Chapter Ninety-Three: The Ambush at Twin Dragon Valley, Part Three

Under such a storm of fire, the two companies that had advanced earlier were like little boats struggling through a roaring sea: one slight misstep and they would overturn, and once they were swallowed whole, not even a splash would be left behind.

With that kind of fire bearing down on them first, the outcome was self-evident. The two companies were wiped out at the very beginning.

The other Japanese soldiers, meanwhile, had no room at all to counterattack, and could scarcely even lift their heads.

If such a scene were seen by any other unit, it would surely make jaws drop all over the ground.

Two battalions actually holding down an entire Japanese regiment? Was this some kind of joke?

One had to remember that a Japanese infantry regiment was made up of four infantry battalions, numbering roughly four thousand men in all. On top of that came regimental artillery support, with grenade launchers, mortars, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, everything one could imagine.

And yet now, they were being pinned so completely by just two infantry battalions that they could not even mount a counterattack. It was simply beyond belief.

Isa Kazuo crouched behind a rock, his whole body curled in on itself, not even daring to peek out.

Listening carefully, he could clearly hear that the enemy now had no fewer than several dozen machine guns firing, among them more than a dozen heavy machine guns.

This terrified him.

"Damn it! What the hell is going on? Could it be that what ambushed us was not a small force at all, but an entire Chinese division?" Isa Kazuo cursed bitterly.

Even as he spoke, a burst of bullets raked past, smashing into the rock beside him and sending a spray of tiny stone fragments flying. They struck his face with painful force.

The rock that had been swept by machine-gun fire was pitted with dense clusters of bullet marks, and the sight of them made Isa Kazuo’s scalp prickle.

As a veteran with ample combat experience, he knew very well what this meant. It meant that the rate of fire of those machine guns had reached a horrifying level.

From the sound alone, Isa Kazuo could be certain that these were bullets fired from Maxim heavy machine guns.

And by rough estimate alone, there were more than a dozen such heavy machine guns!

Under this kind of fire, the firepower advantage his Seventh Regiment had once been so proud of vanished in an instant.

It had even come to the point where a counterattack was now exceedingly difficult.

Hiding behind the rock, Isa Kazuo tried to get a look at the situation across from him. But the moment he poked his head out, a string of bullets swept toward him, forcing him to duck back at once.

Even so, one round skimmed over his scalp. The bullet, flying at such high speed, even singed his hair.

A faint smell of scorched hair drifted into his nose.

"Damn it! Where on earth did the Chinese army get such excellent equipment? How can their firepower be this fierce?" Isa Kazuo cried out in grief and fury.

He had come full of vigor and confidence, firmly believing that by launching a secret attack on Dingyuan, he could seize the county seat in one blow. He had never imagined that he would be ambushed in Double Dragon Valley.

And the force ambushing them was nothing more than two battalions. What made Isa Kazuo even more unable to accept it was that those two battalions had actually pinned down the entire Seventh Regiment.

It was simply unbearable.

But even so, what could he do about it?

Isa Kazuo had no answer. However unbearable it might be, he had no trump card capable of changing the course of the battle.

This situation left him feeling suffocated with frustration.

To think that a mere two battalions could suppress an entire regiment. If word of this got out, his Seventh Regiment would surely become the laughingstock of the entire Empire of Japan.

At last, Isa Kazuo was experiencing the same helplessness the Chinese troops had once felt when facing the fierce firepower of the Japanese army.

Thunk-thunk-thunk...

Mortars, grenade launchers, and infantry guns continued to pound the Japanese positions.

Rat-a-tat-tat...

Czech light machine guns and Maxim heavy machine guns kept pouring fire into the Japanese ranks. The terrifying barrage swept across the field, and wherever it went, the little devils fell in great swathes, like wild grass cut down by a scythe.

Isa Kazuo felt ice-cold all through.

From the defenders’ counterattack at the beginning to the Japanese being completely suppressed now, less than twenty minutes had passed.

Yet in those twenty minutes, the Japanese had suffered nearly a battalion’s worth of casualties.

The two companies in the assault had been annihilated at the outset, while most of the rest had been killed by artillery and machine-gun fire.

Faced with such losses, Isa Kazuo’s heart had already sunk to the bottom.

But he knew this was only the beginning.

If things continued in this direction, as time went on, the casualties in his Seventh Regiment would likely rise sharply, and there might even be... the danger of total annihilation.

At the thought of this, Isa Kazuo was suddenly jolted.

Total annihilation...

In the organization of the Japanese army, that had never happened before.

Aside from the 115th Regiment, which had been destroyed on the Nanjing battlefield by that Chinese named Chen Qingzhi, there had been no other regiment completely wiped out.

If his Seventh Regiment were to follow in the footsteps of the 115th Regiment, then the name Isa Kazuo would likely be nailed forever to the empire’s pillar of shame.

"No. I absolutely will not allow that to happen!" Isa Kazuo roared. "The Empire of Japan is invincible. My Seventh Regiment is a fierce fighting force. How could we possibly follow in the footsteps of the 115th Regiment? Yazaki Setsuzo was nothing but a fool! It was his stupidity that brought about the complete destruction of the 115th Regiment. As for me... I will never allow such a thing to happen!"

"Never allow it!" Isa Kazuo’s eyes were bloodshot as he shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Regimental commander, what’s wrong with you?" The battalion commander beside him, noticing Isa Kazuo’s strange state, could not help asking loudly.

"How many of my Seventh Regiment are still fit to fight? Gather them all and attack the Chinese army. Our Seventh Regiment must not be destroyed here! Absolutely not!" Isa Kazuo said coldly. "Go at once and assemble the troops. Organize them. Counterattack the Chinese army!"

"But..." Hearing Isa Kazuo’s words, the battalion commander looked troubled. "But the Chinese firepower is so fierce right now. If we attack rashly, our troops will suffer heavy losses, and there’s a very real chance we won’t achieve anything at all."

"We must counterattack!" Isa Kazuo said. "There are no cowards in the Empire of Japan. Every soldier, including myself, is already prepared to give our lives for the empire and for His Majesty the Emperor!"

"Go at once and prepare!" Isa Kazuo almost roared the words out.

At the thought that his Seventh Regiment might be annihilated here, and that he himself would become a stain on the empire’s honor, he could not help trembling all over.

He absolutely would not allow that to happen.