Chapter 74 last effort

On December 1, the street fighting entered the decisive stage.The enemy and us are bounded by East-West Zhijie Street. The 57th Division occupies the southern half of the city, and the 116th Division occupies the northern half of the city. When the distance was quite close, the Japanese army fired incendiary bombs into the civilian houses guarded by the defenders with flat-fire guns.Due to the long drought, the wood inside the house was very dry, and it was instantly ignited by the incendiary bombs, and the flames blazed instantly, and some officers and soldiers who had no time to move from the house were buried in the flames.

Flames fluttered with the wind, and other houses more than ten meters apart did not ignite spontaneously. Soon, nine out of ten houses in the city were in ruins, and the defenders lost their barriers and support.The smog that permeated everywhere and the extremely low visibility also provided cover for the actions of the Japanese army. They formed groups of three and four and began to search and capture the officers and soldiers of the 57th Division from house to house. The defensive area of ​​the defenders shrank sharply, and the remaining troops could only rely on a few dilapidated bunkers to support them.What's more serious is that the continuous bombardment and poison gas by the Japanese army destroyed the water source in the city. Gradually, everyone couldn't even drink cold water.

The soldiers dug the ground, trying to find a new water source, but there was no drop of water three feet deep.A person can survive without food for a while, but not without water.Especially in fierce battles, people forget about hunger and sleep, don't want to eat, just want to drink water. The fear of water cutoff was just an imagination in the past, but now it has become a reality test.First, the mouth was dry and the lips were cracked, followed by dizziness in the eyes, tightness in the chest, and weakness in the whole body, as if suffering from a serious illness and on the verge of death.On the defensive position, there were constant groans for a while, and some people could only drink their own urine to quench their thirst as a last resort.

Although the Tianwang Yaowu Corps moved forward against all odds, it was restrained by the 13th Division of the Japanese Army and had to retreat.The situation of the Third Division of the Tenth Army is even more embarrassing. Its Seventh Regiment has already rushed to the South Bus Station in Changde at night. People in the city can hear the signal flares and horns outside the city, but only the sound of the stairs , no one came down. Some people think that the reinforcements are unwilling to cross the river to the city to take risks, so they pretend to only send out signals to indicate that the reinforcements have arrived.In fact it was wrong to blame the reinforcements.The Seventh Regiment could see a sea of ​​flames in the city and heard the rumble of guns, but because they had no boats, they could not cross the Yuan River to join the defenders.

While the Seventh Regiment was trying to find a ship, the 68th Division of the Japanese Army surrounded them from all sides.The Seventh Regiment failed to provide reinforcements, but fell into a siege. After a heroic resistance, only a few people broke through and retreated back to Tokuyama. The Ninth Regiment who stayed behind at Tokuyama was soon besieged by the Japanese army.The Tenth Army also had two other divisions, but these two divisions were blocked and blocked by the Japanese army during the process of pushing forward side by side, so they were too busy to take care of themselves and could not reinforce Tokuyama.Among them, the Preparatory Tenth Division suffered heavy casualties. The division was ambushed by the Japanese Third Division. The division commander, General Sun Mingjin, was killed in battle, and the entire division command was almost wiped out.

On December 2, the defenders in the city were divided and surrounded. The troops could no longer maintain their organizational system and could only fight on their own.The two sides fought hand in hand, so that when the Chinese bomber fleet flew over Changde City, they were unable to drop bombs because the distance between the enemy and us was too close and difficult to distinguish. In the afternoon, the Japanese army broke through the Daximen defense line.So far, the 57th Division only has a small position from the Central Bank of Xingjiekou to Bijia City.The Japanese army also suffered heavy casualties. Major Kaneo Suzuki, the acting regiment commander of the cloth army, was shot through the lower right abdomen by a bullet and was sent off the line of fire due to serious injuries.

Counting from the Japanese bombing of Germany on November 20, this historic city, known as the "Important Town in Western Hunan", has experienced 12 days and nights of devastation, and has long been in ruins.Among the ruins, the corpses of the officers and soldiers of the 57th Division wearing the armbands of "Hu Ben" were mixed with the corpses of the Japanese soldiers, and they fell to the ground in disorder, creating a tragic scene of blood flowing into rivers and piles of corpses like mountains. At three o'clock in the afternoon, there was a dull and intensive artillery sound from far and near in the direction of Deshan. Some people said that reinforcements from the friendly army were approaching Changde City.Everyone was refreshed and prepared to cooperate with the reinforcements to attack, but when it was almost dusk, the sound of the artillery gradually faded away.

The sound of artillery was the last effort made by the Ninth Regiment of the Third Division.The next day, under the onslaught of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army, most of the regiment was killed from the commander down, and the hope of the 57th Division to receive reinforcements from the south ended. Instead, the Gap Drilling Detachment composed of the 51st Division in the west sent people into Changde City and got in touch with the 57th Division—unfortunately, there were only dozens of plainclothes death squads, which could not alleviate the situation at all. On December 3, at two o'clock in the morning, Jin Dingzhou, the artillery regiment commander, suddenly received a call from the division command post, saying that Yu Chengwan was holding an emergency meeting in a private house in Bijia Mountain and asked him to attend it as soon as possible.

It was dark and drizzling, and it was impossible to see anything around.Jin Dingzhou took his adjutant with him and quietly went to the meeting place along the path of Bijia Mountain.On the way, we had to pass through the Temple of Confucius, where the rest of the 170th regiment was still fighting fiercely with the enemy. Several regiment leaders of the fifty-seventh division were summoned.When Jin Dingzhou entered the back room for a meeting, the adjutant waited in the main room with several guards. After waiting anxiously for more than half an hour, a burst of violent gunfire was heard outside, and the sentry told everyone that the Temple of Confucius had fallen.At this time, the meeting was also over. Yu Chengwan walked out from the back room first, followed by the group leaders.

The result of the meeting: breakout!