Republic of China: German-equipped divisions massacred as warlords guarded the nation's borders

Nanjing. Outside Guanyin Gate.

This land had been plowed by artillery fire for two whole days and two nights.

The trenches at the base of the city wall were filled with blackened blood. Broken rifle butts and stiffened corpses were mixed in with the mud, making it impossible to tell whether they were soldiers from Fujian or Hunan.

The air was filled with a nauseating stench of burning and decay.

Several stray dogs squatted by the ditch, their eyes shining, waiting for nightfall.

Ma Zhongnan squatted behind a half-collapsed city wall, clutching a half-eaten dry biscuit that he couldn't break.

He was the brigade commander of the 7th Independent Mixed Brigade under Sun Yuanfeng. Having fought for twelve years, rising from platoon leader to brigade commander, what kind of situation hadn't he seen?

But this time, he panicked.

"Brigadier, we've run out of mortar shells." A battalion commander, covered in dust and dirt, ran over, his voice hoarse as if sawing wood. "The Third Battalion only has seventy-six guns left that can fire. The First Battalion is in even worse shape; they don't even have enough bayonets to go around."

Ma Zhongnan took a bite of the dry biscuit.

I chewed it twice, but couldn't swallow it.

"What about the other side?"

"The Hunanese are about the same. Their artillery fell silent yesterday afternoon. This morning, their men started a fire on the position to cook porridge."

Ma Zhongnan scoffed.

"Porridge. We don't even have porridge, damn it."

He stood up and glanced towards the front lines.

Five hundred meters away, Tang Mengxiao's vanguard regiment of the Eighth Army of Hunan remained huddled in the trench, motionless. There was no sound of artillery fire, no sound of gunfire. Occasionally, a few curses could be heard.

Both sides are too exhausted to fight anymore.

They ran out of ammunition, ran out of food, and even finished off the emergency compressed biscuits the officers carried.

What did this battle turn out to be?

It was smashed into a pile of mud.

"Brigadier!" The communications soldier stumbled over, clutching a telegram in his hand. "Urgent! Sent from the Commander-in-Chief in Fuzhou! Priority!"

Ma Zhongnan snatched it away.

His face changed after reading the first line.

After reading the last line, he felt as if his bones had been pulled out from behind him.

"Our foundation in Shanghai has been uprooted, and our grain reserves are gone. Chen Zijun has been plotting this for a long time, using Nanjing as bait. Retreat immediately, do not linger!"

The telegram slipped from his fingers.

It drifted into the bloody mud beneath my feet.

Ma Zhongnan's mouth was open, as if he wanted to say something, but he didn't utter a single word.

The battalion commander's expression shifted from confusion to fear, and then from fear to a blank, utterly hopeless despair.

"Traveler... Traveller, what does that mean?"

Ma Zhongnan closed his eyes briefly.

Then he opened his eyes, and there was no longer any fighting spirit in them.

"It means that we've been working for others from the very beginning."

He squatted down, picked the telegram out of the mud, and looked at it again and again.

"Nanjing is a ghost town. Chen Zijun deliberately threw Nanjing out there, waiting for us and the Hunanese to fight to the bitter end. The shops, granaries, and treasuries in Shanghai were all wiped out by his men overnight."

"We lost over three thousand brothers here, all for a single bone he threw out!"

When he shouted those last words, his voice cracked.

The officers standing nearby were all stunned.

No one spoke.

The wind blew by, carrying with it the smell of gunpowder and the stench of corpses.

"Pass on my orders." Ma Zhongnan stood up and wiped the mud off his face. "The entire brigade must immediately regroup and retreat southeast along the main road after dark. Those seriously wounded who cannot be taken with them... leave behind a day's rations and settle them on the spot."

"Brigadier!" the battalion commander cried out anxiously. "Just like that? What if those Hunanese catch up?"

"He's chasing my ass," Ma Zhongnan sneered. "He's in a worse situation than us. Look at his soldiers on the battlefield, they can't even stand up. Who's chasing whom?"

He glanced back at the Nanjing city wall behind him.

There was no one on the city wall.

There wasn't even a lookout.

An empty city.

It was an empty city from beginning to end.

"Go." He spat out a mouthful of blood. "If you don't leave now, you'll be stuck here in your coffin."

……

At the same time.

The front-line command post of the Eighth Army in Hunan.

Tang Mengxiao sat on a door panel that had been blown up, the map in front of her was so wet from the rain that the words on it were no longer legible.

He also received the message.

They didn't come from Shanghai.

It was seen by his own staff officer through binoculars from the front-line observation post.

"Commander, the Fujianese are retreating."

Tang Mengxiao suddenly raised her head.

"What?"

"The entire 7th Mixed Brigade of Fujian Province is retreating. Their seriously wounded are still left in the trenches, and some are gathering their troops and heading southeast."

Tang Mengxiao stood up.

His first reaction was not to chase after him.

But why?

After two days and two nights of fighting, both sides were exhausted. The Fujian troops suddenly retreated, either because they had been routed or because... something terrible had happened in their rear.

"Investigate!" he barked. "Contact Changsha and see if there's any news!"

The staff officer looked very grim.

"Commander, the radio ran out of power last night. The spare battery was destroyed in yesterday's shelling."

Tang Mengxiao took a deep breath.

He glanced down at his troops.

The vanguard regiment had less than four hundred men left to fight. They counted the bullets in the ammunition boxes again and again; each rifle had less than thirty rounds left. To hell with Nanjing! Even if all the Fujianese ran away, what use would eight hundred of them be? They'd just occupy an empty city; who would feed them then?

"Commander, should we pursue them or not?"

Tang Mengxiao gritted her teeth.

"Don't pursue. Regroup the troops and rest in place. We'll deal with it again once the radio is repaired."

He already had a vague, terrifying intuition.

But he dared not say it.

I don't even dare to think about it.

……

into the night.

Southeast of Nanjing. The official road outside Zhongshan Gate.

The moon was half-hidden by clouds.

The dilapidated official road was full of potholes and craters. In winter, the mud was frozen solid, making a crunching sound when you stepped on it.

Ma Zhongnan led his remaining troops—more than 1,400 men—southeast along the official road.

There were no torches. There were no lights.

There were only footsteps and the occasional cough.

The column stretched out very long. Leading the way was the relatively intact 2nd Battalion, followed by the wounded and supplies. All the artillery was lost; even the mounts of several mortars were left on the position.

Ma Zhongnan walked in the middle of the group, with only one thought in his mind: to get out of Nanjing, reach Jurong, and then find a boat to go south down the Yangtze River back to Fujian.

As long as we leave Nanjing, everything will be fine.

As long as we get out of this awful place, everything will be fine.

He looked up and glanced ahead.

The official road stretched into the darkness, flanked by bare winter fields and a few crooked trees.

Quiet.

It's too quiet.

A sense of foreboding suddenly rose in Ma Zhongnan's heart.

He had traveled this road during the day. On the ridges between the fields, people were carrying water, and smoke rose from the chimneys of distant villages.

But now.

There was nothing there.

Not even a dog barked.

"Brigadier!" The lead soldier suddenly stopped, his voice trembling. "There's...there's something ahead!"

Ma Zhongnan's heart clenched.

He strode to the front of the line.

Then he saw it.

Directly ahead on the official road.

About 300 meters away.

A row of searchlights turned on at the same time.

The white light descended as if from the sky, illuminating the entire official road and the fields on both sides as if it were daytime.

Ma Zhongnan's eyes were instantly blinded by the glare. He covered his face with his arm, his pupils contracting rapidly.

Three seconds later.

He saw it clearly.

Behind the searchlights were twelve light tanks.

They were lined up in a row.

Neat and tidy.

Each tank's turret was equipped with a water-cooled heavy machine gun, its dark muzzle pointing directly at the official road.

On either side of the tank stood rows of infantrymen wearing German-style steel helmets and carrying Mauser rifles. Each of them had a gaze as cold as a winter knife.

The turret cover of the first tank was open.

An officer poked half his body out from inside.

He wore a black beret, his face was young, but his eyes looked old, as if he had fought a lifetime of war.

Shen Li.

He was holding a tin megaphone.

"Brothers over there." His voice blared through the loudspeaker, echoing across the open fields. "I am Shen Li, Chief of Staff of the Newly Formed National Defense Army of the Southeast Front Army of the National Revolutionary Army."

"You are surrounded."

"Ahead are twelve tanks and four hundred German-equipped infantry. Behind you, look back yourselves."

Ma Zhongnan turned around.

Behind us, a row of searchlights had been lit up on the official road at some point.

Eight armored personnel carriers blocked the retreat route. The heavy machine guns on the roofs were cocked, their barrels gleaming coldly under the lights.

The front and back are blocked.

The two flanks were winter fields, muddy ground with varying depths, making it difficult to even walk, let alone run.

Ma Zhongnan's 1,400 remaining soldiers stood rooted to the spot, as if they were nailed to the ground.

No one speaks.

No one moved.

Even their breathing became softer.

Shen Li's loudspeaker blared again.

"Surrender and you will not be killed. Put down your weapons, cover your head with your hands, and squat down. Every one of you will walk out alive."

"But if someone fires..."

He paused.

The turrets of all twelve tanks rotated by a tiny angle simultaneously.

The sound of metal scraping together was exceptionally clear in the night.

"You should know what the effect is when the shells from this kind of tank are fired."

Ma Zhongnan's knees buckled.

It's not because I'm afraid of dying.

He had fought for twelve years and seen enough people die.

It was because he finally understood something.

From the day Nanjing became a ghost town, they were no longer hunters.

They have always been the prey.

From the moment Chen Zijun threw Nanjing out, to the fierce battle between them and the Hunan soldiers outside Guanyin Gate, to the uprooting of Shanghai's merchants and grain depots, and finally to now—tanks blocking their way.

Every move was a carefully laid out strategy by Chen Zijun.

They obediently went inside with each step.

Ma Zhongnan bent his knees and knelt on the cold mud.

He gave a bitter laugh.

The voice was very soft, as if talking to oneself.

"Fight? How about you fight with your head?"

His hand loosened.

The Mauser pistol that he had with him for twelve years fell to the ground and sank into the mud.

Behind me, a series of splashing sounds rose and fell.

Rifles, bayonets, grenades, canteens, backpacks...

More than a thousand people collapsed in unison on the official road, like puppets whose strings had been cut at the same time.

Under the searchlights, the surrendering column stretched for nearly half a mile.

Shen Li jumped down from the tank turret and stepped onto the frozen mud.

He walked up to Ma Zhongnan and looked down at the middle-aged soldier kneeling on the ground.

There was no insult. There was no ridicule.

He simply extended one hand.

"Stand up, Commander Ma."

Ma Zhongnan looked up at him.

"Your young marshal..." His throat felt like it was blocked by a stone. "Had he been waiting for this day from the very beginning?"

Shen Li pulled him up from the mud.

"The young marshal said something."

"What did you say?"

Shen Li turned around and looked at the distant, faintly white horizon behind the tank formation.

He said, "It's not a skill to fight Chinese people. The real skill is to make Chinese people stop fighting each other."

Ma Zhongnan was stunned.

After a long while, he lowered his head.

At that moment, he suddenly realized that kneeling down and surrendering might not be the most humiliating thing in his life.

The most humiliating thing was that after fighting for so many years, he finally realized that he had never figured out who he should be fighting.