Chapter 129: The 16th Division of the Beast Army

When Ma Zheng learned that the Japanese army planned to transfer the 16th Division to the Mongolian army, he was a little conflicted, worried and excited.

The concern was naturally due to the combat effectiveness of the 16th Division, a first-class permanent division of the Japanese Army, which was well-equipped and participated in the Russo-Japanese War in its first year.

After the outbreak of the Lugou Bridge Incident, Japan began a full-scale war of aggression against China. To this end, Japan mobilized for the war and began to recruit a large number of soldiers, and the 16th Division, which was a first-class division, expanded from 18,000 in peacetime to about 25,000 in wartime. In September 1937, the 16th Division landed at Tanggu Port in Tianjin and was incorporated into the battle sequence of the Second Army of the Japanese North China Front. Subsequently, he participated in battles in areas such as the Ziya River.

What really made the 16th Division famous was the attack on Shanghai and Nanjing at the end of October 1937, when the 16th Division was incorporated into the battle sequence of the Shanghai Dispatch Army and transferred from North China to Shanghai.

When the 16th Division landed near Shanghai, the Japanese had already occupied Shanghai, so Matsui Ishone, then the commander of the Japanese Central China Front, ordered the division to pursue the Chinese troops retreating from Shanghai to Nanjing. Subsequently, the 16th Division, under the leadership of Nakajima Imasago, successively captured Changshu, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Danyang, Jurong, Tangshui Town, and Qilinmen, and entered the Purple Mountain line in the eastern suburbs of Nanjing.

Ma Zheng attaches great importance to such a heavy army group, although the 16th Division is nominally the same as the 26th Division, which is a division-sized establishment. But Ma Zheng knew that the two divisions were fundamentally different.

The 16th Division is a first-class permanent division of the Japanese Army, with a four-four system of combat personnel, about 15,000 to 20,000 combatants, plus 28,200 non-combatants from the first division and two brigades. Because it was composed of units that had survived the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, it had been formed for a long time, experienced large and small wars, and had relatively solid combat experience and training, so it was the absolute main force of the Japanese invasion of China.

According to the establishment of the Japanese army, the permanent division has two brigades under its jurisdiction, two infantry wings under the brigade and regiment, three infantry brigades under the jurisdiction of the infantry wing, four infantry squadrons, one machine gun squadron, and one artillery squadron under the jurisdiction of the brigade, and three infantry squadrons under the jurisdiction of one machine gun group, one grenadier group, and two rifle groups under the jurisdiction of the infantry squadron.

In addition, the division has an artillery wing, a baggage wing, an engineer wing, a cavalry wing, and other units. Not counting the automatic firepower such as light and heavy machine guns, there are 44 75mm mountain guns, 12 75mm field guns, and 8 Type 92 infantry guns alone, which is much more powerful than a group army of the Nationalist Government.

Now the Japanese base camp has transferred such a powerful beast to the Suicha area, which is an unprecedented challenge for the Suicha base area. Compared with the strong 16th Division, Ma Zheng's division was far inferior in terms of strength and firepower. Not to mention that the 16th Division still has the 26th Division, the 2nd Independent Mixed Brigade, the Cavalry Group, and a large number of puppet troops to cooperate in the operation.

However, Ma Zheng was also a little excited about the arrival of the 16th Division, why, because this division was one of the culprits in the Nanjing Massacre. The reason why the 16th Division is so famous in China is because of its brilliant achievements on the one hand, and its brutal behavior on the other.

On the way to Nanjing, the division was unable to keep up with the supply because the speed of the march was too fast, so it ordered the "expropriation" of grain and straw on the spot, and the so-called "expropriation" was actually plunder. What is even more appalling is that on the way to Nanjing, a "100 people beheading" killing competition was actually launched, which was the so-called "100 people beheading" that was hyped up by Japan's "Tokyo Daily News" and other newspapers at that time.

This incident specifically occurred during the pursuit from Wuxi to Changzhou, and Second Lieutenant Noda Takeshi, the third adjutant of the 9th Infantry Wing of the 19th Brigade of the division, and Second Lieutenant Toshiaki Mukai, the leader of the artillery squad of the brigade, agreed to see who would kill 100 people with Japanese swords first when they arrived in Nanjing.

After that, the two officers began to slaughter on a large scale, and when they reached the Purple Mountain outside Nanjing, Noda Takeshi killed 105 people, while Mukai Toshiaki killed 106 people. Since it was not possible to confirm who would kill 100 people first, it was decided to restart.

In addition to these atrocities, the most serious atrocities committed by the 16th Division occurred after the capture of Nanjing.

In the early morning of December 13, 1937, the 20th Infantry Wing of the 16th Division occupied Zhongshanmen. On the same day, the 33rd Wing and the 38th Wing of the division, with the cooperation of light armored vehicles, rushed along the Xuanwu Lake from outside the Taiping Gate to the Xiaguan River in the north of Nanjing, in order to cut off the retreat of the Chinese troops.

In the afternoon, when the 33rd and 38th Wings entered Xiaguan, there were a large number of Chinese soldiers preparing to cross the Yangtze River, and there were also many Chinese soldiers crossing the river on the river. The Japanese troops immediately opened heavy fire with machine guns, and for a time the river was dyed red. Some of the Chinese soldiers waiting to cross the Yangtze River returned to the city of Nanjing, where they took refuge in the safe zone, while others were shot or captured by the Japanese. Then, the Japanese army massacred the captured Chinese soldiers along the Yangtze River.

After the fall of Nanjing, the 16th Division carried out a "sweep" in and out of the eastern suburbs of Nanjing in accordance with a pre-formulated plan. In the course of the "sweep", the 16th Division captured many Chinese servicemen who had laid down their arms.

Regarding the captured Chinese prisoners, the commander of the 16th Division, Nakajima Imago recorded in his diary: "Most of the defeated enemy entered the forests and villages in the combat area of the 16th Division, and on the other hand, there were also those who escaped from the Zhenjiang fortress, and there were prisoners everywhere, and the number was too large to deal with, so the policy of total extermination was basically not implemented, and it was decided to adopt the policy of total and complete extermination."

According to incomplete statistics, the 16th Division alone massacred no less than 50,000 Chinese prisoners in Nanjing. In particular, after the Japanese occupied Nanjing, the Nanjing garrison, mainly the 30th Infantry Brigade of the 16th Division, began to search for Chinese soldiers who had laid down their arms throughout the city. In the course of the "sweep" of the remnants of the enemy, the 16th Division forcibly dragged young men with hat marks on their heads and calluses on their hands from among the refugees and massacred them en masse, many of them ordinary civilians.

In the process of searching for Chinese soldiers, some Japanese officers and soldiers who had no military discipline at all even wantonly **** women and looted property. During the post-war trial of Japanese war criminals, many Nanjing citizens testified to the atrocities of the Japanese army's "Nakajima Force". The so-called "Nakajima Force" is the 16th Division headed by Nakajima Imago.

It can be said that Nakajima Imago and his 16th Division have committed extremely serious crimes on the land of China, which is simply too numerous to mention. For such a beast army, Ma Zheng had long thought about it for a while.

If you want to say that Ma Zheng wants to eliminate the Japanese division the most, Gu Shoufu's sixth division ranks first, and this sixteenth division ranks second. It's a pity that these two divisions fought in Central China before, and Ma Zheng's division had no chance to confront them. God has eyes, and he actually let the 16th Division go to the edge of his defense area, and even the heavens give face like this, how can Ma Zheng be polite to them!

Therefore, when he learned that the 6th Division was about to be transferred to Chahar, Ma Zheng ordered the Propaganda Department to start publicizing the atrocities of this beast unit, and at the same time to step up the training of the troops, so as to make those recruits form a combat force before the arrival of the 16th Division.

In view of the fact that the strength of the troops was still a little insufficient, especially when he was about to face such a behemoth as the 16th Division, Ma Zheng immediately sent a report to the headquarters of the Second War Zone Commander, asking the two regiments allocated to him by the Military Commission to be rebuilt immediately to make up for the shortage of soldiers.

Yan Laoxi had just owed Ma Zheng a favor in the matter of northwest Beijing, and after receiving the telegram, he immediately sent a telegram to Sun Weiru's department, ordering the two regiments of the department to immediately go north.