SHADOWS OF THE VALLEY
Chapter 14: Baptism on the Shanxi Front
Date: October 25, 1937
Location: The Taihang Mountains, Shanxi Province
The war had a new sound. It was not the sporadic crackle of ambush in a Shaanxi valley, but the constant, grinding thunder of artillery to the east—a sound felt in the chest more than heard. Li Fan's company, now formally designated the 1st Special Service Company, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army, crouched in a rocky defile on the western flank of the Taihang range. They were seventy-six men strong, having absorbed vetted recruits from Red Army units and a few more of their own trained villagers. Their gear was still a mix, but now more uniform—grey Eighth Route Army tunics, but with their faded valley-and-eye insignia stitched discreetly on the collar.
Before them lay the objective: a Japanese forward observation post codenamed "Eagle's Perch." It was a fortified position on a jagged peak, directing artillery fire onto the main Eighth Route Army defensive lines ten miles to the south. Their mission was not to hold it. It was to blind it.
Senior Commander Wang's briefing had been stark. "The Japanese 20th Division is pressing hard. Their artillery is killing ten of our men for every one of theirs in close combat. Eagle's Perch has a wire telephone line back to their battery. Cut the nerve. Kill the eyes. Then disappear."
Now, looking through his captured Japanese Type 97 sniper scope, Li Fan studied the "Perch." A sandbagged machine gun nest (a Type 92 heavy), a small command bunker, and a tripod-mounted artillery spotting scope. Four men visible. The wire ran down the back slope into a gully.
"Confirmation," he whispered to Liu Feng beside him.
Liu Feng, now the official Company Reconnaissance Platoon Leader, nodded. "Pattern holds. Four on duty. Relief at midnight. One hour window of minimal activity at 2300 when they eat. The wire follows the gully for two hundred meters before going underground."
Li Fan motioned for his platoon leaders to gather. Zhao Quan (1st Platoon, Assault), Liu Feng (2nd Platoon, Recon/Sniper), and a new addition—Wei Guo, a fierce, competent former Red Army squad leader who now commanded 3rd Platoon (Support/Demolitions).
"We execute at 2305," Li Fan said, tracing the route on a slate. "Liu Feng, your team neutralizes the wire in the gully. Cut it in three places, take a section for analysis. Zhao Quan, you take the assault team up the east draw. Suppress the machine gun nest with grenades, do not assault it directly. Your job is noise and distraction. Wei Guo, your demolition team is with me. We go up the west scree slope during the distraction, breach the bunker, destroy the spotting scope and any maps or codes. Exfiltrate separately via the northern cliffs. Rules of engagement: silent until compromised, then overwhelming violence. We are ghosts delivering a stroke of lightning."
They rehearsed the plan with hand signals in the fading light. There was a new tension in the air, different from the familiar anxiety of their valley fights. This was the Imperial Japanese Army. Their reputation for tenacity and brutality was not an abstraction.
At 2250, they moved into position. The night was moonless, perfect. Liu Feng's team, including Chen Rui, vanished into the gully like black water. Li Fan, with Wei Guo and two demolitions experts, began the arduous climb up the loose scree of the west slope. Every dislodged stone sounded like a cannon shot in their ears.
At 2303, from his position halfway up, Li Fan heard the faint, cheerful chatter of Japanese from the perch above—the meal break. He froze, signaling a halt. A sentry walked along the sandbag wall, lit a cigarette, and hummed a tune. The smell of tobacco drifted down.
2305.
A series of soft thumps echoed from the east draw—Zhao Quan's men launching their grenades. Not at the nest, but at the rocks beside it. The explosions were sharp, shocking in the mountain silence.
The perch erupted in shouted orders. The machine gun swung east and opened fire, its slower, heavier thud-thud-thud drowning out all other sound. Perfect.
Li Fan's team scrambled the last twenty meters. They reached the sandbag wall at its blind corner. Wei Guo placed a small, shaped charge of stolen Japanese explosive against the bunker's wooden door. He gestured: Ready.
Li Fan peeked over the wall. The machine gunner was fully engaged, firing into the darkness below. Another soldier fed the belt. A third was shouting into a field telephone—useless now, thanks to Liu Feng. The fourth was peering east with binoculars.
Li Fan dropped back and gave the chop signal: Execute.
CRACK. The shaped charge blew the door inward with a minimal, localized blast. Even over the machine gun, the Japanese inside the bunker shouted in surprise.
Li Fan was through the door first, his Mauser pistol up. A Japanese lieutenant was reaching for a sword. Li Fan shot him twice in the chest. A radioman turned, and Wei Guo cut him down with a burst from a captured Type 100 submachine gun. The small space filled with acrid smoke.
"The scope! The maps!" Li Fan barked.
One of Wei Guo's men swung a pickaxe into the delicate brass and glass of the artillery spotting scope. The other swept maps, codebooks, and a small safe into a burlap sack. Li Fan grabbed the lieutenant's map case and sword—intelligence and a psychological blow.
From outside, the machine gun fire stopped abruptly. A new sound: the sharp, faster reports of Mauser rifles and the ping of grenades. Zhao Quan's team was now in close combat.
"Time!" Li Fan yelled. They burst from the bunker. The machine gunner was dead, shot through the side of the head—Chen Rui's work from the gully, a phenomenal 300-meter shot in near darkness. The remaining two soldiers were in a desperate firefight with Zhao Quan's men advancing up the draw.
Li Fan didn't join the fight. He threw a smoke grenade onto the perch, creating a choking screen. "Disengage! Zhao Quan, fall back! Now!"
Whistles blew—the pre-arranged signal for retreat. Zhao Quan's men broke contact, vanishing back down the draw as suddenly as they appeared. Li Fan's team went over the west wall, sliding down the scree slope in a controlled avalanche of noise and stone.
The whole engagement, from first grenade to exfiltration, lasted less than four minutes.
They regrouped at a pre-planned cave three miles away, deep in friendly terrain. The cost: one man from 1st Platoon with a through-and-through flesh wound in the leg. The score: one enemy observation post obliterated, four enemy KIA (including an officer), all equipment destroyed, and a haul of vital intelligence.
But the real test came at dawn. As they prepared to move further back, the mountain shook. Not with sporadic artillery, but with a concentrated, furious barrage. The Japanese battery, blind and enraged, was dumping its entire ammunition load onto the coordinates of their now-dead perch, pulverizing the mountaintop in a spectacular, wasteful display of fury.
From a distant ridge, the company watched the awesome, terrifying fireworks.
"They're angry," Zhang Wei grunted, a hint of pride in his voice.
"They're blind," Liu Feng corrected, analyzing the fallout. "And they've just revealed the location and range of their battery for our artillery spotters. A costly temper tantrum."
Li Fan watched the smoke plume. This was the new warfare. Not just killing men, but unbalancing systems, provoking overreaction, gathering intelligence from the enemy's rage. It was his kind of war.
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Date: November 12, 1937
Location: 129th Division Forward Headquarters, Taihang Mountains
They were summoned not to a celebration, but to a field briefing. The command cave was crowded, maps plastered to every rock face. Senior Commander Wang was there, along with several other battalion and regimental commanders. The atmosphere was grim.
"The Japanese are adapting," a division intelligence officer reported. "Their patrols are larger, more aggressive. They are beginning anti-partisan sweeps. They have learned the hard way that our 'bandits' have teeth."
Commander Wang pointed to Li Fan. "Captain Li's company has been effective. But their methods are a luxury. We cannot afford a hundred such companies. We can, however, afford a hundred men trained with their basic skills. Captain, your primary mission is now officially training. You will establish a mobile training detachment. You will rotate through our regiments and local guerrilla units. You will teach them what you know: fieldcraft, sabotage, marksmanship, small-unit tactics."
It was the expected evolution. Their value was now in multiplication.
"But sir," a regimental commander objected, "we need every rifleman on the line. Taking men out for training…"
"Will give you scouts who can prevent ambushes," Li Fan interjected, his tone respectful but firm. "It will give you sappers who can blow a bridge with one charge instead of ten. It will give you squad leaders who can think. A month of our training will triple the effectiveness of a platoon. This is a force multiplier."
The commanders grumbled, but Commander Wang silenced them with a look. "It will be done. Captain Li, you have carte blanche. Select your training cadre from your company. The rest will continue as a rapid reaction force for division-level special missions."
Back at their own bivouac, Li Fan made the selections. Zhao Quan would head the hand-to-hand and close-quarters training. Liu Feng would teach reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. Chen Rui, to everyone's surprise including his own, was put in charge of basic marksmanship instruction. "If you can teach a shaken boy to balance a stone on a gun barrel," Li Fan told him, "you can teach anyone." Zhang Wei and Wei Guo would handle demolitions and heavy weapons.
They were becoming an institution within an army.
The first training class assembled a week later—fifty raw, eager, and skeptical soldiers from three different regiments. The first lesson was not firing. It was moving. Liu Feng had them crawl a mile before breakfast, then showed them how the dew on the grass betrayed every path they'd taken.
"You are not soldiers yet," Zhao Quan told them during a brutal session of unarmed combat. "You are loud, clumsy bears. The Japanese are hunters. We will make you into ghosts. The ghost kills the hunter."
It was hard, often humiliating work. But as the weeks passed, a change became visible. The trainees moved quieter, shot straighter, thought in terms of terrain and cover. The first time a trained squad successfully ambushed a Japanese patrol, losing no men and capturing two rifles, the skepticism in the regiments turned into demand. Requests for training slots flooded division headquarters.
One evening, after a long day teaching knife-fighting, Zhao Quan sat with Li Fan by a small fire. "It feels strange," he admitted. "Not being the one going out. Just… teaching."
"This is how we win," Li Fan said, poking the embers. "One man with a rifle is a target. One man who can teach ten others to be shadows is a weapon that reproduces itself. We are no longer just a company, Zhao Quan. We are a seed. And we are planting it across the whole of the Eighth Route Army."
He looked at the weary, determined faces of his veterans around other fires, instructing, correcting, building. The Shadows of the Valley were dissolving, their essence spreading into the very bloodstream of the people's army. Their war was no longer for a single valley, but for the soul and future of a nation. The path was set, long and bloody, but for the first time, Li Fan saw not just survival, but the glimmer of inevitable victory at its end.
End of Chapter 14