Chapter 15 Chapter Three

One morning in early spring, a train came from Zhengzhou. When the steam-breathing locomotive came to a slow stop at the bridgehead, a group of serious officials in yellow woolen coats got out of the carriage and went straight to the bridge for inspection.When Mr. Jiang got the news and hurried to the bridge, the crowd had already reached the center of the bridge and pointed.A thin-faced middle-aged officer stands motionless at the head of the independent bridge, and the strong river wind lifts his yellow wool cape from time to time, making his back look like a statue. Jiang Zaizhen recognized him as the awesome Generalissimo Jiang.

It turned out that this was Chiang Kai-shek's special trip to inspect the Yellow River Iron Bridge.Due to the secrecy in advance, many generals in the first war zone were kept in the dark. They followed closely behind the chairman, and they couldn't help but have wild imaginations about the chairman's coming.They speculated that the chairman's sudden arrival must have something to do with the situation in the northern battlefield, and perhaps also with the fate of the bridge under their feet.But the answer was not written on the leader's face, because in addition to the daunting stern expression, the chairman was as unpredictable as ever.

At this time, an unexpected enemy situation happened suddenly. A Japanese plane came out of the river. This low-flying enemy plane whizzed past the beam of the bridge. The huge airflow from the wings even swept a sentry into the river.Fortunately, this was a reconnaissance plane, and there were no air strikes or strafing bombs, which made the people on the bridge a false alarm.The crowd immediately surrounded the chairman and returned to the bridgehead.At the headquarters of the New Eighth Division, Jiang Zaizhen gave a brief report. The chairman of the committee did not give instructions. Instead, the chief of the general staff, He Yingqin, asked several questions about the activities of the enemy in Qiaobei, and the commander Jiang answered them one by one.Mr. He is from Guizhou. He recognized Mr. Jiang's authentic Guizhou accent, and when he learned that the New Eighth Division came from his hometown in Guizhou, his attitude immediately became friendly. Before leaving, he patted Mr. Jiang on the shoulder and said some words of encouragement.

Later, Chiang Kai-shek and his entourage came to the bridgehead on the south bank of the Yellow River, where there was a cast iron monument built in the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, engraved with the inscription: The Great Qing State Railway Corporation built it.The Beijing-Hanzhou Railway was assisted by Biguo Company.On the day of the completion of the work, the imperial court specially sent the crown prince Shaobao, the former Zuo servant of the Ministry of Industry Sheng Xuanhuai, Yipin Dingdai, and acting Zuocheng of the Ministry of Commerce Tang Shaoyi to the completion ceremony, and I would like to engrave it.It was October 16th in the thirty-first year of Guangxu.With a heavy expression on his face, Chiang Kai-shek stood in front of the iron monument for a short while, and then boarded the car and left.

Soon the base camp issued an order to blow up the bridge, and people's guesses were partially confirmed. The chairman really decided to give up the area north of the Yellow River. He came to bid farewell to this "No. 1 bridge in the world".A team of engineers placed a new type of "TNT" explosive on the pier. Because the pier was too strong, the first blast did not collapse.The engineers had no choice but to blast again before completely blowing up the Yellow River Iron Bridge.The New Eighth Division, which had no bridge to defend, was temporarily on standby. The division commander Jiang Zaizhen immediately left Jingshui Town, where he was stationed, and went to Wuhan to recuperate.

5 In the twenty-seventh year of the Republic of China (1938), just after the Qingming Festival in the lunar calendar, the eternal tranquility that enveloped Ximazhai in the Dabie Mountains was broken by a huge explosion.A shepherd boy saw with his own eyes a Japanese plane with plastered wings flying across the bright sky like a big black bird, and then crashing into a hill with its long tail.When the villagers who got the news rushed to the back mountain, the plane had already fallen to pieces, and debris of the plane, large and small, were scattered everywhere in the woods.The villagers found the bodies of the two drivers. They were all bloody and inhuman, but one of them had an iron chain firmly locked on his wrist, and an intact black leather bag was connected to the chain.

Surprised by the villagers, they were still excited. If the two Japanese didn't fall to their deaths, they should talk to everyone, such as why the plane fell from the sky?Where are they going?Why is that black leather bag locked on the wrist?and so on.A villager cut off an iron chain in public. When he opened the mysterious black leather bag, people couldn't help but be disappointed, because there was nothing in the bag except a few thin pieces of paper covered with Japanese characters that looked like earthworms. The news of the plane crashing into the mountain quickly spread to the Shanxia Township Office, and the head of the township personally drove into the mountain on a slider, and ordered the villagers to send all the dead and the spoils of war to the county.Ximazhai is a full day’s journey away from the county seat. It took the villagers a lot of effort to carry the dead man and an airplane tail out of the deep mountains and old forests. On the way, someone remembered the black leather bag, so they picked it up from the grass and handed it to the village. government.

Villagers receive a War of Resistance bonus. After the Japanese discovered that the plane was missing, they immediately sent reconnaissance planes to search everywhere, but they never found the whereabouts of the crashed plane.It wasn't until the 29th year of the Republic of China (1940) that the Japanese swept up the Dabie Mountains, and the wreckage of the plane missing for two years was found in Ximazhai because of the traitor's informant.The brutal Japanese carried out a bloody massacre of villagers and razed the village to the ground. The Wuhan base camp urgently sent experts to inspect the gift that fell from the sky. They were overjoyed to find that the Japanese plane that crashed unexpectedly turned out to be a special messenger plane.At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, radio communications were easily intercepted and deciphered, and generally important documents were often delivered by flying couriers. The Japanese who locked himself with his briefcase was a flying courier from Tokyo.At that time, the Battle of Xuzhou was still going on fiercely. The Tokyo base camp issued a top-secret order to the Chinese front.

The documents were rushed to Wuhan. The Chinese base camp is like a treasure.After analysis and identification by the intelligence agency, the document was confirmed to be true, and the possibility of the enemy sending false information was ruled out.Strategists agreed that this Tokyo order explained at least the following two problems: First, the Japanese army's front line was too long and its combat power was weak, so it was temporarily unable to launch a new offensive.The second is not to rule out the possibility of peace talks, which shows that there are still voices for peace talks in Japan.The latest move of the Japanese undoubtedly brought various variables to the fierce fighting in the Chinese battlefield, revealing some subtle signs of the war slowing down. The Chinese high-level leaders saw a glimmer of hope for a truce through the smoke of gunpowder, and some people even began to regain optimism about the prospects of the war. .