106 The End of the Beginning (14)

From the perspective of the Beiyang Army, if they could charge to within thirty meters of the enemy, they could basically confirm their victory. "Winning by courage" was no joke. Historically, even when the Beiyang Army had already fractured and disintegrated, during the Northern Expedition, Ye Ting's Independent Regiment only achieved final victory after engaging in fierce, cruel hand-to-hand combat with the Beiyang Army at key locations like Dingsiqiao. After the historic April 12th Incident, when the Communist Party had been purged, the army commanded by Baldy Chiang was unable to defeat the Beiyang Army in the Second Northern Expedition.

Jin Yunpeng watched the tide-like Beiyang Army charge the People's Party position, his brow already furrowed. Lowering his binoculars, Jin Yunpeng turned to the Beiyang generals observing the battle beside him. Originally, Jin Yunpeng did not believe that a few thin lines of iron wire could stop the Beiyang Army's charge. Now, everything happening was verifying Jin Yunpeng's thoughts.

*Tu tu tu.* There was finally movement from the People's Party side. Jin Yunpeng hurriedly grabbed his binoculars and looked toward the position, only to see long tongues of fire spewing from the shooting ports of several bunkers. The shooting was not directed at the Beiyang Army's entire battle line at all, but rather at the few breaches in the iron net where large numbers of Beiyang soldiers were crowded, man pressing against man.

The Beiyang soldiers naturally were unwilling to expend effort to fully push over the wire netting, not to mention those wooden stakes were buried quite deep. Relying on shaking with hands or kicking with feet, or even smacking with entrenching shovels, could not sever it. As for the barbed wire, it was even more troublesome; grabbing it high up meant getting pricked. Bayonets could not cut the barbed wire, and entrenching shovels were not good at cutting it either. Even if they expended the effort to break one strand, it was not worth mentioning against the dozen strands of the wire net.

The Beiyang troops blocked by the wire net wanted to cash in on the bounty promise and attempted to destroy the net, but the people coming up behind began to push and shove. Instead, this caused several Beiyang soldiers with unstable footing to throw themselves onto the wire net, immediately triggering shrill screams and hysterical curses.

Facing such a situation, the easiest method would be to charge directly through the already damaged gaps in the wire net. Even if the officers wanted to try and maintain formation, the entire charging tide of people had already instinctively advanced toward the gaps in the wire net, gathering into large clumps of crowds at a dozen or so key points. Not only was it man against man, man squeezing man, but the original command system also fell into complete chaos.

Just then, inside the bunkers that had been silent all along, heavy machine guns began to roar. The shooting ports of these bunkers were less than 50 meters from the Beiyang crowds; this was almost equivalent to pressing the muzzle against the Beiyang soldiers' chests and firing. The bullets carried massive kinetic energy, penetrating bodies, severing blood vessels, and shattering bones, yet remaining full of energy. After passing straight through the flesh of the soldier in front, they drilled into the bodies of the Beiyang troops behind, continuing their journey of destroying human bodies.

Although one could not see blood splashing, could not see bullets forcefully flipping open distinct human skulls sending white brain matter flying high, and could not even hear the dying screams of the Beiyang officers and soldiers... however, Jin Yunpeng, watching the formation from the rear, could see the Beiyang troops being mowed down slice by slice like wheat by the bullets. And just a moment after the People's Party's heavy machine guns began to roar, many small black dots suddenly popped up on the ground—those were the People's Party soldiers hiding in the trenches joining the firing line.

The rifle and machine gun fire did not continue for long before the People's Party artillery also began to fire. Shells flew into the Beiyang crowds, who had already been stupefied by the sudden, fierce, and extremely efficient slaughter, harvesting Beiyang lives with even higher single-shell killing efficiency.

Jin Yunpeng was already watching in a daze. The Beiyang Army, which had been attacking like a tide just a short while ago, had in the blink of an eye become the object of slaughter. Those uncomfortable-looking iron wire nets now finally revealed a ferocity like evil ghosts. Under the blow of interlocking firepower, the Beiyang troops who began to flee in all directions were completely trapped by the wire nets. Some people were squeezed onto the wire nets by their companions and immediately began to struggle forcefully, but the struggling had no effect; those unlucky soldiers were hung entirely on the wire nets.

Jin Yunpeng had seen a small section of wire net presented by the Sixth Army. On that thick iron wire, sharp, pointed iron barbs "bloomed" like flowers. He did not know how those iron barbs, hard enough that they could not be easily bent, were firmly wrapped around the three strands of iron wire acting as a support. Anyway, however one looked at it, it was a combination bound together, yet it was impossible to make the clumps of iron barbs wrapped on the wire slide. Seeing the Beiyang troops twisting while hung on the wire nets, Jin Yunpeng recalled the appearance of those iron barbs. He felt his teeth aching, and waves of cold air rising from his back. Relying solely on imagination, he could feel that intense pain.

Under such fierce, multiple blows, the Beiyang Army could no longer maintain its offensive. Not knowing where it started, they attempted to flee. Aside from the unfortunates who had been forcibly squeezed onto the wire nets by their own side and hung there, the escape route for the survivors was still those gaps in the iron nets. The People's Party's firepower chased the route the Beiyang Army was forced to take, firing fiercely. Layers of corpses piled up on this road. Only those Beiyang troops who were scared senseless and began to flee along the channel in the middle of the wire nets survived temporarily. But very quickly, they discovered that between the two rows of wire nets, there were also obstacles cutting off the channel. Like rats that had walked into a dead end, the Beiyang troops just froze there, not knowing whether to try every means to continue advancing or to return the way they came.

The riflemen of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army did not give them the chance to try. Against almost stationary targets, the volley fire of the rifles displayed massive power. A pile of corpses soon piled up in front of the dead end as well.

The slaughter lasted less than twenty minutes. Except for the Beiyang troops running at the very rear who were able to run back in time, the officers and soldiers charging at the front were unable to escape with their lives from this death trap. The wire nets were full of Beiyang soldiers who were already dead or still struggling helplessly. Jin Yunpeng's mind was in chaos. In this situation, he even subconsciously estimated the number of Beiyang soldiers who fled back. In the first wave of attacks, two battalions totaling two thousand men were committed; those who could flee back numbered perhaps less than three hundred. Nearly ninety percent of the soldiers had lost their lives within twenty minutes, while the People's Party's position remained impregnable. From beginning to end, Jin Yunpeng could not even see a single People's Party soldier fully exposed in his binoculars.

Facts had proven that losing a brigade of soldiers in one day was absolutely not an absurd joke. Jin Yunpeng was nearly petrified. His rationality wanted to acknowledge this fact, but his emotions could in no way accept everything that was happening.

As if wanting to save Jin Yunpeng from this terrible state, only to then throw him into an even deeper abyss, a messenger officer ran over. He shouted in a shrill voice: "Report! Commander Jin, Jinan has fallen!"

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army used less than two days to conquer Jinan. The troops disguised to attack the Beiyang Army's Jinan strongholds succeeded with a light strike. The Beiyang Army simply never expected the People's Party main force to be able to cross the mountain range and attack directly beneath Jinan city, behind layers of checkpoints.

In the night raid, the Beiyang Army collapsed entirely. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army chased the defeated Beiyang soldiers and rapidly broke through the Jinan perimeter defense line. By the 17th, the West Group raided and occupied strongholds like Kuanglizhuang, Shuangshantou, and Changqing, pressing in on the Lashan line; the East Group captured key points like Maolingshan and Yanchishan, the barriers east of the city, and pounced straight for the outer city.

On the morning of the 17th, the West Group cut off all of the Beiyang Army's external passages. At the same time, they fiercely attacked the city wall. The defenders were caught off guard, and the outer city wall was seized by the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. However, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army did not carry many artillery pieces, and their engineering tools were insufficient. The Jinan inner city was 8 to 12 meters high, the bottom width 10 to 11 meters, and the top width 8 to 9 meters. The Beiyang Army and the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army engaged in tragic hand-to-hand combat on the city head. Relying on the desperate counterattack of the more than thirty thousand Beiyang troops inside the city, the Beiyang Army actually temporarily held the Jinan inner city wall.

By the dawn of the 18th, the People's Party intelligence system suddenly launched a fierce attack on the enemy troops in the inner city and set fires everywhere. The siege corps seized the combat opportunity, coordinating inside and outside, and mobilized the 2nd Division of the reserve 50th Army to join the West Group in combat. Finally opening a breach, all units fought bloody battles, assaulting continuously. The 73rd Regiment of the 50th Army broke into the inner city from the southeast corner of the city at 09:00 on the 18th; the 109th Regiment of the 38th Army broke in from the southwest corner of the city before dawn. The troops swarmed in and finally breached the enemy's defense line.

After the battle, the 73rd and 109th Regiments were separately awarded the honorary titles of "Jinan First Regiment" and "Jinan Second Regiment" by the Central Military Commission. Immediately, all units attacked fiercely into the depth. Fighting fiercely until the dusk of the 18th, the inner city defenders were completely annihilated, and Jinan, known as the "City of Springs," was liberated. The defending general of Jinan escaped in disguise but was captured by the militia.

Pu Guanshui had been constantly worried about the situation of the Qingdao Campaign, but the current situation was better than imagined. The two hundred thousand troops of the Beiyang Army attacked Qingdao in several columns but were completely blocked in front of Qingdao's outermost defense line. Several days of attacks resulted in not an inch of progress. Under such a situation, Pu Guanshui immediately wired the Military Commission of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, requesting to implement the next step of the strategy to encircle and annihilate the Beiyang Army.

This time, the Central Military Commission did not give clear instructions. Chen Ke only sent one sentence to Pu Guanshui: "Thus, victorious warriors win first and then go to war; defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." This was a sentence from *The Art of War* by Sun Tzu. The general idea is that an army capable of winning battles first positions itself in an invincible position, and then goes to engage the enemy to obtain victory. A failing army, however, launches the attack first and then attempts to seek victory during the battle.

The Shandong Military Region, as the victor's side, immediately began to study this instruction. As the winning side, the Shandong Military Region was naturally the "victorious warriors." The Beiyang side was currently the "defeated warriors"; they had launched the battle without a plan and attempted to find a chance for victory during the battle. If looking at it from the things that had already happened, this was an explanation beyond doubt. However, the fact that Chen Ke spoke this way itself implied a very subtle criticism or negation.

What exactly did Chairman Chen want to say? This was what all commanders inside the Shandong Military Region headquarters wanted to figure out.