Behind Yuhuatai the 88th Division had stationed its barely trained new recruits atop Nanking's Zhonghua Gate. The Japanese had already tried the previous night to infiltrate a "suicide squadron" bearing explosive picric acid up to this gate to blow a hole in it, but it got lost in the morning fog and failed to reach the wall. At noon on December 12 a team of just six Japanese soldiers made it across the moat in a small boat and succeeded in scaling the wall at Zhonghua Gate on a shaky bamboo ladder and raising the Japanese flag there. Five of them were killed by gunfire but the last man grabbed a Chinese machine gun and held the position singlehandedly. Soon after another Japanese team set a fire in front of the gate to create a smokescreen. 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, and with the help of some well aimed Japanese artillery fire from atop Yuhuatai parts of the wall finally crumbled. 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.