Chapter 44: The Eleventh Battalion’s Crushing Defeat
“Fuck those little Japs!”
Su Yaoyang’s expression changed instantly. As the saying goes, new recruits fear artillery while veterans fear machine guns.
On the battlefield, if you’re targeted by the enemy’s machine gunner, they’ll really cling to you and not let go.
Without thinking, he lunged toward a nearby crater on the ground. Just as he lunged into the crater, Su Yaoyang felt a blast of air accompanied by a large amount of kicked-up dust and soil pass over his head.
“Damn it, the little Japs are even throwing grenades!”
“Beep beep…”
At that moment, a piercing whistle sounded, followed by the crisp crack of a light machine gun nearby. The Japanese firepower point that had been shooting toward Su Yaoyang instantly went silent. It turned out that a squad of security regiment soldiers had flanked around the house, set up a Browning M1918A2 light machine gun, and the machine gunner had taken out that firepower point with a precise burst.
After eliminating the firepower point, that squad of soldiers ran toward Su Yaoyang. Leading them was a captain who, upon seeing Su Yaoyang, immediately became anxious. He grabbed his arm and loudly said, “Regiment commander… it’s too dangerous here. I’ll arrange for a few brothers to escort you down right away.”
Su Yaoyang looked closely and saw it was Wang Shouxin, the company commander of the 4th Company, 2nd Battalion.
“No!” Su Yaoyang shook his head. “The battle is intense right now. How can I be a deserter? Don’t worry about me. Take the brothers and continue the charge immediately. We must crush the 11th Regiment. I’ll take care of myself.”
Seeing Wang Shouxin still hesitating, his expression darkened. “Execute the order!”
“Yes!”
Seeing Su Yaoyang angry, Wang Shouxin didn’t dare delay and could only lead the soldiers to continue advancing.
After Wang Shouxin and his men left, Su Yaoyang struggled to his feet. He was about to follow the troops when he discovered his submachine gun was missing.
“Where’s the gun? Where’s the gun? Where’s my gun…” Patting the dust off himself, Su Yaoyang searched around for his submachine gun but couldn’t find it anywhere.
Just then, he spotted a gun next to the body of a security regiment soldier who had been killed by an explosion not far away.
Su Yaoyang hurried over, picked up the bloodstained Garand rifle from the pool of blood, and removed the ammo pouch from the corpse.
This ammo pouch was divided into two sides: one held 7.62 caliber bullets, the other held seven or eight MARK II grenades.
Slinging the ammo pouch over his shoulder, Su Yaoyang ran toward the area with the most intense gunfire.
After running just tens of meters, Su Yaoyang, crouching low and charging forward quickly, saw a Japanese soldier lying on the ground about a hundred meters away raising a Type 38 rifle aimed in his direction. He immediately dropped to a half-kneel and fired at the Japanese soldier.
“Bang bang…”
Two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously. Because of the close distance, even though the street was still filled with gunsmoke, Su Yaoyang clearly saw the Japanese soldier’s skull blown open, red and white matter flying up the instant the bullet hit.
“Bang bang bang…”
The streets were filled with intense gunfire everywhere. Countless Japanese soldiers in khaki uniforms and security regiment soldiers in gray-green uniforms were fighting in the streets, ruins, and buildings.
In this narrow terrain, the flaws of the Type 38 rifle, designed for long-range precision shooting, were fully exposed.
The Type 38 rifle was a traditional bolt-action rifle with a rate of fire of only about 5 to 10 rounds per minute, unlike the Garand rifle.
Although this world’s first semi-automatic rifle had many drawbacks like being heavy and unsuitable for Asian physiques, Su Yaoyang still insisted on choosing it for one reason: its reliability and rate of fire of 40 to 50 rounds per minute. These two advantages alone outweighed all its flaws.
The soldiers of the 11th Regiment painfully discovered that their usual painstakingly trained precise shooting skills seemed useless.
Because in this narrow and complex terrain, once an enemy was spotted, the distance between both sides was usually only tens of meters, or even point-blank range.
At that point, as long as one wasn’t blind, even the worst shot could hit the enemy.
Moreover, those Chinese soldiers were equipped with many melon grenades, throwing them wildly at people, filling the streets with booming explosions.
On the way while searching, Su Yaoyang encountered seven or eight soldiers from the New Security Regiment. Seeing the epaulets on Su Yaoyang’s shoulders, they automatically gathered around him.
“Pop… pop…”
Suddenly, sporadic gunshots came from behind a house that had been half-collapsed by an explosion dozens of meters away—the distinctive sound of the Type 38 rifle.
Su Yaoyang quickly raised his Garand rifle and moved toward that pile of ruins. The soldiers around him also grabbed their weapons and fired toward the ruins.
“Boom!”
A security regiment soldier at the front, taking cover behind an object, lobbed a MARK II grenade toward a position more than twenty meters away. With the explosion, the already sparse gunfire stopped.
Su Yaoyang led the soldiers to rush forward taking the opportunity, killing several dazed Japanese soldiers.
“Is this war?”
As they continued advancing, looking at the road littered with blasted-apart corpses, even some body parts and intestines blown onto the rooftops by the roadside.
The gray streets were now shattered by explosions. The gray road surface was covered in dark red blood, with the occasional groans of wounded Japanese soldiers. Japanese soldiers with limbs blown off were everywhere.
“Onegai… ichi hatsu kudasai, onegai shimasu. Please… give me a shot, please!”
A Japanese soldier whose legs had been blown off, lying in a pool of blood, shouted loudly at Su Yaoyang and his men. Seeing the Japanese soldier just a few meters away, the surrounding soldiers were momentarily at a loss. One soldier looked up at Su Yaoyang, the highest-ranking one. Seeing Su Yaoyang nod to him.
“Bang!”
With Su Yaoyang’s approval, the soldier raised his rifle and fired at the Japanese soldier’s head. Su Yaoyang even saw the relieved look in the Japanese soldier’s eyes as their own soldier raised the gun.
The intense battle lasted more than an hour. Under the security regiment’s powerful firepower, the Japanese 11th Regiment suffered heavy losses.
In a civilian house, Nagano Yuichiro was like a defeated beast, looking at Hasegawa in front of him.
“Deputy brigade commander, I failed, and the 11th Regiment failed too. Are you happy now?”
“Slap…”
Accompanied by a crisp sound, a stinging slap landed on his face.
“Baka yarou, you coward, idiot! One failure and you’ve lost your fighting spirit?” Hasegawa berated.
“The 11th Regiment is just an insignificant part of the Imperial Japanese Army. We still have tens of thousands of empire elites around us.
One small failure proves nothing. What you need to do now is gather the remaining troops and withdraw immediately.
If the regimental flag falls into the hands of the Chinese, you couldn’t wash away your shame even by disemboweling yourself ten times!”
