Chapter 932: Gaining a Foothold

“Women? How can you let women go to the battlefield?” Kimura frowned. At 29, he was already a veteran, at least in the sense that he had fought a few decent battles on the Chinese front. So when he was conscripted again, becoming a soldier of the Great Japanese Imperial Army, he felt a unique sense of superiority when faced with the fresh-faced new recruits.

And as a man with a sense of Yamato pride, he didn’t approve of women fighting on the bloody battlefield. He felt that was a job for true samurai, not for a group of women whose duty was to have children.

“It seems Amaterasu is truly blessing our Great Japanese Empire,” the regimental commander, a man of high status, said from behind Kimura. He squeezed through the crowd and, after a couple of glances, said, “Gentlemen, our enemies have grown so weak they can no longer protect their women and children. Victory is just ahead! Long live the Great Japanese Empire! Long live His Majesty the Emperor! Forward!”

“Banzai! Banzai!” At the mention of His Majesty the Emperor, the Japanese soldiers’ spirits instantly rose by another third. As a unit that had been fighting in China all along, the Japanese Kwantung Army had not been affected by the disastrous defeat of the Japanese army in the Battle of Imphal. And the matter of Marshal Yamamoto Isoroku’s navy losing the Solomon Islands was at this moment still being kept as a top secret by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, so the morale of the entire Kwantung Army was still quite high.

Among these soldiers, there were still some who believed that, apart from that frightening piece of equipment made of steel called a “tank,” the combat quality of the infantry of the Great Japanese Imperial Army was the best in the world.

To be fair, in 1930, the training level of the Japanese Army could be said to be one of the best in the world. At least before 1935, that is, before the large-scale military expansion, the infantry of the Japanese Army could beat their chests and say they were the best in the world—of course, the German grenadiers, paratroopers, SS, and special forces all said the same thing. The actual truth is unknowable.

As for the two skills that the Japanese Army trained most desperately, one was bayonet fighting, and the other was precision shooting. It could be said that every Japanese veteran was a semi-sniper who had been fed with bullets. The prowess of the Japanese soldier in individual combat was there for all to see.

In addition, the spirit of Bushido in the Japanese Army was quite deeply ingrained. The soldiers all had a very firm loyalty to the emperor and a patriotic ideology, so their fighting will was very strong. According to the German army’s evaluation standards, they could be considered an “SS” with formidable combat skills, which from another perspective also reflected the advantages of the Japanese Army.

However, a Führer far away on the European continent, named Akado, had given his most pertinent evaluation of the Japanese Army: “The Japanese Army is the world’s strongest ‘World War I’ army.” What this meant was that from the perspective of the First World War, the Japanese Army could be considered the strongest in the world.

But was this the First World War? Clearly not. The armies of the United States and Germany were desperately piling cars and tanks into their units, desperately trying to make their artillery keep up with the speed of their infantry and even their tanks. When the soldiers of both sides fought on the front lines for an hour, the ammunition consumed was calculated in tons—and the Japanese Army was still playing with bayonets, which seemed a bit too out of place.

The entire Japanese attacking force, after indulging in a few minutes of spiritual opium, was once again in high spirits and ready to set off. They had now successfully crossed the Soviet “defense line,” and victory was just around the corner. So everyone picked up the ammunition and weapons from their fallen comrades and continued to advance.

BOOM! Before they had taken a few steps, a Japanese soldier at the very front stepped on a landmine buried in the woods. The unlucky soldier was not even killed, but just lost a leg and was lying on the ground, struggling, his face covered in blood. The medics quickly came up to bandage him, and the other soldiers, amidst the shouting, continued to advance.

In the Far East Soviet General Headquarters, the young Chuikov was deploying his troops. He already knew that the Japanese army was crossing the actual line of control between the two sides and had already engaged some of the Soviet border defense forces.

In the eastern border region, some of the delaying defense lines, which had been temporarily set up with female soldiers, had been completely broken through. The Soviet army had lost over a thousand of its conscripted female soldiers. These female soldiers had all been imbued with the idea of fighting to the death, and their role was to slow down the speed of the Japanese attack. Compared to the precious young men, these fierce female soldiers had become the first batch of “cannon fodder” to be sacrificed by Chuikov.

Three thousand of these female soldiers were scattered in the border region, used as a protruding first line of warning, to provide early warning for the troops, and also as a touchstone to measure the weight of the Japanese army. Chuikov hoped to assess the Japanese army’s determination for the campaign and to slow down their advance. As for the consumption of those old supplies and the scattered food and ammunition, he really didn’t care much. With the American-aided supply base in the Far East, with its mountains of supplies, at his back, he had plenty of things to squander.

And Chuikov was not sitting and waiting to be killed. Besides the cruel consumption of a portion of his female soldiers, which had brought him the intelligence of the start of the enemy’s attack, he was now assembling his armored forces. Even if these backward KV-1 tanks and T-26s were as fragile as paper in front of the German army, they could still be considered powerful tanks in front of the Japanese army.

So Chuikov was not without troops to use. On the contrary, he had too many cards in his hand. Two “well-equipped” armored divisions were moving east. These units were now about to reach the combat area, to deliver a fatal blow to the Japanese army that had broken through the defense line from the flank. If these two broken-down armored divisions were thrown onto the western front, they would be annihilated by the German armored forces in the blink of an eye. But these tanks, when used in the Far East, were really as powerful as armored lions.

The Japanese unit Kimura was in had not waited for the attack of the Soviet armored forces before they had stopped their own offensive. On their way north, the Japanese army had inevitably and truly run into the core defensive area of the Soviet army. These areas, which were heavily guarded by the Soviet army, had become a nightmare for the Japanese infantry.

The fierce firepower had turned the Japanese offensive into a joke. Most of the Soviet soldiers were holding American-made M1 Garand rifles and were firing frantically from their trenches, inflicting huge casualties on the Japanese, who were accustomed to charging with fixed bayonets. If one were to count the small number of PPSh submachine guns and the various types of machine guns—the Soviet firepower, which had no advantage in front of the Germans, had instantly become a firepower advantage that the Japanese could not match.

This was like the second-best martial arts master in the world being constantly abused by the best, and then one day he went down the mountain and found that he could beat the third-best with no effort at all (not to mention Japan was a long way from being the third-best). So the Soviet defenders were having a very happy time. They were pouring ammunition on the Japanese soldiers, pinning them down.

The offensive and defensive situation on the German-Soviet front was reversed here. Now it was the Japanese soldiers who had to charge frantically to get close to the Soviet positions and prevent the Soviets from leveraging their firepower advantage. So, just a few days after the start of the war, the Japanese side was already suffering heavy casualties, with bodies strewn everywhere.

After a great deal of effort to break through several Soviet defense lines, the Japanese high command had already discovered that their speed of advance was simply too slow to speak of. The quick and decisive battle they had originally planned had already turned into another protracted war of attrition.

And for the Soviet side, a miracle had finally appeared on the Japanese side. The initiative that Stalin had lost on the German front seemed to have been found again on the Japanese side. Chuikov was promoted to a full general of the Soviet Union. Stalin seemed to have pinned all his hopes on the seemingly more feasible, distant Far Eastern campaign.

Kimura lay on the body of a comrade and, with his Type 38 rifle, aimed at a Soviet trench opposite him. His sights indicated the other was 300 meters away. This distance was nothing to him, so he still maintained a very calm breath.

To wait for the Soviet soldier who had just thrown a grenade to show his head—this was what Kimura wanted to do. After all, the enemy’s firepower was simply too powerful, which made him completely unwilling to get up and charge at those terrifying opponents.

Sure enough, the Soviet soldier showed his head. He was firing his rifle, and he seemed not to have noticed Kimura, who was aiming at him. Kimura gave a cold laugh, pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit the other’s head. Kimura could see the Soviet soldier’s body crumple as he was hit.

He worked the bolt of his rifle. The long Type 38 provided a very long firing range, but it also had disadvantages in length and other aspects of performance. This weapon had a great penetrating power, but not much killing power. But for the Japanese army, which emphasized precision shooting, this small shortcoming was still within the tolerable range.

Chambering a round, he aimed at a new target. Not long after, he continued to fire, turning another Soviet soldier into a convulsing corpse. Some Japanese soldiers took the opportunity to charge into the Soviet trenches, and then the main mode of combat became a bloody bayonet fight. The Japanese army had a clear advantage in this aspect, and their desperate charge finally drove the Soviets out of this position.

“Kimura-kun, well done!” the sergeant major said, praising Kimura as the two of them charged forward together. He had just seen the way Kimura had shot and killed the enemy and the effect it had. A capable person was clearly welcome everywhere. After all, this was not an era where you could get by on your looks.

A few minutes later, the Japanese army had entered the already-empty small town. This was the first important strategic strongpoint they had captured after entering the Soviet Union. This showed that they had finally found the correct direction for their offensive and had finally established a firm foothold on Soviet soil.

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