If there are heroes on the battlefield, there will be cowards. A hero may not be able to bring out a group of equally heroic soldiers, but a coward can demoralize a group of soldiers.
To be honest, on every front, the number of people Zhang Sixing deployed in a company was by no means too many.
However, these people were not protected by artillery, Vickers heavy machine guns and armored vehicles in the rear position, and the firepower was more fierce than the Japanese firepower across the river.
But it's useless, especially when these are just temporarily organized broken armies.
When the Japanese motorcycle team was attacked on the river bank, the Japanese motorcycles quickly turned around and took cover.
Then a large group of Japanese infantrymen drove up the river bank, leaning against the slightly raised ridge on the side of the road, and exchanged fire with the people in the field fortifications on the other side of the river.
However, something unexpected happened. Some of the broken troops in the trenches in front saw a large number of Japanese infantry on the other side running towards the river bank, and were immediately frightened.
"There are so many Japs. There must be thousands of them. If you run, you will be killed if you are surrounded...Run quickly..."
His panicked shouts instantly caused the morale of the defeated soldiers, who originally had little confidence in the battle, to collapse.
It's just that the person shouting was the so-called "smart man". When he saw more than 30 people running back from the company of more than 100 people in the front line, he joined the fleeing crowd.
Of course, they were smart and did not jump out of the trench and run, but ran along the trench to the rear.
However, when they turned the corner at the trench, there was a "cloth tearing machine" HMG42.
The defeated soldiers waved their guns and shouted loudly,
"Run, run quickly, there are too many Japanese soldiers, we can't stop them..."
However, what greeted them was the long muzzle flash ejected by the "cloth tearing machine" HMG42, and the escaping soldiers were swept down in the trench one after another.
The rest ran back to another passage, but each trench back was equipped with a "cloth tearing machine" HMG42.
War is so cruel, and the machine guns placed on the retreat road are used to shoot these cowards. Because if we don't kill them, how can we show respect for the blood of the warriors.
There is no need for cowards on the battlefield.
Li Jixian, who was hunched over and walking in the trench with a livid face, came to the front with a few men carrying HP90s.
The defeated soldiers knew that retreating would lead to death, so they returned to their respective fighting positions. At this moment, they were all trembling, lying on the fighting positions, trembling and crying.
But in order to show that he persisted in fighting, he was shooting at more and more Japanese army soldiers on the other side of the river.
Li Jixian, who was running bent over, spoke Mandarin with a Guizhou accent and shouted with red eyes,
"You cowards, don't think about your parents, wives and children. If the Japanese attack your house, you will run away. They are all eggless things."
Then he came behind those guys who seemed to be a little clever and had now retreated to the fighting position. He stretched out his hands and pulled his hair, dragging him down into the trench.
"Don't think I didn't see it. It was you who yelled at them to run away and not let you stay."
At this time, the person who knew that his cleverness had no chance of survival in this army made a tearful plea,
"Sir, I fought, I fought with the Japanese..."
However, Li Jixian didn't say much. He just shot him to death on the trench with several shots and continued to shout,
"Fight with all your strength, and those who retreat will die. Even if we die, we soldiers must stop those devils and not let them harm our fathers and fellow villagers..."
With the suppression and shouting of Li Jixian and his men, the originally unstable military morale slowly stabilized.
In fact, if the deserters just ran five minutes late, they would have won a battle that they thought was huge.
Because of their escaping actions, the firepower on the river bank was somewhat weakened, which made the Japanese cavalry on the other side feel that it was time to charge.
After receiving the report from the walkie-talkie of the motorcycle reconnaissance team ahead, Colonel Hisaka Oshima, commander of the 101st Division Rapid Group, pulled out his sword and then made a pressing gesture.
"Tick-tick, tick-tick..."
The cavalry's unique charge horn sounded, and the cavalry lined up in four lines on the road drove the infantry under the road.
The sound of horse hooves replaced the sound of gunfire on the battlefield, and they went from slow to fast...
Although using cavalry to attack a narrow pontoon bridge is definitely not a clever move in cavalry tactics.
It is only about thirty meters long, and the river is so shallow that you can almost see the bottom of the river from the bank, and war horses can wade through it.
The most important thing is that the commotion in the position on the other side of the river and the use of machine guns against their own people made the Japanese soldiers think that this was an excellent opportunity to break through.
If it weren't for the following thing, then all of this would be true.
It's a pity that the position set up by Zhang Sixing is really so easy to break through.
A suona sounded, and the tune was a rural funeral tune. Except for the charging cavalry, the other Japanese looked around inexplicably.
As the suona sounded, something was suddenly opened in the fields on both sides of the accelerating cavalry.
They were no more than twenty meters away from the road. They were round and looked like human heads hidden in the grass. No... they looked like steel helmets. Could it be that they were enemy soldiers ambushing on both sides of the road.
But those helmets looked like watermelons growing out of the ground, not like living people at all.
The Japanese infantrymen running forward on both sides of the road were filled with doubts as they looked at these human-like but not human-like things.
Fortunately, they were motionless on the ground like watermelons, only vaguely as if they were emitting green smoke.
In the blink of an eye, the six-second delay passed, and those round things on the ground that looked like human-headed guns almost exploded together.
Not only that, they also sprayed large amounts of shrapnel, feces and even common stones by the river at the Japanese infantry and cavalry on the road.
Heavy black smoke lay on the road, and the black smoke rose up to 500 meters along the road.
The entire 101st Division's fast pursuit column was almost instantly engulfed by the foul-smelling black smoke.
The only ones that were probably the headquarters, the baggage train, and the artillery team were outside the attack range.
Colonel Hisaka Oshima and the officers around him, who were sitting on the tall horse, could not understand why this happened. Moreover, when the smoke cleared, he could not bear to look directly at the tragic scene on the road.
Some of the undead war horses stood up and ran with wounds on their bodies. They opened their bloodshot eyes in fear and let out a long and miserable cry. The cavalry running in the middle tried desperately to control the frightened war horses.
The rest were either officers or gunners and baggage trains.
How to do this?
Before the rest of the group could figure out what to do, a burst of "Reveille", "Lights Out" and "Charge" sounded, and even the sharp whistles of "??" and the crisp sound of gongs.
This is very helpless. When there are no field telephones and walkie-talkies, this is the best command method.