National Army supply point at Kunshan Railway Station, drizzle.

The sky was gloomy, and occasionally there was a faint rumble, but it was not thunder.

It was dark in broad daylight.

A soldier carrying a rifle quickly walked through the waiting room to the outside of the station, taking standard steps. Every step he took was as if measured with a ruler, the same distance, exactly the same, and even the force of stepping down was the same.

The military uniforms are neat, but not that clean. There are stains here and there, gray here and there, oil stains, and sweat-stained collars and cuffs that are yellow. Compared with the soldiers with dark faces and oil-stained collars and sleeves around them, they look different.

Stand out from the crowd and be as clean as a chicken.

The two military policemen on duty looked at his collar insignia. He was also an officer. Judging from his military rank, he was only a second lieutenant. At most, he was just a platoon leader. He was so arrogant when he walked around, what a fool!

But he had to raise his hand to salute. This was not the first time I saw a soldier who could show such an aura, and I didn't dare to stop him to show his ID.

The gendarmes are not stupid. It is said that this group of people is planning to go to Shanghai to be cannon fodder. Comparing with a dying man, the one who gets beaten is considered lighter. It really angers these desperadoes. It is not worthwhile to charge them with mutiny. The two gendarmes look at each other.

At one glance, they all looked at the ground beneath their feet: the blackened blood stains indicated that something like this should have happened.

He shuddered, stopped talking, and walked out with his eyes sideways. According to regulations, soldiers of the national army could not leave the station.

The higher-ups had already spoken: Anyone who dares to act without authorization will be shot on the spot!

The square outside the station was full of people, disorderly and busy. A large number of strategic materials were ready to enter the station, but their destination was Nanjing.

The Battle of Songhu is coming to an end! The Chinese army was defeated and retreated.

Food, clothing, and medicine were originally supplies for the troops at the front. However, the retreat of the national army turned into a rout. The Logistics and Military Supplies Department stopped transporting various supplies to Shanghai. The supplies piled up in the station square, and they were rushed to Nanjing nervously.

To the west of the station square, there is a large courtyard with a big red cross painted on the wall. It is a civilian house that was requisitioned by the field hospital. On the east side of the square, there is an ordnance warehouse! The entire train station has long been under military control.

In order to prevent sabotage by Japanese spies, in the entire station square, except for soldiers and people with special documents, no one else was qualified to enter the station. All this was for the national army's hasty retreat under the chairman's hasty arrangements.

Soldiers, laborers and station staff were nervously moving and delivering various materials to the station through a gap in the demolished wall next to the train station building.

The cold and oppressive atmosphere, like the lead cloud above the head, made people breathless. It was even more eerie when mixed with the shouts of lively vendors and newsboys outside the cordon.

From time to time, the explosion of large-caliber artillery shells was heard in the east. The sound rolled over the clouds in the sky, one after another, over and over again.

The soldier calmly came to the outer police line and bought newspapers from the last three days from a dirty newsboy. The newsboy chose a good place. There were many people buying expired newspapers. He got three cents and cleaned two cents.

Half.

"Uncle, do you want a cigarette?" A little boy next to the newsboy, wearing some thin clothes, looked at the soldier in front of him with hope. There was some yellowing between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. He must be a smoker.

The soldier shook his head and had no intention of buying it.

The neatly dressed soldiers walked back with unique steps, crossed the square again, passed between the two gendarmes, and returned to a stuffy train car parked on the icy railway track.

Two hands stretched out from the carriage and pulled the returning soldier up.

There was a buzz in the carriage. When I saw someone coming back, the voice became much quieter. There were people in the 70s and 80s. Looking at the troop staffing, it was half a standard company!

In fact, the people in this carriage are just a company, just organized if they are not satisfied.

The company commander and deputy were not there, probably for a meeting at the temporary regiment headquarters on the train. Only the second platoon leader, the third platoon leader, a few squad leaders were bragging, and the first platoon leader who had just returned.

Orders to go to the battlefield will be issued at any time and at any time. It is said that the situation on the battlefield ahead is not optimistic. The soldier who bought the newspaper greeted a few people who were gathered in a group, and a few people squeezed out a seat.

The second lieutenant sat down with the newspaper, and several people moved their buttocks closer. The other second lieutenant, who was sitting on the ground, did not get up. He took out a wrinkled cigarette case from his coat pocket, took out a cigarette and handed it over.

One took out a kerosene lighter from his personal bag, held it up in a fancy way, and lit the fire.

The three second lieutenants sat together and smoked. As usual, the soldiers in the carriage craned their necks to wait. After a cigarette, the second lieutenant who came back would explain to them the big and small things in the newspapers.

It should relieve boredom and open your horizons.

After the smoke cleared, the soldiers moved closer to them. More than seventy or eighty people were crowded into a stuffy train car. Even though the cold wind kept blowing in from the closed door, the car was still a little stuffy.

Mixed with a unique odor.

But it's better than those broken soldiers huddled on the platform shivering in the cold wind.

The soldiers were lying or crouching. They were used to listening to the gossip from the main road except the company commander. They listened to the second lieutenant who bought the newspaper. The information they got from him was even better than that of the company commander. It is said that the second lieutenant drank foreign ink and read it.

Newspapers were also a habit he brought with him, and most of the soldiers didn't even know a few Chinese characters. They only had one, two, three, and their own names, and nothing else, haha.

The soldiers of the supplementary regiment were combatants injured in the battle of the 49th Army in North China. They were all veterans who were organized after recovering from their injuries. The second lieutenant was the liaison officer and led a platoon to serve as the first battalion and the first company.

In the smoke-filled carriage, it didn't take long for the soldiers to know the current situation. At this moment, the Shanghai defense line had collapsed. Their mission, which was advancing eastward along the Shanghai-Nanjing line, was to join the 109th Division of the 49th Army, which was cut off from the rear. Their mission was to cover.

Commander Chen Cheng's left army retreated. Most of the 49th Army had retreated to Taicang, about 50 kilometers away from Kunshan. The supplementary regiment was all veterans. It could be reached by a day and night of forced march, but the reorganization of the troops had not yet been completed, so a supplementary regiment was of no use.

The loss of personnel of the main force was too great. In order to delay the Japanese attack and cover the retreat of the main force of the National Army, the 49th Army was in urgent need of supplementary troops, so these wounded soldiers were also drawn up. At that time, the National Army in Shanghai was defeated across the board, and the supplementary regiment was basically gone.

There was no need to go up any further, and the 109th Division also issued an order to keep the supplementary regiment on standby.

But a group of big bosses in the Military and Political Department seem to have forgotten this order, at least the supplementary regiment has not received it until now.

What the supplementary regiment is about to face is more than 200,000 Japanese troops, including naval guns and tanks. Even the 109th Division, which originally only had more than 6,000 dissatisfied troops, may be just cannon fodder. The supplementary regiment will only have 1,000 troops if it is fully equipped.

You can hear the bubbles popping up.

The second lieutenant analyzed the battlefield situation through the dry words in the newspaper.

The new orders had not yet arrived, so the soldiers stayed in the carriage without the locomotive. Occasionally they ran down to stretch their hands and feet and get some water.

On both sides of the railway were defeated soldiers. Led by officers with white sleeve bands on their arms, they walked all the way west. Most of them belonged to the 74th Army. They were old military uniforms that had not been washed and smoked for many days. They were originally white. The color of their shirt collars has been changed, their shiny hair is stuck together, their faces are dark, some of them are bandaged, they are being carried or supported, and the queue is long, a scene of decadence.

The Northeastern Army was originally a large German-style organization. The supplementary regiment was not so particular. The temporarily reorganized supplementary regiment, as a regiment-level army, naturally did not have a designation in the national army. It was temporarily affiliated to the 109th Division of the 49th Army. 109 Division Commander Gao Pengyuan had heard of him as a ruthless man. After reading the newspaper, the second lieutenant stretched himself and looked at the past newspapers carefully.

His platoon plus the platoon deputy has 26 people, which is not enough. In the Northeastern Army's standard platoon, there are 4 squads of 10 people each. The three squads of the chief, deputy platoon leader, and medical officer correspond to a firepower team of 46 people. Now it is just over half.

The rain outside the carriage was not heavy. Except for those who were still marching, no one wanted to stay in the rain for a long time. The listless wounded soldiers on the platform were waiting to board the train. The train bound for the west was about to take them back to Nanjing. They could walk. They were staggering toward their goal of Nanjing in the west. They were led by officers and people from the camp for broken troops, so they were still in good order.

Now, the station is the terminus. I heard that the railway was bombed by Japanese planes and is temporarily impassable. It is said that we cannot leave until night.

Time passed slowly and it was time for lunch.

The second lieutenant poked his head out of the car, looked around as a habit, jumped out of the car, put the rifle behind his shoulder, looked at each other with the second and third platoon commanders who came out of the car, and then looked at the extension of the train. In the distance, it's gray and not much to see.

These are the three platoon leaders of a company. The deputy platoon leader is responsible for the entire team.

The second platoon leader is neither tall nor short, his name is Yang Yong, a whiny, veteran soldier.

The third platoon leader, Gao Jie, is quite tall, has good marksmanship, is honest and hard-working, and has no evil intentions. The three platoon leaders have not known each other for a long time. They all got together after meeting when reorganizing wounded soldiers. They are all from the Northeast, so they are united. .

"Platoon Commander Li, do you know if the company commander has received the order?" Yang Yong, the second platoon leader, asked even though he knew that the platoon leader in front of him named Li didn't know.

"The train is here. It's probably still a long way to go. We'll see the bandy-legged dwarf again soon."

After the large-caliber artillery was fired in the air, the sound of the shells rubbing against the air could be faintly heard mixed with the explosion. The national army had been defeated. The large-caliber naval guns destroyed the fortifications, and the small-caliber guns were used when the infantry and armored troops attacked. Carry out fire suppression, and then use aircraft and aerial bombs to bomb accurately.

Hearing what Platoon Leader Li said, the second platoon leader was very happy: "I like what you said. My buttocks are swollen from riding on this train."

"Brother Li, an army of 800,000 people can't defeat the brat - Xiao Luoquan, let's just use it as a ball, don't you think of us as cannon fodder again? Well, that's not what I said, even the company said so." Third Platoon Chang Gaojie muttered.

Platoon Leader Li did not answer the conversation: "Let's talk after dinner."

Each person received a box of porridge and two steamed buns, and a spoonful of pickles was poured directly into the porridge. The pickles were fried and mixed with meat particles. No one said anything, and the sound of hulu was very loud.

I'm used to putting the unfinished steamed buns in a dry food bag.

Next to the gray and white railway wall, a small gap outside serves as part of the toilet function, and the yellow color flows along the sewer to the river not far away.

The steam locomotive was replenishing coal and water, braving the white mist, roaring and debugging, preparing to return at night. After finishing, the soldiers took the kettles they carried with them to the station boiler room to fill them up. Finally, led by the officers, they headed

It’s boring in the waiting room, stuffy in the carriage, and cold in the square.

The company commander and the company deputy finally showed up. It seemed that they had been arguing with the big guys from the regiment for a long time. Platoon Leader Li raised his hand out of habit and took a look. Then he remembered that he had bought the only valuable thing in Germany.

The Swiss watch was given to a pawnshop at a low price.

The company commander actually didn't know the details of Platoon Commander Li. Although they were all members of the 49th Army, Li Yuan was assigned by the superiors to be responsible for collecting wounded soldiers. It is said that when they were in the Northeast, they made a mistake in secretly releasing red elements, so a supplementary regiment was called in.

Add soy sauce and mix it with Pai Zhang.

After working for more than a year, he was promoted from a leading soldier to a platoon leader without even fighting a battle. He rose very quickly. It is said that he is very skilled and can lead troops very well. According to the regiment leader, his personal military quality is the second best in the entire regiment.

People dare to recognize the number one.

There are no cars, tanks, machine guns, or cannons that can't be mastered. This is talent. In fact, many people don't believe that a person who can play with those things is a platoon leader. Isn't this a talentless thing? At least he must be a lieutenant colonel.

Anyway, they all like to brag, so what’s the difference?

However, Platoon Leader Li is really good at fighting. I heard that he has been practicing martial arts since he was a child. When he was the squad leader, none of the 12 big guys in the intensive class had ever beaten him, so there was no one to look for him without looking around. Naturally, no one was dissatisfied.

In the army, it's all about who has the biggest fist.

I don't dare to promote him, as it is a taboo to gain fame. This is the unanimous opinion of the whole group.

But it's a bit strange why the regiment commander didn't put him in the guard class. It is said that this man has many bad habits, but he usually doesn't find any bad habits in him. Besides, how many people in the army don't have bad habits?

No one can save fuel if he can reach the rank of company commander, so there is no need to dig up someone else's background.

The three platoon leaders saluted together.

The company commander returned the salute and looked around: "The train can only go here. News came from the Military and Political Department that the main force of the 49th Army's military headquarters and the main force of the Left Route Army have retreated to Taicang. The military headquarters will retreat along the south bank of the Yangtze River with the Left Route Army of the theater."

"We've already retreated, why are we still going up to do this?" Yang Yong shuddered and asked in confusion.

"This is a mission given to us by the Ministry of Military Affairs. Don't be too verbose. We have to advance along the road from Kunshan to Taicang. After arriving in Taicang, we will join the 109th Division and return to build. The mission is to break up the rear. The troops have been fighting for more than half a month and have suffered heavy losses. Early on

We are exhausted. Fortunately, it is not far away, only fifty kilometers. While we grit our teeth, the rest of us have to find a way to enter the war zone on our own. We will notify all the troops to assemble in a moment."
To be continued...