Soviet troops advancing against the Japanese Army in Manchuria.
CHAPTER 11 – MANCHURIA
05:46 (China Time)
Saturday, August 27, 1932
Road between Hailar and Tsitsihar, Manchukuo (Manchuria)
Northern China
The double file of tired and hungry Japanese soldiers had been following the muddy road to Tsitsihar all night, marching as fast as possible in order to escape the Soviet onslaught that had taken the men of the First Infantry Division completely by surprise a few days ago. With no prior signs of possible hostilities along the border between Mongolia and Manchukuo, the puppet state recently established by Japan in Manchuria, the sudden waves of Soviet armored vehicles, infantrymen and artillery guns had swept aside the border units of the Kwantung Army’s Fourth Army, which was tasked with defending the northwest portion of Manchukuo. The 470 Japanese soldiers now withdrawing towards Tsitsihar were nearly all that was left of their regiment. One company had bravely stayed behind in order to block the enemy for as long as possible and give a chance to the rest of the regiment to withdraw. However, that had not stopped Soviet planes from periodically bombing and strafing the columns of Japanese soldiers, gradually cutting their numbers down and forcing the remaining soldiers to abandon the severely wounded, who would have slowed the column down to a crawl. There were no trucks or other motor vehicles present in the column, as those had either been destroyed by Soviet fire, had broken down or had run out of fuel. Only a few officers still enjoyed the luxury of being on horseback. Most had stayed on their horses and kept yelling to their troops to march faster, but not Captain Kaito Imegushi, the senior surviving officer of the regiment slogging towards Tsitsihar. Instead of acting like too many Japanese officers, who typically treated their men like dirt, Imegushi had given his horse to a wounded man and was now marching at the head of his unit. His hope was to be able to join up with another unit, replenish his depleted ammunition supplies and form a new defensive line to block the Soviet advance towards Tsitsihar.
Arriving after another hour of march at a shallow stream where the road could be forded with only some forty centimeters of water up the men’s legs, Captain Imegushi decided to make his men stop and rest under the cover of some sparse bushes once the stream was crossed. Letting first his men go fill their water bottles at the stream, he then told them to eat their last ration of cooked rice and dried fish: they would need all their strength to march the remaining distance from here to Tsitsihar. Leading his horse to the stream after the wounded man had been gently taken off it, Imegushi made the beast drink while he filled his own water bottle. Once it was full, he straightened up and observed carefully westward in the distance, trying to see if any Soviet unit was nearby. To his relief, he saw nothing. Guiding his horse to one of the bushes and tying its bridle to it, he finally sat down with a sign of relief: his feet were throbbing from the long march and he was positively famished. Taking out his own remaining ration, he started eating it cold, the way he and his men too often ate their food in the last few days. After his frugal meal was eaten, he called to him the four remaining junior officers of his unit, assembling them in front of him and speaking to them in a calm tone.
“Go around our men and check how much ammunition they have left on them. Do it quietly and don’t interrupt their meal or their rest, then come back and report to me.’’
“HAY!’’ replied in unison the four lieutenants before dispersing. They were back some fifteen minutes later with news that were rather discouraging.
“Sir, most of the men have on average four clips of rifle ammunition on them, while some have even less. Only a handful of men still have a grenade or two.’’
“Hum, that’s quite slim. Tell those that have more than one grenade to keep one and to give the rest to other soldiers around him. Pass as well the following directive: from now on, any man that will fall to Soviet fire must be stripped of his remaining ammunition by his comrades. Every bullet now counts.’’
“HAY!’’
Kaito then laid down to rest a bit as his subalterns walked away. He used that time as well to think about his options. In truth, they were few. The harsh reality was that the Soviet Army had proven to be clearly superior to the Japanese Army in terms of equipment, firepower and mobility. In particular, the scarcity of anti-tank weapons in the Japanese arsenal, along with the small number and calibers of Japanese artillery pieces, had strongly played against Japanese soldiers, who had found themselves facing an onslaught by hundreds of Soviet light tanks and armored cars backed by a powerful and highly mobile field artillery. Contrary to the Japanese Army, where the mass of the infantry had no motor transportation, the Soviets had plenty of trucks to boost the mobility of their army. That had allowed them to quickly flank and envelop the Japanese units they encountered, cutting them off from their supply lines before pounding them with artillery fire.
Captain Kaito Imeguchi was about to order his men to resume their withdrawal walk when one of the sentries posted to watch westward suddenly shouted in alarm.
“CAVALRYMEN HAVE APPEARED TO OUR WEST!’’
Grabbing his binoculars and raising them to his eyes, Kaito swore when he saw that the sentry was correct: three widely separated columns of cavalrymen were trotting towards him and his men. In turn, the reaction of those cavalrymen on seeing the Japanese told Kaito about their identity.
“Shit! Soviet cavalrymen! They are now splitting up to envelop both of our flanks. TAKE DEFENSIVE POSITIONS! ENEMY CAVALRY ADVANCING ON US!’’
His men, despite their fatigue and throbbing feet, reacted at once, taking as much cover as they could get from the few dispersed bushes where they had been resting. On his part, Kaito ran to one of his few machine guns, which was being set up behind a bush, with only its barrel protruding out. Soon, Kaito was able to get more details about the enemy he was now facing.
“Cossacks! A whole regiment of them.’’ he said to himself in a disgusted tone. Japanese soldiers hated Soviet Cossack cavalrymen for many reasons, but the main reason was the high mobility of the Soviet riders. Not needing fuel to move and making their tough horses live off the tundra, Cossack units had proven about as mobile as motorized units and, while often undisciplined, individual Cossacks were on average ferocious and dangerous combatants. Right now, that Cossack unit was apparently splitting up further, with cavalrymen riding around both flanks of the Japanese infantry unit while keeping out of effective rifle range, while their central column was dismounting and forming a succession of skirmish lines, advancing on foot and at a crouch towards the Japanese. The one positive thing about them, in Kaito’s point of view, was that Cossacks rarely had radios with them. Thus, those Soviets were unlikely to be able to call up artillery fire or air support. Still, that left Kaito’s men outnumbered by more than four to one, with the enemy having as well a clear superiority in mobility. Understanding that withdrawing further was now impossible, Kaito resolved himself for a fight to the finish.
“DIG FOXHOLES AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN, MEN: WE ARE GOING TO STAND OUR GROUND!’’
That order, far from making his soldiers panicky, reinforced their resolve and they started digging furiously with their short entrenching tool, which every Japanese infantryman carried as a standard piece of field kit.
Due to the distance at which both of the groups had spotted each other, the Japanese ended up having a good twelve minutes to dig until the first shots rang out. While still shallow, those holes did provide some precious cover and protection to the Japanese infantrymen.
“SLOW FIRE ONLY! DON’T WASTE ANY BULLET!’’ Shouted Kaito to his men, too conscious of how low in ammunition they were. In contrast, the Cossacks didn’t seem to have such a problem and were pouring a dense fire into the Japanese. The Cossacks were known to be expert riflemen, on top of being born horse riders, and quickly proved it by downing one Japanese after the other, most often with bullets to the head. Japanese fire was also lethal, with a few Cossacks going down at intervals as they advanced, but the 6.5mm TYPE 38 ARISAKA rifle, with its muzzle velocity being much lower than that of the Soviet 7.62mm Mosin-Nagant 1891/30 used by the Cossacks, lost the accuracy contest. The Soviet commander, seeing how low the Japanese volume of fire was, correctly deduced that his enemy was low on ammunition and pushed forward his soldiers more aggressively. Soon, Soviet and Japanese soldiers were exchanging fire from a distance of less than 150 meters, with the shallow stream between them. Then, as Kaito had feared, Japanese soldiers started one by one to run out of bullets, with the Japanese positions falling silent as the Soviets were arriving within 100 meters. A grim Kaito holstered his NAMBU pisto and took out his sword before shouting an order.
“FIX BAYONET!’’
Then, waiting for the Soviets to his front to get up and resume their advance, he jumped to his feet, his Katana sword held high.
“FOR THE EMPEROR! BANZAI!’’
BANZAI!
The reaction of the Cossacks to this desperate charge was to stop, kneel and aim carefully their rifles before firing a devastating volley into the Japanese ranks of running soldiers. They had taken only a week or so to get accustomed to these Japanese bayonet charges and had by now developed an effective counter-tactic to it: basically, to stop and deliver a few well-aimed salvoes into the masses of Japanese infantry, dropping most of them before they could get within bayonet range. Again, bullets proved superior to cold steel and, despite their bravery and fanaticism, Japanese soldiers fell by the dozen, wounded or dead. A grand total of 57 Japanese managed to stay alive until they arrived within bayonet-range of their enemies, but those 57 brave men then found themselves fighting with over 430 Cossacks and, while inflicting some losses to the Soviets with their bayonets, were quickly overwhelmed and killed. Captain Kaito Imeguchi fell on his face a mare twelve paces from the first Cossacks facing him, shot up with three bullets. A Cossack officer then finished him with a pistol shot to the head and a hateful declaration.
“Here is for all the Russians you massacred in Shanghai, you bastard!’’