Volume 4 Chapter 51

  This Kawasaki bomber was the very plane flown by Lieutenant Commander Okuda Kikusaburo, the ace pilot of the Japanese army! He discovered that someone had shot down his own wingman and couldn't help but curse loudly: "Baka! Damn Chinese!"

  The bomber came flying towards Li Bin with a deafening roar, a string of machine gun bullets sweeping in. At this moment, the truck made a nimble turn, and the bullets all shot into the ground beside the carriage.

  "Good job! Brother!" Li Bin gave a thumbs up towards the driver's cabin.

  The driver didn't even have time to answer, just driving the car with all his might, dodging the bombs that were about to roar in.

  Okuda Kikujirō dropped a bomb, but it missed Lee Bin's truck. He hastily pulled up the plane, and the bomber engine let out a heart-stopping roar as he climbed to high altitude.

  At this moment, the enemy plane and Li Bin's anti-aircraft vehicle formed a perfect angle, just right for the machine gun to fire at its tail. Li Bin would not let go of this excellent opportunity, he operated the machine gun, aimed at the bloodthirsty enemy plane and pressed the trigger. The muzzle spat out a long flame, bullets chased from behind.

  A string of bullets pierced the sound of the leather entering Oda Kikusaburou's ears, he tried to turn around, but unfortunately found that the hydraulic operating system was broken!

  Another burst of bullets caught up with the already uncontrollable bomber, the bullets pierced the oil tank, and the plane immediately erupted in a fierce blaze, the engine roaring futilely as it continued to plummet towards the ground.

  A loud "boom" shook the ground as the Kawasaki bomber and the earth shared a intimate kiss, Lieutenant Colonel Okuda Kikujirō and another pilot in the rear seat were killed instantly. In fact, Li Bin did not know that he had just shot down a lieutenant colonel, if he knew, it's unknown how ecstatic he would be.

  The remaining four Japanese bombers saw their commander's plane shot down, and they were so frightened that they hastily turned around and fled the battlefield in disarray.

  "Damn it! Come down and fight with Grandpa if you have the guts! What are you running for!" Li Bin cursed loudly at the Japanese plane flying away.

  A big Han jumped down in the driver's cab, Li Bin fixed his eyes and looked again, only to find that the one driving this car was actually Hong Biao!

  "Good kid! It was you after all! Second brother, your driving skills are not bad! Otherwise, I would have lost my life just now!" Li Bin said with a pat on Hong Biao's back.

  The warriors on the battlefield withstood the Japanese army's fierce artillery fire and stubbornly shot out a hail of grenades at the devils on the riverbank, turning those who could not advance or retreat into corpses one by one.

  Soon, more than 400 devils who were blocked on this side of the river and could not attack or retreat were all wiped out.

  Seeing his full-strength battalion being wiped out in an instant, Lieutenant General Kashimura's face turned increasingly gloomy. However, on the face of Ishihara Kanji, a faint smile that was almost imperceptible hung. In his heart, he thought: You think you're something just because you've been stationed in Korea? You haven't even fought against the Chinese before, and yet you easily signed the military order! Now let's see how you plan to wrap this up!

  The Japanese who had just come up suffered a great loss, and more seriously, the ice surface was blown open, the bridge was also blown off, and these Japanese did not carry any crossing tools, they could only stare at the defensive position of the opposite side.

  "Hah! I don't believe it, if we can't cross the Daling River, we won't be able to attack the Chinese from behind by going around from the west!" Katsumura Denzirō said with discontent.

  "General Kashima, you said it yourself, we must take Daling River within three days! If not, you will apologize with your death. There are only three days left, I don't care whether you choose to detour or use any other method! As long as you can make it, the first achievement of the Jinzhou Battle belongs to you!" Ishihara Kanji said sarcastically.

  Kajiwara Dakichirō was not convinced of this small Chūsa, thinking that Ishihara was just a fox exploiting the tiger's might, relying on Honjō Shigeru and Sakakibara Seizaburō to support him. Thinking of this, he said to Ishihara: "I will immediately lead my Independent 39th Brigade to bypass Jinzhou from the west! I don't believe it can be bypassed!"

  Kanda Masatane, as Kajiwara's superior, naturally agreed with Kajiwara's suggestion and had him lead his 39th Brigade to bypass the Taoling River defense line from the west of Jinzhou, attempting to launch an attack from behind the Taoling River defense line.

  Katamori Matsudaira then led his army westward.

  Watching the back of Kajiwara leaving, Honjō Shigenaga pulled Ishihara aside and asked: "The Chinese must be on guard against our detour attack. The terrain in western Jinzhou is treacherous, it's a mountainous area where one man can hold off ten thousand men, why didn't you dissuade General Kajiwara?"

  "Let him go! Anyway, it will take several days to prepare the crossing tools. It's not too late for him to come back after he has hit a snag."

  As expected, when Jiayuan's travel group arrived at the Songling Mountains after a whole day of traveling, they encountered Zhang Haitian's Righteous and Brave Army troops there.

  Katsumura Toshirō ordered a strong attack, but the narrow mountain road made it impossible for his troops to deploy. The treacherous terrain also made it difficult for their heavy weapons to be effective. The defenders could have repelled Katsumura's forces with just stones, not to mention that they had machine guns and mortars.

  The Thirty-Ninth Division attacked for three hours and got nothing but more than a hundred corpses.

  Just as Kajiwara Dōjirō was getting angry, another bad news came: because his logistics team had gone too far into the enemy line, they were suddenly attacked by a group of "bandits" and an entire squad was annihilated.

  The hope of detouring was shattered, even if they could get through the "Lao Bei Feng" pass, there were still the third cavalry brigade of the Northeast Army waiting for them behind, and there was no chance to bypass the Da Ling River defense line at all.

  Kawamura Tadayoshi returned, and Ishihara Kanji said with a wry smile: "Has General Kawamura returned? Has he successfully bypassed the defenses?"

  Kashima Tatsujirō said nothing and just gave a resentful glance at Ishihara Kanji.

  The Japanese were temporarily blocked outside the Daling River, and at this time General Huang Xiansheng sent a telegram to Zhang Xueliang, requesting that Zhang send troops to the northeast. With Ma Zanshan's coordination in the north, they could take advantage of the opportunity to recover lost ground. However, after sending out the telegram, it was like throwing mud into the sea, and there was no response from Zhang Xueliang at all.

  At this time, Li Bin was very clear in his mind that Zhang Xueliang was unreliable. Since the Opium War, China's self-image as a great power had been thoroughly shattered, and many Chinese people had an inferiority complex, believing that they were fundamentally unable to resist the powerful nations. Zhang Xueliang was no exception, pinning his hopes on the League of Nations.

  At this time, Li Bin was very clear that he could only rely on his own strength to develop and grow step by step. In fact, he didn't want to fight a war of attrition with the Japanese invaders in Jinzhou either. His purpose was just to try his best to hold back the enemy, so that after the devils occupied Jinzhou, they would not have the strength to annihilate Ma Zanshan in the north. In fact, at this time, whether it was the Northeast Army or the Central Army that came up to help, it was still possible to drive the Japanese out of the Northeast. However, this was not possible.

  Taking advantage of the fact that the Japanese army was blocked outside the Daling River, Li Bin took the opportunity to train those new recruits. When the enemy opened fire and bombarded the position, he let these new recruits come to the entrance of the trench and listen to the explosion sound, training the new recruits to overcome their fear of artillery bombardment. As the saying goes, new soldiers are afraid of cannons, and old soldiers are afraid of machine guns. In war, many new soldiers were scared by the sound of cannons and crawled out of the ground to find cover, only to be shot dead by machine guns.

  Within these two days, Li Bin's command post was hit by a 150mm shell, and the heavy artillery shells instantly turned the command post into a pile of powder. Fortunately, Li Bin was not inside at that time.

  By nightfall, the soldiers of the engineering battalion built a new command post for Li Bin at the fastest speed.

  By January 12th, after the Japanese crossing equipment arrived at the Daling River, the Japanese launched another offensive.

  Two days later, the river surface froze again, but the ice layer was not thick enough to allow the pontoon boats to pass through, and people and horses could not cross over it. This time, the Japanese first blasted open the ice surface, and then the pontoons were put into the river one by one.

  After a fierce bombardment, Lieutenant General Kashima drew his command sword and shouted: "Kill!" The boats loaded with devils rushed to the opposite bank of the Daling River.

  "The devils are coming again! All units, prepare for battle!" Li Bin ordered from the command post. His order was transmitted through the telephone lines repaired by the telephone soldiers with their lives to the command posts of various grassroots officers.

  The warriors emerged from the underground tunnels, braving enemy artillery and bombing, entering their positions to prepare for blocking the devils' new round of crazy attacks.

  "Fire!" With Li Bin's order, the defensive position spewed out flames, shooting dense bullets onto the surface of the Daling River.

  On the river surface covered with ice floes, small water columns jumped up one after another. As the water columns moved forward, from time to time rafts were hit by bullets, and devils who were hit let out mournful cries as they fell into the icy cold river water. The river surface was stained red in patches by the devils' polluted blood.

  Mortars also fired in unison, shells whizzing across the sky and slamming into the river with a loud explosion, sending columns of water mixed with shattered ice blocks shooting straight up into the air. Many rafts were capsized, and the devils on them fell into the icy waters.

  The devils who fell into the water struggled to swim forward, trying to reach the other shore, but were killed one after another by dense bullets in the river, and their heads disappeared from the surface of the river, polluting the clear river water with bloody foam.

  "Don't fall back! Everyone charge forward!" Colonel Kashimura bellowed in a hoarse voice.

  Wave after wave of devils rushed to the opposite bank, and batch after batch were beaten into the river. The Japanese army's heavy artillery fired wildly, extinguishing one by one the firepower points that spat out flames, but new firepower points emerged like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, again shooting dense bullets onto the river surface.

  The fierce battle has reached a white-hot stage, and the defenders, relying on their solid fortifications and reasonable layout, repeatedly launched fierce attacks on the devils who were crossing the river, but still could not stop the enemy from crossing the river.

  Through the telescope, it can be seen that some devils have crossed the Daling River and set foot on the riverbank. After Li Bin put down the telescope, he turned to Wang Zihao and said: "We don't open fire at those unexposed firepower points in the second line for the time being! Wait until more devils come up, their skin rafts will definitely go back to pull people again, at that time we can cut off the connection between the enemy!"

  After finishing speaking, he picked up his binoculars again and carefully observed the movements of the devils who were launching an attack.