Chapter 249: Charge
Dead silence.
Inside the command vehicle was a deathly silence, the telegram bearing the bad news weighing like a thousand pounds, pressing down on everyone until they could hardly breathe.
Su Yaoyang slowly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, all the emotions in them—shock, grief, regret…—had vanished, leaving only a bottomless coldness burning with black flames.
He didn’t look at the trembling radio operator again, but reached out and snatched the handset from his hand.
His voice wasn’t loud, yet it was like icicles in winter, transmitted clearly through the radio to every combat unit’s channel.
“Connect to Armored Regiment One, John.”
After a brief crackle of static, a voice with a heavy accent came through: “Boss, this is John Miller. What are your orders?”
Su Yaoyang said word by word, his tone terrifyingly calm:
“Commander Zhang Zizhong is dead?”
There was a second of silence on the other end of the handset.
“What… General Zhang is dead?” John was stunned at first, then shouted in disbelief.
“Full regiment, attack forward.”
There wasn’t a trace of warmth in Su Yaoyang’s voice. “I don’t care what methods you use, crush every living thing you see ahead. Speed up, charge into Pumpkin Shop at maximum speed.
I want no Japanese standing on this land anymore.”
“As you wish… Boss!” John’s voice carried a bloodthirsty excitement.
Immediately, he switched to the team comms channel and roared into the microphone with all his strength:
“All units attention! Everyone listen up! The boss’s latest order… General Zhang has fallen!
Now follow me and kill all those bastard Japanese monkeys!”
“Now, floor the goddamn accelerators! All machine guns, all cannons, fire at will! Turn everything you see ahead, man or mouse, into mincemeat! Charge! Charge! Avenge the general! GO! GO! GO!”
Boom…
The entire Armored Regiment One went mad in an instant!
As the best-equipped and most heavily armed assault force under Su Yaoyang, this steel behemoth composed of Sherman tanks, half-track armored vehicles, armored scout cars, and Char D2 light tanks fully transformed into a vengeful flood at this moment.
The engines of the armored vehicles roared deafeningly, tracks and tires kicking up clouds of mud, charging wildly toward Pumpkin Shop at speeds far exceeding normal marching pace.
The Browning M2HB 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine guns on the vehicle roofs issued muffled roars, their glowing ammunition belts unleashing metal storms on every suspicious target ahead.
The soldiers on the armored vehicles also raised their Garand rifles and Thompson submachine guns, sweeping volleys of bullets into the fields and woods on both sides of the road.
This was no longer an attack, but a pure, cost-be-damned destructive charge. They had only one goal… to use steel and fire to completely erase the enemies who killed that general, along with all traces of their existence, from this land!
………..
On the outskirts of Pumpkin Shop, in a position repeatedly plowed by artillery fire, Japanese artillery mid-captain Hashimoto Banjiro was lying flat in a carefully camouflaged emplacement.
Every muscle in his body was tense from strain, sweat soaking the back of his uniform.
Like a statue, he stared motionlessly at the approaching steel flood in the distance, frantically praying to Amaterasu in his heart, praying those “iron turtles” wouldn’t spot his little gun position.
It wasn’t that Hashimoto Banjiro feared death, but as a veteran, he knew full well what kind of junk the Japanese Army’s anti-tank weapons were.
From the Type 97 20mm anti-tank rifle to the Type 94 37mm rapid-fire gun, they were all copied foreign crap, and even the Type 1 47mm anti-tank gun in his hands was developed on the basis of the Type 97 47mm gun, with laughably poor armor penetration.
They were fine against Chinese machine gun nests or mud huts before, but now against those thick-skinned tanks, they seemed utterly unreliable no matter how you looked at it.
The only method he could think of was to wait for the Chinese tanks to get close and then fire at point-blank range, for even a slim chance of destroying them.
Suddenly, not far away, a flash of fire from another gun position! An impatient gunner fired the first shot.
“Clang!”
The shell struck the front of an armored vehicle, sparking, then bounced off harmlessly.
“Baka yarou… which idiot fired so early?” Hashimoto Banjiro raged.
The next second, the autocannon turret atop that armored vehicle slowly turned, locking onto the exposed target.
“Da-da-da-da-da…”
The dense 20mm high-explosive rounds, like the scythe of the Grim Reaper, instantly tore that gun position and the gunners inside into fragments.
“Baka!” While cursing that foolish comrade in his heart, Hashimoto gripped the gun’s traverse wheel tightly with both hands.
He held back the urge to fire, watching helplessly as those steel behemoths drew closer. Three hundred meters… two hundred meters…
Just as he felt his heart about to burst from the immense pressure, he finally roared the order to fire.
“Boom…”
The shell whistled out, but sadly missed the target, vanishing into the writhing tank swarm.
However, as his gunners fumbled with the second reload, another surviving anti-tank gun unexpectedly created a miracle! A half-track armored vehicle that had been firing wildly was precisely hit, belching black smoke and halting.
“Hit!”
The brief cheer hadn’t spread when vengeful shells arrived in succession.
Hashimoto had just pressed his eye to the sight for the second shot when he saw a real “iron turtle”… a Sherman tank’s long barrel already aimed at him.
This was the last sight he beheld.
“Boom…”
In the earth-shattering explosion, Hashimoto Banjiro and his gun were reduced together to flying parts and flesh.
When the Japanese Army’s last anti-tank gun position was blasted skyward, battalion commander Kato Kazuichi’s bloodshot eyes were completely consumed by madness.
He knew conventional resistance was meaningless.
“Bring the magnetic mines!” he roared at a trembling soldier nearby, quaking with fear.
That soldier scrambled from a niche in the trench wall and retrieved several Type 99 magnetic anti-tank mines.
This weapon, which required soldiers to rush to the tanks and attach by hand, had become their only—and most desperate—hope at this moment.
Kato Kazuichi’s gaze swept like a viper over the young, terrified faces around him, finally locking on a soldier named Okamura Tatsuya.
“Okamura-kun!”
Kato’s voice was icy, devoid of any human emotion. “It’s your turn to die for the Emperor! Take it, go blow up the Chinese tanks!
Succeed, and you’ll be an imperial hero!”
The named Okamura Tatsuya blankly raised his head, his still-boyish face instantly draining of color.
Kato allowed no reaction, grabbing a magnetic mine and roughly stuffing it into his arms.
Okamura jerked like he’d been burned, nearly dropping the heavy iron lump. His legs shook uncontrollably, cold sweat instantly soaking his forehead.
Use this to blow up a tank? What difference was that from leaping into Death’s embrace?
“Still hesitating? Go!”
Kato’s patience exhausted, he drew his army sword with a “shing,” the cold blade nearly touching Okamura’s neck.
Driven to the end, Okamura desperately glanced at his comrades. Not one pleaded for him; their eyes held a sickly anticipation—hoping he’d succeed, so they could avoid being sent to die next.
Okamura’s heart died completely.
Like a walking corpse, he tremblingly climbed the trench parapet, using shell craters for cover, cautiously crawling toward an approaching Sherman tank.
When the tank was less than ten meters away, Okamura arched in the crater, summoning all his life’s courage and strength, leaping out toward the steel behemoth!
He flung his arm with all his might, hurling the magnetic mine!
He acted very bravely.
But he missed.
The magnetic mine exploded beside the tank’s left track, splattering mud and sparks, without even scratching the paint.
The next instant, the coaxial machine gun on the tank turret roared like the Grim Reaper.
“Da-da-da-da-da…”
The dense bullet stream instantly turned young Okamura’s body into a riddled hive, and he crashed to the ground, never to move again.
“Useless trash!” Kato Kazuichi cursed, preparing to send another to die.
At that moment, a shrill whistle like Death tearing the air echoed from the sky.
Two F4U “Corsair” fighters with shark-mouth paint schemes dove from the clouds in an elegant yet lethal posture.
They didn’t fire, merely circling once over the Japanese positions before radioing precise coordinates to the rear artillery.
Seconds later, doomsday arrived.
Shells from heavy mortars, mixed with tear gas rounds releasing thick white smoke, poured down like hail onto the Japanese Army’s final position.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The violent explosions tore bunkers, soldiers, and their last resistance to shreds. The choking white fog swiftly enveloped everything, filled with soldiers’ hacking coughs and panicked screams thinking it was poison gas.
Fear of the unknown instantly shattered their final mental defenses.
On the outskirts of Pumpkin Shop, the last obstacle fell completely under the triple assault of steel, fire, and chemical smoke.
