Gathering Storm: Wuhan

“... - After leaving ancient Zhengzhou on the mighty Yellow River’s shores behind us, the Express carried us via Nanyang, Xiangyang, Jingmen, Jingzhou -over the course of two days travel in considerable comfort- deeper and deeper into the heart of great China. I noticed the fields of grain began to make way for endless terraced fields of rice, with uncountable small villages cresting low hilltops all the way to far-off mountains on the horizon. After Jingmen, these mountains slowly sank beneath the horizon and a suffocating haze descended on the wet flatlands for which my alpine physique was ill-equipped. Thanking the sensibilities of the Express’ engineers to outfit the carriages with controlled climates, I beheld us entering Wuhan. Dispersed townships made way for vast industrial expanses -still intermingled with lakes and canals-  which in turn made way for hundreds of modern concrete apartment highrises. Truly, Joseon’s civil engineers were in a league of their own, able to house central China’s massive population in such numbers with modern amenities. As the sun set that day, I was met with another gleaming example of Joseon civil engineering. We were borne over the Yangtze on the Third Wuhan Yangtze bridge. A suspended, multi-decked, steel-framed work of art, it afforded us majestic views of the First and Second bridges, glowing in the hazy sunset of days’ end.” 

Excerpt from Alois Simonischek’s ‘Linking Empires; On the Trans-Eurasian Express’, 1919

Wuhan history

On the eastern bank of the Yangtze, the old fortress-city of Wuchang has been standing strong for almost two-thousand years. On the western bank, the largest port on the Yangtze can be found in Hankou, north of where the Han estuary joins the Yangtze. South of the Han, still on the western banks of the Yangtze, lies Hanyang, the arsenal of central China. The founding of the Hubei Institution of Technology in 1864 laid the groundwork for the reputation of what later became Wuhan as a city of progress and innovation. Since then, many world-class engineers, architects and technicians have called this institution their home.
 
In 1879, the First Yangtze bridge was completed, joining together for the first time the sister cities of Wuchang and Hankou by land. At this same time, the Joseon governor of Hubei province joined the three large cities together into the metropolis of Wuhan. Two more bridges followed, and Wuhan, already a major logistical hub due to the critical port of Hankou, also developed itself into a major railway hub during the industrialization effort pushed during the reign of Emperor Heonjong. North of Wuchang, the largest steel mill of central China had been steadily expanding since its initial construction in 1876, and was joined by the Beongae Locomotive Company in 1887 and the Wuhan Automotive Factory in 1908.

During the famine of 1920, compounded with the terrible drought of 1923 where the Yangtze ran dry, the Russian-Mongolian Kuznets-Ganzorig Corporation acquired a controlling stake in the Wuhan steel mills in exchange for large loans intended to acquire food and aid from the French. Throughout the many rebellions and revolutions between 1923 and 1927, Wuhan managed to regain and maintain its footing and stability, aided by the end of the Yangtze drought in ‘24 and bountiful harvests in the surrounding farmland thanks to investments in mechanized agricultural equipment by the Institution of Technology. This apparent return to stability was unfortunately not meant to last.

The First Joseon-Japanese War (1927-1931)

In May 1927, the Empire of Japan and the British Empire launched a full-scale invasion of China. Supposedly a peace-keeping mission to quell communist uprisings and other revolts in the coastal provinces, by the following month the Japanese Army had pushed all the way into Wuhan, and the central Yangtze basin.

The Central Provincial Army Wuhan Ying and the Hubei regional government had been caught completely unaware. Although the initial shock of the Japanese occupation of the Shanghai metropolitan area had kicked the bloated military bureaucracy into gear to start conscription and send out marching orders, no one expected that Wuhan itself was ever under direct threat. Expectations notwithstanding, Japan’s modernized and mechanized 11th General Army simply outpaced Joseon’s provincial venerable bureaucrats. Through a mix of strategic pushes to take geographical chokepoints and bridges, a mass deployment of fast gunboats up the Yangtze from out of Shanghai, and air support from the Japanese Navy, Wuhan was occupied before even 10 percent of the Wuhan reserves could be mobilized.

Led by their relatively young and idealistic General Saigō Magohachi, the 11th Army pushed on, right over the majestic First, Second and Third Yangtze bridges the Hubei governor had hesitated on for too long to blow up. At this point however, the neighboring and more experienced Central Provincial Army Chengdu Ying had mostly mobilized and was already en-route, having just left Yichang on their way to meet the Japanese forces. Although this advance was a little closer than they anticipated, they met it all the same on the plains, lakes and rice paddies west of Wuhan. Despite the 11th’s impressive speed up until this point, it suddenly and violently got slowed down to a grinding slog.

Gunboats, now anticipated, were fired upon from fortified shoreline positions or blocked by sideways barges. Tanks and halftracks got stuck in the swampy terrain, and air support from above had trouble spotting targets in the torrential downpour of the incoming rain season. The remainder of Wuhan’s Provincial forces mobilized at last and joined the Chengdu Ying arriving from Sichuan. By year’s end, any hope of pushing deeper into China beyond Wuhan had been smothered in the mud of Hubei province.

For three years war raged on in China. As Japan’s control on the coast from Shanghai to Canton was solidified, Joseon was unable to retake Wuhan. However, Japan was equally unable to advance much past Wuhan, the great Yangtze becoming an obstacle for both armies.

While ostensibly done to quell rebellions and bring peace and prosperity to the Chinese populace, China’s natural resources were of unmistakable appeal to the resource-poor Japanese Empire. Almost wholly dependent on British coal and crude iron imports before the war, Japan had hoped to gain access to China’s iron mines as well as its near limitless coal fields in the provinces north of Wuhan, in addition to the ones in the now-occupied Guangzhou in the south. It had succeeded in taking control of Jiangxi’s iron mines as well as the Hubei mines directly east of Wuhan. However, they had become entrenched around the southern reaches of the coalfields around Luoyang, falling just short. With battle lines so close, the mines were for the time being effectively useless. Their inability to acquire the steel their war machine required ultimately made them more willing to sign the ceasefire of 1931.

The Ceasefire (1931-1936)

Even before the ceasefire was signed, the provisional Choukou government had gotten to work setting up Wuhan as a bridgehead to facilitate future campaigns into the Chinese interior. The Shogun himself classified Wuhan as a critically important foothold and ordered it become the seat of the 11th Army high command. The hope was to use the existing rail and naval infrastructure within Wuhan to turn it into a critical supply node for the front.

"Let there be no confusion, conquering Wuhan has never been the goal. Instead, it is a vital rung in the ladder. Our goal is not conquest, our goal is dominion. Our dominion cannot be realized as long as the Joseon court continues to lay claim to its own dominion of China. At the advisement of Field Marshal Tokugawa Yoshihiro, your objective is as follows:
During the coming armistice, build up for a mass mobile offensive northwest. Like in ‘27, you will take the Koreans by surprise and speed. Your targets are the Korean North-South supply lines in the Chinese interior, which will put severe pressure on Joseon supplies in Southern China and Canton. Your goal is to make the Joseon Court unable to exert control over China. If successful it should be enough to force them to accept territorial concessions and a peace treaty favourable to us and our allies."

Letter from Shogun Sakai Tadanaga to 11th Army High Command, 1932

General Saigō Magohachi, commander of the 11th General Army, was not one to shy away from challenging assignments. After all, it was him and his general staff who had pulled off the initial push from Shanghai to Wuhan, and it was one of his officer corps who had suggested commandeering the moored Joseon gunboats in the Shanghai and Nantong harbors, causing the operation to be carried out even swifter than planned. The Japanese had not yet considered river warfare, so the inclusion of this domestic fleet was instrumental in their advance. The 11th’s combined strategic acumen and adaptability made it the perfect rapid strike force.

Saigō understood the strategic value of this plan like no other. Interrupting supply lines at the very least would relieve pressure on the armies deployed to South China, and although he was skeptical of any chance of pushing through he now began to worry that he may have overdelivered in the swift taking of Wuhan. He noticed there was no end objective given in these orders, but the enclosed maps showed Joseon supply lines all the way to the Loess plateau and China’s coal fields in the north. After receiving a later message giving him carte blanche to request any material and reinforcements he deemed fit to break through or strike past the stalemate, his suspicions that Edo high command was putting pressure on him to single-handedly end the war was all but confirmed. Reading between the lines, General Saigō could also tell the assignment he was handed was a given opportunity to make up for his failures in pushing past Wuhan for the last 3 years.

Not a word was said about the standstill, but the message was clear. "Wuhan’s capture exceeded expectations, but expectations were now adjusted accordingly. Stop wasting time in the mud." Carte blanche or not, even preparing such an offensive was no small task. For 2 years the Imperial Army Railways and Shipping Section was hard at work refitting railyards, setting up warehouses and ammo depots, building airfields and setting up shipping schedules between Shanghai and Wuhan. Entire armored columns of light tanks, halftracks and trucks were parked in refitted and emptied factory halls in Hankou on the west bank, in an attempt to lessen Joseon’s chance of realizing Japan’s plans. Across the demilitarized zone, which stretched from Hanchuan on the Japanese side to Qianjiang on the other, an eerie quiet fell.

The Joseon Empire too, had been hard at work before the armistice was signed. Its ancient bureaucracy had buckled under the rebellion of the Shanxi Clique, and had fully broken under the Japanese invasion. At the insistent advice of Grand Chancellor Ya Jeong-Hee, the highest civil servant in the Korean court, His Royal Highness Emperor Taejong signed the Civil and Military Archival Revitalization Edict in 1929. This decree sought to introduce a new and mutually interchangeable standard to both civilian and military bureaucracy. On it’s introduction, existing records were transferred en-masse to the new model. Relevant civil information, such as production output and census data were now stored and recorded next to military supply records and provincial army strength assessments. The decree’s intent was to bring balance between the civilian and military sectors of Joseon society, wherein the civil side would be better positioned and informed to support the military side, and the military side would in equal measure be made more capable of assessing threats and priorities of protection of civil society.

Although an undertaking of glacial scale, it had been in the works for quite some time. First proposed by the former Grand Chancellor Park Jeong-yang in 1904 following the first Russo-Japanese war, it was already quite apparent back then that Joseon’s provincial army system was in dire need of modernization. Intended to bring balance between the civilian and military aspects of the Empire, it was surprisingly equally opposed by both, fearing they’d be made subservient to the other. However, the most vocal civil opponents were the Shanghai and other East Coast businesses, who were now no longer in any position to oppose anything, and some of the most prominent military opponents eventually found themselves in the Shanxi Clique which when defeated, no longer had any political weight. 

 Although signed in ‘29, the active war going on was somewhat hindering a full transition of the administration. However, the groundwork was being laid for the next 2 years. In the Korean peninsula and the provinces not currently at war, clerks set to work transferring existing data to new formats. Relevant data, such as census and stockpiles were transferred and verified. Immediately irrelevant data such as heritage information and land ownership data older than 100 years was archived, supposedly for the time being. No records were destroyed, however there was a major shift in priorities in what records were actively maintained moving forward. Despite the relatively sheltered nature of non-frontline provinces in the Empire, there was an overall tense acceptance to these developments, both given the shock from the Japanese invasion which had managed to permeate even into remote communities, and the brutal reprisals against the Shanxi Clique. Now was not the time to argue over paperwork.

The Sichuan Blitz (1936)

By 1936, things had developed in a rather unpleasant manner for General Saigō. He had anticipated needing 2 and a half years to build up and prepare his forces for the planned next stage of dismantling Joseon control in China. 5 years after receiving the order, launching the attack seemed further away than ever before. Building up the infrastructure and supply depots had started off strong, and there was now a robust network connecting Wuhan to Shanghai and the coast. Recuperating and reinforcing lost units in the 3 years of attrition warfare had however taken much longer than anticipated, even with the supposed ‘carte blanche’ he had been granted. Then there were also the material shortages. As it turned out the Navy had managed to acquire a far larger share of the traded British steel resources than Army high command initially anticipated, leading to shortcomings in army vehicle production. The 11th General Army had a sufficiently large motorpool of halftracks, trucks and even new reconnaissance walkers, but was lacking in any medium and heavy armor to break through fortified positions.

Civil unrest in the Choukou Administrative District had been a constant drain on his forces, which were more and more being used as a police force rather than a strike force. The optimal infrastructure connecting Wuhan and their relatively high mobility meant that the 11th was more and more called upon to answer to outbursts of civil disobedience and sabotage far to the east. Not just that, but the population of the city itself had proven to be an unanticipated challenge. 

Many denizens had welcomed the 11th as liberators of the Chinese people from the Joseon yoke, many others in Wuhan had watched on in quiet resentment. There was no telling what any of the remaining 12 million Wuhan citizens thought who had not fled when the Japanese arrived. The vast majority kept their heads down, but unrest had been brewing. Ranging from subversive graffiti to assassination and sabotage attempts, these acts of civil disobedience could boil over to a legitimate threat if left unattended. Some of these dissidents were also suspected to be members of the Chilong, a growing partisan group loyal neither to Korean or Japanese authority. Under the advisement of the governor appointed by the Choukou administration, Saigō had ordered the city divided into districts with walls, guard patrols, and identification checkpoints starting in 1932. Although not official policy, at some point suspected troublemakers and subversives began to be forcibly relocated to Zhuankou district on the west bank, south of Hanyang. Heavily policed and surrounded by lakes and canals, Zhuankou slowly turned into a place where martial law was applied harshly to any and all who so much as looked at a patrol the wrong way.

While the general appeared far from comfortable with this development, it did have a noted effect on lessening acts of disobedience in Wuhan as a whole. Additionally, the district and checkpoint system gave his bored troops something to do. With the man himself growing increasingly weary of his station over the city, sometimes the easy solution was the best. Not just in Wuhan, but all along the line similar difficulties were experienced by the occupying forces. A feeling began to sink in amongst the troops stationed in China that they had bitten off more than they could chew, and high command's insistence on a continued 'mobilization' actually caused more delays than if they had taken the time to consolidate their gains. Furthermore, deployments to stomping out communist revolutionaries in Indochina in ‘35 had taken several veteran units out of China.

Similarly, Joseon was in a rather different position than it was in 1931. Bureaucratic reorganization had revealed key opportunities in manpower allocation and had streamlined material and supply production in several of the provinces, primary amongst these being Sichuan and its Chengdu-based provincial armies. Due to its relative proximity to the oft-rebellious Tibetan highlands as well as the frontlines in Hubei province, it was designated as a mustering location for the operation that became known as the Sichuan Blitz. Being veterans of the First Battle of Wuhan and having held back the Japanese advance for 3 years in Hubei, the Chengdu Ying was a hardened veteran force. Besides the standing army, the new Imperial Department of Regional Commissions had identified several divisions’ worth of recruitable population in non-essential sectors that got either reassigned to essential industries or received marching papers to join the Sichuan forces.

Led by the commander of the Central Chinese Theatre Gao Feng, a former Wuhan resident and No. 4 Wuhan Wei commander, Joseon struck in December 1936. Caught off-guard and distracted, Japanese forces in China found themselves in much the same situation Joseon had found itself in 9 years earlier. The Chengdu Ying led the spearhead in central China with not necessarily high but terrifyingly consistent momentum. Japan never anticipated Joseon’s ability to reorganize and mobilize such a counterattack and always prepared to be on the offensive rather than the defensive.

All across the line Japanese positions were overrun. In Wuhan however, things were eerily silent. General Saigō, standing in the midst of his now well lived-in general staff headquarters, witnessed the pandemonium unfold via telegrams, radio transfers and telephone calls. Yet not a single attack on Wuhan had been made.

As it turned out, Joseon had gotten word of the infrastructural updates and troop and civilian movements in Wuhan, but had not gotten a clear answer what troops and materials were stationed there. They assumed that Wuhan was the most well-fortified city on the front, because of the sheer amount of equipment and resources that were shipped there. Thus, they had decided against another frontal assault on Wuhan, and instead chose to strike around it and cut off its supply lines.

In the weeks that followed the start of the Blitz, the Japanese Army managed to regroup itself. Defensive positions were put up, fallback lines drawn and slowly the grinding iron wall came to a halt. Swathes of territories had been reclaimed from the invader, yet Wuhan still stood, as did its supply lines. At some point General Saigō and his staff realized they were not under direct attack, and instead used this privileged misunderstanding to conduct lightning fast mobile counter attacks and flanking maneuvers to slow down or stop the Joseon advances on their supply lines.

Around this time General Gao also realized Wuhan could not be left unassailed. He had hoped to cut off its supply lines and start an offensive around its supposedly fortified western defenses, but now he realized two key points. First, Wuhan’s rapid strike force needed to be dealt with before their supply lines could be cut. Second, Wuhan's formidable defenses might not be that formidable at all. When the first counterattacks hit, he had ordered a probing strike on Hanyang, which contrary to all expectations was able to reach and push through the suburbs and into the city proper. The district checkpoints with at most thin concrete walls topped with barbed wire did not stand a chance against Joseon’s tanks and combat engineers. Not equipped to maintain a lengthy assault, they retreated to and were reinforced in the suburbs, setting up a bridgehead some miles south of Zhuankou district.

These events led to the somewhat bizarre situation of a barely-fortified city being nominally under siege, but with the besieging party having committed all its troops elsewhere being unable to encircle said city or make any meaningful gains. At the same time, the besieged party was harassing and moving around the assailant, fully engaged in highly mobile warfare. Because of the robust infrastructure network between Wuhan and Shanghai, General Saigō was able to rapidly move around his troops along the line to provide support where needed, and despite the odds was able to stabilize a lengthy front line and keep his supply lines intact, somehow fighting a highly mobile defensive war on both sides of the Yangtze. General Gao was forced to pull away troops from their push through Hunan province in order to put pressure on Wuhan and prevent them from attempting a breakthrough behind their lines. The Japanese, recovered from the initial shock, had properly reorganized their forces and readjusted to the new reality of the war having reignited without their initiation of it. Wuhan was about to experience the horrors of protracted urban combat for the first time.

The Second Battle of Wuhan (1937-1938)

In February 1937, all of Wuhan west of the Yangtze was encircled. The Japanese 11th General Army had managed to hold off Joseon advances across the river and controlled all of the immediate countryside around Wuchang. That being said, Wuhan had effectively turned into a salient. For many days the trucks and transport that had waited in the halls of Hankou for years were driven back over the three Yangtze bridges to aid logistics elsewhere. The roar of engines and rumbling of tires over the bridges could be heard whenever the fighting quieted down, stirring confusion in the attackers and a sinking realization that the long awaited push beyond Wuhan was well and truly dead in the defenders. General Saigō could hear it too, each vehicle making it back to the east bank fueling his frustration with Edo High Command and their delays. He had been ready for 2 years, but now it was too late.

By March, the No. 4 Wuhan Wei backed by Sichuan forces had pushed through the industrial and logistical expanses and many basins and lakes of western Wuhan’s Dongxihu and Caidian districts, and was entering the city proper, first amongst them being Zhuankou. For the first time in almost a decade, the exiled soldiers could catch a glimpse of the Yangtze bridges, glistening in the pale light of spring.

The 11th was now properly settled in for a long defensive engagement. A few companies that were on loan as MPs were recalled to the front, arriving on riverboats under cover of night. Japanese halftracks had been repurposed and reinforced as mobile pillboxes and weapons platforms. They were parked in shop windows, hidden around corners, or simply dug into defense networks, creating a nasty surprise for anyone who dared peek their heads around a corner. Whenever a chance did still present itself for flanking maneuvers, the humble T-94 halftracks and T-91 gun tractors carrying anti-tank cannons, field guns, and AA guns were often seen right at the forefront, providing fire support for the advancing infantry.

The expansive concrete high-rise neighborhoods of western Wuhan, once the pride of the Hubei Institution’s architecture and engineering department and an inspiration for urban planners worldwide, slowly turned into a concrete quagmire of barbed wire, flooded roads and half-collapsed buildings. Hubei province’s legendary wet and damp climate, combined with high groundwater levels and destruction of civilian water management infrastructure meant that many parts of the city were subject to frequent flooding, especially during the rain season. Trenches were generally an impossibility outside of the few hills present in the city. Instead, existing buildings were fortified and outfitted with gun emplacements, and makeshift walls and barricades constructed from the rubble. 

Surprisingly, the new Tekkiba light reconnaissance walkers came into their element in this terrain. Able to navigate flooded streets and mountains of debris with such speed that occasional flanking attacks and counterattacks in the dense urban chaos was still a potential success, they developed a fearsome reputation. Amidst it all, the civilian populace did its best to survive. Following an urgent petition from civilian figureheads, General Saigō allowed an evacuation of inhabitants of the west bank. Over the course of nearly 2 months, a stream of refugees was passing over the first and third bridges (furthest away from the frontlines) non-stop. Soldiers in charge of the bridge checkpoints however continued to conduct strict identification checkups, as resentment between civilians and the occupying military had been reaching new heights.

With Joseon forces very slowly closing in on the bridges, Saigō grew more desperate. The bridges were the key to a large-scale ground offensive across the Yangtze, and he had still held out hope that the west bank could be held. All throughout China, lines were stabilizing, and in some cases Joseon gains were beginning to evaporate. If the 11th could hold on and stop the Joseon advance, there was still a possibility of a future push into Hubei and central China.

On the other side of the battlelines, General Gao was coming to the same conclusion. The bridges were vital for any of Japan’s future machinations in this region, but at the same time capturing the bridges was equally vital for a swift push across the river. He was aware the northern push on Shanghai was falling apart and Joseon was now engaged in a fighting retreat towards Nanjing. Similarly, the southern blitz had come to a halt against the Nanling mountains, Canton forces, and fire support from the British Empire. They could not afford Japan to maintain its foothold in Central China, but to Gao, it was equally unthinkable to blow up the bridges. 

The bridges are the pride of Wuhan, a symbol of Chinese skill and ingenuity, heralds of progress and the importance of the Hubei Han Chinese within the Joseon Empire. The bridges also connect the three cities into one. Without the bridges, there is no Wuhan. General Gao Feng, a proud Wuhan native, amateur local historian, and someone described as having ‘a sentimental streak’, could not find it in his heart to order the destruction of the bridges. Instead, he held out hope that a breakthrough anywhere along the line could solidify a spearhead to take at least one of the 1.6 kilometer long bridges. Similarly, General Gao had not made use of Joseon’s formidable long-range artillery to strike targets and strongholds within the city. With some difficulty, supply depots and routes beyond and beside the city could be struck, but Japan’s air superiority, thanks to Navy fighter craft, and increased access to Army ground support attack aircraft and bombers made it difficult to set up permanent artillery positions.

The 11th General Army had not had any heavy artillery stockpiled, a result of the river port serving as a supply nexus for many other positions prior to the conflict. There were field guns and anti-tank guns, but little heavy artillery. With Wuhan’s position changed from a hub to a holdout, General Saigō had been able to build up the 113th Artillery Division with slowly supplied heavy artillery and ammunition. Becoming more and more convinced of the need to use his new ordnance, the Japanese General was also hesitant to unleash such destruction on the city he had now lived in for 10 years. His General Staff too was deeply divided. His more idealistic officers argued that they were now the city’s stewards and had to defend it against Joseon’s oppression, and not cause it harm. However, a majority of his staff, as well as his civilian counterpart the Governor, saw the need for a brutal but pragmatic answer to Joseon’s advance. Governor Takamura in particular had increasingly become a hardliner for more harsh reprisals, both against unruly Wuhan citizens and the advancing Joseon forces.

Although General Saigō had once sympathized with the ideal of showing a better way to the Chinese people, these notions had slowly shrivelled up and died over the course of nearly a decade of civilian disobedience, High Command indecisiveness, and a continuous inability to meet unmeetable expectations. As a last compromise, he ordered a general evacuation for the west bank and relaxed checkpoint controls for 3 days. Broadcast over public radio channels, this order was also relayed to the citizens still living in the western parts of the city now reclaimed by Joseon. 24 hours before order’s end, General Saigō, directly addressing the citizens, declared that anyone still in the districts where an evacuation order was issued would be considered an enemy combatant. 24 hours later, on the second of August 1938, his rearmed artillery division made good on this threat.  

A rumble of distant guns firing echoed over the river and through the battlelines of Hankou. As if by unspoken agreement, no artillery had been fired on the city itself by either side, until now. All across western Hankou and Hanyang shells struck streets, warehouses, and apartment blocks. But they did not explode. Toxic gas poured from the struck sides and roofs of buildings, streets getting clouded in sickly yellow fumes. All throughout the Joseon rear lines, troops were getting suffocated, caught by surprise and inexperience with gas. Many civilians too, unable or unwilling to evacuate, paid the price for disobeying Saigō one last time. People fled into buildings, closing off windows, aiming desk fans at cracks, scrambling to find unissued gasmasks in warehouses. More and more gas fell until the air was inundated with gas, yellow residue forming on the walls and streets at ground level. Due to the thick, windless August air, the gas pooled and sank downward, turning the street levels into certain death for anyone without protection. Desperate people, citizens, soldiers, and the occasional journalist and government official alike, rushed to higher ground, roofs becoming their salvation.

General Gao himself, at that moment inspecting the troops, was one of them. Caught without gas masks, he and his officers also scrambled to the top floor of the building they were in, one of the concrete highrises serving as a barracks and mess hall. There, from the 23rd floor, looking out over the city he loved, he heard the guns fire once more. This time though, the shells were loaded with high explosive ordnance.

Buildings shook on their foundations. Facades came crashing down. Gaping holes and roaring fires appeared on the sides of the concrete colossi that had provided hope and homes to entire city-sized neighborhoods. The artillery rained for several hours, into the night. Gas, high explosives, and incendiary shells equal measure, western Hankou and Hanyang were turned to hell on earth. In 13 hours, General Saigō expended most of the ordnance he had pulled his last favors for in the past months. Almost a dozen highrises, despite their very sturdy construction, had collapsed entirely. Several more were battered down to crumbling skeletons hanging together by rebar, stairwells and spite. None remained untouched.

Somewhere in the night, the wind had picked up. A strong breeze came from the west, fueling infernos and pushing them towards the river, bringing thick clouds of gas with it wherever the fires did not roar. Because of the damp of the rain season most fires did not get pushed very far. However, burning embers were carried by the wind into old Hankou. Overgrown, narrow streets became flooded with gas, occasional buildings began to glow with fires building inside, open windows forgotten amidst the evacuations before.

Soldiers of the 11th, some of whom had cheered, others had looked on in shock and awe, were now confronted with a desperate Joseon push of frontline troops who were caught between the horrors advancing behind them and the Japanese lines in front of them. An enormous explosion resounded above the roar of advancing fires and gunfire. An ammo depot and mustering point, located in a requisitioned covered market on the shoreline under Third Yangtze Bridge, connecting Hankou and Wuchang, had fallen victim to the rain of embers. Taking with it a nearby mustering breakthrough force and a good chunk of the Third Bridge, it had erupted in multiple, violent explosions, a massive fireball reaching hundreds of meters into the sky.

The Third Bridge had been the main connection to Wuchang, but now its access ramp on the west bank had been obliterated, and a good 100 meters of bridge-deck had fallen into the river. For the Japanese frontlines in Hankou, there suddenly was no longer a way out if they needed. Panic began to spread in the ranks. Roaring fires around them, choking gas, and desperate assailants, combined with witnessing the brutal obliteration of a large part of the place they had fought over for 10 years caused many to break rank.

Telephone lines that had run over the Third Bridge had been taken with the blast and there was a momentary break in communications with the General Staff in Wuchang. Officers of their own accord sounded retreat, some making for moored ferries and barges, others pushing to Hanyang across the Han river bridges and the First Bridge, others retreating north to the Second Bridge.

At the other bridges similar scenes were playing out. The fires in western Wuhan were slowly burning out, gas blown east on the winds and dissipating. With General Gao and his most senior officers missing in action, General Nam Po-Sun, commander in charge of the Gao’s artillery regiments, made the call to repay the enemy in kind. While the Japanese army was regrouping on the west bank to hold on to their two remaining bridgeheads, they too were suddenly caught unaware by a rolling barrage of high-explosive ordnance. Joseon’s legendary long-range artillery now-too wreaked destruction on the city.

Across the river in Wuchang, General Saigō looked on from the New Yellow Crane Tower atop Snake Hill. Having moved his headquarters here before the commencement of his artillery strike, ignoring protestations from the civilian monument caretakers and his own staff lugging equipment up 8 flights of stairs, his knuckles turned white gripping the balustrade. He had needed to see the west bank burn. He had still held on to a shred of hope of forcing a breakthrough, mustering his most veteran and well-equipped troops around the foot of the Third Bridge in Hankou with orders to advance when most of the fires had died out. He had felt the wind turn, had seen the sparks rain, and had felt the blast-wave from across the river, knocking rooftiles down all around him and making the tower shake on its foundations. Then, he heard reports and requests coming in. Entire divisions falling back and regrouping, he let it happen. Then at last a distant rumbling of thunder as Joseon’s guns fired, ripping through the still intact parts of Hankou and his forces in the middle of the chaos. As yet another ammo depot went up in flames in central Hanyang, Saigō knew it was over. With an emotionless voice he ordered a full retreat and the destruction of the First and Second Yangtze River Bridges. 

To Be Continued...