The Grand Decisive Battle That Opens a New Era (4)
Among the Korean ranks, the black-clad infantry of the Youth Vanguard took the concentrated fire of the enemy upon their own bodies and came crashing forward in a sudden, crushing wave. The Qing soldiers, already milling in confusion, had no choice but to give ground.
"Fall back! Fall back...!"
The reason was this: an enemy force that had already broken through the killing ground would only now come into its own, driving a wedge into the center and pouring in reserves to split the defending army in two. Even knowing this, the defenders had no option but to pull their lines back or feed in headquarters reserves piecemeal, buying time at the cost of cohesion.
"Abandon the hill!"
"Run!"
And through that sequence, the defenders' morale crumbled, their formations scattered, and they were reduced to loosely bound fragments that could be smashed apart wherever they stood. Thus the defending army dissolved into a rout.
When the Qing troops holding the foot of the hill fell back in disgrace, the Youth Vanguard seized the opening and pressed the attack with mounting fury.
No — they came on at a near-gallop, crashing to within a spear's length of the enemy.
"Charge! Charge!"
"Cut them all down! Slaughter every last Qing bastard in front of you!"
"Long live the Revolution!"
With a razor-sharp change of formation, the Youth Vanguard struck the Qing front line in a single blow, then, like jackals in a forest, lunged after the enemy's crumbling ranks, tearing at every weakness they could find.
"Die!"
"Long live the Republic!"
Bayonets ripped through Qing bellies and punched holes in flesh. Officers' swords stitched crimson thread across enemy backs, and the American-made revolvers in the non-commissioned officers' hands laid six men on the earth with each measured click of the hammer.
"There — the Beiyang Army!"
"Halt, all of you! Reform on the company commanders, now!"
"Halt! Halt! Company — two ranks!"
The Youth Vanguard had already smashed through the Liaodong garrison troops — or what had once been the old Green Standard Army — that had barred their path, and now they opened a furious firefight against the Beiyang Army units being fed in behind them.
The Beiyang Army opened fire first, targeting the Korean troops just cresting the hill.
"Fire! Don't let the Koreans close!"
"The moment we give way here, the fate of our Great Qing hangs by a thread! Fire!"
"Hold them! Battalion, dress ranks!"
"Take aim!"
They blocked the way, and with the crash of rifles a wall of powder-smoke burst across the field, blotting out the view. Men of the Youth Vanguard went down in droves, pitching into the dirt. But to those who called themselves the President's Black Wall, a handful of deaths were no shock at all.
"Company reformed!"
"Then let's go kill them!"
"Waaaah!"
They had taken a blow, but the Beiyang Army's fire had been scattered — an attempt to save their own collapsing allies — and the Vanguard officers, realizing the casualties were lighter than expected, hastily dressed their ranks and counterattacked.
Unlike the provincial troops who had been smashed to pieces and driven back in a panic, the Beiyang Army's regiments — the only true elite on the Qing side — pulled the fleeing local garrison behind them and hurriedly reformed into two-rank lines.
With calm faces they watched the provincial troops, already out of their minds, clutching their heads as they abandoned the line. Then the Beiyang officers roared, steadying their men.
"We must hold them!"
"Long live His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Qing!"
The Korean army was already coming over a hill no higher than a man's thigh. If they were driven back any further, even the central headquarters — which had made no preparations whatsoever — would be thrown into crisis by the enemy's assault, and the result would be the total annihilation of every Qing force in Liaodong. They hurled themselves into the fight with everything they had.
"Beijing's elite! All of you, in place — halt!"
"Company, two ranks! Two ranks!"
"Present arms! Prepare for volley fire!"
And it was the same for the Vanguard, who had been pursuing the retreating Liaodong troops up the hill and now turned their eyes. Spotting the Beiyang Army — dressed not in gaudy traditional costume but in proper uniforms that would not have looked out of place beside their own — the Vanguard steeled themselves once more and dressed their lines.
"Quick step, forward!"
The Black Wall, slightly warped, began to advance slowly once more, displaying its formidable strength before the Beiyang Army's eyes. Even men who had endured the harsh training of Western instructors and drawn high pay could not help but waver at the sight.
"Front, two hundred!"
"In place — halt!"
The distance was a mere two hundred meters. Now it was a contest of pure firepower, one side against the other.
"Shit, there's a filthy lot of them."
Someone among the battalion soldiers forming the firing line spat a curse. Unlike the Qing rabble who had broken and fled for their lives, these men looked every inch the elite, spreading left and right to bar the way.
"Keep your mouths shut."
The non-commissioned officers with revolvers cuffed the backs of the heads of those with loose tongues, and the Lieutenant Colonel commanding them swallowed hard as he stared forward.
From the rear, the faint sound of bugles and the noise of signalers cluttered the battlefield, but he was waiting for only one thing.
The bugle tore the air.
In the instant a passing cloud stole the sun's heat, shouts erupted from both sides at once, and the roar of man-made powder-clouds shook heaven and earth.
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
In a heartbeat, a red mist and a flash of light burst forth and poured into Beiyang Army and Vanguard alike, sparing neither.
"Gyaaah!"
"Help me...!"
Wherever the streaks of light touched, young men sprayed blood and stained the field crimson, and still more clawed at their own torn bodies, gasping out pain and bitterness as they slipped from consciousness.
But it was not over.
"Battalion, reload! Reload!"
"First rank, prone fire! Second rank, kneeling fire!"
"Third rank, aim! Fire!"
Battalions that had gone from two ranks to four, or that had folded in the companies first scattered across the front, threw out small left and right wings and poured a relentless storm of lead into the Beiyang units blocking their path, too busy to think of anything else.
"Get a hold of yourselves, you bastards! The President himself stands behind us!"
Platoon, company, and battalion commanders snapped at men whose minds had gone blank from the shock, forcing them to spit lead toward the front — and it was no different on the Qing side.
"Counterattack! Counterattack!"
"Hold the line! Hold your ground!"
"Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire!"
Still more lead crossed the killing ground, and just as many soldiers went to sleep in nameless earth.
"Good, good...!"
The Republic, holding a four-rank column in the rear ready to smash through the center the moment the chance came, clenched its fists and watched the Youth Vanguard's sacrifice, intent on drawing the Beiyang Army into a pure contest of firepower and bleeding it white amid a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
"Hnh."
Seo Jae-pil wet his parched lips with a dry swallow and laid a hand on the sword hanging at his hip. Another roar, another flash of red, and dozens of soldiers pitched forward and back. He glanced behind him at the body of men waiting in silence for his order.
Hundreds of pupils moved with his own. Beneath trousers of deep blue, each man wore the same leather-finished belt. These were the Sword Drawing Corps.
On the Day of the Revolution, at the Battle of Gyeong-u Palace, Seo Jae-pil had learned that a mad charge, packed with revolutionary spirit and rage, could make a force several times larger hesitate — and that a single burst of explosive violence could turn a battle on its head. He had pressed the army's high command hard, and founded a dedicated close-combat unit built around men of great strength and imposing build like himself, armed with nothing but an American revolver and a single sword: the so-called Sword Drawing Corps.
This Sword Drawing Corps was fundamentally different from the Armored Infantry, the Republic's new public face. Unlike those men, the unit Seo Jae-pil had founded with his own hands would have to butcher its way through the enemy with nothing but the cloth on their backs — no armor, no helmet, only flesh.
If anything, he thought, they were the true fragment of Korean manhood. How could a brutishly thick iron cuirass, a helmet without a shred of style, and plates of steel ever be the face of Korea?
"We're the better ones."
The familiar crash of rifles pulled Seo Jae-pil back to the present, and he spoke.
The Beiyang Army, the Vanguard, and some of the 3rd Division's battalions were trading lead in a furious storm, pouring their rage at one another without yielding an inch.
That was a real battlefield.
"...All of you. Ready."
Seo Jae-pil turned his head and locked eyes with his men.
"Don't spare your lives. Behind us, there are more of us still."
He held their gaze and hardened their will to fight. In an instant the Sword Drawing Corps changed the look in their eyes, each man gripping sword and revolver tight.
Will steeled, he turned his face to the front again. The Vanguard and the Beiyang Army were still hammering each other with insane volumes of fire.
But they were tired. Unmistakably tired. The Vanguard, having fought the enemy's provincial troops and rabble all the way up from the foot of the hill, felt sluggish; the Beiyang Army still had their legs, but the sight of their own men fleeing had clearly worn them down in spirit.
"Now."
That subtle air of a battlefield — Seo Jae-pil, who had walked the line between life and death more than once, knew it well. The fulcrum of a fight, ready to whip around at the slightest shock, the slightest variable.
It was now.
He did not let the chance slip. Seo Jae-pil surged up from the fold of ground where he had been hidden and roared.
A man tall enough to stand among any European of the West burst up from the fold of ground on the right, bellowed, and hurled himself toward the Beiyang Army like a madman. Hundreds of blue-clad warriors followed, shouting as they launched the charge.
"Wh-what!?"
"Enemy! Enemy!"
The Beiyang battalions and regiments reeled in shock at the sudden appearance of this separate enemy force.
They had already spent more than ten long minutes trading a relentless storm of fire toward the front, and they were exhausted. Just as the end of it seemed in sight — an ambush? An ambush, now? Where the hell had these bastards come from?
But there was no time to wonder. In a heartbeat the Sword Drawing Corps and Seo Jae-pil had crossed those two hundred meters — no short distance — and driven flashing, razor-edged steel in under Qing throats.
"Die, every last one of you! Long live the Revolution!"
Seo Jae-pil cut down a Beiyang officer who was stumbling backward with a dazed look on his face, then in a flash of lightning stabbed through the throat of a Qing soldier who had thrust a bayonet at him clumsily, and dropped him. In less than ten seconds he had cut down four men.
"Waaaaah!!!"
Unlike the Black Wall, these blue-clad warriors had appeared from nowhere. Unable to form a proper killing net, the Beiyang battalions flailed in a chaotic counterattack, and one by one they began to break.
"Die!"
"Gyaaah!"
A Sword Drawing Corps man's revolver blew a head apart; a sword split a belly and spilled the guts. And that, more than anything, sent the morale of Beiyang soldiers who had been clinging to their courage into a geometric collapse.
"G-good God...!"
"W-we have to run! Run!"
Everyone knows it: dying by a bullet is a lighter burden on the mind than watching a man in front of you spray blood with his entrails pouring out. And if the men who made that scene are monsters who come charging on, unbowed by gunfire, swinging swords like ghosts — then even a hero of ten-thousand-strength will feel fear. That is the way of the world.
The Sword Drawing Corps hurled themselves into the Beiyang ranks with ghost-haunted eyes that made no effort to hide their madness, slashing and stabbing without pause. The Qing army took the blow hard and froze where they stood.
Honestly, units that fought like this had vanished a hundred years ago. Even in the old days, when they, the Jurchen, had claimed to be warriors of the steppe on horseback, they had never fought this stupidly.
In the precious time the Sword Drawing Corps had bought with their fury, the Black Wall finished reforming and came striding on. Even the Beiyang Army, said to be the finest elite in all the Great Qing, began to hesitate, and one by one they gave ground.
No — they began to run.
"They're running!"
"After them!"
In that same fashion, units all along the line began to decide the fight.
"They're falling back!"
"Now! Issue the order to the entire army! General assault!"
In some places it was Korea's pride, her public face — the Armored Infantry — that absorbed the enemy's fire with their own bodies and put them to flight. In others, units like Seo Jae-pil's Sword Drawing Corps butchered the enemy with courage and fanaticism as their weapons.
In the end, that was how the Qing army's general rout began.