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

Seishiro Itagaki gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, picked up the broken bowl, and took a big gulp.

"Crunch."

The teeth bit into the sand, making a sharp, teeth-grinding sound.

Seishiro Itagaki almost vomited up the leftover food he had eaten the night before.

He forced himself to swallow the mouthful of thin porridge mixed with sand, his throat aching from the rough grains of sand.

The adjutant next to him also looked constipated, forcing a grateful smile as he drank.

That expression was absolutely hilarious.

Finally, evening arrived.

The cooks prepared another pot of thicker porridge, this time adding some chopped dried meat.

After the starving people finished eating, many of them began to protest in their stomachs, clutching their bellies and running to the fields outside the village to relieve themselves.

Seishiro Itagaki also felt a sharp pain in his stomach.

The brown rice porridge mixed with sand, along with the still-dry horse meat jerky after cooking, completely overwhelmed his sophisticated digestive system.

He clutched his stomach, gave his adjutant a wink, and mingled among a few villagers, heading towards a thicket of bushes outside the village.

At this moment, Itagaki Seishiro had completely relaxed his guard.

He estimated that the Great Xia army would disperse these "refugees" tomorrow or the day after.

At that time, he only needs to blend into the crowd and leave the encirclement.

Then, try to head north and escape back to the area controlled by the North China Front Army.

As for the grave offense of losing the entire Fifth Division, he had already come up with an excuse to deal with it.

Just shift the blame.

They said that Qingcheng Port was lost too quickly, completely cutting off his escape route.

In addition, the 10th Division's rescue efforts were ineffective, and they were merely dawdling over the Jinpu Railway line.

Furthermore, the air support from the North China Front Army was too weak, which led to its being unilaterally slaughtered by enemy railway artillery and bombers.

In short, it wasn't that Itagaki Seishiro was a bad commander, but rather that the enemy was too cunning and the friendly forces refused to come to his aid.

In addition, he also had some connections in the upper echelons of the military.

He figured that his military career was definitely over, and he could forget about leading troops into battle again in this lifetime.

But even a less-than-honorable retirement should be enough to save your life.

Anyway, when he was fighting in North China, he allowed his men to plunder, and the gold and antiques they looted had long been sent back to China through secret channels.

With that wealth, he could return to China and live a comfortable life as a rich man.

He was thinking about it with great satisfaction.

Seishiro Itagaki slipped behind a dense thicket of bushes, loosened his belt, and squatted down.

He was so relaxed that he didn't notice anything amiss.

Although Platoon Leader Wang Youliang hadn't developed calluses on his gun, he still felt a strange sense of unease between the two men.

So he secretly sent a clever soldier named Er Gouzi to follow them.

After a series of loud, forceful releases.

Seishiro Itagaki looked relieved.

He habitually reached into his clothes and rummaged around inside.

Then, he pulled out a roll of something.

Er Gouzi, who was hiding behind a big tree a dozen meters away, poked half his head out and took a closer look in the dim light.

My eyes widened instantly.

"Damn it!"

Er Gouzi exclaimed inwardly.

In those days, refugees who couldn't even get enough to eat would grab a couple of leaves or some clods of dirt from the ground to relieve themselves.

But the dirty-looking "old man" in front of me was holding a roll of snow-white, incredibly soft, high-quality toilet paper.

Er Gouzi had only seen this foreign gadget once before, when he worked as a day laborer for a wealthy family in the city.

How could a refugee who can't even afford to eat possibly be carrying such high-end goods?

"Platoon leader! Platoon leader!"

Er Gouzi scrambled back to the village and found Wang Youliang:

"Those two guys are suspicious!"

The old man used snow-white foreign paper to defecate.

Upon hearing this, Wang Youliang's expression changed instantly.

"Damn it, I almost got fooled by that old fox."

"Squad leader, take your men and follow me."

A few minutes later.

Seishiro Itagaki, who had just pulled up his trousers, hadn't even had a chance to get out of the bushes yet.

He was then pressed against the head by more than a dozen dark gun barrels.

"Don't move! Hands up!"

Wang Youliang stepped forward, snatched the half-used roll of toilet paper from Itagaki's hand, and sneered:

"Fellow villager, you're quite particular."

Even while fleeing, they didn't forget to bring this precious thing with them?

Tie him up!

Seishiro Itagaki and his adjutant were bound hand and foot and taken directly to the regimental headquarters.

Commander Liu Xiong Ying sat behind a broken wooden table, looking Itagaki Seishiro up and down as he was brought in.

"Tell me, what were you doing in the Japanese army?"

Liu Xiong Ying tapped on the table.

Seishiro Itagaki rolled his eyes and decided to stick to his guns.

He puffed out his chest, adopting an arrogant air, and said in broken Chinese:

"I am a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander of the logistics regiment of the 5th Division."

According to the Geneva Convention, you must treat me as a prisoner of war commensurate with my rank.

After hearing this, Liu Xiong Ying, who was a graduate of the Baoding Military Academy, was stunned for a moment, and then couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"Lieutenant Colonel?"

Liu Xiong Ying stood up, walked up to Itagaki, and unceremoniously patted his old face, which was covered in soot from the bottom of a pot:

"Old man, you should at least draft your lies before you start making them up, right?"

Although I haven't done very well, after decades of working, I'm still just a regimental commander.

But I've worked under Commander Yu before, and I've dealt with you Japanese devils for so many years, I know your promotion rules inside and out.

A lieutenant colonel in his fifties?

If you Japanese army soldiers were still only lieutenant colonels in your fifties, you would have been forced to retire long ago and go home to be with your grandchildren.

Anyone still in a field army at this age is at least a major general and brigade commander.

Seishiro Itagaki's face stiffened, and a hint of panic flashed in his eyes.

He hadn't expected that the commander of the Great Xia regiment in front of him would know so much about the internal situation of the Imperial Army.

"You're not being honest, are you?"

Liu Xiong Ying snorted coldly and waved his hand:

"Men, take these two guys to the division headquarters."

Tell the commander that we caught a big fish.

Once he gets to the division headquarters, there are plenty of ways to make him confess everything about his ancestors, even going back eight generations!

Seishiro Itagaki was dragged out by two fierce-looking warriors who held him by the arms.

He glanced back at Liu Xiong Ying, and felt a chill run through him.

He knew that his dream of escaping had been completely shattered.

After that, Itagaki Seishiro and his adjutant, like two plucked, sick chickens, were bound hand and foot and escorted all the way from the regimental headquarters to the divisional headquarters.

The military police at the division headquarters were also completely baffled by these two "commoners" who refused to speak.

But since Regiment Commander Liu Xiong Ying said that these two people had problems, the division headquarters did not dare to neglect them and simply sent them directly to the headquarters of the newly formed 8th Army.

Army Commander Zhang Wenzhong looked the old man in front of him up and down with a strange expression. His face was covered with soot and his back was hunched.

"You said you're a logistics lieutenant colonel?"

Zhang Wenzhong put down his teacup and sneered:

"Wash his face clean."

Two guards immediately brought over a basin of cold water, pressed down on Itagaki Seishiro's head, and began to scrub his face vigorously with a rough towel.

"Baka! Let me go!"

Seishiro Itagaki struggled desperately, but he was no match for the two strong young men.

A moment later, the thick layer of soot from the bottom of the pot was washed away, revealing a well-maintained face that, although somewhat haggard, still exuded the authority of a superior.

Zhang Wenzhong looked at that face, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

He felt like he'd seen that face somewhere before.

Suddenly, a photograph from a newspaper flashed into his mind.