Chapter 35: Preparing to Retreat

October 9, 1938—Jiangcheng Temporary 2nd Division Office

Wang Yue’s screening of the soldiers went smoothly. He had become highly practiced at it, knowing exactly what questions to ask or what gestures to make in order to provoke a response from people of different backgrounds. As he grew more proficient with the soul-searching technique, the process became easier still. In just over a day, he had finished screening this batch of recruits.

The good news was that among the students screened, there were only thirteen Japanese agents, all of them traitors to their own country. Agents like these were extremely difficult to identify. The bad news was that another 176 were agents or sympathizers working for other parties. Naturally, they would have to be politely escorted out of the country.

Among those already screened, however, there was not a single innocent person who had been wrongly accused—not counting the Japanese Army’s officially registered spies. There were also quite a few agents operating through civilian organizations, as well as Japanese agents working independently. This was a very bad sign. Clearly, his previous actions against Japanese spies in Jiangcheng had attracted Japan’s attention and provoked its anger. They were preparing to deal with him. If he had not always kept a low profile and treasured his life, Japanese assassins would probably have arrived by now. After all, those underhanded short-legged men loved nothing more than assassination.

Because of his interference, the Battle of Jiangcheng seemed to be proceeding somewhat more smoothly. The Chinese had launched several impressive counterattacks on different fronts, and the Japanese Army had suffered considerable losses. Yet from the perspective of grand strategy, the Japanese still held the advantage. The fall of Jiangcheng was only a matter of time. Now that all the students had been screened, he had to find a way to send them back to Qifeng Town as quickly as possible.

The air force was easy enough to deal with. Its “side business” had always been clearly priced. More than a thousand people could be packed into TB-3 transport aircraft in no more than five or six sorties. Since he could ensure that these recruits traveled with virtually no baggage, the TB-3’s formidable carrying capacity made the journey entirely feasible. To be honest, that wretched machine was really only suitable for use as a transport aircraft.

Now that the Japanese had their eyes on him, he could not afford to be careless. According to information obtained by Xu Zhongyi, quite a number of Japanese spies had recently entered the city from other regions through the foreign concessions, and their intelligence operations had once again become active. Among them were people sent to deal with him. Well, not “probably”—certainly.

In that case, he could simply have “Wang Yue” return to the Taihang Mountains to take charge of the overall situation, while he remained with the Umbrella Company as an employee. The current office could also be kept in operation, allowing him to continue quietly recruiting technical personnel. The later things became, the more chaotic the situation would be, and the easier it would be to fish in troubled waters—especially when it came to the pilots he urgently needed.

Mizilong had contacted several pilots from the former Northeastern Army, and they were willing to come over. Unfortunately, the Central Command had them under excellent “protection,” making it impossible for them to leave without provoking a conflict. The only opportunity would come when they were transferred to Mountain City. As for why the pilots could not simply fly there themselves, the reason was straightforward: the air force did not have enough aircraft. During the final stage, its limited transport capacity had to be reserved for high-ranking officials and their luggage. There was no room for pilots who had fought and bled on the front lines.

It was a pity about all those pilots who lost their lives in battle. An incompetent commander could exhaust an entire army. If the Spendthrift had struck first, he might not have been unable to destroy most of the Japanese Army Air Force while it was still in its infancy.

Artillerymen, tank crews, engineers, ground crews, communications personnel—there were still far too many kinds of specialists he lacked. Take tanks, for example. In the entire Temporary 2nd Division, Zhou Weiguo was the only one who knew how to drive one, and even he was no professional. He still handled the machine with difficulty. How could he possibly train tank crews? Besides, operating a tank was far from enough. Tactics and strategy also had to be taught.

He had enough equipment to establish an entire German-trained division, yet his supply of technical personnel was almost nonexistent. Jia Youfu was training artillerymen, but that required time as well. Why was it that other time-travelers could get a bunch of illiterate peasants to fly aircraft and drive tanks, while everything he did required such exhausting training—even the preparation of ordinary recruits?

Never mind the new recruits. Consider the veterans from the Northeastern Army whom he had recruited earlier. Many of them still had not fully recovered physically. It would take at least another month before the entire group could meet the Japanese soldiers’ standard of fitness—and that meant merely reaching the Japanese standard, not surpassing it. In truth, the Northeastern Army’s physical conditioning had always crushed the Japanese.

The Japanese of the twenty-first century might look much like us, but anyone who truly saw Japanese soldiers in 1938 would understand that “little devils” was not merely an insult; it was a fact. The average Japanese soldier stood only a little over five feet tall. In the later years of the war, some were reportedly no more than four and a half feet, or even shorter. In terms of physical constitution, they could only bully Chinese soldiers who had long been underfed. Against any other great power, they would have been crushed just as thoroughly.

For some time, ruffians had often caused trouble in the French Concession. The Third Republic’s sailors would routinely chase a group of them down, beat them up, and then deliver them to the Japanese officials in the concession—who could even extort a sum of money from the victims afterward. In the eyes of Europeans, the Japanese were in fact much like us. Japan did not truly “stand up” until after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The later generations’ widely circulated “borrowed seed” theory was not necessarily without merit. Without genetic changes, raising the average height of an entire population was practically a fantasy. As for the claim that drinking milk could make people taller, that was nothing more than advertising by the dairy industry. Its effect was about the same as cooking rice porridge in an iron pot—at least as far as height was concerned.

On October 10, the Military Affairs Commission unexpectedly broke with tradition and held a celebration in Jiangcheng. During the event, the Japanese Army Air Force attempted to cause trouble, only to be ruthlessly suppressed by the Allied China Air Force. The nation’s leaders went even further, declaring that a counteroffensive would begin from Jiangcheng. For a time, the entire country was in an uproar, and many people truly believed that the Nationalist Army was about to launch a counterattack.

But Wang Yue knew that everything had already entered its countdown. The so-called counteroffensive was merely intended to buy time for the retreat. After all, a million Nationalist soldiers had been deployed around Jiangcheng. They represented the last reserves of the nation’s blood and strength. If they could be withdrawn, then they had to be withdrawn. The war was far from over.

Since that was the case, he had to pick up the pace as well. Recruiting personnel, gathering supplies, eliminating traitors, secretly capturing Japanese spies—all of it had to be accelerated. The final two tasks were especially urgent. He could not openly cause trouble, but he could certainly lead people in creating trouble quietly and discreetly. In preparation for the Japanese occupation, those people had stockpiled enormous quantities of supplies. He felt not the slightest psychological burden about taking them. Even if he could not completely strip the city bare, he could at least make things difficult for the Japanese. The more he seized, the greater the pressure on Japanese logistics would become.