Chapter 4 4. Touch the original

The "Detailed Report on the Operations in Northern Hunan and Southern Hubei in the First Battle of Changsha" written by the Chongqing Military Commission and Chiang Kai-shek in the Ninth War Zone, which most directly reflected the appearance of the first Changsha Battle, is now quietly lying on the second floor of Nanjing City. In the vast military and political archives of the Nationalist Government in the Historical Archives. This document is a collection of detailed combat reports submitted by each division, corps, and group army participating in the battle.Unfortunately, with the passage of time and man-made destruction, this extremely precious material has been seriously damaged.We can only imagine the thrilling bloody battle through its fragments and fragments.

Case number: 787; volume number: 8806; order: 3 cases in total; year: 1939. Title: The First Battle of Changsha The detailed report on the battles in northern Hunan and southern Hubei. The thing that is overlaid on the document and makes it unclear is called "time". Through this layer of turbidity that obscures the entire document, one can see the following writing on the cover: "October 24th, twenty-eight years. Urgent. Yu. Chairman Jiang. Hemi. Served by Commander Xue Zhuanjun." These words were written on rice paper in extremely neat small letters. The rice paper is dark yellow in color, brittle, and will break if you don't pay attention.There are some fragmented page numbers in the document, and the remaining parts are pasted on white paper, unable to present the original content.

Turning the pages one by one, a pungent mixed smell of burnt, pungent, and decayed gushes out from the pages.Some original rice papers have obvious traces of fire and water immersion, and a large number of fragments are pasted on the white paper, and the order of the original manuscripts cannot be found. "...Xinqiang River runs through Lujiao Leishi Mountain and guards the front for more than a hundred and ten miles..." "The enemy's 13th and 33rd divisions each have a Nata detachment of marines and artillery cavalry engineers..." "...Start attacking me with artillery... All the fortifications were destroyed, and infantry charged. It is up to our officers and soldiers to report that we will live and die with the country..."

"... and raised the balloon to instruct the bombardment... our army braved the cannon... to repel them and fill the river with corpses..." "The casualties of the division also reached more than a thousand...failed to deal a greater blow to the enemy...the guilt is deeply rooted, and the troops are trained to fight the enemy..." "...The attack suffered heavy casualties due to the concentration of a large number of troops...The sound of the artillery was as dense as a cannonball after several hours...The poison gas was used and all the defenders of Wang Street died heroically and they were suddenly attacked...Zhao Gongwu Dunshou October 15th"

Zhao Gongwu is the commander of the 2nd Division of Zhang Yaoming's 52nd Army.During the battle, this division first guarded the line along the Xinqiang River, then retreated to the northeast area of ​​Fengjiang Bridge to block the enemy again, and after October 6, it attacked the Japanese army advancing south from the west side of Yanglin Street and Dajing Street.After these few battles, most of the division suffered casualties. A fragment of an envelope at that time was pasted on a piece of white paper, on which words such as "Changsha 126-3 Zhang Yaoming", "Hunan Jinjing Airmail", and "The battle process..." can be vaguely discerned.That stamp is perfect.Now it's a rarity in the mail. 1.5 centimeters square, with Sun Yat-sen's head in the middle, "Republic of China Post" written at the bottom, "五" on the right in the upper corner, "fen" in the left, and "5" in each of the lower corners.

I sat at the long table in the spacious and bright reading room, unable to continue thinking.These are the blood and lives of those Chinese soldiers who did not leave their names about the great war left to future generations. With the hand that also held a gun, I gently stroked the pages of words from a long time ago, they were cold and without a trace of breath.