Chapter 60: The Final Showdown
Just as John was driving the Caudron tank towards Zhongshan Wharf, Su Yaoyang led the third battalion and artillery company to arrive at Zhongshan Wharf at around 1:40 a.m.
Zhongshan Wharf was very large, covering several square kilometers, with many warehouses and buildings around it, which also allowed the third battalion to conceal themselves.
At 1:47, the third battalion spread out in a fan shape behind the ruins of the cargo warehouses on the west side of Zhongshan Wharf, when several searchlights swept over them. In the instant the searchlights passed, they saw a scene they would never forget.
More than five thousand prisoners of war were divided into over twenty square formations by barbed wire, standing barefoot on the frozen riverbank.
The Japanese used fire hoses to build a ring-shaped ice wall on the periphery of the crowd, with severed limbs frozen in the ice layer stretching upward like coral branches.
Every once in a while, some Japanese soldiers wearing gas masks would throw torches into the formations, forcing the crowd huddled from the cold to disperse again.
“The devils… are… preventing riots.”
A soldier suddenly retched. At the edge of one formation, a dozen bodies embracing for warmth had been flash-frozen into a large lump, and on the cut surface from a bayonet slash, corpses wrapped in ice crystals could be seen.
Su Yaoyang felt his hands trembling. When he raised the binoculars, a strange reflection suddenly flashed in the lenses. He saw a group of people in white coats pushing carts carrying stacks of enamel trays.
“They’re dentists.”
Lu Shaobin’s breath froze into an ice crust on his collar. “They’re collecting gold teeth.”
As if to confirm this statement, the buzzing of dental drills suddenly sounded in the distance. A prisoner of war pressed on the ice table convulsed and kicked through the ice layer, revealing the previous batch of victims frozen underneath.
“Fuck those little devils!” An furious roar came to Su Yaoyang’s ears. He turned his head and saw the blazing eyes of the soldiers behind him.
Su Yaoyang used great willpower to turn the binoculars back to the wharf, discovering that the Japanese were systematically driving the prisoners of war towards the riverbank.
“The little devils are waiting for the tide to rise!” Lu Shaobin’s tone changed. “Once the tide rises, the water will drown these prisoners of war, and then they can report it as collective drowning of prisoners.”
Su Yaoyang rolled up his sleeve, revealing a dark blue fluorescent watch. The hands pointed to exactly two o’clock, ten minutes short of the agreed time with John.
“No more waiting for them.” Su Yaoyang made up his mind. Every extra moment of waiting meant more compatriots killed by the devils.
“Mortars in position.”
In the severe cold, Xiong Junfeng’s voice sounded like a rusty bearing.
Twelve M2 60mm mortars were set up on the frozen ground, with cannon barrels wrapped in oil-soaked hemp cloth. When the loader opened the ammo box, solidified antifreeze lard was seeping from the fuze openings of the shells.
“Fire!”
In the instant the 60mm mortar shells tore through the snow curtain, Su Yaoyang saw the snowflakes along the trajectory instantly scorched into water vapor.
Twelve 60mm high-explosive shells crashed into the group of Japanese guards around the barbed wire. The collision of severe cold and extreme heat instantly blasted open the gates of hell.
“Boom boom boom…”
After the shell fuzes detonated on impact, the overpressure shockwave evaporated the snow into a ring-shaped white mist. Japanese soldiers within a 20-30 meter radius suddenly turned into paper-cut-like human silhouettes.
Bodies shattered and disintegrated in the air blast of over minus ten degrees.
A Type 92 heavy machine gun mounted on sandbags had its frozen ammo tray blown into the air by the shockwave, countless 6.5mm bullets scattering to the ground like heavenly maidens scattering flowers.
“Switch to white phosphorus rounds!”
After the first salvo, Su Yaoyang’s voice came through like it was from an ice cellar.
“Understood… white phosphorus rounds ready!”
The gunners wasted no words, taking out shells with white-painted warheads from the ammo boxes.
“Fire!”
Another twelve shells exploded among the Japanese, but this time what splashed out from the explosions were flames from hell.
In the instant the white phosphorus shells burst open, seeing the twelve blue-green flames rising by the riverbank and the Japanese dancing in the fire, he suddenly thought of the female student they met on the road who had been raped to death, as if seeing a smile of vengeance on her face.
Before the toxic flames of the white phosphorus had dissipated, the army sword of Major Motoyama Kouta, second company commander of the Japanese 3rd Division’s 6th Regiment, had already cleaved through the thick smoke.
This officer, who graduated from the University of Tokyo’s mathematics department before enlisting, was naturally sensitive to numbers and directions. After the first salvo, he immediately looked toward the direction the shells came from. When the second salvo fell, he had already taken out his pocket watch to calculate the firing interval, drawing coordinate axes on the snow with his right hand.
In just tens of seconds, he calculated the approximate position of the enemy artillery.
He raised his army sword and roared toward the southwest: “Grenade launcher teams ready, coordinates blue 17, 4 cyan!, range 460 meters… fire!”
Soon, four Type 89 grenade launchers fired toward 22 degrees southwest.
“Boom boom…”
Type 91 hand grenades landed and exploded massively, their impact points less than 50 meters from the artillery company concealed behind a coal pile.
A flying shrapnel even hit the ammo box next to Xiong Junfeng with a crisp ping.
Startled by the Japanese reaction speed, Xiong Junfeng quickly said: “White phosphorus rounds load… fire!”
Another twelve shells exploded among the Japanese. Coincidentally, two large clumps of blue-green phosphorus flew onto Motoyama Kouta’s body in the cold wind.
The white phosphorus stuck to his woolen greatcoat, the high temperature instantly burning his clothing to ashes, flames even flowing down his spine into his trouser legs.
The intense pain made him jump up on the spot. When he jumped into the sand box prepared for firefighting, he found the sand grains had frozen into concrete-like hard lumps.
“Save me… save me quick!” Motoyama Kouta let out a hoarse, inhuman roar.
A nearby orderly rushed forward, trembling at the sight of the flaming figure, hesitated, then tried to pick off Motoyama Kouta’s burning uniform with a bayonet, but only gouged out a whole strip of burning back. In the end, he could only watch helplessly as his own major burned into a lump of black charcoal before his eyes.
The viciousness of white phosphorus lay in this: once it stuck to the body, unless the flames and flesh were cut off together with a knife, there was no way to stop the burning.
The violent explosions also alerted the prisoners on the wharf. Everyone stared dumbfounded at the Japanese ravaged by white phosphorus nearby, then at the Japanese on the wharf fleeing in panic from the blasts, all the prisoners erupted in earth-shaking cheers.
“Brothers… someone’s come to save us!”
“We’re saved!”
The prisoners of war who had originally lost all hope of survival
instantly boiled over, shouting and yelling. Some began running from the riverbank onto the wharf.
“Da da da da…”
But as soon as they reached the wharf, machine gun fire rang out. Tongues of fire like deadly whips lashed at them, many prisoners instantly falling into pools of blood.
