Chapter 15
25th of January
The shooting was loud and confusing.
Takumi’s unit had met a group of peasants that carried old guns and opposed them in the mountains. As they were locals, they had known some secret passages or whatever and did therefore appear almost out of nowhere.
This had just happened. The soldiers left the truck, accompanied by some rough swearing from McFarne. He also issued some simple orders, as he had started to learn Japanese with Takumi’s help after the landing. The fight was not as it had been in Russia, for in Russia, their intelligence had been better and therefore they knew when they would be attacked. This time, however, there was no information about such ambushes.
Takumi threw himself onto the ground of the road, unlocking his gun and providing some covering fire for the rest of the soldiers.
The militia wasn’t organized very well. Had those attacks come all at once, they would have dealt some serious damage. But the assaults were only sporadic and easily dealt with. All they did was slowing them down. The battle lasted for about twenty minutes. The militia didn’t hold their stand much longer. The results were three wounded Japanese soldiers and some bullet-holes in the trucks.
According to High Command, they were on time and progressing well. Encouraged by the early successes in the coastal region of China, a motorized division of 16th Homengun was to perform what would later be called the “Wuhan Push”. The idea was to drive a wedge deep into the Chinese hinterlands. Takumi and the division in which he served were scheduled to reach Wuhan in early February, thus unifying with 16th Homengun and then leaving again, as they would clear out the south-west and 16th Homengun would move north.
In the north, a tank division had managed to get behind the Chinese while they were being split into several smaller encirclements. The division was to use its speed in order to gain control over the highly fortified mountains that once belonged to the communists before the Chinese could occupy them.
The stalemate in the north-east had been resolved by the 1st Hohei Gundan, a cavalry corps that had managed to surround the Chinese and caused lots of trouble in their lines.
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4th of February 1941
Haruji was stunned by the news from the front.
Not only did the IJA sweep mercilessly through the badly-armed defenders, but they did also suffer only a few casualties.
Peace in Asia became ever more likely, as the territory of one of the Chinese warlords had also been recognized as a legitimate state and was accepted into the Allies four days ago.
He felt that, currently, things were going quite well for the Empire. It was obviously winning the war in China and the rare material crisis had also been solved successfully because of those conquests.
The newspaper did always print old maps of the frontline in order to avoid revealing too much about the happenings in the war, as there might always be spies reading, too.
Today’s map was dated for the 1st of February, the day after the successful conquest of Wuhan. It seemed as if the other divisions had been held back by Chinese forces or other problems, but the division in Wuhan was now under threat of being cut off.
To be honest, today was a day on which neither Haruji nor any other civilian did really care about the war.
Today was the day of the second elections since the establishment of democracy in Japan.
It was the second opportunity for the people to raise its voice. Although the market-liberal Minsei Party became the strongest power in the parliament, they could not rule on their own and did therefore have to form a coalition-government with the social-conservatist party.
The recent successes in the war had brought a lot of popularity to the old government and the population apparently forgot about all its problems and earlier mistakes. The new government immediately found itself challenged by having to fight a global conflict.
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6th of February 1941
“Faster! Faster! Press the attack, damnit!” Takumi shouted.
“They are retreating and we cannot afford waiting any longer! There’s Japanese lives to be saved!”
“We’re on the move already, but we’ll need time to build up some bridges of that river ahead of us!” exclaimed an engineer- sergeant nearby. He didn’t belong to Takumi’s unit and he couldn’t see his name-sign, but their advance had been chaotic after the conquest of Nanhung two days ago.
Takumi cursed, but knew the man was right.
Without the bridges, the trucks and the heavy guns would sink into the ground below the surface of the crossing, thus ripping the divisin of its most important parts and making them easy prey for the Chinese.
Wuhan had been cut off and, with no airfield in the town, it had become impossible to supply the division trapped within.
Therefore, 1st Konoe Gundan was sent out to relieve the siege. The airforce was already flying bombing runs on the attackers day and night, Takumi could hear the sound of bombs and saw large piles of smoke rising at the horizon. There must be Wuhan, he thought.
Obviously, the move that was supposed to finally decide the war had already become its greatest disaster.
As they crossed the river at night, it was already too late.
Wuhan had been taken by the Chinese. The town and its surroundings had become a huge graveyard with 5,000 Japanese killed or missed and about 7,000 dead Chinese attackers. The victims of the Japanese bombardments are unknown.
The rest of the division, about another 5,000 men, surrendered to the Chinese. The public was shocked by the loss of a whole motorized division. High Command hadn’t expected the Chinese Army to remove so many units from the northern front, so that the divisions that followed the push would have to halt for so long.
In the next few days, the Yunnan-warlord and Greece joined the Allies.
Also, the last Chinese port had recently been occupied by Japanese soldiers. Thus, no reinforcements or goods from the outside could reach China any more, as it was completely surrounded by enemies.
Takumi did barely care for those news, as good as they might be. Immediately after its fall, Wuhan was once more under Japanese attack. The battle raged for four days now, and the end had yet to come. Due to massive air-superiority, the IJA made significant gains, but the Chinese had obtained the defensive positions and heavy weapons of the old Japanese defenders.
The fighting was tough and tore at their nerves. McFarne was continuously swearing, by now partly in Japanese and English. Takumi didn’t answer letters from Misaki, he only wrote her that he was alive and well and missing her. He didn’t find the power for more, and he didn’t want to think about how he missed her.
Wuhan finally fell on the 14th of February. The raging battles had made the town a field of corpses and ruins. Still, Takumi pushed his men onward to follow the last Chinese defenders in order to eliminate the last elements of the Chinese Army in the region.
By now, the last elements of the 16th Homengun had also arrived in town.
The British and the French started large campaigns in the south on the 21st of February. Thus, the war in the south was over.
The sudden expansion was probably triggered by the annexation of Luxembourg.
The German Reich advanced slowly yet steadily into Western Europe. The neutral BeNeLux-states were under attack of the Wehrmacht since the 9th of January, and Luxembourg was the first to fall.
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24th of February 1941
What followed was occupying village after village in search of some resistance.
Instead, they found villages filled with women, children and old people. This was definitely a consequence of the numerous wars that China had fought during the last years.
Wives without husbands, children without fathers.
One day, as the unit was resting in a village, the soldiers were being watched by several young children. Although they suffered starvation and were probably always told that the Japanese are their worst enemies, they didn’t behave any different than as if the foreign soldiers were friends coming over for tea. The adults were glaring at the soldiers, yet the children didn’t seem to mind their presence.
They only shrieked back as McFarne brought a huge lunch-package from one of the trucks and wanted to give it to them. As he approached them with the package, they turned and ran, hiding behind houses or amidst carts and crates. Takumi smiled and went to McFarne.
Together, they opened the package and showed its contents to the children. There was water, bread cooked vegetables and several other goods, all packed in a way that they didn’t go bad.
It took some time, but, eventually, one of the children found the courage to approach them and take some bread from Takumi’s hands.
The division’s war-photographer did immediately take a picture of this moment, which would probably be used for propaganda later on, but Takumi didn’t care about this.
After all this bloodshed, he had finally the feeling of doing something good again.
The last battle of the war that deserved this term was fought in the north from the 24th to the 28th of February, leading to the encirclement of the last few Chinese defenders in the north.
It was an easy battle, as the defenders were already starved out and lacked supplies. Still, the sheer amount of space that was taken over by the “Battle of the Northern Encirclements” made it last four days.
On the 3rd of March, the United Kingdom announced a new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, which was dryly commented by McFarne who said “Englishman is Englishman. One’s like the other. They lack the fire in their eyes. We’d need us some Scottish Prime Minister. Then we’d clean the floor in the Reichstag with Hitler’s moustache in no time, I tell ya!”
It still took almost a week for the Chinese to accept their absolute defeat.
On the 9th of March, the Republic of China surrendered without conditions to the Empire of Japan.
This marked the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War as well as the end of the war in Asia.
The few uprisings were quickly dealt with.
What followed was the establishment of a Chinese state under Japanese influence and protection. The Empire was afraid that the Chinese might once more rise up against them, and so they demanded at least an indirect control over China.
It was obvious that they would be moved to Europe during the next few months, but first, Takumi had taken a leave so that he could marry the woman he loved.
"Against Bolshevism and the Japanese menace! For business and profits!"
