SFS Chapter 939 Slaughter Artillery Battalion
Chapter 939 Slaughter Artillery Battalion
"Go, call the person in charge of the site to come see me!" Matsui said to his adjutant.
"Hai!" the adjutant replied, and immediately led a few men to find the person in charge at the scene.
But as soon as they set off, seven or eight Japanese soldiers came towards them, led by a company commander.
The man ran over and saluted Matsui Risatsu: "Commander Terashima Masao, 11th Company Commander of the Military Police, welcomes Your Excellency, Commander!"
Matsui nodded and asked, "What's the situation now? Tell me!"
"Ha-i!" Terashima Masao stood at attention and then said, "When we arrived here on orders, this place was already a ruin, and the ruins and the surrounding streets were full of the corpses of my Imperial Army officers and soldiers."
"Strangely, the bodies were relatively well-preserved, but all the weapons and ammunition were missing!"
After hearing this, Matsui asked, "How many people are still alive?"
“This…” Terashima Masao hesitated and evaded his questions.
Matsui, his face stern, rebuked, "What, are you trying to keep this a secret from me, the garrison commander? Is there anything in Shanghai that I can't know?"
Terashima Masao said with a troubled expression, "Before we came here, Commander Sato gave orders to keep the news strictly confidential. We can only report the specific situation here to him!"
"Baka!" Matsui roared in anger and slapped Terashima Masao across the face.
Terashima Masao, who had been hit, immediately lowered his head and stood at attention.
Matsui angrily rebuked, "I am the highest-ranking officer here. Even Sato is under my command! Now I order you to tell me the specifics. I ask you, how many people were still alive when you arrived?"
Terashima Masao quickly replied, "No, when we arrived we didn't find anyone alive, and we haven't found a single one yet!"
Matsui took a deep breath and asked, "How many people died here in total?"
Terashima Masao hesitated for a moment before replying, "We have found 147 bodies so far, all of which can be seen on the streets and in the ruins. There should be some more buried under the ruins, but turning over all the ruins would be too much work. It would be impossible to clear this area of ruins in less than ten days to half a month!"
"Two bodies were found with their heads cut off. One of them appears to be Chief Sakata from the Special Higher Police, while the other is wearing a soldier's uniform, but his face and head make him look like he's about 45 years old. We don't know what he is."
Matsui asked, "Where are their bodies? Take me to see them!"
"Hai, Commander, this way please!"
Terashima Masao led Matsui and the others to a flat area filled with corpses.
"This is it!" Terashima Masao said, pointing to two of the corpses. "We reattached the heads after we found them!"
Matsui crouched down and reached out to lift the white sheet covering a corpse. Seeing that the body was indeed Sakata Tadayoshi, he said, "It's Section Chief Sakata. How could his head have been chopped off?"
Terashima shook his head and said, "I don't know either. When we arrived, this place had become a scene of hell. There were only corpses and severed limbs; not a single living person was left."
Matsui walked over to another corpse, knelt down, and uncovered the body. When he saw the deceased's face, he exclaimed in surprise, "It's him? How is that possible? Wasn't he in Japan? How did he get here? When did he arrive?"
Terashima Masao couldn't help but ask, "Commander, who is he...?"
Matsui snapped out of his daze and waved his hand: "You don't need to know. Keep these two bodies separate! Everything that happened here tonight, everything you and your soldiers saw, is to stay inside yourselves. No one is allowed to discuss it among themselves, and no one is allowed to utter a single word. All news must be blocked, or you will be court-martialed!"
Terashima Masao's heart tightened, and he quickly stood at attention and straightened his body, saying, "Hai!"
At this time, Zhang Yunhe had already driven to the vicinity of the Japanese artillery battalion's position.
Although he didn't know which unit fired the artillery or where the artillery position was, he did look up at the incoming shells during the shelling, and the Iron-Blooded Mask scanned and recorded their flight paths.
Afterwards, Zhang Yunhe used the IronBlood computer to calculate and analyze the trajectory of the shells, and calculated the complete parabolic flight path of that batch of shells, thereby determining the location of the Japanese artillery positions.
On a barren land, the headlights of trucks illuminated the entire area, and hundreds of Japanese soldiers were busy preparing to use trucks and mules to tow artillery away from there.
With his tactical gloved hands parting the tall grass, Zhang Yunhe peeked out from the grass to observe the situation on the wasteland.
At this point, some of the artillery pieces had been secured to the rear of the trucks, some had been tied to the necks of mules and horses with ropes, and some mules and horses had been led to the artillery pieces in preparation for rope traction.
Seeing this, Zhang Yunhe knew he had to act quickly. If he delayed for another five or six minutes, these hundreds of Japanese soldiers would drag away the artillery.
He quickly came up with an idea. He took out more than a dozen smoke grenades from his backpack, pulled the pins, and threw them one by one at the feet of the Japanese soldiers in the wasteland.
"Clang, clang, clang..." The smoke bombs kept hitting the ground with a sound and quickly released a lot of thick smoke.
When some Japanese soldiers saw it, they thought it was a poison gas bomb and immediately cried out in terror: "Poison gas bomb!"
"What? Poison gas?" Major Nagashima, the artillery battalion commander, realized what was happening and immediately shouted to his men, "Someone has launched a sneak attack and thrown poison gas at us! We don't have protective masks, so everyone wet their towels with water and cover their mouths and noses!"
Upon seeing the large amount of smoke rising around them and hearing someone shout about poison gas, the Japanese soldiers immediately panicked, and the scene descended into chaos. They were just artillery units, auxiliary troops, not rigorously trained infantry, and their military skills were not as high as those of infantry. Now that an emergency had occurred, these more than 300 people quickly fell into confusion.
Some Japanese soldiers heard Major Nagashima's shout, but most of the Japanese artillerymen did not. They ran around in all directions, and some tried to escape, but after running a few steps, they found that there was only smoke ahead.
Within seconds, the entire wasteland was shrouded in thick smoke, making it impossible to see anything.
"Time to get to work!" Zhang Yunhe emerged from the tall grass, carrying a silenced pistol in each hand.
Under the scan of the Iron-Blooded Mask, the thick smoke had no effect on him at all. He walked and fired at the Japanese artillerymen in front of him. The Japanese artillerymen who were hit fell down one by one, not even knowing how they died or who killed them.
He kept firing, and Japanese artillerymen kept falling, their spent shell casings clattering to the ground.
After emptying one magazine, they immediately switched to another full magazine. They emptied more than a dozen magazines, using up all the magazines full of pistol bullets, but there were still more than 170 Japanese soldiers running around aimlessly in the thick smoke like headless flies.
Zhang Yunhe immediately extended his wrist blade and began killing even faster, slitting the throats of Japanese soldiers one by one.
It seemed that a Japanese artillery officer had noticed something was wrong and shouted, "The enemy has infiltrated our ranks and is ambushing and killing people! Everyone be on high alert! Don't run around! Find your comrades and stand back to back to cover each other!"
When Zhang Yunhe heard someone shouting, he knew that the Japanese soldiers had noticed something was wrong. He had no choice but to speed up his killing spree again. He pushed his movement technique to the limit and slit the throats of several Japanese artillerymen in the blink of an eye.
Zhang Yunhe simply threw a grenade at the Japanese soldiers who had reacted and gathered together, back to back for cover, killing a group of them instantly.