Chapter 26 choking gunpowder smell

Seeing that it was about to sink to the bottom of the water, the 106th Division of the Japanese Army was very eager to reach out for a life-saving straw. Or Zhang Gushan.The 106th Division decided to bypass the front and outflank the Chinese 151st Brigade from the side, but they did not expect to run into the defensive position of the 153rd Brigade. Since there are also Chinese troops stationed here, we can only rely on force. At dawn on November 4, the Japanese army dispatched about a regiment of troops to launch a fierce attack on the 306th Regiment of the 153rd Brigade. The fighting became more and more intense. By noon, two battalion commanders of the 306th Regiment had been injured, three company commanders had been killed, and more than half of the remaining officers and soldiers had been killed or injured.The regiment's combat effectiveness was also greatly damaged by this, and the only one that could continue to fight was the incomplete third battalion.

Zhang Gushan's terrain was complex and the battle line was wide. There was no area that did not need to be defended. The third battalion blocked here but could not block there.When Wang Yaowu heard the news, he quickly asked the division to prepare to retreat, lest the Japanese army succeed in a detour and copy the command core of the 51st Division. At this time, Li Tianxia had been dismissed from the position of brigade commander of the 153rd Brigade, and was appointed as the deputy division commander of the 51st Division, and the post of brigade commander was promoted by Zhang Lingfu.Seeing that the situation was urgent, Zhang Lingfu personally rushed to the front to supervise the battle, and found that there were not enough combat soldiers, so he gathered the remnants and miscellaneous soldiers from each battalion, led by a battalion attached, and handed them over to the third battalion for use.With this extra manpower, the third battalion was able to block the enemy's attack, and the battle situation was stabilized again.

The 106th Division of the Japanese army continued to attack the Zhanggushan position where the 51st Division was located. Not only did they fail to catch any good fruit, they also suffered heavy casualties. Make a breakthrough in the guarded Wanjialing defense zone. On November 5, the 106th Division of the Japanese Army launched an attack on the position of the 58th Division under the cover of aircraft.From this day on, under the dispatch of the headquarters of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army, Japanese planes would come to Wanjialing to bomb and shoot every day to cheer for the 106th Division.

The Chinese front-line troops did not have air defense facilities, so the Japanese planes dared to fly low. The planes often flew over the treetops, and the pilots were so crazy that they would fly sideways while sticking their heads out of the cockpit to observe ground targets.At that time, the only way to defend the air was to set up air defense surveillance posts. When the surveillance posts saw the aircraft or heard the roar of the aircraft, they would immediately blow the whistle to call the police, but this method of relying solely on the naked eye and ears to observe was not very effective.The most common situation is that the Japanese plane has just flown overhead before the whistle has sounded and the person has not yet reached the hiding place.

The Chinese combat command post was frequently attacked by Japanese planes.Some staff members had no time to escape from the command post, so they had to hide under the bed boards temporarily. As a result, Japanese planes strafed the small thatched hut used as the command post as a colander, and the room was filled with the choking smell of gunpowder smoke. This is still the case for the command post, not to mention the forward positions. Only when the two armies are close to each other, the Japanese planes dare not drop bombs and strafing casually.The 172nd Brigade of the 58th Division made full use of this gap and withstood the Japanese onslaughts with extremely tenacious defenses, ensuring that the position was firmly in their own hands.

Although the 106th Division of the Japanese Army still failed to break out from Wanjialing, they still got a little inspiration from the battle that day. Since the battle of Xuzhou, the Japanese army has used a large number of poison gas warfare to break through the defense line of the defenders.In order to deceive people, they call it "special warfare" internally. Gas bombs are not called gas bombs, but "special smoke". The 106th Division of the Japanese Army did not forget to carry poison gas equipment when they set off. Gas cylinders and gas masks can be found everywhere on the Japanese army positions after the war.However, there are many restrictions on adopting this kind of ruthless tactics. One of the most critical ones is that the user needs to know the local weather and geographical conditions. If the wind direction or terrain is wrong, it is likely to be self-defeating, causing their own troops to suffer first.

The 106th Division obviously lacked this condition in Wanjialing, so the gas bombs were not used much. At this time, they had to rely more on planes to help. On November 6, the Japanese aircraft participated in the battle more actively, and focused their air strikes on Zhanggushan to cooperate with the attack launched by more than 2,000 Japanese infantry.The surface of Zhang Gushan has almost been planed by bombs and artillery shells. It is not easy to find a tree that can be used for concealment. In addition to the lack of preparations for air strikes, many officers and soldiers who resisted desperately were killed on the spot. This falls.

The capture of Zhang Gushan gave the 106th Division of the Japanese Army a new glimmer of hope in the face of hardship.If they were able to take down the Wanjialing defense area of ​​the 58th Division again, there would undoubtedly be a major turning point in the battle, and they might even be able to turn things around.