Chapter 52

  The individual soldier's bunker, one by one, was knocked out by the enemy's heavy artillery fire after the first trench. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the devils continued to climb up the riverbank.

  After all the rafts had disembarked the devils on the other side, they were rowed back to this shore and took over the second batch of devils.

  The devils are adjusting their troops, Li Bin is also deploying, a batch of soldiers quietly enter the first line of defense, supplementing the batch of soldiers who have just sacrificed, maintaining enough firepower to kill a large number of enemies.

  The enemy's raft had just turned back for a moment, and Li Bin gave the order decisively: "Fire!"

  Machine guns, mortars and rifles poured down a hail of bullets onto the riverbank, rows and rows of devils fell like harvested scallions, the snow-covered riverbank turned into a crimson sheet, the scorching flames melted the snow, and the melting snow water mixed with red blood flowed into the river.

  "Fire! Fire! Fire!" The Second Lieutenant's voice was hoarse from shouting, his command knife waving wildly in his hand.

  The shells came pouring down like a storm, landing on the defenders' positions and blowing them to pieces. The soldiers fought bravely in the face of intense artillery fire, taking out the devils one by one on the riverbank where they had nowhere to hide.

  The devils' planes in the sky dived down to the ground one after another, bullets and bombs falling like hailstones, filling the air thick with gunpowder smell with a choking bloody odor.

  Hong Biao, with his makeshift anti-aircraft vehicle, fired bursts of flame at the rampaging enemy bombers in the sky, shooting down one plane and damaging another. However, his own makeshift anti-aircraft team also suffered heavy losses, with soldiers falling one after another into pools of blood.

  The devils' raft paddled back to the other shore, and once again carried a batch of devils charging towards this riverbank, launching a reinforcement attack on the devils on the beach. Wave after wave of devils were knocked down, and behind them, another batch of devils stepped onto the beach. The defenders who persisted in their defense suffered extremely heavy casualties, but the weapons in their hands still shot out fiery tongues at the enemy. Bullets filled with hatred hit one devil after another, shooting them down on the beach.

  Kaoru Lieutenant General picked up the binoculars and looked across the river, only to see corpses lying horizontally on the beach. He was furious and shouted "Quick! Give me firepower coverage! Blast those Chinese!"

  "General Kashima, isn't our firepower intense enough? Is it that your soldiers aren't brave enough?" Ishihara Kanji said sarcastically.

  Li Bin saw through the telescope that the first line of defense had been broken, and he decisively ordered: "The first line of defense begins to withdraw and enter the second trench!"

  Fighting, to eliminate the enemy's living forces, Li Bin would not let his warriors make unnecessary sacrifices. He wouldn't let his soldiers be eliminated by friendly fire like the Nationalist troops did, where more than half of their forces were lost before even making contact with the enemy.

  The warriors who were still alive in the first line of defense retreated into the second trench after burying landmines and waited for orders.

  Wang Zihao did not understand Li Bin's order and asked: "General, why don't we stop the enemy on the other side of the river, but let them come up?"

  "This is just the beginning of the enemy's attack! I estimate that the next battle will be even more brutal! If I'm not mistaken, the Japanese battleships and aircraft carriers will come soon!"

  Wang Zihao and others did not know what a battleship or an aircraft carrier was, but Li Bin knew. He had learned from the radio that Japan's Kaga, Akagi, and Red Castle three aircraft carriers, Nagato, Iwate battleships and Kongō, Hiei battlecruisers as well as a large fleet of destroyers were now showing off their military strength on the Yellow Sea between the Korean Peninsula and the Shandong Peninsula. Does China have a navy? At that time, the Nationalist Party's navy was at best an inland river fleet. If Japan launched an attack from the sea, all coastal ports would be quickly destroyed. This may be one of the reasons why Chiang Kai-shek feared Japan.

  Of course, there were contradictions between the Japanese army and navy, with the navy looking down on the army and the army not liking the navy. In general, the army would not easily ask for naval support. But now that history has been changed by Li Bin, will the Japanese military department, which is about to suffer heavy losses, order the fleet to be sent over?

  The Japanese troops who had landed on the riverbank at a great cost under the cover of heavy artillery and air power finally occupied the position, then the Japanese engineer troops began to set up pontoon bridges on the river surface in preparation for large-scale troops and tanks crossing the Taoling River.

  Li Bin saw the Japanese building a pontoon bridge through his binoculars and ordered: "Mortar troops, attack! Open fire on those sons of bitches!"

  A mortar unit that fires one shot and changes location is the "cold gun tactic" brought by Li Bin from later generations. This was a new tactic invented by the Chinese Volunteer Army when the battalion and "United" confronted each other on the 38th line. Li Bin brought this tactic here, establishing a "mobile artillery" to deliver fatal blows to the enemy time and again.

  Mobile artillery carried mortars and set them up on the battlefield, then fired intense cannon fire onto the river surface.

  "Boom! Boom! Boom!" Shell after shell landed on the river surface and exploded, sending columns of water mixed with ice shards shooting up into the air again and again. The Japanese engineers who were busy on the river surface let out miserable cries as they fell into the icy waters.

  "Great hit! Great hit!" Li Bin excitedly shouted.

  Suddenly, the artillery fire gradually became sparse and soon stopped completely. Li Bin was furious, he turned his head to Wang Zihao and said: "Go and get the artillery company commander for me! Ask him why he didn't open fire!"

  In a moment, the muddy artillery company commander stumbled into Li Bin's command post and panted to report: "Report, report Comrade Commander! We have no more shells!"

  "Damn it!" Li Bin slammed his fist on the table.

  "Let Liu Hanshan's armored train come and blast those bastards!" Wang Zihao suggested.

  "Haven't you seen the enemy planes in the sky and the heavy artillery on the ground? Now let the armored train make a move? That's just sending them to their deaths!" Li Bin refused to deploy the armored train at this time. He knew that if they made a move now, the Japanese planes would definitely launch a fierce bombing attack on the armored train without mercy. He wanted to wait patiently for an opportunity to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy before deploying the armored train.

  On the battlefield that had been bombed to pieces, Wu Congyu and Huang Hua led the snipers in agile and mobile activities. They fired a shot and changed their position, and from time to time, they shot out cold gun bullets, one after another, knocking down the devils on the riverbank.

  Those devils lying on the ground were of no use. Accurate shooting still blew their brains out one by one. The terrified devils could only shout loudly: "Chinese godly marksmen! Chinese godly marksmen!"

  They lay on the ground, watching as one by one the soldiers at the edge became corpses, feeling a kind of terror in their hearts, and not knowing whether the next bullet would be aimed at themselves.

  At last, a little devil platoon leader could no longer bear this pressure. He didn't care that the reinforcements behind him had not yet arrived, and jumped up to draw his command knife: "Kill!"

  A scorching bullet whizzed in, the Japanese officer's command knife stiffened in mid-air, his body straightened like a wooden stake and fell backwards, his skull blown open with a splatter of red and white mixed substance.

  The little devils of this squad received the order from their captain, disregarding everything and crawling up from the ground to charge forward. However, not one of them could rush to the front of the first trench, as more than 20 snipers and over 60 sharpshooters' accurate shots quickly "named" all the little devils in this squad.

  Under the intense firepower of the devils, six snipers were sacrificed and more than 20 sharpshooters were killed. However, they annihilated an enemy force several times larger than their own numbers.

  The devils shouted excitedly: "The Chinese have no shells! Let's rush across the river and kill them!"

  The construction of the pontoon bridge and the transportation by rafts are proceeding simultaneously, while more and more devils are crossing the river. On the beach, everywhere is a large number of devils wearing khaki uniforms.

  "General Kajiwara Tatsujirō drew his commander's sword: 'Kill them all!'"

  Japanese army officers, including lieutenant colonels and majors, who had already crossed the river, also drew their command knives: "Kill!"

  The Japanese sprang up and charged forward to the enemy positions on the riverbank. They were met with only sniper and machine gun fire. Although accurate, it was unable to stop the charge of over a thousand oni.

  "Kill! The Chinese have no machine guns!"

  "Kill! Charge and kill all those Japanese!"

  The devils who were shouting and brandishing their bayonet-tipped rifles charged towards Li Bin's defensive position, and soon they reached the first trench.

  On the opposite bank, Lieutenant General Kajiwara saw that his "brave warriors" had already rushed to the front of the first trench and turned around with a smile to say to Ishihara: "How about it! My brave warriors are still rushing up!"

  Ishihara smiled coldly to himself, but said nothing. In fact, he was thinking: You stationed troops in Joseon look down on us Kwantung Army? Just wait and see! Have you gone up yet? This is just the beginning of a nightmare!

  Ishiwara had always disliked Kawabe, and was thinking that once Kawabe had exhausted his 39th Division, the annoying guy would also commit seppuku. At that time, his own army would charge up, and all the credit would go to the Kwantung Army!

  How could Jia Cun know that this was just the beginning of a nightmare without having experienced the bloody battle of Goubangzi?

  These devils who rushed to the first "trench" just now discovered that this so-called first trench was not a trench at all, but a wide and deep ditch! And it was the scattered soldier holes and individual earth forts behind the ditch that had just fired bullets at them. These devils wanted to jump over the ditch, but they simply couldn't jump over it.

  At this moment, the second trench, which had not fired a shot, suddenly spewed out dense bullets, and some carefully hidden single-person bunkers more than 100 meters away spat out machine gun fire tongues. These devils fell to the ground one after another, still unable to avoid the bullets coming from the front.

  Under the "special care" of snipers and god gunmen, those devils' machine gunners and grenade throwers were almost unable to play a role, with corpses all over the edges of machine guns and grenade launchers.

  To save their lives, the devils in front of the first trench jumped into the trench one by one. Only after they jumped into the trench did they discover that it was so deep that they couldn't even expose their heads to fire. They couldn't climb out, and more devils behind them were still jumping in.

  Devils accidentally touched a landmine, and in the explosion, dozens of devils were blown to pieces on the spot.