19371February 12 at dawn, the Japanese army launched an unprecedented fierce attack on all positions in Nanjing.
In the direction of Shuiximen, the fifty-first division of the king defended the city wall. When the Japanese army broke through the wall and rushed in, the officers and men had to fight back with the courage of bloody battle to death. Hu Hao, the battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion, led 100 fighters to the breakthrough and launched a bitter hand-to-hand combat with the invading army. The battalion commanders Hu and Liu belonging to the regiment were immediately killed.
The position of the 5 1 Division 153 Brigade was also in crisis, because the adjacent position was unguarded and the Japanese army climbed up from there. Li Tianxia, the brigade commander, carried out a counterattack at the command of the division commander, but several counterattacks failed-"At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, due to excessive casualties of officers and men, the position held by the brigade was in jeopardy. The houses inside and outside Shuiximen were destroyed by Japanese artillery fire, and several places caught fire, filled with fireworks, and the dead bodies were vertical and horizontal, which was very tragic."
In the direction of Yuhuatai, the 264th Brigade of the 88th China Garrison Division, together with the engineering barracks, went to the front. The Japanese army rushed to the top of the mountain again and again, and was countered by the defenders again and again. Sun, the division commander, said to the officers and men, "The enemy is not invincible!"
Around the Yuhuatai position, the Japanese army paid the price of 1000 casualties, which made the bodies of both sides pile up together in front of Yuhuatai, and the blood merged into a trickle.
The 88th Division has no ammunition and no reinforcements outside. Japanese infantry attacked like a flood under the cover of heavy artillery, planes and tanks. In the end, all 88 divisions were killed or injured. Colonel, Gao, Colonel, Hua Pinzhang, battalion commanders Huang Qi, Zhou Hong, Fu Yiting, Su Tianjun and Wang Honglie were killed or committed suicide, and more than 6,000 officers and men below the platoon level were killed.
At ten o'clock in the morning, the Yuhuatai position fell. The remnants of the 88th Division retreated to Zhonghua Gate and continued to block the wall. Sun, the division commander, led his team to retreat in the direction of Shimonoseki, but was stopped by Song Xilian, the division commander of the 36th Division, so he had to carry out Tang Shengzhi's orders: anyone who retreated to Jiangbei without authorization would be shot.
Mr. Sun only returned to Zhonghua Gate with the remains. At this time, Zhonghua Gate has been blocked by the Japanese army. Unable to retreat into the city, Mr. Sun could only lead the officers and men to the north of the city along the moat under the artillery fire of the Japanese army, and suffered heavy casualties all the way.
In the afternoon, the wall to the west of Zhonghua Gate collapsed in many places, and the Japanese army swarmed in. After the 88th Division of China Garrison withdrew from Zhonghua Gate, Nanjing citizens in Zhonghua Gate also fled to the north of the city, resulting in chaos in Nanjing.
Those hundreds of garrison soldiers who stayed in the city, because they were surrounded by unarmed people, could only "spontaneously meet up" where the Japanese army swarmed in and blocked the enemy's March with their bodies.
However, all the sacrifices are of no help.
All the gates of Nanjing, which is backed by the Yangtze River, have been breached.