Chapter 90 The blind man feels the elephant

In the villages at the foot of Niuxing Mountain, except for a few migrant workers, most of the villagers have "run away", that is, they have been evacuated. Only some old and weak or women stayed at home and could help the defenders buy food. One day, three soldiers of the 51st Division caught some grass carp from a fish pond and asked the villagers to cook fish soup for them. Urgent order. The folks cooked a big pot of fragrant fish soup, but no one was seen withdrawing from the front line until dark.The next day, a few bloody soldiers finally withdrew from the Niuxing Mountain, but they were not the three who had caught the fish.

Seeing the villagers asking and the soldiers crying loudly, they said that they were the only ones who could walk off the battlefield in good condition... The 51st Division regained control of the Songshan Highlands. In the process of close combat, the division killed a squadron of the Japanese army and suffered heavy casualties.On the mountain ridge, the gaps between the boulders were filled with the wooden handles of the grenades, and the bloody corpses of the soldiers were intertwined, which was too horrible to look at. As of April 25, the 51st Division of the 74th Army and the 100th Army attacked one after another, encircling the main force of the 109th Regiment of the Japanese Army in the mountains east of Gyudong.

The Japanese army fought without a rear, and the food they brought was very limited.At first, they thought they could win the battle as quickly as before, so they ruined the grain and livestock of the people along the way, or burned them, or poured them into the gully.For the plundered cattle, they only ate the thigh meat, and the slaughtered pigs only took a small amount of lean meat. At this time, the transportation and supply lines of the 109th Regiment of the Japanese Army were cut off, and many troops soon fell into a state of starvation.When eating, the soldiers gathered and stood in a row, and the officer took out a small bag of fried rice and distributed a handful to each soldier.The soldiers took the fried rice and swallowed it with mountain spring water.

I brought a lot of ammunition, but it was more expensive, and finally I was forced to implement a quota supply, and the ammunition had to be handed over and sent to a temporary arsenal for reprocessing. Seeing that the 109th Regiment was surrounded, Division Commander Hishida ordered them to secure their existing positions and prepare for the offensive, and at the same time decided to transfer an infantry brigade and artillery squadron from the 133rd Regiment to help. According to Hishida's vision, after such an adjustment, the siege of the 109th Regiment of the Japanese Army can be quickly resolved, and the main force of the Chinese army can be contained. More importantly, the division can still attack Zhijiang according to the original plan. Passive is an active strategy that kills multiple birds with one stone.

When the order was received, the Japanese 1st, 33rd Regiment's attack on Shanmen Town had just ended.The mountain gate is located in the south of Guidong. The defender here is only one battalion of the 169th Regiment of the 57th Division of the 74th Army. With only one battalion, they have withstood the fierce attack of the enemy three times their own.The two sides fought fiercely for three days and nights, and more than 500 Japanese troops were killed and injured. The battalion also suffered heavy casualties. However, until the Japanese army rushed into the town, the remaining more than 100 people still fought with the Japanese army for three days.

After capturing the mountain gate, the 1st, 33rd Regiment of the Japanese Army sent a rescue brigade reorganized with infantry to attack Longtan Town according to the order of the division. In the Battle of Xiangxi, the Japanese army not only lost its air supremacy, but also the army's reconnaissance and communication methods also failed.A very obvious feature is that the Japanese army behaved clumsily during the battle. Compared with the previous nimble and agile skills, it was a completely different army. In the past, when the Chinese army encountered the Japanese army on the battlefield, they tried their best to conceal their bodies. Even if they watched the Japanese army's movements, they had to be extremely careful. If anyone accidentally exposed the target, they would be attacked by Japanese artillery and aircraft.Now it's the other way around. The Chinese commander can calmly observe the terrain and the enemy's situation on the front line, but the Japanese still only dare to poke their heads and look around. Once they find a Chinese army in front of them, they have to get in immediately. The forest hides.

It was precisely because the headquarters of the Fourth Front Army had a clear view of the situation on the front line, while the Japanese army was like a blind man grasping an elephant, Hishita's plan was passive at every step: the rescue brigade encountered round after round of powerful resistance from the 57th Division and other units along the way, and its progress was very slow. The three magic weapons that the Japanese army relied on on the Chinese battlefield-aircraft, heavy artillery, and tanks (or cavalry) have now lost their effectiveness one by one.That's all. In order to prepare for this mountain battle, the Japanese army brought a lot of pack horses and iron furnaces for horseshoes. These stoves can be used with motors. to replace.

But it was the pack horses that went wrong.They are all improved horse breeds, tall and strong, suitable for fighting on the plains, but they are difficult to move in the mountains, especially after being attacked by a small group of Chinese troops, the horses can't look at each other from head to tail, and there is chaos, blocking the way for the infantry to advance up. What made the rescue team suffer a lot was the rugged and treacherous terrain of Xuefeng Mountain. Basically, the further they went, the higher the mountain and the deeper the valley.Wherever you want to pass, the roads that can be used by people and horses to march are less than one meter wide, and most of the dangerous places have been destroyed. If you want to continue to pass, you can only saw down trees and rocks to pave the way.