Chapter 299: Relentless Assaults
If the frontline battle was a high-speed meat grinder splattering blood and flesh, then the Shanxi Militia Headquarters in the rear was a brain center tensed to its limit.
From the start of the battle, not only frontline officers like Li Yunlong, Ding Wei, and Li Gaoyuan were on high alert, but the three-person command team personally led by Su Yaoyang, Bai Chongxi, and the brigade commander was under immense pressure.
In front of the massive combat sand table, the air seemed to have frozen solid.
Su Yaoyang, dressed in a gray combat uniform, stood in the center, his expression calm, but a flicker of contemplation occasionally passed through his deep eyes.
To his left was the Gui famous general known as the “Little Zhuge,” Bai Chongxi, who was pointing at the Japanese defensive nodes on the sand table with a baton, muttering to himself.
To Su Yaoyang’s right was the Eighth Route Army brigade commander, hands on hips, body slightly leaning forward, staring intently at the red arrows representing their own armored forces.
In the entire command room, the ringing of telephones, the ticking of telegraph machines, and the sounds of staff officers moving quickly and reporting in low voices intertwined, forming a tense yet efficient symphony of war.
Frontline enemy situation telegrams flew in like snowflakes.
In just one hour of combat, the headquarters had received more than twenty telegrams and over ten urgent phone calls from frontline units, with a new enemy report coming in almost every two minutes.
This intelligence was immediately compiled and reported to the three at the sand table, who analyzed and judged based on the ever-changing battlefield situation and issued the latest decisions.
An operations staff officer hurried to the sand table with a stack of freshly decoded telegrams and stood at attention to report:
“Report to the Commander-in-Chief and Commander Bai, our armored forces and infantry 1st and 6th Regiments have successfully torn open the Japanese first line of defense and are currently coordinating infantry-armor to expand the breakthrough on both flanks, consolidating the occupied area.
At the same time, our special operations team captured Highland 87 one hour ago, annihilating the defenders and successfully destroying a Japanese anti-tank gun company deployed there!”
Bai Chongxi nodded lightly upon hearing this; it was good news as expected.
But the staff officer didn’t pause and immediately read the second telegram, his voice noticeably heavier:
“Also, the Japanese have strengthened their anti-tank forces on the second line of defense! They are using surviving fortifications and ruins to organize multiple anti-tank teams.
Four of our Sherman tanks and three Xiafei light tanks have been damaged and lost mobility, awaiting rear repairs!”
Su Yaoyang’s brows furrowed slightly.
The staff officer took a deep breath and read the third, most worrying intelligence:
“Most of the Japanese forward positions have been destroyed by our artillery fire, but their resistance remains extremely stubborn.
After our tanks broke through the positions, they are desperately sending out ‘human bomb attack’ teams, with soldiers carrying explosive packs and grenade bundles, rushing out from shell craters and ruins, attempting to block and destroy our tank offensive with suicide attacks.”
Upon hearing “human bomb attack,” his face instantly became grave.
He was very familiar with this insane Japanese tactic—a desperate method of filling with human lives, primitive and bloody, but it created enormous psychological pressure and real threat to tank crews and supporting infantry.
At the mention of “human bomb attack,” the already tense air in the command room instantly grew heavier, as if layered with ice.
All the staff officers’ movements subconsciously slowed, their gazes unanimously turning to the three top commanders at the sand table.
However, Su Yaoyang’s face remained as calm as a deep pool; the Japanese madness seemed to stir no ripples in his heart.
He simply withdrew his hand from the sand table, slowly straightened up, and said to his chief of staff Pi Ruoyu beside him in an unquestionable, icy voice:
“Tell Li Gaoyuan, Wu Qingyun, and the armored regiment’s John and Fu’er.
I don’t care what tactics the Japanese use to counterattack, whether bayonets or human bombs.
My requirement is only one: crush all Japanese counterattacks with the most resolute and bold actions and determination.
Infantry must establish isolation zones for the tanks, killing on the spot any Japanese soldiers attempting to approach the tanks!”
His voice wasn’t loud, but it was like a heavy iron hammer striking the heart of everyone in the command room. It was an order born of absolute confidence and overwhelming strength, devoid of emotion, purely pursuing victory.
The brigade commander beside him also had a grim face; he deeply understood the brutality of this battle.
He turned his head and said seriously to a staff officer also from the 386th Brigade: “Immediately telegram the Independent Regiment and New 1st Regiment, tell Li Yunlong and Ding Wei not to fear sacrifices and casualties in combat.
This battle is for the future of our entire Chinese nation, to completely drive out the invaders! To recapture Taiyuan, even if it means wiping out the troops, it’s worth it. Don’t forget, we are fighting for national independence and integrity against Japanese imperialist aggression!”
His words were filled with a revolutionary’s passion and resolve to sacrifice for ideals, in stark contrast to Su Yaoyang’s pure military orders, but their determination to win was identical.
After hearing their words, the silently contemplative Bai Chongxi nodded heavily. He forcefully tapped the position representing Taiyuan city on the sand table with his baton, producing a crisp sound.
“Well said!”
His eyes gleamed, “Mingxi, what you say is true.
In this battle, we’ve invested all our energy and resources—victory is permitted, defeat is not! No matter the casualties, nothing can stop us from pursuing final victory!”
Three top commanders, three different styles, yet at this moment they reached a highly unified consensus.
The orders were quickly recorded, and the staff officers immediately turned and rushed to the telegraphs and phones, transmitting this iron-blooded directive laced with sacrifice to every frontline commander.
The battle continued from dawn to noon, a full four hours, with cannon fire, gunfire, and explosions never ceasing.
By noon at 12 o’clock, under the successive assaults of the Shanxi Militia armored forces and elite infantry, the Japanese first line of defense, long prepared, had been smashed full of holes and thoroughly breached in multiple places.
The surviving Japanese, like turtles with shattered shells, could only rely on isolated strongpoints and damaged fortifications, barely holding under the militia’s storm-like offensive; total collapse was only a matter of time.
Blood-soaked Li Gaoyuan stood in a bombed-over Japanese command post, watching the last large bunker complex not far ahead being surrounded by his men, preparing to order a final push to take it completely.
Beside him, Wu Qingyun wiped the gunpowder smoke from his face, raised binoculars, and prepared to call for rear tanks for the final precise strike.
However, at that moment, the headquarters’ withdrawal order reached the frontline.
Though extremely reluctant, military orders were as immovable as mountains.
Li Gaoyuan and Wu Qingyun could only grudgingly order the troops to provide covering fire alternately and withdraw from the captured positions.
The Sherman tanks, smoking but still powered, slowly reversed, their tracks crushing Japanese soldiers’ corpses and twisted weapon debris.
The exhausted but high-morale militia soldiers carried wounded and spoils, orderly retreating to the starting positions, allowing the long-waiting Independent Regiment and New 1st Regiment to take over their assault positions.
The rhythm of the battlefield underwent a wondrous shift at this moment.
If the Shanxi Militia’s offensive was like an indestructible ten-thousand-ton hammer, relying on tanks, heavy artillery, and superior firepower to crush the enemy’s defenses—men and fortifications alike—into powder with absolute, unreasoning force.
Then the Eighth Route Army’s attack was like mercury spilling, seeping everywhere.
The warriors of the Independent Regiment and New 1st Regiment, far less well-equipped than the militia, had no tanks to lead or overwhelming artillery support.
But as soon as they entered the positions, they immediately dispersed into small units by squad and platoon, like countless agile loaches, instantly slipping into the countless gaps and breaches smashed by the militia.
They would launch attacks on the Japanese from any unimaginable angle and direction.
A three-man combat team would silently approach from the side of a collapsed trench, using bayonets and grenades to take out a machine gun nest.
A squad of soldiers would use thick gunpowder smoke for cover to circle behind surviving Japanese bunkers.
Li Yunlong would even organize his specialty earthworks, digging temporary passages between shell craters, appearing under the Japanese noses unnoticed.
Their tactics were extremely flexible and varied, sometimes massing forces for a fierce assault on one point, other times dispersing for harassment, leaving the already understrength and mentally collapsing Japanese unable to mount effective defenses.
Just coping with a frontal assault, and grenade explosions would sound on the flanks, with even sniper fire from behind.
This omnipresent pressure left the surviving Japanese soldiers exhausted, nerves constantly taut, as if trapped in a tightening net, slowly strangled to death.
On the left wing of the first line of defense, repeatedly plowed by artillery like a lunar surface, was garrisoned by the Japanese 36th Division’s 222nd Infantry Regiment.
At this moment, taking advantage of a lull in the opposing Chinese army’s offensive, the 1st Battalion commander of the regiment—Major Nakajima Taro—was stepping over soft scorched earth mixed with human tissue, inspecting his already dilapidated positions.
His battalion was basically wiped out, everywhere littered with mutilated corpses and moaning wounded. The surviving soldiers huddled like frightened birds in craters and damaged trenches, eyes vacant, faces covered in black gunpowder smoke and despair.
At that moment, dragging footsteps approached. A wounded soldier with his abdomen wrapped in thick bandages, long soaked through with blood, was laboriously dragging a heavy wooden ration box to a trench where a dozen soldiers were gasping.
He weakly leaned against the trench wall and said to the starving soldiers with stars in their eyes, using his last strength: “Hurry… eat while hot… after eating… drive the Chinese down.”
Seeing food, the famished soldiers’ eyes instantly burst with beastly light.
Ignoring thanks, they swarmed forward, opened the box without a word, grabbed the still-warm rice balls inside, and stuffed them into their mouths, wolfing them down.
However, halfway through eating, one soldier’s movements suddenly froze.
He looked down at the rice ball in his hand and saw large patches of glaring, sticky dark red staining the white rice.
He froze, then his stomach churned; he immediately crouched in the trench and vomited violently with a “wah.”
His reaction was contagious; the other eating soldiers also stopped, looking down at their food.
When they saw the rice balls were stained not with sauce but human blood, everyone’s faces paled. Instantly, the trench filled with vomiting sounds.
“Baka!”
Seeing this, Nakajima Taro flew into a rage. He strode over, raising his hand to deliver resounding slaps to the delivery wounded soldier, berating him for bringing such a thing to shake morale.
But when he rushed up, he found the wounded soldier slumped against the trench wall, head tilted, having stopped breathing completely.
Behind him, a long, bluish intestine trailed from his abdominal wound, leaving a several-meter-long, wet bloody trail on the ground.
The blood on the ration box, the blood on the rice balls… all from this soldier.
Nakajima Taro’s raised hand froze in mid-air. He looked at the soldier’s wide-eyed dead face, then at the shocking intestines on the ground, finally at the bloodstained rice balls discarded by his men. An indescribable shame and sorrow surged in his heart, leaving him somber.
He understood this soldier had used his last life and flowing blood to deliver this final supply to his comrades.
“Eat!”
Nakajima Taro suddenly let out a suppressed roar. He bent down, shamefully picked up the bloodiest rice ball, and under his men’s shocked gazes, stuffed it fiercely into his mouth, chewing with bloody taste while ordering loudly in a muffled voice:
“Eat your fill! Drive the Chinese… all of them down!”
“Boom…”
At that moment, several mortar rounds exploded around the trench; instantly, the trench was filled with flying limbs and severed arms, one arm still clutching a rice ball flung by the blast onto a nearby tree branch.
Soon, accompanied by a loud charge horn, countless Eighth Route Army warriors in earth-gray uniforms charged toward them with rifles at the ready…
