Chapter Seventy-Four: The Fall of Melbourne (I)

On the last day of August 1946, in a desperate situation, the Australian federal government finally issued the order to evacuate Melbourne. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

However, at this time, the situation of the war was already extremely dangerous, more than 200,000 Japanese troops were gradually approaching from three directions, and the Allied defense line was cut to pieces. The Australians have completely lost air and sea supremacy on the battlefield, and there is not much time left to move people and supplies.

The last remnants of the tens of thousands of Allied troops had to retreat while dealing with the Japanese siege on three sides, while also collecting food and ammunition scattered everywhere - in order to be able to continue to hold on to Cape Shank after being forced to abandon Melbourne, the Allies needed to seize the last time to transport supplies and ammunition there, otherwise if they really fled empty-handed, even if the Japanese did not attack further, the tens of thousands of Allied troops who retreated to Cape Shanke would quickly starve to death.

In the midst of extreme tension and haste, Australian Prime Minister John Brown. Katyn and the commander of the Australian Army, Thomas Brown. In only 30 minutes, Admiral Bremmy hastily drew up an extremely crude plan for the retreat, preparing to transport 100,000 tons of flour, sugar, and canned food, 20,000 pieces of medicine and medical equipment, and about 30,000 tons of ammunition and all the weapons in stock, especially anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft radars, to Cape Shankke within a week.

However, the whole retreat did not go smoothly from the beginning, and the heavy rain and bad weather made all the roads in the Melbourne area always muddy, which of course slowed down the pace of the Japanese troops entering the city to a certain extent, but also seriously hindered the Allied transfer and retreat.

The only road leading from Melbourne's city centre to Cape Shank was soon crowded with trucks carrying food and ammunition, tractors towing radars, howitzers and anti-aircraft guns, ambulances loaded with sick and wounded, and all sorts of cars, carriages, etc., and the traffic was unspeakably congested, and on the Yarra River, which divides the city into east and west, all the bridges across the river have long been blown up by Japanese planes, even the temporary pontoon bridge, which was originally located in the western part of the city. Having to rely on flat-bottomed barges to transfer across the river is actually surprisingly inefficient.

At the same time, Australia's engineering troops had to brave the rain to repair a large area of barracks and warehouses at Cape Shank, otherwise there would be no place to store the supplies even if they were transported there, and they also had to dig trenches and build bunkers in the section of the peninsula that connected them to the land in order to cope with the fierce fighting that would inevitably break out in the future.

What's worse is that as the news of the federal government's abandonment of Melbourne gradually spreads, the civilians in Melbourne are also in chaos.

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In recent days, with the repeated defeats and casualties of the Allied forces on all fronts, hundreds of wounded soldiers and refugees from the suburbs have been sent into Melbourne like a tidal wave, making every street full of troops, wounded soldiers, refugees, and all kinds of contradictory bad news, which has already caused an ominous storm to brew in Melbourne, the last refuge of white Australians.

As soon as the Australian federal government's order to abandon the city and transfer the city was issued, the remaining hundreds of thousands of Melbourne citizens were in an uproar, and then they rushed ahead of the Allies and fled in panic, and thousands of people flocked to Cape Shank, some on foot, some on bicycles, blocking the roads - the demonization of the Japanese army by the Australian government in the past few years made them generally believe that once the Japanese army occupied Melbourne, they would definitely be beheaded or buried alive by these brutal yellow-skinned dwarves, and some were stuffed into the mines to die...... Well, that's pretty much the case.

-- For the Japanese, who yearn for a rich mainland, their occupation policy in Australia is, in general, "keep the land but not the people." At present, there are hundreds of mass graves all over Australia, and the corpses of those "American and British white animals" in them have not yet decomposed!

The exception, of course, was the beautiful young Caucasian women, who were assigned to various comfort stations to comfort the warriors from the Japanese archipelago with their bodies.

Fortunately, although the land traffic is congested and chaotic, the water traffic is relatively smooth for the time being. Despite the powerful combined fleet of the Japanese Navy, it was eyeing the open sea south of Cape Shank. But Port Phillip Bay, which straddles Melbourne and Cape Shank, is still a white man's world for the time being.

Taking advantage of the last safe time, the Australian federal government mobilized all the unsunken ships, whether fishing boats, freighters, yachts or torpedo boats, to travel back and forth between Melbourne and Cape Shanker over and over again (one way is equivalent to crossing the Yangtze River at least ten times), transporting all kinds of supplies hoarded in the city, as well as troops and civilians who were ready to retreat to Cape Shanker for the last resistance, little by little.

However, such an intense but methodical transportation work, which lasted only one day, encountered a more severe test.

- By noon on the day after the retreat began, the sky over Melbourne cleared, and although the muddy roads began to dry out of the sun, annoying Japanese planes followed, and the Japanese pilots soon spotted the Allied retreat and dropped a string of bombs......

For a time, the originally calm sea of Phillip Bay was covered with huge water columns, and ships full of goods and people had to struggle between the crests and valleys of the waves...... These small boats, which can only travel a few tons or more than a dozen tons in the coastal waters, are powerless to resist even the smallest aerial bombs.

In the face of the incoming Japanese planes, the stubborn Australians also took out the last of their capital, dragged out the last intact F4F "Wildcat" and P-38 "Lightning" fighters from the very cleverly camouflaged bunkers, and risked their lives to brave the roar of bombs and aviation machine gun fire, filling in the dense holes on the runway as much as possible, and letting the pilots drive these last fighters to the sky to meet the attack. The two sides fought for three days over Melbourne, and then on the fourth day, the last Australian air force was lost, and the Japanese planes once again completely dominated the Australian sky.

Late at night on the third day of the retreat, Australian Prime Minister John Murphy Katyn and the commander of the Australian Army, Thomas Brown. Admiral Braimy boarded a bullet-riddled yacht and withdrew from the devastated city of Melbourne. The lower deck of the yacht is stacked with gold and silver bars from the Australian government. The desperation of the passengers contrasts sharply with the beauty of a silvery moonlight in Phillip Bay; Someone sang "Quiet Night" alone, but no one echoed it.

And just as the Australians in the rear were moving like ants, carrying supplies from Melbourne to Cape Shank. The Allied forces on all fronts were still relying on trench fortifications to resist the Japanese attack. In order to buy time for the transfer, the Australian federal government issued a final conscription order, and all men over the age of 14 and under the age of 70 were organized into volunteers to fill the gaps in the trenches, using their lives to delay the collapse of the front, and at the same time replacing the elite veterans and withdrawing to Cape Shank for the last resistance.

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Mixed with the chaotic and noisy flow of people, Corporal Downey of the 17th Division of the US Army walked into the city of Melbourne in a daze.

After withdrawing from the outpost in Broadford Town, he followed his troops to participate in several blocking battles, like an iron wall that firmly nailed the Japanese 152nd Division on the opposite side more than 30 kilometers away from Melbourne. The division commander, Lieutenant General Masanobu Tsuji, found himself unable to break through the seemingly weak Allied lines from the front, so he tried to make a roundabout way under the cover of night. However, his enemy had long been on guard against this move, constantly taking advantage of the superiority of the inner line to move troops, repeatedly entering the battlefield first to block the enemy army, and beating the Japanese 152nd Division on the northern front again and again.

However, although Corporal Downey and his unit withstood the invading enemy from the north again and again, they could not withstand the fire in the backyard - the main force of more than 100,000 Japanese troops on the eastern front successfully broke through the pass guarded by the Australians and smashed into the narrow plain east of Melbourne. Not only did it cut the Allied forces deployed there to pieces, but its vanguard even penetrated the back of the 17th Division of the US Army, and it was about to form a flanking attack. Next, the defensive line to the west of Melbourne also collapsed, and the US army's hold on to the northern suburbs of Melbourne was completely meaningless.

Although they were not defeated, they no longer had enough troops to hold their positions while crushing the flank attack of General Yamashita Fengwen...... Corporal Downey and his companions had to abandon the positions and forts they had held for many days, and retreated to Melbourne in great strides while laying mines to destroy the road. In the midst of the continuous scuffle and transfer, Corporal Downey's 17th Division has been shattered, and no one knows which general is under command at the moment. They simply obey orders mechanically, numbly and instinctively go to battle or march.

At this moment, he and his companions were exhausted by the battle and march that had lasted for more than half a month, and Corporal Downey's face was blackened with smoke and mud, and the toil and fatigue made him look nervous and miserable, and two pieces of cotton wool were tied to his bare feet when he stepped on his shoes. His companions were all mud-drenched, bearded, ragged, sloppy, hungry and tired, so tired that they dozed off as they marched, and most of the soldiers, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, and Britons, thought nothing of anything, and walked like scarecrows......

When these American GIs, who had suffered heavy casualties, abandoned their positions and retreated, there was a large group of refugees in front of them, mostly local farmers, wounded people on crutches, dying people lying on stretchers, pregnant women with big bellies, gray-haired old people, and unsteady children, all dragging carts full of chests and household belongings—because the cars and cattle were requisitioned by the army, the refugees had to rely on manpower to haul the carts containing household goods, making the roads around Melbourne crowded. Along the way, there are deserted villages, overgrown abandoned farms, and lonely huts with open doors. Occasionally, a few lonely old men and women can be seen sitting on the side of the road, like walking dead.

Although the atmosphere of retreat all the way was oppressive, they had already said goodbye to the battlefield for the time being, away from death and blood.

And just as Corporal Downey was withdrawing from the battlefield, another group of people were walking into the battlefield even more tragically - when they entered the city of Melbourne, the old man and his child who had been drafted into the Volunteers were passing these American GIs in the opposite direction on the same road. The gray-bearded old men were so shaky that they could barely move their legs, and the children's faces were full of fear and despair as they had been forced to take on the tasks of adults prematurely.

When the regular army gradually withdrew from all fronts, these old and sick who were destined to be abandoned, these volunteers who were all dying old men and half-grown children, were ordered to go to the front line, dig trenches and arrays, and desperately hold on, buying time for the transfer and evacuation of the government and the army.

Enemy planes roared overhead, shells whistled in their ears, and many were killed in the bombardment before they even reached the front line, but the remaining volunteers, who had just picked up their guns, persevered in trying to complete their mission, trying to dig foxholes in the hills that could be defended, erecting field guns on the high ground, and really repelling the Japanese attack for a time - after a long drive to the distance, the Japanese began to get a little tired.

However, the Japanese put in too many troops this time, and the firepower was too fierce, and the shells fired every day were more than in a previous battle, and they were not at all stingy with shells like in the past, but beat the artillery like machine guns, and brought the artillery doctrine to the extreme.

Therefore, the Japanese troops attacking from all directions, despite repeated setbacks and heavy losses in the face of a strong defensive line, were fully able to withstand the losses due to their abundant forces and endless ammunition supplies. Even if it is temporarily impossible to break through the bunkers and trenches of the Allied forces, there are still at least 100 planes dropping aerial bombs and bombarding indiscriminately into the city of Melbourne every day, killing and injuring a large number of troops and citizens in the city, destroying many bridges and buildings, adding many huge craters to the streets, and making Melbourne, a lonely city of the end, more and more precarious and catastrophic predicament.

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After entering the city, Corporal Downey first left the team and went to the wounded soldier hospital in a high school auditorium, hoping to ask for iodine or sulfonamide powder to reduce the inflammation of his arm that had been grazed by a stray bullet. Then he saw a horrific sight: hundreds of Allied wounded and sick people, shoulder to shoulder, head to foot, lying in rows on the filthy floor, stretching from the ruined auditorium along the corridors and playgrounds. The crowd was so dense that it was barely possible to insert your feet. Some of them lay on stretchers, most of them lay directly on the concrete floor and grass, in all kinds of postures. Some lay silently and stiffly, while others crouched and moaned in the sun. Everywhere there were swarms of flies flying over their heads, crawling around in their faces, buzzing. The stench of blood, sweat, filthy bandages and feces made people sick, and the moans were so harsh that people with weak nerves would go crazy when they lay in this place for hours. In fact, many of the wounded were already insane.

Colonel Downey covered his nose and circled around the wriggling human blanket, not finding a single doctor or nurse. During this period, they often stepped on the wounded who were too closely aligned, and those who were stepped on had to roll their eyes sluggishly...... Next, Corporal Downey struggled to find a one-legged Australian Army second lieutenant who was still quite conscious, and from his mouth he figured out what was going on in this place.

- It turned out that as early as the evening of two days ago, Melbourne's hospital began to organize evacuation, and doctors and nurses were evacuated from the city with medicines and equipment, and moved to the "final defense base" at Shank Point by boat. As for the wounded soldiers and sick people in the hospital, all those who could move followed along. But those who were so badly injured that they couldn't move were basically left behind and given up – because there weren't enough ambulances and stretcher bearers. With the exception of a few seriously wounded officers who were able to hop on a car or ship and be transferred to Cape Shankke, the rest were left to fend for themselves in the abandoned and empty city.

What's worse is that when all the doctors and nurses here have gone, it seems that because of the lack of information, the wounded on the frontline positions around Melbourne continue to be transported in batches, and then they are left here by irresponsible convoys. These poor wounded soldiers have no medical treatment or ambulance, not even food, no water to drink, and nowhere to run......

“…… So, please get me some water! Better have some more to eat. The Australian Army second lieutenant, whose right leg had been blown off, licked his chapped lips and coughed to Corporal Downey, pleading, "...... Ahem! I haven't eaten or drunk all day......"

“…… Sorry, there's still a little bit of water, and I don't even have enough to eat. Corporal Donnie sighed, opened the lid of his portable kettle, poured the last bit of water into his throat, shoved a few more cigarettes, and turned away.

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ps: Recently, the Taiwan side announced after driving away the mainland family that the death of the mainland tour group bus was a malicious crime of a Taiwanese driver drunk driving + oil and arson self-immolation ♂, the driver was just sentenced to five years in prison in June, but for some reason he was not arrested and sent to prison (suspected to have been bewitched into a suicide bomb by extremist forces.) And President President Tsai also wrote a commendation for this goods - the treasure island in the textbooks in the past has become a colony of madmen, liars, fools and terrorists, and it is not surprising that something strange happens, and we really have to have the spirit of bravely breaking into the island of life in the future to dare to go to Taiwan to play.