Chapter 98 Should you take a rest?

The so-called Guantong, as the name suggests, is a combination of observation and communication.In the artillery unit, the Guantong platoon is mainly responsible for position measurement and battlefield communication. The officers and soldiers in the platoon are required to have a certain level of education, at least to have attended middle school, so that they can learn to use observation instruments and calculate shooting elements. Guantong platoon leader Wang Jiyou is also a student of the 17th batch of Whampoa.He is a student in exile, and his father died under the butcher knife of the Japanese army, so he has a blood feud with the Japanese army.When he participated in the battle for the first time, he prayed silently in his heart: "Father, I am about to confront the Japanese invaders, and I must fight with a hundredfold bravery to avenge you!"

Wang Jiyou and Zhou Beichen are not only classmates in Huangpu, but also fellow villagers in Jiangxi. They have a very good personal relationship.Wang Jiyou chose Qingyan Mountain for observation, next to Zhou Beichen's command post, and the cooperation was more tacit. During one battle, Wang Jiyou saw through the binoculars that more than forty Japanese soldiers were approaching the main position from the front left.Zhou Beichen also discovered this enemy situation at the same time, and hurriedly shouted: "Jiyou, there is a new army of devils coming over there, hurry up and shoot!"

Wang Jiyou immediately issued a command to the artillery position by phone: "Grenade! Instant signal tube, five to the left, 2,400 meters, stand by for release." The position replied: "Ready is complete." After spotting the timing, Wang Jiyou yelled into the microphone: "Let it go!" Only two bangs were heard, and two shells fell into the crowd, blowing up the Japanese soldiers to howl. Zhou Beichen was so happy that he gave him a thumbs up: "Jiyou, you played these two shots well, you insist on it (Jiangxi dialect, which means really good)." The Jiangkou blocking battle on the middle road included two parts, Qingyan and Tieshan. Qingyan was mainly guarded by the 171st Regiment of the 57th Division, and the 170th Regiment of the 57th Division was guarding Tieshan.The 120th Regiment and the 133rd Regiment of the 116th Division of the Japanese Army invested all their troops on this line. The number of Japanese troops participating in the attack on the front line reached more than 6,000 at most, but none of them could break through the Chinese defense line.

On May 3, the defeat of the Japanese army in the front line was obvious, and Banxi was forced to send an urgent message to the headquarters of the Sixth Front Army in Hankou and the headquarters of the "China Expeditionary Force" in Nanjing.In the telegram, he bluntly stated that "in the direction of the Zhijiang operation, the Central Army has concentrated an unexpected large number of troops." For this reason, he asked his superiors to increase the strength of two to three divisions for him. The result was that the bosses on both sides disagreed.Naozaburo Okabe, commander of the Sixth Front Army, said that the troops stationed along the Nanning, Liuzhou, and Guilin routes were retreating at this time to shrink the battlefield and prevent the US troops from landing.The implication is that it doesn't matter how the Zhijiang battlefield is. Of course, it is even more impossible for him to allocate troops for Banxi.

Neiji Okamura, the commander of the "China Expeditionary Force", did not go so far.His analysis is that if Banxi's suggestion of increasing troops is adopted, two to three divisions will not be enough, and at least seven divisions must be sent to have a chance of winning in Xuefeng Mountain. Different reasons, but the conclusions are the same, that is, Sakanishi's thoughts are far from the reality, so let's take a rest. The problem is that the combat troops on the front line can't rest.The battle for Xinhua became more and more intense. Brande, the U.S. liaison leader of the 73rd Army, wanted to take a look at the front line, but the interpreter was shot dead as soon as he arrived at the front line.Brander, who was the commander of a U.S. battalion in World War I, said in amazement: "When we fought the most, it was nothing more than that. At that time, there were not so many aircraft and artillery."

Under the fierce counterattack of the Chinese army, the Japanese Shigeguang Detachment suffered heavy losses and was unable to advance westward. It could only implement passive defense at Yangxi in the southwest of Xinhua. The 116th Division of the Japanese Army in the middle has the most combat experience and the strongest combat effectiveness. However, in the face of the "hammer" attack of the 74th Army and the 100th Army, the three infantry regiments were besieged. The blocked ones were blocked, and after more than half a month, the scheduled rendezvous goal was still unable to be achieved.

Among the three regiments, the 109th Regiment of the Japanese Army, which was trapped in the east of Kyu-dong, was the most miserable.The ammunition of the regiment was further reduced, and the 116th Division had to send supplies to pass through the gaps in the encirclement, taking the risk of replenishing ammunition.Even so, it is still not enough. If it were not for the air-dropping of ammunition by the plane and the processing of the shell casings by the temporary arsenal, the entire wing would have to fight with bayonets and butts. In fact, the 116th Division of the Japanese Army and even the entire 20th Army were in trouble in terms of logistical supplies.Two small Japanese transport planes once flew over the 109th Regiment's position and dropped ammunition boxes at low altitude in an attempt to boost morale.The soldiers eagerly opened the ammunition box dropped by the air and found that there were bricks inside. They couldn't help crying in despair.

The captain of the Longsi regiment set up the living quarters of the troops at the bottom of the ditch, and the seriously wounded and sick patients also set up camps scattered at the bottom of the ditch.At this time, he only wanted to stand out from the encirclement, and his thoughts of crossing Xuefeng Mountain and capturing Zhijiang River had long since dissipated. The other two alliances are still attacking, but apart from the fact that more and more people are dying, it is almost difficult to make any progress.At this time, even the head of the Lingtian division lost the confidence to continue westward.

The difficulty of supporting the frontline troops of the Japanese army was gathered to the command post of the 20th Army in Shaoyang.Seeing that all the battlefields are in a state of being passively beaten, and there is no strong second-line corps to change it, on the afternoon of May 4, the commander of the army, Banxi, issued an order to the 116th Division and the 58th Brigade, so that They retreated to the mountain gate, the cave entrance, and Garden City to assemble.