied that he only led more than 300 people when he received the order to set off. He became what he is now after encountering several waves of friendly troops that were dispersed or retreated along the way. The nearly 1,000 chaotic Red Army soldiers following him belonged to six infantry divisions with different numbers. It is conceivable how chaotic the battlefield situation was at that time.

Although he secretly criticized the rapid promotion of Division Commander Leonid, Malashenko, who thought that he seemed to be promoted faster than Division Commander Leonid, didn't say anything. It seemed a bit excessive to become the lieutenant colonel commander of the Guards Tank Regiment and the title of Red Army Tank Hero at the age of 26.

But Leonid's rapid promotion to the position of division commander is not without merits, for example, his approachable and smiling face is obviously a symptom that he has not yet cultivated the airs of a division commander.

Malashenko, whose shoes were covered with mud, quickly withdrew his depressed face and greeted Leonid with a smile.

After all, he is a division commander and a colonel, one level higher than himself in terms of position and rank, and Malashenko still showed the proper respect.

"The construction of the position is not very good, comrade division commander. The mud outside the village collapsed after digging, collapsed after digging, collapsed again after digging, and then continued to dig. Many soldiers dug one meter down and found that it was soft and muddy after the snow and permafrost melted. The entire trench was full of mud. This required several times more physical strength than digging trenches in summer. If they work all night without getting sleep and rest, I am worried that the soldiers will not be able to hold up when they fight tomorrow."

After walking around the construction site outside the village, Malashenko felt that he was in a great headache. It was not a heroic situation to struggle with mud in the mud pit in the dark at night.

It takes two or three times more physical strength to shovel out the mud with a strong suction force than to shovel dry soil. Even the Red Army infantrymen who specialize in digging trenches and earthwork work will collapse on the ground and gasp for breath after working for several hours.

But if they don't dig, there will be no place to hide when the battle starts tomorrow. The helpless and contradictory reality makes the Red Army soldiers who work in three shifts all covered in mud.

Unable to bear watching the infantry comrades exhausted, the tank soldiers under Malashenko also joined the army of playing with mud. However, the tank soldiers who were not as good as the infantry in digging pits and only knew how to do it recklessly, and they failed after a while, which made Malashenko, who was inspecting the site, almost burst his face.

After hearing the situation described by Malashenko, he could roughly imagine the current situation of digging trenches outside the village. Commander Leonid couldn't help but sighed, and it seemed that he didn't have any better solution.