The same is said, Erling Mountain, the military position.

In the afternoon, when the deafening roar of artillery fire receded like a tidal wave, the commander of the 13th Wing of the Army, Infantry Osaisoya Ryosuke, staggered to his feet, and by this time, the shelter had been reduced to ruins. It took him a lot of effort to remove the two beams and get out of the hole, and he stood on the cool breeze of the mountain with the smoke of gunpowder.

Erling Mountain is the 203 highland, and it is said that the language takes its homonym, and it is called Erling Mountain. The original name of Erling Mountain is actually called Monkey Rock Mountain, located in the west of Lushun City, because of the altitude of 203 meters, it is called 203 Highland. The 203 Heights is the commanding heights of the western front, close to the urban area of Lushun and the port fortress, and echoes with the nearby Wangtai Mountain and East Jiguan Mountain. Because the 203 Heights can control the urban area of Arthur and the military port fortress, and affect the whole body, it is an important position for the warring parties to compete for during the Russo-Russian War.

For himself, Erling Mountain has a special significance.

From August 19 to 24, 1904, the first ground assault on the Russian fortress at Lushunkou failed. At noon on September 19, 1904, the army launched its second general offensive. Nogi Noshinori, commander of the Third Army, ordered the use of machine guns to supervise the battle, and ordered the soldiers to only advance and not retreat, otherwise they would all be killed on the spot. On the left and right flank battlefields, after four days of fierce fighting, the army captured several small batteries in the south fortress of the naval division battalion, but the main target of the 203 heights could not be captured for a long time. Nogi Noshinori was so anxious that he fell ill and collapsed in bed. On September 22, he ordered the offensive to be stopped. In this general attack, the army suffered 7,500 casualties and the Russian army suffered 4,450 casualties. After that, from October 30 to November 2, the army launched the third general offensive, mainly attacking the commanding heights of the Eastern Front, Wangtai Mountain and East Jiguan Mountain, but it was also unsuccessful. On November 26, 1904, Nogi Noshinori issued the fourth general attack order. After being unable to capture the fortress of Songshushan and the East Jiguanshan Fort separately, Nogi integrated the 7th Division, which had just been reinforced from China, into the 3rd Army, and invested nearly 100,000 troops in the 4 divisions, trying to capture the commanding heights of the Eastern Front as soon as possible, but still could not win. Later, he changed his tactics and transferred 3,000 strong soldiers from four divisions to form six death squads to attack the western foot of Pine Mountain. Before leaving, Nogi Noshinori personally made strict demands to the daredevils: survive unexpectedly, fight to the death; Flee from the battle, and kill without forgiveness. In the evening, under the cover of artillery, death squads sorted. At night, by the moonlight, the death squad of the army crossed the trench and rushed into the fourth fortress of Osong Mountain. The Russian army used searchlight scanning and machine-gun fire at death squads, and the two sides fought fiercely and fought with white knives. At 2 a.m., more than half of the death squads were killed or wounded, and the assault was still unsuccessful, and the rest withdrew.

Seeing that the battle situation was stalemate, Gentaro Kodama, chief of the general staff of the army at the headquarters in Liaoyang, personally came to Lushun to help in the battle and directly participated in the command. Nogi Noshinori ordered the warlords to set up machine guns to drive the soldiers to fight for the Russian fortress, and those who retreated were all killed. In order to compete for this hill less than 250 meters long and only more than 30 meters wide, the army dispatched 64,000 troops, used more than 60 large and small artillery, and fired 11,000 shells, including 2,254 280-mm howitzer shells, weighing nearly 500 tons, and 17,000 casualties, and finally captured the 203 heights on December 5, 1904. After the fierce battle, the corpses piled up by the army in the forward position were actually higher than the Russian position, and the soldiers of the army stepped on the fragmentary bodies of their comrades to kill into the trenches of the Russian army, and the corpses of the dead soldiers on both sides were piled up, and they were actually as high as the main peak of 203! One combatant said afterwards: "This is not a struggle between people, but a struggle between men and steel, burning oil, explosives and the stench of corpses!" ”

At that time, the largest 280 mm heavy artillery of the Yue army had a firing range of 7.8 kilometers, and the 203 Heights were only 5 kilometers away from the military port where the Russian warships docked. On January 1, 1905, the Russian generals had no intention of fighting again, and took the initiative to ask the army to surrender, and Lushun fell into the hands of the army.

In order to boast of the "great military exploits" of the army to conquer the 203 Heights, after the end of the Russian War, Nogi Noshinori renamed this mountain "Erling Mountain" with the homonym of the 203 Heights, and built a 10.3-meter-high, similar to the monument of the rifle bullets, the monument is made of shell skins and waste weapons collected here after the war. Nogi Noshinori, who lost his two sons in this battle, also wrote an inscription and wrote a poem by himself: "Erling Mountain is difficult to climb, the boy's entrepreneurial period is difficult, the iron-blooded mountain shape is changed, and everyone respects Erling Mountain." ”

Erling Mountain witnessed the most glorious and glorious moment of the army in those years, but today, these splendor and glory are about to cease to exist.

A round of red light peeked out of the thick smoke, probably after staying in the dark cave for too long, and the dilated pupils were like bats that could not immediately adapt to the sunlight, so Isoya had to squint his eyes. But when his pupils readjusted to the bright light of Bai Yue, he was suddenly surprised to find what a vivid and magnificent picture of war the earth presented to him.

In front of you is the endless sea, shimmering on the distant eastern horizon, which is indescribably quiet and beautiful. But the distant mountains had been crushed overnight by war machines from the Chinese, whom he had always despised.

During these days, Chinese planes flew through the sky day and night, artillery spewed fire in the distance, hundreds of large surface ships, including battleships in the wind, cruised in Haikou, and everywhere in this land destined to become a battlefield there were burning fortresses, blocked rivers, writhing and groaning lives, corpses that had solidified and would be solidified, and countless deep and shallow craters and trenches.

The current Erling Mountain position is surprisingly quiet.

Isoya's cheap brain was completely blank at this point.

Ryosuke Isoya was born in Hyogo Prefecture and was the third son of Jiro Isoya, a former Sasayama clan. Ryosuke Isoya graduated from the 16th class of the Army Non-commissioned Officer School in 1904 and graduated from the Army University in 1915. In 1916, he served in the General Staff Headquarters, and in 1917 he was sent to China, where he was stationed in Guangzhou to support Sun Yat-sen's Guangdong Revolutionary Political Axe, and was later promoted to Dazuo, and came to Lushun as the captain of the 13th Infantry Wing.

Ryosuke Isoya is recognized as the "Shina Pass" in the army. He has focused on political and military developments south of the Yangtze River in China, with a particular focus on Sun Yat-sen and his Chinese Revolutionary Party system. In the army, the "Zhinatong" was divided into the "northern branch" and the "southern branch", with the northern branch mainly attaching importance to the northern branch and Manchuria centered on Yanjing, while the southern branch was concerned with the Chinese revolutionaries and mainly paying attention to Sun Yat-sen's movements. Therefore, there is a big difference between the two, and it has had a great impact on the formulation of the China policy of the Army. This is because the leadership of the army is also divided into four factions: the "Continental European faction," the "Anglo-American faction," the "Russian faction," and the "China faction," which are full of contradictions and struggles among themselves. This is also one of the reasons why Ben's China policy has been constantly changing.

Ryosuke Isoya has a keen interest in China, and he has said more than once, "The military personnel called 'Shina Tong' must also be viewed separately and cannot be generalized." As soldiers, they have the common task of conducting detailed investigations and analyses of China's national affairs, national defense, military strength, and people's conditions, and reporting to their superiors and staff headquarters in order to prepare for war. However, the way we care about China and the way we understand it is very different. After the Meiji Restoration, with the implementation of the policy of enriching the country and strengthening the military, the management of the "Asian continent" also began. Its primary targets are North Korea and China. For this reason, the War Department has continuously sent army personnel to China to reconnoiter China's national conditions and collect intelligence on China, and it was in this environment that Isoya began to be interested in China; on the occasion of graduating from the Army Non-commissioned Officer School, he said: "My grades in school are all right, but in short, I hope to go to China, but I don't want to enter the Land University." ”

After the Chinese Revolutionary Party was supported by the Chinese Revolutionary Party to rise up in Guangdong, Sun Yat-sen proclaimed himself Generalissimo, while the people of Guangdong and the warlords of the southern provinces of China called him "Sun Cannon", but Ryosuke Isoya did not think so. He has always regarded Sun Yat-sen as a "teacher". In 1908, after receiving orders from the War Department, Ryosuke Isoya visited Sun Yat-sen for the first time in Shanghai. After this meeting with Sun Yat-sen, Ryosuke Isoya, who was more "concerned" about China, decided to work under Sun Yat-sen after the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911.

Ryosuke Isoya was actually very disapproving of the military department's support for the Chinese Revolutionary Party's move in Guangdong, and at that time, after conducting intelligence reconnaissance in southern China, he had already discovered the young "high-tech warlord" who had quietly risen in Jiangxi.

After a study of Yang Shuoming, Ryosuke Isoya came to the following conclusion: "Unlike Sun Yat-sen, who was bent on dedicating himself to the people of China, this young warlord named Yang Shuoming was close to Britain and the United States for the benefit of himself, his wife's family, and the overseas Chinese businessmen behind him, and was controlled by an American consortium, and they jointly adopted a policy of resistance to anti-Japanese exclusion." This person does not trust anyone from the bottom of his heart, and among the powerful people of the [***] valve, there are many people who put the interests of themselves, their own people, or those who support them first compared to the future of their own people. But this young soldier was able to fully and fully understand this atmosphere and put it into practice. ”

But he didn't pay much attention to the young warlord until the catastrophic air raid in Guangzhou.

During that air raid, Ryosuke Isoya always believed that it was the protection of Amaterasu that saved him from the disaster.

For Yang Shuoming, who eliminated the leadership of the Chinese Revolutionary Party and the important military and political officials, Isoya Ryosuke can be said to hate it to the core, and he realized how much disaster this person would bring to Yumoto in the future, so he began to pay attention to Yang Shuoming, but the War Department did not pay attention to Isoya Ryosuke's warning. And Ryosuke Isoya had to think about himself to complete the "research work" of the enemy.

And now, Ryosuke Isoya, who was transferred to Lushun, is no longer able to complete the task he gave himself.

At this time, most of the trenches under Isoya's feet had been blown up, and there were many bloodstained wounded soldiers sitting or lying in the trenches. The chief of staff was lying unconscious on a canvas, he crouched down, and a paramedic next to him was saying something to him, and strangely, he couldn't hear the other party's voice at all. All he could see was that people's mouths were open and closed, like fish thrown on the shore and about to die.

It's over, I can't hear anymore. A wave of sadness rose in Ryosuke Isoya's heart.

In front of the position, there were broken corpses everywhere, and it was impossible to distinguish which ones belonged to the enemy and which belonged to one's own. The fiery red sun haunted the smoke of gunpowder, shining as generously as ever on the devastated battlefield and the dead soldiers.

Ryosuke Isoya's gaze continued to scan blankly over the position. The surviving soldiers greeted their commander with an expression of despair that had survived the catastrophe, and now only the Wing Commander, deaf to the ears of the cannons, could read the language of his soldiers. It was a force about to be crushed, they had stood in the thousands, and stood as dense as a woods, but when they had fought for seven days and seven nights on this position, which said that the past glory and glory of the army had been written, there were less than six hundred living soldiers left in this wing.

Ryosuke Isoya suddenly realizes that this may be the last moment of his military career.

In the distance, again a team of enemy attacks appeared.

In the misty sunlight, the figures of the groups of Chinese soldiers seem to float silently in the hallucination, making people feel that the picture in front of them is not real, but more like a trance dream.

A nightmare that never stops.

“…… Keep fighting! Remember, even if you have one person left, you'll have to fight until dark. After dark, reinforcements will arrive and launch a counter-attack...... As your commander, I am proud of your heroic deeds. Soldiers of this Empire! Look in front of you, the filthy corpses of the enemy are all over the positions, the remains of our comrades have not yet cooled, and we have no reason to stop fighting...... Retreat is just as shameful as surrender! ”

Despite his impassioned words, he could no longer hear the responses of the soldiers.

Looking at the rapidly approaching enemy, he leaned down, with difficulty picked up a gun from the ground and walked into the soldier's trench.

And when he walked into the trenches, he found that what he was holding in his hand was a Chinese-made "Flower Machine" submachine gun.

This gun should have been snatched from the hands of the Chinese soldiers who died in the battle by the soldiers who lacked rapid-fire weapons.

Now for this kind of "flower machine gun", the soldiers are already very familiar with it.

This submachine gun equipped with a 50-round arc magazine is mainly equipped with the [***] team in Jiangxi. And it was this kind of submachine guns and their masters that made the officers and men suffer enough.

At the moment of life and death, the officers and men, who had always been arrogant, had no choice but to bow their heads, throw away those bulky rifles after the ammunition was exhausted, and do everything possible to collect the enemy's weapons for battle.

And those who can pick up such guns and ammunition often have an extra chance of survival.

It's just that now, Isoya can't say whether he's lucky or unlucky.

And until now, Ryosuke Isoya did not want to believe that the Chinese factories were now able to produce such advanced and terrible weapons.

The battle started again, and the fierce artillery fire and gunpowder smoke instantly enveloped his own position, and the Chinese [***] team once again invested heavy troops to fight for Erling Mountain, and the fierce battle lasted until the evening. It was not until midnight that reinforcements finally arrived, and the seriously wounded Ryosuke Isoya withdrew from his position with the wounded, and by that time his wing had less than 100 officers and men alive, including the lightly and seriously wounded.

In the afternoon of the next day, the bad news finally came, and the heights of Erling Mountain were lost and occupied by the [***] team.

Hearing the news, Isoya was cheap and cried bitterly in the ward with his comrades.

After Ryosuke Isoya returned to Yumoto after nine deaths, when he was interviewed by a news reporter about the "Battle of Erling Mountain", he still couldn't help but burst into tears.

"Do you know what it means to fight? You haven't been on the front line, you can't know, you can't know, and I've been there. We fought in blood, the Chinese tanks were crushed in the pile of dead people, and those dead bodies even made squeaky screams, like tortured rats, have you heard? ……”

“…… At that time, the war was already different from the war of Yulu, we paid great attention to building strong fortifications, and the superiors also demanded so, and our trenches were dug very deep, but in the end they were all blown into potholes and flats, and the enemy's bullets were like rain; Airplanes bombed, artillery bombarded, tanks crushed, dead people are actually a blink of an eye......"

“…… When our trenches were flattened, we built up bunkers with corpses, and our superiors called them 'Wall of Sighs' and 'Meat City' in order to boost our morale and encourage us to do so! The machine-gun bullets fired by the enemy hit the bunkers of these human bodies with a 'poof' sound, splattering dead people's brains, carrion, and dirty blood everywhere. After a long time, it sticks to the face and can't be scraped off with a knife...... Later, there were so many dead people that we simply rolled around in the pile of dead people, sometimes numb from the beating, unable to hear any sound, our minds were blank, and even we felt strange, not knowing whether we were alive or dead......"

“…… The emperor called on us to punish the tyrannical tribes and defend Manchuria, and we all wanted to win the war, but can we win the war by shouting slogans? You must know that the soldiers of the Imperial Army have never been afraid of death. You also know that when people are not afraid of death, there is no invincible enemy, let alone those despicable Chinese armies. However, as soon as we fought with the Chinese army, we found that all our previous understanding of war, including the spirit, weapons, strategic principles, and tactical principles, as well as the experience, experience, and ideological preparation for war, had all lost their effect! ”

(To be continued)