Chapter 252: Incendiary Bomb
Third Division, Fifth Brigade subordinate Sixth Regiment headquarters.
On a temporarily reinforced earth embankment, Sixth Regiment commander Kawanami Mitsu Colonel was using an elegant posture nearly like appreciating a work of art, raising the German-made Zeiss binoculars he had bought out of his own pocket, observing the place ahead named “Xiaguan Town” that was burning fiercely.
The whistling of shells, the roar of machine guns, and the signature charge shouts of Imperial soldiers intertwined into a war symphony that sounded extremely pleasant to his ears.
“Hmph, a bunch of stubborn moles.” Kawanami Mitsu lowered the binoculars, a contemptuous sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.
The operations staff officer behind him immediately bowed and reported: “Colonel, just now, our brave First Company has successfully broken into the town entrance! Although they faced a frantic counterattack from the Chinese army and temporarily withdrew, the enemy’s defense line has developed a huge gap! Their casualties must be several times ours!”
“Good!”
Kawanami Mitsu nodded in satisfaction, gently brushing nonexistent dust from his uniform with his white glove. “The Chinese army’s resistance is nothing more than the death throes of a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
Their courage is as cheap as the dirt beneath their feet.
So-called holding firm is merely adding some negligible obstacles to the sharpness of our samurai blades.”
He completely disregarded that brief “repulse” just now.
In his view, it was merely a perfect fire reconnaissance, successfully consuming the already scant living forces and ammunition of the defenders.
In the town village was an unknown infantry regiment of Nationalist Army 55th Army.
These people, under the Imperial Army’s fierce artillery fire, had actually held out like cockroaches for several days, which in itself was an insult to the Imperial Japanese Army, to the “Steel Army” Third Division.
Kawanami Mitsu believed that this insult would soon be thoroughly washed away.
He turned around and commanded in an unquestionable tone: “Pass the order! Artillery units, conduct another round of covering bombardment! I want every inch of soil on that land to feel the warmth of Imperial artillery fire!”
“First Battalion’s Second and Third Companies and Cavalry Company, prepare!
The moment the bombardment ends, launch the general assault! Before the sun sets, I will enjoy my dinner amid the ruins of the town village!”
“Hai!” The staff officers responded in unison and ran off fanatically to relay the orders.
Kawanami Mitsu raised the binoculars again, his face brimming with the confidence of victory in hand. He seemed to already see the Chinese army’s positions crumbling amid the artillery fire, his soldiers shouting “Banzai,” stabbing the remaining resistors to death one by one in the ruins.
And he, Kawanami Mitsu, would receive commendation from the brigade commander for capturing this stubborn stronghold. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be long before the rank on his shoulder turned into a general’s star.
He contentedly narrowed his eyes, looking at the cloudless blue sky stretching for miles.
What fine weather, truly a good day to reap victory and glory.
At that moment, a strange, low buzzing sound came from the distant horizon. The sound grew louder and clearer, as if a massive swarm of metal bees was approaching at high speed.
“Hm? What sound?” Kawanami Mitsu frowned, puzzled, and raised the binoculars toward the sky…
At this time, Xiaguan Town could no longer be called a “town,” but a purgatory repeatedly plowed by artillery fire.
Amid the shattered walls and ruins, thick smells of gunpowder, blood, and death permeated the air.
29th Division 85th Brigade 169th Regiment commander Ma Wenyin was leaning against a tottering broken wall, gasping for breath heavily.
His left arm was roughly bandaged with cloth strips, dark red bloodstains already soaking through the entire piece of fabric.
Beside him were the only over one hundred brothers left in the regiment, all ragged, covered in blood, their eyes filled with exhaustion, but still tightly gripping their weapons.
They had held out here against the Japanese army’s attacks for several days.
Suddenly, a rapid and heavy sound of hooves, like drumming, rang out from the outskirts of the town, approaching at an astonishing speed!
“Cavalry! Japanese cavalry!” A sentinel lying on a rooftop let out a terrified scream.
Ma Wenyin’s heart sank sharply.
The outer positions had long fallen, and the barricades set up in the town to hinder infantry and tanks were utterly useless against charging cavalry!
Before his thought finished, a troop of Japanese cavalry on tall horses burst out from the street corner like demons from hell.
They wore steel helmets, khaki uniforms, with carbines hanging from their saddles, but the sabers gleaming with chilling light in their hands were the greatest threat.
“Charge!”
The leading Japanese cavalry officer let out a beast-like roar, pointing his saber forward.
The entire cavalry troop instantly turned into a torrent of steel, crashing into the Nationalist soldiers’ makeshift defense line.
A young soldier had just raised his Hanyang-made rifle, not yet able to aim, when a warhorse smashed into him with immense force.
His whole body flew out like a kite with its string cut; in mid-air, a flash of bright blade light passed, and his head flew skyward, blood spraying from his neck cavity, staining the ruined wall behind red.
“Ah…”
Screams rose one after another.
These elite Japanese cavalry demonstrated terrifying dominance in the narrow streets.
From their high vantage, the warhorses’ iron hooves trampled wantonly, and every swing of their sabers took a fresh life.
The Nationalist soldiers were already all wounded and hampered in movement; their single-shot rifles seemed clumsy and powerless against these high-speed moving targets.
Resistance turned into slaughter.
“Damn it!” Ma Wenyin’s eyes blazed red; he personally witnessed an old soldier who had followed him from Hebei to here being sliced in half at the waist by a cavalryman.
He could no longer tolerate such humiliating deaths.
“Brothers!” He drew his pistol from his waist, fired several shots into the sky, and roared with all his strength: “All get up for me! We are soldiers! Not pigs waiting to be slaughtered!”
“Fix bayonets! Charge with me! Even in death, stab a hole in those bastards on horseback!”
The roar ignited the last spark of ferocity in the soldiers’ hearts.
“Kill!”
“Charge with the regiment commander!”
The surviving soldiers leaped up from their cover, rifles with fixed bayonets in hand, launching a desperate charge against the unstoppable steel torrent.
Ma Wenyin led the way; his pistol spat fire tongues nonstop, shooting down the foremost Japanese cavalryman. But more sabers were already slashing down at him.
He could already smell the strong musky stench from the warhorses and see the ferocious, cruel smiles on the cavalrymen’s faces.
He closed his eyes, ready to meet his end.
However, at that moment, a roar even heavier and more shocking than the hoofbeats came pressing down fiercely from the sky!
Just as Ma Wenyin and his brothers closed their eyes awaiting death, ready to meet the sabers with flesh and blood in their final moment, that descending, increasingly loud roar, like the war drums of the gods, instantly overwhelmed all the clamor on the battlefield!
Ma Wenyin abruptly opened his eyes, a ray of ecstatic hope exploding in his bloodshot pupils!
He remembered! Just half an hour ago, the brigade commander had told him in a hoarse voice over the phone to hold on no matter what, that airplanes would soon come to reinforce!
At the time, he thought it was just the brigade commander’s consoling joke—after all, in the entire war zone, where were there any flyable planes? But unexpectedly, it was real!
“Signal gun!” Ma Wenyin roared almost in a breaking voice.
He didn’t even care about the saber slashing at him, abruptly drawing the polished signal gun from his waist, aiming at the sky, and unhesitatingly pulling the trigger!
“Whoosh… bang!”
A red signal flare trailing long white smoke whistled toward the charging Japanese cavalry, standing out starkly against the overcast sky!
As if receiving the clearest order, the thunder in the sky instantly turned into the roar of the god of death!
“Da-da-da… da-da-da-da…”
An unprecedented, chainsaw-tearing-steel-like burst of dense gunfire erupted from under the wings of fighters streaking by at ultra-low altitude!
Six 12.7mm heavy machine guns fired simultaneously, weaving a net of fire like an invisible giant scythe, savagely sweeping across the charging Japanese cavalry troop!
The originally unstoppable, tide-like enemy cavalry suddenly halted, followed by tooth-grinding sounds of bones shattering and flesh tearing filling the air.
The high-speed rotating large-caliber bullets possessed terrifying kinetic energy.
Whether the warhorses’ sturdy bodies or the cavalrymen’s gear, all were fragile as paper before this metal storm.
Warhorses along with their riders were instantly torn into blurry clumps of flesh and blood, rolling and tumbling to the ground in swathes. The cavalry troop that had been majestic moments ago was in chaos, blood flowing like rivers.
“Long live!”
“Our planes! It’s our planes!”
Watching the ferocious fighters with shark-mouth paint jobs strafing the enemy cavalry at ultra-low altitude, the Nationalist soldiers who had just been ready to go down fighting erupted in earth-shaking cheers.
The immense joy of surviving the disaster made them leap up forgetfully, waving their weapons.
However, before their cheers faded, the lead diving fighter elegantly pulled up its nose, and at the same time, a silver, barrel-shaped bomb from its belly was gently dropped.
The bomb’s tail “popped” open a small parachute, making it sway leisurely and slowly drift down toward the chaotic street below.
Seeing that leisurely bomb, the ecstasy on Ma Wenyin’s face instantly froze, replaced by bone-deep terror!
“Run… it’s incendiary bombs!” He screamed shrilly with all his strength.
As regiment commander, he had of course seen the power of incendiary bombs; this weapon called “hellfire” was too vicious. He would rather be hacked to pieces than be licked by that flame even once!
The soldiers were stunned by his scream, but survival instinct made them instinctively dive toward the ruins on both sides.
Just as they ran less than a second!
“Thud!”
A muffled explosion came from behind them. Immediately, a scorching heatwave hot enough to cook a man swept the entire street.
A massive, viscous, orange-red fireball erupted violently, countless burning oil pastes splattering everywhere like living venomous snakes! The center of the street instantly became a sea of roiling flame dragons!
In the sea of fire, heart-chilling, inhuman shrieks immediately rang out!
Screams of men and warhorses mixed together, forming the most terrifying symphony of hell. Warhorses covered in fire, driven by agony, charged out of the flames heedlessly; they ran and leaped madly, the unburnt oil paste on their bodies dragging steel-melting flames, scattering wildly to both sides of the street, carrying the seeds of death to every corner!
In the sky, the other fighters clearly had no intention of stopping. They took turns diving, low-flying, and dropping bombs. Dozens of incendiary bombs ranging from 50 to 100 kilograms were precisely dropped one after another on the wide street.
The entire area was completely engulfed in the flames of fire dragons. In the inferno, one could occasionally see cavalrymen ablaze like burning charcoal falling from their horses, only to stand up instantly, struggling and dancing futilely in the flames before turning into twisted black char.
“Ah…”
At that moment, a Nationalist soldier who hadn’t dodged in time suddenly let out a heart-wrenching wail.
A clump of flame sticking to his arm was burning fiercely, instantly burning through his uniform and starting to devour his flesh.
In agony, he instinctively used his other intact hand to desperately slap at the flames on his arm.
“Don’t pat!”
Ma Wenyin, closest to him, roared with bulging eyes, pouncing like a cheetah, slamming the soldier face-down and pinning his burning arm dead with his body.
Incendiary bombs, also called napalm bombs! Their most vicious aspect was that they were viscous oil paste! Patting would only spread the fire area larger and larger, eventually burning the whole body, beyond even gods’ salvation!
“Bayonet… quick, scrape with bayonet!” Ma Wenyin strained to hold down the screaming, struggling soldier, bellowing loudly at another dazed soldier nearby.
That soldier snapped awake, hurriedly drawing his bayonet from his waist, aiming at the burning oil paste and scraping down hard with the tip!
“Sizzle…”
Accompanied by a disgusting sound of scorched skin being scraped and a burnt stench, the wounded soldier let out a wolf-howling scream, his body convulsing violently. The scraped oil paste on the bayonet still burned stubbornly and eerily on the blade tip.
The most insidious part of napalm bombs was this: they burned almost anything they touched, unstoppable even in water.
If a person was hit, the only way was to scrape off the burning part as fast as possible; otherwise, once delayed, the fire poison would seep into the body, and then even gods couldn’t save them.
