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In December 1941, the Soviet Army’s Military Information Bulletin:

Since the beginning of the month, our army launched a counter-offensive on the southern front; until December 12th, we recovered Jikhvin...

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"A bunch of idiots!" In the Army Group Headquarters, Fejuninsky angrily slapped the telegram on the table, threw off his chair, stood up, and walked half a circle around the room in a few strides.

"Call back the first division and order them to pursue?" asked Kulik, who was the staff officer on duty that day.

"Return. And use the most severe terms to ask them is this how to carry out combat deployment?" The commander walked to the large map hanging on the wall, his eyes followed the direction of the road all the way north, "tell They, if this armored regiment retreats to Tikhvin, let them figure it out!"

Kulik stepped forward, pointed to a legend with a station mark on the south side of Tikhvin, and said: "The First Division once reported that two battalions were left here, should we tell them to come out and push it first?"

Fejuninsky nodded and said bluntly: "It's not a push, it's an all-out block. Before the main force of the First Division arrives, the Germans will be dragged here. Add it to the telegram and send it out immediately," he paced half a step , then turned around and said, "And you, go to this station yourself." He said with emphasis: "You know what to do."

At the beginning of December 1941, the Russians who had been dormant for half the winter seemed to have suddenly found a breakthrough; the Leningrad Front Army and the Volkhov Front Army jointly launched an attack on the German army.If these military operations can be successful, the embarrassment caused by the siege of Leningrad is expected to be greatly alleviated; and the Soviet army, which was catching up with Moscow at that time, turned to a counterattack after the difficult see-saw offensive in November, and the two cities were militarily divided. Once the action is successful, it will have a huge and incalculable political impact.

The Soviet army was determined to win Jikhwin, which the two sides had repeatedly fought for before.

At this time, the movement of a German armored regiment originally stationed near the Volkhov Hydropower Station made the battlefield situation very delicate.

For a long time, this is an independent unit with rapid action, strong propulsion ability, and its strength should not be underestimated; after the Soviet counter-offensive began, various circumstances showed that the German armored regiment had plans to move north to reinforce Tikhvin. sign.

The Soviet Army's response plan was to block its way from the north with the 54st Division of the 4th Army, which was the closest, and the 52th Independent Army and the [-]nd Army deployed troops to encircle it from the south.

After the first division arrived at the designated position, it was heavily shelled in the northwest direction, so the commanders judged that the German army would break through here; they sent a report to ask whether they should move accordingly.

The problem lies here; for some unknown reason, the telegram was delayed for a whole day in the translation room; and the first division changed the deployment without a reply.

At that time, the 4th Army was moving slowly in the east, and the 54st Division of the [-]th Army happened to move to the west. The German armored regiment took advantage of this fleeting gap to quickly intersperse. Go to Tikhwin.

Once this impressive force joins the defense against Jikhvin, it will be more difficult for the Soviet army to succeed; and the responsibility for blocking the unfavorable will also cause the 54th Army to lose face.

Chasing with a division at full speed, using the troops along the way to stop the enemy, the ultimate goal is to ensure that the main battlefield will not be disturbed; as the commander of the group army, this is what Fejuninsky can and must do at this time.

Kulik watched the telegram sent away by the telegrapher, put on his overcoat and walked out of the translation room. At the door, he said to an operator: "Call a car, I'm going to the army."

With two battalions blocking and waiting for help, and the opponent is a aggressive mechanized unit, facing the enemy head-on is tantamount to seeking a dead end. Anyone understands the risks involved in this errand, but Kulik has no choice; In the middle of the day, the north wind was still coming through the car window, and he soon felt the cold wind piercing through the military uniform; kulik subconsciously buried his face in the fur collar, and when he did so, he thought to himself, this is not the coldest winter And when compared to Siberia, the winter in Leningrad is really nothing.

a day later.

From the hydropower station to Tikhvin, the mechanized corps was within walking distance, but the German armored corps was blocked halfway.

This is not because the Soviet army blocked it, but because the road was destroyed.

What lay in front of them was a ditch that appeared almost overnight, with a depth of one person and a width of four to five meters. What made the German army commander even more mad was that this big ditch was dug into the railway foundation at one end and connected to the other end. A swamp.

This is Russia, and the Germans can never be more familiar with their own land than they are.

The German engineers were at a loss. They wanted to rush to repair the road but found that there was no soil to fill the ditch.

The soil was pulled back to the blocking position temporarily set up by the Soviet Army by military trucks. The lieutenant colonel staff officer from the Army Staff Headquarters watched the truck stop in front of him and said with satisfaction: "Put sacks of soil to repair the fortification." He turned to the battalion commander and finally revealed With a little smile, "There are also those farmers who helped lead the way and dig the soil. Sorry, I don't know how to express my gratitude to them. I mean material things-please figure it out."

In this way, the German armored regiment was forced to stop in a narrow strip. Even if they wanted to reach Tikhvin, they had no choice but to change their route and occupy the bus station first.They may not know—even if they knew, they would be helpless. The two battalions of the Soviet Army that had been left on standby at the bus station were waiting there, and the main force of the first division was also galloping here, and a new encirclement was about to take shape.Here will be the first bloody wrestling that will determine the fate of Leningrad after the main forces of both sides have been silent for a long time.

The cold wind rolled up the snow, and the military canvas hanging outside the door rustled; Lieutenant Colonel Iliakulik sat silently by the map, just like he did in many nights before the big war was approaching, whether he was thinking or lost in thought , or just, quietly waiting.

The next day, the Germans occupied a farm near the bus station; although the chief of staff of the regiment tried his best to oppose the army's prolonged stay there, the troops needed to be replenished, and many cars were stalled because of the cold-as in the war. As in countless instances of this kind of story, for various reasons that seemed insignificant in hindsight but seemed well-founded at the time, the armored force stopped and never left.

In the cold field of Leningrad, the Russians suddenly appeared around the village as if they had emerged from a snowdrift.

The attack begins immediately.But the Germans were not panicked either. They used the villages for fortification defense and waited for an opportunity to break through.

At that time, kulik was not on the battlefield.He was waiting with a battalion on the road from the station to Tikhvin, ready to meet a German army that tried to respond.

Tikhvin's German army was very aware of the intentions of the Soviet army's series of actions. They chose to shrink their troops for intensive defense; as a mobile force with powerful firepower, the arrival of the armored regiment can undoubtedly add a heavy weight.Therefore, when this unit was besieged by the Soviet army, the Tikhvin defenders naturally could not sit idly by, and they quickly dispatched support troops.

However, this kind of response was cautious and tentative. The response troops did not want to leave the stronghold completely and become the prey of the Soviet army's reinforcements. Therefore, the German army formed a formation like a sharp cone. Maybe they didn't know it. I will pay a painful price for this kind of caution; in fact, the distance between Tikhvin and the bus station is only a few tens of kilometers. a battalion.

The Germans were still cautiously probing, but Kulik responded quickly.He decided to leave one battalion to participate in the siege and take another battalion north to stop the attack.He believed that Tikhvin's German army had no real attempt to attack, and if the Soviet army could win first, this annoying tentacles would retreat back to their strongholds.

However, his request was rejected: "Strictly follow the instructions of the group army to ensure that the encirclement and annihilation are foolproof; do not disperse the troops and make unnecessary actions."

Kulik's department seemed to ignore it.

"It's really audacious." His colleagues in the staff department commented.

Kulik soon received the harshest telegram he had encountered in his career: "Lieutenant Colonel Iliakulik takes full responsibility for the unauthorized actions and possible serious consequences."

"That was indeed the most nervous time for me." Kulik still remembers the past more than ten years later, "but I believe that turning a blind eye to the threat from Jikhwin would be a completely wrong judgment."

"That's it?" The telegraph operator glanced at Kulik suspiciously, and the answer he got was simple: "Yes."

The staff then received a telegram, which again explained the reason for the action and asked the staff to issue an order to deploy other troops for reinforcements. "It sounds like I'm tired of working. If the army refuses to support me, no one will bury me when I die. But I believe my decision is right."

It was a dangerous gamble, but at the time he had no choice but to wait.

At the beginning, he was sitting next to the transmitter and waiting, staring at the shadow on the ground and following the direction of the sun to turn a fan, but he didn't wait for any movement. "I wanted to wipe it, but I was afraid of scaring the sender. He was already scared enough; I looked at the map, and the distance between my location and Jikhwin was only a thumb's width away. They all said that my face was so pale. Terribly bad."

Liza was only a teenager when she heard this story, and it was difficult for her to understand the cruelty of life and death on the battlefield."Sounds heroic," she quipped, half-truthfully.

Her father said lightly: "Of course; I wouldn't dare to do it now."

Then the telegraph machine rang again.

"The staff department called and said that an additional battalion would be sent over, ordering us to complete the blockade."

Kulik took the telegram and read it again, and then again.

"Do you want to go back?" the operator asked.

"Sorry, please wait a moment." Kulik waved his hands and stood up, only then did he feel the numbness of his legs, he stomped his feet and let out a long breath and said, "Call back, saying that we have received orders and will resolutely carry out the orders. "

On December 1941, 12, the Soviet army recovered Tikhvin.This is not only a signal for a series of counter-offensive operations, but also means that the distance of the ice transportation line can be greatly shortened.Sticking to Leningrad seems to have hope again.

The First Division of the 54th Army of the Soviet Union encircled and wiped out a German armored regiment, partially wiped out the enemy, and captured tanks and other supplies.The remnants of the German army broke through and retreated south.

An inconspicuous episode occurred after the battle. Lieutenant Colonel Kulik, the staff officer of the 54th Group Army, once tried to keep a handful of German guns for himself, so he unnaturally approached the military judge. "That can't really be done," said the judge-at-arms, "but as a souvenir or something, I can get you an empty case."

"You must have looked so stupid!" Liza laughed at him.

"Yeah," he looked at his daughter and smiled gently, "it's quite silly."

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