binnovel Chapter 117 Fighting in Shanghai
Chapter 117 Fighting in Shanghai
At Zhengzhou Railway Station, four platforms are currently under military control, and ordinary people can only use one platform to get on and off the train.
The platform was filled with soldiers preparing to board the train, and all around them were the military police of the Zhengzhou garrison, standing guard and patrolling with their sleeves emblazoned with "Military Police". Zhang Wenwu was part of the first group of troops from the 102nd Division led by Chief of Staff Zhao Dong. Four days had passed since they set out from Zhenjiang City, and due to the current capacity and speed of the China Railway, they only arrived at Zhengzhou Station today. However, in terms of time, according to the requirements of the military, their division would be able to arrive within the specified time.
"Wenwu, come, have a cigarette and take a break." Cai Qibin, the commander of the 655th Regiment, smiled and handed a cigarette to Zhang Wenwu.
Zhang Wenwu quickly took the cigarette from Cai Dingwen and lit it. After taking a deep puff, he thanked him and said, "Thank you, Captain Cai. I really want to smoke a few puffs of cigarette. I've been sweating all morning." Zhang Wenwu was really tired. He had to run to the station duty room several times this morning. He had to ask when the train assigned to them would arrive at the station. He also had to ask the military station to prepare lunch for them. At the same time, he had to call the station behind from the duty room to arrange for the station to prepare meals for the officers and soldiers of the 102nd Division at the local station. He then had to report the situation to Chief of Staff Zhao Dong in a timely manner. It can be said that Zhang Wenwu was so busy this morning that he didn't even have time to smoke a cigarette.
"Captain Cai, Deputy Director Zhang, and Chief of Staff Zhao want you to come over." The communications soldier trotted over and saluted the two men.
When Zhang Wenwu and Cai Qibin heard that Chief of Staff Zhao was looking for them, they quickly threw away the cigarette butts in their hands and walked quickly to the other end of the platform.
"Captain Cai, Wenwu, you are here. This is the telegram that Commander Huang just sent. Please take a look." As soon as Zhao Dong saw the two men coming, he hurriedly handed over the telegram in his hand.
Zhang Wenwu came to Cai Qibin and read the telegram. The telegram ordered the first batch of troops led by Chief of Staff Zhao Dong to turn back immediately. The Military Commission issued a new order that all the troops of the 18th Army should assemble in the direction of Nanjing.
After Zhang Wenwu saw the telegram, he understood what was happening. He had been wondering about this for the past few days. He remembered that the 18th Army participated in the battle in Shanghai, but why was it now marching towards the north? It turned out that the troops were temporarily called back halfway.
At that moment, Zhang Wenwu hurried to the station duty room to contact the returning train. They needed to rush back to Jinling to gather as soon as possible according to the order.
It turned out that at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on August , Lieutenant Oyama Yufu and Private Saito Yozo of the Japanese Marine Corps stationed in Shanghai, wearing military uniforms and driving a military car, tried to force their way into Hongqiao Airport, but were stopped by the Chinese troops guarding the airport who had already changed their uniforms.
Due to language barriers, communication was difficult, and the fact that the troops guarding the airport had been secretly replaced by elite troops of the Central Army, the officers and soldiers were already furious with the Japanese, which led to an instant escalation of the dispute between the two sides. The two Japanese soldiers were also stubborn. They were probably used to being arrogant, and they actually pulled out their pistols to threaten the officers and soldiers guarding the airport on the spot. When the officers and soldiers guarding the airport saw that the Japanese dared to show their weapons, they were not to be outdone and fired warning shots into the air. Seeing that the guards were so tough, Oyama Yufu and others felt that something was wrong and drove away in a panic. How could the officers and soldiers guarding the airport let him get away? They fired a few shots at the time, which blew up the car's tires. The car lost control and rushed into a vegetable field on the side of the road. The two Japanese soldiers could only abandon the car and run to the side.
The guards at the airport also chased after them. A cook from the Huaxia army who passed by saw his own people chasing two people, so he took a grenade from a soldier and threw it over, killing Dashan Yongfu on the spot. Saito Yozo, who escaped the disaster, was so scared that he rolled and crawled with his gun to a remote jungle nearby. What he didn't know was that the Huaxia army was secretly building fortifications next to the jungle. After hearing the gunshots, the officers and soldiers in charge of building fortifications saw a Japanese soldier running towards them with a pistol, so they immediately raised their guns and shot him dead.
After the incident, Zhang Wenbai immediately summoned Yang Wenquan, deputy commander of the Second Division Supplementary Brigade, in Suzhou and asked Yang Wenquan to personally go to Shanghai to investigate the truth of the incident, because the airport guard force was affiliated with the Second Division Supplementary Brigade. Later, after Yang Wenquan's on-site investigation and verification, he believed that the incident was a sudden incident and not intentional. However, at that time, China and Japan were already on the verge of war in Shanghai. The two Japanese soldiers drove their cars and broke through the airport cordon without authorization and armed with guns. This was a serious provocation and completely ignited the fuse of the war.
On the afternoon of August 11, the Japanese representative Okamoto Kiyoshi arrogantly put forward unreasonable demands, including that China withdraw its security forces in Shanghai and remove all defensive fortifications. These demands were sternly rejected by the Chinese representative Yu Hongjun. Subsequently, the commander of the Japanese Third Fleet in Shanghai, Kiyoshi Hasegawa, immediately ordered Japanese ships to enter the ports of the Huangpu River and the Yangtze River, and his fleet was ordered to rush to Shanghai to prepare for battle. At the same time, he ordered the First Special Marine Corps of the Navy and other troops on standby in Sasebo, Japan to reinforce the Japanese troops in Shanghai.
The Chinese government and army showed no sign of weakness. Zhang Wenbai commanded his troops to enter Shanghai at 9 pm on August 11, preparing to attack the Japanese fortifications in Shanghai. The 87th Division, the 88th Division and the 2nd Division's Supplementary Brigade advanced to the vicinity of Shanghai city from Changshu, Wuxi, Suzhou and other places respectively.
On the morning of August 12, the vanguard of the Chinese army entered the urban area of Shanghai, which made the Chinese people very excited. This was the first time they saw their Chinese army in the urban area of Shanghai in five years.
On August 13, in order to seize the initiative in the war and achieve the strategic goal of attracting Japanese troops from North China to Shanghai, and hoping to eliminate the Japanese troops stationed in Shanghai before the arrival of Japanese reinforcements, Zhang Wenbai commanded his troops to launch an attack on the Japanese troops stationed in Shanghai. At the same time, he dispatched the Air Force to bomb the Japanese Marine Corps Headquarters, Huishan Wharf and ships on the sea.
When Zhang Wenwu arrived at the 102nd Division's assembly area in Jinling, it was already August th. As soon as he arrived at the division's temporary base, Zhang Wenwu hurried to the division headquarters. He wanted to see the battle situation reports of the past few days.
Zhang Wenwu took the battle report from the training staff Liu Sihao and read it carefully:
At 9:15 a.m. on August 1, a squad of Japanese Marines suddenly crossed the Shanghai Railway and rushed into Baoshan Road from the road between the former site of the Commercial Press near Tiantong'an Station and Yokohama Bridge, and attacked the positions of the Shanghai Security Corps stationed near Xibaoxing Road. They first opened fire on the defenders, and our army fought back.
After 10 a.m. that day, the Japanese army attacked Qiujiang Road, Tiantong'an Station, Baoshan Road, Baochang Road and other places, but was repelled by our army. The Battle of August th first broke out in Zhabei.
At 3:50 p.m., the Japanese army began a full-scale attack, bombarding Zhabei with artillery. Fires broke out in many places on Qingyun Road and Xibaoxing Road, and the Jiangwan New City area was also bombarded by Japanese warships.
At 88:9 p.m., the th Division bravely charged under the enemy's intensive artillery fire and recaptured the Baji Bridge in one fell swoop. The fierce fighting lasted until p.m.
The 87th Division has occupied Hujiang University, and the 88th Division has also occupied key points such as Wuzhou Cemetery, Baoshan Bridge, and Bazi Bridge.
That evening, after the superiors learned that the battle in Shanghai had officially begun, they immediately issued a general attack order: "First, the Beijing-Shanghai Garrison Army was reorganized into the 9th Army Group, with General Zhang Wenbai as the commander-in-chief of the army group, and began to attack the Japanese troops in Hongkou and Yangshupu on the 14th. Second, the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Border Army was reorganized into the 8th Army Group, with General Zhang Xianghua as the commander-in-chief, guarding the north bank of Hangzhou Bay, sweeping the enemy in Pudong, and shelling Huishan Wharf and Gongda Cotton Mill in Puxi. Third, the Chinese Air Force was dispatched on the 14th to cooperate with the army in combat and be responsible for the air defense of important areas and cities."
Zhang Wenwu felt a bit complicated when he saw this. He also knew that the Japanese had built very strong fortifications in the concession in Shanghai. In addition, there was a Japanese fleet on the sea providing powerful naval artillery fire support. The losses of the troops in the attack were also quite large.
After seeing the battle report on the 30th, Zhang Wenwu's mood immediately became depressed. At around o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, Huang Jingzhong, a graduate of the first term and major general and brigade commander of the th Brigade of the th Division, was hit by a Japanese artillery shell near the Patriotic Girls' School while personally commanding his troops to attack the Japanese army. He died heroically along with Colonel Deng Guang, chief of staff of the brigade, and more than officers and soldiers of the communications platoon.
On August 3, Emperor Hirohito of Japan ordered General Matsui Iwane as the commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, commanding the 11rd Division, the th Division, the th Heavy Artillery Brigade and the Japanese Shanghai Marine Corps to launch a landing attack on the Chinese army in Shanghai.
In the following days, the 102nd Division where Zhang Wenwu was stationed had been resting and on standby near the Jinling area, which made the officers and soldiers of the entire division extremely anxious. There was no other way. Every day they could see reinforcements heading to the Shanghai front line from the road outside the troops stationed. How could they not be anxious?
On August 18, Deputy Minister Chen was ordered to return to Nanjing to discuss the anti-Japanese combat plan and combat force sequence with Deputy Chief of Staff Bai, Minister Huang, Deputy Minister Wang and others.
The next day, Deputy Minister Chen and Chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Government Xiong Tianyi rushed to the front line in Shanghai for inspection. At the headquarters of the Ninth Army Group, after listening to Zhang Wenbai's introduction to the current battle situation, Deputy Minister Chen suggested that the troops could first attack Huishan Wharf, break through the center of the Japanese army, cut the Japanese army into two sections, and then annihilate them separately. He also suggested that the 36th Division and the 98th Division that had just arrived in Shanghai be reinforced to the attack front, and try to eliminate all the Japanese troops in Shanghai before the large-scale reinforcements of the Japanese army arrived.
That night, Deputy Director Chen and Xiong Tianyi returned to Jinling City. On the way back to Jinling, Xiong Tianyi asked uncertainly: "Deputy Director Chen, do you think we should discuss how to report this inspection to the higher-ups and unify the story?"
Deputy Director Chen glanced at Xiong Tianyi and said, "It's okay. There's no need to speak with one voice. We can each report our own situation. This way, the people above can get different information and have a more comprehensive understanding of the situation on the front line."
(I will continue to modify some names today, thank you for your support!)
(Thanks to ~Wandering around the world with you~ Shen Suqing who loves white bee cake, Qin Youran who loves enoki mushroom rolls, and Fu Ming who loves every move for their gift support!)