In December 1937, China was at war with Japan for six months. The invaders moved north to Nanking, and the vanguard of the Chinese, with a force of about three thousand people, was stationed to guard an important object - a bridge in the southern suburbs. Having taken positions in the dug trenches, the troops began to await the approach of the Japanese. But the assault never happened. But something much more strange happened.
On the morning of the deployment of the vanguard at the bridge, the Chinese commander, General Li Fushi, was awakened by a distraught orderly, who informed him that radio contact with the division guarding the bridge had been lost. Frightened that his men were bypassed, Commander Fushi ordered an immediate reconnaissance on the front line. He braced himself for the worst, but the story the returning officers told him was so fantastic that he could hardly believe it. For all they found were lines of empty trenches, devoid of any sign of human presence - neither living nor dead.
Also, no traces of the recent battle were found, which somehow could explain where the three thousand subordinates of the general went. Li Fushi was stunned, for he knew that if the soldiers decided on mass desertion, they would have to cross the bridge, but there was an enemy in the south, and they were inevitable death.
So what happened to them? Two days after the disappearance of the division, hordes of Japanese broke through the bridge and invaded the city. The assault ended with a massacre and the destruction of Nanking - a massacre incomparable with any other in the bloody history of the Asian wars, and against this background, the loss of three thousand defenders of the bridge was forgotten. However, many years later, after the end of the Second World War, the Chinese government carried out an official investigation, which again did not provide any facts for a logical explanation of the strange incident that preceded the fall of Nanking.
A little later, an investigation carried out already under the communist regime, on the orders of Chairman Mao himself, categorically established that the Chinese who guarded the bridge in 1937 were never seen or heard of.