Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 330 Niangziguan

The night at Niangziguan, accompanied by the faint sound of cannons in the distance, carried a sense of oppressive heaviness.

Originally the headquarters of the Jin-Sui Army, it has now been transformed into the division command center by the Japanese Third Division.

Under the dim light of the lantern, Masataka Yamawaki's face was even more gloomy than the night outside.

He clutched the newly delivered telegram in his hand; the thin paper had been twisted into a crescent shape.

"How could this be?"

Masataka Yamawaki exhaled a low, angry breath, his sharp gaze sweeping over his chief of staff, Colonel Mori Sho. "Wasn't Yangquan County heavily guarded? Why were those supplies blown up by the Chinese?"
Where are our army air force units? Why aren't they coming out to destroy those Chinese planes?!

Colonel Mori Takashi stood to the side, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. He knew that the division commander's anger was not only due to the loss of supplies, but also because this defeat had shattered Yamawaki Masataka's dream of personally leading his troops to attack Taiyuan.

He lowered his voice and spoke cautiously: "Your Excellency, Division Commander... the telegram from the First Army Headquarters has already explained the reason."

The Chinese tactics this time were very cunning... They first sent fighter jets to raid our Yangquan Airport, directly paralyzing Yangquan's air power.

Then, without any fighter interception, a large number of bombers carried out continuous bombing raids on Yangquan Railway Station and supply warehouses.

Sen Shao paused, seemingly wanting to soften his tone, but ultimately forced himself to continue: "Most of the warehouses were destroyed, and military supplies suffered heavy losses... By the time our planes, which we had gathered from various places, arrived, the Chinese aircraft had already completed their bombing and returned safely."

Commander Yansong... has ordered all troops to cease their offensive and remain in place.

Masataka Yamawaki's brows furrowed like a knotted rope. He slammed the telegram down on the table, the paper making a sharp cracking sound.

"Stand by?" His voice suddenly rose, like a whip lashing at Sen Shao's heart. "Do you know what that means?"

The air seemed to freeze. Sen Shao and the staff officers in the room held their breath for a while, and no one dared to utter a sound.

Masataka Yamawaki suddenly stood up from his chair, stomping his heel heavily on the wooden floor with a dull thud.

"This means that our Third Division's offensive has been forced to a halt, and that we have lost the best opportunity to attack Taiyuan!"

As he spoke, he pointed sharply at the outskirts of Taiyuan on the huge map on the wall, "Yan Xishan and his Jin-Sui Army will then have the opportunity to reorganize their troops, and..."

He paused, his eyes turning sinister. "And the Chinese will definitely launch a counterattack when our supply lines are cut!"

Sen Shao lowered his head and remained silent... This was exactly what he was most worried about.

Although the Third Division still had troops, its food and ammunition reserves were running low after the Battle of Niangziguan, especially the artillery units, whose ammunition was almost insufficient to support a large-scale bombardment.

If the Chinese were to apply pressure from the front and both flanks at the same time... the consequences would be unimaginable.

“Division Commander,” Sen Shao said, forcing a smile, “I estimate that Commander Iwamatsu intends to wait for supplies to arrive from the rear before launching another attack on Taiyuan, so you don’t need to worry too much. The difficulties are only temporary.”

Masataka Yamawaki snorted coldly, put his hands behind his back, and paced back and forth. The sound of his boots scraping against the wooden floor was particularly jarring in the quiet night.

After a long silence, he said in a deep voice, "Mr. Sen, increase the reconnaissance efforts in the Taiyuan area. If anything unusual happens... even a single cavalry patrol must be reported to me immediately!"

"Hai!" Sen Shao immediately stood up straight, saluted, and turned to leave quickly.

The atmosphere in the room remained heavy, with only the red and blue flags on the map silently confronting each other under the dim light... and no one knew how long this standoff could last.

…………

The roar of cannons outside seemed to urge everyone inside to go faster and faster.

The office door was pushed open, and Pi Ruoyu, who had just arrived, saluted Su Yaoyang, but his tone carried a hint of hesitation and doubt: "Commander, didn't you say that this battle would only involve the air force and not ground troops? It's one thing to send out two artillery regiments, but why are you also sending in ground troops?"

Su Yaoyang, who was looking at a map with his hands behind his back, couldn't help but rub his nose when he heard this, a hint of helplessness between his brows: "I don't want to send out ground troops either."

His gaze remained fixed on the small red flags representing his troops on the map, and he sighed: "But when I took a walk around the city the day before yesterday... the whole of Taiyuan was in complete chaos."

"If these Jin-Sui troops were really sent to attack Niangziguan or Xinkou alone, let alone driving out the Japanese, they would probably collapse halfway through the battle, and a major rout is not out of the question."

Pi Ruoyu frowned slightly upon hearing this, still somewhat doubtful: "Even if the Jin-Sui Army is bad, it can't be this incompetent, can it?"

Su Yaoyang turned his head to look at him, a cold smile playing on his lips: "You really shouldn't disbelieve me."

He put down the baton, turned around and leaned against the map table. "The day before yesterday, I had some free time, so I went for a walk around the city myself... Do you know what I saw?"

Pi Ruoyu was stunned for a moment.

Su Yaoyang snorted: "Groups of defeated soldiers wandered around the city like headless flies, guns hanging from their waists, looking dazed. Some even squatted at the entrance of teahouses asking for cigarettes."

Worse still, they frequently caused trouble and disturbed the peace—stealing vendors' grain, clashing with patrols, and some even fighting in broad daylight at street corners and harassing women.

Pi Ruoyu's brows furrowed more and more tightly.

"Commander Yan did indeed send military police to the streets to maintain order."

Su Yaoyang continued, "But their effectiveness is still very limited. The military police are understaffed and cannot manage all areas... I even saw with my own eyes that the military police took away several troublemakers, and then those people were released by their original unit officers."

This isn't a problem of low combat effectiveness; it's a complete lack of military discipline—people like this, let alone attacking, might even desert on the battlefield.

Pi Ruoyu fell silent. He knew very well what this meant—it meant that Su Yaoyang's worries were not unfounded, but a real hidden danger.

Su Yaoyang took a deep breath, picked up the command stick again, and pointed to the place where the three red lines on the map intersected: "I can't place my hopes on a group of troops that may collapse at any time, so the ground troops must be our own militia, with the Eighth Route Army cooperating, the Jin-Sui Army..." He paused, and curled his lips contemptuously, "Let them set up their formation on the front and keep the Japanese eyes on us—we'll gnaw on the remaining tough nuts ourselves."

Pi Ruoyu nodded. This was indeed a safe and secure way to avoid taking the blame: if they won, it would be a complete victory for the allied forces; if they lost, the Jin-Sui Army would be disgraced.

Another burst of artillery fire came from outside the command center window, causing the glass to tremble slightly. Pi Ruoyu snapped out of his thoughts, stood at attention, and saluted: "Understood, Commander-in-Chief. I'll pass the order down immediately!"

Su Yaoyang hummed in agreement, then lowered his head and continued pushing the small flag representing an infantry regiment on the map, all the way to the depths of the Japanese defense line. He then tapped it lightly twice, as if making a final judgment on himself.

The pitch-black night enveloped the middle section of the Taihang Mountains, and the peaks stood silently like sleeping giants under the moonlight.

Niangziguan Pass is like a sharp iron nail embedded in the top of this mountain, firmly nailed to the only official road leading to the heart of Shanxi.

Standing on a hillside two kilometers west of the pass, Colonel Fuhr, commander of the 2nd Panzer Regiment, held a German-made Schmidt telescope and slowly traced the outline of the defenses before him through the faint moonlight.

The rugged and steep mountain ridges, the thick city walls built of bluestone at the pass, the machine gun emplacements embedded in the mountainside, and the silhouettes of howitzers standing silently in their artillery positions—all of this made him sigh from the bottom of his heart:
"God... can anyone tell me how the Jin-Sui Army could hand over such a formidable pass to the Japanese in less than a day? Did Commander Yan send a bunch of pigs to guard the pass?"

Through the binoculars, the Japanese soldiers' newly constructed bunkers and camouflaged artillery positions gleamed like steel spikes on Niangziguan Pass, appearing impregnable. The crossfire was like an invisible spiderweb, instantly tearing apart any troops attempting to pass head-on.

Given its terrain, even three times the normal number of troops wouldn't dare to launch a direct attack... Yet these Jin-Sui troops couldn't even hold out for half a day?
Fuller slowly put away his binoculars, his thick eyebrows furrowed like two ropes about to strangle someone. His breathing became heavy in the night and the gentle breeze: "Damn it... I wouldn't even dare to confront an armored regiment head-on in this place. How did they lose so quickly? Was the enemy's artillery fire terrifying, or was their morale rotten to the core?"

Behind him, a staff officer from the local militia couldn't help but whisper, "Sir, Yan Xishan's Jin-Sui Army is notoriously undisciplined. They dare to retreat before they are ordered to move. I heard that on the day the Japanese attacked, a whole battalion slipped away in the middle of the night."

Fell took off his military cap, ran his fingers heavily through his coarse, short hair, and shook his head repeatedly: "It's incredible. I feel like even if you put thousands of pigs there, they could hold out for a little longer."

He turned around and looked back along the ridge. The winding official road shimmered faintly in the moonlight, like a line carved by a knife.

"Boss, I just went to the nearest high ground to observe Niangziguan Pass myself... The terrain there is really too difficult to conquer."

Fu Er, who rushed back to Taiyuan, said to Su Yaoyang with a bitter face: "Its two sides are steep cliffs, and the front pass is embedded in the ridgeline. The Japanese used these fortifications to reinforce the machine gun and artillery positions, forming crossfire."

Our available armored units are all confined to narrow roads, serving little purpose of mobility other than acting as mobile artillery positions.

Su Yaoyang listened with a blank expression and a calm gaze.

Fell continued in a low voice, "If we want to take it by force, the price will be very high. It won't be just a few dozen casualties, but large numbers of people falling down."

Frankly, I don't agree with launching a full-scale assault. Even if we must fight, we should only do so beforehand with sustained bombardment by aircraft and heavy artillery... We must knock out their firing positions one by one, blind their artillery, and silence all the machine guns on top of Niangziguan Pass, so as to minimize the bloodshed of our young men.”

At this point, he paused for a moment, glancing cautiously at Su Yaoyang's expression—the other man still had that calm look, only his right hand was gently stroking the pencil on the table, as if silently rehearsing the trajectory of each cannon shot.

“So, boss,” Fuller gritted his teeth, “I suggest… don’t rush to launch an attack with infantry. Let our air force and heavy artillery chip away at the outer shell of the breach, and let the infantry take less direct hits from the bullets. Otherwise… this battle will be a matter of trading lives for the outcome.”

“I understand what you mean,” Su Yaoyang said. “Niangziguan is indeed easy to defend and difficult to attack, but we also have reasons why we have to take it.”

He reached out and gently touched the Zhengtai Railway line behind Niangziguan: "It is the throat of Taiyuan. If we don't take it, no matter how well we divide and encircle it from the front, the Japanese can use this line to send reinforcements and supplies. So we must take control of it."

Fol remained silent; he knew it was true.

Su Yaoyang continued, "As for how to fight, you decide that yourself... I will have the air force and heavy artillery cooperate with you, but..." He paused, his voice lowering, "within three days, have our military flag planted at Niangziguan!"

Fol's expression turned serious, and he stood at attention and saluted: "Yes, sir!"

The night sky over Jinshaling Airport was as if it had been soaked in ink, with only the glaring floodlights on both sides of the runway illuminating the entire tarmac in a cold white light.

Under the lights, rows of B-25 Mitchell bombers stood in neat rows, their silver fuselages reflecting a cold luster in the night, like sleeping but fiery steel beasts ready to unleash their fury at any moment.

The engine hadn't even roared yet, but the air was already thick with the tense and urgent smell of gunpowder, mixed with the highly volatile smell of aviation gasoline, making one's throat dry and chest hot.

Dozens of meters away, hundreds of ground crew and support soldiers were running around and operating the giant beast like busy ants.

Some people were squatting under the wings tightening screws, some were checking the rotation of the machine gun ammunition belts, and some were pushing carts loaded with bombs, bumping along the runway. Everyone was working in an orderly manner.

"rise……"

A ground crew squad leader wearing a helmet shouted, his voice carrying far into the night.

Two support staff immediately gripped the handles on both sides of the crane, planted their feet firmly, leaned forward slightly, and their arm muscles were clearly taut under the light.

The thick steel cable was taut and straight, and the aerial bomb hanging on the steel hook slowly lifted off the ground, like a sleeping but dangerous shark, swaying slightly in the air—it weighed a full five hundred kilograms of steel and explosives.

The crane lowered the bomb to the bottom of the bomber, and the two men carefully controlled the angle—with a soft "clang," the bomb was steadily inserted into the slot in the bomb bay.

Immediately afterwards, another maintenance worker used a long-handled fixing rod to lock the clip into place. After confirming that it was safe, he marked "Completed" on the side of the aircraft with chalk.

Not far away, another group of ground crew was loading another "big guy" into the bomber... a black cylinder about the size of a gasoline drum.

They were carefully rolled off the wooden pallets and delivered from one end of the ammunition cart to under the wing. Ground crew, wearing thick leather gloves, worked together to lift the cylinders and place them one by one into the modified secondary ammunition compartment.

The light shone on the metal buckle of the cylinder, reflecting a dark yet sharp light.

As you get closer, you can smell a pungent odor... the smell of highly concentrated napalm and chemical fuels. Anyone involved in loading them knows that these are not just bombs, but destructive weapons capable of turning enemy positions into a sea of ​​fire.

Dozens of B-25s stood motionless in the night wind, like a row of giant dragons holding their breath.

Once everything is loaded, at a single command, these heavy yet elegant machines will roar like thunder, bursting into the night sky with their full firepower.

(End of this chapter)