Lone City’s Tiger Warriors: The Nameless Find a Name

Hengyang, 1944. Eight thousand battered soldiers. Forty-seven days holding out against a hundred thousand Japanese troops in a siege. No reinforcements. No supplies. They gnaw tree bark and eat rats. Maggots infest their wounds. Some charge into the enemy ranks with explosives strapped to their chests, then look back and shout, “Company commander, I’m not afraid anymore!” Zhao Tie is just a company commander hoping to save enough money to buy land. Lin Heng is still a student soldier whose hands shake when he holds a pen. Their superiors say reinforcements will arrive soon. They wait for forty-seven whole days. The news that comes is that friendly forces fired a few shells and retreated. The medical supplies they receive are boxes of expired saline. In an air-raid shelter, someone carves a crooked character into the wall with a bayonet: “Mother.” Zhao Tie says, “Hengyang is right behind us. Anyone who retreats is a bastard.” Forty-seven days later, the city falls. Some are buried in the green hills. Some vanish into the night. Some spend a lifetime carving those names into stone. Set against the true history of the Battle of Hengyang, this novel tells how a lone army used its flesh and blood to become a monument amid utter despair.