Chapter 255: Withdrawal
“Damn… what kind of battle is this!”
Looking at the telegram just delivered by the communications soldier, personally sent by Li Zongren, Su Yaoyang couldn’t help but mutter under his breath, his face full of an expression of wry amusement. He casually handed the thin telegram paper to the operations staff officer beside him.
The operations staff officer took the telegram, quickly scanned it, and a wry smile appeared on his serious face as well.
Earlier… they had still been triumphant victors full of high spirits.
Airplanes and heavy artillery had taken turns bombarding, blowing the arrogant elite Japanese troops into chaos and making them wail like ghosts and wolves.
Just the 3rd Division and the 13th Division had been gnawed away by seven to eight thousand men by their combined 33rd Army Group, back and forth in front of Pumpkin Shop. This great victory was enough to boast about for any Chinese army for several years.
But now?
In the blink of an eye, the situation had drastically changed.
The friendly forces couldn’t hold, Japanese reinforcements were closing in from all directions, and Pumpkin Shop, which they had previously regarded as a sure thing, had instantly turned into a death trap leaking on all sides.
And he, this “hero” who had just been enjoying the fruits of victory, had to prepare to tuck tail and run in the next second.
What the hell is this!
Su Yaoyang paced irritably two steps in the command post, and finally let out a long sigh.
He knew very well in his heart that he could understand Li Zongren’s decision.
Although they had achieved a resounding tactical victory in the local battlefield at Pumpkin Shop, relying on firepower superiority beyond the era. But on the grand strategic chessboard of the entire Zaoyi Campaign, the 5th Theater, and even the entire Chinese army, they were still the side in absolute disadvantage.
The general trend was like this, and no single person’s power could reverse it.
His small victory was like throwing a stone into a raging river; it could splash up quite a bit of water, but it fundamentally could not change the river’s course.
Yichang… probably couldn’t be held.
Thinking of this, Su Yaoyang stopped his steps, and the irritation and helplessness in his eyes were quickly replaced by his usual calm and decisiveness.
Running is running, nothing shameful about it.
As long as the green hills remain, there’s no fear of running out of firewood. As long as his core force was still there, as long as the capital was still there, he could anytime pull together an even stronger unit and doubly get back the face lost today.
He pondered for a moment, and a preliminary withdrawal plan had already quickly taken shape in his mind. He raised his head and looked at Pi Ruoyu, as well as all the officers in the command post waiting for his orders.
“Pass on my orders!” Su Yaoyang’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was filled with unquestionable authority.
“Order all units to immediately cease pursuit and contract the defensive line! In units of companies and platoons, provide alternating cover and build temporary blocking positions.
Load all weapons, ammunition, equipment, and supplies that can be taken onto the vehicles! Destroy anything that can’t be taken on the spot, don’t leave a single hair for the little devils!」
“Order the engineer troops, starting now, to lay enough landmines for me on our withdrawal route! Bridges, passes, everywhere that can be blown up, load with explosives! I want the little devils’ pursuers to pay a bloody price for every step forward!”
“Order the Pirate Air Wing, after dawn, to conduct indiscriminate blocking bombing on all possible Japanese units pursuing us! Don’t skimp on ammunition, bomb them hard!”
“Finally…”
Su Yaoyang’s gaze swept over everyone, “Notify the whole army to prepare. Tonight deep into the night, we… begin the withdrawal!”
Withdrawal is a complex job, can’t just do it haphazardly; which units withdraw first, which later, how to provide alternating cover, the withdrawal route, etc., all are profound knowledge.
The staff officers busied themselves for several hours before sorting out the withdrawal plan and handing it to Su Yaoyang, who looked it over, pondered for a good while, and then signed it.
…………
Deep night, 2 a.m.
The night at Pumpkin Shop was eerily quiet.
The battlefield that had been rumbling with cannon fire and shouts of killing during the day now only had the whimpering of the breeze over the ruins, and the faint smell of gunpowder and blood still lingering in the air.
However, amid this deathly silence, something out of place with the tense atmosphere was happening in the positions of the Shanxi Militia—having a midnight snack.
Platoon leader Zhang Wenshan of 4th Regiment, 1st Battalion, 3rd Platoon was squatting behind a broken wall, shoveling big spoonfuls of his piping hot mess kit.
In the mess kit was hot beef canned stewed potatoes urgently transported up by the logistics department’s trucks; white sorghum rice soaked in the rich meat broth, glistening with oil and fragrant.
“Damn, satisfying!”
A young private first class said indistinctly while hissing from the heat, “Fighting under Commander Su is comfortable; win a battle and there’s meat to eat, even when running there’s still a full meal!”
Zhang Wenshan smiled, said nothing, just shoved another big mouthful into his mouth. He knew very well in his heart that this wasn’t simply “comfortable.”
As the saying goes, details determine success or failure.
Commander Su often said, man is iron and rice is steel; an army with empty stomachs can’t win battles, nor can it run fast.
No one knew what would happen on this withdrawal road; maybe continuous forced marches of dozens or hundreds of kilometers, maybe turning around to fight the pursuing devils. Filling the soldiers’ stomachs before departure and building up their stamina was the most basic and most important preparation.
This kind of care shown in the finer details was exactly the root of why this unit’s cohesion and combat power far surpassed other armies.
At 3:20 a.m., with an order from the command post, this carefully planned grand withdrawal officially began under the cover of night.
The first to move was the artillery regiment.
The artillery regiment, already prepared, began a furious bombardment of the Japanese positions, with dense artillery fire continuously striking the Japanese positions, causing fires to shoot up on the Japanese side, throwing their positions into chaos for a time.
Although this bombardment wasn’t intense, it continued for more than an hour, making the entire Japanese army nervous and on edge, thinking the Shanxi Militia was launching a night attack.
But the Japanese didn’t know that while they were enduring the shelling, the opposing army grandly drove onto the road to Yichang under the cover of the artillery fire.
First came the truck convoy of the field hospital; the medics were carefully tending to the wounded on the vehicles—they were the heroes of this victory and had to be transferred with the highest priority and safety.
Next came Huang Guantao’s 2nd Regiment and the armored regiment.
Amid the slight tremor of the earth, a steel torrent composed of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles let out a low roar. The tank tracks crunched over broken stone and rubble.
They showed no panic at all, striding forth openly with the might of victors, beginning the transfer.
Finally came the 4th and 5th Regiments under Su Yaoyang’s command; as the rearguard, after the engineers laid the last landmine and blew up the last key bridge, they boarded the trucks in good order and merged into that steel dragon surging westward.
The entire withdrawal operation, though massive in scale with vehicles streaming like water and horses, made quite a bit of noise.
But the Japanese positions opposite showed no reaction.
The Japanese at this time were busy dodging the shells from the artillery regiment, with no attention to spare for anything else.
Even if they heard the faint rumbling from afar, or saw the vague shadow on the horizon slowly moving east.
But they didn’t know what was happening.
Was the Chinese army redeploying? Or were they launching a new offensive?
Without clear orders from superiors, no one dared to act rashly.
They could only watch wide-eyed, full of bewilderment and fear, as that force grew farther and farther away from them, finally disappearing into the western night.
They could never have dreamed that these opponents who had beaten them into disarray these past days had slipped away right under their noses, bold as brass.
When the first ray of morning light pierced the night sky over Pumpkin Shop like a blade, Major General Katayama Riichiro, commander of the 3rd Division’s Infantry 5th Brigade, was finally roused from extreme fatigue.
He wasn’t woken by the artillery fire.
In fact, what made him and all Japanese officers and men extremely uneasy was this damn, spine-chilling silence.
At this usual time, the ferocious Chinese army on the opposite position should have already started their “morning greetings” with their seemingly endless shells. But today, the entire position was quiet as a grave.
“What’s going on? What are the Chinese troops opposite up to?”
Katayama Riichiro rubbed his bloodshot eyes and asked hoarsely. His command post was filled with the foul smell of gunpowder, sweat, and cheap cigarettes.
No one could answer him.
All frontline observation posts reported the same eerie situation—dead silence opposite.
This wasn’t to say the 3rd Division’s soldiers had all become useless.
It was just that the battles of the past few days had been too brutal.
This ace division that prided itself as “elite” had suffered the most painful and humiliating blow since the Sino-Japanese War began.
Their boasted bushido spirit had been smashed to pieces in the face of the enemy’s sky-covering artillery fire and tanks surging like tides.
The soldiers’ morale wasn’t just declining; it was on the verge of collapse. Many soldiers didn’t even dare close their eyes at night, fearing being torn to shreds in their dreams by those heavy bombs falling from the sky.
In such a state of grass and trees all soldiers, everyone in peril, no one had imagined that the Chinese army, which had always held absolute superiority and rubbed them into the ground, would pull off a midnight runaway act.
This completely defied military common sense! Which side that won would slip away without even a greeting?
It wasn’t until full daylight that a reconnaissance squad of the most seasoned veterans, under repeated urging from officers, tremblingly crawled out of the trenches and cautiously probed toward the opposite positions.
They were prepared for ambushes, sniping, being bombed to the sky.
But what they encountered were only empty trenches, large numbers of abandoned ammo crates（ with empty ammo inside）, and scattered mess kit cans still warm all over the ground.
Even more chilling for them were the countless deep tank tracks on the ground, clearly indicating that last night a massive mechanized force had leisurely withdrawn from here.
They had even blown key bridges on the withdrawal route and left simple warning signs on some must-pass roads—”Landmines ahead, welcome”—written in Chinese characters and clumsy Japanese katakana, full of blatant mockery.
When this humiliating report reached Katayama Riichiro, the major general’s face instantly turned pig-liver red.
“Baka ya lu!”
He kicked over the campaign desk in front of him; maps, documents, and teacups scattered all over the floor.
Shame! This was monumental shame!
They had cowered nervously all night like fools facing empty positions! And their enemy, the Shanxi Militia that had beaten them down, had long since fled.
A communications staff officer rushed in pale-faced and reported the latest conclusion from air reconnaissance and technical department calculations.
“Report to Your Excellency General… according to… according to our estimates, the Chinese main force… currently… has already withdrawn over a hundred li beyond our lines…”
Over a hundred li?
This number was like a resounding slap, fiercely striking Katayama Riichiro and all the 3rd Division’s senior officers in the face.
This meant that even if they organized pursuit right now, they could only eat dust behind the enemy’s ass. Commander Sonobe’s grand, all-costs “iron pincer encirclement” plan had thoroughly become a massive joke.
The cage they had painstakingly built hadn’t even caught a single hair.
