Chapter eight hundred and forty-eight firepower attack!
The failure of the siege of Huaiyin caused a gloomy atmosphere to permeate the entire temporary camp of the Ninth Guerrilla Column. The occasional cries of pain from the wounded who lacked medical treatment made people even more upset.
Most of the guerrilla officers and soldiers were wrapped in quilts and ragged military blankets and fell asleep deeply on the spot. The continuous marching and fighting made them exhausted.
Guerrilla officers can still live in temporary tents, while most ordinary officers and soldiers can only sleep in the open fields. The cold wind is howling and the weather is freezing. They can only sleep next to piles of fires.
There is deathly darkness in the direction of Huaiyin City. The battlefield has become silent. Occasionally, the smell of blood wafts over. There lie the bodies of hundreds of brothers who were killed in the battle but could not be retrieved.
Most people had already entered a dream. The guerrilla sentries were walking back and forth around the temporary camp with guns on their backs, breathing hot air with their hands to their mouths and shivering from the cold.
Next to a crackling fire, the dismissed leader of the First Guerrilla Detachment Liu Jinhu stared at the flames blown by the cold wind and remained silent.
Although Huaiyin does not have a city wall, the fortifications and bunkers built by the Japanese are very strong. The guerrilla officers and soldiers do not have heavy weapons to suppress the Japanese. If they rush forward, they will die.
But the guerrilla commander had become red-eyed and could no longer listen to his advice, which made Liu Jinhu's face full of distress.
If the brothers were allowed to continue the forceful attack, they would probably lose everything before they even entered Huaiyin City. This was something he didn't want to see, but now he had no way to stop the guerrilla commander's recklessness.
"Sir, go get some sleep. It's almost dawn, and there will be a battle later."
An orderly came over and put a shabby military coat on the detachment leader Liu Jinhu, who was staring blankly at the fire.
Liu Jinhu looked away from the burning fire and saw his orderly Tiedan standing next to him, his skinny body looking particularly thin in the cold wind.
"I'm not sleepy." Liu Jinhu thought that after dawn, the brothers would brave the hail of bullets to die again, but he could still sleep there.
Liu Jinhu looked at the orderly Tiedan and asked, "Why don't you go to bed?"
Tiedan added some firewood to the fire to make it burn brighter, and said naively: "I can't sleep either."
"What, are you worried?" Liu Jinhu asked Tiedan, the always simple and diligent orderly, to sit down and asked with concern.
The orderly Tiedan looked at the dark direction of Huaiyin City and was silent for a long time before replying: "Zhuzi, who was a soldier with me, died while fighting the Japanese just now. We have had the best relationship since childhood...
."
As Tiedan spoke, he couldn't help but stretch out his sleeves to wipe away the tears that came from his eyes, which made Liu Jinhu's heart aching.
"He died fighting the Japanese. He is honorable. You should be proud of him."
Liu Jinhu's lips moved and he patted Tiedan's shoulder. While comforting Tiedan, he also felt a little guilty in his heart for causing so many brothers to lose their lives.
But this is a cruel war. Once a general has achieved great success, his bones will be withered. An officer without a strong psychological quality cannot withstand the huge pressure and self-blame.
"Sir, I have a request, can you agree to it?" After Tiedan finished speaking, he raised his head and looked at Liu Jinhu with tears in his eyes.
Liu Jinhu looked at the orderly who had been following him and nodded: "Tell me what you want."
The orderly Tiedan wiped away his tears and said seriously: "Sir, I don't want to be an orderly anymore. I want to kill the Japanese to avenge Zhuzi!"
Liu Jinhu looked at Tiedan with a firm face and agreed to him after a long silence: "Okay, let's fight the Japanese together!"
"Thank you sir——"
Tiedan suddenly became happy when he saw Liu Jinhu agreed. He looked in the direction of Huaiyin City and clenched his fists.
"Is there anyone else at home?"
Liu Jinhu felt mixed emotions when he saw his orderly. He didn't know if his decision would harm him. After all, the battlefield was much more dangerous than being an orderly.
"There is a mother at home..." A happy smile appeared on Tiedan's face, as if he remembered something warm.
While the officers and soldiers of the Ninth Guerrilla Column were resting in the temporary camp and preparing to launch an attack again after dawn, danger was rapidly approaching in the dark fields.
The Japs Captain Yamaguchi Akamatsu sent three squadrons of Japs to pretend to reinforce the direction of Lianshui, but they hid themselves after leaving the city.
At the same time, except for three companies of the puppet troops stationed in Huaiyin, most of them left the city in advance to lie in wait.
The Japanese and puppet troops were hidden so far away that even the guerrilla scouts did not notice them.
And now, while the guerrilla detachment was smashing their heads and bleeding under the city of Huaiyin, the Japanese and puppet troops who were recharging their strength were surrounding them from all sides.
A large number of Japanese and puppet troops were like ghosts wandering in the countryside, their ghostly figures silently surrounding the guerrillas' temporary camp.
The bayonets of the Japanese and puppet soldiers were smeared with mud, and they lurked in the fields not far from the guerrilla detachment, like poisonous snakes spitting out poison, hiding in the darkness, ready to deliver a fatal blow to the officers and soldiers of the guerrilla detachment.
The Japs' leading soldiers, holding sharp bayonets smeared with mud, crept close to the guerrilla sentries on the periphery.
"Pfft!"
The Japs' vanguard soldiers were all carefully selected elites. They were agile and could quietly knock down the guerrilla sentries and cut their throats.
Some time before dawn, when people were sleepy, the guerrilla sentries were eliminated one by one by the Japs' top soldiers.
And the cold wind howling through the countryside was a good cover for the actions of the Japanese soldiers, so that the guerrilla officers and soldiers in the camp were not aware of it at all.
"Go to bed quickly, it will be dawn soon."
Liu Jinhu chatted with Tiedan for a while, and he felt less angry with the guerrilla commander. He felt sleepy and told Tiedan to go to bed.
"Yes!" Orderly Tiedan was happy because Liu Jinhu agreed to let him go to the front line to participate in the battle. He stood up and prepared to send Liu Jinhu to the tent first.
Just when Liu Jinhu and Tiedan stood up, a sudden scream sounded from a distance, and three green signal bombs jumped into the sky from the direction of Huaiyin City.
Seeing the signal flares rising up into the sky, Liu Jinhu looked up at the sky and was stunned for a few seconds. He felt that something was wrong. What kind of flares were the Japanese using at night?
"Swish swish——"
Before Liu Jinhu could figure out the reason, scarlet bullets were whizzing past a mound on the left.
"Sir! Be careful!" the orderly Tie Dan, with quick eyes and quick hands, shouted and stepped forward to block Liu Jinhu.
"Puff puff!"
The body of the orderly Tiedan trembled, and several bloody holes appeared immediately. It was as if all the strength had been drained from his body, and he fell limply to the ground.
"Puff puff!"
The dense bullets swept into the temporary guerrilla camp from all sides like water splashing. The guerrilla officers and soldiers sleeping around the fire immediately became living targets, and they were sacrificed before they could react.
"Tiedan! Tiedan!" Liu Jinhu's eyes turned red immediately when he saw the orderly lying limply on the ground covered in blood.
However, the orderly Tiedan was shot several times and kept spitting blood from his mouth. He wanted to speak, but his head tilted unsatisfactorily and he died.
"Little devil, I am your ancestor!"
Liu Jinhu roared angrily when he saw the Japanese soldiers stuck in the mound next to the camp and firing continuously.
"Boom! Boom!"
Artillery shells followed closely with their ear-piercing whistles. In the deafening explosion, those fires were like living targets, providing coordinates for the Japanese artillery.
The sound of gunfire caused the sleeping guerrilla officers and soldiers to get up in fear, but bullets were shooting from everywhere in the dark surroundings, and everything was immediately in chaos.
The shells with the breath of death kept falling on the crowd of running and screaming guerrillas, exploding into clouds of blood mist, and countless mutilated bodies and broken guns were blown away.