As they entered this unnamed village, Linen became a veritable "mud man" of performance art. From head to toe, there wasn't a clean spot on him, with clumps of dried mud clinging even to his hair, falling in scattered flakes with every step he took.
On the brutal battlefield, appearances had become a trivial matter. Looking at the officers and soldiers who had retreated from the front lines, their bodies were covered in mud, grease, and even blood. For them, survival was paramount above all else.
With exhaustion and soreness weighing heavily on him, Linen sat down outside a wooden and stone structure with a pointed roof, alongside "Butcher". Before long, a soldier in relatively clean military attire approached, carrying a large basket in his left hand and a wooden bucket in his right. The basket was filled with fist-sized pieces of bread, while the bucket contained vegetable soup—nothing more than a few leaves and scattered oil floating on the surface. Though it wasn't yet noon, for those who had been on the verge of starvation, exhausted from the morning's long trek and near brushes with death, a piece of bread soaked in hot soup was a heavenly gift.
"Butcher" wasted no time, using one hand to ladle out soup and grab a piece of bread, as if the loss of a few fingers on his left hand had no effect on him. Watching his companion, Linen felt almost moved to tears. Suppressing the immense sadness welling up inside him, he took out his battered mess tin and quietly filled it with soup, grabbing a piece of bread and mimicking "Butcher's" actions, placing the mess tin on his knee, tearing the bread into small pieces and soaking them in the soup. Then, as if savoring a feast, he calmly, slowly, and without leaving a crumb, consumed it all.
After satisfying their hunger and thirst, Linen looked around at the village, which consisted of only about twenty houses. With the arrival of hundreds of fleeing soldiers, the village, which had already been occupied by some troops, appeared crowded. However, there were hardly any people walking around on the two intersecting roads. Most of the officers and soldiers, their faces worn and weary, sat or lay down, mostly with their eyes closed, seeking rest after a tumultuous morning. A moment of respite seemed precious indeed.
After resting for about ten minutes, Linen removed his pack and Mauser rifle from his back, placing them aside along with his service pistol drawn from his belt. "Butcher" noticed the pistol and took it from Linen's hand, inspecting it. With several fingers missing on his left hand, he used his left forearm to hold the barrel of the Mauser pistol. First, he ejected a bullet from the chamber, then used the bullet's tip to push against the cartridge in the magazine on the pistol grip, pulling back the magazine catch to release the magazine and spring. He then adjusted the hammer, pushed the sear while pulling out the hammer, disassembling the pistol into its components. Watching "Butcher" meticulously examine the hammer, Linen couldn't understand the specifics of their conversation, but he knew where the problem with the gun lay.
Even with one hand, "Butcher's" speed in handling the pistol was admirable. After reassembling the Mauser pistol, he handed it back to Linen, saying a few words. Though Linen could barely understand, he nodded as if he did, and reinserted the pistol, which he cherished, into his belt.
"Hey, the butcher!"
A familiar voice called out, and both Linen and "Butcher" turned to see two soldiers carrying StG 44 assault rifles walking briskly towards them. They were part of "Butcher's" subordinates. After the terrifying "road of death", there were probably only four of the nine men left from this morning's squad!
Seeing "Butcher" with his injured hand bandaged, one of the soldiers immediately took out a first aid kit to help him. Throughout the process, "Butcher" remained silent, but seeing the broken fingers on his hand again, Linen felt a heavy sense of discomfort.
Once the wound was taken care of, the two soldiers chatted with "Butcher" for a moment before sitting down against the wall to rest. If they could bask in the sun until dusk, it might be the most beautiful time Linen had experienced in the past three days. However, less than half an hour later, the shrill air raid sirens sounded. Officers with relatively clean uniforms at the crossroads directed the soldiers to disperse around the village. Linen tried to help "Butcher" up, but he shook off Linen's hand vigorously. Stubbornly, he got up, grabbed his trusted MP40 submachine gun, and strode forward. Linen grabbed his weapon and followed closely behind with the other two soldiers. After running about 400 meters, they reached a trench located north of the village. Unlike the trenches Linen had stayed in before, this one was not dug very deep, and the trench walls were not reinforced with wooden planks. Some parts of the trench were filled with ankle-deep mud and water.
Finding a spot in the trench with fewer soldiers, "Butcher" sat down without hesitation, ignoring the muddy water on the ground.
The sensation of sitting on damp ground in the middle of winter wasn't pleasant, but their clothes were already soaked with sweat and mud, so Linen and the others didn't mind "soaking" a little longer. In the damp trench, they could still catch some sunlight, which brought some positive emotions to the German soldiers who had just experienced the ordeal of life and death. Therefore, when the Soviet fighter planes arrived in formation, everyone looked up at the sky without a trace of fear on their faces. By this time, the seven German tanks that had previously dealt heavy blows to the Soviet tank battalion were nowhere to be seen on the defensive positions around the village. Their white camouflage was clearly used to evade enemy air raids—simply find a nearby forest, cover the tank tracks with mud and sand, and even Soviet pilots would have a hard time spotting them!
Before the Soviet planes began bombing, the thunderous roar of artillery had already started. Most of the black smoke from the exploding anti-aircraft shells was in the mid to low altitude range, while Soviet aircraft bombing was vastly different from the neat formations of Western Allied bombing seen in pictures and movies: dozens of fighter planes roared in at a height just above the treetops, attacking German ground positions with small bombs or aircraft machine guns. Single-engine, single-fuselage light bombers and ground attack aircraft followed suit at roughly the same altitude, bombing the village and positions with conventional bombs and machine guns. Afterwards, several dozen single-engine twin-engine medium bombers flew in at a faster speed, flying at an altitude of roughly two hundred to four hundred meters, and although the bombs they dropped were still in clusters, the quantity was much smaller than that dropped by Allied heavy bombers.
In just a few minutes, tons of bombs rained down on the village, shaking the ground and buildings with a devouring force. The building where Linen and the others had been sitting outside was directly hit by a black bomb, and the massive wooden and stone structure collapsed instantly in the violent explosion, with roof tiles and wall stones flying in all directions! Seeing this scene, anyone still left in the village would have no way out unless they were crouched in deep underground shelters.
During the most intense explosions, just like the German soldiers in the trenches, Linen tightly covered his ears with both hands to alleviate the burden on his eardrums. After enduring repeated shelling and bombing for three consecutive days, he had already noticed a significant decline in his hearing. Whether it would fully recover in the future remained uncertain, but it was likely that if this continued, the damage to his hearing could become permanent.
The deafening sound of bombs overshadowed everything, but the German anti-aircraft fire continued. Near the trench where Linen and his companions stayed, a four-barrel machine gun camouflaged with branches and leaves at the edge of the woods kept roaring, with several soldiers in gray uniforms, despite enemy strafing, busy transporting and loading ammunition for the machine gun. About a hundred meters away, a single-barrel anti-aircraft gun also fired at a rate of dozens of rounds per minute, with German soldiers responsible for ammunition supply also busy. Thanks to their efforts, two Soviet planes were shot down quickly. They were both single-wing twin-engine aircraft, with subtle differences in their outlines. Linen had studied more about WWII German and American equipment, and the textual and pictorial materials in this regard were relatively abundant. However, due to various reasons, the Chinese-language materials on contemporary Soviet equipment were often rudimentary, with inconsistencies and contradictions between different books, coupled with differences between three-dimensional objects and flat images. Linen could only roughly speculate that they were either the Soviet SB or TU series medium bombers, but they could also be IL-4 or bombers aiding the Soviet Union from the Allies.
From the appearance of Soviet aircraft until the end of the bombing, not a single German fighter aircraft could be seen in the sky. Only when the returning Soviet bomber formations gradually left the range of German ground fire did two squadrons of gray-green-painted fighters appear on the northern horizon. They descended from high altitudes like short arrows shot from a powerful crossbow. The Soviets were also prepared, and the fighters flying with the bombers immediately broke away from the large formation to intercept. Against the sunlight, Linen squinted and counted, realizing that their fighters were roughly outnumbered two to one. He hoped that the outcome of the aerial battle would not be as one-sided as it had been in the morning. Unfortunately, less than 20 meters to the east of the trench was a small grove, which blocked part of their view. Linen could only see about half of the aerial combat. The Focke-Wulf (FW-190) fighters were agile and fierce like falcons, often relentlessly chasing and attacking Soviet aircraft, but the Soviet pilots were also skilled, some displaying dazzling tactical maneuvers. However, they did not have the same determination to fight to the death as the German pilots. This aerial battle ultimately ended with their proactive retreat. The German fighters shot down more Soviet fighters at a smaller cost, and the Soviet pilots successfully protected their bomber formations. One side achieved tactical victory, while the other achieved strategic victory, and it was not hard to see who won and who lost.