Chapter 132: The Japanese Army Dispatches an Elite Unit

  After 10 o'clock in the evening, Huitong Bridge became lively.

  Local officials and wealthy merchants from Ruili, Mangshi, Longling and other places, with their families in tow, drove all sorts of vehicles to the banks of the Nujiang River in a state of panic.

  From these people's mouths, the Bridge Guard Special Agent learned that on the 28th, the Japanese 56th Division suddenly appeared in Laohekou like a heavenly army and launched a surprise attack on the 29th Division of the Expeditionary Force's 66th Army stationed in Laohekou. The Japanese took control of Laohekou in just a few hours.

  It happened to be Sunday, the Japanese army launched a strong attack on the expeditionary force and the British army in various battlefields in Burma. The situation that had been stalemate for nearly a month suddenly turned around in favor of the Japanese army on this day. The expeditionary force, which had penetrated deep into the interior of Burma, learned that Laoshan had lost its position, and the Kunming-Burma Highway was completely cut off. From the highest commander to ordinary soldiers, everyone panicked.

  Dong Li Mao stood on the west bank of the Huitong Bridge, watching the officials and their families fleeing in a panic. He couldn't help but feel amused, thinking that no matter what dynasty it was, officials always seemed to know things that ordinary people didn't, especially at critical moments, giving them more opportunities than common folk, including the chance to escape.

  Around midnight, a convoy of American armored vehicles arrived, and the soldiers of the Special Forces unit intercepted them for a routine inspection. However, they were suddenly yelled at by a lieutenant colonel who got out of one of the vehicles.

  "Blinded by dog's eyes! Do you know who is sitting in the car? Don't you hurry up and give way!"

  Dong Li Mao heard the deputy officer scolding his brother, rushed forward, with his left hand grasping the loudly scolding deputy officer, and with his right fist hitting him in the face, then kicked him in the stomach, kicking the deputy officer to the ground.

  "You dare to play tricks in front of my brother? Believe it or not, I'll execute you on the spot!" Dong Li Mao said, pulling out his pistol, cocking it and aiming at the deputy officer.

  "Halt!" Another colonel got off the car and walked to Dong Li Mao's side, saying: "This is Deputy Commander Zhang Jun's aide-de-camp. You, a mere captain battalion commander, dare to be rude to your superior officer?"

  "I don't care what kind of officer he is! He's a deserter, that's all I know! No commanding officer!" Dong Limao pointed his gun at the colonel: "You're also a deserter!"

  The colonel was stunned, and he was indeed intimidated by Dong Li Mao's aura. He stuttered: "This... is the 66th Army... the armored vehicle team of the army commander... how dare you be so presumptuous..."

  "Nonsense! How could General Zhang of the 66th Army be a deserter? You dare to spread rumors and confuse people, I'll shoot you dead right now!" Dong Li Mao understood what was going on in his heart, but he didn't want his subordinates to know that the general had escaped, so he deliberately said this.

  The deputy officer who was kicked down by Dong Li Mao quickly got up, leaned his head close to Dong Li Mao's ear and whispered: "Brother, the armored vehicle is indeed Zhang Junzhang of the 66th Army, you'd better not block it, this is for your own good."

  Dong Li Mao sneered and then whispered to the deputy officer, "Tell that soft-boiled egg of a military commander that I, Dong Jia Cheng, despise him! It's best if I don't see him again!"

  "You... you are Dong Jiacheng..." The deputy officer heard this name and looked up and down at Dong Li Mao with some disbelief.

  "My great name, people like you are not qualified to call, get out of here quickly!" Dong Li Mao shouted angrily.

  The deputy officer quickly turned around and ran towards the armored vehicle.

  Dong Li Mao spat on the ground: "The army commander leads the way in being corrupt, what kind of **broken army** is this!" He waved his hand, letting the special forces soldiers make way for the armored vehicle to pass.

  The armored vehicle that the deputy officer was sitting in drove up to Dong Li Mao's side, and when it did, a general poked his head out and glared at Dong Li Mao fiercely, as if the deputy officer had relayed Dong Li Mao's words to him, making him extremely angry and wanting to see what kind of person dared to block his way.

  Dong Li Mao stretched out his right hand, raised his middle finger, and made a gesture to the general who had poked his head out, which was considered a salute.

  When the army is defeated, it's like a mountain collapse. After the Japanese 56th Division easily captured Xiaguan, they divided their troops into two routes. One route was led by General Tohira himself, attacking Myitkyina, the largest city in Myanmar closest to the Chinese border, which was also the last city that had not been breached after Myanmar's fall. The other route was led by Lieutenant General Sakata, advancing along the Yunnan-Myanmar Highway into Chinese territory, and unexpectedly, they advanced almost without firing a shot, unimpeded.

  The Burma Road was thrown into unprecedented chaos, with the Burmese expeditionary forces retreating from the front line in droves, rushing to flee back. The local government agencies and civilians, as well as Burmese Chinese and refugees, were hastily evacuated, carrying the elderly and young children, mixed among the soldiers. These military and civilian personnel formed a massive escape army. The highway was packed with countless cars, ox carts, horse-drawn carriages, and hand-pulled carts, filling the road to capacity. The flow of people and vehicles merged together, advancing in one direction - towards the Huitong Bridge connecting the east and west banks of the Nujiang River.

  In order to reduce the flow of goods and not let the US aid materials be left for the Japanese army, the Expeditionary Force Headquarters ordered the destruction of the materials that could not be transported along the way. Flames rose high on both sides of the highway, and the sound of explosions was endless near and far.

  After Matsushita Nagayoshi's vanguard was defeated, the Japanese army sent out a special action dare-to-die corps to capture the strategically important Huitong Bridge. Disguised as defeated soldiers and fleeing civilians, they rushed towards Huitong Bridge, preparing to seize the bridge.

  It took some effort to get here, so let me explain the situation of the Japanese 56th Division and the direction of General Sakaguchi's attack.

  The 56th Division of the Japanese Army, also known as "Honshu Troops", was formed mainly by workers from shipyards in Honshu, Japan. These soldiers were not only culturally disciplined but also exceptionally strong-willed and had a high combat effectiveness, ranking among the top in the entire Japanese army. The 56th Division was actually an expansion of the original Kwantung Army's First Division, with most of its officers and men participating in the infamous "9/18 Incident" and also taking part in the "Nanjing Massacre", making them a truly brutal force. They marched long distances, avoiding the main forces and scouts of the expeditionary army, suddenly appearing at the rear of the expeditionary army's flank, firing the first shot that led to the defeat of the expeditionary army in northern Burma.

  The first division commander of this unit was named Watanabe Masao, who led the entire division to break through and occupy Lang Son. The last division commander was named Matsuyama Yoshizo.

  Lieutenant General Sakaguchi led the vanguard of over 3,000 troops, crossed the Sino-Burmese border on May 2, 1942, and captured Tengchong with only ten tanks as cover; occupied Zhetang and Mangshi on April 3; and entered Longling County on the afternoon of April 4.

  The flustered commander of the Sixth Army, Gan Lichu, ordered a company of tanks to be blown up to block the highway, using such a stupid method to try to stop the Japanese army's vanguard of over 3,000 troops. As a result, the Japanese army cleared away the destroyed tank roadblock in just over two hours.

  What a pity about that tank!

  The terrain of the Yunnan-Burma Highway was originally extremely treacherous and easy to defend but difficult to attack. Just by dispatching a division-sized force to hold a certain mountain pass, even if they couldn't stop the Japanese army's final assault, at least they could slow down the enemy's advance for several days or even tens of days, giving the retreating soldiers and civilians more precious time. However, unexpectedly, chaos erupted within the borders. As soon as people heard that the Japanese had crossed the border, they were frightened out of their wits, only caring about saving their own lives, with no one willing to take the initiative to fight the enemy, including those generals who were already scared to death before even seeing the enemy.

  The disorganized and scattered state of the expeditionary army made the Japanese, who were determined to fight to the death, breathe a sigh of relief.

  Along the Yingtou Town line, there were originally two divisions of the 66th Army of the Expeditionary Force, but they were driven more than 300 kilometers in four days by Sakaguchi's Japanese army of over 3,000 people.

  This feat can be considered a miraculous defeat in the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japan!

  The speed of the Japanese army's advance and its smooth progress not only exceeded the expectations of the Expeditionary Force Headquarters and Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing, but also far exceeded the estimates of Japanese commanders Watanabe Masaharu and Sakaguchi.

  It was laughable that just as the Japanese army's convoy entered the streets of Mengshi, the traffic police standing in the middle of the street were still energetically directing traffic. When this traffic policeman suddenly realized something was amiss, he quickly turned around and ran away!

  Victory emboldened the Japanese soldiers who were advancing like a hot knife through butter.

  Commander Sakaguchi, with renewed confidence, was determined to create a miracle that would take Japanese tanks into any possible area within China. He believed that no one could now stop his advance, and the only barrier in front of him was the world-famous Nujiang Canyon, as long as he took down the Huitong Bridge, everything would be possible!

  Sakaguchi then dispatched several hundred of his rapid response troops, disguised as defeated expeditionary soldiers and civilians, to seize the Hu Tong Bridge.

  Dong Li Mao's special agent team took on the arduous historical mission of preventing Lieutenant General Sakaguchi from driving tanks to any place in China that could be reached.

  However, Dong Li Mao really did not know how to identify the members of this rapid unit of the Japanese army, although he knew that there would be a team following in the footsteps of the "Chuan Shan Jia" action of the Longguang Wild Wolf Dare-to-Die Corps, coming to send them to their deaths, but he had no way to find these few hundred people among the tens of thousands of fleeing soldiers and civilians.

  So Dong Li Mao ordered the bridge guards to loudly question the crowd passing through the bridge, and those who could not understand the dialect would be pulled out by the guards for questioning. Among them, a small number were refugees from Myanmar, and Gu Hao played a crucial role in this, if it weren't for him, some of the refugees might have been unable to pass through the Huitong Bridge, or even mistakenly killed.

  In the tense atmosphere, Dong Li Mao saw off batch after batch of fleeing soldiers and civilians on the west bank of Huitong Bridge. Apart from finding the Japanese army's quick response team that wanted to capture Huitong Bridge, he had another thing that made him anxious - the person who took pictures for his great-grandfather had not appeared yet. This made him a bit worried, as it was a photo he had been expecting with his life. For this photo, he fell into the big explosion pit and crossed over to this era. Although he had adapted to this war-torn environment now, this photo was still indispensable. He would have to rely on this photo to return to his own reality world two years later; otherwise, he would really die on Songshan Mountain.

  Dong Li Mao stood on the west bank of Huitong Bridge, in front of a sandbag bunker, wearing his lieutenant uniform, shading his eyes from the glare with his right hand, looking up at the towering Songshan Mountain, thinking: Am I really going to follow in Taigong's footsteps and die here?

  "Dong Lianchang, how did you end up here?" A woman's exclamation reached Dong Limao's ears.