Rise from eight hundred.

Chapter 1510: Commander Tang’s spear is already impatient!

In order to maintain its subsequent combat effectiveness, the Chinese side spared no expense in training new recruits with bullets and manpower. Faced with such annoying harassment, the Japanese side naturally responded frequently.

East of the city, by the Xiangjiang River!

Like most cities in China, Hengyang City was surrounded by city walls in the past. However, since the beginning of the Republic of China, many cities including Hengyang have gradually been demolished due to the need for urban construction and expansion. The old city walls were regarded as a symbol of feudal remnants.

The supreme commander was one of the important driving forces behind this. At that time, the ancient city wall of Nanjing affected the Whampoa Military Academy and was going to be demolished. Later, due to the strong opposition from the public, the plan was shelved.

However, as a small border town, Hengyang's city walls were not demolished so thoroughly. The city walls in the south and west of the city were very dilapidated. Before the Battle of Hengyang, there were basically only a few loess piles similar to earthen walls left. It took nearly 3 laborers a week to reconnect these earthen walls with wood and loess to form a simple defense line meters high. On the east side of the city, in order to prevent floods from the confluence of the Xiangjiang River and the Zhengshui River from flooding back into the urban area, there is a very complete section of city wall in the northeast corner of Hengyang city.

Soldiers of the 10th Army often went to the Xiangjiang River to fetch water, and used these walls as cover to avoid being shot by Japanese snipers hiding in the reeds on the opposite bank.

But the Japanese snipers were very skilled in shooting. Even at a distance of more than 450 meters, they observed the gaps between the battlements of the city walls. Once they spotted a figure passing through, they would immediately aim and snipe at the next battlement. They could often hit the soldiers of the 10th Army across a river.

On the first and second days, perhaps only two or three soldiers were hit, which was not a large number, and the losses were reported only at the company and battalion levels. However, as time went on, especially on the fourth day, casualties increased sharply, and the number of soldiers killed and seriously injured exceeded 4, including several accurate shooters who attempted to kill the Japanese army.

At this point, the battalion and the regiment could no longer hold back, and the news eventually reached the Chief of Staff of the Hengyang Command, Zhao Ziling. When Chief of Staff Zhao heard the news, he became furious. In a big battle, both sides would suffer losses, which depended on the ability of both sides, but how could the Japanese army be allowed to suffer piecemeal losses and endure it silently?

He immediately called and severely criticized the infantry commander under the 3rd Division, accusing him of not caring about the lives of the soldiers, which was a typical old warlord style. If he didn't have the ability, he should just get out and make room for other troops that could.

A colonel regimental commander naturally did not dare to argue with a lieutenant general-level chief of staff and could only bow his head and accept the scolding. However, his superior, Lieutenant General Zhou, the commander of the 3rd Division, felt deeply embarrassed and immediately transferred three anti-tank guns from the artillery company directly under the division headquarters to Jiangdong.

Although the lieutenant general division commander was quite angry, he knew in his heart that the 3rd Division was not without accurate shooters, but the Japanese were hiding in the reeds that could not be seen at all, and the distance was more than 400 meters, so the vision was not as clear as his side. If they relied solely on shooters to shoot, they might lose both the wife and the soldiers.

Why not take the simplest and most direct approach? It would be fine if the Japanese snipers don't show their heads. Once they do, use anti-tank guns to deal with them. This is what is meant by using rifles for accuracy when you are poor and firepower coverage when you are rich!

"Commander Zhou, how about I go over and help your division save some artillery shells?" Tang Dao, who was inspecting the defense line of the 3rd Division, suddenly interrupted.

Ever since the battle of Hengyang broke out, Tang Dao, the director of the Operations Department, has been extremely busy. There are 48 large and medium-sized positions and 138 small positions in the outer and inner areas of Hengyang. All information of nearly 200 positions is under the overall responsibility of the Operations Department led by him. He is also responsible for coordinating the artillery support of various divisions, regiments and even battalions.

After distributing a sufficient number of individual walkie-talkies and battalion and regiment-level radio voice communication equipment to each unit, the work efficiency of the Operations Department was greatly improved, but the workload was also two or three times as much as before. In order to be so busy, he handed over the command of the Sixing Regiment to Ye Chenghuan.

As the strongest soldier in the entire Hengyang City, it has been a month since the war started, and Director Tang has not even had a chance to pull out the Black Star pistol from his right thigh, let alone fight on the front line with a gun.

  To put it bluntly, Tang Dao's gun has been thirsty for a long time, but it's useless, there is no target!

Suddenly, we heard that there were Japanese snipers provoking us on the other side of the Xiangjiang River, and they had been doing so for a week, killing and wounding more than 20 of our comrades. How could Tang Dao tolerate this?

"Director Tang, that's not possible. Where are we going to take you? If you get hurt, the commander will swallow me up." Lieutenant General Zhou shook his head repeatedly.

  He is old, not stupid!

Let's not talk about how much Fang Xianjue values ​​Tang Dao, he directly puts a colonel in the army in the position of chief of operations who almost commands the entire army. Just talking about the performance of the Four-Line Regiment in the past month, it really reflects the reputation of the rumored "number one regiment in the world" to the fullest.

Earlier at Huangchaling, a battalion of the Four-Line Regiment took on an attack by a Japanese infantry regiment and directly crippled it. The piles of corpses in the killing trenches were chilling, and the green-headed flies that grew in the deep trenches were as fat as beetles, and they all flew to Hengyang City, ten miles away.

As a result, the soldiers and civilians in the city knew where the big green-headed flies came from as soon as they saw them.

As soon as the anti-aircraft battalion of the 4th Regiment showed up, it directly shot down more than a dozen Japanese fighter planes and bombers, and made the Japanese Army Aviation Force weak. In the next few days, no bombers were seen at all.

According to his private communication with Ge Youcai, commander of the 10th Reserve Division, with the current combat effectiveness of the Four-Line Group, it might be a bit exaggerated to defeat the 10th Army, but it is a foregone conclusion that they can surpass their two divisions.

To put it bluntly, in the eyes of the two lieutenant generals who hold military power in Hengyang City, Tang Dao is actually a person who can completely stand on equal footing with them.

Because the Four Lines Regiment under his command has this strength.

In the battlefield where the survival of the fittest prevails, identity and background are unimportant; everything depends on the strength in hand.

  As a result, Tang Dao, a commander who was ranked among the top five in Hengyang City in Zhou Qingxiang's mind, actually said that he wanted to fight with Japanese snipers. Who would agree?

"Haha! Who said I was going? Commander Zhou, you know that my regiment is well-equipped, but you probably don't know that my regiment also has several very good snipers!" Tang Dao laughed. "Do you still remember the revenge my regiment launched against the Japanese after I was assassinated? In Jiangxia City, the old devil Tanabe Moritake was shot and killed by a sniper from hundreds of meters away. It was the joint efforts of two great snipers from my regiment."

Erya, who was following behind Tang Dao, blinked her eyes and chuckled.

How should I put it? The commander-in-chief looks so handsome when he talks nonsense seriously.

Captain Erya, who had been promoted to deputy company commander of the communications company of the Sihang Regiment and chief of the Tangdao secretariat, has now returned to female attire.

Her identity was not exposed by Tan Tai Ming Yue who had guessed it long ago, but was due to a battle. Er Ya, deputy captain of the medical team, was injured with a gunshot wound to the ribs. After the bra of the unconscious Er Ya was untied, the story of Hua Mulan joining the army in place of her father and now Captain Er Ya, a woman who is as brave as any man, quickly spread in the Four Lines Group.

There are many female soldiers in the Four Ranks Regiment, but Erya is the only female officer who has been disguised as a man for several years and has even been fighting on the front line. Everyone is surprised and admires her more.

Erya may have gotten used to it. She no longer needs the bra that was so tight that it almost suffocated her, but her hairstyle is still the same buzz cut as the male soldiers.

His healthy wheat-colored skin, buzz cut and military uniform gave him a heroic look that attracted a large number of young officers.

However, Captain Erya is no longer the soldier who was almost scared to tears when shooting and killing the enemies. During the seven years he followed Commander Tang, he learned a lot of close combat skills and marksmanship from Tang Dao. His skillful decapitation lock can make a strong man as strong as an ox lose his ability to resist in just three seconds.

If you want to pursue her, you must defeat her first, which is a condition that discourages countless young men from the Four Lines Group.

"Hiss~~~Are you serious?" Zhou Qingxiang was stunned.

With his rank, he only knew that an important Japanese general in Jiangxia was shot dead as a result of revenge by the Four-Line Regiment, but he did not know the inside story. Most people believed that it was an assassination by intelligence personnel. Now, when he heard Tang Dao personally admit that it was the work of an elite shooter from the Four-Line Regiment, he was naturally shocked.

"How can you deceive Commander Zhou?" Tang Dao waved his hand. "Go inform Instructor Niu Er and Pang Zilong, tell them that we have a great catch today."

Two sniper masters from the Four-Line Regiment who were resting in Hengyang City were ordered to come. In order to open Master Zhou's eyes, Pang Zilong shot a human-shaped wooden target hidden in the bushes 400 meters away.

"Let's go!" Seeing Tang Dao personally carrying a long and big rifle and getting on the jeep, Lieutenant General Zhou Da, who was sitting in a jeep behind, always felt that something was wrong.

His premonition unfortunately came true.

He had only made some arrangements and instructions with his regimental commander and battalion commander in a fortification bunker 100 meters away from that section of the city wall, and then the two snipers from the th Regiment disappeared, and even Director Tang was absent.

The only thing that appeared in the vision of this Chinese Army Lieutenant General was the back of the man who was carrying a nearly 15-kilogram gun, bending over and moving forward with incredible agility.

"Damn it!" The Chinese Army Lieutenant General couldn't help but swear. He finally understood why this heroic regiment commander was collectively called a troublemaker by the theater commanders he had served.

This person is a typical example of someone who is rebellious against Tiangang.

  What? For a shootout, does it only take a long, big, and thick gun to do it?

But it turns out that maybe it really works!

In order to allow the Army Lieutenant General to see more clearly, the artillery platoon moved all the artillery observation mirrors to this fortification less than a hundred meters away from the Xiangjiang River.

The scene in the reed marsh on the opposite side was clear, but even the Army Lieutenant General could not see any trace of the Japanese.

Just because the Army Lieutenant General can’t see it doesn’t mean that the three super snipers led by Tang Dao can’t see it.

Tang Dao knew that the Japanese, having tasted the sweetness, must be hiding in the reeds, but they were just disguised very well.

On the battlefields of World War II, many people left their names in history with their superb marksmanship and terrifying number of single-soldier kills. There was the Russian Vasily Zaitsev who sniped at least 242 enemy soldiers, the German Empire's top ace Mahaus Heitzenauer who killed 345 people, and even the Chinese "Tuba", which was extremely short of weapons and equipment, had a gun god who killed dozens of Japanese soldiers from a long distance.

But no Japanese gunner has ever achieved such an achievement. Is it because the Japanese marksmanship is not good?

On the contrary, the Japanese army's marksmanship was not very good but quite good.

The Japanese army had an almost abnormal requirement for accuracy in shooting training. Taking the Kwantung Army as an example, they required that not only all five bullets must hit the target (only the head and shoulders) 300 meters away, but at least three of them must be concentrated on an area the size of a fist.

  After reaching this level, it is time to shoot within seconds. Initially, it is limited to hitting a target that appears from nowhere 4 meters away within 300 seconds, and then it is limited to 2 seconds. After this is also done, put on a gas mask and run 30 meters, and then enter the time-limited shooting. If you fail to complete it, you will be beaten and scolded by the veterans, and you will not be allowed to eat if you don’t hit it!

After the recruit training, they will move on to squadron and company-level coordinated tactical training. At this stage, the recruits will be subjected to the devilish training of the veterans, such as standing with weights on and aiming with a gun; shooting at incense sticks at a distance of 3 meters at night; running to avoid bullets and shooting methods targeting running to avoid bullets, etc. These devilish trainings have indeed greatly improved the individual combat capabilities of Japanese soldiers. This is also one of the reasons why China was almost always defeated in the first three years of the war and there was very little news of victory.

In terms of training quality, if the Japanese army is college students, the Chinese army is at best just an elementary school dropout.

Why couldn't the Japanese army produce ace snipers? This is largely related to their devilish training methods. Although the Japanese Army also formulated the so-called "Five Basic Combat Ethics" - loyalty, humility, courage, honesty, and frugality, the way the Japanese Army's grassroots officers treated their subordinates was completely opposite.

In the Japanese Army, low-level soldiers would be severely punished if they made any mistakes, negligence, slowness or carelessness. Corporal punishment of soldiers was commonplace, not only in the training of new recruits, but also in combat units.

The Japanese soldiers' fear of being punished for making mistakes and their trembling mentality when facing the authority of their superiors largely stifled their initiative. For this reason, Japanese soldiers were often too rule-abiding to seize fleeting opportunities.

They were all trained to be screws in the Japanese war machine. Under military orders, they did their best to complete the combat tasks assigned to them by their superiors, but rarely took the initiative to think about how to fight the war.

Even the precious snipers, who have accurate shooting skills and extraordinary perseverance, do not know how to adapt and often stick to one spot and shoot until they die. Isn't this turning themselves into disposable consumables?

The ace sniper who could leave his name in the sky of history would run away immediately after killing the enemy, waiting for the next opportunity to hunt prey. Otherwise, where did the terrifying number of over 300 come from?

Even someone as strong as Commander Tang had to jump back and forth between several sniper positions of his own choice. Once he discovered that the Japanese army had artillery aimed at him, he would immediately turn around and run away. He was so fast that even a dog could not catch up with him.

The Japanese army's "fearless" tactics are the real reason why they have no ace snipers.

The Japanese army does not have ace snipers, but that does not mean their marksmanship is bad. Tang Dao, Niu Er and Pang Zilong are all well aware of this.

Therefore, they were all very careful in the three locations.

"What are Tang Dao doing?" After looking at the reed marsh opposite for a long time, the Chinese Army Lieutenant General could only cast his gaze on the three Tang Dao people who had already hidden behind the ruined city wall.

But he was surprised to find that the Tang sword was leaning against the bottom of the city wall, the big black gun was also placed on the ground, and he was tying something with a few wooden sticks and ropes.

Tang Dao's craftsmanship was good, and he quickly made a frame. After he took off his military uniform and put it on the frame, and also put his helmet on this simple wooden frame, the Chinese soldiers behind him finally understood.

Tang Tuanzuo's craft is called scarecrow making. It can be seen that it comes from the countryside. From a distance, it looks quite similar.

"Is this called luring the snake out of its hole?" The Army Lieutenant General raised his eyebrows slightly.

  But what if it is brought out?

The other two officers, who were called sharpshooters by Tang Dao, did not stick their heads out to observe. They sat quietly behind the city wall and checked their guns. They had no intention of saying that their superiors had worked hard to make wooden men to conduct reconnaissance for them and that they had to engage in battle immediately.

In the reeds!

Second Lieutenant Korihara Zang was searching the river bank through the 99x scope of his Type 4 sniper rifle. About 2 meters to his side was his assistant, Sergeant Konishi Hayami.

This was the fourth day that the duo had come to this area to ambush the Chinese soldiers who were fetching water. With their accurate shooting skills and the tacit cooperation of the duo, they had achieved fruitful results in the past few days and were highly praised by Colonel Matsuyama Yoshimasa.

It is believed that the duo's continued successful sniping is gradually restoring the 6th Infantry Regiment's increasingly depressed morale.

This was also one of the reasons why the division headquarters sent the 9th group of the guard squadron to the 6th Infantry Regiment. It was to save the morale of the 6th Infantry Regiment which was about to collapse by killing Chinese soldiers. In addition, it was to scout the battlefield because the main force of the 3rd Division was about to arrive at the Hengyang battlefield.

The duo are not soldiers from the 6th Infantry Regiment, but are directly affiliated with the division headquarters. It is a special infantry company built by the 3rd Division in the past two years to imitate the reconnaissance company of a Chinese unit. On the surface, its number is the division's direct guard company, but in fact, the 120 officers and soldiers in the company are all elite soldiers selected from the 2.5 people in the division.

To join the squadron, the minimum military service required is 4 years and the minimum rank is sergeant. Usually, they do not participate in battles in squads or teams, but in groups of 2 or 6.

In the year and a half since the formation of the escort squadron with the tactical purpose of reconnaissance, secret attack and long-range sniping, it has achieved fruitful results. The highest-level target killed by Lieutenant Ogasawara Zou, a leader, was even a Chinese army colonel.

He was a commander at the regimental level. Ogasawara Tsunayoshi even now remembers the moment when he killed the Chinese commander who was surrounded by many soldiers in a bush 480 meters away from the Chinese position, and the stunned expressions of the Chinese soldiers.

At that moment, Lieutenant Ogasa felt that he was the sharpest sword in the hands of the emperor of the empire.

Now, this sharp sword attacked again, and Lieutenant Ogasa had a hunch that soon the Chinese would either use cannons or send archery experts to fight him.

I can only say that a man’s overly sharp intuition is not a good thing.

The Japanese duo provoked three super snipers who were ranked in the top three in the entire Hengyang City and even the entire Central China.

Their only advantage is that it is too easy to hide in the reed marshes. Unless you have eagle eyes, it is difficult to find their exact location.