Chapter 23 gas bomb

Just like the fire bull formation, the Japanese army released a large number of poison gas bombs before the infantry charged.Especially the Japanese army in the northwest, because they are on the upwind, so they are not afraid that the poisonous gas will blow on his own head. After this kind of gas bomb explodes, it emits a mustard smell. At first glance, it smells like peppers being fried in the kitchen.The equipment of the Chinese army is backward, and gas masks cannot be popularized among the front-line combat troops at all. The indigenous method is to carry a towel with you, put some soap and wine on it, and cover your face.If you don't even have soap and wine, just pull out a piece of lint from the cotton uniform, sprinkle your own piss on it, and stuff it in your nose and mouth.

The Japanese army not only used poison gas bombs in Changde, but also conducted bacterial warfare. In 1941, Mr. Deng Yiwei, Director of the Health Department of Hunan Province, as a special commissioner for epidemic prevention, led the epidemic prevention personnel to Changde to cooperate in the prevention and control of the plague brought by the Japanese army's poisoning.According to Mr. Deng's recollection, at around 6:00 a.m. on September 16th in the lunar calendar that year, the sky had just dawned and dense fog filled the air, and an air raid siren was issued in downtown Changde.Immediately, a giant Japanese plane flew low from east to west, circled over Changde City for three weeks, and then turned to the urban area from outside the west gate.When it turned and flew low, it did not drop bombs, but dropped a large amount of grain, wheat, and beans in Ji'e Lane, Guanmiao Street, Court Street, Gaoshan Lane, Wupu Street outside the East Gate, and Shuifu Temple in the city. , sorghum and rotten cotton, rags, straw and other things.

In the five or six days after the Japanese planes dropped grains, wheat, etc., dead rats were often found on the streets of Changde City.Some sick rats crawled slowly on the street and were trampled to death by pedestrians. People talked about it and thought it was strange, but no one sent the dead rats to the hospital for examination, and the local authorities did not pay attention. On November 12, Cai Taoer, a 12-year-old girl, was carried by her mother to the emergency department of Guangde Hospital in Changde.Tao'er's mother said that her family lived in Guanmiao Street in the city. Tao'er had dinner the night before, and at around 9 o'clock in the evening, she suddenly felt chills and shivered.Dr. Tan Xuehua took the blood of the sick child and the lymph node fluid of the groin, and stained it on the glass stain for inspection. He found a few bacilli with darker staining at the two poles, and the initial diagnosis was plague.Immediately, Tao'er was admitted to the hospital and treated in isolation. That night, the patient's condition became more serious, and various rescue efforts failed, and she died on the morning of the 13th.

After Cai Taoer, many cases occurred in Guanmiao Street and Ji'e Lane, and they often died quickly without waiting for treatment.The number of infected people is increasing day by day, with an average of more than 10 people per day, and one person is sick, affecting the whole family.According to later reports, only two of Cai Tao'er's family died.The epidemic spread severely, and the citizens became pale when they talked about it. After receiving the Changde epidemic telegram from the provincial government, the Hunan Provincial Health Department of the Kuomintang believed that it was the result of the Japanese army's bacterial warfare. Therefore, it urgently called the Chongqing Nationalist Government for instructions on how to deal with it.The general idea of ​​the reply is that the epidemic situation must not be falsely reported, and it is related to international reputation.Later, knowing that the plague patient had been found, he began to take it seriously and sent a medical epidemic prevention team to Changde.

After arriving in Changzhou, the provincial medical and epidemic prevention team led by Mr. Deng and the head nurse Lin Huiqing, composed of more than 50 students from the medical vocational school, reported to the agency and discussed the epidemic prevention measures.First, set up isolation hospitals. The isolation hospital was located in the Han family's big house about two miles outside the east gate. More than 10 households were relocated and their houses were temporarily rebuilt.A trench one foot five feet deep and one foot two feet wide was dug around the house, which was poured with water to isolate it from the outside world and prevent rats from escaping.A movable wooden bridge was erected on the ditch for access at any time.

The crematorium was set outside the west gate, and more than 360 corpses were cremated.At that time, the masses were very resistant to cremation, and the anti-epidemic team forced it to be carried out, and the buried infected corpses were also dug up and cremated, which caused panic among the people.Some people are afraid of cremation, so they often do not report the epidemic when they are sick, or smuggle them out of the city at night for burial.An old man in his 80s died of illness in the big house of the Chen family outside the east gate. The family members refused to be cremated, so they secretly buried them in their own vegetable garden in the middle of the night. As a result, a tragedy happened. One gets sick, one gets sick and one dies.After the entire family died, the epidemic prevention team found out the reason. After investigation, the soil and water sources of his house were all polluted, and it gradually disappeared after extensive disinfection.

In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, checkpoints have been set up at the six city gates of Changde City, and epidemic prevention personnel will give vaccinations to people entering and leaving the city.But the common people don't understand and worry a lot.Some sneaked out over the city wall to avoid injection, and climbed the city wall again in the middle of the night.Some spend money to buy other people's injection certificates as false certificates.Before the Lunar New Year, a cloth dealer surnamed Li who lived in Mazongling, Taoyuan County went to Changde to sell cloth and lived in a hotel.He didn't want to get vaccinated, but bought an injection certificate so that he could leave the country.Suddenly one day he had a headache and fever, fearing that the hotel would find him and send him to an isolation hospital, he hired a boat overnight to sneak home and died on the third day.His family's two sons, daughter-in-law and a young son died of the same disease one after another.It doesn't count that his family died, and it spread to the neighbors, and another fourteen or five people died.The man's father-in-law was a wizard, and after hearing the news, he came to set up an altar to pray for him. Afterwards, he could not escape bad luck, and died of the plague.For a while, Mazong Ridge was full of ghosts and shadows, and it became a mountain of death.

The medical team sent from Chongqing was led by Chen Wengui, a professor of bacteriology in the training class of the Military Medical Administration, and arrived in Changde on November 17.Chen Wengui and Mr. Deng were classmates. After hearing the report, he believed that the plague was very likely based on the epidemic situation and evidence.However, when the government considers whether the Yersinia pestis was actually dropped by an enemy plane, an autopsy is still needed. Only after the autopsy has obtained definite proof can it be confirmed, so as to convince the scientific community at home and abroad.So Mr. Deng mobilized people to try to find a dead body for autopsy in order to confirm the Japanese army's crime of germ warfare.

It happened that on the evening of November 20, epidemic prevention personnel stopped a coffin outside the east gate of Changde that was being carried to the suburbs for burial.The deceased, Gong Desheng, was a tailor who lived in the city. He died of illness that morning. His family members were afraid of being cremated, so they secretly carried him to the suburbs for burial.After stopping the coffin, the anti-epidemic personnel ordered it to be carried to the open space outside the isolation hospital and sent to guard it.The next day, Professor Chen and Mr. Deng jointly dissected it.They stained slides on the spot with the blood from the deceased's heart and the juices taken from the lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and groin lymph glands, and injected the blood and organ juices into the organs of 4 guinea pigs and 2 rabbits. In the abdominal cavity, procedures such as bacterial culture were also performed.In the face of factual evidence, Professor Chen confirmed that the epidemic in Changde was caused by Yersinia pestis, and concluded that the plague was caused by items dropped by Japanese planes.

Mr. Deng, who is more than seventy years old, was extremely indignant when talking about the tragic scene in Changde, but in addition to his indignation, he finally said with regret: "I can't understand why the Kuomintang government did not send a report to the government after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. The International Tribunal for the Far East formally lodged a complaint? When the diplomatic relations between China and Japan were normalized, the Chinese government did not request compensation from the Japanese government. Why?!" In fact, young people in their 30s like the author only rely on the reminders of old people like Mr. Deng to get enlightened.I can't help but draw a giant question mark in the sky too:

Why? When I checked the materials of the Battle of Changde, I got a report "Summary of the Use of Poison Gas by the Japanese Army in the Battle of Changde", which said: In this battle of Changde, the enemy was brutal and inhumane, and the number of times poison gas was used was unprecedented since the Anti-Japanese War.Its overview is as follows: (A) The enemy has used poison a total of 74 times (if the number of times is unknown, it will be counted as one time). (B) The location where the hostiles used poison the most: (1) Changde City and its vicinity 35 times. (2) 8 times near Renheping. (3) 24 times in other places. (C) My most poisoned unit: (1) My 57th Division of the Changde garrison was poisoned 32 times. (2) My 13th division near Renheping was poisoned 7 times. (D) The enemy used poison the most in one day, on November 26, when they poisoned our Changde defenders 13 times. (5) One of the largest scales of enemy use of poison was on December 7 when the enemy at Renheping fired more than 500 poisonous bombs at our 13th master's family temple position with mountain artillery and mortars. (Si) Types of enemy poisons: (1) Lachrymatory 3 times. (2) Sneezing 5 times. (3) Asphyxia 1 time. (4) Erosive once. (5) Asphyxiating and erosive mixed users once. (6) Asphyxiating tear gas mixed user 1 time. (7) Mixed users of poisonous gas and smoke screen once. (8) 61 times with unknown poisonous gas.According to the reported poisoning symptoms, it seems that the sneezing arsenic gas is the most common. (G) Poison weapons used by the enemy: (1) Airplane poisoning once. (2) 14 times by mountain artillery and mortar shell launchers. (3) Throwing grenades twice. (4) Blowing and blowing poisonous smoke cans twice. (5) Unknown use of poisonous weapons 55 times. (Xin) Captured the evidence of the enemy's use of poison: (1) The original order of the enemy's mortar use of poison in Qianqi troops. (2) 37 cans of poisonous smoke. (3) 10 poison gas grenades. At the beginning, some officers and soldiers of the 57th Division had insufficient understanding of the lethality of gas bombs.Although some precautionary measures were taken, when the enemy used tear gas bombs with low toxicity, they thought that the gas bombs were nothing more than that.Later, the Japanese army saw that the defenders on the northwest front were extremely strong-willed and the defense line was not easy to break through, so they upgraded and released suffocating gas bombs, which poisoned many front-line soldiers of the national army. Seeing the serious damage caused by the gas bombs, Division Commander Yu Chengwan ordered all officers and soldiers of the division to carry anti-virus tools with them, whether they were at the front or in the city, to avoid accidents. During the street fighting, a poison gas bomb exploded at the entrance of the division headquarters. Yu Chengwan was caught off guard and moved a little slower. His face was infected by the poison gas, and even when he was squatting in a cell in Chongqing, there were still marks on his lips. In Chinese, poison and evil are connected together, there is evil first and then poison, so there is the word "malicious".I hope that human beings will be more kind and less evil, and the poison will be extinct.I think that is the meaning of the question mark that Mr. Deng Yiwei has kept in his heart so far.