Chapter 1464: If There Are Few, Fight; if There Are Many, Run! (Please Give Me a Monthly Ticket at the Beginning of the Month!)
If Anda 23 is decisive enough at this time and continues to attack the Zhongtiao Mountain defense line without hesitation, China, which has already suffered huge casualties, may not be able to hold on for long.
Even if Yuncheng is captured, the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain will definitely end with the victory of the Japanese North China Front.
But at this critical moment, Anda Twenty-Three hesitated.
The hesitation of the top Japanese frontline commander is not unreasonable. Once Yuncheng is captured by the Chinese, it means that the 180,000 troops on the frontline will be completely out of food in a week, and the rapidly consumed ammunition will be difficult to replenish immediately.
If all battles cannot be completed within a week, the main force of 180,000 Japanese troops will fall into an extremely dangerous situation. Not only will they have nothing to eat or drink, but their guns and artillery without ammunition will also become useless decorations.
Not to mention that there are still hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Zhongtiao Mountain. As long as the more than 10,000 Chinese who attacked Yuncheng come over, the 180,000-strong army will have to hide and seek with them in the mountains.
If Okamura Koji, who has a more ruthless temperament, is here, he will attack China at all costs. Even if he pays twice as many casualties as expected, it is worth taking Nakatō Mountain.
Unfortunately, Adachi Twenty-three was not Okamura Koji. After several telegram exchanges with Okamura Koji, Adachi Twenty-three finally made a more prudent decision.
The attack on the Zhongtiao Mountain front line was suspended to focus on maintaining the current defense line. In addition, the 35th Infantry Division, a division directly under the North China Front Army Headquarters, was dispatched to urgently return to Yuncheng to support Yuncheng.
The 35th Division is not a permanent division. It was established on February 7, 1939. It is a three-unit division dedicated to security. It has jurisdiction over the field artillery regiment, the engineering regiment, the baggage regiment, the division communications team, and the weapons service. Logistics units such as corps and health corps, the entire division has an establishment of approximately 18,000 people.
To put it bluntly, this kind of security division is an organization between a mixed brigade and a type A division. Their combat targets are often an ordinary infantry corps of the Chinese Army.
Perhaps one garrison division is not enough to wipe out more than 10,000 Chinese troops, but Anda Twenty-Three's purpose is simple. As long as the crisis in Yuncheng can be resolved, this important logistics base will not be lost.
This may be the unprecedented humbleness of the Japanese army lieutenant general in the Battle of Nakatiao Mountain. For the first time, he did not ask his subordinates to annihilate the enemy in front of them, but only to defend the city.
But even if he is humbled to this extent, the Chinese people will not give him face.
The 35th Division marched toward Yuncheng from the front line 60 kilometers away. According to the original march plan, they would arrive in Yuncheng around 12 o'clock that night.
Marching 60 kilometers in 11 hours was definitely a promise that non-elite troops would not dare to make. For this reason, Lieutenant General Harada Kumakichi, then the commander of the 35th Division, wrote a military order to Adachi 23rd: "Everyone under his command must be responsible for Arrive in Yuncheng before 12 o'clock today to relieve the crisis in Yuncheng. Otherwise, I am willing to lead the division and regiment to perform a disembowelment to apologize to His Majesty the Emperor!"
This military order was indeed a bit ruthless. If they disagreed, they would kill themselves with a knife, without asking the opinions of other people in the division and regiment headquarters.
However, this is not what Harada Kumakichi wants to show in front of Adachi Twenty-three. Both of them are lieutenant generals. Although the status of the chief of staff of the front army is higher, in terms of real power, Harada Kumakichi is the actual division commander, and he is the leader of the Japanese Army. If he can be considered the number one person, there is absolutely no need to stab Adachi Twenty-san in the stomach with a knife. It would be almost the same if he were replaced by Okamura Koji.
But the grievances between the 35th Division and the 80th Army were too deep.
Last year, the 35th Division killed two generals one after another.
The former division commander, Lieutenant General Maeda Haru, was shot in the head and killed in the Battle of Jincheng in May 1940. The army that killed a Japanese Army Lieutenant General was at Nakatiao Mountain at this time, so the 35th Division was The desire to participate in the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain was particularly strong.
Maeda Osamu's death may be attributed to the unlucky 19th class in which he graduated from the Military Academy. One of his best classmates was named Abe Norihide, who died half a year earlier than him.
This is only what the Japanese know now. Of course, they don’t know how poisonous this 19th issue is. In just one year, Tsukada Tsukuda, who originally ran to take over as the commander of the 11th Army, has not yet arrived, and the plane He was shot down and fell to death in China. Naoji Sakai, the commander of the Japanese 15th Division, would also die in the "Battle of Zhejiang and Jiangxi" in the same year when he stepped on a landmine planted by Fan Haer's command.
Another important general of the 35th Division was Major General Taijiro Iida, who was the commander of the 35th Infantry Regiment at the time. This guy commanded three infantry regiments of the 35th Division. He was the number two figure in the 35th Division. Especially after the death of Maeda Osamu, he was the man who carried the cauldron of the 35th Division at that time.
However, this unfortunate major general may have admired his former division commander too much. Within a few months, during a small force attack organized by the 80th Army, his command headquarters was destroyed by an infantry platoon-level force. The first unit of the Eightyth Army was attacked by surprise.
At the cost of only a dozen casualties, the Eightyth Army shot the unlucky kid Taijiro Iida. The unlucky Japanese major general who had no penicillin died of wound infection a few days later.
Do you think the 35th Division's eyes turned red when they heard the name of the Eightyth Army?
In order to win over the generals of the division, Harada Kumonaki, who had been in office for half a year, gritted his back molars and issued a military order that even Adachi Twenty-san couldn't help but twitch in the corners of his eyes under the banner of the two generals who died for the division.
The Japanese have a special characteristic. They rarely make false claims and always do what they say, even if they are a bit strong-willed.
In order to make the entire division march 60 kilometers in 11 hours, the 35th Division abandoned all baggage except weapons and equipment, including clothing, food, etc., including the excavation equipment carried by the engineering regiment.
Because these heavy things are mainly used for digging, the 35th Division is going to settle accounts with the Chinese, not to dig trenches with them.
Besides, the officers and soldiers of the division are still carrying individual engineer shovels!
Without even carrying rice balls, only carrying guns and cannons, how can the 35th Division not run fast! If nothing unexpected happens, they will even arrive in Yuncheng half an hour earlier than the stipulated time.
Then, something unexpected happened.
On a road that the 35th Division must take to return to Yuncheng, something happened!
The vanguard troops running in the front first plunged into the minefield. In the endless darkness, the rumbling explosions and the flashes that constantly tore through the night completely engulfed a vanguard squad.
Then, scarlet whips flashed in the wilderness on both sides, sweeping over the 35th Division's strong soldiers who were caught off guard and still marching quickly.
The screams of severe pain made the 35th Division's mind suddenly clear. Besieging the city and attacking the reinforcements was a very familiar tactic.
The main force of the Chinese was not around Yuncheng, but here!
That's right, the ones surrounding Yuncheng were just the logistics and baggage troops of the Guard Brigade and the 772 Regiment. In order to bluff an infantry regiment in Yuncheng, the Guard Brigade and the 772 Regiment even left 16 150 heavy mortars and 10 mountain cannons. The fierce artillery fire that the Japanese army in the city had never seen before made them sure that the main force of the Chinese was outside the city.
The main force of the Guard Brigade, the 772 Regiment, and the 771 Regiment, with a total of 13,000 people, was ambushed in Changle Village, 10 kilometers away from Yuncheng.
Changle Village is a hilly area, and most of the cultivated land is sloping. It is not a common mountainous area around Yuncheng. The terrain is neither dangerous nor difficult to hide troops, so it is not suitable for ambushes.
However, after learning that nearly 20,000 Japanese troops were marching towards Yuncheng, the highest commander of the Chinese army, Brigadier General Cheng, resolutely chose this place for the ambush. His reason is very simple: "The so-called ambush is to be in a position that the enemy can't think of. If the enemy can guess and be vigilant, then the most important suddenness of the ambush loses its meaning.
It doesn't matter if the terrain is not dangerous. We just caught the devils off guard. We didn't plan to fight any offensive and defensive battles or protracted wars with the Japanese. After the firepower coverage, we will rush in and kill them to divide and surround them and resolve the battle as soon as possible.
It is difficult to hide troops in hilly areas. This time we are not hiding in the grass in the ravines in broad daylight. The night is the best concealment!"
It can only be said that Brigadier General Cheng, who has been dealing with the Japanese for many years, has a thorough understanding of the Japanese army's psychology.
Before the 35th Division set out, in order to prevent the Chinese from playing siege and attacking the reinforcements again, Anda Nijusan arranged reconnaissance planes to fly back and forth at least four times on the road that the 35th Division had to pass through to ensure that there were no large numbers of Chinese.
A small number of Chinese may not be seen by the reconnaissance pilots, but as long as there are thousands of people, it is only because the reconnaissance pilots are blind.
Therefore, the main forces of the two infantry brigades that arrived did not march to the ambush site until around 6 pm, and they arrived here only about an hour earlier than the Japanese army.
Harada Kumayoshi also sent out a scout team and a cavalry squadron 2,000 meters ahead of the main force to search the mountains along the way, especially the mountainous jungles. The search depth on both sides of the road even reached 200 meters. If it was really impossible to detect a place, then use firepower reconnaissance.
The first 50 kilometers of mountains have been passed, but I didn’t expect the Chinese to appear in the most unlikely hilly area.
The Japanese army in a hurry could only defend on the spot, but tragically, in order to march quickly, the engineering regiment basically became a transport soldier for transporting ammunition, and the engineer shovel became their only tool for digging fortifications.
If the Chinese army could give them enough time, relying on the Japanese army's strong civil engineering operation ability, they would also be able to dig out enough individual bunkers for individual soldiers to hide.
Unfortunately, the Chinese did not give them much time, and I don't know how many mortars made a hair-raising "boom! bang! "Muffled sound.
On the 6-kilometer-long marching line of 18,000 Japanese troops, I don't know how many flames and black smoke broke out.
In order to gain vision to attack the enemy, the Japanese army had to fire flares!
The light of the flares illuminated the wilderness a hundred meters away, and also clearly placed the Japanese army's figures that were originally vaguely visible in the artillery fire in the sight of Chinese soldiers.
"Fight!" With the roar of the grassroots infantry company commanders on the front line, bullets from various light and heavy machine guns, rifles, and submachine guns swept towards the Japanese army like raindrops.
Excluding artillery, only the firepower of light weapons, the firepower output efficiency of the Guard Brigade and the 683 Brigade at this time should be more than three times that of the Japanese army on average.
In addition, the Japanese army's counter-strategy of "the enemy is in the dark and we are in the light", it would be strange if the veterans of the two infantry brigades who grew up in the war did not kill the 35th Division with the new recruits.
Brigade Commander Cheng had given an order before the war to kill more than 10,000 Japanese soldiers in one battle. This battle with the main forces of our two infantry brigades was a complete victory. It didn't matter whether we could capture Yuncheng or not. There was no need to save any ammunition. We would just shoot as many bullets as we had.
The officers and soldiers of the two infantry brigades, who no longer had the idea of saving, felt so comfortable when they pulled the trigger.
According to statistics after the war, the two brigades fired 800,000 rounds of bullets in the battle of ambush on the 35th Division alone.
What is this consumption rate? Take for example the large-scale counterattack launched by the Eightyth Army on the Thousand Miles of Defense Line in order to defeat Okamura Koji's cage policy in time and space.
At that time, a total of 36 infantry regiments in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region participated in the war, consuming a total of 260,000 rounds of ammunition of various types; the 129th Division participating in the war was already considered the strongest among the Eighty Group Army, with more than 80,000 troops participating in the war, and only consumed 750,000 rounds of ammunition.
And that was a battle that lasted nearly 5 months!
But on this night, only 11,000 Chinese infantrymen fired 800,000 rounds of bullets. Even if it took an average of 200 bullets to kill or wound a Japanese soldier, under such a dense rain of bullets, the Japanese casualties would also be Around 4000.
But what really dealt the heaviest blow to the Japanese army was not the dense rain of bullets that could be shot into a hornet's nest as soon as they raised their heads.
The local artillery, which Brigadier Cheng called "the heartless cannon", once again made its appearance. This 'shock wave' type blind artillery originally used to clear ground fortifications and remove obstacles was used to kill and injure infantry who had basically no fortifications to hide in. It can be called a 'harvester of life'.
Although the 2nd Independent Mixed Infantry Brigade in the past two days completely lost its defense line and collapsed due to artillery with a range of only more than 200 meters, they still had a trench and an anti-gun hole that could last for a while.
What does the 35th Division have?
What else can I do besides push my head hard?
Don't tell me, this is really true.
In order to ensure that the explosive package can be pushed 200 meters away by the thrust of the gunpowder without accidentally exploding, there is a thick wooden partition under each explosive package. The two together weigh 8 kilograms. .
Since the length of the fuse inevitably varies, some explosive bags have not completely burned out when they are dropped. Without exploding, this 8-kilogram thing actually has about the same effect as a stone.
As a result, some Japanese soldiers were caught off guard and were hit on the head with planks of wood and explosives.
The equipment of the Japanese army is actually not bad. At least every Japanese soldier has a steel helmet.
As we all know, the steel helmet is good at blocking grenade fragments, but it is basically just a decoration when blocking bullets.
If it blocks an 8kg object falling from the sky.
Not even the furnishings.
Because, even the helmet and head would be smashed into the ground.
But if the Japanese soldiers encountered this, they should be lucky. At that moment, they all entered a coma state. At least they didn't have to watch the huge explosive package emitting a trace of fire like their colleagues, and then with a 'boom' sound, the radius was Everyone within 10 meters will be sent to heaven.
Lieutenant General Harada Kumakichi died in this way.
A large explosive package landed less than 3 meters away from the Japanese Army Lieutenant General. Even though there were more than 20 guards around him, there was even a line in front of him that was 80 centimeters high and half a meter thick. of sandbag fortifications.
But in front of this 5-kilogram explosive package that hit the fortification and exploded 0.5 seconds later, everything was illusory.
Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese have found any trace of the Lieutenant General's division commander. Some people even suspected that Harada Kumayoshi simply absconded because he was defeated in the war and was too embarrassed to face the local elders. At this moment, he didn't know who was waiting for him in China. They make a living by eating corn and potatoes!
The Japanese North China Front Army Command finally only included him in the list of missing persons, but did not put him in the list of war dead.
Half an hour after losing unified command, the remaining soldiers of the 35th Division finally decided not to hold on.
To put it nicely, it’s called a breakout, but to put it bluntly, it’s called a rout!
Segmentation, pursuit, and siege were the main theme throughout the second half of the night. The two infantry brigades completed a miracle before the sun rose.
The 35th Division, which the Japanese returned to support, disappeared in just one night.
According to post-war statistics of the Japanese North China Front, more than 80% of the 35th Division's battle casualties were lost. Less than 10% were able to break through the encirclement and escape into the mountains, and nearly 10% were left alive without seeing any dead bodies. Can only be listed as missing.
According to the unwritten regulations of the Japanese Army, units whose flags are seized or whose division commander is killed in battle will be deactivated. For example, the 106th Division in Wanjialing was wiped out including the division commander, and in Liaocheng, the entire army was wiped out. The 114th Division, whose division commander died in the battle, and the 35th Division were all occupied, the result is needless to say.
After receiving the news that the 35th Division was ambushed and annihilated, Anda Twenty-three did not almost fall this time, but actually fainted from anger.
Okamura Koji, who was far away in Pingbeicheng, had to serve as the frontline commander himself, commanding remotely from thousands of kilometers away.
After losing nearly 30,000 troops in a row, Okamura Koji had to admit that if he did not make decisive decisions, it might not be a matter of not being able to capture Mount Nakajo, but whether the 160,000 Imperial officers and soldiers on the front line could safely attack Nakajo. Big problem with mountain evacuation.
At this time, the Chinese army plus the 20,000 Chinese elites who completed two impossible battlefields in succession, the total strength once again exceeded 200,000, while the imperial army had less than 160,000 left, and the logistics base Yuncheng was still on the other side. under threat.
Once the logistics base is broken, the Chinese, whose morale has soared, only need to hold off the imperial army for a week, and all of them will be finished collectively.
Withdrawal is now imperative!
Under the order of Okamura Koji, the 5th Division and the 13th and 10th permanent divisions each deployed a main brigade. Nearly 30,000 troops were divided into three groups and rushed towards Yuncheng with great momentum.
The rest of the Japanese troops on the Zhongtiao Mountain front also began to gradually separate from the Chinese army. The defense line that had previously cost hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives was lost to the Chinese.
Okamura Koji's idea was that as long as the Chinese stayed around Yuncheng for another day, he could make it impossible for the 20,000 Chinese elites to escape.
As a result, the Chinese stayed for most of the day, bombarded the storage area in Yuncheng with more than 2,000 shells, including many incendiary bombs, burning at least 50% of the various reserve materials in Yuncheng, and then started to run away.
The 20,000 troops almost fled to Linfen, and then fled to the Taiyue Mountain area.
At that speed, not to mention that the three Japanese infantry brigades, who were full of energy, could not catch up, even the Japanese cavalry, who had chased Linfen City, could not find them.
The speed of running is not the most important thing. The most amazing thing is the keen sense of the battlefield. The timing of running is almost perfect. If you run too early, the Japanese army can change tactics at any time. If you run too late, you will be caught up. Even if Okamura Koji hates these guys to the core, he can't help but admire them sincerely.
In his words, "The commander of this Chinese army is the strongest general he has ever met on the Chinese battlefield. Perhaps only the Tang Dao can barely match him."
After the war, even the one who was almost spitting at each other with the 80th Army had to send a telegram to An County to express his gratitude. The Military and Political Department also ordered the promotion of Brigade Commander Cheng to Lieutenant General and Lei Xiong to Major General of the Army.
I am afraid that these two people who continue to serve as brigade commanders with the rank of Lieutenant General and Deputy Brigade Commander with the rank of Major General are extremely rare in the history of the Chinese military.
Mainly, the two who received the military rank said that they are very satisfied with their current military positions. It doesn't matter if the military pay is a little higher, but they don't want to be promoted at all.
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PS: I recommend the new book "Songhu: Never Fall" by Lonely Swordsman. Swordsman is a great writer of the War of Resistance. Military enthusiasts know how good his writing is. I can only say here that as a post-90s, I grew up reading this great man's books.
Also, the military cute girl Xingchen's "The Anti-Japanese War Started from the Northeast Army" is free for the next two days. You can go and grab some! The photos she sent me are all long-legged cute girls, but I always suspect that the guy sitting in front of the computer has a bunch of heart hair