Although the efficiency was not high, the Soviet army's retreat was still proceeding in an orderly manner.

Fedorov, who was also a believer of artilleryism, did not miss the opportunity to retaliate. Under his command, the artillery of the Fifth Tank Division, together with the artillery regiment of the 126th Infantry Division of the friendly forces, and the two regiments of howitzers launched devastating artillery bombardment on the bridgehead of the Reed Army in the forest. The German starting point was not spared on the forest area across the Neman River.

Over the past night, on both sides of the Neman River, the artillery of the Soviet and German armies was busy and desperately pouring steel to the other side. Waves of artillery shells dragged the dazzling tail flames toward the other side. Soldiers from both sides watched the "meteor shower" all night.

At around three o'clock in the morning, Captain Winter led his subordinates to launch a new round of offensive despite the continuous explosions on the positions behind him.

In order not to be accidentally injured by their own artillery, the Soviet infantry in the forest had retreated to a distance they thought were safe.

The dense shrubs and dark light provided Captain Winter and his scouts with the opportunity to take advantage of it.

Using crawling forward, the scouts shuttled through the bushes and quietly approached the Soviet army's position step by step until they heard the various frequencies of snoring and grinding their teeth when the Soviet army was sleeping.

Unlike the 7th Armored Division, which had been through three years of war and had been through many battles, the performance of the Fifth Tank Division, who had just started on the battlefield, can be described as carelessness.

Apart from the routine duty posts, they thought the Germans were immersed in their dreamland like them, or were suppressed by the fierce artillery fire of friendly artillery soldiers, and they did not expect that the German scouts had touched their positions.

Carefully lurking under a slope in front of the Soviet position, Captain Winter quietly listened to the sound coming from the Soviet position.

Apart from the messy sounds of snoring and grinding teeth, he was surprised to hear a whisper. This was a sound that should never appear on a position at night. Are these Russians really here to fight? Captain Winter mocked the Russians opposite in disdain.

Turning his head and looking behind him, the scouts once garrisoned, where the fires of shells exploded and burning flames were everywhere. Captain Winter smiled proudly. The Russians would never have imagined that it was their powerful shelling that drove them to make the decision to attack the night.

The closer they are to the Soviet infantry, the further they are to the Soviet artillery shells. They would rather seize them from the Soviet infantry at close distance than to be passively bombed under the artillery fire of the Soviet artillery.

Good discipline and rigorous training played a decisive role, secretly approaching with lurking during the period, no scouts exposed their tracks.

Restraining his increasingly intense sleepiness and forcing his eyelids to fall, Captain Winter finally waited for Tian Fang's white belly, and also waited for the sound he had expected. A loud snoring sound was so close that it was almost right in his ears. It almost made him think it was made by Friedrich, who was lurking beside him.

He turned his head and looked at Friedrich. Friedrich's eyes were also full of sleepiness, but he was still energetic and did not lose in the hands of the Sandman.

There is only one possibility that the grunt came from the opposite side of the earth slope and was made by the Russians.

Looking down at the watch and looking up at the light that was shooting through the gaps in the branches and leaves, Captain Winter held his breath and listened carefully to the snoring sounds opposite him.

He took out a bayonet and bit it on his mouth. He held the p38 pistol in his hand, exerted force with his elbows, climbed up the soil slope step by step, and looked at the other side of the soil slope through the gap between a clump of Russian sea buckthorn on the top of the slope.

Two Soviet soldiers lurked on the other side of the earth slope, one leaned against the earth slope and leaned against the sky on the ground, with a uniform and long snoring sound coming from his mouth.

Another Soviet soldier lay on the top of the earth slope, his chin was steep on the back of his hands, his head was bit by bit, and his eyelids had covered his eyes, and he was making the final resistance with the Sandman. He was obviously on the verge of defeat.

Captain Winter made several gestures to Friedrich below the ground, and Friedrich nodded. Then he quietly touched the top of the ground.

Looking around quietly, no suspicious target was found. Captain Winter nodded to Friedrich, and the two of them walked around the sea buckthorn bush on the top of the slope and turned to the other side of the slope.

Captain Winter pounced on the back of the Soviet sentry lying on the ground, and walked around his head with his left hand and covered his mouth.

The Soviet sentry suddenly woke up, but could not make any sound. A bayonet had already pierced into the artery on the right side of his neck. The bright red artery blood was spraying out, dyeing the land red.

Beside Friedrich, the snoring sound from the Soviet sentry sleeping on his back had stopped. He stared at Friedrich with his big eyes, making a "hoho" note from his mouth. In the middle of his throat, a bright red blood mark erupted from blood.

Friedrich cut off his throat and could not make any sound no matter how hard he struggled until his whole body stopped twitching.

The two brothers worked together to kill a Soviet outpost. Captain Winter pulled the sentry's feet and dragged the body to the bottom of the earth slope to hide.

After doing all this, Captain Winter listened to the movements on the Soviet positions opposite again.

After listening carefully for a while, he turned his head and looked behind him. At some point, the Soviet bombardment had stopped and the forest returned to silence.

Before Captain Winter could be glad for the amazing discovery, he heard a thud of gunshot.

Oops, someone has been exposed.

The sudden sound of gunfire sounded again and the horn of full-scale battle. The harsh gunfire sounded on the Soviet positions, and dense rain of bullets shot towards the direction where the gunfire sounded. The German scouts were no longer lurking and fought back. The flames sprayed from the muzzle flashed again and again, which was particularly dazzling in the dark dense forest.

Both sides of the war did not know the opponent's troops, nor did they know the opponent's position. They judged the opponent's approximate position based on the light at the opposite muzzle.

A string of tracer bullets pierced the night like electric whips, and the shouts and fire of soldiers on both sides filled the battlefield.

Colonel Fedorov could hear the gunshots in the forest clearly, but he had no energy to pay attention to them. The sound of guns and cannons from the south made him know that the Fifth Tank Division and the Neman River defense line were in an unprecedented crisis.

"Who is the commander of the 124th Division? Are they called idiots? Why didn't they inform us of the news that Mojin Town was occupied by the German army? That damn pig, the villain ordered the 10th Tank Regiment to go south immediately and face the enemy's tanks head-on. The artillery of the division headquarters turned to the south, and must assist the 10th Tank Regiment to defeat the German army in the south."

The Chief of Staff was also furious. It was not until the German army in the south launched an attack on the Fifth Tank Division that they received the bad news that the defense line in Mojin Town was broken.

The German bridgehead in the forest has not been eradicated yet. The retreat of the defenders in the city of Alitus has just been in half. The sudden appearance of the German army in the south is tantamount to a fatal blow to the Fifth Tank Division, which has put the Fifth Tank Division in an unprecedented crisis.

The 10th Tank Regiment immediately set off and drove south along the highway to rescue the guards who were attacking, and bumped into the 21st Armored Regiment head-on, head-on by Xingye, and the tank battle broke out.

The battle became an overwhelming situation at the beginning. Although nearly fifty tanks suffered mechanical failures because they were not adapted to the Russian-style bad roads, as many as 150 tanks participated in the battle, while the Soviet Army's 10th Tank Regiment had only more than 90 tanks participated in the battle.

The tankers of the 10th Tank Regiment participated in actual combat for the first time. Facing the German army with the advantage in number of battles, they showed extraordinary courage and amazing mistakes.

The battle began not long after. As the German tankers were puzzled, the main force of the 10th Tank Regiment, the tankers of the t-34 type tank drove the tanks over the nearly twenty kv-1 type tanks that were forwards, and bravely rushed towards the German tank cluster.

With the accurate KK40 tank gun, the German tankers were calling out at the charge of the T-34. The rumbling sound of cannons made the farmhouses near the battlefield tremble, and the earth seemed to be shaking.

Seeing that the T-34s in front were destroyed one by one, the flames and thick smoke on the tanks of the comrades spread all over the battlefield, the kv-1 tankers quickly passed through the wreckage of the T-34 tank and joined the fierce battle. But they sent themselves into the slaughterhouse.

Shortly after the battle began, behind the 21st Armored Regiment of the German Army, the division-owned tank destroyer finally caught up with the armored regiment and happened to encounter the kv-1 tank that launched the charge.

The No. 4 tank destroyer passed the No. 4 tank without hesitation, and acted as a shield on the battlefield with its more powerful armor protection, resisting the impact of the kv-1 head-on.

In the face of the more powerful firepower of the 75mm l60mm cannon, the seemingly powerful armor of the kv-1 is useless, and its performance is not much stronger than the fragile T-34.

It was approaching six in the morning and the tank battle that took so many hours to come to an end.

Left more than fifty tank wreckage and corpses everywhere, the 10th Soviet tank regiment hurriedly fled the battlefield. However, the 21st Armored Regiment only damaged seven No. 4 tanks.

The surviving T-34 tanks used their excellent off-road capabilities to play their greatest advantage over the No. 4 tank, and left the German tanks' pursuit. They hurriedly fled to the north, their starting position.

At 6:20, in the village of Vasd, Fedorov's command was already in chaos, with busy figures of staff packing their luggage and burning documents everywhere.

Outside the command department, the guards also began to load valuable military facilities and prepare to transfer them.

The German tank troops were about to reach the village of Vasd soon, and the retreat of the troops on the west bank of the Neman River was cut off was foregone conclusion. Colonel Fedorov knew clearly that he had lost the battle. Before retreating, a huge problem was placed in front of him.

On the other side of the river, the main force of the 126th Infantry Division and the Ninth Tank Regiment did not complete the retreat mission, and a considerable number of troops were still fighting in the city of Alitus. Should the two bridges on the Neman River be blown up or not?

"These two bridges must be blown up and must not be left to the Germans."

Fedorov scratched his head anxiously and said to the chief of staff: "The command of the military headquarters is that we must wait until all the troops on the West Bank retreat to the East Bank before we can blow up the bridge. But now, there are still thousands of people fighting in the city of Alitus. What if we blow up the broken bridge, what should they do? And we cannot violate the command of the military headquarters."

Seeing that the Chief of Staff was still about to speak, Fedorov continued: "The bridge in the upper reaches of the town of Mojin has been occupied by the Germans. Even if we blow up these two bridges, we cannot stop the German army from crossing the river. There is no difference between bombing and not blowing up. Don't worry about those bridges, we retreat."

More than twenty minutes later, when the vanguard of the 21st Armored Regiment drove into Wald Village, there was no Soviet army in the village.

The motorized infantry following behind the 21st Armored Regiment immediately rushed to the bridge and the forest. Faced with the attacks from behind, the Fifth Motorized Infantry Regiment, which was fighting fiercely with the Germans in the forest, collapsed instantly.

Contacting the 7th Armored Division's troops in the forest, the 20th Armored Division and the 7th Armored Division successfully surrounded the city of Alitus.

After finding himself surrounded, the defenders in the city lost the courage to resist and put down their weapons and surrendered to the German army.

Even so, the battle continued until noon, and the sound of gunfire in the city of Alitus gradually subsided.

Colonel Rosenberg was not in a happy mood after crossing the hard-earned bridge and reaching the east bank of the Neman River that he had been longing for.

Beside him, the commander Lieutenant General Feng Ke's face was also very gloomy.

"We let the 20th Armored Division steal the limelight, but this is only once, no such example. Colonel Rosenberg, when will we be able to reach Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania?"

Rosenberg said in a muffled voice: "Two days at most."
Chapter completed!