Chapter 301: Pressing On Reluctantly
A staff officer hurried through the busy command room and handed a telegram marked “Top Secret” to Militia Chief of Staff Pi Ruoyu.
Pi Ruoyu quickly glanced at it, his face immediately becoming serious. He did not dare to delay and promptly presented the telegram to Su Yaoyang, who was sitting behind the desk reviewing documents from the logistics department.
Su Yaoyang did not look at it right away. Instead, he leisurely pushed the documents aside, took a pack of “Good Luck” brand cigarettes from his pocket, and lit one with a crisp “click” from an exquisite Zippo lighter.
He took a deep drag, exhaled a long plume of smoke, then extended the fingers holding the cigarette and tapped the new telegram, looking sharply at Pi Ruoyu.
“Is the intelligence reliable? Has the intelligence department confirmed it?”
Hearing the term “intelligence department,” Pi Ruoyu’s stern face furrowed slightly, seemingly having some reservations about this department that Su Yaoyang had personally established and which operated independently of the traditional military system, but he still replied in his precise military tone:
“Report to the Commander. The Military Intelligence Section and the air brigade’s reconnaissance squadron have cross-verified it. The intelligence accuracy has reached over ninety percent and can basically be confirmed.”
Su Yaoyang’s gaze shifted from Pi Ruoyu’s face to the huge military map on the wall, his eyes deepening.
“In that case, that means the Japanese reinforcements will arrive in Taiyuan in as little as two days?”
“Yes.” Pi Ruoyu’s response was firm and decisive.
Amid the swirling smoke, the corners of Su Yaoyang’s mouth curved into a cold arc.
“We absolutely cannot let the Japanese reinforcements arrive in Taiyuan so comfortably.”
He stubbed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray, suddenly stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced two laps in the center of the command room. All the surrounding officers held their breath, knowing the commander-in-chief was about to make a major decision.
Su Yaoyang abruptly stopped, turned, and pointed to the railway line on the map leading from Hebei into Shanxi.
“Order the air brigade immediately!”
His voice was not loud, but it was filled with unquestionable authority. “Cease all conventional bombing of Taiyuan! Concentrate all forces on destructive bombing of the Japanese 27th Division and 7th Independent Mixed Brigade coming to reinforce! I want you to stop them all halfway!”
“Yes!”
Pi Ruoyu snapped to attention with a standard salute, then turned without hesitation and strode out of the command room.
Pi Ruoyu had just turned to leave when the sound of Su Yaoyang issuing the order still echoed in the command room.
Bai Chongxi was frowning deeply, his fingers rapidly gesturing on the map, clearly simulating the chain reactions that this major strategic change might trigger.
At that moment, the door curtain of the command room was suddenly flung open.
“Brigade commander… Brigade commander!”
A young staff officer from the 386th Brigade rushed in excitedly, nearly stumbling because he was running too fast.
He had no time to straighten his crooked military cap and practically bounced over to the group, his young face flushed red with extreme excitement.
“Brigade commander, Regiment Commander Su, Commander Bai, good news, tremendous good news!”
“Little Li.”
Su Yaoyang recognized the staff officer and, seeing his ecstatic expression, smiled and asked, “What good news has got you so thrilled?”
The staff officer named Little Li took a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart, but his voice still trembled slightly with excitement:
“Regimental flag, it’s a regimental flag.
The Independent Regiment just sent a telegram: they captured a regimental flag from the headquarters of the 222nd Regiment in a cave on the right wing of High Ground 87! It’s a regimental flag personally bestowed by Emperor Meiji of Japan!”
He waved his arms excitedly, as if he had seen the flag with his own eyes, reciting every detail from the telegram verbatim:
“The purple tassels were only able to be burned one-fifth, and the three-sided gold-plated finial on the top of the wooden lacquered flagpole hadn’t been burned at all! The 16-petaled chrysanthemum emblem relief pattern of the Japanese imperial family on the large finial is perfectly preserved!”
Before Su Yaoyang could speak, the brigade commander behind him shot to his feet with a “whoosh,” shoving the chair in front of him so hard that it slid far back.
“Where’s the flag? Has it been verified?”
He rushed to Staff Officer Li in two steps, grabbed his shoulders with both hands, unusually losing his usual composure, and eagerly pressed, “Call the Independent Regiment right now. Make sure to confirm if it’s the 222nd Regiment’s regimental flag!”
Seeing this unprecedented excitement, Su Yaoyang genuinely felt happy for him, while a strange sense of emotion welled up in his heart.
In another timeline, after years of that brutal war, neither China, which suffered 35 million military and civilian casualties, nor America, which bombed Japan back to the Stone Age, had captured a complete, truly significant Japanese regimental flag on the battlefield.
After World War II ended, the entire Japanese Army had only one surviving military flag.
In the Japanese heart, the status of that flag was almost equivalent to that infamous Yasukuni Shrine.
But since he arrived in this timeline, everything had changed. First, two complete regimental flags were captured in Nanjing, giving Chongqing a huge favor and face.
Now, the Eighth Route Army had personally captured another one… The spiritual impact and political significance of this victory were even more exhilarating and joyful than simply annihilating a Japanese division.
Two days later, at the rear of Xinkou, in a narrow pass on the vital road to Taiyuan.
A massive army, like a gray-green giant serpent, was laboriously crawling along the dusty official road amid flying dust.
The marching formation of this army could no longer be called orderly.
Nervous mounted vanguard scouts frequently galloped back from the front, reining in their horses and loudly reporting to the officers riding tall horses in the column, each report making those officers’ faces grow darker.
In the middle of the marching dragon, several surviving Type 94 large trucks occasionally rumbled past. Beneath their majestic exteriors were drivers repeatedly looking up at the sky with terrified eyes.
As the trucks passed, they kicked up clouds of yellow sand, choking the surrounding soldiers into coughing fits and making the thick stench of blood and charred flesh in the air even more pungent.
The column was mixed with many wounded soldiers leaning on makeshift crutches, bandages seeping blood wrapped around their bodies.
They shuffled along with numb expressions, their eyes filled with exhaustion and fear.
The presence of these wounded turned this supposedly elite imperial division into something more resembling a routed mob that had just suffered a crushing defeat.
In fact, they were indeed undergoing a one-sided slaughter.
Not just the wounded—almost all the soldiers, while marching, would occasionally glance fearfully at the blue sky, a bone-deep terror of death from above.
Whenever any small black dot appeared in the sky or a faint engine buzz was heard, the entire column would immediately descend into chaos.
This was the Japanese 27th Division urgently rushing from Hejian Prefecture in Hebei to reinforce Taiyuan.
Ever since they set foot on Shanxi soil two days ago, preparing to reach Taiyuan in one push, the nightmare had begun.
Starting from yesterday, they had been continuously subjected to bombings by the Chinese air force.
It was not the sporadic, symbolic harassment they were used to, but relentless, destructive carpet bombing.
The grass and fields on both sides of the road looked as if they had been brutally plowed by a giant iron plow, churning up black scorched earth riddled with dense bomb craters everywhere.
Wreckage of destroyed weaponry, supplies, wagons, and trucks still burned by the roadside, belching thick black smoke. Along the roadsides were unburied Japanese soldier corpses in gruesome states of death, as well as severely wounded men lying on the ground moaning in agony.
The Chinese air force’s incessant, maggot-like bombings had already inflicted heavy losses on this division.
On a relatively gentle hillside, Division Chief of Staff Colonel Ota Kimihide rode up to Division Commander Lieutenant General Honma Masaharu. His usually stern face was now etched with anxiety and helplessness.
“Division Commander!” Ota Kimihide’s voice was hoarse with urgency. “Our division has already suffered over twenty percent casualties. If this continues, I’m afraid we won’t even reach Taiyuan before the Chinese air force completely bombs our 27th Division to pieces!”
The warhorse under Lieutenant General Honma snorted uneasily, seemingly disturbed by the heavy aura of death around them.
The division commander himself stood like a statue, his gaze fixed dead ahead on the dusty pass, as if trying to burn through that sky that filled him with utter humiliation with his eyes.
He listened to his chief of staff’s complaints without a change in expression, squeezing words out through gritted teeth.
“Then what do you want to do?” Honma Masaharu asked in a deep, raspy voice.
Ota Kimihide saw a glimmer of hope and immediately leaned forward, saying in an almost pleading tone: “Division Commander, we should temporarily halt the advance and find cover somewhere.
Continuing to march the troops openly on the main road makes us too big a target! The Chinese planes are too ferocious, like mad dogs! We can’t keep going!”
“No!”
Honma Masaharu’s refusal was firm and decisive, even carrying a hint of a roar.
He whipped his head around, staring at his chief of staff with an icy, piercing gaze that made Ota Kimihide involuntarily shrink back.
“The troops cannot stop! We must continue advancing! No matter what, we must reach Taiyuan to reinforce!”
Honma Masaharu was actually quite helpless himself, even feeling a suffocating sense of fate choking him.
He knew better than anyone that continuing meant sending soldiers to resist bombs with flesh and blood.
But reinforcing Taiyuan was a direct order from North China Area Army Commander General Tada Hayao.
Taiyuan was the Imperial Army’s strategic fulcrum in Shanxi and could not fall no matter what.
If Taiyuan fell, not only would First Army Commander Shimozuka Yoshio be held accountable, but he, the division commander ordered to reinforce yet failing to arrive in time, would absolutely not escape either! His future and honor were tied to Taiyuan’s fate.
So, even if it was a mountain of knives and sea of fire ahead, he could only grit his teeth and press on.
