Spy Wars: I am the Captain of the Military Police

Zhou Zhenqiang suddenly closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, his eye sockets were in excruciating pain, and his voice was like a broken bellows, hoarse but clear as he roared, "Retreat! Pass on my orders!

"Abandon your positions! Split up and break out! Every man who can escape must escape! Quickly!"

Every word seemed to be squeezed out from lungs blurred by blood and tears.

The order was given, but it was even more cruel.

The retreat route is the Japanese army's hunting ground for firepower!

From the very beginning, this retreat was destined to be another bloody harvest!

"Retreat! Retreat!" The heart-wrenching roars of the surviving officers and non-commissioned officers spread among the sporadic resistance.

The soldiers who were finally holding on to the bomb craters and the shattered walls heard the order, and a trace of sad relief flashed in their eyes. Then they broke out a final crazy fire suppression to cover their comrades' escape.

They knew that this meant that the people at the rear would almost certainly die.

But no one hesitated.

Sporadic Czech-style, Mauser pistols and rifles roared desperately, trying to disrupt the Japanese pursuit formation.

"Kill! Chase! Leave no one alive!" The pursuing Japanese soldiers were like a school of sharks smelling blood, their excited howls instantly drowned out the sound of gunfire.

The retreating crowd was instantly exposed to the view of the swooping sky!

The hovering Type 96 carrier-based attack aircraft immediately captured the perfect moving target!

"Wooooooooooo!" Death screams descended! 50kg or even 100kg bombs fell like hail in front and behind the retreat route!

Every explosion created a storm of mixed flesh and mud!

The huge shock wave blew a huge gap in the retreating team!

The soldiers were torn apart and blown away, their broken limbs and arms thrown into the air like the fragments of broken dolls.

The rear-end guns' precise extended fire followed suit! The shells landed like maggots on the bones, chasing the retreating troops and bombarding them fiercely!

The Type 7.7 carrier-based aircraft flew low at altitude, with the mm machine guns under its wings spitting out flames crazily, chasing the soldiers who were running and rolling on the ground below!

The scorching ammunition belts plowed a bloody path through the ground! Strafe! Fly low! Chase! Dive! Drop bombs!

With the Japanese pilots' absolute superiority in firepower and air dominance, the pursuit devolved into a brutal massacre! The pilots' excited shouts could even be faintly heard over the roar of the engines!

"Run! Don't stop!" A young officer crawled in the mud with a broken leg, screaming desperately at a soldier next to him who was stunned by the explosion.

But the next moment, his entire body, along with a large area of ​​mud beneath him, was completely flattened by a precisely dropped bomb!

Chen Changhe's broken body was ultimately unable to climb out of the quagmire.

When several soldiers tried to turn around and drag him, a dense string of strafing fire from carrier-based aircraft instantly covered his position.

The bullets puffed in the mud, splashing sticky liquid, while more of them penetrated directly into the old soldier's body, which had long lost the ability to resist.

The knuckles gripping the butt of the gun were forever frozen in that final position.

Under the desperate protection of his guards, Zhou Zhenqiang led the remaining one hundred or so men of the brigade headquarters and crawled into a drainage ditch connecting to the salt fields in the rear.

The Japanese pursuit firepower was like a thorn in the flesh.

The blasts from the naval guns continued to explode beside the ditch, the huge vibrations making his internal organs churn. The turbid, smelly ditch water quickly submerged him up to his waist.

A bomb exploded right at the mouth of the ditch ahead! The massive blast, carrying scorching sand and mud, slammed the two staff officers behind him against the ditch wall, instantly breaking their bones and tendons!

"Brigade Commander! Map!" A young combat staff officer who had been guarding closely by his side, with half of his face covered in blood, took out a combat map soaked in blood from his arms and stuffed it into Zhou Zhenqiang's hand. He smiled bitterly and turned around suddenly.

"Little devils! Accompany me on the road!"

He lit the last few grenade fuses on his body!

Amid the piercing crackling sound of the exploding fuse, the staff officer roared like a mad beast and pounced on the Japanese pursuers rushing towards the ditch!

"Boom!" A huge flame of explosion suddenly broke out at the mouth of the ditch!

Temporarily seal the narrow passage with blood, flesh, and fire! The blast, carrying scorching flesh and blood fragments and a foul stench, slammed Zhou Zhenqiang's face.

The brigade commander's vision was completely blurred.

Was it tears? Blood? Or mud? He couldn't tell.

The guards suppressed their grief and nausea, carried him up, and in the thick blood and smoke, they hurriedly disappeared along the winding and sticky drainage ditch towards the increasingly dark salt fields that were on fire.

Behind him, the scarlet muddy mudflats of Chuanshakou were leaping with flames, devouring the debris on the ground.

The sporadic roars of the dying and the painful groans of the wounded drifted in the twilight, like the never-fading echoes of purgatory.

The sound of Japanese army boots treading on the ground covered with blood, flesh and corpses, the dull thud of heavy artillery hitting the ground, and the arrogant hum of airplane engines flying across the night sky constituted the most brutal and bloody finale of the Battle of Shanghai.

When Zhou Zhenqiang was dragged into the back seat of a dilapidated military truck that had narrowly escaped the Japanese air raid on the rear road, he numbly spread out the blood-soaked battle map.

The blood blurred the red circle mark representing Chuanshakou where he ordered the retreat.

A drop of cold, turbid liquid quietly slid down, hitting the circle and slowly spreading.

The sad smile that the staff officer gave him before his death was like a poisonous thorn, engraved deep in his bones forever.

The lives of more than 3,100 men were ultimately left on this bloody map, leaving behind this silent, desperate, and cold red.

. . . . . .

At the same time, at Wusongkou, the muddy waves of the Yangtze River, carrying smoke, hit the remaining concrete piles of the Wusong Railway Wharf.

In the afternoon of August 8, the landing craft of the Japanese 28th Division, under the cover of the Third Fleet's naval guns, swarmed towards Zhanghuabang Beach like locusts.

Zhang Zhizhong's orders pierced through the intermittent radio waves and the roar of artillery fire: "87th Division, defend Zhanghuabang! The Training Corps, block Yunzaobang! Not a single soldier is allowed to set foot in Wusong Town!"

At dusk on the 28th, the light was dried up by blood and fire.

The turbid waves of the Yangtze River repeatedly hit the shattered concrete base of the dock. Each wash took away a layer of sticky dark red, but it could not take away the strong smell of blood and the burnt smell of gunpowder that seeped into every inch of soil and every twisted steel bar.

A layer of strange particles floated in the air.

Dust kicked up by the explosion, fragments of burnt flesh and skin, and soot from unburned wood.

And a deeper, more suffocating smell, a disgusting, sticky smell mixed with the fishy smell of the sea, earthy humus, and hundreds of human organs that were instantly evaporated and cooled by high temperatures.

This is the smell of hell after life is forcibly decomposed by the violence of industrialization.

"boom!!!"

Another salvo of 140mm high-explosive bombs spewed out from the muzzles of the two mobile steel fortresses on the river, the light cruisers "Tianlong" and "Longtian", with a soul-shattering scream, and slammed heavily into the last section of the old warehouse wall on the west side of Zhanghuabang Wharf that had not yet completely collapsed!

A terrifying gap with a diameter of nearly three meters instantly exploded on the reinforced concrete wall, and scorching airflow and explosion shock waves swept out!

A dozen soldiers from the Second Regiment of the Training Corps, who had just used the warehouse structure to repel a wave of Japanese attack, were torn to pieces, blown away, and carbonized along with the fortifications they were defending before they could even utter a scream!

The broken limbs and arms were caught in a rain of bricks and stones and fell on the street dozens of meters away, making a dull and sticky sound.

A half-charred arm, with its five fingers still convulsively gripping the barrel of a Zhongzheng rifle with a bent bayonet, fell beside an overturned gun carriage.

Wu Qiujian, commander of the 2nd Regiment of the Teaching Corps, was half-kneeling less than twenty meters from the edge of the scorching ruins.

The blast knocked him to the ground, and the hot fragments sparked dazzling sparks on his helmet, leaving a deep bloody wound on his forehead under the helmet.

The hot blood mixed with the gray-black smoke and dust instantly covered half of his face.