Spy Wars: I am the Captain of the Military Police

"Order all regiments that the Japanese will launch a major attack on our central peak today." As Zhu Chi spoke to the chief of staff, his gaze remained firmly fixed on the Japanese artillery positions that were faintly visible to the east.

He noticed that the enemy was changing gun barrels, a sign that the heavy artillery formation was about to unleash its power.

Through the telescope, soldiers of the 13th Field Artillery Regiment of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army were loading shells into Type 95 field howitzers. The muzzle elevation was clearly adjusted to the maximum range, which meant that they would use slingshot tactics to cover the reverse slope positions.

Yuhuatai is no longer what it used to be.

The beacon tower built in the Ming Dynasty is now just half a brick pile. The glazed tiles of Yuhuatai Temple in the Northern Song Dynasty were shattered into dust after days of shelling. Only the colorful Yuhua stones still reflect an eerie light in the shell craters.

In this hilly area with an elevation of less than 100 meters, the 264th Brigade built three lines of defense in one month.

The front line is an obstacle zone consisting of rail fortifications, barbed wire, and minefields.

The main position is a group of bunkers converted from ancient tombs from the Six Dynasties period.

The final layer is a deep defense system built upon the ruins of the Ming Dynasty city wall.

At 6:00 AM sharp, the first 240mm howitzer shell tore through the morning mist, crashing down on the second line of defense with a whooshing sound like a train crossing an iron bridge.

The shockwave from the explosion lifted the entire row of wooden stakes into the air, and the pre-buried booby traps were detonated one after another, instantly turning the site into an erupting volcano.

Private Wang Changshuan's machine gun squad was concealed in a cat-ear-shaped tunnel on the reverse slope. The violent tremors caused soil to fall from the tunnel ceiling.

The young man from a farming family in Xuzhou instinctively reached for the inner pocket of his chest, where his fiancée had embroidered a mandarin duck purse, but all he found was a sticky, wet hand.

"The Japanese are testing it!" the veteran squad leader roared, stuffing machine gun parts into an oilcloth bag. "When the artillery fire spreads, we'll charge to position number one!"

Before he could finish speaking, even louder explosions followed.

The Japanese army adopted a gradual advance barrage tactic, with the impact points of the shells advancing deeper into the enemy's territory at a speed of fifty meters per minute.

Zhu Chi, who was in the observation post, saw that the field hospital set up next to Fang Xiaoru's tomb was instantly engulfed by flames, and the red cross flag hanging there became the best reference point for the Japanese artillery.

Bandages, severed limbs, and fragments of medical kits flew through the smoke. A military doctor performing an amputation was knocked to the ground by the blast wave, still clutching a blood-stained scalpel.

The shelling continued until 8:20 a.m., when the Japanese 23rd Regiment infantry began to leap out of their attack positions, the entire main peak of Yuhuatai had been lowered by two meters.

The distinctive triangular military flag of the Kumamoto Division fluttered in the morning breeze as engineers wearing gas masks began cutting barbed wire.

Just then, a miracle occurred: hundreds of gray figures suddenly appeared on the previously silent battlefield.

"beat!"

Zhu Chi made a sharp, chopping gesture inside the observation post.

The heavy machine gun hidden in the plane tree stump suddenly opened fire, the carefully designed flanking fire network like the scythe of death.

The Japanese company at the forefront was almost entirely wiped out instantly. One sergeant was shot in the waist by a 7.92mm bullet, and his upper body was still crawling in the mud.

The Japanese army reacted quickly, and their Type 95 light tanks rolled over the bodies of their comrades and advanced, while their 37mm main guns fired in bursts at the Nationalist army's strongpoints.

"Demolition team, move out!" With a desperate shout, more than ten suicide squad members strapped with cluster grenades leaped out of the trench.

Zhao Daya, a soldier from Henan who was at the forefront, was a former acrobat. He rolled and leaped amidst the hail of bullets, and was shot in the chest ten meters away from the tank.

This normally timid soldier used his last bit of strength to climb the remaining distance and stuff the hissing explosive charge into the gap between the tracks.

With a deafening roar, the tank turned into a burning iron coffin, and the blast wave threw his mangled body back into the trench, landing right at Wang Changshuan's feet.

At 10:00 a.m., the fighting spread to the tomb of Fang Xiaoru, a great Confucian scholar of the Ming Dynasty.

The 3rd Battalion of the 45th Regiment of the Japanese Army discovered that this stone cemetery was easy to defend and difficult to attack, and immediately dispatched a flamethrower squad.

Two fiery dragons swept through the forest of steles, and the centuries-old pines and cypresses instantly turned into torches, burning the wounded hiding in the tomb chambers to a crisp.

When Li Zhenwen, the brigade staff officer, led the training team to reinforce the troops, he saw a man in flames carrying a Japanese soldier as he jumped into the swill pool. The man was a second lieutenant accountant from the quartermaster department, a frail scholar who never even dared to kill a chicken.

"Fix bayonets!" Li Zhenwen pulled out the bayonet of his Chiang Kai-shek rifle. This top student who graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering was more like a furious lion at this moment.

He discovered that the Japanese army was relying on tanks for infantry-tank coordination and immediately organized explosive charge teams to carry out "suicide attacks".

The most brutal melee took place in the tomb passage.

The Guizhou soldiers brandished Miao machetes, focusing their attacks on the lower flanks of the Japanese troops.

A Guangdong soldier used a captured Type 30 bayonet to pierce the enemy's throat.

A company commander whose leg had been blown off lay among the graves and used his Mauser pistol to kill three Japanese officers in succession.

When the Japanese army temporarily retreated, Li Zhenwen leaned against the stone tablet at the "Site of Fang Xiaoru's Martyrdom" and gasped for breath. He discovered that his bayonet had been bent at a right angle and that his intestines were spilling out of the tear in his uniform.

He hastily bound the stone tablet with bandages, then dipped his fingers in blood and wrote on the back: "Sons of Han, fight to the death for your country."

At 3 p.m., the Japanese army deployed its reserves to launch its sixth assault.

The 264th Brigade had suffered over 70% casualties, and Zhu Chi incorporated the brigade's clerks, cooks, and even stretcher bearers into the combat sequence.

With ammunition running low, the quartermaster opened the last box of grenades and discovered that they were prototypes from the Nanjing Arsenal. The pull tubes were not properly attached to the grenades, and three out of ten were duds.

"The higher-ups want us to risk our lives," the armorer said with a wry smile as he tucked his waistband full of grenades.

Just then, the observer suddenly exclaimed, "Brigadier! The Japanese are adjusting their gun positions!" Zhu Chi raised his binoculars and saw that the Japanese artillery was removing the camouflage netting from the howitzers, a sign that they were about to launch direct fire.

"Fix bayonets! Charge into the Japanese ranks, and those devils won't dare fire!" Zhu Chi took off his general's overcoat, grabbed a Czech-made light machine gun, and declared, "Today, I, Zhu, will stand with you all in this national crisis!"

The remaining hundreds of soldiers leaped out of the trenches and launched a counterattack against the tank formation.

During the charge, Wang Changshuan was hit in the knee by shrapnel. He lay on the ground and continued throwing grenades until his chest was crushed by the tank tracks.

As night fell, the flag of the Republic of China was still flying on the main peak of Yuhuatai, but there were no longer any intact trenches on the battlefield.

Only the blood-soaked pebbles gleamed with a dark red luster under the moonlight, like tears of blood from the earth.

Beside the broken stele at Fang Xiaoru's tomb, half a charred copy of "The Collection of Righteousness" turned its pages in the wind, stopping precisely at the sentence: "Heaven and earth possess righteousness, which manifests in various forms. Below, it becomes rivers and mountains; above, it becomes the sun and stars."

. . . . . . . . .

At dawn on the 2nd, Nanjing awaited its final moment in deathly silence.

The Yangtze River was shrouded in thick winter fog, and the outline of Zijin Mountain was faintly visible in the morning light.

At 5:30 a.m., the first Japanese test-fired shell pierced the sky and landed on the moat outside Guanghua Gate, sending up a towering column of water.

Immediately afterwards, the Japanese 9th Division concentrated more than a hundred heavy artillery pieces and opened fire simultaneously. The roar of the 150mm howitzers made the Nanjing city wall tremble slightly.