The battle is still ongoing. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The Japanese soldiers continued to advance, in the midst of the intersecting nets, in the face of rain of bullets, and treked painfully and hard towards their target, gradually closing the distance to the first trench - it was almost close, only the last thirty meters were left - and from time to time, one soldier would be shot and fall, but this would not stop the others, and the other soldier would immediately vacate his position and push the line forward a little further.

Nogi Noshinori watched all this calmly, his heart full of joy - yes, that was his mood now, joy, the lieutenant general thought that victory was within reach, as long as - of course, it was necessary, that his soldiers crossed the last bit of distance and were able to use their bayonets to drive the Qing soldiers out of their positions, to plant the flag of the Empire of Japan on it, and to announce to the whole world that the valiant Imperial samurai had defeated their enemies.

He's about to fulfill his vow before going to war.

A slight smile appeared on Nogi's mouth, but the people next to him could barely notice it, and they couldn't feel it. It is obvious that apart from the lieutenant general himself and other Japanese officers, not a single person believed that the goddess of victory would lift her skirt to the Japanese army.

At least not today.

Today, it is an impossible goal for the Japanese Army to win. Coalition officers and journalists believed that relying only on the few remaining soldiers of that force on the battlefield, about 900 or less, they would not have a chance to enter the first trench at all, or, if some soldiers rushed in, they would be immediately overwhelmed by the overwhelmingly superior Chinese soldiers, without even a chance to breathe.

The outcome of the battle has become extremely clear.

Because of his judgment of the ending, an American journalist felt that he should interview Nogi on the spot and ask him what he thought of the failure—reporters are always in the habit of asking the wrong questions to the wrong people at the wrong time. Out of his professional habits, this reporter slowly approached the god of the Japanese army and took the liberty of asking his question.

"General Nogi, what do you think about the impending defeat?"

"Failure?" A wave of anger quickly rose in Nogi Noshinori's heart: at the moment when he was about to win, there was a Nanban reporter who thought he would lose? A basin of cold water. What could be more intolerable than that? In the end, though, the lieutenant general kept his anger under control and didn't show it.

Although his tone was chillingly cold. "The valiant samurai of the Great Japanese Empire will soon be victorious, and the Shina army will be the losers."

It was only because of his consternation that the reporter was stunned for a moment - in any case, he could not come up with a reason why the Japanese would win, and if it was not his ears, it was the Japanese general in front of him who had a problem with his grasp of the situation on the battlefield. Of course, before drawing conclusions, he first needs to confirm it.

"You mean...... Win? General Nogi, did I hear me right? ”

"It is an irrefutable fact that the Imperial Japanese Army was about to win this battle." Nogi continued to try to control his anger, and as one way to do so, he turned his gaze from the reporter to the battlefield and pointed there, "Mr. reporter, don't you see that the soldiers of our army are gradually defeating the cowardly Shina with their bravery? ”

"All I see is that your soldiers are rapidly being depleted in the fire net of the Chinese army." The reporter spread his hands and said he had not seen what the lieutenant general had described.

It was the Japanese army that was gradually moving towards defeat. What can be seen is that although the Japanese soldiers had reduced the distance between them and the trench to less than twenty meters - which may have been so short - their number had also dropped to about seven hundred, the number of Chinese soldiers in the trench was at least three or even four times that number.

The Japanese could not have won. The reporter reaffirmed this fact, and at the same time, he further confirmed that Nogi Noshinori was indeed not clear enough about the current situation on the battlefield, even if he kept looking there.

However, Nogi Noshinori has the opposite view of him. "Mr. Reporter, you have not seen the current situation clearly." He said loudly, drawing the attention of every soldier and reporter in the vicinity, "The valiant imperial warriors are about to break through the positions of the Chinese people, and victory will surely be ours." ”

"There are less than seven hundred of your soldiers left, and the number of Chinese is at least three times as large," the journalist struggled to state the facts he knew, "and I personally believe that they cannot win in a brutal white-knuckle battle, general." ”

"Ridiculous!" Nogi Noshinori finally couldn't help it, and raised his voice a little more, angrily refuting the strange arguments of the American journalists, or at least he thought it was, "How can a cowardly and incompetent soldier outperform my brave and fearless Imperial Samurai in a white-knuckle battle that highlights the will of the soldiers?" Even if there are less than 700 officers and soldiers left in our army, we can still kill the soldiers of China in the battle with one hundred and no armor left......"

He talked endlessly, but the reporter couldn't listen to anything anymore. It is clear that his opinion is that the Japanese general has not only lost control of the situation on the battlefield, but has fallen into some strange fantasy, trying to turn the outcome of the battle in his favor by a pipe dream.

It's funny. The reporter shook his head secretly. The appointment of such a general by the Japanese government as commander of the expeditionary force was undoubtedly a wrong decision, and for the Japanese soldiers, such a mistake was clearly unfortunate and fatal.

He turned his gaze back to the battlefield. Now that the Japanese soldiers were close to their goal, the next step would be to enter the Chinese trenches, but they clearly could not win the battle as their generals thought.

The Chinese are about to embrace the goddess of victory.

It seems so—however the American journalist may think—but Nogi Noshinori was not entirely wrong in his judgment, and it was true that the Japanese soldiers were superior to the soldiers of the Takee Front Army, though not all. It was not a matter of skill, although the fact was that all the Qing soldiers lacked training in bayonet fighting, with the exception of the part of the Umbrella military adviser training, the bigger problem was that they did not have the courage to fight with a white knuckle.

This problem was evident in the First Opium War: as soon as the British began to charge with bayonets, the Qing army would immediately collapse, and they could hold out much longer under heavy artillery fire. Next, in the battle to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Second Opium War, and the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing army all showed that they would collapse at the touch of a finger when encountering a white-knuckle battle, and this time was no exception.

This time, however, several hundred of the soldiers who had been trained by American military advisers were not as fearful of white-knuckle combat as their other colleagues, and they also had good skills - interestingly, the Umbrella mercenaries rarely trained in white-knuckle combat, but used pistols and shotguns instead of hand-to-hand weapons - and under the guidance and supervision of these soldiers, the remaining Qing soldiers did not turn and flee, but continued to stay in the trenches.

Even though they were very scared, some even shivered nervously.

Everyone was still waiting, waiting for that order.

"Get on the bayonet." That's the order - that's how it should be. But in fact, the Qing soldiers in the trench were given another order: "Copy the guys." ”

Many did not know what this order meant, but the soldiers trained by American advisers immediately threw their rifles aside and picked up the sapper shovels that had been set aside—some of them even sharpened, the sharp edges glinting with icy light. It was only by this time that their colleagues realized that they had put aside the sapper shovels not to mend the trenches, but to fight the Japanese. And judging from the expressions on the faces of these soldiers, they just wanted to knock the heads of the Japanese with the shovels in their hands.

Then, the remaining soldiers remembered the reward that General Nie had promised before the battle began: fifty taels of silver for the head of a Japanese soldier.

Someone is going to get rich......

Just when Qing soldiers who were not prepared for close combat were secretly frustrated or looking for a weapon that could replace the sapper's shovel - such as a broadsword, but only some of them carried this weapon out of habit, which had been abandoned for several years - the first Japanese soldier jumped into the trench.

Then came the second, third, fourth......

At this moment, a smile appeared on Nogi Noshinori's face. However, the situation developed completely differently than he expected. Not a single one of them retreated, and all the Qing soldiers with and without sapper shovels swarmed up, but the Japanese soldiers did not have the right weapons to fight them: neither the bayonet-mounted rifles nor the officers' command knives were unsuitable for use in the trenches.

Moreover, the Qing soldiers had an absolute advantage in numbers, and more importantly, they were all crazy about a bounty.

For the Japanese soldiers, the successful entry into the trench only led them to another hell. As a result, these soldiers quickly disappeared from the battlefield, like some stones thrown into a pond that quickly sank to the bottom of the pond after making a splash, never to float.

Then, the smile on Nogi's face disappeared, replaced by the calm he had at the beginning. To others, the Japanese general seemed completely indifferent to his defeats and losses, yet only the lieutenant general himself knew how angry he was now.

"Soldiers! More soldiers are needed! A voice hissed inside him. (To be continued, if you want to know what will happen next, please log in to the www.qidian.com, more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!) (To be continued.) )