Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 66 The Final Showdown (Sixteen)
On the morning of December 16, the fog, thick with the smoke of gunpowder, turned the Yangtze River into a murky, leaden gray.

As the observation balloon of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Division rose from Mufu Mountain, six chimes rang out from the dilapidated chimney of the Xiaguan Power Plant.

The tolling of the bell carried a lonely and desolate air, as if announcing the final dawn of this city plunged into hell.

Li Tao huddled behind a pile of anchors at the dock, watching a German-made M35 steel helmet floating in the river.

After being rescued from Zhongshan Wharf by Su Yaoyang last night, he and more than 2,000 prisoners of war finally escaped to Zhongshan Wharf in the early hours of the morning.

The prisoners, who had hoped to escape the city, were devastated to discover that their hellish existence was far from over.

Just now, his communications officer shielded him with his body, taking away shrapnel from a shell that exploded not far away.

Li Tao survived, but the communications officer died.

He was clutching a half-eaten, blood-stained biscuit, which had been given to him by Su Yaoyang and the others the night before when they met up.

"Whoosh... Boom..."

Suddenly, a shrill whistle rang in my ears—it was the salvo of the Japanese Type 92 infantry guns. Amidst the explosions, the Baroque dome of the nearby customs building was shattered into countless fragments.

"That's the flag of the 6th Division!"

A hoarse roar came from the west side of the dock.

Through the thick smoke from the burning riverboat, Li Tao saw a group of Japanese soldiers wearing pig-snout gas masks climbing over the dense wreckage on the road and approaching them.

The executioners held rifles, their bayonets stained with blood, and the flags they flew belonged to the 23rd Regiment of the 6th Division, which had perpetrated the Jinan Massacre.

As the Japanese troops slowly approached, Li Tao felt a pang of regret. He should have gone with Su Yaoyang.

Previously, in his opinion, Su Yaoyang was at most a guy who appeared out of nowhere, who gathered a group of defeated soldiers and then appointed himself as the commander of a garrison regiment.

As a major and deputy battalion commander in the Central Army, how could he possibly submit to such a bandit-like fellow? So he rejected Su Yaoyang's offer without hesitation.

But now, he regrets it. If he had gone with Su Yaoyang last night, perhaps he wouldn't be in this dilemma now.

Unfortunately, there's no going back in this world.

Scattered gunshots rang out around Xiaguan Wharf; it was Song Xilian's 36th Division putting up its final resistance.

Logically speaking, as a Class A division of the Central Army, the 36th Division should have had more than 10,000 men when it was fully staffed. Unfortunately, after the Battle of Shanghai and the Battle of Nanjing, the 36th Division had less than 2,000 men left. Faced with the overwhelming Japanese army, their resistance seemed so powerless.

Song Xilian's command post was located in the cellar of the Hutchison Whampoa. The division's radio transmitter had been shattered yesterday by a 150mm shell fired from a river gunboat.

When the 6th Division launched its attack on Xiaguan Wharf, Song Xilian grabbed a Type 24 rifle and rushed onto the pier, just in time to see three Type 96 attack aircraft skimming across the river at a 30-degree angle.

The moment the bomb bay opened, a fifty-kilogram Type 94 bomb fell onto the dock with the whistle of death.

With a deafening roar, soldiers within a radius of hundreds of meters were engulfed in thick smoke.

"Fuck those damn Japanese devils!" Seeing dozens more soldiers fall in battle, Song Xilian, filled with grief and indignation, rushed to the dock, raised his rifle, and fired several shots at the Japanese planes in the sky until all five bullets in the barrel were emptied.

However, this level of attack was merely a tickle to the Type 96 attack aircraft. Looking at the three Type 96 attack aircraft still circling at low altitude, Song Xilian felt a surge of grief and indignation.

"Commander... Commander..." He heard a voice calling his name. He turned around and saw that it was Zhang Yiyang, the chief of staff of the division headquarters, running over with more than ten guards.

He ran over, grabbed his arm, and ran towards a passenger ship moored at the dock. "Commander... we can't hold this place anymore, let's go!"

Song Xilian hesitated and said, "But there are still so many people here. What will happen to them if we leave too?"

"If we don't leave, we'll all die together! As long as we're alive, we can always rebuild!" Zhang Yiyang pulled him forcefully towards the passenger ship, while more than ten guards cleared a path for them. After some shouting and scrambling, the two of them finally boarded the ship.

When Song Xilian boarded the passenger ship named "Jiang Jing", the hands of his pocket watch were stuck at 7:15.

Half a copy of the Central Daily News floated outside the porthole, the lead headline "Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek vows to live and die with Nanjing" blurred into tear stains by the river water.

The moment the ship's horn sounded, the No. 4 pier of the China Merchants Wharf collapsed with a roar, and hundreds of soldiers who had failed to board the ship fell into the river like scattered chaff.

Soon, the fully loaded passenger ship swayed and rocked its way toward the opposite bank.

Shortly after the passenger ship carrying the routed soldiers and Song Xilian's group left, the 36th Division, having lost its commander, completely collapsed, and the Japanese 13th Regiment was the first to rush into the dock.

Hiding behind a pile of goods, Li Tao watched the Japanese soldiers slaughtering the fleeing troops, and his heart felt as cold as an ice cellar.

He was determined to kill the enemy, but he had no weapons at all except a rifle that had run out of bullets. At that moment, he hated his own weakness.

If I had had a little more courage a few hours ago and followed that Commander Su, I suppose even in the worst-case scenario, I wouldn't be cowering here like this now, without even the resources to fight the Japanese to the death.

"Sir...look!" A second lieutenant suddenly shouted, pointing at the river.

Looking around, Li Tao saw two Japanese gunboats named "Yahagi" and "Hamakaze" suddenly cut across the middle of the river and then opened fire on the river.

The defeated soldiers on the dock witnessed firsthand how the water columns kicked up by the explosions of 150mm naval guns on the river surface turned an eerie pink—the water was mixed with human tissue.

A soldier desperately paddling across the river while carrying a wooden crate was even thrown more than ten meters into the air by the blast wave. The crate was also blown to pieces, and the silver coins inside scattered like flowers in the morning sun, drawing hundreds of tragic parabolic arcs.

The lieutenant turned to Li Tao and said sadly, "Sir... are we going to die here?"

"So what if we die?" Li Tao had given up on the idea of ​​survival and calmed down. "So what if we die? At least we brothers can die together. We'll still be brothers in the next life!"

The lieutenant smiled sadly: "Yes... let's be brothers again in the next life."

"Boom boom boom..."

Just as the two closed their eyes and awaited their death, a series of explosions suddenly rang out on the dock. The two looked in the direction of the explosions and saw several shells land more than 200 meters away from them, blowing a group of Japanese soldiers who were approaching them to pieces. In a daze, they seemed to see a group of people wearing German-style uniforms charging towards them...

(End of this chapter)