Chapter 1 The cries for help of Dabao

Dabao, who was originally hidden in the firewood, heard his father calling him and quickly ran out of his hiding place.

He heard his father ask him, "Have you seen any Guomindang troops passing by these past few days?"

"I saw them! There were so many of them, and they said they were going to kill devils. They were going to kill all the devils.

So many devils came today. Why haven't they finished killing them yet?"

Dabao kept calling them devils. Zhou Jun usually said the same, so he didn't pay much attention.

Only the old village chief interrupted Dabao, "These are Taijun (Japanese soldiers)! You have to call them Taijun!"

"They're devils! Devils!" Dabao was only seven years old and didn't understand the consequences of scolding a monk in front of another monk.

The word "devil" didn't need translation. Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta could understand it.

Hearing the child call them devils over and over, anger rose in his heart. He snapped out his command saber and swung it.

Zhou Jun was carrying a shovel and only saw the Taijun, who had just given him a cigarette, suddenly draw his sword and swing it.

His Dabao fell, his body twitching a few times as blood flowed in a crooked line on the ground.

The old village chief, who had been hating Zhou Jun for not dying, now felt some sympathy for him. This Zhou Jun had killed his own only son.

Seeing Dabao die in front of him, Zhou Jun's eyes turned red. Dabao had five older sisters. He was born when they had their ninth child, and he had been lucky enough to make it to seven years old.

The whole family was counting on this son to carry on the family line, but he was killed by this devil in front of him.

Zhou Jun shouted and swung the shovel in his hand, slamming it down on Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta.

Several devils beside him rushed forward, shouting loudly, and at least four bayonets stabbed into Zhou Jun's chest.

Before he could even swing the shovel, he dropped it weakly to the ground.

Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta disregarded the dead Zhou Jun and ordered loudly, "Gather all the people in this village. I want to ask them one by one where the Guomindang troops are."

Looking at the bodies of Zhou Jun and his son lying on the ground, none of the people in Zhou Village dared to say a word.

They had heard about the brutality of the devils from the Lunan Detachment. At that time, they were still half-believing.

In the eyes of these simple villagers, anyone should have a bottom line, and some things were impossible for people to do.

These villagers, who had not yet witnessed the true face of the devils, were only now seeing one side of them.

A few days ago, when the Lunan Detachment left, they said:

"If anyone comes to inquire about their whereabouts, be sure to say that you have not seen them.

Whether it's devils, puppet soldiers, traveling doctors, or peddlers who come to inquire, don't tell them."

At that time, Zhou Jun had said, "These people are afraid. They're afraid of being found by the devils.

Because the Lunan Detachment definitely can't beat the devils, that's why they don't want us to tell anyone."

The entire population of Zhou Village was driven out of their houses, and the devils of Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta's unit set up machine guns on the village threshing ground.

Teams of devils were also lying in wait on the surrounding high ground, staring at the villagers. Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta said to the translator:

"Tell them! Whoever can tell me where the Guomindang troops are will be spared."

The old village chief walked up to Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta. "There really haven't been any Guomindang troops passing through here recently. The last time they passed by was at least several months ago.

At that time, the rice seedlings had just been planted and hadn't grown to two feet high. We villagers don't keep track of the days.

Nobody really knows exactly how many months it's been. Zhou Jun is a muddlehead. He can't remember clearly. He always says 'a few days ago, a few days ago.'

Even if you ask him what day it was, he wouldn't be able to tell you. How would us country folk know where those Guomindang troops are now!"

Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta's face turned black. He had just believed Zhou Jun's words. The old village chief was calling him a muddlehead, wasn't he just openly calling himself a fool?

With a "yah!" Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta swung his butcher knife again, and the old village chief fell.

The people of Zhou Village didn't understand why the devil had killed the village chief for no reason.

Everyone became agitated and surged forward. Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta waved his hand.

The devils beside him rushed forward and, without saying a word, began stabbing randomly with their bayonets. The unarmed villagers were suddenly attacked by the devils.

After more than twenty people fell, they quickly retreated, back to where they had been standing.

More than twenty people had fallen on the ground in front of them, men and women, young and old.

Those who had been stabbed and were still struggling in pain groaned and begged the villagers for help.

The villagers who had been driven back didn't dare to take another step forward.

Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta clearly enjoyed this scene. He signaled to the translator to once again urge the villagers, "Tell us where the Guomindang troops are, and you will be released."

Seeing his father lying on the ground, clutching his chest and groaning, Zhou Yun couldn't bear it any longer.

Standing in the middle of the crowd, he said loudly, "The Lunan Detachment came half a month ago.

There were several thousand of them, and they went east. They didn't say where they were going."

"Yoshi! You are a good civilian, a very good civilian! Come over here." Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta was delighted.

He signaled Zhou Yun to come forward. Zhou Yun pushed through the crowd and went to his father to check his injuries first.

With just one look, he knew that his heart was injured, and there was no way to save him.

When he stood up, his legs were shaking. Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta asked, "You! Didn't hear them say where they were going?"

"No! Really no!" Zhou Yun said quickly.

"You are not honest! Not telling the truth!" Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta suddenly changed his expression.

He swung his butcher knife again, cutting off Zhou Yun's arm, and asked again, "Where did they go?"

Looking at his arm lying on the ground, Zhou Yun could no longer stand and collapsed to the ground, crying and saying, "I really don't know!"

"Who knows?" the translator asked quickly.

"Nobody in the village knows! They were really just passing through!" Zhou Yun covered the bleeding wound with one hand.

Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta finally determined that none of these people knew where the Lunan Detachment had gone.

He coldly ordered, "Fire! Burn the village!"

The sound of machine guns suddenly rang out. The villagers who were crowded together didn't understand what the devils were saying.

Only when the machine gun fire started did they realize that the devils were going to kill everyone in the entire village!

Only then did these people start to flee. Now they understood that what the people of the Lunan Detachment had said was all true.

These devils were so brutal and completely devoid of humanity. No wonder they were called devils.

More than five hundred people in the entire village, under the machine gun fire of Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta's unit and the accurate shooting of the devils' rifles, scattered like a disturbed hornet's nest.

Although these people were very familiar with the village, they had been driven by the devils and concentrated on the threshing ground. The surrounding area was completely open, with no place to hide.

These villagers had to run more than thirty meters to reach the nearest house.

Hundreds of people rushed towards the houses thirty meters away, pushing and shoving each other.

Those running in the front were shot by the devils' rifles and pushed by those behind them. Many were knocked down by those behind them without being hit by the devils.

In the crowd, as soon as someone fell, they were immediately trampled on, and even the strongest person couldn't get up.

The entire population of Zhou Village, in the machine gun fire of the devils and the laughter of Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta, either fell under the devils' bullets or under the feet of their own people.

In the end, of the more than five hundred people, less than fifty escaped. It was these lucky villagers who survived who told the story of the Zhou Village massacre.

Many other villages had suffered the same fate, but there were no survivors to tell the outside world about the horrors they had experienced.

Company Commander Nakaishi Shunta's unit was also the only unit among the search teams that went out of the city today that found a clue.

As darkness fell, the people of Zhou Village who had escaped hid in the distance and watched the devils leave, and it was only after a long time that they dared to return to the village.

The entire village was shrouded in smoke, and the beams and pillars that had not yet been completely burned could still produce sparks when the wind blew, flickering in the wind.

As darkness fell, Gu Xiuming led the four regiments of the Lunan Detachment back onto the road to the airport.

In another direction, Lin Fan had led more than forty regiments to a place twenty miles from Tasha Town during the day and was waiting.

As soon as it got dark, the waiting troops began to move. They were going to surround the entire Tasha Town at night.

They had to surround Tasha Town without alarming the devils!

With thorough preparations, progress was very smooth!

Three hours later, the entire periphery of Tasha Town had been surrounded by the Lunan Detachment, and even the road between Tasha and Xuzhou was being secretly monitored.

However, at this time, the Lunan Detachment had not completely cut off this road. This direction was the battle position of Gu Xiuming's First Regiment and Hua Deze's Second Regiment, Seventh Regiment, and Eighth Regiment.

The troops stationed here now were only temporarily stationed to prevent accidents from happening.

In fact, the entire encirclement of the Lunan Detachment was still very large, surrounding the Xuzhou Task Force far in the middle.

Each regiment was digging trenches nervously, preparing for the battle tomorrow.

Gu Xiuming led his troops on a forced march to Xuzhou Airport, and in the darkness, they could only see some lights in the distance at the airport tarmac.

Tamoeya Masaya, the commander of Xuzhou Airport, had been restless these days. He, the commander specifically responsible for the security of the airport, always received bad news.

The entire Tenth Independent Mixed Brigade of the Xuzhou Infantry had been wiped out, and the Seventeenth Independent Mixed Brigade of the Infantry had lost an infantry battalion.

The Special Task Force had lost two regiments. These battles had all taken place around Xuzhou.

Moreover, none of the aviation squadrons that flew out of his airport had returned. All indications were that the area around Xuzhou was not safe.

Yet he could do nothing, and even his proposal to place mines around the airport had been rejected.

The reason given was that airplanes would run off the runway during emergency landings! Placing mines outside the runway would blow up the Empire's own planes.

In fact, Commander Tamoeya Masaya knew that the front lines were strained, the Empire had no money, and there were problems with the supply of weapons.

When the Empire had money, it used foreign exchange to buy foreigners' weapons. When it didn't have foreign exchange, it used gold.

Now, there was no gold either, and nothing could be bought! They could only exchange it for minerals, but those minerals were also needed for domestic production.

In order to exchange for weapons and oil, they could only ask those domestic manufacturers to suspend production for a while.

Commander Tamoeya Masaya was just a small airport guard, and there was nothing he could do in this situation.

He could only send out more devils to patrol and increase the density of the patrols.

Tonight, the patrol was being carried out by the Tanino Keita Squad. The squad leader led more than fifty devils, carrying torches and patrolling along the barbed wire fence.

The tarmac was guarded by the Fujiyama Yuto Company. They didn't need torches. There were tall sentry towers and searchlights that constantly swept across the area.

Squad Leader Tanino Keita looked at the night outside, feeling the cool autumn evening breeze, and felt very comfortable.

They had been defending the airport for four months and had never encountered an attack.

If it weren't for Commander Tamoeya Masaya's strict requirement that they patrol, Squad Leader Tanino Keita wouldn't have bothered to make this trip at all.

When they reached the end of the runway, the wolfhound that the squad leader was leading suddenly barked.

It lunged towards the darkness ahead, all the way to the barbed wire fence, stood on its hind legs, and barked incessantly into the darkness.

The devils of the entire squad tried to shine their torches on the front, trying to find anything in the darkness that might have attracted the dog's attention.

The faint red light from the torches only illuminated about ten meters, and the devils couldn't see anything outside, even when they concentrated all the torches.

Squad Leader Tanino Keita had no choice but to pull on the rope around the wolfhound's neck, dragging it away from the spot.

From that point on, the wolfhound kept barking at the night sky.

"This dog is crazy!" Sergeant Ojika Shotaro said loudly.

Company Commander Feng Ruili, who was lurking outside the airport, watched the devils leave and said resentfully, "Damn old dog, almost exposed me."

At this time, three regiments of soldiers were already ambushed outside the airport. This was Gu Xiuming specifically ordered them to do to complete the task assigned to him by Lin Fan.

The devils carrying torches had gone far away, and the First, Second, and Seventh Regiments, which had been lurking, all rushed to the barbed wire fence.

The prepared large pliers began to snip. Soon, large sections of the barbed wire were cut.

Teams of soldiers quietly slipped in. Thirty infantry companies and three anti-aircraft machine gun companies from the three regiments all moved into battle positions.

Each company sent back reports that they had entered their battle positions.

Gu Xiuming received the reports from each company, and his order was very simple: "Bomb it!"

Four rocket launcher companies began to bombard the airport, and infantry guns and mortars joined in.

These troops were not far from the airport, and the effect of the exploding shells could be seen very clearly.

The three anti-aircraft machine gun companies had all set up their machine guns at this time and began to strafe the enemy planes on the tarmac.

They were now less than a thousand meters from the enemy planes, and the anti-aircraft machine guns could easily hit them.

Commander Tamoeya Masaya was already lying in bed asleep when he was awakened by the sudden explosions.

Seeing the flames soaring into the sky outside the window and feeling the floor still shaking, Commander Tamoeya Masaya jumped up, putting on his clothes while shouting, "Guards! What's going on outside?"

"Report, Commander! We are under artillery bombardment!"

Hearing the words "artillery bombardment!" Commander Tamoeya Masaya's head exploded.

He knew what artillery bombardment was. Just the night before last, the Xuzhou Task Force had been bombarded by the Guomindang's heavy artillery regiment, losing more than 8,000 devils, 30 tanks, and more than 7,000 horses. The entire task force had lost all of its heavy weapons.

Were they coming for him today?

"Rescue! Immediately ask Brigade Commander Manda for rescue!" Without hearing any more reports or making any inquiries,

Commander Tamoeya Masaya's first order after being attacked was for rescue.

Then he ordered, "All aircraft take off immediately!"

When this order was issued, some quick-moving devil pilots had already rushed to the tarmac.

For these pilots, even though they couldn't fly anywhere else after taking off at night,

as long as they could get into the air, if the attacking force on the ground dared to continue their attack, they would be mercilessly attacked by the planes.

Moreover, the attacking force on the ground wouldn't even be able to fight back. This is what Kinoshita Yumi thought.

As an excellent pilot, he had been flying in the devil's air force for five years.

The moment he was awakened by the bombing, he started running towards the tarmac. Although this was the first time Kinoshita Yumi had been attacked at the airport, his reaction was as if he had been prepared for it.

He was the first devil pilot to react and rush to the tarmac. The other devils reacted only after seeing that he had already run a distance.

Their pilot quarters were more than a thousand meters from the tarmac. As he ran, Kinoshita Yumi saw many houses that had been collapsed by the shelling, and from time to time, he could hear cries for help from inside.

Unlike Commander Tamoeya Masaya, he didn't know that there was a Guomindang heavy artillery regiment operating in the area.

Looking at the craters on the ground that were more than a meter in diameter, Kinoshita Yumi secretly estimated what caliber of shells had created them.

He could see such craters every few tens of meters. The intensity of the bombing shocked Kinoshita Yumi. Was this a major counter-offensive by the Guomindang?

During this time, the devils in their air corps had heard that the Battle of Wuhan was not going well, and that the area around Xuzhou was also unstable.

A few days ago, the commander of the Xuzhou Airport Yoshitaka Yuma Air Group led twelve planes on a sortie, and none of them survived.

This fully showed that whether on the ground or in the air, the area near Xuzhou was no longer safe.

As Kinoshita Yumi ran, he could still hear the sound of shells flying and exploding in the distance from time to time.

The attacking Guomindang troops were still bombing, and they hadn't retreated! This discovery made Kinoshita Yumi feel excited.

As long as he could get his plane into the sky, he could find the attacking force and deal them a heavy blow.

Moreover, as long as he could attack the other side, the other pilots could also take off. At that time, the attacking Guomindang heavy artillery force would definitely not escape.

Thinking of this, Kinoshita Yumi quickened his pace.

At the devil's airport, it wasn't just him running towards the tarmac. Sergeant Yamanaka Yusuke, who was on guard on the tall sentry tower, noticed the muzzle flashes on the runway at the first moment of the artillery attack.

It was the anti-aircraft machine gun company firing. Sergeant Yamanaka Yusuke tried to point the searchlight in the direction of the machine gun fire.

At a distance of more than a thousand meters, the searchlight was of little help. At the same time, Sergeant Yamanaka Yusuke sounded the alarm.

The "woo woo" of the siren echoed over the Xuzhou Airport, along with the "rumbling" explosions, all reminding the devils at the airport that the airport was under attack.

The searchlight on the sentry tower pointed towards the direction of the three anti-aircraft machine gun companies. Even against the backdrop of the artillery fire, it was very striking and eye-catching, and also very dazzling.

Without saying a word, the three company commanders gave the same order: "Take it down!"

Taking down the devil's searchlight was a must!

Even Regiment Commander Gu Xiuming in the distance could see the light from the devil's searchlight. His order was slightly different: "Fire at that position!"

The devil's searchlight became a beacon for the artillery to bomb, and the second round of ammunition for the rocket launchers had been loaded.

This time, they used the position of the searchlight as the aiming target. The "rumbling" explosions rang out on the tarmac.

The three rocket launcher companies fired at the same time, and all one hundred and forty-four shells were aimed at the tarmac, which was completely unbearable for the planes and the devils on the tarmac.

Kinoshita Yumi, who had just run onto the tarmac, was still looking for a complete plane that he could fly into the sky.

To his disappointment, he had already looked at five planes, and their fuselages were covered with bullet holes. It was not clear whether these planes could still take off.

In this emergency, Kinoshita Yumi didn't want to test them one by one. He wanted to find a plane that he could board and take off immediately.

Behind him were several devils who were doing ground support. Sergeant Endo Ayumu followed Kinoshita Yumi closely.

Their purpose was the same: to get the plane into the air. With the help of ground support, Kinoshita Yumi could find a suitable plane faster and more easily.

These devils all knew that only when the plane took off could the bombardment of the airport end.

Sergeant Endo Ayumu ran nervously, and the "rumbling" explosions continued to ring out.

The whistling sound of bullets whizzing past his ears always made him feel inexplicably afraid.