Episode 25 The bloody battle in the suburbs of Nanjing

The Yangtze River makes a small bend here in Nanjing, and the north of Nanjing is in an east-west direction, and the west of Nanjing is in a north-south direction, which is divided into east bank and west case.

10 kilometers southwest of Nanjing, the Yangtze River runs north-south, and there are three large sandbanks lined up on the river, which are called Zimu Continent, Xinji Continent and Xinsheng Continent respectively. The northernmost is the Mother Continent.

Now there is a lot of artillery fire here, and the fighting is extremely fierce.

It was almost dusk, and the fog was full of flashes of explosions, muzzle flames, shouts of killing, machine guns, grenade explosions, and the whooshing of flamethrowers...... The smoke and fog were mixed together, and no one could be seen a few steps away, and there were bayonets everywhere, as if it had reached the end of the world.

There was a lot of gunfire in this place, but there were very few shells falling. Now that a large number of Qing troops have attacked the east bank, the two armies are fighting in a melee, and the artillery of both sides does not dare to hit here, for fear of hurting their own people. The artillery of the Ming army in the distance was only used to block and shoot to prevent the Qing army from breaking through further.

Strictly speaking, this section of the defense line is also considered the Nanjing section, because after all, it is only about ten kilometers away from the suburbs of Nanjing. But even if it is counted as the defense line of the Nanjing section, it is also a relatively marginal part. The three sandbanks in the middle of the river here are not as large as the Jiangxinzhou in Nanjing, the soil is still relatively soft, and no overly large or heavy fortifications can be built, and there is no deep and complex underground transportation system on the sandbanks. Under the strict order of Emperor Guangwu to "go to Nanjing for the Spring Festival", the Qing army attacked desperately regardless of casualties, and after paying thousands of lives, it was relatively easy to land on Zimu Island.

The sandbar on the river divided the river into two tributaries, and once the Qing army landed on the sandbar in the middle, it was equivalent to having a springboard, and it was much easier to cross the second tributary.

Because the fortifications on Zimu Island are smaller and lighter, and they are not deep into the ground, they were originally overturned by the intensive artillery fire of the Qing army, and some of the larger fortifications left have also blown out broken gaps, and the most important thing is that the fog causes them to not see far, and the machine guns can only strafe in the general direction, and cannot accurately fire at the point, and when they see the enemy, they are already close at hand. In addition, the Qing army issued some infantry flamethrowers, which were a sharp weapon against the fortifications.

The firing ports of the bunkers are very small, "dada" spits out tongues of fire, the bullets outside can't get in, the grenades can't be thrown in, the ** bag blaster canister can't get close, and it was difficult for the flamethrower hand to get close, but thanks to the fog, they can easily lean within more than ten meters and shoot a stream of fire in the direction of the machine gun's tongue, and if the shot is accurate, the machine gunner inside will be reimbursed. If the bunker is relatively small, or the internal partition is not well designed, the entire bunker will be filled with flames, and all personnel will be burned to death.

The Qing army had very few flamethrowers, but this time in order to break through the defense line during the fog, a large number of flamethrowers were specially prepared, many flamethrowers had no formal training, and the techniques were not accurate, and they carried a large cylinder of fuel on their backs to the battlefield, and they were extremely nervous. As long as the first shot is not accurate, the long flame and the characteristic "whoosh" sound will become a target, and the machine guns will be concentrated in all directions, and the half-hung flamethrower will most likely be hit by several bullets and become a fire man.

Rao is so, the battle in the thick fog, the fixed fortifications are too bad. Coupled with the huge numerical superiority of the Qing army, the Qing soldiers could often take advantage of the cover of dense fog to detour behind the pillbox, breathe fire into it, or throw grenades into it from the side close to the firing port. In this way, a ** fortification will be put to an end.

A large number of Qing infantry were rushing from Zimu Island to the east bank in assault boats, and there was one of the largest pillboxes on Zimu Island that was still resisting.

This large fortification is L-shaped, half underground, covering an area of more than 100 square meters, and is the general headquarters of the Zimuzhou fortification group. This pillbox is well designed, and it is not used to shoot around, but mainly to provide concealment for the command staff, so there are no firing ports on several sides, only there is an entrance at the inner bend of the L shape, or the classic "defensive entrance", and there is a firing port on the side of the type, which is perpendicular to the entrance and protects the entrance from the side. The Qing army did not rush in as many people as they died.

Whenever a figure of the Qing army appeared near the door, the shooting port inside would spit out tongues of fire, not giving the Qing soldiers a chance at all. The Qing army sappers tried to blast from the side with ** bags and blasting canisters, but the cement walls of this headquarters were one and a half meters thick, and after each earth-shattering loud noise, only a small number of broken cement blocks were blown down.

The two firing forks at the entrance covered it, and it was difficult for the Qing flamethrowers to get close. The Qing army's shouts and persuasion to surrender were ineffective, and finally the flamethrower masters were transferred from other divisions, and the flames were finally sprayed accurately into the firing port. But the inside of the fortifications is well designed, and the flames can only go in a little, and it cannot achieve the effect that the whole fortification is filled with flames. And every time a Ming machine gunner was burned to death, new people immediately made up for it, and it seemed that he was determined not to surrender.

Three or four people were burned to death in succession, and it is estimated that the machine gunners have long since died, and now it is the officers who are fighting machine guns.

Finally, after the fifth firepower was cut off, the inside was not replenished in time, and the Qing soldiers swarmed up, and a burst of bayonets rushed to kill, and the last fortifications of Zimuzhou were taken.

The light bulbs in the fortifications were dim, there was a smell of mold and rot, and a row of wounded people lay on the ground in the middle room, moaning incessantly. A few more people, charred and blurred, were already dead.

The Qing soldiers who rushed in had already killed Red Eye, stabbed them with bayonets, and stabbed several to death on the spot. An officer stopped him and had the wounded dragged out.

Outside, the officer told them to lean against the concrete wall, then took a few steps back and called the flamethrower over.

The flamethrower came, and the sprinkler head ignited the flames, and drops of fire kept falling.

"Sir?"

The officer, whose face was covered with blood, pointed to the wounded Ming soldier in the corner, sniffed his nose, and patted the shooter's shoulder:

"You're on the spot."

The surrounding Qing soldiers began to think that the commander had stopped stabbing them with bayonets and wanted to take them prisoners, but now when they heard this, they all let out a beastly cheer and roared loudly:

"Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn! ……”

The flame shooter's face turned white:

"Sir, this ......"

The officer laughed:

"What is this? Avenge the brethren! …… These people are all injured like this, and I won't be able to live without killing them. While it's not dead, squirt a little. Hurry up, stop grinding, brethren are waiting! ”

A few of the Qing soldiers who were looking around couldn't bear it, turned around and walked away, but most of them were so hateful that their eyes were blood-red, their faces were full of excitement, and they shouted in unison with all their strength, and their voices became louder and louder:

"Burn! Burn! Burn! ……”

The flamethrower looked at the frenzied brothers around him, then at the chief, sniffed, and aimed the sprinkler at a few wounded Ming soldiers by the wall.

The two wounded soldiers, who were still conscious, crawled on the ground with all their strength, trying desperately to dodge the flamethrower's sprinklers, but the sprinklers moved, always pointing at them.

Finally, there was a sharp whistling, and several burning men by the wall twitched and rolled. In the cheers of the Qing soldiers, there was another stream of fire, and several people had already become smoking coke.

……

The Qing army has now taken down Zimuzhou, and the east bank defense line has also pulled out several pillboxes, tore a few hundred meters of holes, and the Qing soldiers who rushed over are fighting with the Ming army's capital garrison.

The Qing army is now in a hurry to build a pontoon bridge between the west bank and Zimu Island, hoping to bring over heavy equipment and shoot accurately at the fortifications on the east bank. However, the torpedo boats of the Ming army continued to harass, and the 20-millimeter machine guns hit the sappers who built the bridge, and the flesh and blood flew everywhere. The torpedo boats were racing at a high speed of more than 40 knots, and under the cover of heavy fog, they ran away in one go, and it was difficult for the artillery machine guns on the shore to catch them.

The sappers died more and more, and the commander of the engineer battalion kept protesting with the division commander to remove the brothers. The division commander saw that the casualties were too great, and before the bridge was built, the engineer battalion was lost. Unlike the worthless infantry, these sappers are still valuable. The division commander finally ordered not to build a bridge for the time being, but to rush to the east bank by men, and wait until a stable ferry crossing was established before building a bridge.

Now the Qing army has only tore a few hundred meters through the hole, but more and more Qing soldiers are swarming in. In normal times, such a small opening would soon be covered by the artillery fire of the Ming army, and the opening would be quickly blocked. But now in the thick fog, the Ming army could not observe it at all, and the command did not know where it had been occupied, where it was still in its own hands, and it could not be smashed with artillery, so it could only send waves of infantry to charge in an attempt to beat the Qing army back into the river.

At present, a large number of assault boats have shuttled on the river on both sides of Zimu Island, and larger fishing boats, sand carriers, steamboats, and bamboo rafts have been used to transport troops. With the addition of these large ships, the first batch of heavy machine guns, mountain artillery, and mortars of the Qing army were transported across the river.

Outside Wu Village, which is more than two miles away from the landing site of the Qing army, the 26th Division under the capital garrison of the Ming army is assembling here.

Now it was completely dark, and more than 1,000 meters to the south was a battlefield with earth-shattering sounds, and the sound of explosions and gunfire could be heard very clearly, and the flash of the explosion could be seen through the fog.

The commander was directing the soldiers to dig the trench frantically, and several trucks in front of him drove slowly along the trench, driving dozens of meters and throwing down a bundle of barbed wire. In front of the trenches, sappers are wielding sledgehammers, smashing stakes into the earth, and then pulling rolls of barbed wire around them to form barbed wire.

"Is it dug up here? Digged? Quick, the machine gun pushes over!! ”

The heavy Maxim machine gun was pushed in front of the trench, and a simple slope protection was built with planks and earth, and the machine gun team lay behind it, nervously making preparations: filling the water cylinder, opening the receiver and loading the bullet chain, and setting the scale of a few hundred meters to only a dozen meters......

As soon as a trench was dug up, a group of soldiers jumped down, their upper bodies lying on their sides, their rifles pointing in the direction of the battlefield.

Behind the trenches, more soldiers were loading bayonets on their rifles, checking the bolt rulers and looking at the door, and the officers pried open the wooden crates, grabbed grenades from the straw and handed them to the soldiers.

These soldiers had never fought. Now both veterans and new recruits were so nervous that they looked at the incessant flashes in the south and listened to the rumbling explosions, their faces turned pale, and their hands holding guns trembled.

On a truck behind him, a loudspeaker shouted:

"Brothers of the capital garrison, behind us is Nanjing, our fathers and brothers, our wives and sisters! We must not take a step back! We must not ......"

"The Japanese ———— bombarded !!"

A mortar shell landed nearby, the soldier lay down in a large area, and the glass of the truck shattered. The horn on the roof of the car paused for a moment, and continued to shout:

“…… Let the Qing Lu set foot on the land of the Ming Dynasty! We must not allow the Qing captives to invade Nanjing! Her Majesty the Empress is now in Nanjing, she is not leaving, she is sticking to us! We will swear to defend Nanjing and Her Majesty the Empress to the death! We are the capital garrison, and we are the elite of the Ming Army elite! We want Your Majesty to see how we drove the Qing captives down the Yangtze River! ……”

Only then did the surrounding soldiers lift the dirt off their bodies and get up one after another.

At this time, the sound of gunfire in the distance weakened, and the sound of gunfire also thinned out, and some small-caliber mountain artillery and mortar shells began to fall in the vicinity intensively. Every soldier did not need to be urged by his commander, but was digging trenches and foxholes like crazy with his sapper shovels. From time to time, one or two soldiers were blown into the air.

Some embarrassed figures began to appear in the dense fog to the south, they were in groups of threes and twos, supporting each other, some carrying stretchers, and many of them threw their guns.

These are the remnants of soldiers who have escaped from the battlefield.

There were more and more deserters, and the commander of the 26th Division ordered them all to be intercepted and not allowed to run backwards. The seriously wounded were carried away, and the remaining deserters, who were not injured or lightly wounded, were gathered in front of a dirt slope.

Two large trucks pressed in front of them, and the bright headlights turned on, so that they could not open their eyes.

The deserters only saw that in the darkness behind the glare of the headlights, there seemed to be countless flashes of steel helmets and bayonets.

Someone whispered in horror:

"It's the gendarmerie!"

Two more big trucks drove up. This time, however, it approached backwards, and when the truck stopped, the cloth was lifted.

One of the deserters blocked the lights with his hand and found machine guns in the back of two trucks.

The crowd became frightened, and people tried to flee and were forced back at gunpoint by the gendarmes.

A voice cried out loudly:

"Sir, you can't do this to us!"

With the crying, a large crowd of people fell to their knees in a hula, and they all wept bitterly.

The loudspeaker on the truck rang suddenly, and a cold, calm voice in the darkness said:

"I am Hou Hekun, commander of the 26th Division of the Capital Garrison and the Ming Army."

The crying silenced, and some hesitated to their feet. The voice continued to say coldly:

"I'm disappointed in you. For three hundred years, the Qing Dynasty did not set foot on the land of the Ming Dynasty, but today, this precedent has been set by our generation. The people on the Yangtze River defense line are useless, but you are even more useless. They let the captives come over, but they themselves died in the fortifications. And you are on the run, deserters in the truest sense of the word. …… It is usually said that our capital garrison is many times more elite than those on the defense line, but now it seems that this is not the case, and there are still many people who are in ruins, such as the group of people standing in front of me.

"There is no forgiveness for escaping and killing in battle, and this is the same in any country and any army. Behind us is Nanjing, and we have no way to retreat. And you fled from the battlefield. Yes, you are afraid, you are tired, you have not fought. But the entire division, the entire army, the entire line of defense, who has ever fought? Who is not tired or afraid? But people are afraid that they will still hold on and still rush forward. Why? Because the brothers around are persevering and rushing forward, if you don't rush, you don't have to be a human being! You won't have even a bit of manly dignity left!

"But you people, don't talk about dignity now, don't even want that little bit of shame. Three hundred years ago, it was because there were too many people like you that the Ming Dynasty was taken away by the Qing captives, and tens of millions of ordinary people were brutally killed by the Qing captives. Today this is still under the city of Nanjing, you can all pull your legs and run away, if you are far away, I think you will not let go of a shot, indulge the enemy for a long time, right? Or simply surrender to the Qing and fight us in turn? ”

The faces of these deserters turned purple, and one of the soldiers couldn't hold it back, and shouted:

"Master Hou, if you want to kill, kill it, why do you say it so ugly? The brothers are all men, and no one is a bad seed when they die! I was inexperienced just now, and I was beaten up, if we do it again, the brothers don't say anything else, at least they can beat better than the recruits of your 26th Division! ”

Master Hou sneered:

"Hehe, just have this sentence, I'll let you bitches choose again. Would you rather kneel here and be killed by the bullets of the gendarmes, or would you rather rush forward and let the captives stab you to death with their bayonets? ”

A large group of deserters jumped up and screamed, on the one hand, they were excited to regain their lives, but more importantly, what Master Hou said for a long time was too ugly, and now they finally caught a chance to be humiliated, and they all shouted:

"We're going to rush! We're going to rush !! ”

"Hmph," Senior Commander Hou sneered, "The glory of the first charge belongs to our 26th Division, and it is not your turn to be a bastard." Wait for the next batch. ”

The deserters cursed, and the passion that had just burst out was forced down again, and they all held back like a volcano about to erupt.

The explosions of sporadic mortars and mountain artillery began to intensify, and the sound of shooting could be heard from afar. This shows that the Qing army has basically cleared the Ming army on the riverside and began to advance here.

A red signal flare rose from the rear, and suddenly a semicircular red light flashed behind him, and with the dense thunderous sound of artillery, countless bright lines crossed the sky, the air whistled, and an explosion sounded in the area near the landing ground of the Qing army in the south.

Preparations for fire before the charge of the Ming army began.

The soldiers of the 26th Division were hunched behind the trenches, their guns in sweaty hands, and their eyes under steel helmets were trembling as they stared at the bombed area in the south.

But the words of the division commander who humiliated the deserters just now still echoed in their ears. Even if they are afraid, no one wants to show it, and they all pretend to be casual.

I don't know how long it took, but the shelling stopped.

Behind the trenches, the commander's shouts came and went:

"Get ready! …… Get ready! …… Check the weapon again! …… Check the bayonet! ……”

A green signal flew up in the rear.

A sharp whistle blew, and rows of soldiers jumped out of the trenches and trotted forward with guns in hand.

Mortar shells kept falling among them, and the front-line commanders kept shouting:

"The formation is scattered! …… The formation is scattered! …… Don't huddle together! ……”

The mortars of the Qing army became denser and denser, and gradually the sound of rifles came, and the bullets "swished" past the ears with the wind.

When the offensive vanguard was still a few hundred meters away from the Qing army's estimates, a loud charge horn sounded, and the front-line commanders drew their pistols and waved them, shouting loudly:

"Brothers, for the sake of the Ming Dynasty, rush to ————"

"Rush, ————"

"Kill, ————"

"Ah————h

The shouts were overwhelming, and thousands of young Ming soldiers rushed to the Qing army's position, facing the "da-da-da" machine gun sound on the opposite side, and went forward one after another, without hesitation.