kingnovel Chapter 885 Wind Direction
Chapter 885 Wind Direction
At around three o'clock in the morning, Li Shaoyi couldn't sleep because the smell in the air was too bad. Zhao Tiezhu had used gasoline to burn the Japanese soldiers in advance, but the wind that night blew from the sea to the inland.
When Li Shaoyi arrived at the headquarters, Zhao Tiezhu carefully poured Li Shaoyi a cup of tea to wake him up.
"Marshal, this is really not my fault. I was just thinking about roasting the Japanese, I didn't expect the wind to blow from the sea."
Zhao Tiezhu said a little embarrassedly, the whole air is now filled with an indescribable smell, which smells a bit sweet, but when you think about what is burning, everyone feels like vomiting. Originally, they wanted to give the Japanese this feeling, but they didn't expect it to happen to us. Some female staff officers in the headquarters almost vomited bile just now.
"That's how you get things done!"
Li Shaoyi also raised his thumbs up. To be honest, he was willing to let the Japanese smell such a smell, but when he was placed in the center of the storm, he felt very uncomfortable all over. It was estimated that after breakfast was ready, many soldiers would not be able to eat.
"The smell is indeed a bit unpleasant, but I asked the meteorologists, and they said the wind direction will change this morning, pushing everything north. Of course, we also achieved some success last night. The Japanese dug trenches in eleven places, and we destroyed them all. I also sent people to investigate on the scene, but there was basically no significant progress."
In fact, there was no need for Zhao Tiezhu to report. Li Shaoyi knew how many people were burned to death by smelling such a strong smell. If there were only one or two hundred people, how could it be possible that it covered half of the city of Jincheng?
At this moment in the Japanese headquarters, Chief of Staff Yamamoto was grabbing his hair, not knowing how to fight Li Shaoyi. The plan he had just come up with was directly shattered by the 72nd Army, and a fire killed nearly 3,000 of our people.
In addition, there are more than 2,000 burned people currently lying in various hospitals, but the Japanese army is seriously short of medicines to treat burns, and can only give them simple bandages. As for whether the wounds will fester and rot, it all depends on their luck. The Japanese army can't guarantee anything.
Forget about buying medicines on the market in Tianjin. After the outbreak of the war, the prices of all kinds of medicines have skyrocketed. Of course, they have no shortage of medicines that the Japanese government can produce, but burn medicines are not essential medicines in war, so these Japanese soldiers with wounds on their bodies can only count the days to their death.
"After daybreak, all units will be on alert. If you discover an enemy force attempting a surprise attack, it's best to proactively attack with a large force, at least three times the size of the enemy force."
Chief of Staff Yamamoto was almost scratching his head, but finally he saw that the sky outside was about to brighten. If he did not make some changes, then today would be the same as yesterday, and by the time the sun sets, eight or nine thousand soldiers would be dead.
The Japanese army would not take such a loss in one day seriously, but how could they not take it seriously if they suffered such a loss every day? According to the overall strategy of the Japanese North China Front Army, occupying the entire North China would result in a loss of about 30,000 people.
But how much has been lost now? Even adding a ten to the front might not be enough, so the Japanese side must think carefully about this. Otherwise, just based on this number of casualties, the North China side feels that the top leaders will not have a good time either.
"I think we should continue digging trenches during the day. No matter what method they use to sabotage us, this has been proven to be a good way to deal with it. Although many officers and soldiers were injured or killed in the process of digging trenches, if we stop digging, will they not attack us?"
A combat staff officer walked up to Chief of Staff Yamamoto. He felt that the strategy of digging trenches should be fine. After all, the 72nd Army had responded, whether it was artillery bombardment or burning. This showed that the 72nd Army did not want us to dig trenches. On the battlefield, the thing they least wanted us to do was, so we had to sit down.
"Your Excellency, Chief of Staff, what Inoue-kun said makes sense. We haven't been able to seize the initiative on the battlefield because we don't know what the 72nd Army fears. Even though our forces have been increasing in number, we haven't been able to capture the key points they've stubbornly defended. Now they've changed their tactics, so we need a response strategy. I believe digging trenches is the most appropriate response strategy at this stage."
The other combat staff officers also stood up. To put it bluntly, these people could not think of any other solution. Although the method of digging trenches was stupid and old-fashioned, it was still very useful in facing the armored group of the 72nd Army. If the tanks wanted to bypass the trenches, then some anti-tank guns on the position would be useful.
"But have you ever considered that if we dig trenches in front of all of our dozen positions, even if they don't interfere with us, it will take tens of thousands of soldiers two or three days to complete. Now with their interference, I estimate it will take five to ten days to complete the digging of all the trenches, or even longer. Besides, they can't just sit there and watch us work. Their artillery shells are free, and everyone knows that. The amount of shells dropped throughout the day might be ten times more than last night."
Chief of Staff Yamamoto rubbed his temple and said, everything else can be discussed, but the ammunition is unlimited, and we really don’t know how to deal with it. Our artillery has been deployed, but it will only take ten minutes of artillery preparation at most, and then we have to move our position, and we don’t have that many shells.
But it was different on the 72nd Army's side. After they started firing, the entire position was filled with artillery. Even the infantry platoons had mortars. We were simply unable to defend ourselves. The most fatal thing was their artillery shells, which kept bombarding our position. There was no safe place at all.
You think they're running out of ammunition, so you prepare to launch a counterattack. But just as you step out of the trench, several times more shells rain down. You're safe in the trench, but you think they're running out of ammunition, so you want to launch a counterattack. Now, the shells are about to take your lives...