Rise from eight hundred.

The breakthrough location chosen by the 17th Independent Brigade of the 46th Division consisted of only one Japanese infantry squadron and one puppet infantry battalion.

If the Japanese defense line, which originally had nearly 800 troops, worked together, even if the 46th Independent Brigade had more than 4300 troops, it would not be easy to break through the entire defense line in less than 20 minutes.

As a result, the Japanese army was unlucky to have this puppet infantry battalion with more than 500 troops. The reason why the 46th Brigade chose this place instead of elsewhere was because an infantry company commander of the puppet army tipped it off.

Moreover, it was this puppet infantry company commander who took the initiative to find the 46th Independent Brigade a day ago and gave the 46th Independent Brigade headquarters a clear map of the Japanese defense line he knew.

And why this puppet infantry company commander did this was because it was the Japanese's own fault.

The Japanese massacred every household in the vast countryside of North China. One of the villages turned out to be the home of the infantry company commander who had surrendered in Yuancheng and was forced to serve for the Japanese army. His parents, brothers and sisters were all killed. Even if this guy had already knelt down and planned to I am humble enough to survive, but I cannot accept this news.

However, this man has a deeper mind and pretends to know nothing on the surface, but in fact he has been thinking about how to trick the Japanese. He will not be able to forgive his hatred unless hundreds or even thousands of Japanese are killed.

In the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, the Japanese mobilized basically regular troops, and the puppet troops only had two regiments. They did not need to go to the front line. They were basically responsible for maintaining the security of the lower communication lines and attacking the Japanese troops on the front line.

But in the eyes of the puppet company commander who buried his hatred deeply in his heart, the opportunity finally came.

Before Brigadier Kong Da returned, the 46th Independent Brigade Headquarters, who accidentally obtained this piece of information, didn't take it too seriously. After all, the defense was struggling, so there was no idea of ​​​​taking the initiative to attack.

But the moment Brigadier Kong Da decided to break through the Japanese defense line at all costs, this piece of information became critical.

After a simple reconnaissance, it was found that this information was basically true, and the entire 46th Brigade gathered its forces and rushed to the area where the Japanese defenses were most vulnerable.

The combat effectiveness of the puppet infantry battalion is not good to begin with. One of the infantry companies collapsed after resisting for less than 5 minutes. Isn't it true that the other two were so powerful?
To put it bluntly, the remaining 15 minutes were all borne by the tragic Japanese infantry squadron alone.

200VS4300, and the opponent also has at least 12 mortars and 12 heavy machine guns, while the Japanese army only has 6 light machine guns and 6 grenade launchers. With such a huge disparity in strength, the Japanese infantry squadron can resist for 15 minutes. Be tenacious.

A Japanese infantry squadron was completely wiped out, and a puppet infantry battalion collapsed, causing thousands of Chinese to rush out of the encirclement. This was not enough for Masao Nakamura to angrily denounce his colonel-level infantry captain in public.

After all, he was also one of the top five figures in the infantry brigade, and he, as the leader, had to save some face.

But Nakamura Masao himself has lost all face, and he still looks like a bastard to others.

Fortunately, an artillery battalion of the 5th Artillery Regiment of the 6th Division under the command of Masao Nakamura completed its position transfer at dusk, and happened to be less than [-] miles behind the defense line.

Upon receiving the emergency situation at the front, the artillery brigade not only did not run away, but also immediately provided artillery support.

This was good. Through the trajectory of the artillery shells, Brigadier Kong Da, who had already broken out of the Japanese defense line, judged that the Japanese artillery position was not far away.

What is the role of the 46th Independent Brigade in breaking through the Japanese defense line? Isn't it just trying to cause damage to attract the attention of the main force of the Japanese army and reduce the pressure on one's own defense line?
The appearance of the Japanese artillery positions was like a doze for the Independent 46th Brigade, which was still a little directionless in breaking through the defense line. If you hesitated for a moment, it was over.

Then, at around 2 a.m., more than 4000 Chinese soldiers ran for more than 2000 meters, swooping on the cornfield like locusts.

Before the artillery brigade could react, they were pinned to the ground and rubbed to death.

By the time the main force of the nearby Japanese army responded and came with full support, the Independent 46th Brigade, which had already killed the Japanese artillery brigade, had already left with the captured equipment.

The strength of soldiers and their speed were perfectly demonstrated by Brigadier Kong Da.

Masao Nakamura's 21st Infantry Brigade actually lost far less than Yamada Seiichi in terms of strength alone, but the equipment losses were much greater.

This artillery brigade is an enhanced type. 12 Type 4 mountain guns are standard equipment. 105 4 howitzers are specially equipped by Shiro Itagaki for his Central Group attack group. In addition, there are 25 4mm twin-mounted guns. The machine guns were originally used for air defense, but at this time there were no Chinese fighter planes on the North China battlefield. The four 25mm machine guns were basically used for ground defense.

If these four machine guns were placed in front of the Japanese artillery brigade, they would certainly be able to block the life-threatening impact of the Independent 4th Brigade, but at least they would cause hundreds of casualties to the Independent 46th Brigade.

However, the artillery brigade of the Japanese army had just moved its position. The trenches were only temporary and heavy firepower fortifications had not been constructed, so the four 4mm machine guns were not taken out. When thousands of people from the Independent 25th Brigade rushed towards them, It was already too late to use it to fight.

Of course, the 4 2 howitzers weighing 105 tons cannot be taken away. A pile of shells were piled up and exploded into parts. The 12 mountain cannons could be carried on pack horses. The two regimental commanders who were worried about the weapons and equipment urged them to be taken away. For the spoils of war, Brigadier Kong Da could only grit his teeth and take away 12 mountain guns and 300 rounds of artillery shells with hundreds of pack horses captured at the Japanese artillery brigade position.

As for the four 4mm twin-mounted machine guns, the two infantry regiments were even more treasured. Each infantry regiment had two. They even set up a machine gun platoon specifically for this purpose. More than 25 people drove 40 pack horses and Two large vehicles are dedicated to serving these two machine guns.

After the war, it was proved that the 46 mountain cannons and 12 machine guns that the 4th Independent Brigade took away at the expense of slowing down the march were actually one of the wisest decisions in this brilliant counterattack.

中村正雄的中条山中部集团攻击群原本共拥有36门四一式山炮、4门105榴弹炮，结果一夜过去，就没了其中的24门75山炮以及4门105榴弹炮。

The 12 mountain cannons owned by the only remaining artillery brigade are not even as many as the number of artillery equipped by an infantry corps of the Chinese 38th Army.

如今的38军可是拥有着超过36门82迫击炮、12门75山炮、6门150重迫，就这还不包括稍微弱一点的96军以及已经获得增援的泗洲山唐刀所部。

If we look purely at ground firepower, Nakamura Masao's central attack group is at an absolute disadvantage for the first time.

If the 4th Army Headquarters could seize this opportunity and order a full-scale counterattack, Nakamura Masao's entire face might turn green.

Unfortunately, Shiro Itagaki, who received Masao Nakamura's request for help at about 5 a.m., responded very quickly and immediately ordered a mixed brigade of the North China Front that was besieging the Fifth Group Army to move closer to Masao Nakamura's headquarters. In addition, Kunizaki, who had been severely damaged and was south of Ruicheng City, was ordered to An infantry regiment from the detachment headquarters accompanied the 8th Division's last eight 105 howitzers to support Masao Nakamura.

By 9 a.m., Masao Nakamura, who had obtained the support of 8 105mm howitzers and a mixed brigade with more than 5000 troops, not only regained the heavy firepower advantage, but at least evened the firepower difference.

Yamada Seiichi also assigned two infantry brigades with 2000 men. Tang Dao, who had completely recovered the highlands, received the reconnaissance report from Li Jijin who had escaped into the mountains, so he did not make the next attack.

He promised the new regiment soldiers, who were exhausted both mentally and physically, that last night would be the last large-scale battle.

If the Japanese don't come, then both parties will be fine. If they feel they have some support and want to come and cause trouble again, Tang Tuanzuo will not mind serving them with a big stick.

Sizhou Mountain now has not only the 2000 remaining troops of the new regiment and the baggage company, but also 3 elite infantry companies of the Si Xing Regiment and 12 mountain cannons that can still be used on the periphery.

However, although China, with the 4th Army as the main force at this time, cannot guarantee a comprehensive counterattack against the Japanese army in front of it, it can basically ensure that the entire defense line is worry-free.

The Japanese attack group faced by the Fifth Army over there was relieved a lot because a mixed brigade was transferred away.

China, which has been passively beaten, can take a breather, but for Japan, it does not dare to take it lightly.

More than a week of fighting has made the Japanese army feel that although the Chinese army they faced this time still lacked heavy firepower, they had an unimaginable fighting will with their backs against the river and no way out.

If they deploy their troops to pursue the Chinese army that broke out from the defense line, and the lack of troops causes the Chinese to take the opportunity to counterattack, they may be greeted by a big defeat.

Therefore, in the early morning of the 14th, although it was known that thousands of Chinese people were killing Ben Ruicheng, the more than 150 Japanese troops in front of the 17-mile defense line in Zhongtiao Mountain remained motionless.

Shiro Itagaki pinned his hopes on the Westward Detachment of the 4th Division, which he ordered to be transferred to the direction of Yuncheng dozens of miles away.

In the view of this Japanese army lieutenant general, although the "Unscarred Imperial Army" is a bit stretched, there are still nearly ten thousand people anyway. They cannot defeat these thousands of Chinese troops who do not know whether to live or die, at least they will not be defeated.

This may not only be thought by Shiro Itagaki alone, but also by Yuan Sugisugi who is far away in Pingbei City.

Although he was very dissatisfied with the base camp's appointment of Shiro Itagaki as the top commander of the front line, Shanshan Yuan did not want anything to go wrong in this battle. After all, his North China Front dispatched nearly 13 people and was the main force in the Battle of Nakatiao Mountain. If he was disgraced , Of course Itagaki Shiro will take responsibility, but he, the nominal supreme commander, may have a disgraceful face.

However, beyond the imagination of these two Japanese commanders, if the two Army Major Generals Masao Nakamura and Seiichi Yamada were scratched with blood in their faces due to the Chinese night attack and counterattack in the early morning of the 14th, then the The Major General of the 4th Division's Western Turbulence Detachment, His Excellency Daxiong Yunsuke, was beaten to a pulp. The combat effectiveness of the 4th Division is still very good. At least after learning that thousands of Chinese people were rushing toward Ruicheng County, His Excellency Da Xiong Yunosuke, who was in charge of Yuncheng, immediately made corresponding arrangements.

[-]. An infantry brigade under his command defended Ruicheng based on its already broken city wall. As long as the Chinese dared to attack, the thousands of Chinese people who could not leave Ruicheng would be sacrificed;

二、两个步兵大队携4辆94式坦克、6门山炮、4门90迫击炮、4门步兵炮赶往芮城，利用城池吸引中国人主力，2000帝国步兵对其形成半包围将其歼灭之。

[-]. The other three infantry brigades of the West Turbulence Detachment formed a defense system with the Yuncheng City Wall as the core to prevent the lurking enemies in Wangwushan from attacking.

This military order of defending while attacking and with a sound distribution of troops was recorded in the battle report of the 4th Division and reported to Itagaki Shiro for approval!

Ruicheng and Yuncheng are both logistics transfer bases for nearly 20 Japanese troops this time, especially Yuncheng, which has a railway station. Not to mention ammunition, the reserves of various types of grains are as high as 120 million kilograms, but that is only enough. The 18 troops on the front line were fed for 10 days.

If the food reserves in Yuncheng are gone, the 18 Japanese troops on the front line can only have enough food for three days. If they reduce the food intake of individual soldiers like the Chinese, they can last for eight or nine days, but people can be hungry, and horses are responsible for huge transportation tasks. But it is necessary to have enough fodder and refined grains, especially in this winter season when there is a lack of green grass.

Moreover, as a logistics base, Yuncheng also has field hospitals stationed here by various divisions. There are more than 1000 medical staff alone, and more than 9000 wounded soldiers of all kinds have been received. This is nearly a thousand soldiers transported back to the original city by train. After the critically injured.

To use Itagaki Shiro's original words: Ruicheng can be lost, but Yuncheng must not be lost.

Even though Konosuke Ohma didn't want to push the good guys from Osaka to the battlefield at all, he couldn't tolerate the slightest flinching at a time like this.

But Tang Dao, who was dozens of miles away, taught him a good lesson: being far away from the front line is not necessarily a good thing, and being slapped in the back will hurt even more.

Leng Feng, who received Tang Dao's order, marched fifteen miles toward Yuncheng, but did not launch an attack immediately. Instead, he first sent scouts to detect the movements of Japanese troops in the direction of Yuncheng.

This reconnaissance was not urgent, and it was discovered that Yuncheng had sent a large force of 3000 people with an armored convoy and artillery team to march along the highway in the direction of Ruicheng.

Isn’t this meat brought to the mouth on its own initiative? Leng Feng immediately realized that this was a rare opportunity, which was even more useful than immediately sending troops to attack Yuncheng, which was defended by city walls.

"Save the land and lose the people, and everyone and the land will be lost! Save the people and lose the land, and both the people and the land will survive!" This is the sentence Tang Daojiang kept talking about for the longest time during the strategy and tactics class.

Under the influence of Tang Dao, the battalion commanders of the Si Xing Regiment had little interest in counterattacking to regain the lost city. Effectively killing the Japanese's effective forces was what they should do most at this time.

Therefore, Leng Feng and Shangguan Yun, who were less than 8 miles away from Yuncheng, immediately turned around and laid an ambush on a hillside less than 10 miles away from Ruicheng County.

To say an ambush is actually not accurate, because when Leng Feng and Shangguan Yun arrived in the mountainous area, the reinforcements from the West Tuo Detachment were actually only 8 miles away from them, leaving no more than 30 minutes for Leng Feng and others. The Japanese troops The elite troops will arrive.

At that time, the battle in the direction of Ruicheng had already begun.

The more than 46 officers and soldiers of the 4000th Independent Brigade are now determined to attract the main force of the Japanese army to death. Isn't that the mentality of scaring the Japanese as hard as they can?
For the safety of the more than 20 soldiers and civilians in Zhongtiao Mountain, Ruicheng must be attacked even if the King of Heaven comes.

The firepower was all out as soon as they came up. Four 4mm machine cannons burst into the area less than 25 meters away from the city wall, hitting the dilapidated city wall that was less than 700 people high and sending dust everywhere.

But this is not what scares the Japanese the most. What scares the Japanese the most is that the Chinese may be afraid that the mountain cannon will accidentally blow up the houses and people in the city. They even flatten the muzzle of the mountain cannon and use it as a direct-aimed cannon. .

The earthen walls of a small county like Ruicheng could withstand such bombardment. After dozens of rounds, the walls were blasted with several gaps.

This frightened the infantry captain who was ordered to defend, and kept sending telegrams to Daxiong Yunsuke for help.

Okuma Konosuke could only keep urging the two infantry brigades he sent to speed up, but little did he know that this would send more than 2600 Japanese troops into the tiger's mouth.

The first wave of blows encountered by the Japanese troops who were panting from exhaustion as they trotted forward did not come from the mountains.

The vanguard troops they sent completed their tasks very well. The hillsides nearly 200 meters away from both sides of the road were tested by them with live ammunition.

The remaining three infantry companies of the 350rd and [-]th Battalions of the Fourth Battalion were actually [-] meters away from the simple road. In addition to various machine guns that could pose a threat to the Japanese army, rifles and submachine guns posed minimal threats to the Japanese infantry.

But unfortunately, each infantry battalion of the Fourth Line Regiment carries anti-tank mines and anti-infantry mines.

After knowing that the Japanese army was leading the charge with Type 94 tanks, the engineer platoon accompanying the team took advantage of the short 20-minute time difference to bury trigger bombs filled with new explosives in the grass on the roadside.

The Japanese infantry running on the side of the Type 94 tank with short legs stepped on the roadside bomb. The huge shock wave blew up more than a dozen Japanese soldiers into pieces, and at the same time, it also lifted the Type 94 tank, which weighed only more than one ton. Turn over, completely blocking the not-wide road.

Three Type 3 tanks that tried to get off the road and bypass the wilderness unfortunately hit an anti-tank mine filled with five kilograms of explosives and were blown into three burning torches.

The four most powerful armored vehicles of the Japanese army turned into a pile of scrap metal without even firing a shot.

Then, the Japanese soldiers who were lying on the ground in a daze after being blown up by various landmines and bombs saw nearly a thousand people pouring out from the hillsides on both sides and running toward them with their waists bent.

The deliberate Chinese are about to enter rifle range!

"Heavy machine gun squadron, kill the chickens!" A Japanese major who led the team was so anxious that he waved his command knife and ordered. "Infantry squadrons, quickly seize the commanding heights!"

The heavy machine guns of the Japanese army began to roar, but obviously the heavy machine guns and various artillery pieces of the Four Lines Group staying 500 meters or even further on the hillside were not indifferent either.

The rain of artillery shells and bullets covered the Japanese heavy machine gun position without cover in less than 10 seconds.

As for the infantry on both sides, one is running down and the other is climbing up. You can imagine the speed of both sides.

The soldiers of the Fourth Line Regiment were the first to arrive at an area less than 250 meters away from the road, and immediately started shooting at the Japanese infantry who were already less than 120 meters away.

There are almost no established field fortifications on both sides, they just rely on a few stones and trees to shoot at each other!
In a sense, this is a showdown of courage.

At least in the first five minutes of the battle, the 4th Division had courage that far exceeded their nickname of the 'Innocuous Imperial Army'.

In the brutal shooting, someone died every second!

At least one-half of the soldiers in the third and fourth battalions are veterans who have experienced several bloody battles. In terms of psychological quality and shooting skills, they actually surpass the 4th Division.

In this kind of confrontation, which still had a geographical advantage to some extent, the Japanese army's losses were at least twice that of the Fourth Army.

But this group of hawkers from Osaka managed to hold on for a full five minutes. It wasn't until the hand-cranked alarm sounded for the retreat from behind that they took turns to cover and retreat.

The bodies of more than 1500 Japanese soldiers were left on the 300-meter-wide hillside.

And in the grass, no less than 100 soldiers of the Fourth Line Regiment also fell down. Even though Shangguan Yun was determined enough, the corners of his eyes twitched hard when he saw this scene.

The difficulty of this battle is just like what Tang Tuanzuo called them back: Never underestimate the combat effectiveness of the 4th Division.

But fortunately, not only did they have the advantage of the terrain, but they were also outnumbered. This was the first time since the formation of the Four Lines Regiment that a large number of people bullied a small number of people.

The luck of the Four Elements Regiment naturally corresponds to the misfortune of the 4th Division!
Not only did they like to pretend to be pigs and eat tigers, they also met a real tiger!

More importantly, after pretending to be a pig for a long time, I started to think I was a pig.