When Rychev himself saw the railway branch line leading to the dark forest, he himself did some analysis.

In the hot sun, the rails also shimmered. The Germans apparently only used the railroad and did not seem to be repairing further?

"Shkav, send some soldiers to observe and see if there is anything unusual on the railway. Especially those road spikes and sleepers, can there be traces of replacement! ”

"Yes!"

More than a dozen fighters emerged from the ambush on the side of the road, and they bent down like railway inspectors. They actually work more carefully, because it takes a good eye to judge whether the rails, spikes, etc. have been replaced.

They examined for about twenty minutes, and finally one of the soldiers found out.

The warrior placed a handful of grass as a marker at the anomaly, and hurried back to report the information.

"Report to the battalion commander, I found an anomaly. That's where I put the grass, there are at least 30 meters of railroad tracks, and the spikes there are completely different from other road spikes. ”

"Sure enough!" Rychev was nervous on the spot.

"Battalion commander? What's going on? Shkav asked curiously.

"Stop talking nonsense, now find out with me!"

Rychev quickly arrived at the place of the incident, and he crouched down, and found that new ones had been used here, and they clearly looked like they had been nailed freshly, while the other spikes were rusty. If you look closely, not only the spikes, but even the sleepers are new, and Rychev has to suspect that even the rails are new.

He raised his head and looked at the soldiers around him who were half-kneeling with guns on guard, and said to Shikav: "Let's look at the soil in this area, it may be different from other positions. ”

"Soil, but the base of the railroad was sprinkled with a lot of stones."

"That's right! Peel back the stones and we'll be sure to find the anomaly. ”

Ratchev told a few warriors to do what they said, and after they removed some stones, they found something seriously abnormal. It was an area where the texture of the land was distinctly different from that of other places, and the paratroopers had sharp noses, and they smelled another very familiar smell besides the smell of earth—the smell of gunsmoke.

The soldiers' self-consciousness tells everyone what happened here, that is, there was an explosion here, which eventually led to the explosion of the railway. Then, it must be the enemy who repairs the railroad!

This discovery was really amazing, and the soldiers present immediately talked about it.

Shkav nervously asked, "Could it be that there are other troops in this area besides us?" ”

"It's probably some guerrilla force that we haven't come into contact with, or maybe it's camped somewhere in the woods, or it's just a straggler. What their strength is, what their weapons and equipment, I don't know. They can blow up the railroad tracks, maybe this force is not weak in combat. ”

"Then, we must make contact with this guerrilla force and integrate it according to the policy."

Rychev nodded: "Indeed, this is our responsibility. ”

Just as they were determined that the place had been attacked by unknown guerrillas, a few clever paratrooper soldiers noticed the vibration of small stones on the railroad tracks.

This was intentional on the part of the soldiers, as long as the stones shook, it meant that a train was coming.

The soldiers immediately informed Rychev of the situation.

"Damn! They still have trains? How long have they been using this line? How can you be so skilled?! Lychev scolded and stood up, shaking the dust off his body.

Shkav hurriedly asked: "Battalion commander, are we going to shoot the enemy?" Our RPG is capable of blowing up the enemy's locomotive boiler. ”

"No!" Rychev hurriedly rejected the group of belligerent fighters, "Today's mission is only to scout all valuable information, we are simply observing. Now I'll give you a mission! ”

The task given to this company's more than 160 men was to camp near this railway line and monitor and record the information of the trains on this line.

It didn't take long for the train that caused the stones to tremble past the Soviet troops in ambush.

The paratrooper fighters, who were covered with grass in helmet camouflage nets, lay in ambush one by one in the low bushes under the trees. Once again, Rychev saw the train pass in front of it, less than thirty meters away from each other.

He personally pinched his hand and counted it, and the huge steam locomotive was stunned to pull thirty train wagons, and the bad thing was that the paint on the leather was not erased, and it was still written in Russian! Obviously, the German army was indeed using local materials, and they were using Soviet equipment to plunder Soviet supplies.

Not all soldiers could suppress their anger, and a few soldiers subconsciously raised their guns and aimed them roughly at the German defenders at the top of the carriage.

The squad leader immediately stopped the stupidity of the soldiers, so that everyone was not exposed after all.

The train passed at a speed of about 40 km/h, and no one could say whether the inside of the thirty wagons was empty or full of supplies.

Some fighters thought it was a lot of flour, others thought it was potatoes, and some even thought it was all Jews.

"Huh! It's going to be stuffed with people, and it's too bad for us to attack rashly! The company commander commented on the whispers of the soldiers.

Rychev hammered the ground helplessly and sighed: "If there are really some Jews here, we will attack rashly, and they will all die after the train derails." However, we let the train go, and they were all killed by the Germans. Unless, if we stop the train, if we do, it will be tantamount to disobedience, and then we will go to court-martialed for disobedience. ”

"It's a tough choice, hopefully, the wagons are full of potatoes!"

"You don't talk nonsense!" Rychev stood up, shook off the dust and grass on his body, "Remember my orders!" Leave some men to set up camp, others follow me to scout their bridgeheads. ”

From the location of the discovery of the train, to the railway bridge, the distance between each other is also nearly two kilometers. In fact, there is only the last kilometer of cover in the forest!

Led by Rychev, the group was almost overhead in the grass, and they were well disguised, so that their self-confidence would never be exposed.

They made their way through the woods by the railroad and soon reached the edge of the forest.

Rychev himself picked up the fifteen-fold magnified telescope and immediately began to reconnoiter the bridge and pay attention to the situation in the city.

"As expected, the enemy is on guard. The bridge exited, and the enemy built two fortresses. ”

Shkav said in passing: "It's still an extraordinary fortress, they are reinforced with concrete!" In this way, our 70 mm caliber recoilless guns, even with high explosives that are even more severe than TNT, cannot blow them up! ”

"That's true, our rockets can do the bombardment. It's a pity, it's a waste to bombard those two lumps of cement with rockets! Suddenly, Rychev had a flash of inspiration. By the way, if the commander can provide a batch of warheads that burn air, he can use a small RPG missile to smash it. ”

"It's bad, we're on the front line, and we won't be able to get this weapon for a while. If we take the initiative to attack tomorrow, we will definitely go head-to-head with these bridgeheads. Besides, battalion commander, if you look closely, they still have a lot of improvised machine guns, and I saw a lot of shaking figures. Has the enemy been informed that we are going to attack? ”

"Impossible!" Rechev retorted, "They have a reason to strengthen the defense here. If I were German, I would have considered the strategic value of Loyev, which necessarily existed as a small railway station. So I'm going to increase the number of defenders here and keep it as safe as possible. ”

With the help of very good telescopes, these paratroopers saw the basic layout of the eastern side of the city of Loyev. They saw a lot of buildings, mostly three-storey, and quite a few wooden houses around the concrete buildings. The most spectacular thing is the iron bridge over the Dnieper, which is 300 meters long, so the length of the iron bridge is also amazing.

Rychev immediately realized that it would be difficult to take good possession of the bridge in future operations. Besides, the enemy is frantically using this railway line.

"This damn bridge, it should still be blown up!"