South of Hong Kong, Drunken Bay Line

The smoke was slowly blown away by the breeze, and the once fierce gunfire gradually subsided.

An antique gunboat, painted black, roamed the empty bay, the British Empire's rice flag fluttering proudly on the mast, the screeching sound of the steam engine running at full speed, and the pitch-black muzzle of the cannon was looking for a target on the north shore.

And on the rocky beaches, and in the bushes and rice paddies under the steep foothills, the corpses of the martyrs lie everywhere.

Further afield, there are countless charred craters the size of a basketball court, destroying the verdant fields and making them mottled and ugly.

-- Because yesterday's journey was like a bamboo, and the Third Army Corps of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, which was somewhat arrogant and careless, made a mistake here.

Although the defense system of the British army in Hong Kong is centered on Hong Kong Island. But the British were also well aware that if the mainland part of Hong Kong were to fall completely and the enemy could calmly occupy the Kowloon Peninsula, not only would the Stonecutters Island Naval Base, where the huge fleet was moored, fall into the hands of the enemy, but Hong Kong Island itself would also be difficult to hold -- as long as the enemy established an artillery position on the northern shore of Victoria Bay, the bustling urban area of Hong Kong's Central would be bombed to rubble.

Therefore, in the north of the Kowloon Peninsula, from Drunken Bay in the New Territories to Ngau Shelter in Sai Kung, including a series of strategic points such as Kam Shan, Shing Mun Reservoir, Beacon Hill, Lion Rock, and Tate's Cairn Mountain, the British authorities in Hong Kong planned and designed a permanent defensive line with a total length of 18 kilometers to prevent enemy troops from advancing southward from the New Territories. The entire defensive line is built on a natural barrier of several mountain peaks in the northern part of the Kowloon Peninsula, which can be said to be a dangerous place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

But. At the beginning of 1935, the line of defense had just begun, and most of it remained on paper. Until the time when the Red Army began its southern expedition to Guangdong. Less than 10% of the entire Drunken Bay defense line was completed, and most of the forts were only laid with foundations, and not even a single artillery was installed. If the Red Army could break into Hong Kong in May, it would really be able to fight all the way to Kowloon and bombard Hong Kong Island.

It is a pity that as a well-known warlord group in China at that time, the Yue Army and the Gui Army were not little sheep to be slaughtered. In order to compete for the prosperous and rich Pearl River Delta. The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had to fight fiercely with the Gui and Cantonese armies in the north of Hong Kong for more than two months...... From plane bombing to silver bomb bribery, almost every trick has been exhausted except for letting female underground party members organize a "meat bomb offensive". Only then did it annihilate the main force of the Guangdong army, severely damaged the Gui army that advanced east to aid Guangdong, barely occupied most of Guangdong Province, and initially stabilized the place. And opened the way to attack Hong Kong.

So. It was tantamount to giving the British troops stationed in Hong Kong time to repair the fortifications and collect reinforcements -- by requisitioning the city's construction personnel, requisitioning building materials free of charge, and sparing hundreds of laborers to repair the fortifications, the defense line of Drunken Bay had been completed by about 70% before the Red Army invaded; Relying on the withdrawal of troops and horses from the front line of the Zhoushan Islands, and the urgent transfer of troops and horses from the Tianjin Concession and the Malayan colony, the current governor of Hong Kong also has a few trump cards in his hands; And the various artillery pieces dismantled from the first expeditionary fleet turned the Drunken Bay defense line into a big hedgehog covered in thorns!

-- After a period of wind and rain in nature, as well as the Hong Kong authorities' requisition of death row prisoners on board for purge. The radiation intensity of these "undead ships" has finally dropped below the pathogenic amount, at least so that people can go up and disassemble the ship's guns. Ammunition was used to strengthen Hong Kong's land defence.

In addition, the British also brought in a number of naval personnel from Singapore to Hong Kong, which were not enough to manipulate the huge battleships to anchor and go to sea, but at least they could stay at the Stonecutters Island Naval Base next to the Kowloon Peninsula as floating batteries to fire at the Red Army north of the Drunken Bay defense line - and the British battleships' 12-inch and 14-inch superguns would be really ...... It's as if the end of shijie has come!

Thus, when the vanguard of the Red Army launched a tentative assault on the defense line of Drunken Bay, it was immediately beaten by a ferocious rain of bullets like a volcanic eruption. The Red Army scouts managed to find an unfinished gap in the defensive line, but when the four Red Army regiments launched a surprise attack from here, they collided head-on with the ace units of the British army in Hong Kong, the Northumberland Fusiliers Regiment and the Ulstershire Rifle Battalion!

-- The Northumberland Fusiliers Regiment is one of the strongest ace units of the British Army. It is also the oldest county in British history, located on the northwestern border of England, where the famous Hadrian's Wall in ancient Rome is located, and has been the front line of the English frontier against the Norse barbarians and Scots since ancient times, and the martial tradition has been passed down from generation to generation among the local residents. Therefore, the Northumberland regiment has always been the top unit of the British army fighting all over Shijie.

The history of the other Ulstershire Rifle Battalion is also extraordinary. Located in North Ireland, Ulstershire is inhabited mainly by descendants of English and Scottish colonists, similar to the Japanese reclamation regiments in Manchukuo. These guys have enjoyed the privileges of conquerors for generations, and have been fiercely oppressing the indigenous people of Ireland since they were young, and they have not only developed a strong ability, but also the main culprit that led to the division of Ireland to this day.

As a result, in the Jinshan position of the Drunken Bay Defense Line, the experienced British Army and the Chinese Red Army, which was not afraid of tigers, launched a wonderful duel: relying on accurate and fierce artillery cover, more than 1,000 British troops actually launched a bayonet charge against 4,000 Red Army! In the midst of the ferocious fighting, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, which had recently expanded too rapidly and whose soldiers' quality could not keep up, soon revealed its flaws. Two of the regiments were quickly crippled, and the other two regiments were defeated and fled, allowing the British to chase them two kilometers in one go...... Zuihou or the Russian traversers drove helicopter gunships, sniped the British from the air, and barely blocked the enemy with a rain of bullets like a whip of flames, so that the battle situation did not collapse.

However, for the first time, the helicopter gunship of the Russian Werewolf Crossing suffered casualties - an unlucky helicopter was unfortunately hit by the debris from the battleship's main gun, and although the weapon operator was lucky not to die, the pilot, Comrade Grisha, was killed.

At the same time, in the waters of the Pearl River estuary between Hong Kong and Macao, the warships of China and Britain once again engaged in a desperate struggle -- in order to block the four troop carriers that were about to enter Hong Kong, the young Red Navy had no choice but to bite the bullet, and in spite of the huge disparity in strength between the two sides, it gathered the remaining torpedo boats and gunboats to force another attack and fought fiercely with the British destroyers escorting the escort at the mouth of the Pearl River...... However, courage is not a substitute for jishu, and blood is not comparable to steel, and the final result of this naval battle at the mouth of the Pearl River was that the British fleet was unscathed and the Red Navy was defeated......

At this point, the battle for Hong Kong has entered a stalemate. (To be continued......)