kingnovel Chapter 1200 The Sad Li Shaoyi
Chapter 1200 The Sad Li Shaoyi
Li Shaoyi didn't want to sleep all night, mainly because he felt too guilty. If he had persisted a little longer, if he had been able to move the 72nd Army earlier, then they wouldn't have had to retreat at Pujiang, and perhaps they would have had enough time to evacuate the civilians.
His men also felt somewhat guilty, realizing they had acted impulsively. Hearing that most of the Nationalist army had retreated, they advised Li Shaoyi that they should also retreat; they couldn't afford to stay here alone. Those Nationalist guys were enjoying themselves in the rear; why should we defend this place for them? This wasn't even our territory.
Seeing this scene now, everyone really wants to slap themselves. What does "their territory" and "our territory" mean? Frankly speaking, it's all land belonging to the Chinese nation. Because of our impetuousness at the time, so many civilians died under the bayonets of the Japanese invaders. If we examine the matter closely, we ourselves are also culpable.
When they woke up the next morning, many people had dark circles under their eyes. Li Shaoyi thought this was a good thing, as it allowed everyone to move around more behind enemy lines and see the miserable lives of ordinary people. This way, when making a decision in the future, they would definitely put the people first.
Li Shaoyi once said that every choice we make concerns the lives of ordinary people. Many people don't quite understand this. Now that they've traveled behind enemy lines, they understand this. When they take up officer positions in the future, they will know how much to consider when making decisions, so that the current situation won't happen again.
How's the situation on your end?
It will take two more days to reach Pujiang. The further south we go, the more Japanese soldiers we'll encounter. If you turn on the radio in broad daylight, you might attract their attention. We're basically deep in Japanese territory now, so Miss Gu isn't inside the carriage but is sitting beside Li Shaoyi.
"I have basically figured out their interception principle. After we get to the urban area of Pujiang, I can use our instruments to find the location, but how to destroy this place? I still need to discuss that with Mr. Baiyun."
After hearing Miss Gu's words, Li Shaoyi felt even more that Mr. Baiyun's efforts were unnecessary. He had originally thought this matter was extremely difficult, hence the need to find a communications expert. Now it seemed completely unnecessary; he already had communications experts on his own.
"According to you, we can handle this ourselves without needing Bai Yun to come. Although he was brought back by the Party and the State, he could betray us at any time in a place like behind enemy lines. If we didn't have him, wouldn't we be able to take down this information center?"
Li Shaoyi frowned and said, "You know, under these circumstances, it's best to keep as few people as possible informed, even those the Party and the State have arranged for us. Aren't there enough people within the Party and the State who have defected to the enemy? Forget about high-ranking officials vouching for us; Li Shaoyi couldn't trust a single one of them, let alone a technician."
"Theoretically, I have no problem, but what if there is? So we still need to see how they do it. We can't be too arrogant, especially in the field of communications, where we are already quite far behind the Japanese. If Mr. Baiyun has a more precise method, we should listen to it."
Upon hearing Miss Gu's words, Li Shaoyi's expression finally relaxed. He had initially thought the Nationalist government had just randomly assigned someone to him, but now it seemed that technical matters truly required collaboration and couldn't be decided by a single individual.
Pujiang East China Expeditionary Army Headquarters
"Colonel, these are the telegrams sent to us by the various divisions. Since the day before yesterday, none of our telegrams to the divisions have allowed them to seize any opportunity to attack. They mobilized nearly 7 men in total, but in the end, they only managed to gather less than 3000 defeated soldiers. I suspect there is a problem within our ranks."
Lieutenant Colonel Aota from the intelligence gathering center arrived at the East China Expeditionary Army's intelligence department with several telegrams in hand. Before him stood Colonel Watanabe, the head of the intelligence department.
"Nani?"
Because of the establishment of the intelligence gathering center, Colonel Watanabe had received a lot of praise from his superiors. Even the Army Headquarters in Japan knew about it and used the intelligence center in East China as a pilot project. If it was suitable, it would be promoted to all war zones across the country. It would be only natural for Colonel Watanabe to be promoted to major general.
So for the past few weeks, this guy had been having wonderful dreams every day, but he never expected to wake up to this kind of news. His subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Aota, was the most technically skilled person in the entire information center, and also his junior colleague. Therefore, he believed Lieutenant Colonel Aota's words 100%.
"Colonel, please take a look. These are the telegrams sent out over the past week, along with the results achieved by each division. While we cannot guarantee that 100% of the telegrams will be successful, at least half of them have intercepted their ragtag troops and brought us some results. However, things have been different in the last few days. We have received very few successful telegrams, and most of them have been leaked."
Lieutenant Colonel Aota said angrily, explaining that this information exchange center was extremely important to him. His senior colleague had risen from colonel to major general, and he himself had risen from lieutenant colonel to colonel—both extremely difficult hurdles for officers. Now that this had happened, it was tantamount to cutting off their promising futures. How could he not be anxious?
"Have you identified any suspects? When we set up the information gathering center, weren't all of these people from the local area? And we conducted several investigations, but we didn't find any problems."
Colonel Watanabe said with a great headache that if it were some local intelligence organization, he would simply have his men take them all to the military police headquarters and interrogate them thoroughly; there would definitely be results in the end. But Lieutenant Colonel Aota's men were different.
They were all brought in from headquarters, and each of them has a network of contacts. To interrogate them forcefully without evidence would demoralize the Imperial technical staff. Besides, their backers won't just sit idly by and let them do as they please.