Three days later, on May 30, 1904, Lieutenant General Predensk, commander of the Chita Fortress Defense District, surrendered to Lieutenant General Zhao Feixue, commander of the Chita Raiders, and 55,000 Russian officers and soldiers were taken prisoner, more than half of whom were wounded.

The 70-day siege of Chita came to an end, during which 38,000 Russian officers and soldiers were killed, wounded, and diseased, and another 19,000 entered the prisoner of war camp before those who surrendered later.

The Chinese and North Korean forces paid a total of 71,000 casualties to conquer this strong fortress, of which 41,000 were lost in just 12 days between May 19 and 30. In addition, since May 19, the Chita Raiders have consumed a total of 1 million rounds of various artillery shells, which is almost two months' stock in the combat readiness warehouses directly under the Western Front.

Lieutenant General Zhao Feixue, who seemed to be outside the above figures, came to the front of Fortress B, which is known as the "Blood Sea Fort", in the afternoon, the breastwork of the fortress was repeatedly razed to the ground in the daytime bombardment of the coalition heavy artillery, but miraculously was repeatedly repaired by the Russian army at night, and the two sides engaged in a series of bloody battles here, and the positions within a radius of tens of meters often changed hands dozens of times a day...... The 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Chinese Army, which was responsible for directly attacking the fort's defensive area, lost half of its men in the first three days of the battle, and the 3rd Brigade, which replaced the 2nd Brigade, lost more than 80 percent of its officers, including the brigade commander and the brigade commander's staff officer, in the next week's fighting, and the last two days of the battle at the Blood Sea Fort were fought by the 7th Infantry Brigade, which had been serving as a reserve, and within 48 hours, of the 30 infantry companies directly engaged in the battle, 4 were completely wiped out, and 15 lost more than half of their soldiers. But the 7th Brigade eventually enjoyed the honor of conquering the Blood Sea Fort.

Standing on the commanding heights of the Blood Sea Castle full of floating soil, General Zhao lowered his eyebrows, and the immobile corpses seemed to be far more than the wriggling corpse collectors, and he couldn't help but sigh and groan casually:

The sky and the earth are cracked, and the guns and bullets are raining and misty.

The fortified city is like iron and mud, and the corpse mountain and sea of blood are a fortress.

Turning his head, he ordered the officers accompanying him: "Pass my order, the military band and all the officers and men of the 7th Brigade will assemble here." ”

After a while, the military band directly under the First Field Army, equipped with a full set of Western musical instruments, assembled in front of the dragon flag at the commanding heights of the Blood Sea Fort, and the band conductor asked Zhao Feixue about the repertoire to be played, and the answer was: ""National Martyrdom." ”

In 1894, during the First Sino-Japanese War, the original music was arranged by a new musician to the original lyrics, and was played with Western musical instruments, which was adopted by the military, and then became a compulsory repertoire for military bands at all levels, which was specially designed for the occasion when commemorating the memorial meeting of the fallen officers and soldiers and the military cemetery.

More than 6,000 officers and men of the 7th Brigade who were alive also completed their assembly in front of the national flag, stepping on the blood of their comrades.

Zhao Feixue summoned the brigade commander: "Do all the officers and soldiers of your brigade sing "National Martyrdom"? ”

"Report to the Commander, we are preparing to sing 'Death of the Nation'."

"It's hard work, let's go back."

Speeches, hats, silence. The six thousand heads preserved in the realm of life lowered themselves towards the dragon banner that had fallen from the windlessness.

Music.

Wu Gexi was rhinoceros armor, and the car was wrong and short-handed;

The sun covers the enemy like a cloud, and the arrows and fallen soldiers compete for the first;

Ling Yu staggered for the rest of his life, and his left side was injured on his right side;

Haze two rounds of four horses, aid jade and beat drums;

When the sky is frightened, the spirit is angry, and the wilderness is abandoned;

There is no way in and out, and the plains are far away;

With a long sword, he carried the Qin bow, and his head was not punished;

Honesty is both brave and martial, and finally strong and invincible;

The body is dead, the god is the spirit, and the soul of the child is the ghost.

The singing voice has changed from weak to strong, from sad to strong, and when it comes to "honesty and bravery", it has become a passionate and regretful trend, like a flood and unstoppable.

Hearing this song that broke through the sadness and dying consciousness, Zhao Feixue was suddenly shocked, at least in the Seventh Infantry Brigade, morale had not been destroyed by fear, and it was the first time for each of them to participate in such a tragic fortress raid battle.

After all, they are the victors of the worst of the best......

"70 days of bloody fighting, devouring the lives of more than 10,000 Chinese soldiers and 11,000 Korean soldiers, but this is not the greatest loss, after this battle until the end of the war, our vassal army seems to have a crisis of faith, officers and soldiers are generally unwilling to fight and look forward to returning home, their reason is: this is no longer a Korean war, Korea has shed enough blood for China, and it is time to end it...... In order to prevent them from becoming a weakness on the front at a critical moment, in the ensuing war, the base camp had to deploy the entire Korean Army, whose strength had been reduced to less than 140,000 men, to the rear of the Western Front to carry out auxiliary tasks such as suppressing occupied areas, defending communication lines, building roads and bridges, and so on......

——The Fall of Chita, by Zhao Feixue, 1925, Zhonghua Book Company.

The next day, May 31, over Vladivostok, more than 1,700 kilometers southeast of Chita, the "swarm of bees" began flapping their wings to spread death and destruction from their respective Pandora's boxes.

Early in the morning, Major General Guo Zhifei, commander of the Vladivostok Air Front, and Brigadier General Wang Shengping, chief of staff, flew over Vladivostok first on the No. 101 "Qiangyun" airship.

"It's a rare day of good weather."

Major General Guo Zhifei, 37, is in a good mood today, and as a veteran figure with the oldest qualifications and the highest number of flying hours in the floating unit, he is not at all surprised that he can serve as the commander-in-chief of this operation. As a die-hard leader of the airship faction, he first put forward the theory that "future warfare is air fleet warfare" in the army, and his supporters are all over the army and have great influence.

"yes, I hope the weather has been so good today."

The person who answered the call was Brigadier General Wang Shengping, chief of staff, who was completely opposite to Guo Zhifei, who was rugged in appearance and obsessed with giant airships; this was a super-powerful aircraft pilot with a delicate appearance but the title of "Sky Dancer"; at the age of 34, he was a leading figure in the military's "theory of aviation development," and believed that "the only common weapon of the future air force can only be a powered aircraft heavier than air."

I don't know whether it was intentional or purely unintentional, the two generals with different opinions were arranged together, but fortunately, this "swarm" operation was a mixture of airships and planes, but the commander was most optimistic about the performance of the dozens of main attack airships, while the chief of staff pinned his hopes on hundreds of "Qingfeng Reform" bombers.

"At three o'clock, the 1st Floating Attack Group, Strong Cloud 10, dispersed the Serpentine Team."

The cat's observer in front of the port side high-powered telescope suddenly reported.

Guo Zhifei smiled and waved his hand: "Send a signal to the pilot boat, the attack begins!" ”

Three red flares flew out from the port side, pulling out three arc-shaped bright traces of light in the air, and after a while, the "Qiangyun" boats led by the 1st Floating Brigade, which came out of nowhere, also fired three signal flares, and each boat began to descend in altitude and pounced on several remaining Russian warships in Vladivostok Harbor.

According to the information of the Russian side after the war, the Russian Pacific Fleet in the harbor at that time had a total of 16 warships that could be operated, including: the armored battleships "Dawn", "Victory", "Retvizhan" and "Chaisharevich", the armored cruiser "Diana", the minelayer "Amur", the transport ships "Angara" and "Lena", and 8 destroyers.

In order to protect the remaining fleet and the urban area of Vladivostok, the Russian army has deployed nearly 30 antiaircraft guns converted from naval guns and army rapid-fire guns and more than 30 modified antiaircraft machine guns around the port and the city.

"If bombing is so useful, wouldn't it be better to concentrate on blowing up the enemy's fleet in the first place? I had to wait for the enemy to build anti-aircraft weapons before I thought of doing this. ”

When Operation Swarm was formulated, there were people in the base camp who complained like this.

This argument was immediately resolutely refuted by Rear Admiral Guo Zhifei, who put forward the plan: "At first, it was not possible to confirm that the enemy fleet would be blockaded in the harbor, and at that time, the training of the troops for the bombing of surface targets had not yet been carried out extensively, and because the occupation around Vladivostok had not yet been ensured, the navigation of the flying units was very difficult...... Now that the above problems have been basically solved, the time is ripe for us to make up our minds to carry out a devastating blow to the remnants of the enemy fleet, no matter what kind of resistance we will encounter! ”

At this time, the 10 "Qiangyun" airships, which were the first attack wave, dispersed, each selected a target, and began to perform a diagonal gliding maneuver.

The Russian ships in the harbor have long been accustomed to the hardships of the Chinese army's floating troops, and each ship has embers in its boilers at all times, and has set up air defense observation posts at various commanding heights around the harbor, and as soon as there is a situation, they will send a signal to the warships, and as soon as they see the signal, the warships will immediately set sail and sail to their own minefields outside the harbor to carry out a serpentine maneuver to avoid bombs.

This time, the Russian ships were no exception, and without waiting for the 10 "Qiangyun" to fly overhead, they had already sailed out of the military port and danced samba on the sea.

The 211-meter-long, 25.4-meter-diameter "Qiangyun" was certainly an excellent target, but the Russian improvised antiaircraft artillery, which lacked precision sights, still failed to make a slight gain before the "Qiangyun" broke out of the range of antiaircraft artillery at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour.

After a while, one black hail after another poured down on the Russian ship......