Editing Battle of Nanking (section)

=== Breaching the Nanjing city wall ===
Back at Guanghua Gate, the Japanese attempted to relieve their beleaguered comrades trapped inside, and after two attempts managed to link up with their forces inside. What followed was an artillery duel between both sides, which lasted the entirety of December 12. During the duel, a stray shell severed the telephone line of the Chinese 87th Division, severing their communications to the rear.<ref name=":23">{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Nanjing 1937, Battle for a Doomed City |date=2015 |publisher=Casemate |pages=210–212}}</ref>

Burdened with the fog of war, commanders of the 87th Division were alarmed upon noticing their comrades in the [[New Guangxi clique|Guangdong]] 83rd Corps abandoning their positions, but did not immediately retreat due to their prior orders and because Nanjing had become considered a home amongst many soldiers in the division.<ref name=":23" /> After some deliberation through the night, the 87th Division, having already suffered 3,000 casualties, abandoned their positions on the Gate of Enlightenment at 2am on December 13 to retreat to the Xiaguan wharfs, leaving some 400 of the most severely wounded who could not walk behind in the city.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Askew |first=David |title=Defending Nanking: An Examination of the Capital Garrison Forces |journal=Sino-Japanese Studies |pages=167–168}}</ref>

The Japanese, having noticed the diminishing Chinese resistance, scaled the city gate at around 4am and found it almost deserted. They killed whatever few Chinese soldiers remained in the area and raised the Rising Sun flag to cheers of "Banzai!" Per its own records, the 36th Regiment had suffered some 257 or 275 killed and 546 wounded in the battle of Nanjing, with most of the casualties being from the battle of Chunhua Town and the battle of Guanghua Gate.<ref>{{cite web|title=中支方面に於ける行動概要　自昭和１２年９月９日至昭和１４年７月１１日　歩兵第３６連隊 |url=https://www.jacar.archives.go.jp/aj/meta/listPhoto?LANG=default&BID=F2011112915495110133&ID=M2011112915495110135&REFCODE=C11111793100 |website=Japan Center for Asian Historical Records| access-date=2025-03-16}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Zhang |title=History of Sabae 36th Regiment |edition=56 |pages=142–143}}</ref>
[[File:Nanjingbattlemoat.jpg|thumb|Japanese soldiers cross a moat beneath the Nanjing City Wall]]
Back near Zhonghua Gate, two Japanese regiments had become pinned down by Chinese gunfire and mortars atop the gate. To conceal their movements, a Japanese team set a fire in front of the gate to create a smokescreen,<ref name="zhonghua22" /> and by 5:00 pm more and more Japanese troops were crossing the moat and swarming Zhonghua Gate by fording makeshift bridges so rickety their engineers had to hold them aloft with their own bodies. Japanese artillery suppressed the Chinese defenders from atop the Yuhaitai heights, and fired so many rounds into the city wall that part of it finally crumbled.<ref name="defenders22">{{Cite book |last=Tokushi Kasahara |publisher=Iwanami Shoten |year=1997 |location=Tokyo |pages=122–123, 126–127 |language=ja |script-title=ja:南京事件}}</ref> The Japanese seized the gate through this opening, and with artillery support beat back all Chinese counterattacks, securing the Zhonghua Gate by nightfall. Meanwhile, just west of Zhonghua Gate, other soldiers also of Japan's 10th Army had punched a hole through Chinese lines in the wetlands south of Shuixi Gate and were launching a violent drive on that gate with the support of a fleet of tanks.<ref name="defenders22" />

At the height of the battle, Tang Shengzhi complained to Chiang that, "Our casualties are naturally heavy and we are fighting against metal with merely flesh and blood",<ref name="fenby22">Jonathan Fenby, ''Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost'' (London: Free Press, 2003), 306.</ref> but what the Chinese lacked in equipment they made up for in the sheer ferocity with which they fought, partially due to strict orders that no man or unit was to retreat one step without permission.<ref name="fuk22" /><ref>Hallett Abend, "Nanking Invested," ''The New York Times'', December 13, 1937, 1, 15.</ref> Over the course of the battle, roughly 1,000 Chinese soldiers were shot dead by other members of their own army for attempting to retreat.<ref name=":13">Masahiro Yamamoto, ''Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity'' (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 84. Yamamoto cites the research of the Japanese veterans' association Kaikosha.</ref>