The expeditionary force began to dominate Southeast Asia by recruiting defeated soldiers

Chapter 238: Capture of Lashio

A sniper from the Security Army lay in a pile of rubble, his eyes slightly close to the cold scope, and his fingertips touching the trigger were as steady as a mountain.

Next to him, another observer was holding a telescope in his hand and muttering to himself.

The shooter held his breath and concentrated. In the 4x scope in front of him, the crosshairs were clearly locked on the head of the Japanese Colonel Yamamoto Shigeru.

The slightly protruding head looked like a bull's eye on a shooting range in the thick smoke.

"Bang!" The gunshot rang out, echoing among the ruins.

A good-looking head with a helmet on its head and a fart curtain trailing behind its neck was "opened up to the world".

Through the telescope, the observer witnessed with his own eyes that the bullet accurately passed through the helmet. The moment the head cracked, it was like a pomegranate exploding, and red and white substances splashed out.

"Well done!" The observer shouted softly with suppressed excitement.

"Colonel Yamamoto died in battle!"

The Japanese soldier next to him, whose face was splashed with blood, dropped the rifle in his hand, his voice filled with trembling and despair.

He tremblingly took off his red-dyed glasses and wiped them, but they became more blurry. He could not see the battle situation in front of him at all and could only shout in panic.

"Bakayalo, shut up!" Another Japanese lieutenant reacted immediately. Such shouting was undoubtedly destroying the remaining morale.

However, he found that the soldier with glasses was still shouting nonsense, so he took out his pistol and pulled the trigger without hesitation to kill him.

The soldier with glasses let out a short whimper from his throat, fell straight down, and blood gushed out of his chest.

But the action of drawing the gun also exposed himself.

"Oh? A pistol? Another officer?" The sniper who killed the colonel licked his cracked lips, stretched out his hand to pull the bolt to reload, his movements as smooth as flowing water.

He fired the Springfield sniper rifle in his hand again, shooting the lieutenant in the head as well.

The figure swayed for a moment, then fell to the ground weakly.

As the snipers in the army began to take action, the grassroots officers who tried to organize other Japanese soldiers to counterattack were targeted and killed one by one. Soon, the Japanese soldiers, who had no leader, lost their morale and completely collapsed.

-----

"Brothers, follow me! Those who enter the city first will receive medals and merit fields!"

A platoon leader of the Security Army raised the M3 submachine gun in his hand, his voice hoarse but full of inspiration.

The M4A3 (105) Sherman tank roared and pushed open the broken city gate, its tracks crushing the bullet casings and corpses on the ground.

The infantry pressed closely against the sides of the tanks, using the tanks' heavy armor as cover and advancing rapidly.

The streets and alleys in the city were narrow, and the Japanese soldiers tried to resist by relying on temporary barricades.

Colonel Shigeru Arai, commander of the 144th Infantry Regiment of the 55th Division, was sweating profusely behind the barricade. He ordered his men to deploy anti-tank explosives while yelling at them to regroup the defeated soldiers.

However, the Japanese in the city had already been frightened by the invading tanks.

In order to blast the tank at close range, cutting off the connection between the enemy infantry and the tank is of utmost importance. However, the infantry of the Anmin Army is not like the Indian infantry in John's colonial army who would just run away after hitting.

They used tanks and surrounding buildings as cover and engaged in a fierce exchange of fire with the Japanese.

"Grenade launchers ready - fire!" The Japanese commander roared the order, and several grenades cut through the air, raising huge clouds of dust in the Security Army.

Even though the Japanese grenade launchers kept firing grenades, facing the flying fragments and splattered blood, these soldiers remained close to the tanks.

"Cover the tanks and suppress their grenade launchers, quickly!" The squad leader waved his arms and directed the soldiers to find cover and shoot.

"Throw a grenade!"

The tank they were protecting did not disappoint them either. The thick gun barrel of the M4A3 (105) Sherman tank slowly adjusted its angle.

A 105mm high-explosive bomb flew out, blasting the Japanese grenade launcher team and the bunker where they were hiding into pieces.

"Charge!" The squad leader didn't care about his ears buzzing from the artillery fire, rolled into the next bunker, and then waved his hand to signal the soldiers to continue pushing forward.

During the street fighting, the Type 99 rifles in the hands of the Japanese infantry were completely no match for the M3 submachine guns and Winchester shotguns in the narrow terrain, and they could only retreat step by step.

"Damn it, the warriors of the Locust Country are completely unable to fight back?" Colonel Shigeru Arai said the last words of his life with a look of disbelief on his face.

Then an M4A3 (105) Sherman used a bulldozer to knock down the barricade where he was hiding, and the following infantry immediately used the submachine guns in their hands to make a series of holes in the chest of the colonel who was "feeling chest tightness and shortness of breath".

Arai Shige's hands trembled slightly, as if he wanted to grab something, but eventually fell down powerlessly.

The infantryman, having completed his task of "helping others", curled his lips, casually tore off the Order of the Golden Kite from Colonel Arai Shigeru's chest, gently blew off the dust on it, and then put it in his pocket.

Then he picked up the saber that had fallen on the ground and ran happily to find his squad leader, kicking away the stones blocking his way on the way.

"Hey, squad leader, look what I found!"

-----

The consecutive deaths of two colonels dealt an unparalleled blow to morale.

The nature of the army determines that once morale begins to waver, it will quickly spread like a plague.

The bloody and brutal street fighting that Zhang Chi had anticipated did not happen.

The devil's organized resistance quickly collapsed.

After the total collapse of morale, Lieutenant General Sadakazu Takeuchi, commander of the 55th Division, could only flee hastily from the east gate of the city with the remaining less than 3000 Japanese soldiers, fleeing towards the vast mountains on the border of the Pegu Kingdom.

Their figures gradually moved away in the vast mountains and finally disappeared in the thick smoke of war.

In the end, the Anmin Army Training Division not only quickly occupied the entire city, but also captured more than a dozen Japanese soldiers who surrendered voluntarily.

"Another Korean logistics soldier? Or a forcibly conscripted overseas Chinese?" Hao Yi, who was used to the Japanese fighting stubbornly to the end, subconsciously didn't believe it.

The staff officer who reported the news shook his head: "They are all real soldiers of the 143rd Infantry Regiment."

However, Zhang Chi knew that as the Japanese war resources were depleted, many Japanese soldiers who were not even as tall as their rifles had been forced into conscription.

These little Japanese devils had no determination to fight to the end. Once the Japanese veterans and grassroots officers guarding them were killed, they surrendered without any psychological burden.

"Okay, lock them all up and send them to a prisoner-of-war reformatory." Zhang Chi said directly.

Since the independent regiment era, Zhang Chi's troops have captured many Japanese prisoners, but they were either pilots and ground crew, or second-tier units such as logistics soldiers and Korean soldiers.

Among these prisoners, except for some who were sent to Stevenson for propaganda, most of them were arranged to go down into the mines in the prisoner-of-war reformatory.

Instead of shooting these devils directly, Zhang Chi felt that it would be better to let them atone for their sins through labor. Anyway, according to the task indicators he set, there would not be many devils who could come out of the mine.

At least not more than the Japanese who later dug potatoes and brought them home from Siberia.