Chapter 57 a big gap

The Sixth Division of the Japanese Army had only heard of the Seventy-Fourth Army by name before, and the two sides had never fought face to face. At dawn on September 27, the Songcun Battalion of the avant-garde troops arrived at the bank of the Laodao River. What surprised them was that the Chinese soldiers were already very close to them, but for some reason they never fired a single shot. The Songcun Battalion sent three infantry squadrons to approach Chunhua Mountain, one thousand meters, three hundred meters, and two hundred meters. The 57th Division, which had been silent until now, suddenly broke out and began to shoot intensively with machine rifles.The direction of the bullets was very tricky, most of them were oblique and side shots, and there were very few shots from the front. There were many corpses left by the Japanese army in front of the position. Only then did the Songcun Battalion feel that they had indeed encountered a strong enemy.

The weather was good that day, which allowed the Japanese army to invest a large amount of air force and cooperate with the Sixth Division and the Third Division to attack the Seventy-Fourth Army, and the battle situation deteriorated rapidly. At noon of the battle, Wang Yaowu, who commanded the battle in Huanghua Town, discovered a flaw in the Japanese defense line, so he ordered Li Hanqing, the infantry commander of the 57th Division, to lead a field repair regiment to detour to the north of Chunhua Mountain and flank the east to support the 57th Division. Li Hanqing was ordered to launch a fierce attack on the flank of the Japanese Sixth Division, which disrupted the Japanese army's position at once, but unexpectedly, a group of Japanese reinforcements also rushed to the battlefield at this time, and surrounded the wild men's regiment from behind.

Li Hanqing knew that the battle had reached a critical moment. If the Japanese reinforcements were not repulsed, not only would the field men's regiment itself be lost, but the position of the 57th Division would also be broken by the enemy. Under normal circumstances, the Chinese army will use firepower to block the Japanese army at a certain distance when defending, in order to limit the advantage of the Japanese soldiers in the chopping technique. , but the wild patch group has neither enough firepower nor enough numbers, they have no choice but to fight. Li Hanqing jumped out of the fortifications and shouted loudly: "Brothers, the victory or defeat of the overall situation depends on one action. We can only serve the country with our lives. If you are not afraid of death, follow me!"

Li Hanqing took the bayonet and rushed to the enemy line first. Inspired by his spirit, the soldiers jumped out of the fortifications to fight the Japanese army one after another.In this bloody hand-to-hand combat, Li Hanqing died for the country, and more than a thousand subordinates who fought with him also spilled blood on the battlefield. The scene was extremely tragic and tragic. After Li Hanqing led his troops to launch a decisive attack, the Japanese army sent part of the Fourth Division to attack the left wing of the 57th Division, which was equivalent to using two divisions to attack the 57th Division at the same time. The formation of the division and regiment, thus reducing the defensive pressure of the fifty-seventh division.Yu Chengwan readjusted his defensive deployment and withstood the ferocious Japanese offensive at the cost of 3,000 casualties that day.

At this time, the 58th Division could no longer support it. Under the attack of the 3rd Division and a part of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army, more than half of the two regiments participating in the front-line combat were killed and killed only by the company platoon leader. Power was greatly weakened.Then, the department was divided and surrounded, commanders at all levels lost control of the troops, and within a few hours of melee, the entire division collapsed. They were originally two swords, but now one was broken. Wang Yaowu had no choice but to throw out the last card and ordered the 51st Division as a reserve team to reinforce Chunhua Mountain and help the regiment directly under the army to contain the remnants of the 58th Division.

When the news that the Seventy-Fourth Army was not fighting well and that the Fifty-eighth Division had collapsed reached the Chinese command center, not only Xue Yue was overwhelmed, but even Chiang Kai-shek was shocked, because Chiang Kai-shek had long regarded the Seventy-fourth Army as China's most effective combat force. Troops, never imagined that this ace troop would face such a predicament. In order to preserve the Seventy-Fourth Army, Xue Yue had to accept the reality that Changsha might fall.At five o'clock in the afternoon, he issued an order to Wang Yaowu: the whole army retreated to the north of Liuyang River.

With the three divisions already entangled with the Japanese army, it doesn't mean that they can withdraw immediately, at least they have to block the opponent's offensive first.After the 51st Division pushed forward, each regiment occupied key points to block the Japanese army's offensive momentum.In the evening of the same day, the defensive position of the 51st Division was attacked again by the enemy. Division commander Li Tianxia saw that the Japanese army's attack was mainly concentrated on a narrow area that was not wide, so he guessed that the Japanese army wanted to break through a little bit first, and then extend to the whole.In order to prevent the position from being breached, he decided to close the defense line and concentrate the troops from the two sides to the middle.

The 57th Division adjacent to the 51st Division is also shrinking its defenses due to heavy casualties.An old saying goes well: "Disasters often arise from the unexpected, but chaos often arises from the unsuspecting." The two divisions that were still fighting in the same way contracted in unison, forming a large gap at the junction. There is a gap, and it is this gap that brought a catastrophe to the Seventy-Fourth Army. Under normal circumstances, the Japanese army does not have the habit of fighting or attacking at night, but if they have an opportunity, they will never let it go.At 8 o'clock in the evening, the two regiments of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army used the night as cover to infiltrate from the junction of the 51st Division and the 57th Division. They quickly broke through the position of the 51st Division and divided their interceptions into several paragraphs.The charge horn of the Japanese army sounded from every hilltop, and the sound of machine rifles was heard endlessly. The divisions, regiments, and battalions lost contact and could only fight on their own.

Li Tianxia ran southward to a private house behind a hill. While he sent the special agent company of the division headquarters to occupy the hill to resist, he asked the communication company to quickly find the various regiments to connect with each other.The communication company searched and found only the heads of two regiments, and the two heads of the two regiments only controlled one battalion. In the melee until midnight, the position of the spy company was breached by the Japanese army, and the division command post was forced to withdraw southward.Because there was no guide, and after walking not far, they encountered the Japanese army, the division headquarters were dispersed, and the 51st Division became even more chaotic.

The night attack launched by the Japanese army was originally a smack in the face, and they did not expect to go deep into the army. However, stimulated by the continuous victory, no one considered what was conventional or irregular, and a large army directly rushed to Huanghua Town by night.