Along the Trans-Siberian Railway, around the Yakovlevich railway station.

At the edge of the dense forest, a large group of Soviet soldiers were working desperately with their heads buried as if they were crazy, digging trenches with sapper shovels in their hands. The Soviet troops here are undoubtedly also elite, and it is not easy to deal with them by looking at the speed with which they dig trenches and their high morale. Although the situation of the world revolution was very unfavorable and the territory of the Soviet Union was being invaded by imperialism, these Red Army soldiers who were digging trenches sang the "Internationale" under the leadership of political cadres. This song, which inspired countless workers all over the world to rise up in the struggle against the capitalists and the reactionary authorities, is now the national anthem of the Soviet Union. The passionate and majestic tune was sung by 200,000 tall and strong Russian men, and it really meant a bit of generosity and sadness.

And the morale of the 200,000 Red Army soldiers here is not only derived from the "Internationale", at least for the time being, this Pavlov cluster has already achieved a great victory without bloodshed - after the capture of the Yakovlevich railway station, the rear of the 31 Chinese divisions (in fact, 36 divisions) in Nizhny Udinsk has been cut off! At least judging from the map, this elite main force of the Chinese army, which numbered at least 500,000, was already surrounded by the Soviet Red Army! When the news reached Moscow, Trotsky immediately issued the highest directive, promoting Pavlov to the rank of commander of the first army group (the highest rank of the Red Army), and at the same time held a grand toast in the Kremlin, and Pravda and TASS also carried out a long report on the Nizhny Udinsk counterattack, saying that this counterattack would deal a severe blow to the arrogance of China's revision of imperialism, completely reverse the unfavorable situation on the Eastern Front, and be the beginning of the victory of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union.

Pavlov, who had risen to the rank of officer, was not as "optimistic" as Trotsky (in fact, Trotsky was not necessarily so optimistic, but he needed a victory too much to boost the morale of the people), and he knew that he was not as good as he seemed. Because the 500,000 elite Chinese troops in Nizhny Uginsk have no awareness of being "surrounded" at all, and they are still attacking the Soviet army in front of them with all their might, where there are more than 4,000 tanks, assault artillery, more than 2,000 cannons, and 2 or 3,000 planes in the sky to help fight! The most distressing thing is. There is no "night" during this time, and the white night in Siberia allows the air superiority of the Chinese army to be maximized. The city of Nizhne-Udinsk has been bombed into ruins by Chinese aircraft, and the railway line to Krasnoyarsk has been blown up.

So more than a million Soviet Red Army troops on both sides of the Uda River were also in a state of logistical interruption, and they were beaten to death by Chinese who numbered less than half of them! The outcome of this battle seems to depend on whether the Soviets run out of supplies first, or whether the Chinese run out of ammunition and food first. However, Pavlov always has a lingering shadow in his heart, and his successful sneak attack may be a trap for the other party, right? Because there was no successful sneak attack of their own. Now Tukhachevsky must have ordered the troops to retreat. But now Tukhachevsky has to choose to stay the course...... Because the temptation of encircling and annihilating 500,000 elite armored troops of the Chinese army is too great, no one will give up lightly. Therefore, Tukhachevsky ordered the Pavlov cluster to hold out on the front line of the Kovlevich railway station for at least 20 days, and also said that a plan was being drawn up to encircle and annihilate the Chinese armored cluster.

"Encircling and annihilating the armored cluster of the Chinese army? We don't have such power! Balagmiyan shook his head worriedly. If you want to encircle and annihilate the Chinese army, you must seize air supremacy, but the result of the air battle on July 10 was a landslide victory for the Chinese air force. Although the Soviet High Command could also mobilize more planes from the Western Front to Siberia, the Chinese could also send more planes over, and they could turn to Germany and Britain for help if necessary. The air forces of China, Britain and Germany are at least 10 times stronger than those of the USSR! Counting on the Soviet Air Force to create a miracle, it is better to ask God to rain heavily.

As for the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops, including 27 armored divisions of the Chinese army, without air superiority, he never thought that if it was the Chinese infantry who were "surrounded", he would still be able to "annihilate" it. But now, it is estimated that Tukhachevsky also intends to fight with the Chinese to consume (materials), right? In case those Chinese do not have enough ammunition supplies in their hands to consume the Red Army, then they will make a lot of money.

"Comrade Balagmiyan. A war of annihilation is impossible, Comrade Tukhachevsky...... It's cheering us up, hoping that we will hold on to the Kollevich train station. Pavlov shook his head. Now Tukhachevsky is using the flesh and blood of the Red Army to drag down the armored clusters of the Chinese army, "consuming" with them, to see who has more supplies in his hands. However, such a "war of attrition" actually has no chance of winning, because he did not defeat Tulum! That is, the Chinese army could transport supplies to Tulum by train, and then use the airfield there to load the supplies onto transport planes and drop them on the Nizhny Udinsk front. Since Tulun is only a little more than 100 kilometers away from Nizhny Udinsk in a straight line. Therefore, the Chinese military transport aircraft does not need to carry much fuel, so that it can carry a large amount of cargo. According to the calculation that a Chinese division consumes 80 tons of materials per day, they have 2,500 tons of materials per day to maintain, and if one can carry 3 tons of cargo at a time, there are more than 800 sorties of transportation to maintain the consumption of the Chinese army's armored clusters. So the only way for the Soviets to win this war of attrition is to capture Tulum!

The question that came to his mind Tukhachevsky also quickly came to mind, and by the afternoon of July 11, the new order reached the Kovlevich railway station. Tukhachevsky asked Pavlov to command the troops to launch an attack on Tulum! He also told him that reinforcements from four divisions were already coming.

Although I know that Tulum is a hard nut to crack. But Pavlov still stubbornly began to deploy an offensive. First of all, he sent two cavalry divisions to monitor Tulum and test the reality of the other party. As a result, by the evening of the same day, the cavalry of these two divisions had let the Chinese beat the wolf bèi and fled back! Pavlov was surprised by the news that these defeated soldiers had brought back, and they were actually attacked by a Chinese armored division in Tulum! At least 100 pursuers, accompanied by 10,000 infantry, and dozens of two-winged Raid 2s in the air! It took less than one hour for China to scatter more than 8,000 Soviet cavalry into the forest......

An armored division is no joke. Pavlov knew that a Chinese armored division had 285 tanks and strong artillery at full strength, which was almost equivalent to one and a half Soviet tank armies, and its combat effectiveness was at least equivalent to two Soviet tank armies. Moreover, the total strength of the Chinese army in Tulum should be more than 200,000, which is more than its own cluster, how can it be possible to defeat Tulum by itself?

Thereupon. Pavlov immediately reported the latest situation to Tukhachevsky, and officially offered to abandon the construction of the Nizhne-Uginsk counterattack.

Just when Tukhachevsky was torn between whether to "let go" of the 500,000 (in fact, close to 600,000) Chinese armored troops in the encirclement. Guo Songling, commander-in-chief of China's Siberian Front, is also making a choice: whether he will "hurt his ten fingers" or "cut off one of his fingers."

To wound his ten fingers was to use the 36 divisions commanded by Li Zongren to defeat about 1 million Soviet troops on both sides of the Wuda River.

To cut off one of his fingers, of course, was to annihilate the 200,000 Soviet troops that had been inserted between Li Zongren's cluster and the Tulun cluster (commanded by Lieutenant General Li Jishen). If Li Zongren's group stopped attacking the main Soviet group, he should send an Panzer Army to the east to deal with the Pavlov group (Tong Guò interrogated the captured Soviet cavalry. At the same time, the Wehrmacht urgently transferred several infantry divisions from Cheremkhovo and Irkutsk to reinforce Tulum by train, increasing the strength of the Tulum cluster to 3 infantry corps (1 army headquarters and 4 infantry divisions are also required), and then advancing west to flank the Pavlov cluster, forming a situation of 300,000 and 200,000, at least the opponent can be hit hard. I can't even hit a full annihilation!

Guo Songling's hesitation did not last long, and on the morning of July 12, he reported the plan for the annihilation of the Pavlov cluster to the General Staff, and it was quickly approved. At the same time, the 28th Army and the 88th Infantry Division, deployed along the Trans-Siberian Railway, were ordered to quickly reinforce Tulum. However, Li Jishen, the commander-in-chief of the Tulun cluster, did not wait for the reinforcements to arrive and started to act, and his plan was to divide the troops into two routes. Lead the main forces yourself. With the 6th Separate Panzer Regiment as the vanguard, approaching the Yakovlevich railway station, the commander of the 22nd Army, Han Deqin, commanded an infantry division, to enter the Great Forest from Tulum first to outflank the "forest path" of Pavlov's cluster and cut off Pavlov's rear road.

At the same time, Li Zongren's cluster also stopped the offensive of the main forces of the Soviet army in Nizhny Udinsk, and turned into defense with the main forces of the Seventh Army with the convergence of the two armored armies, and then launched an attack in the direction of the Yakovlevich railway station with Cai Zhonghu's 6th Panzer Army.

At noon on July 13, the main forces of the Tulum cluster, advancing westward, and the vanguard of the 6th Panzer Army, advancing eastward, arrived outside the Yakovlevich railway station.

Yakovlevich railway station is not an isolated station. Rather, it is a settlement centered on a railway station, with hundreds of houses made of logs, most common in Siberia, and at its peak there were always hundreds of inhabitants. However, after the start of the war, all the peaceful inhabitants of the area were evacuated to Western Siberia, and when the Wehrmacht occupied the railway station, it built fortifications on the basis of the station and the log houses, and at most a division of defenders was stationed.

After the Pavlov cluster recaptured it, a large-scale expansion of the fortifications left behind by the Chinese army was carried out. When Li Jishen arrived, the Soviets were still digging trenches and building fortifications, and through the guò telescope, a defensive zone about 5 kilometers deep appeared on an open area about 12 kilometers wide to the east of the railway station. There are five trenches, which are spaced 100 to 250 metres apart from each other, and communication trenches that are densely packed like spider webs to connect the trenches. Between these trenches were also scattered a large number of mounds of suspected anti-tank support points. Fortifications and active Red officers and soldiers could also be faintly seen in the forests on both sides of the Soviet defensive zone, which were also apparently part of the Soviet defensive line. However, there were no anti-tank trenches or other anti-tank obstacles on the periphery of the Soviet defensive zone, so it is estimated that the time is too short to carry out construction, right?

Although no anti-tank trenches were dug, such a strong defensive line, with at least 100,000 defenders, could not be defeated by a few infantry divisions and an armored regiment in the hands of Li Jishen. However, he still decided to launch an attack without waiting for the reinforcements of the 28th Army and the 88th Infantry Division to arrive. Because the 6th Panzer Army, which had a strong attacking force, had reached the west of the Yakovlevich railway station, and the infantry division under the command of Han Deqin was also in a group with the troops left by Pavlov in the forest to guard the "forest path". Now the biggest worry of the Chinese army is not that they will not be able to defeat the Pavlov cluster, but that these Soviet troops will flee into the big forest. Therefore, it is undoubtedly the best choice to get in touch with the Soviet troops and entangle with them.

However, Li Jishen also retained enough caution, and he first sent the 6th Independent Armored Regiment and another infantry regiment to carry out a tentative attack. In order to provide fire cover for these two regiments, 216 105mm and 155mm howitzers from the artillery regiment of the 22nd Army and the artillery regiments of the five divisions were the first to roar, and countless huge fireballs rose around this Soviet town at the same time. Rubble, dust, rubble, wood and shrapnel scattered in all directions in the explosion, hissing and screaming.

Under the cover of artillery, 61 Chaser tank destroyers, covering a battalion of panzergrenadiers and an infantry battalion, rushed forward first. Colonel Dai Anlan, who led the team, was a graduate of the fifth phase of the Central Military Academy, the third phase of the armored corps, and the tenth phase of the Lu University. Visually measuring the distance between the two sides.

"Stop!"

As soon as the Pursuer tank destroyer was 800 meters away from the Soviet front, Dai Anlan ordered the radio to stop its advance and prepare to shell the bulging mounds behind the Soviet trenches. But at this moment, the mounds on the opposite side were the first to spit out fire!

The "Boom ......" one of the pursuers at the front was the first to be shot, and with a thud it turned into a pile of twisted, burning metal wreckage.

"Fight back! Counterattack! Fight back quickly......"

Not to be outdone, the Chinese pursuers flashed fire from 48 times the caliber of 75mm guns. Armor-piercing shells rained down on targets more than 1,000 meters away. But after a loud bang, those "mounds" did not fly into the air as expected, but still kept firing! The pursuers on the battlefield were hit by bullets one after another, and at the same time, the Soviet howitzers also began to counterattack, and a dense rain of bullets flew from the direction of the Yakovlevich railway station, and many Chinese infantry accompanying the tanks were killed and wounded by surprise!

"Hell. Retreat, retreat quickly! That's not an anti-tank support point, that's a bombardment gun hiding behind cover! As soon as Dai Anlan's mind turned, he immediately understood why those "mounds" could block the bombardment of 75mm armor-piercing shells.

……

"Comrade commander, we have repelled the first wave of the Chinese army's attack!"

Pavlov was at the command post in the basement of the Yakovlevich railway station and Kulik about how to use the limited number of shells against the enemy, and Bagramian rushed in. Pavlov raised his wrist and looked at the time, it was less than 10 minutes before the end of the Chinese artillery bombardment.

"Retreat so soon?" Pavlov asked with a frown.

"Isn't it, those Chinese devils are too cunning. At all, they did not approach our positions at all, and at a distance of 800 meters they shelled the bunkers in front of the SU-75 with the 75mm guns of the pursuers. The bunkers were all civil structures, and I couldn't afford a few shots, so I had to order the Su-75 to open fire, and probably killed twelve or thirteen pursuers, and the others fled. Baghramyan also showed a look of regret. This idea was the one he came up with, and he was expecting to hit the Chinese armored forces hard. I didn't expect the other party to be so careful.

"Hasn't Comrade Tukhachevsky's telegram come yet?" Pavlov did not pay any more attention to Baghramyan's "small schemes", and now his group was under attack, and the retreat route to the north, the "forest path", was under attack by the Chinese infantry, and could be cut off at any time. If you don't leave. The consequences can be imagined.

"Not yet, Comrade Commander."

"Then send another telegram to Comrade Tukhachevsky with a request to abandon the Yakovlevich railway station and retreat the whole army into the Great Forest."

Pavlov sighed and ordered his men to call Tukhachevsky again. But at this time, he could not have imagined that Tukhachevsky was already deploying a total retreat!

"Let Comrade Pavlov hold on for another week! Reinforcements from the Red Air Force will soon arrive, and when the time comes, the sky will return to us, and more than 30 divisions of the Chinese will catch turtles in the urn! After Tukhachevsky instructed his staff officer to telegraph Pavlov, he leaned over in front of the map table and continued to study the retreat route with Kamenev, Khalepsky and others.

"Comrade Tukhachevsky, do you really care about the Pavlov cluster?" Kamenev hesitated and asked.

"No, I can't care so much!" Tukhachevsky gritted his teeth and said: "Without air superiority, more than a hundred of our divisions would not have been able to return to Krasnolyarsk safely." Now the only way is to let the Pavlov cluster be cannon fodder to attract the main forces of the Chinese army and the air force! As soon as the Chinese army begins a general offensive, we will immediately retreat! As for the Pavlov cluster, let them retreat into the forest to fight guerrillas! ”

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