Rise From Eight Hundred Chapter 172

Chapter 172 Changes in the sea

The Japanese infantry refused to give up.

From the time the sun rose until the sun set like blood, with the help of more than 2,000 people from the 37th Infantry Regiment who were hurriedly transferred by the 3rd Division, they climbed up and down the ruins like industrious little ants.

However, there were so many people that they were unable to lift a concrete block weighing a thousand kilograms, let alone rescue a living person.

It is quite easy to dig out a lot of corpses stuck in the cracks of various rocks, because it is very simple. If they are pressed and stuck, just use a knife to chop the corpse into several pieces and pull it out.

At the end of the day, more than twenty mutilated corpses were pulled out, but that was already the greatest result of the hard work of more than 2,000 Japanese troops.

But even this was not without cost. For these corpses, which were only left in half, the ruins that had been loosened suffered another minor collapse, and several more Japanese infantry were buried inside.

Seeing this scene, the Japanese Army Lieutenant General who arrived at the scene in person despite his busy schedule couldn't help but became furious. He roared loudly on the bank of the Suzhou River like a trapped animal, and even slapped the Captain of the Engineer Regiment who did not enter the warehouse but managed to save his life. Some big mouths.

Of course, if anger is useful, why do we need artillery?

Unless, thousands of kilograms of explosives are brought over and the ruins are blown up to see if they can find the regimental flag of the 36th Infantry Regiment?

But if one accidentally blows the golden crest of the alliance flag to the concession, the trap will be really big.

Finally, when night fell and the groans in the ruins were almost silent, the Japanese army gave up the rescue operation.

When the Japanese army retreated like a tide, except for a symbolic detachment left here, it meant that the 36th Infantry Regiment that could have entered Sihang Warehouse in a victorious manner was abandoned.

In fact, until the end of the entire Songhu Battle half a month later, and even until the end of the entire war, the Japanese army who occupied Songhu did not conduct any excavation of the ruins.

The 36th Infantry Regiment, which lost its regiment flag and lost most of its officers in the battle, was abandoned by the 3rd Division on the evening of November 1st and placed under the direct jurisdiction of the dispatched army headquarters.

Hide Toyoda, the unlucky guy, turned out to be a lucky one. Because of the unlucky attributes of the 36th Infantry Regiment, no junior officer was willing to serve. The dispatched army headquarters had no choice but to appoint him as the acting captain of the 36th Infantry Regiment.

Although the level was not promoted, the position was jumped two levels in a row. Even so, it seemed that the captain of the New Science and Technology Alliance didn't even smile when he saw the defeated soldiers.

Other units are under the direct control of the high command, which raises their standards, but for the 36th Infantry Regiment, even an idiot knows that it may only be a matter of time before their designation is revoked.

Perhaps the only thing that these unlucky guys are thankful for is that they can stay away from the war from now on.

A week later, some unlucky and lucky guys returned to China on transport ships and never set foot on Chinese soil again in their lives.

Perhaps, they don't want to come to this painful land anymore. The desperate groans of their colleagues in the ruins will always become their nightmare.

As for the other part, the war is not over yet!

After the war, China did not excavate and sort out the ruins of Sihang Warehouse. Instead, it built the Sihang Warehouse Monument on the top of the ruins. The list of all combatants of the 524th Regiment of the 88th Division is included in it.

The names of Yue Changqing and ninety-two other people are also engraved on the base of the monument. This is a tribute to them from the whole of China. I believe that the soldiers who are buried here will not refuse their company.

The army and the people are essentially fish and water.

The monument with a white marble base has experienced several years of wind and rain, and around the concrete ruins, more than a dozen small trees have grown.

Some people say that the hero who died in Sihang Warehouse came back and transformed into a tree to protect his position and his country; others say that it was actually the hundreds of Japanese corpses that gradually rotted in the ruins that provided enough nutrients. It nourishes the tree seeds brought by the birds.

But regardless of that statement, in the end no one touched the small trees that grew tenaciously in the ruins, even if they were not precious species, just miscellaneous trees.

With the passage of time, decades have passed by, and the past battlefields and ruins have disappeared, replaced by a tree-shaded hill, green in spring and dry in winter, and prosperous every year.

But no matter how the seasons change, the only thing that remains unchanged is the monument and the name on it.

China has not forgotten them, and neither has this nation forgotten them. Lao Zhang and Lao Zhou, a bank clerk and a rickshaw driver during the war, two fellow Henan fellows who were originally very different in status and could not communicate with each other, became friends because of this battle.

Although the concession was captured by the Japanese army a few years later due to the outbreak of the Pacific War, they helped each other and survived those difficult years and survived sixty years later.

Two ordinary old men from Songhu who were completely retired had no other hobbies and nothing to do, so they brought teapots and sat next to the ruins of Sihang Warehouse. In their words, they came to accompany the soldiers who were sleeping here.

Of course, when someone asks for help, the old man will tell them about the battlefield that broke out decades ago and the stories of those people.

Many young people have asked them whether the heroic unit successfully evacuated in the end, or whether they died fighting with the Japanese invaders under this famous ruins. The two old people always said with red eyes that they must have left.

But actually, they don't know either.

Because they had not even seen anyone in the warehouse. As ordinary people, they had no way of knowing whether they were dead or alive and continuing to fight the Japanese invaders on other battlefields.

However, an unexpected incident gave them, who were already old and about to die, the answer they had wanted to hear for decades.

As the city becomes more and more developed, available land becomes less and less. Zhabei District, which has become the core area, is full of skyscrapers. Only this area is an eyesore of small mounds covered with trees.

Finally, someone has set their sights on this place, hoping to invest huge sums of money to develop the site, remove the unsightly ruins, and move the monument to the Suzhou River dozens of meters away.

Capital is only interested in money and never cares about spiritual totems.

However, there are still some ordinary people who have not forgotten the past who do not agree.

The two old men who accidentally learned the news were holding wooden sticks, just like the soldiers holding steel guns in those days, and stood in front of the large excavator with the local residents.

Back then, it was they who took their lives to protect the people. Now, it is the people's turn to protect them.

The government sent high-level officials to persuade with earnest words, promising not to damage the monument in the slightest and to build a new memorial on the site. But what does that mean?

The positions that the Japanese could not capture back then were actually occupied by **** capital, and the elderly and residents refused to accept them.

Until, a white-haired old man with numerous medals on his chest appeared.

There is no need to go into details about the process. The end result is the complete defeat of capital and the preservation of ruins.

After giving a trembling military salute to the ruins, the old man bowed to the two men and thanked them for their decades of cleaning the monument, and for paying homage to the soldiers who died here during the Qingming Festival.

Because, that is his comrade-in-arms.

What makes Lao Zhang and Lao Zhou extremely excited is that they finally heard the happiest news in the past fifty or sixty years.

Under the monument where they stop and stare every day, there is no sorrow for the Chinese soldiers, only the ghosts of the Japanese invaders.

On November 1st, except for the two dozen people who died in Sihang Warehouse the day before, more than one hundred people escaped.

Although some people died one after another in the battles with the Japanese invaders in the future, many people still saw the dawn of victory.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter end

Report