Chapter 66: The Final Showdown
The morning mist on December 16, wrapped in gunpowder smoke, dyed the Yangtze River a turbid lead gray.
When the observation balloon of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Division rose from Mount Mufushan, the broken chimney of the Shimonoseki power plant exactly chimed six times.
The bell tolls carried desolation amid loneliness, as if heralding the final morning bell for this city plunged into hell.
Li Tao huddled behind the pile of iron anchors on the dock, watching a German-made M35 helmet floating in the river water.
After being rescued from Zhongshan Wharf by Su Yaoyang last night, he and more than two thousand prisoners of war finally escaped to Zhongshan Wharf at dawn.
The prisoners who originally thought they could escape from this city alive despairingly discovered that their hellish life had not ended.
Just moments ago, his communications officer had shielded him with his body, taking the shrapnel from a shell exploding nearby in his place.
Li Tao survived, but that communications officer died.
At this moment, he clutched half a piece of bloodstained biscuit, which had been given to him by the other side when he rendezvoused with Su Yaoyang and the others last night.
“Woo……Boom…”
A sharp whistle suddenly exploded by his ear, that was the salvo of the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun, amid bursts of explosions, the Baroque dome of the nearby customs building was blasted into fragments all over the sky.
“It’s the military flag of the 6th Division!”
A hoarse roar came from the west side of the dock.
Through the thick smoke of the burning river steamer, Li Tao saw a group of Japanese soldiers wearing pig-snout gas masks climbing over the dense wreckage on the road, advancing towards them.
Those executioners held rifles, with bayonets still stained with blood, and the flag they carried was that of the 6th Division’s 23rd Regiment, which had perpetrated the Jinan Massacre.
Watching the Japanese slowly closing in, Li Tao felt waves of regret in his heart; if only he had followed Su Yaoyang.
Previously, in his view, Su Yaoyang was at most some guy who popped up out of nowhere, who gathered a bunch of routed soldiers and then gave himself the title of garrison regiment commander.
And as a major deputy battalion commander of the Central Army, how could he throw in his lot with such a bandit-like figure, so he unhesitatingly rejected Su Yaoyang’s recruitment.
But now, he regretted it; if he had followed Su Yaoyang last night, perhaps he wouldn’t be in this dilemma now?
Unfortunately, there is no regret medicine in this world.
Sporadic gunshots rang out around Shimonoseki Wharf, that was Song Xilian’s 36th Division making its final resistance.
Logically, as an A-class division of the Central Army, the 36th Division should have over ten thousand men when at full strength, but after the Battles of Shanghai and Nanjing Defense, it was left with less than two thousand men; facing the ferocious Japanese, their resistance seemed so powerless.
Song Xilian’s command post was set up in the basement of Jardine Matheson, and the division’s telegraph had already been shattered yesterday by a 150mm shell fired from an inland river gunboat.
When the 6th Division launched its assault on Shimonoseki Wharf, Song Xilian grabbed a Zhongzheng rifle and rushed onto the wharf, just in time to see three Type 96 attack aircraft skimming over the river surface at a 30-degree dive angle.
The moment the bomb bay opened, 50kg Type 94 bombs whistled down like the call of the Grim Reaper onto the wharf.
Accompanied by a earth-shattering roar, all soldiers within a hundred meters were enveloped in thick smoke.
“Fuck his grandma’s little Japs!”
Seeing dozens more soldiers killed, the grief-stricken Song Xilian rushed onto the wharf, raised his rifle, and fired several shots at the Japanese planes in the sky until the five rounds in the chamber were all expended.
But such an attack was mere scratching for the Type 96 attack aircraft; watching the three planes still circling low, Song Xilian felt a surge of grief and indignation.
“Division Commander… Division Commander…” A call came from beside him; he turned to see Division Staff Director Zhang Yiyang running over with over ten guards.
He ran up, grabbed his arm, and headed towards a passenger ship docked at the wharf, “Division Commander… we can’t hold here, hurry and go!”
Song Xilian hesitated: “But there are still so many people here; if we leave too, what about them?”
“Not leaving means dying together! As long as the green hills remain, there’s no worry about firewood!” Zhang Yiyang pulled him forcefully towards the passenger ship, with the over ten guards clearing the way ahead; after some shoving and cursing, the group finally boarded the ship.
When Song Xilian boarded this passenger ship named “Jiangjing”, his pocket watch was stuck at 7:15.
Outside the porthole floated half a sheet of《 Central Daily》, the headline “Chairman Jiang vows to live and die with Nanjing” blurred into tear stains by the river water.
The moment the whistle blared, Wharf No. 4 of the CSSC dock collapsed with a crash, and hundreds of soldiers who hadn’t squeezed onto the ship fell into the river like scattered chaff.
Soon, the fully loaded passenger ship wobbled towards the opposite shore,
Shortly after the passenger ship carrying the routed soldiers and Song Xilian’s group departed, the commandless 36th Division completely collapsed, and the Japanese 13th Regiment was the first to rush into the wharf.
Hiding behind a pile of cargo, Li Tao watched the Japanese continuously slaughtering the routed soldiers, his heart cold as an icehouse.
He wanted to kill the enemy, but in his hands now was only a rifle with no bullets left, and nothing else; he hated his own weakness immensely.
If a few hours ago he had had a bit more courage and followed that Commander Su, even in the worst case, he probably wouldn’t be cowering here now without even the means to fight the Japanese to the death.
“Commander… look!” A second lieutenant beside him suddenly pointed at the river surface and shouted.
Li Tao looked out and saw two Japanese gunboats named “Yashiro” and “Hamakaze” suddenly cutting across the river center, then firing at the river surface.
The routed soldiers on the wharf personally witnessed how the water columns stirred up by the exploding 150mm naval guns on the river turned an eerie pink—that was river water mixed with human tissue.
A soldier clutching a wooden box and paddling desperately on the river was even flung over ten meters into the air by the blast wave; the box was blown to pieces, and the silver dollars inside scattered like heavenly maidens dispersing flowers, tracing hundreds of gorgeous parabolic arcs in the sunrise.
The second lieutenant turned to Li Tao with a mournful look: “Commander… are we going to die here?”
“So what if we die.” Li Tao no longer harbored any hope of survival and instead calmed down: “If we die, we die; at least us brothers can die together, and in the next life, we’ll still be brothers!”
The second lieutenant smiled mournfully: “Right… in the next life, we’ll still be brothers.”
“Boom boom boom…”
Just as the two closed their eyes awaiting death, a series of explosions suddenly rang out on the wharf; following the sound, they saw several shells landing over two hundred meters away, blowing a Japanese squad advancing towards them to bits, and in a daze, it seemed a force in German-style uniforms was charging towards them…
