Chapter 45

  On the twenty-fifth day, as soon as the sky was bright, Japanese planes flew over like annoying flies, buzzing and circling in the air above the position. The various heavy artillery of the Japanese army on the ground poured down a hail of shells at the Gou Bangzi position once again, blasting the Chinese army's defense line into smithereens for the umpteenth time.

  Ten minutes later, Nakamura Shinjiro drew his command sword and shouted: "Kill!"

  A sea of devils carrying wooden boards to fill the trenches, under the cover of twenty-four tanks and twelve aircraft, ferociously charged towards Li Bin's position.

  The cannon fire had just subsided, and Li Bin entered the command post upon receiving notification from the observation outpost. He picked up his binoculars and gazed into the distance. What he saw made him exclaim in surprise: "Good grief! This time they're coming in force!"

  Li Bin put down his binoculars and slammed his hand on the table: "All units, take your positions! Prepare to engage the enemy!"

  Hong Biao took over Li Bin's binoculars, took a look at the front, and he was also frightened: this time, not only were there more devils attacking than yesterday, but also dozens of "turtle shells" were advancing towards the position.

  In fact, seeing the "turtle shell", Li Bin was also lamenting the lack of time. Otherwise, he would have mobilized those Shenyang Arsenal workers who went to Jinzhou to teach them how to manufacture armor-piercing shells. Unfortunately, the Japanese did not give Li Bin any extra time and launched a crazy attack.

  Tanks are the infantry's worst nightmare, and even these thin-skinned tin cans were hard to eliminate without anti-tank weapons! So Li Bin was thinking about how to deal with these Japanese tanks. He wanted to pull out the few 7mm mountain guns he had left to blast those devilish tanks, but the planes in the sky were really annoying!

  The warriors emerged from the underground tunnels one after another, through the traffic trenches, and ran to their respective positions in small steps.

  A squadron of 88 bombers dived down, and the bombs landed on the edge of the trenches, exploding into a huge fireball. With a loud "boom", blood-soaked earth flew into the air, and several soldiers were killed instantly.

  The second 88 bomber roared towards the ground, dropping bombs that exploded on impact. Immediately after, two more planes dived down together, their machine gun bullets "whooshing" vertically from the sky, and several soldiers running in the communication trench fell to the ground, with several blood holes "gushing" out blood.

  Jing Da, now the commander of the volunteer army, led his soldiers through the traffic trench to prepare for battle, braving the bombing and strafing of enemy planes. Looking up at the circling enemy aircraft, Jing Da glared with bloodshot eyes and roared: "You little devils! If you have the guts, come down and fight me!"

  Japanese planes bombed and strafed the position recklessly, causing heavy casualties among the Righteous and Brave Army and Northeast Army soldiers. However, the soldiers did not fear; they gripped their steel guns tightly, waiting for the dark mass of Japanese to approach them.

  The annoying plane finally flew away, and the Japanese on the ground had approached the first trench. At this time, Li Bin gave a decisive order: "Fire!"

  Jing Hu, now a sniper, fired a bullet and with one shot, hit a Japanese lieutenant, who fell headfirst onto the icy ground. About thirty meters to his left and right, Wu Congyu and Huang Hua also opened fire, and a Japanese machine gunner and a grenadier had their heads blown off, spewing out a cloud of dirty blood.

  "Hit! Give me a good hit on these bastards!" Jin Da drew his pistol and aimed at a devil 100 meters away, firing a bullet of revenge. With one shot, the devil was knocked to the ground. The soldiers' rifles and machine guns fired together, bullets whizzing by, and dozens of devils in front fell to the ground one after another.

  Li Bin still used yesterday's tactics, the heavy machine gun firepower points would not easily open fire, lest they be destroyed by the devils' infantry artillery. Moreover, today, the devils had not only infantry artillery but also twenty-four Type 89 medium tanks.

  The Type 89 medium tank was the first domestically produced tank in Japan, and it's more accurate to say that it's a small tank rather than a medium one. Seeing these Japanese planes and tanks, Li Bin felt a sharp pain: if not for the non-resistance policy, the Northeastern Army originally had over three hundred aircraft and twenty-six tanks, as well as a large number of guns and artillery from the Shenyang Arsenal, but unfortunately, due to the non-resistance policy, all those weapons fell into the hands of the Japanese invaders!

  The Japanese, however, were not yet familiar with the captured planes and tanks, so they did not use those captured weapons to fight the volunteer army, but used their own planes and tanks instead. The caliber of the guns seized by the Japanese was different from that of their own guns, so those guns were later left for the puppet troops to use, while they themselves continued to use 6mm caliber firearms.

  After losing Shenyang, the Japanese army poured into Northeast China from Korea in large numbers. At this time, the strength of the Kwantung Army increased greatly, and it was already very difficult to drive the Japanese out of Northeast China again.

  The little devil tank used a 37mm cannon to fire at the Chinese defenders in the second trench, and waves of flames rose up in the trenches, with many defenders sacrificing their lives. Fortunately, Li Bin's design of the trench was quite reasonable, which reduced the loss of the defenders to the maximum extent under the enemy's firepower.

  The second wave of enemy planes flew over the battlefield with a dull roar, diving down from the air one after another, crazily strafing the Chinese defenders in the trenches.

  "No! Can't fight like this! The enemy tanks are all coming up! Fighting like this will suffer losses!" Li Bin said, he turned his head to the communication soldier and said: "Pass down my order! All retreat! Withdraw to the fourth trench for defense! Blow up all the traffic trenches between the second and fourth trenches!"

  The defenders who received the order quickly withdrew from the second and third trenches through the traffic trench, retreating to the fourth trench. This fourth trench was Li Bin's second-to-last defensive line, which was directly connected to the underground tunnel, forming a crisscrossing defensive fortification. Behind the fourth trench were mobile howitzers and some mountain guns carefully hidden by Li Bin. After the loss of the front-line position, snipers and sharpshooters could also retreat behind the fourth trench to conduct long-range sniper fire against the enemy.

  Originally, Li Bin wanted to make the enemy pay a heavy price for every step forward, but because the enemy's tanks had already launched an attack, in order to preserve his strength, Li Bin ordered a temporary retreat.

  The onrushing devils found that the second and third trenches did not shoot out bullets, they excitedly shouted: "The Chinese have escaped! The Chinese have escaped! Charge quickly!"

  Soon, planks were laid on the first moat, and those Japanese soldiers prepared to cross over from the planks. At this moment, Li Bin's "guerrilla artillery" began to show its might, more than a dozen mortars fired at the same time, shells whizzing down and exploding in the first moat. The ground instantly erupted with balls of fire, the Japanese soldiers who had rushed onto the planks and were about to rush across the moat were blown into the air one after another "riding earth planes", the newly laid planks were blown to pieces block by block in the explosion.

  At the same time, the grenade launchers also came into play, and the grenades flew into the sky, falling like hail on the first trench and exploding. For a while, those devils were blown to pieces, and soon only a large patch of Japanese people disappeared from view.

  Japanese planes dived down, strafing the grenadiers who were launching grenades. Bombs exploded on the ground, blowing the grenadiers and their launchers to smithereens. Aircraft machine gun bullets whizzed towards the ground, batch after batch of soldiers fell in pools of blood.

  The enemy tank arrived at the first ditch, a three-meter-wide trench, where could the small enemy tank cross over? The 7.7-meter-long small tank had a crossing ability of two meters, and this three-meter-wide trench seemed to be tailor-made for this type of Japanese tank!

  The helpless tank could only circle around the outer perimeter of the trenches and couldn't advance at all. However, the non-stop firing from the tank's cannon caused some casualties to the soldiers defending in the fourth trench.

  With the help of the fourth and last lines of defense, the warriors fired at the enemy's artillery fire, and those devils who were blocked outside the first trench were knocked down one by one into the ditch.

  Looking at the rampaging enemy tanks, Li Bin finally made up his mind: "Artillery battalion commander! Get the mountain gun out and heavily attack those turtle shells!"

  Four mountain guns protruded from the bunker, and the gunners of the first mountain gun aimed at the first Type 89 tank. With just one shell, they hit the thinly armored tank, and a fireball burst out of the enemy tank. "Boom!" A loud explosion was heard, and the tank turret flew into the air, rolling several times before falling to the ground dozens of meters away.

  The second mountain gun also opened fire and shot down another annoying "turtle shell".

  The exposed artillery position was discovered by the enemy aircraft, and the 88-style bomber immediately dived towards the artillery. However, these stubborn artillerymen did not retreat, they used their own lives to ignite one after another of the enemy tanks, turning them into a blazing inferno. In no time at all, the four mountain guns were completely destroyed, but they had also destroyed six enemy tanks.

  The devils paid a heavy price, and finally put wooden boards on the first trench. Groups of Japanese soldiers rushed past the boards, rushing fiercely towards the second and third trenches.

  Li Bin saw through the telescope that the devils had already crossed the second trench, so he slammed his fist heavily on the table: "Heavy machine gun, open fire!"

  His order was transmitted through the telephone line to the ears of the machine gun company commander, who immediately gave orders to the heavy machine gunners hiding in the dark fort between the second and third trenches: "Fire!"

  The Japanese who had already crossed the second trench found that the defenders in front of them, under the suppression of tank and aircraft firepower, no longer had many bullets to shoot at themselves. Those devils suddenly seemed to have taken stimulants, shouting "Wah wah" one by one, charging forward and killing.

  Four embrasures of the pillbox suddenly opened fire, the gunner pressed the trigger, four 24-barrel machine guns roared in unison, the deputy gunner stroked the canvas bullet belt quickly shortened, and the yellow bullets "ding ding dang" fell to the ground.

  The formation of the Japanese charge was scattered, but from the side, it was still a dense formation. The four heavy machine guns that suddenly shot out bullets were like four sharp sickles, cutting into the devils' group, and wherever they went, they splashed up with scarlet arcs, and the devils who charged forward fell down like straw.

  The devils who were not killed suddenly found bullets shooting from the side, one by one fell to the ground, and dared not lift their heads as the bullets whizzed over their heads. However, they soon discovered that there was not even a stone near them to hide behind. The machine gunner lowered his muzzle and swept the devils on the ground with intense fire.