Chapter 194: Push to Kharkiv within 48 Hours

"Keep moving! Don't stop! Ignore the enemy infantry!

"Spread out after crossing the river. Maintain a search and advance formation. If you spot enemy artillery positions, call in friendly forces to flank and destroy them!

"Do not halt for any other targets. Leave those enemy infantry units for the trailing friendly forces to handle."

Following Lelouch's concise orders, the tank regiment that had breached the Oril River railway bridge continued its triumphant advance, driving deep into enemy territory.

The main force of the Lusha infantry division defending the town of Pereshchepyne failed to pose any threat to Lelouch. A mere seven or eight thousand infantrymen couldn't even make a ripple before Lelouch punched right through their center, tearing them in half.

Lelouch didn't even have the time to split his forces to encircle them. He simply left his flanks exposed to the enemy remnants and focused solely on penetrating deeper behind enemy lines.

In just half an hour, the troops advanced several more kilometers, breaking completely through the town and re-entering the wide-open fields.

Post-harvest cornfields flanked the road. The cobs were long gone, leaving only swathes of haphazardly chopped stalks abandoned in the fields.

Throughout this process, Lelouch's forces engaged in a series of frequent, small-scale skirmishes, the vast majority of which resulted in negligible losses.

Aiming for speed, three tank companies had launched a pincer attack on the enemy artillery battalion from different directions. However, the tank company attacking from the front met fierce resistance from the twenty-four 76mm cannons of the Lusha forces firing in a direct trajectory.

Four tanks took direct hits in succession, prompting the company's remaining twelve tanks to hastily scatter and seek cover. Fortunately, the two flanking tank companies managed to maneuver into position in time, annihilating all twenty-four enemy cannons from the sides.

Field artillery in this era exclusively used high-explosive shells; there were no Armor-Piercing Shells.

Because there had never been armored targets to deal with before, small and medium-caliber land artillery lacked the very concept of an Armor-Piercing Shell. Only the navy utilized Armor-Piercing Shells.

Yet even with high-explosive rounds, a direct hit from a 76mm shell on a 20mm thick frontal armor plate was enough to shatter the steel and blow a massive hole in it. The inner layer of the armor plate would also spall into countless fragments, inflicting severe casualties on the tank crew inside.

Of those four struck tanks, two were completely destroyed. The crews of the other two were killed by the blast, and much of the internal equipment was shattered or ruined, leaving only the hulls and engines intact.

To think they had breached the Oril River with zero casualties, only to stumble and pay a price in the final mopping-up phase of the battle. After grasping the situation, Lelouch instructed the officers at all levels, who still lacked practical tank combat experience:

"As the subsequent tank companies advance, make sure to adjust your reconnaissance formations! Furthermore, if you spot a field artillery position, do not attack it head-on. Wait for friendly forces to flank them from the rear!

"Also, calculate how far it is to the next town or river defense line, and use the radios to call in aerial reconnaissance support in advance. Once you locate the general position of the enemy artillery, report it using the coordinate block codes on the map. If the opportunity arises, have the reconnaissance fighters suppress them with small bombs and machine-gun strafing."

Having lost four tanks, Lelouch learned his lesson. He made sure the officers throughout the division took it as a warning, prompting them to reflect and adapt on the spot. With their tactics optimized, they resumed the offensive.

The two tank regiments quickly passed through the area, pushing further ahead. The trailing mechanized infantry regiment, motorized infantry regiment, and regular infantry regiments followed suit.

After fighting their way forward for another twenty minutes, Lelouch, seated in the cabin of his command tank, heard his radio operator relay a message:

"Division Commander! That division defending the town of Pereshchepyne earlier—after we broke through and split them, their division commander sent a messenger under the continuous pressure of our trailing forces. He expressed a willingness to surrender, but on one condition: he wants our army to report that they all died in battle."

Lelouch was stunned. "Something like that actually happened?"

He agreed, having the operator send a reply, and then inquired about the reason, hoping the subordinate accepting the surrender would clarify the situation.

More than half an hour later, Lelouch, fighting as he advanced, had pushed nearly twenty kilometers north of Pereshchepyne, almost reaching the next county town.

The rear infantry regiment commander in charge of accepting the surrender finally figured out the situation and sent a reply to Lelouch. His radio operator quickly deciphered it.

"Reporting to the Division Commander! Lieutenant Colonel List reports that the Lusha division commander was coerced by strict military orders. The 13th Army demanded that he defend the town to the death, or at the very least, ensure the Oril River railway bridge was blown up and kept out of our hands, lest he face the harshest military punishment.

"Because he failed in his duty and couldn't react in time to blow the railway bridge, he knew he would be executed by firing squad even if he retreated. Therefore, he defected on the battlefield. However, he doesn't want to implicate his family, so he only asks that we publicly announce that he and his subordinates fought to the bitter end."

Hearing this, Lelouch laughed out loud.

His psychological warfare on the eve of the formal offensive had been entirely too successful.

In the final ten days before the fierce battle, the Tsar had hastily executed General Aleksei Evert, the former commander of the Lusha Southwest Front who had later been reassigned as commander of the 6th Army, directly on the front lines.

This atrocity, combined with his previous unjust persecution and wanton slaughter of naval officers and men, finally ignited a powder keg of panic among the troops who had been forcibly dragged to the front lines.

Because their defeat had come so swiftly, these soldiers feared additional harsh military punishments, leading to such a chain-reaction avalanche of desertion.

Although it was only the division commander surrendering with his headquarters and a portion of the troops close to him, rather than a planned, full-scale surrender of the entire division, it was enough to relieve the pressure on the rear.

At least four thousand men willingly laid down their weapons and walked into the POW camps. As for the remaining enemies separated from their division headquarters, they certainly wouldn't last much longer.

Upon receiving this excellent news, Lelouch ordered his troops to take a brief rest, using the opportunity to broadcast the victory to the entire army.

Every soldier in the tank regiment, as well as the closely following mechanized infantry regiment, learned of this unexpected windfall. Their morale soared, their spirits exceptionally high.

"Brothers! Follow Division Commander Lelouch and charge into Kharkiv! The enemy has been driven to despair and division by their tyrant. We have tanks! We can absolutely crush them in one fell swoop!"

After a short rest, the armored division launched an assault on a newly emerged county-level target ahead: Karlivka. Of course, Lelouch had no intention of using his armored forces for direct urban warfare in the streets; he merely had his troops bypass the city.

Karlivka was a county town situated along the railway line, but there were no east-west rivers nearby to obstruct the army, meaning there were no targets like railway bridges to capture. Lelouch only needed to break through the field defenses west of the city.

The condition of the local garrison was even worse than in Pereshchepyne. It was clear the high command of the Lusha 13th Army had never anticipated that the Demanians would breach their outermost two layers of county and town defenses so quickly, appearing at Karlivka with such lightning speed.

Before Lelouch announced the start of the attack, he checked his watch. It was only 9:30 in the morning. Barely four hours had passed since the offensive began, and he had already struck this deep. Compared to the start of the advance, he had now penetrated at least 45 kilometers into enemy territory.

The defending troops stationed inside Karlivka also had attached artillery, alongside layered trench networks to the west of the city.

However, those trench networks proved completely useless against the advancing tanks. Swathes of Lusha soldiers broke and routed before the tanks even rolled over the trenches, slaughtered in droves by sweeping machine-gun fire from behind.

The Lusha soldiers in the rear ranks saw the gruesome fate of their comrades ahead. Rather than waiting for the tanks to reach them, they abandoned their positions and fled while still one or two kilometers away.

"Run! Those iron monsters can crush right over the trenches! Those obstacles can't stop them at all!"

Soldiers of this era had not yet learned to construct dedicated anti-tank fortifications. They knew nothing of digging "dragon's teeth" or setting up the kind of structural barricades found on the beaches of Normandy back on Earth.

When digging trenches, they merely made them wide enough for a soldier to crouch inside—typically less than two meters. Before the advent of the tank, digging a trench any wider not only wasted labor but also increased the chances of indirect artillery fire landing squarely inside.

Panic spread even faster than Lelouch had anticipated. The defensive capabilities of the Lusha infantry were suppressed to the point of being negligible.

Just as the swarms of tanks rolled over the trenches, more than a dozen combat reconnaissance planes streaked across the sky from south to north, soaring over Karlivka.

The roof machine gunners on the tanks, wearing bulletproof steel armor and specialized helmets as thick as Level 3 helmets, looked up at their airborne comrades and let out rousing cheers.

"The recon planes are out there spotting enemy artillery positions for us! Look alive, boys! Once the enemy artillery is located, flank them from both sides and the rear! The front will only serve to pin them down! Let's not repeat the mistake we made back at Pereshchepyne!"

While the tank groups on the ground adjusted their attack formations, the reconnaissance planes in the sky had already pinpointed the artillery positions north of Karlivka.

The rear-seat pilots in two of the recon planes tapped out short radio transmissions. Using the highly detailed maps distributed prior to the battle, they relayed coordinates based on the longitude and latitude grid block numbers.

Meanwhile, the other planes that didn't need to transmit orders threw themselves into steep dives, descending toward the artillery positions at twenty to thirty-degree angles.

The twin machine guns mounted on their noses opened fire simultaneously. The rapid staccato of gunfire rang out as tongues of flame licked across the artillery encampment, ripping strings of bloody holes through the Lusha artillerymen caught in their path.

As they skimmed directly over the artillery positions, the pilots manually hurled five-kilogram small bombs hooked to the outer walls of their cockpits, quickly blowing the site to pieces.

While such an assault couldn't completely wipe out a division-level artillery regiment position housing some twenty cannons, and it was difficult to destroy the guns themselves, it was more than enough to kill or wound a significant percentage of the soldiers. The bombardment left the artillery position paralyzed in the short term, drastically slashing its combat efficiency.

Seizing this window of opportunity, the frontal tank company closed the distance, initiating a flanking maneuver from the rear.

When the tanks rumbled to within two kilometers of the encampment and began lobbing high-explosive shells from their 57mm short-barreled cannons into the position, the surviving artillerymen panicked and scattered, fleeing frantically toward the rear.

With this air-to-ground coordination, capturing another regiment-level artillery position cost Lelouch only a single tank—a vast improvement over their performance in Pereshchepyne three hours prior.

...

Under Lelouch's flanking breakthrough, Karlivka was soon bypassed. By the time all of this was concluded, it was barely time for lunch.

However, a massive infantry force remained garrisoned within the county town. Unlike the defenders of Pereshchepyne, these soldiers did not surrender the moment they were cut off.

This complication forced Lelouch to slightly rein in his offensive pace. He needed to wait for the regular infantry, who were advancing on foot from the rear, to catch up and fill the defensive lines to prevent his flanks from being severed.

Fortunately, Lelouch and Rommel had previously formulated a tactic: dividing the armored division into two detachments. One would assault for twelve hours while the other rested and slept for eight, followed by four hours of travel to catch up to the territory newly conquered by their comrades in the preceding twelve hours.

As it had already been six hours since the battle commenced, Lelouch ordered one tank regiment, one mechanized infantry regiment, and one motorized infantry regiment to stand by in place, maintaining a semi-encirclement along the western flank of Karlivka.

Meanwhile, Rommel pushed forward with the remaining tank regiment, mechanized infantry regiment, and motorized infantry regiment. Lelouch permitted Rommel to halt at nightfall and await his arrival for the shift change.

At the same time, Lelouch ordered the crews to conduct an emergency transfer of fuel. The crews resting in place and awaiting reinforcements used siphons to extract excess fuel from their tanks, supplying the troops who were about to resume the assault. They also hauled several extra crates of machine-gun ammunition and 57mm shells over to their advancing allies.

The three regiments tasked with remaining at Karlivka to monitor the besieged Lusha forces would simply hold their ground. Once the rear supply convoy arrived alongside the main infantry force, they could refuel and rearm from it.

The entire handover took about an hour, during which all the soldiers seized the opportunity to eat lunch. They rested briefly afterward so the ensuing turbulence wouldn't induce motion sickness and make them vomit their meals. Rommel finally resumed the march at 1:00 PM.

Lelouch stayed behind to wait for the supply convoys and infantry to catch up. During this time, the Lusha forces inside Karlivka attempted to break out, but Lelouch beat them back at every turn.

It wasn't until past 5:00 PM, with the sky darkening, that Lelouch finally saw a massive convoy of horse-drawn carriages catching up from the rear, accompanied by infantrymen taking turns riding and running.

Seeing his tardy comrades, Lelouch complained, "What took you so long? I had to ration out diesel and ammunition to Deputy Division Commander Rommel just to ensure his half of the armored division could sustain the tempo of the attack!"

The colonel in charge of escorting the logistics carriage convoy looked utterly helpless. As he apologized to Lelouch, he explained breathlessly, "Every single one of us was taking turns on horseback. The horses had to pull the carts and carry the soldiers; they simply couldn't run any faster. We marched 50 kilometers in twelve hours—is that not fast enough? We averaged over four kilometers an hour without stopping. We didn't even pause for lunch. You guys are just advancing way too fast."

A wave of sorrow washed over Lelouch. This was the frustrating reality of mule-and-horse-drawn logistics.

There were simply too few trucks. Having enough to reorganize infantry regiments into motorized regiments was already a luxury. Almost all the trucks were dedicated to transporting troops; where would they find spares to haul fuel and munitions?

"Alright, enough of that. Hurry up and refuel my hundred-plus tanks! Move those ammo crates faster! Rommel might already be waiting for me at the next county town! I made an agreement with him: we push at least 80 kilometers in a single day and night. We have to reach the outskirts of Kharkiv in two days."

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