No one can tell how many arrows and winds and frosts the heavy city walls of Nanjing have endured since they were built.
But how can the era of cold weapons be the same as the era of hot weapons? The bombs dropped by Japanese aircraft caused unprecedented damage to the city wall.
A huge column of smoke rose into the sky, as if the bricks and stones of the city wall were burning.
As a result, people in Nanjing who saw the Japanese bombing ignored the fact that the Japanese dropped an aerial bomb on the water tower.
Of course, the focus of people's attention is on the city gates and walls, because there is the hope of protecting Nanjing.
At this time, the water tower was filled with choking smoke.
The Japanese aerial bomb only blew up a corner of the water tower, and the dust and gravel poured down from the hole in the middle of the floor.
When the diffuse dust gradually fell, a person could be faintly seen lying on his stomach and hanging below the hole.
After a while, the dust naturally decreased a lot, and the man moved, so he moved twice like a swing, but the belt hanging him was shorter, so it was not violent.
Am I still alive? The man grinned and felt the pain on his body. It was Shang Zhen.
When Shang Zhen had this first thought, he woke up, and then he felt a sharp pain from his left shoulder to his right hip.
Shang Zhen, who was in mid-air, struggled to turn his head and raise his head. Only then did he realize how lucky he was.
It turned out that when he jumped down from the hole, he really did not collide with the remaining steel bars on the hole. At the same time, when he fell, who would have thought that the gun belt of the box gun slung on his body was actually Hanging on the broken part of a steel bar.
With the help of his hand grabbing the steel bar when he fell, and the hook of the box of gun belt, he finally did not fall straight to the ground from the hole.
Although he became a half-assed person, he didn't suffer any serious injuries after all.
"Bah", Shang Zhen felt the discomfort in his mouth and wanted to spit something out.
It's just that what he spat out was dust instead of spit. It must have been that he didn't close his mouth when he yelled, and then the dust poured in.
Since the gun of his cannon was slung across his body, the pain from the gun belt was still there.
While Shang Zhen was glad that he had escaped with his life, he suddenly thought of another problem. They said that violent explosions can cause internal injuries, so he didn't know what happened to him.
He tried to breathe and felt the blood surge in his body.
If you don't die, you will have a good life, and it will be in vain to think too much.
Shang Zhen thought about it, and stretched out his right hand to grab the gun belt hanging on the steel bar. Then he passed his left hand up. By clinging to the gun belt, Shang Zhen finally got out of the gun belt again. Climbed up the hole.
When he climbed all the way up to the floor, he lay down flat on his back.
After a disaster, you always need to take a breath before resuming your life.
There was still dust floating above, but the visibility was improved, and now Shang Zhen saw the sky filled with gunpowder smoke at the corner of the house.
The situation was so critical at that time that Shang Zhen didn't know where the Japanese aerial bomb had hit, but a corner of the building above him had collapsed. Otherwise, how could he see the sky?
Ancient Chinese people often said that things are the same but people are not. But for Shang Zhen, people are still the same but things have changed beyond recognition, and this is war.
Shang Zhen checked himself carefully and found that his eyesight was good and his ears could hear. Although the place where he was strangled was painful, he didn't feel anything too uncomfortable in his body.
So he sat up, and finally climbed up the ladder that was deformed by the explosion, and returned to the original position.
Just when he was about to hide there, he heard another loud "boom" in front of him.
This explosion was so frightening that Shang Zhen's body moved. When he looked forward, he saw another piece of bricks flying at the Guanghua Gate ahead.
This time it was heavy artillery, Shang thought after being shocked.
Although Shang Zhen is a veteran, he has never participated in that kind of extremely cruel positional warfare. Most of the Japanese artillery he has seen refers to infantry artillery and mountain artillery, such as the Japanese military's aerial bombs and naval artillery in the Songhu Battle. He had never experienced any indiscriminate bombing of the defenders.
But since he is a veteran, although he has not experienced it, it does not mean that he has not heard of it. Now that he saw the explosions ahead, he felt that the caliber of the artillery used by the Japanese army this time should be at least 105mm or 150mm.
The Japanese army used such heavy artillery. Presumably they knew the thickness of the Nanjing city wall. Could it be that they wanted to blow up the Guanghua Gate?
While Shang Zhen was thinking, the sound of gunfire in front of him could not be stopped. The smoke and dust from the plane bombing had not yet dissipated, and new columns of smoke were rising into the sky.
It is difficult to imagine how the defenders could survive such fierce Japanese artillery fire.
Shang Zhen had not experienced the specific situation of this kind of positional warfare, but he could also guess that most of the casualties of the Chinese army should be caused by enemy artillery fire.
The shelling finally stopped half an hour later.
After the artillery bombardment of the infantry and the infantry, Shang Zhen knew that the Japanese army was about to launch an attack on Guanghuamen.
Sure enough, more than half an hour later, Shang Zhen heard gunfire from ahead, and in his telescope, the figures of Chinese officers and soldiers guarding the city also appeared.
But now Shang Zhen can only watch the battle quietly.
Although now behind the city wall is the city of Nanjing and the Chinese people in the city.
But if Shang Zhen is asked to defend his position, he won't go if he can.
He felt that his way of fighting the Japanese army was more about ambush and sneak attack on the Japanese army, rather than shouldering the Japanese attack from the front.
Because he couldn't do it himself, he admired the defenders very much.
Soon he saw through the telescope that the wounded were being carried off the city wall one after another.
There were bursts of gunfire, and I thought the fighting there was particularly intense.
Shang Zhen kept observing there until noon.
He was not in a good mood, just because others were carrying the Japanese attack at the front, but he became a bystander.
But this situation changed again at noon. Shang Zhen was surprised to find that the defenders suddenly pushed the gasoline barrels onto the city wall.
What are they doing pushing gasoline barrels against that city wall?
Shang Zhen felt confused, and he saw the way the officers and soldiers were lifting, pushing or carrying the gasoline barrels. It was obvious that there was gasoline in the barrels.
How can we get gasoline to the position at this time? If the Japanese army fires a shot, the lethality of the explosion will naturally be doubled.
It was impossible for the defenders not to know this extremely simple common sense. Because of his surprise, Shang Zhen used a telescope to watch carefully, and then he discovered that the officers and soldiers tilted the gasoline barrels toward the city.
Since the water tower was higher than the city wall, Shang Zhen was able to see clearly the actions of the defenders.
Just why do they do this? Shang Zhen could only imagine and speculate.
But before Shang Zhen could figure it out, he saw the officers and soldiers reported by Guanghua Gate suddenly huffing and retreating.
Could it be that the Japanese army had already reached the city, so the defenders poured gasoline on it and set it on fire?
Don't tell me, Shang Zhen immediately saw flames rising under the city wall, at the entrance of Guanghua Gate.
Guanghuamen was not completely sealed by the defenders. They built a large fortress there. As for how many Japanese tank guns the fortress received, Shang Zhen did not know.
Shang Zhen was just thinking about the battle situation when he suddenly heard the loud cheers of the officers and soldiers coming from the front.
It was only then that he suddenly realized that those officers and soldiers were not pouring gasoline on the Japanese troops attacking the city, but were pouring the gasoline into the entrance of Guanghua Gate below.
As for why you did this, do you still need to ask? Some Japanese troops must have rushed into the doorway. Their defenders couldn't reach the Japanese troops, so they simply poured gasoline on them and set them on fire.
Oops, this is a really good move. Zhang Zhen seemed to see Japanese soldiers rolling and shouting under the doorway under the burning of gasoline.
