You were tasked with guarding the Sihang Warehouse, and you brought out a Tiger tank?

"What?!"

Seishiro Itagaki suddenly raised his head, his eyes wide open, his small pupils filled with great surprise.

He grabbed the communications officer by the collar, lifted him up, and spat in his face.

"What nonsense are you spouting, you bastard?!"

Is it highly likely that Jun Sakamoto will be captured alive?

The regimental flag is missing?!

How is that possible?

That was the command center of an entire brigade, heavily guarded.

"Yes...it's true, Your Excellency..."

The communications officer was so frightened he almost wet himself, and stammered an explanation:

"The 21st Regiment reported that on that afternoon, an extremely fierce Chinese tank unit suddenly appeared around the command post."

They were equipped with a large number of our tanks and assault weapons.

With the help of the bombers in the sky, the outer defense line was torn apart in an instant.

The command post where Major General Sakamoto was located was bombed and collapsed by enemy aircraft. Although the 21st Regiment forcibly recaptured the command post afterward.

But the whereabouts of Lord Sakamoto Jun are unknown, and it is highly likely that...

"Baka yarou".

Seishiro Itagaki threw the communications officer to the ground, drew his command sword from his waist, and began hacking and slashing wildly in the air-raid shelter like a madman.

The wooden table was split in two, and the map was scattered all over the floor.

"A disgrace, an unprecedented and humiliating defeat since the founding of the Imperial Army."

Seishiro Itagaki roared to the sky, his voice filled with a broken, hysterical outburst.

The major general was captured, and the regimental flag was seized.

Either of these two incidents alone would be enough to make him, as the division commander, commit seppuku as an apology.

Now it's happening right under his nose.

What terrified him even more was that Baitu Town was under attack and would most likely fall. What did that mean?

This meant that his 5th Division's retreat route to Qingcheng Port was completely cut off.

He became the real turtle trapped in a jar, as the Chinese idiom describes.

After venting his anger, Itagaki Seishiro slumped into a chair, panting heavily, as if he had aged ten years in an instant.

With trembling hands, he picked up the map from the ground and laid it out again.

Looking at the arrows representing the enemy forces on the map, Seishiro Itagaki's mind raced as he tried to assess the current situation.

"Something's not right...this is definitely not right..."

Seishiro Itagaki muttered to himself, his eyes filled with deep self-doubt:

"Given this overwhelming firepower, at least four of China's main divisions are launching a fierce attack on us; otherwise, the battle lines wouldn't have been able to shrink so quickly."

Judging from the density of artillery fire, the flanking force was at least two divisions in size.

Now, our retreat route is under fierce attack, and we've run into Lin Feng's legendary elite armored unit.

Adding all that up... just how many troops did Lin Feng actually deploy?!

Seishiro Itagaki abruptly turned to look at Takeshi Sakurada and roared:

"Didn't the intelligence department confidently assert that the 33rd Army Corps only had two corps, four divisions, and one brigade?!"

These are the four divisions the intelligence agencies were talking about?!

My senses are that there are at least seven or eight divisions surrounding me and attacking me.

Moreover, the artillery firepower of each division was several times stronger than that of the most elite German-trained divisions of the Central Army.

Are all those idiots in the Special Higher Police and the South Manchuria Railway Bureau blind?!

Or have they all been turned by the Chinese?

Sakurada Takeshi lowered his head, unable to utter a single word.

He felt aggrieved too.

This battle was so bizarre; the enemy's artillery shells were raining down like they were free, and the machine guns never stopped firing.

This is hardly the army of the Great Xia Dynasty.

This firepower configuration would be considered top-tier even on the European battlefield.

In fact, both Itagaki Seishiro and his chief of staff fell into a huge cognitive fallacy.

They used the standards by which the Great Xia army was usually measured to evaluate Lin Feng's troops.

A typical army group of the Central Army has only a few dozen artillery pieces.

In reality, each infantry division under Lin Feng's command possessed an independent artillery regiment with a full thirty-six cannons.

The subordinate infantry regiments were even more outrageously equipped with 120mm heavy mortars, as well as a large number of 82/81mm mortars.

As for the basic rifles and light and heavy machine guns, there was plenty of them.

The two German-equipped divisions were also equipped with a large number of MP-40 submachine guns and MG34/42 general-purpose machine guns, with ammunition supplies that were outrageously plentiful.

Therefore, Itagaki Seishiro made a serious misjudgment purely based on the density of firepower.

At this very moment, those who are truly holding him back from the outside, relentlessly humiliating him, are the ones who are relentlessly attacking him from the outside.

It consisted of only two divisions of Zhang Wenzhong's newly formed 8th Army, plus a part of Xu Zhiming's newly formed 16th Division.

All in all, it was just two and a half infantry divisions, plus a hastily assembled motorized regiment from Zhao Dashan's First Honorary Brigade.

But with this small force, they managed to create the oppressive atmosphere of seven or eight divisions, forcing the Japanese army, which they themselves called the strongest in the world, into a desperate situation.

The underground command post was deathly silent.

Only the occasional muffled explosions overhead served as a reminder that death was approaching.

Looking at the map, Itagaki Seishiro felt as if Lin Feng's troops were everywhere, with dark gun barrels and cannons looming all around.

This division commander, who had been arrogant for half his life, finally experienced firsthand what despair truly meant at this moment.

"I can't just die here..."

Seishiro Itagaki was not about to write his death poem here.

He gritted his teeth, and his instinct for survival ultimately triumphed over the so-called Bushido dignity.

He took a deep breath and made an extremely humiliating decision.

"Sakurada-kun, draft a telegram immediately."

Itagaki Seishiro did not intend to sit idly by and wait for his doom:

"The first letter was sent to the North China Area Army Headquarters, General Terauchi Hisaichi."

For example, my 5th Division was besieged by more than 12 well-equipped main forces of the Chinese army north of Linyi. It suffered heavy casualties and its retreat was cut off.

The request is for the Army Front to immediately order the 10th Division and the 15th Independent Mixed Brigade to abandon Tengxian and rush eastward to provide reinforcements.

The request is for the air force of the front to provide tactical guidance and airdropped supplies to our forces at all costs.

Sakurada Takeshi quickly nodded and wrote it down. He planned to polish it up and send it to the army headquarters.

As for the fact that just a few days ago, Itagaki Seishiro sent a telegram reporting a victory and saying that everything was going smoothly and that the city of Linyi was about to be captured.

But back then...

Neither of them blushed.

"The second letter..."

Seishiro Itagaki closed his eyes, and the muscles in his face twitched painfully.

"Send it directly to...the home base."

"What?!"

Major General Takeshi Sakurada abruptly raised his head, his face filled with shock:

"Your Excellency, Division Commander, are you sending a telegram for assistance directly to General Headquarters, bypassing the proper order of command?"

This...this is a serious violation of military regulations.

If the shogun Terauchi finds out, he will be furious.

In the strict hierarchical system of the Japanese army, reporting to higher authorities without proper authorization was a major taboo, let alone directly pleading for help from the Supreme Command.

This is tantamount to trampling on the face of Terauchi Hisaichi, commander of the North China Area Army.

"I can't worry about that anymore."

Seishiro Itagaki suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze revealing a reckless, madness:

"That old stubborn Terauchi Hisaichi probably has no idea what kind of monster we're facing now."

By the time he slowly coordinated the reinforcements, our 5th Division would have been completely wiped out.

Send it as I said.