Nanyang 1931: From piglets to giants

Chapter 163: The First Battle in Nanyang, We Are Here to Destroy the Japs
Half a month later,

Phuket, Racha Island Naval Base.

The sky was clear and the wind was gentle, with a faint smell of salty sea water. Little monkeys were busy climbing up and down the wild coconut trees. On the soft beach, bursts of whistles rose and fell, like a piece of music.

This was originally the palace residence of the King of Thailand, and the navy was originally used to protect the King of Thailand. After the establishment of constitutional monarchy, the military government came to power and the power of the King of Thailand was greatly reduced. However, the subsequent large-scale expansion of the military made this place even more lively.

Warships from Italy and instructors from Japan turned this place into a so-called naval stronghold.

After the split between Siam and Thailand a month ago, because this place is close to the Kra Isthmus, it can be used as a springboard for the navy to quell the rebellion. It is backed by Phuket and has sufficient logistical supply capabilities, so naturally the scale of the navy's stationing here was expanded.

At the same time, this place is far away from the mainland. As early as three days ago, the Japanese troops invited by the Thai side officially stationed here.
They even stationed the Fuso-class heavy battleship "Yamashiro" here to "demonstrate national prestige", equipped with a small number of light cruisers and destroyers as escorts, as well as a full 3,000 marines.

This shows how much importance Japan attaches to Thailand.

Rumors about peace talks with China have been circulating from time to time among the civilian government and even the military high-ranking officials. Anyone with a little common sense knows that this damn war is about to be fought.

However, rumors are just rumors after all. Militaristic Japan has already gone further and further down the road of madness. No one dares to stand up and talk about a ceasefire, otherwise he will definitely be punished by the angry Imperial Way faction among the soldiers.

It is precisely because of this that Japan, unable to gain benefits from the occupied areas, had to turn its attention to other regions.
At this critical juncture in 1938 when France had not yet surrendered, the Japanese upper class still had some rationality and had been trying their best to suppress their greed for the French East Indies.

Then they naturally turned their attention to Thailand.

Phraya Phahony treated Japan with great respect, and he promoted the Great Thai Tribe and took the initiative to invite Japanese troops to station there. The Japanese army was naturally overjoyed. Isn't this something that was obtained without any effort?
Moreover, Phraya Phahony also announced that it would cut off trade with Penang and all rice produced would be sold to Japan first. It can be said that he was extremely terrified.

But at the same time, the efforts to strengthen and expand the army never stopped. An army of 600,000 was assembled in the name of suppressing rebellion and trained day and night.

Being soft on one hand and hard on the other made the Japanese high-ranking officials dare not invade rashly. They tried their best to suppress the army's restlessness, for fear of repeating the mistakes of the Chinese battlefield and turning a profitable business into a losing one.

The cabinet is still very satisfied with the current situation in Thailand. Not only can it lie low and do whatever it wants, but it can also advance in both the south and north directions at the same time, and even use the Thai army to test the attitudes of Britain and France.

If Britain and France showed a weak attitude, they could use Thailand as a springboard to directly attack the Dutch East Indies.

After all, the Netherlands at this time could no longer be called a great power, and the Dutch East Indies had the oil resources that Japan most urgently needed.

Japan has now entered the predicament of 41 ahead of schedule. It is in urgent need of oil, and even if Zheng Yi does not impose sanctions on them, they will be in trouble soon. Their foreign exchange is almost exhausted. Without sanctions, they will not be able to use the foreign exchange to buy oil.

The collapse of the textile industry completely destroyed Japan's ability to generate foreign exchange, and it could only rely on plundering primary raw materials from China for support. However, due to the rapid establishment of bases behind enemy lines, even the plundering of primary raw materials was costly.

They were in such a difficult situation that they had to find a way out.

However, the cabinet has no plan on how to break the deadlock, because they themselves know that it is useless to make a plan, because those guys in the military who only have muscles in their brains will definitely act alone.

Showa Japan was a brainless monster whose brain followed its limbs.

Whichever army breaks the situation first will hijack Japan's national policy and strategy.

However, two days ago, after the Japanese navy successfully entered Emperor Island, they immediately started to have fun.

The top leaders were busy harvesting Thailand's oil and rubber, and various Japanese businessmen followed the army to plunder at low prices, while the middle and lower levels did not think about rubber and oil at all, and their minds were full of rice, meat, and women.

To put it simply, the Japanese invaded the village.

During the stalemate phase, everyone was short of food. Japan had already started to control rice, with the daily quota for each person being half a pound of rice. If one had a slightly larger appetite, it would not be enough. There were also no side dishes, let alone meat.

As for the occupying forces in China, they didn't even have half a pound of rice and could only rely on looting. However, bases behind enemy lines were already everywhere, and the easy and convenient things had almost all been taken, and the rest were difficult to loot.

There was even an incident where two Japanese soldiers fought to death over a steamed bun from an old lady.

Now, a new map has finally been opened.

The relatively weak Thai people have endless rice to eat, countless delicious tropical fruits, plump and sweet seafood, and countless beautiful girls that they have never played with.

Who can still bear it?
The Japanese were not a unit with strict military discipline.

What the hell is this Japan-Thailand friendly relations? To hell with it.

People may still be afraid of the great powers such as Britain and France, but is Thailand worthy of them?

Phraya Phahony did not try to stop them, as he knew that it was impossible to stop them. In fact, this was also the main reason why he chose to let the Japanese invaders enter Emperor Island.

Koh Racha is a subsidiary island of Phuket, but the Phuket of this era is not the holiday resort of later generations where people can live a good life just by relying on tourism income.

The indigenous people here are all Malays, and the economic pillar is tin mining. As for tin mining, the miners are naturally mainly Chinese, supplemented by a small number of Li people. Although there are Thais, they are not many and are not the main population.

To some extent, Pan-Thai nationalism is a bit inhumane to ethnic groups other than Thais. This can be regarded as a reasonable fig leaf, so naturally people can just ignore it.

So for two days, the Japanese completely let themselves go in this future resort, and the Chinese on the island suffered the most.

The Chinese were originally relatively wealthy. After Zheng Yi rose to power, the Chinese who stayed on Phuket were all engaged in tin mining business and tin ore deep processing business. Those who could speak Chinese were either bosses or engineers, and naturally became richer.

Even those native engineers who can hardly speak Chinese have benefited a lot from their Chinese identity and their lives have become better.

These devils hated these Nanyang Chinese to death. Whether they were from the upper or lower classes, they all believed that these Nanyang Chinese were the culprits that prevented them from quickly winning the war.

But now that they had the opportunity to vent their anger, they naturally killed everyone they saw and stole whatever they could get.

In particular, the Chinese here are mainly from Qiongzhou. Most of the Qiongzhou people still farm and raise chickens, ducks and fish, but their interest in robbing is even stronger. The superiors can't control them, and they don't even want to control them.

I just wanted to let the soldiers release the anger that has been pent up in their stomachs for the past few years. Let's go into the city and rob for three days. For a militaristic army, appropriate indulgence will help maintain the morale of the army.

Although the gun ownership rate among the Chinese has increased a lot now, they are not Penang Chinese after all. At most, there are only one or two guns among ten men. Sporadic resistance not only failed to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army, but instead further aroused the brutality of the Japanese army.

Not only did some people kill people, but some also set fires, and some even massacred villages when their brutality took over. They even had to justify their actions by arguing that reducing the number of Chinese people on the island as much as possible would help ensure their safety.

Affected by this, many Malays and Li people were also invaded by the Japanese army. The Japanese army even forced landlords in every village, tribe and town to voluntarily hand over young and beautiful women to comfort the Japanese army.

Otherwise, they will be considered Chinese as well.

Some surrendered and actually offered beautiful women, but even more fled overnight. The entire Phuket Island, near the Emperor Island, became completely chaotic amid sporadic gunshots, flames, and bestial laughter.

"Ah~, Flower Girl, Flower Girl, don't run~"

In an ordinary Chinese mining area, the miners resisted for two days with the help of the terrain and the scattered weapons in their hands, but were finally defeated by the Japanese army. They broke in and were about to vent their animal desires as they had in other mines and plantations before.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and a Japanese soldier who had just taken off his pants had his head exploded before he could do anything else.

"Baga! There are still people resisting, who?!"

Before his companions could finish shouting, there was another bang, bang, bang, countless gunshots rang out, and bullets passed by them one by one.

Looking back, they saw that a Malay team of more than 300 people had unknowingly rushed in from outside and started shooting at the Japanese soldiers who were enjoying the fruits of victory.

Their clothes looked shabby, their marksmanship was good, but they didn't have many guns, and some of them even had cold weapons such as axes and sickles.

However, even though there were only a hundred or eighty guns, because they appeared suddenly, they caught the Japanese troops off guard and caused heavy losses.

“Malay?”

Bang, bang, bang, bang. These Malays are very good at shooting, at least among civilians. These Japanese soldiers who came to commit crimes were only a small team, or a platoon, with only sixty or seventy people.

Moreover, there had been some casualties during the attack on the mining area, and a lot of ammunition had been consumed. After the sudden attack, they immediately collapsed, and some people turned around and ran away without even pulling up their pants.

In the sporadic exchange of fire, everyone suffered casualties. After fighting for less than twenty minutes, more than half of the Japanese army had been killed or wounded, leaving behind more than thirty corpses and fleeing in panic.

In the chaos, no one even noticed that most of the rifles in the hands of these Malays were Zhongzheng rifles.

The Malay man in the lead was shooting accurately and shouting something loudly in Malay.

This is because these Japanese people did not understand Malay, otherwise they would have been surprised, because the Malay leader shouted: "Don't beat them all to death, let them go! At least let ten go!"

In a short while, all the Japanese soldiers fled the tin mining area, leaving only the Malays laughing and starting to clean up the battlefield and collect the spoils from the Japanese corpses.

Of course, nearly twenty of these Malays were shot, but the Japanese Type 6.5 rifle was of mm caliber after all, and the two sides exchanged fire at a long distance. These Malays were surprisingly lucky to be wounded but not killed. Most of them even had penetrating wounds, so there was no need to even retrieve the bullets.

Penetrating wounds from the Type 38 rifle are naturally more troublesome in China. Sometimes injuries are more troublesome than deaths, especially in an environment with a shortage of medical care and medicine.

Yet, these Malays didn't take it seriously. They didn't even have a decent set of clothes, yet they pulled out medical bandages, wound medicine, and even penicillin from their backpacks! The Chinese devils, who had thought they had no chance of survival, were driven away. Naturally, they were overjoyed and cheered.

The mine boss came over quickly and said in not-so-fluent English, "Thank you all for your help, we are so grateful."

"There's still some valuables in the mine. If you don't mind, heroes, we can give them all to you. The Japanese have suffered such a great loss, they will definitely come to retaliate. Let's go quickly. I wonder if the heroes have any ships that can go out to sea?"

"We are all Chinese. If the hero can take us out to sea, we can act as your guarantor and go to Penang to seek refuge with Mr. Zheng, the leader of our Chinese community. If we can reach Penang, we will be safe."

Hearing this, the Malays who could understand English all laughed. The leader extended his hand to shake hands with him, but said in rather unfamiliar Chinese: "You can speak Chinese. My Chinese is not very fluent yet, but you can understand it now."

"I am Anand, the commander of the Royal Malayan Regiment of Kedah. What's your name?"

After thinking for a moment, he added, "We are under Mr. Zheng's command."

The mine owner was stunned. "Kedah? Why are you in Phuket?"

Before he could finish, he saw a Malay man behind him, who had no pants but a pair of patched shorts, pull out a brand new radio from his backpack and ask, "Hello, is there power in the mine? I need to send a telegram to my brothers."

"Ah? Ah...ah...yes, yes, please follow me."

Anand: "Mr. Mine Owner, we came from Kedah on Mr. Zheng's orders to kill the Japanese. When we came, we left a few small boats at the northwest river mouth. If you want to leave, you can take our boats."

Mine owner: "We take your boat? What about you?"

Anand smiled confidently, "We are here to kill the devils. Of course we won't leave. Either we die here, or we drive these devils away and send a triumphant report to Mr. Zheng, asking him to take us back."

Mine owner: “Huh??”

As he spoke, the mine owner looked at the tattered clothes of the Malay soldiers and was a little confused and unable to understand.

In fact, these people were certainly not following Zheng Yi's orders. Zheng Yi was at the French parliament at that time scolding the French parliamentarians for being cowardly, timid, and appeasing in order to get as much French aid as possible.

He also knew that this battle would be difficult to fight. It might even become a national war or even the fuse of the Pacific War in this time and space. Naturally, he had to be fully prepared.

These Malay soldiers all came here secretly.

There is no military discipline at all!
Because Zheng Yi was always busy, these people also ran away in batches. It was not until more than half of his Malay camp secretly ran away that he realized that half of the new army he had formed had run away.

Anand didn't take the initiative to contact him, so Zheng Yi didn't know where he had gone. He was so angry that he was furious and shouted that Malays were indeed unreliable.

But they are abroad and it is impossible for them to go back for a while, so we can only let them do whatever they want.

But he was thinking that when he returned to Malaya, if Anand still did not show up and could not give him a reasonable explanation, he would simply disband the Malay Regiment and never use them again.

Anyway, because of Wu Aihua, he doesn't have to use these Malays.

How could he have known that these Malay soldiers were so brave that they actually ran to Phuket and actually encountered the Japanese army!

This was actually an unexpected surprise for Anand, as he came to Phuket by boat with the help of the Malays.

After all, this place was not a strategic location before, and the Thai government did not pay much attention to it. After promoting "Greater Thaiism", it almost ignored it.

Anand completely forged the imperial edict and, under the name of Zheng Yi, requisitioned ordinary small boats from Malay landlords, businessmen, and even Chinese merchants in Kedah, and sent a total of 5,000 people to the island in batches.

They were originally Malays, and before World War II, Malays were the main ethnic group on Phuket Island. Due to the chaos and war, no one paid attention to them. In addition to these 5,000 people, they even secretly transported a large amount of supplies.

Originally, the Japanese army on Emperor Island consisted of only a Japanese instructor group. It was such a coincidence that after Anand brought 5,000 troops to the island in batches, he originally planned to attack the Thai naval base and capture the instructor group alive.

In fact, they were also confused and bumping around blindly. They just knew that there must be Thai troops on Emperor Island, and if there were Thai troops, there should be some Japanese instructors. They were just trying their luck.

Who would have thought that just when they had been preparing for almost half a month and felt the time was ripe to attack the Thai military base, the Japanese navy actually arrived.

There was even a heavy battleship.

The Yamashiro's 356-ton displacement and mm main guns left these uninformed Malays a little confused.

It's too late to run.

Anand had participated in the coronation of George V and had seen the world. Naturally, he knew how powerful this thing was. A shot towards the coast was enough to wipe out half a regiment. It was simply a killing machine.

However, he knew very well that they had escaped secretly without Zheng Yi's knowledge this time, and they could all be treated as deserters and executed immediately.

If they fail to achieve results and run away in disgrace, Zheng Yi, who originally did not want to disband the Malay Corps, may really have to disband them.

Not only will he be ashamed to live, but his family and even his tribe will be forever ashamed because of something like him.

If that's the case, let's fight for it.

Otherwise they will all be wiped out and die here.

Otherwise, we can achieve a good result in battle and show it to Mr. Zheng, so that he knows how powerful the Malays are.

Let those arrogant Chinese troops be shocked and let them never look down on them again!

This guy was forced into it. In a nearly desperate situation, Anand actually came up with a way to survive.

Seeing that the Japanese troops had no discipline after landing on the island and were burning, killing and looting, Anand immediately realized his opportunity and ordered his troops to break up into small groups of 300 and disperse to conduct reconnaissance.

Then they put away all their good clothes and bought the most tattered clothes from the local Malays to wear.

Afterwards, he ordered everyone to put away half of their firearms and weapons, and instead use cold weapons such as sickles, hoes, sticks, and even got a few flintlock rifles.

This was to make the Japanese army look down on them and mistakenly believe that they were only about 200 people, and that they were Malay bandits, robbers, or even refugees with very poor weapons and equipment and certainly not many bullets.

They waited and waited, and finally got this opportunity.

Anand noticed that this inconspicuous Chinese mine was located in a valley with a river passing through it. The entrance was a gourd-shaped mouth, and there seemed to be no particularly obvious roads in other places.

It is an ideal battlefield for them to fight to the last and refuse to surrender.

This is the place that Anand had carefully selected over two days. He was going to fight the Japanese to the death and bury his bones in a fight to the death.

It depends on whose bones are buried.

In less than an hour, the 5,000 Malay troops who had been hiding nearby finally entered the mining area in batches.

The Chinese in the mining area were horrified to find that so many Malays were not only uniform, moving in an orderly manner, full of energy and spirit, looking like elite soldiers (for a place like Nanyang), but they were also carrying a lot of boxes.

When the boxes were opened, they were found to be full of baggage, supplies, weapons, and ammunition. There were even more than a dozen Maxim heavy machine guns, nearly a hundred grenade launchers, and small mortars in those boxes!
Is Penang taking the elite route? Even though these Malay regiments are positioned as second-line troops, cannon fodder troops, and line-filling troops, their equipment is designed to be as close to that of the Japanese Army's first-class regiments as possible.

It's just that they lack heavy weapons such as artillery and tanks.

It was not until this moment that the Chinese people in the mine believed that these Malays had really come to fight the Japanese army to the death.

Anand didn't know whether he was explaining to these Chinese or boosting their morale, but he said in Chinese:
"The Japanese navy is too powerful. They've even got battleships coming. If we force our way in, our entire brigade won't be enough to withstand a few salvos from the ship's guns."

"But they are the navy after all. Once they leave the ship, everyone has their own responsibility. Why should we be afraid of them?"

"As long as we can provoke the Japanese army to come for revenge and give up their naval guns to fight us in the field, we will win this battle! We will win!"

The five thousand Malay soldiers who followed him were inspired by this and all raised their guns and shouted, "We must win! We must win!"

Anand: "We must win a battle to show those Chinese, to show Mr. Zheng. We must prove to Mr. Zheng, to the Chinese, to the British, and to the world that as long as we are given good enough weapons and equipment, we Malays can also fight!!"

After saying that, Anand turned around and said to the terrified Chinese mine owner, "If you want to leave, leave now. It will be too late. We don't want your money. We just want to borrow your precious land to fight the Japanese to the death."

After a while, the mine owner turned around and said, "Old, weak, women and children, pack up your things and go to the place the heroes told you to find a boat and leave quickly. Be a man, stay with me and accompany Mr. Zheng's troops to fight the Japanese here."

After that, an old man behind him was not happy and said angrily: "This is a mine, where are the elderly, weak, women and children coming from?"

A woman also said: "That's right, boss, who are you looking down on? We can't carry guns, but can't we help you cook?"

The 18-year-old child actually raised his hand and shouted: "I can shoot too. Give me a gun, and I want to stay and fight the Japanese too."

(End of this chapter)