Chapter 1446 Chapter 1447 For that Damn Food!

Bullying is not scary, what is scary is being hungry!

After all, the Jingu Detachment has more than 1,800 people to share more than 600 kilograms of food. Everyone can get more than half a catty at least, not to mention that they can eat a full stomach! It is still possible to calm down the belly that keeps making gurgling sounds.

This is also thanks to the artillery of the Four-Line Regiment who killed more than 100 Japanese soldiers in one breath, which in a sense alleviated the distribution crisis of the Jingu Detachment.

For the 231 Infantry Regiment surrounded on the other side, the battle of airdropping supplies is even more tragic!

Because of the bounty order of Tang Tuanzuo, several infantry regiments have used their forces to capture the high ground occupied by the Japanese army and divide and surround the Japanese positions, which resulted in small encirclements in the large encirclement, and many parachutes fell between the positions of the Chinese and Japanese sides that were almost face to face.

Face to face on the battlefield means that both sides are within the range of the other's rifles. Usually, the soldiers of both sides are bent over and dare not show their heads when they move in the trenches. Now that the supplies fall between the two sides, it naturally means that whoever dares to pick them up will be completely threatened by the other side's machine rifles.

Usually, these foods are naturally not the focus of the Japanese army, but for the soldiers of the 231st Infantry Regiment, who are about to run out of food and have long begun to halve their rations, they are more precious than ammunition.

The Chinese side, which has sufficient supply of logistical materials, does not need this. Even under the order of the commander, they began to destroy the wooden boxes with mortars and machine guns.

Seeing that the precious food was about to be destroyed by the Chinese side, the Japanese commander who originally wanted to wait until night to use the cover of night to grab the food finally couldn't help it. He did not hesitate to use machine guns and grenade launchers for fire cover and sent infantry to try to drag the supplies back to the position.

How could the Chinese side let the Japanese succeed?

The companies, platoons and squads of the Sihang Regiment basically had walkie-talkies, and they immediately used walkie-talkies to call the mortars of each company and battalion to bombard the supplies and the Japanese army. The infantry also counterattacked the Japanese army with rifles, machine guns and 60 mortars.

Although the regiments of the 11th and 18th Divisions did not have advanced communication equipment like the Sihang Regiment, they also had signal flares. Three red signal flares hit the sky, which was the signal of the Japanese attack. Not only did all the infantry go to the front line, but the mountain artillery battalion also tore off the gun jackets and bombarded the designated area according to the telegram from the front, entering a full battlefield state.

For the Japanese army, a tragic "supply battle" broke out completely on the afternoon of the second day of the Lunar New Year.

Both China and Japan not only deployed infantry, but also mobilized almost all artillery, and the intensity of their artillery fire was no less than that of the strong attack on the Niuchangpo battlefield at that time.

However, this time the 231 Infantry Regiment was at a complete disadvantage. The Chinese side deployed more than 8,000 infantry and nearly 100 artillery of various types, including nearly 24 75mm mountain artillery alone.

After the war, this battle that broke out because of the Japanese airdropped supplies was jokingly called "the battle for stuttering" by Tang Tuanzuo.

Whether in terms of manpower or artillery intensity, the Japanese side was at a comprehensive disadvantage, and it is also possible to imagine how the final outcome would be.

According to the battle reports found from the Japanese army after the war, in that battle that lasted until the early morning, the Japanese army killed more than 870 soldiers and seriously injured more than 500, but the supplies that could be taken back were less than one ton.

If the number of casualties and supplies are compared, it is almost one life for 800 grams of food!

The entire 231 Infantry Regiment received only about 3 tons of supplies that day. For Colonel Masayoshi Yamada, who still had more than 3,000 troops, it was actually just a drop in the bucket. It was only enough for the 231 Infantry Regiment to survive for another two days.

"It seems that we have to welcome the 11th Army to airdrop."

Tang Dao received statistics on the number of Japanese killed by various units on the second day after the war. The commander of the 4th Battalion, Cai Yongguan, even took advantage of the fact that the Japanese on a high ground were too active in looting food and suffered too many casualties. He directly sent a platoon to chase them. After using the dense firepower of submachine guns and semi-automatic rifles to drive the remaining Japanese out of the high ground, he suddenly found that this was really a good method.

It is entirely possible to use the Japanese army's thirst for food to lure the Japanese out of the position and kill them. In this way, without a strong attack, the goal of consuming the opponent can be achieved.

Although the high-level officials of the war zone and the military and political departments were eagerly waiting for the Japanese to surrender, Tang Dao wanted to bury these Japanese troops directly in this mountain as fertilizer.

"At present, the surrounded Japanese officers and soldiers have begun to lack food. From a humanitarian perspective, in order to avoid more unnecessary casualties, our Chinese officers and soldiers urge the Japanese to surrender immediately. We guarantee to treat prisoners of war well, and we are even willing to invite personnel from Western embassies in my country to the scene of the battle to supervise. Please also ask the theater command to convey our wishes to the Japanese." The second day after the airdrop of supplies, the commander surnamed Hu sent a telegram to the commander of the third theater.

This is the time for China to be proud! If the Western world, especially the Americans, see this scene with their own eyes, will they feel that their investment will have a sufficiently rich return? The commander surnamed Chen of the third theater is a famous smart ghost. He immediately smelled the possibility of maximizing the benefits of victory from this telegram.

Now China has obtained several low-interest loans from the United States. Although it has taken the mines in Yunnan Province as collateral, the Americans want to get back the principal and interest or even directly obtain control of the mines. The premise is that China can win this national war.

If China loses, not only will hundreds of millions of US dollars be lost, but the mortgaged mines will also become a piece of waste paper.

Unless the Japanese collectively go crazy, they will admit that the ownership of these mines belongs to China's creditors.

And the creditors are the ones who want the debtors to be well, and their level of concern is comparable to that of parents.

Therefore, at the invitation of the senior military and political officials, the embassies of the United States, the British Empire, and the Gallic Rooster Empire all sent military attachés and reporters to take a boat from Shancheng and arrived at the Shipai battlefield on the seventh day of the Lunar New Year.

"This may not be the most tragic battlefield I have ever seen, but it is definitely the saddest battlefield I have ever seen. The once invincible Imperial Japanese Army is like a group of lambs surrounded by wolves on this battlefield.

Due to the lack of food and ammunition, they have long been unable to launch any attack on the Chinese. It is only a matter of time before they are completely wiped out, or it depends on when the Chinese commander decides to start the attack.

But obviously, the Chinese army colonel named Tang who was in charge of the siege was not willing to lose even one soldier in order to end this battlefield as soon as possible. His battle plan has only one word "trapped". He used guns and cannons to make an indestructible cage, allowing thousands of people inside to starve to death.

In my telescope field of view, I have seen at least Dozens of remains of Japanese army soldiers, for unknown reasons, died on the hillside, but no one buried them. Perhaps the Japanese army did not dare to leave their positions easily, or perhaps there was not much space to dig graves on their positions.

From a humanitarian perspective, I don't want the latter!

But my wish did not come true!

As one of the special envoys to persuade the Japanese army to surrender, I accompanied the German Empire military attaché Lieutenant Colonel Hausen into the position of the 11th Japanese Army's Hariya Detachment to persuade Major General Hariya Itsuhara to surrender.

That was perhaps the most miserable army major general I have ever seen. Lieutenant Colonel Hausen gave a few chocolates he brought with him as a gift to Major General Hariya Itsuhara, who was already pale. Major General Hariya took only a few seconds to bury two chocolates. He ate all of them and gave the last two to his personal guards.

I never thought that I could see eyes emitting green light in the East. Maybe it was my illusion, but the guards looked at those chocolates like lovers who had not seen each other for several years.

With two chocolates as energy supplement, Major General Yiyuan of Jingu had enough strength to reply to us. They would not surrender and would fight the Chinese to the end until the last man.

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I admire his spirit, but his approach is not advisable!

Because we have seen too many corpses along the way, most of them died of injuries and hunger.

No one buried them either. These people who seemed helpless because of hunger. The thinner bodies were piled up like firewood piles in Chinese rural areas.

Perhaps it was not that there was not enough space to dig graves, but that the extremely food-starved Japanese did not want to and could not waste their already precarious physical strength on digging a large number of graves.

I can guarantee that I did not tell the Chinese about the current situation of the Japanese on the battlefield. To some extent, I actually began to sympathize with these invaders known for their brutality, because when I saw these Japanese with dull eyes who had to eat grass roots and tree bark as their main food, I even thought I had walked into hell. "

This is the record of the Chinese battlefield published on the front page of the famous Boston News the next day. The narrator is Lieutenant Colonel Frank, the military attaché of the British Empire Embassy who personally entered the Japanese position.

According to the description of this lieutenant colonel military attaché who participated in the First World War, the despair brought by the lifeless position can even be compared with the depression of the Battle of Verdun where he participated.

The vast majority of American people who favor China cheered, believing that this marked a new stage in the Chinese battlefield. The retreating Chinese army might fight back and complete the feat of driving the invaders out of the country.

On the other side of the ocean, Japan was in an uproar!

The news of the Chinese Expeditionary Force's defeat in the Battle of Shipai was not blocked, but simply explained by a simple sentence that the pre-war target was not fully achieved. This did not have much impact on the Japanese people.

The Imperial Army has been singing a triumphant song, and occasionally failing to achieve the predetermined combat goals is within an acceptable range.

But I never thought that behind the failure to achieve the pre-war target was such ugliness. Thousands of imperial officers and soldiers were trapped in the encirclement of the Chinese, and their situation was so miserable that they were called the saddest battlefield by a foreigner, like hell!

That's too much. The Japanese, who have always been disciplined, especially the college students at school, actually held a parade and played a sit-in demonstration around the imperial palace, hoping to severely punish the front-line generals who did not act.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the Japanese Army Headquarters immediately ordered the China Expeditionary Army Headquarters to provide sufficient support to the surrounded imperial officers and soldiers.

As the Chinese saying goes: "If there are conditions, we must go; if there are no conditions, we must create conditions and go!"

It was in this context that the largest airdrop operation in the history of the Japanese Army took place over the small sky of Shipai.

From February 5, 1941, the ninth day of the Chinese New Year, the Japanese army assembled 40 transport planes and 100 Zero fighters to carry out the first round of airdrop supplies. By February 10, 1941, the intensity of airdropping supplies of more than 45 tons per day was maintained, and hundreds of fighter planes and transport planes were continuously dispatched to airdrop more than 250 tons of various supplies.

It is said that just to raise these supplies, the logistics support of a division was mobilized.

The Japanese were also stimulated by the American newspapers. For these colleagues who were starving but still fighting to the end, there were more than 100,000 boxes of high-quality canned beef, 80,000 kilograms of cooked and raw rice, and a lot of milk candy, fresh meat and various vegetables.

Even if only one-third of these supplies could reach the Japanese army, they would not only be able to sustain for ten days or half a month, but also absolutely nutritious, and could compensate for half of the fat consumed before.

But the Japanese who were only responsible for airdropping supplies did not expect that from the day of airdropping supplies, the famous "battle for stuttering" would begin.

The soldiers on the high ground desperately fired at the wooden boxes scattered in the fields, and the artillery positions that had received artillery shells were free to throw shells at the area where the Japanese army rushed out of the bunker.

According to post-war statistics, in just these five days of fighting for supplies, the entire Chinese side fired 1 million rounds of various bullets and 4,200 rounds of artillery shells, and its ammunition consumption was even more than that of the 11th Division defending the Shipai Central Fortress battlefield for 4 days.

This terrifying rate of ammunition consumption even shocked Commander Chen, who received the report. He couldn't understand how these bullets and artillery shells were consumed in such a short period of 5 days.

Didn't the Japanese have positions and anti-artillery holes? Tang Dao, the highest commander on the front line, also ordered not to attack by force. Why was there such a large consumption? Could it be that they were just training with live ammunition on the mountain in their spare time?

If he didn't trust the division commander Hu enough, General Chen would even think that this was a false report of consumption and corruption of supplies.

"Report to Commander Chen, this battle is a battle for the Japanese airdropped supplies. We have killed at least 2,000 Japanese invaders in five days, and the Japanese corpses are everywhere.

At this rate, the Japanese invaders will collapse soon, and our army will win a great victory in no time!" Facing the doubts of Commander Chen, Division Commander Hu replied.

"Not good!" After receiving this telegram, Admiral Chen slapped his thigh.

In 5 days, 2,000 people were killed. How many devils are there in the encirclement? If this goes on, a great victory is true, but don't think about letting the world see thousands of devils surrender.

"In view of the shortage of supplies, our unit still relies on siege as the main force and attack as the auxiliary force, and try to force the Japanese to surrender!" Admiral Chen replied immediately.

"Division Commander, Commander Chen has replied, what should we do?" The Major General Chief of Staff handed the telegram to Division Commander Hu.

"Captain Tang just called and said that the Jingu Detachment only has 3 high grounds left, with about 400 soldiers on them. He has planned to prepare artillery fire for 4 hours and launch the final battle against them."

"Let him do it! The troops deployed there are mainly from his Sixing Regiment. We will do whatever he says." Division Commander Hu put down his teacup and looked into the distance with a sharp gaze.

"Commander, if Commander Chen comes to his senses one day," the Major General Chief of Staff reminded cautiously.

"What do you mean by come to your senses? I just made a suggestion as a subordinate. The war of robbing supplies against the Japanese invaders is also the most normal tactic. Can our soldiers just watch the Japanese eat the delicious canned beef falling from the sky? This is unreasonable!" Division Commander Hu smiled faintly.

"We are soldiers, so we should consider issues from the perspective of the battlefield. Politics is not for us reckless men.

By the way, please tell Captain Tang that the artillery battalion of our 18th Army requests to participate in the battle to annihilate the Hariya Detachment!"

"Yes!"

February 6, the tenth day of the Chinese New Year!

A total of 36 75mm mountain guns, 8 150 mortars, 6 80mm howitzers, 28 82mm mortars, 40 60mm mortars, a total of 118 artillery pieces of various types, bombarded the three high grounds where the Hariya Detachment last occupied.

The loud noise that could be heard 15 kilometers away lasted from 7 am to 11 am!

"Hariya Detachment, it's over!" Colonel Masayoshi Yamada looked into the distance and sat dejectedly in the cold trench.

It was not a simple grief for the death of the rabbit, but this Japanese Army colonel knew that the next one would be his 231st Infantry Regiment.

Even at their peak, the remaining 1,500 men could not last three days under such a bombardment.

Not to mention that they were all starving like ghosts in hell.

And the reason for all this was for that damn food.