War of Resistance: The Sichuan Army in Straw Sandals Never Gives an Inch!

During the Battle of Shanghai, a ragtag Sichuan Army company that nobody wanted, wearing broken straw sandals, carrying old rifles, and unable to gather enough ammunition of the right caliber, was treated as a disposable pawn and thrown onto a blood-soaked defensive line.

Xu Maosheng, a stand-in platoon leader who had been a stonemason, fought alongside Feng Chaogui, a sworn-brotherhood knife fighter; Deng Zhengfa, a wily old soldier; and Zhong Shunxi, a hunter. They scavenged bullets from piles of corpses and launched counterattacks among the ruins. Sasaki Kenichi, a Japanese tactical genius skilled in coordinating infantry and artillery, watched the defense line like a vulture.

From blowing up bridges to cover the retreat from Shanghai, to fighting with bayonets in the isolated city of Teng County; from direct-fire attacks in the pouring rain of the Dabie Mountains to ambushes and strangulations of enemy sentries behind their lines, all the way to the final decisive battle: five brutal engagements, each deadlier than the last. They reequipped themselves with captured weapons and fought to sustain themselves. When their ranks were depleted, they picked up Japanese guns and kept fighting; when a brother fell, they marked his name on the roster. As long as the bloodstained flag bearing the word “Death” still flew, these straw-sandal soldiers swore to fight the enemy head-on to the bitter end!