appeared next to Commander Tang.

No wonder this person sat next to Commander Tang, after all, he was the person he even praised the chairman, and almost everyone knew that if this person came to Jinling and came to the national capital, his future career would be smooth and prosperous.

If this person is loyal to the government, he can even directly control the central army, and his status can surpass Chen Cheng.

In these days, there are too many people who can fight, but there are too few people who can make a big deal with a small one.

And this person is the one who can make a big deal with a small one.

Commander Tang said: "Everyone knows Xia Yuan's contribution during his stay in Songhu, but they don't know that in the defense of Jinling, he participated in the battle of Jiangyin, with the strength of a battalion, killed thousands of enemies, held the Jiangyin position for a whole day, guarded Yuhuatai, led a battalion to meet the enemy, held on for a day, killed thousands of enemies, and then held the Zhonghua Gate, the Japanese army broke through the city wall, he fought alone more than ten Japanese soldiers, easy to fight, Qiu Weida, the commander of the 306th Regiment of the 51st Division, saw with his own eyes, the government can have such talents, it is the honor of the government, the honor of China. ”

As soon as the conversation changed, he suddenly asked everyone: "How long do you want to fight?" ”

This question was too sudden, just now I was still introducing the Songhu God of War, and now it suddenly fell on me, everyone looked at each other, and they didn't know how to answer this inexplicable question, and they stared at each other with puzzled eyes.

As if asking rhetorically.

Didn't you tell us to live and die with Jinling? How to ask how long we want to play.

Of course, Tang Shengzhi understood the meaning in everyone's gaze, and stood awkwardly for about half a minute, so he had to lift the chairman out, coughed dryly, and said, "Everyone, the chairman has an order!" ”

As soon as they heard the chairman's order, everyone stood up in unison, put their legs together, bowed their heads and listened, even Xia Yuan was no exception, and he followed the customs.

After Tang Shengzhi read out the chairman's brief order on retreat, Chief of Staff Zhou then read out the retreat routes of the divisions and the time they would arrive at the designated places.

After Chief of Staff Zhou finished reading out, Tang Shengzhi did not explain a word, and waved his hand to announce the adjournment of the meeting.

If the army commanders and division commanders received the amnesty order and rushed to the door, they knew that as soon as the retreat order was announced, Jinling City would definitely be in chaos, and the troops who rushed out of the city first would avoid the danger of being pursued by the enemy.

In layman's terms, whoever runs fast will survive.

As for staying and blocking the attack, it is basically impossible, the Japanese army is surrounding Jinling on all sides and attacking from three gates, and those who stay to block the enemy can only resist one side, but cannot resist the other. As for the transfer of troops to stay behind and stop the enemy, it would be even more impossible, the Japanese army began to attack on all fronts, and all aircraft and artillery were used.

They also relied on the advantage of numbers and terrain to be able to hold Jinling.

And until this time, there are not many troops in the hands of the people, and those who remain will die.

Therefore, everyone had no intention of talking to Xia Yuan, and ordered the driver to increase the horsepower, and now that it was not dawn, they had to hurry back to inform their troops.

According to Commander Tang's retreat route, the 87th Division, the 88th Division, the 74th Army, and the Teaching Corps retreated to Xiaguan, and then concentrated in Chuzhou, while the rest of the troops had to fight a bloody way from their positions and retreat outside the city.

However, no matter which direction these 100,000 officers and men broke through, they were risking their lives.

Especially from Xiaguan, since Tang Shengzhi ordered not to retreat a few days ago, ordered to strictly defend to the death, and even ordered all the ships to be burned, at this time there were no ferries at the Xiaguan wharf, and the enemy formed three or four encirclements in Jinling, and it was not easy to break out of these heavily guarded breakthrough circles.

But now, the order to retreat has been communicated to the ministries, and the officers and soldiers below have received the order to abandon their guns and flee. Even after many army commanders and division commanders left Tang Shengzhi's mansion, they did not return to the troops, and fled directly to Xiaguan.

Even Tang Shengzhi left with Xia Yuan to take care, and left in a hurry with someone.

Tragedy happened under such circumstances.

The army of 100,000 was leaderless for a while, and the army commander and division commander all ran away, didn't they run yet? The 100,000 troops fled desperately along Zhongshan North Road, through the Drum Tower, and Shanxi Road to Xiaguan.

At this time, Song Xilian's troops, who were maintaining order in Xiaguan, had not yet received a notice that the troops could retreat from Rujiangmen, and even when Tang Shengzhi fled, he had already forgotten about it. Therefore, Song Xilian's troops are still resolutely carrying out the orders issued by Shangfeng to prevent soldiers from escaping from here.

The Rujiang Gate is tall and heavy, painted with a layer of red paint, and there are sandbags piled up in front of the door, and large scrapped trucks are parked.

Tang Shengzhi once came to Xiaguan and told Song Xilian thousands of times, instructing him that without his warrant, no deserter should be spared.

Now, what did the rout soldiers say to the sentries guarding the Rujiang Gate, the sentries did not believe their words, and told these poor officers and soldiers who wanted to retreat: "Now the task is to defend Jinling to the death, and no one can escape from the battle." Chief Tang has an order, and without his approval certificate, no one will want to open the door and slip away. ”

In order to carry out this order, they also fired warning shots at the incoming officers and soldiers from time to time.

The officers and soldiers who fled for their lives crowded, pushed, and cursed loudly, and some soldiers could not bear it and even shot directly at the sentry, which immediately exploded.

A sentry fell, and other sentries were also shot, and many people escaped death under the guns of the Japanese devils.

At this time, Rujiangmen has fallen into chaos.

In order to escape, some people found ropes, or simply mopped the floor and dropped their clothes, tore the quilt into strips of cloth, tied it into a rope, and then tied the rope to the trunk of the tree in front of the city gate, crowded and grabbed the rope to climb up, and someone below saw this, and hurriedly rushed up to grab the rope and climbed up.

A slender rope that could withstand the climb of so many people quickly broke, and the soldiers in mid-air fell to their deaths under the city walls.

The foreigners living in Jinling City and the people witnessed this unprecedented rout.

Some foreigners have documented the incident: on the way to the Xiaguan River, the situation was unusually unusual, piled up with rifles, bullets, belts, military uniforms, cars, trucks and so on abandoned by the Chinese army. Countless vehicles were burning, and a terrible fire was set in the field. The gates of the city to pass through the pass and the river were closed, and the terrified soldiers hung down the walls with ropes, leggings, belts and strips of cloth, and many fell to their deaths. This is a tragedy that shouldn't have happened.

The officers and men who were fortunate enough to escape to the river did not have time to rejoice in their fate, and an even more tragic situation was placed in front of them.

On the surface of the river, the mighty river water, without wind and three feet of waves, emitted bursts of waves, roaring constantly. They had thought that there were a large number of boats waiting for them by the river, and that there must be tea on the roadside, but now it was all a fantasy.

The river was empty, there was not a boat, when the mountains and rivers were exhausted, someone found a plank, plucked up the courage to jump into the icy river, the December day, the river water was bitterly cold, not to mention the rapid passage of body temperature, whether they could reach the other side of the river is not certain, but the huge waves swept them into the bottom of the river.

Some officers hired a boat at a high price, and before he could leave the shore, the fleeing routs saw it, jumped into the icy water, and climbed up in a swarm, and the small wooden boats were crowded to the brim, and before they reached the center of the river, the rolling waves swallowed them.

Zhonghua Gate.

In the 88th Division, Sun Yuanliang gave up command and went into hiding, and the whole division lost command and fell into chaos, and most of them died in the Nanjing Massacre. The three brigade commanders of the 88th Division under his command lost two of them, three of the six regiment commanders were killed, and 11 battalion commanders were killed, and the company platoon commanders suffered eight-tenths of the total casualties. The 88th Division had about 6,000 people before the war, and only 500 people returned after the war.

Xia Yuan participated in the meeting and knew that the next thing to start was the great escape, and he took the remaining part of the 88th Division with only 36 wounded, which was only the strength of a platoon.

The 88th Division of Yuhuatai and Zhonghuamen was beaten by the Japanese army like a plate of scattered sand.

Xia Yuan led these remnants, abandoned the garrison at Zhonghua Gate, and began to retreat into the city.

They retreated relatively late, after Xia Yuan left the conference room, there was no car, and moved towards the Zhonghua Gate on foot, and when they arrived at the Zhonghua Gate, it was dawn, and the Japanese attack came.

Xia Yuan led the remaining soldiers to repel a wave of Japanese attacks and began to retreat into the city.

At this time, except for a section of the Zhonghua Gate that Xia Yuan was holding, most of the Zhonghua Gate, as well as other city gates, had been breached by the Japanese army, and a large number of Japanese troops poured into the city like locusts, with a raging flame of revenge, killing people when they saw them, raping women when they saw them, and not caring about anything.

In the remnants led by Xia Yuan, I saw an alley along the way, full of corpses of the people of Jinling, the flesh and blood of Bai Huahua, and the exposed organs, which were twisted into deformed bodies.

There are men, women and children of all ages, and the smell of blood fills the alleys.

There is no place to put your feet.

The remnants of the 88th Division led by Xia Yuan were blue and clenched their fists one by one, even Xia Yuan was like this, even if he was mentally prepared, and now seeing so many Chinese corpses, his heart still couldn't stop trembling, and the seeds of hatred were deeply rooted in his heart.

When did the Japanese army start massacring the Chinese?

In fact, in the early days of the Jinling Defense, the Japanese army had no idea of engaging in the Jinling Massacre at all.

The Sino-Japanese War was a matter of worldwide attention.

At the time of the Battle of Songhu, the Japanese army attacked China, and the resulting Battle of Songhu, coupled with a series of 'performances' by Chiang, had already tilted international public opinion in favor of China, which was unfavorable to the Japanese army.

Therefore, when the Battle of Jinling broke out, the focus of the world was on China, and what the Japanese army did when it entered Jinling was bound to be seen by the whole world.

At this time, Matsui Shigen wanted to let the disciplined team enter Jinling.

But things always backfire.

On December 7, 1937, just as the Japanese army was approaching Jinling, Matsui Ishine, who was at the Suzhou Field Headquarters, became seriously ill, and his chronic tuberculosis recurred.

Matsui Ishone's illness came at the right time, as his command was about to be handed over to a member of the imperial family, the Asaka Palace.

Under the new order, Matsui Ishine was promoted to the supreme commander of the entire Central China Battlefield, while Lieutenant General Hatohiko Asakamiya, who had served in the army for thirty years, became the new commander of the Shanghai Dispatch Army, responsible for commanding the troops around Jinling.

Since Chaoxiang Palace was a member of the imperial family, he had far more power in his hands than all the generals who fought on the Jinling front. On top of that, because he had been a colleague of Nakajima and Yanagawa Heisuke for three years at the Japanese Army Intelligence Service in Paris, he had a much closer relationship with the two than Matsui Ishone.

During the Japanese Mutiny of February 1936, Asakanomiya sided with the emperor's younger brother against Emperor Showa on a political issue. Then in all the imperial family lists, Emperor Showa still singled out this guy who had once stood on his brother's side and appointed him as the commander of the Japanese army in the Jinling area, apparently wanting to give his uncle a chance to atone for his crimes.

At the time, this seemed like a trivial personnel change, but later facts proved that it had a decisive impact on the lives of thousands of Chinese.

No one knew what happened to the Japanese army at that time, but I did know a thing or two about the trial of Matsui Ishine and his colleagues.

Matsui Ishine was worried that this new member from the imperial family would abuse his power and do something to the detriment of the Japanese army, so he issued a series of moral orders to the troops attacking Jinling.

He ordered his troops to stop and repair a few kilometers outside the city of Jinling, and only a few disciplined troops were allowed to enter Jinling and complete the occupation.

In this way, the Japanese army performed well in front of the Chinese, thereby winning their trust in Japan. He also summoned a meeting of the staff at his sickbed and announced:

"The entry of the Imperial Army into a foreign capital was a major event in the history of our country. It is bound to attract the attention of the whole world. Therefore, the troops entering the city must be strictly disciplined, let them know in advance what they need to keep in mind, as well as the location of the rights and interests of foreigners in Jinling City, and must not rob them. If necessary, arrange for sentry. Robbery and arson, even if unintentional, will be punished severely. The gendarmerie and auxiliary gendarmerie should be sent into the city together with the troops to prevent illegal acts. ”

It can be seen that Matsui Ishone has a strategy and vision, and he is very aware of the impact of entering a foreign capital, which is quite remarkable all over the world.

Therefore, the actions of the Japanese troops in Jinling City must be strictly guarded against to the death, and there must be absolutely no incident that insults the face of the imperial troops.

However, the lawless troubles that are brewing elsewhere are beyond Matsui's control.

On December 5, Asakanomiya left the movement by plane, and three days later arrived at the front line, where he met with his colleague General Nakajima in Paris, in an abandoned country house about 10 miles southeast of Jinling, not far from the field headquarters.

Nakajima, who was recovering from a flesh wound to his left buttocks, told Asakanomiya that the Japanese would defend about 300,000 Chinese troops near Jinling and that preliminary negotiations were underway indicating their intention to surrender.

Most of these troops were local troops who had retreated from the Songhu battlefield, from various provinces, and with the defeat of the Battle of Songhu, their flight could be described in one word.

Disorderly! (End of chapter)