Chapter 105: Tank Company Charge
Although they had long known that Su Yaoyang would bombard the town, when Li Zongren and Sun Lianzhong saw the scale of the bombardment, they could not help but be shocked by its magnitude.
The entire heaven and earth seemed to consist only of the huge explosive roars, with no other sounds; even from so far away, they could feel the ground beneath their feet trembling incessantly.
Gunpowder smoke coiled around the entire Tai’erzhuang like a giant python, the fireballs rising in the distance flickering the two men’s pupils bright and dark; the explosive shockwaves hurled debris striking the town, like millions of evil spirits knocking on the door at once.
Even though the two were more than ten li away from Tai’erzhuang, gusts of wind still blew the sulfur-tinged gunpowder smoke into their nostrils, which involuntarily reminded Sun Lianzhong of watching blacksmiths hammer iron in his childhood; those red-hot iron blocks sparked under the hammers, but the hammer before their eyes was clearly meant to smash the entire Tai’erzhuang into hell.
The bombardment lasted a full half hour before it abruptly ceased.
Sun Lianzhong lowered his binoculars, gazing at the distant Tai’erzhuang now completely shrouded in gunpowder smoke, and murmured: “My goodness… Do we even need to fight? We could just send a battalion to collect the corpses for the Japanese, right?”
“No such good luck.” Li Zongren said indifferently, “In my view, the Japanese will still struggle a bit in the end.
Although Li Zongren appeared calm on the surface, careful observation would reveal a gleam of joy flickering in his eyes.
But he was not wrong; with such firepower density, the complete recapture of Tai’erzhuang was just around the corner.”
“Two commanders, look quickly… The security regiment has begun its attack!”
“Oh…”
The two almost simultaneously raised their binoculars and saw a row of tanks emerging from the smoke, slowly crawling toward the Japanese positions, with countless blurry figures following closely behind the tanks.
The steel behemoths emitted harsh metallic friction sounds in the morning mist, the tracks splashing broken brick blocks with crackling noises as they crushed the scorched earth.
John inside the Renault tank saw through the observation window the trench half-shaved away by artillery fire; it had originally been a two-story small building, but now it had become a Japanese machine gun emplacement.
Looking at the machine gun position continuously spitting tongues of fire at them, John shouted into his headset: “Target… Japanese machine gun position 300 meters to the right front… Fire.”
“Boom…” Accompanied by an explosion, the Japanese machine gun position was blasted into the sky.
Amid the explosion, shattered Type 92 heavy machine gun parts mixed with dirt clods and dark red blood foam shot into the air, like a filthy rain of blood.
The tank company continued advancing, the steel tracks emitting a teeth-grinding crisp sound as they crushed twisted rifles; the vehicle compartment was filled with the choking smell of machine oil and sulfur.
In the distant lingering smoke, half a Rising Sun flag burned, the crackling of flames licking the fabric even clearer than the explosions.
“Spread out… Spread out quickly… Don’t stay too close to the tanks, watch out for Japanese stray bullets hitting you!”
Following closely behind the tank company was Company 3 of the 1st Battalion; seeing many soldiers clustered tightly around the tanks, Wang Shouxin hurriedly dispersed them.
“Squad Leader of 1st Platoon… I told you to spread out, not scatter; you’re so far from the tanks, what if Japanese demolition experts circle around from the tank’s blind spot?”
As their first real combat experience with infantry-tank coordination, the 1st Battalion’s performance was somewhat lacking, but there was no helping it; the tank company had been established too recently, with too little training and combat experience, so various problems were inevitable.
But every coin has two sides; this was the security regiment’s first infantry-tank coordination combat, but was it not the same for the Japanese?
In the past, it was always the Japanese using their own tanks to bully the National Army without anti-armor capabilities; today, retribution had come swiftly, and it was their turn to be dumbfounded.
Facing the rolling steel monsters, the surviving Japanese soldiers discovered they had no weapons capable of dealing with Chinese tanks.
On the position littered with ruins and wreckage everywhere, the Renault tank’s tracks emitted a muffled rumble like rolling thunder as they crushed over it.
On the Japanese position, Private First Class Seitaro Nishijima from Hyogo Prefecture huddled tightly in a shell crater, his steel helmet askew on his head, revealing eyes bloodshot; he stared deathly at the steel behemoth spewing black smoke from its rear, its dark cannon barrel slowly turning toward the trench where he was.
Despite the gray-green tank armor being covered in bullet marks, it still advanced like a stubborn wild bull.
Seitaro Nishijima’s fingers spasmed on the trigger of his Type 38 rifle, the cold sweat seeping from his palm making the wooden stock especially slippery.
He wanted to raise his gun to shoot at the approaching tank, but found his hands trembling nonstop, even lacking the strength to lift the rifle.
Watching the tank drawing ever closer, he suddenly recalled his ferocious laughter a few days ago while attacking Teng County, as he watched imperial tanks crush the flesh and blood of National Army soldiers.
Just as despair welled up in him, a low machine gun burst suddenly came from his right.
“It’s a Type 92 heavy machine gun; someone is shooting at the Chinese?”
Seitaro Nishijima was both shocked and delighted; following the sound of gunfire, he indeed saw a fire point hiding in a ruined house 30-odd meters away continuously pouring fire at the tank in front of him, bullets striking the tank’s hull with pinging sounds.
Sure enough, the tank originally heading toward him instantly shifted its attention to the fire point on the right.
As the turret slowly turned, the tank body paused, followed by a muffled bang, then a massive explosion; that fire point which had just been spitting flames was instantly blasted into the sky.
Having destroyed the fire point, the Renault tank did not stop but continued rapidly advancing toward that building.
Amid a tearing sound, the tank smashed down the already dilapidated building.
In the flying debris, Seitaro Nishijima saw a soldier leap from the trench howling, holding a bundle of grenade clusters high; but before he could reach the tank, he was cut in two by the tank’s coaxial machine gun, and the bundle of grenades dropped to the ground.
“Boom!”
In the huge explosion, that bisected body was shredded into fragments by the grenade bundle before it even hit the ground; the charred smell mixed with gunpowder smoke filled Seitaro Nishijima’s nostrils, the intense stench making his stomach suddenly convulse and surge.
Perhaps Seitaro Nishijima’s vomiting alerted the tank; its coaxial machine gun suddenly swung its muzzle, and in a burst of rapid fire, dense bullets plowed the dirt at his feet.
Seitaro Nishijima curled up in the crater, frantically groping his body, only to find a single Type 89 grenade at his waist; but this shrapnel-only anti-infantry grenade couldn’t even pierce truck armor—using it to blow up a tank was a joke.
“Look quickly… There’s a Japanese in that crater over there!”
“Liu Lao’er,”
“Here!”
“Give that little devil two pineapples to taste.”
“Yes!”
Although Seitaro Nishijima did not understand Chinese, it did not prevent him from sensing danger.
Just as he tried to leave the crater, two small black dots fell from the sky.
“Boom boom…”
Amid the explosions, two MK3 grenades turned Seitaro Nishijima hiding in the crater into a sieve…
