Chapter Thirteen: The Movements of the Invaders

Night of July 23, 1938—Heyuan County Seat

The Independent Detachment had indeed handled the operation with extraordinary care. Not a single man had been allowed to escape from the battlefield. Yet Wang Yue had overlooked one possibility: that some of the puppet soldiers might fall behind. Two men from that puppet battalion had become separated from the rest. When the fighting began, they heard the gunfire and assumed that victory had already been secured. Eager to distinguish themselves, they hurried over—only to witness Wang Yue personally wielding a battle-axe and severing the heads of the Japanese dead, one after another.

The two puppet soldiers fled back to the county seat in abject terror. After hearing their report, Ichiro Hirata did not lose his temper. Instead, he seemed somewhat excited. There probably was not another force in all of Heyuan County so fond of chopping off heads. Yet the enemy’s strength had clearly exceeded his earlier assessment. They were well equipped and well trained, with enough power to annihilate an entire squad in under a minute. The last time, they had at least used artillery. This time, they had not even needed that.

“Captain Hirata, are you certain they are a German-equipped division?” asked a Japanese major beside him, his somewhat ferocious features flushed with excitement.

The man was Jiping Yamazaki, formerly a company commander in the Japanese Sixth Division. Recently promoted to major, he had never imagined that the Special Higher Police would select him to command the Korean Detachment, where he would work alongside Ichiro Hirata in the search for Wu Ziyu.

“Judging by what we have seen, it is very likely. However, the military police have very little intelligence on this unit.” Hirata had known from the beginning that the bandits at Laojun Temple had been replaced by a group of stragglers. Given the terrain of the Laojun Temple mountains, there could not be many troops stationed there, so he had paid little attention. Men like those stragglers would become bandits sooner or later, and such matters were not worth his concern. What interested him more were the Military Statistics Bureau agents who appeared from time to time in the countryside around Heyuan County.

Heyuan County could not be called completely impregnable, but it was, by and large, under his control. Only in certain areas were small units of the Jin-Sui Army and the Eighth Route Army still active. How, then, could Military Statistics Bureau agents move about so freely? Did they have a base in Heyuan County as well? Could it be Laojun Temple?

“At the very least, we could try shelling them from a distance,” Yamazaki said, still unwilling to accept the situation. During his time with the Sixth Division, he had fought German-equipped divisions before. During the Battle of Nanjing, one of his companies had even dared to stand against an entire enemy regiment. As for a German-equipped division scattered behind enemy lines, deprived of supplies and support, its combat effectiveness could only be lower still.

“When I visited Laojun Temple shortly after we occupied Heyuan, I saw that its main buildings were halfway up a steep mountain, tucked into a natural hollow. Our Type 92 infantry guns would pose little threat unless we brought them within a thousand meters and fired by direct aim. As for the other buildings on the mountain, most of them are concentrated on the summit. The area is small, and the elevation angle is too steep. They would not be easy targets either.” Hirata shook his head gently. Laojun Temple had originally been built by Taoist priests seeking refuge from the Yuan court’s campaigns, and its terrain was exceptionally perilous. The enemy had at least ten light and heavy machine guns—more than enough to seal off the mountain paths.

“Are we really going to let this go? Those were fifty-seven warriors of the Empire! Surely we cannot simply abandon even their bodies?” Yamazaki demanded angrily.

“Do not be impatient, Captain Yamazaki. You must understand that in an occupied territory, military force is not the only means of compelling the enemy to submit.” Hirata was not particularly pleased with Yamazaki. Had the two men not been classmates at the Army War College, he would never have allowed the Special Higher Police to transfer the man here.

“Captain Hirata, what do you mean?”

Yamazaki realized that he might indeed have acted too hastily and quickly softened his tone.

“Blockade. A complete blockade. Cut off their access to weapons, ammunition, and supplies. The Laojun Temple mountains are barren to begin with. Without salt, sugar, grain, medicine, and cloth from the outside, they will not last long. And it will not be only them—the Jin-Sui Army and the Eighth Route Army entrenched in the mountains will suffer just as badly. There are at least seven thousand enemy troops and a considerable number of bandits in the mountains around Heyuan County. Their daily consumption is astronomical.”

As he spoke, Hirata marked the corresponding locations on an enormous military map. The Special Higher Police updated its maps once every quarter, and combined with his own reconnaissance, this particular map was reasonably accurate.

The two old Japanese officers then began discussing how to blockade the Laojun Temple mountains—how many checkpoints and blockhouses to build, and how many troops to station at each strongpoint. But before they could complete the plan, the telephone at the military police headquarters rang.

The central strongpoint at Zuojiazhuang reported that gunfire and artillery had been heard from the direction of a puppet-troop position near the mountains. The telephone line had also gone dead, and they were asking whether assistance should be sent. While the report was still being delivered, explosions erupted from the Zuojiazhuang strongpoint itself, where an entire detachment of Japanese troops was stationed. Moments later, the telephone connection was cut off.

One should not assume that every strongpoint was garrisoned by Japanese troops. In reality, a position with even two Japanese soldiers stationed there was already considered important. Most strongpoints—especially the smaller ones in harsh and remote locations—had no Japanese troops at all. Ordinarily, a post with two Japanese soldiers would have at least one platoon of puppet troops attached to it. A position with an entire detachment of Japanese soldiers would require a puppet company, or even a battalion, to be stationed there as well. The Japanese simply did not have enough manpower. This was still the early stage of the war, when conditions were comparatively favorable, yet even Hirata did not dare place all his available troops outside the county seat.

Still, refusing to send aid was not an option. At the very least, they had to put on a show for those below them. Otherwise, who would still be willing to risk his life for them? The same applied not only to the puppet troops but also to the military police, who had secretly recruited large numbers of local reservists. Moreover, Yamazaki was eager for battle. Hirata therefore had no choice but to authorize him to lead an infantry company and two Chiyoda armored cars to the rescue.

Before long, Yamazaki used the radio to report the situation at the front. The Zuojiazhuang strongpoint was unharmed. The enemy had merely severed the telephone line; they had not captured the position. As for the sound of artillery, it had come from an old muzzle-loading cannon used by an Eighth Route Army guerrilla unit, which had fired two iron balls. Since the balls had been cast by the guerrillas themselves and were not perfectly round, they had been wrapped in scraps of torn clothing.

Yamazaki then continued forward along the highway, searching as he advanced. Although the old Japanese officer had grown arrogantly overconfident, he remained disciplined during the night march. It took more than two hours before he finally reached the strongpoint that had been attacked.

The news this time was far less encouraging. The strongpoint had been completely destroyed. The Eighth Route Army had used a small-caliber direct-fire cannon and fired at least two shells. The powerful armor-piercing rounds, with their tremendous kinetic force, had blasted two enormous holes through the brick-and-rammed-earth outer wall. One shell had even punched straight through the entire bunker. The weapon was suspected to have been a German 37-millimeter antitank gun.