The heavens start from Changjin Lake

Chapter 715

The troops who stayed on the front line were destined to suffer heavy casualties.

He put his hands behind his head and wanted to relax in the next time to prepare for the next battle to defend Jinling.

However, Xia Yuan has no idea how to intervene.

The process is no longer important. With his personal power, he can only affect the direction of a war, but cannot affect the overall situation.

Jinling will eventually be breached.

The ambitions of the Japanese devils will not change just because of the defeat in a small war.

How can the wolf's ambition be changed?

Otherwise, the Japanese would not be so shameless as to still deny the comfort women, the Holocaust, etc. after more than half a century.

Late at night.

Jinling Supreme Commander's Mansion.

Baldhead hasn't slept yet.

A desk lamp was on, emitting a bright light. The bald head was hiding on the stool, reading the battle reports sent back from the front line, and his mind was buzzing.

The Japanese army captured Jinshan Guard in Hangzhou Bay and moved towards the Suzhou River.

He still had expectations for the Nine-Nation Pact, and was hesitating whether to withdraw his troops from the front line.

At the critical moment of life and death, Zhang Fakui decisively adjusted his deployment and ordered Wu Keren, commander of the 67th Army, to lead his troops to advance towards Jinshanwei via Songjiang to block the Japanese army head-on.

There is no doubt that a brutal blocking battle has begun.

The Japanese landing force had three divisions with a strength of 10.

However, at the cost of huge casualties and sacrifices, this critical response slowed down the advance of the Japanese army and bought time for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops who were in danger.

At this time, the Japanese army had occupied the south bank of the Huangpu River, only five kilometers away from Songjiang City.

Songjiang is the throat of Shanghai and Zhejiang. Once the Japanese army captures Songjiang, it will cut off the Chinese army's retreat to the west and south.At this time, there was only a local security team stationed in Songjiang, which could not withstand the Japanese attack.

On the 6th, Zhang Fakui issued a death order, ordering the security commander to cooperate with Guo Rugui, commander of the 40th Army, and Wu Keren, commander of the 67th Army, to guard Songjiang County for three days. Violation will be severely punished under military law.

That evening, Guo Rugui led the 40th Army to Songjiang County.

The 40th Army traveled thousands of miles from Sichuan to participate in the Battle of Songhu. After participating in several bloody and heroic blocking battles, it retreated from the main battlefield. Only more than 500 soldiers of the entire army are left today.

A few minutes later in the night, the 67th Army led by Wu Keren arrived in Songjiang County. Before they could complete their assembly, they were attacked by fierce Japanese artillery fire. Then the Japanese army also launched a crazy attack on Songjiang County.

In order to defend Songjiang County for three days and to cover the retreat of the large forces, the 67th Army fought bloody battles in Songjiang County for three days. The main force headed by the 67th Army fought hard and tragically in the defense battle of Songjiang. Every point, every Every second is the price of blood and flesh.

Bayonets tore flesh and blood, and shells tore human bodies into pieces.

Facing the Japanese attack, the national army guarding Songjiang showed their perseverance and fearlessness to the extreme.

The ammunition was gone and there was not much left.

They started a fierce hand-to-hand fight with the Japanese army. It didn't take long for a bayonet to be used. The blood was so hot that it could blunt the bayonet. It was very difficult for some soldiers' bayonets to pierce through their clothes and penetrate the Japanese soldiers' bodies. The bayonet was gone. , biting with teeth, the two sides fought fiercely on the front, and grenades became a powerful weapon.

Some companies found that a soldier killed the Japanese with a grenade, which caused far fewer casualties than fighting with a bayonet.

With bayonets, sometimes one Japanese soldier could kill three Chinese soldiers.

But with grenades, we got entangled with the Japanese. Sometimes, a grenade could take away one or two Japanese.

This is how they used it to fight the Japanese. Many soldiers held bayonets in the trenches. When waiting for the Japanese troops, they would place grenades within easy reach. In this way, even if the Japanese stabbed them with bayonets, Entering his own body, he also has time to activate the grenade on his body.

According to the words of the company commander, just listen to the sound and know nothing. Waiting for reincarnation in the next life, you will be a good man again.

The battle to defend Songjiang was fierce.

Three days later, no order to retreat was received. Instead, an order was received to continue to defend for another three days.

11 month 8 day.

Relying on their powerful firepower, the Japanese army broke into Songjiang City from the east, south, and west sides of Songjiang City with heavy firepower cover such as tanks, armored vehicles, heavy artillery, and aircraft. The defenders resisted desperately, and most of the 67th Army officers and soldiers were killed.

In the end, only two platoons were left to break out.

When the remnants of the 67th Army were crossing the river, Japanese pursuers arrived. Wu Keren, a 43-year-old young army commander, died for his country. He was the first lieutenant general to die during the Songhu Anti-Japanese War.

67th Military Northeast Army.

The four eastern provinces are suffering too much from oppression. The policy of non-resistance is decided by the superiors, not by the soldiers at the bottom.

Soldiers take it as their bounden duty to obey orders and retreat without resistance. Many people felt aggrieved. During the Battle of Songhu, the Northeast Army came to 7 divisions, and most of them suffered heavy casualties.

After the Japanese army occupied Songjiang, their fangs were exposed.

They divided their troops into two groups and went straight to Jinling via Zhejiang and Anhui.

The main force was directed at Jiaxing and Pingwang, cutting off the Shanghai-Hangzhou railway and highway. At the same time, the Japanese 16th Division landed at Baimaokou, Taicang, Jiangsu. The forward was directed at the Beijing-Shanghai railway and highway, and the 6th and 18th Divisions Form a closing trend.

After the six Japanese divisions on the north bank of the Suzhou River forcibly crossed the Suzhou River, they quickly moved closer to the 6th Army that landed in Hangzhou Bay.

The situation has reached a critical moment.

The Chinese army retreating to the south bank of the Suzhou River is surrounded by enemies from both sides. If it does not retreat, it will be completely wiped out.

In such a critical situation, Bai Chongxi once again suggested to the bald man that the Chinese army should immediately retreat to the Wu-Fu line. He Yingqin and others also suggested that the time had come to retreat.

After the persuasion of many people, Baldhead realized the importance of preserving his strength, and issued the order to retreat on the night when Songjiang fell.

But at this moment, he was still very worried that the retreat of the national troops in the Songhu Battle would have a negative impact on the "Nine-Nation Pact" meeting. However, the night he issued the order, it was already too late.

The best time to retreat had passed, the war situation deteriorated instantly, and hundreds of thousands of troops fell into a terrible chaos.

Japanese planes continued to take off from aircraft carriers, dropping bombs one after another on roads crowded with retreating soldiers. They were exposed to enemy bombing and machine gun fire without cover.

The dilapidated bridges and stations were crowded with retreating troops and were also subjected to fierce bombing by Japanese fighter planes and artillery fire from the rear.

There were few roads and the retreating army was crowded on the highway. At the same time, the Baihe Port bridge was blown up, vehicles were blocked, and order was disordered.

This was a sudden order to retreat. The defenders on the south bank of the Suzhou River were not prepared at all. There was no plan for the retreat. Soldiers and cars were crowded, and the few roads were blocked by Japanese aircraft.

Rather than a retreat, it was an unprecedented rout.

The car with four wheels wishes it could grow wings and escape from the scene.

The soldiers only wished they had two legs and could run slowly. They could not outrun the bombs dropped by the Japanese fighter planes and the bullets fired by them.

The blasted corpses left only a blood-red ground, with broken limbs and arms scattered all over the ground. The bodies of the wounded affected by the explosion were mangled, and their painful screams echoed through the wilderness.

There was no command, no order, the organization of the team was completely chaotic, and it was impossible to tell which company it was.

A few days into the retreat, it started to rain again.

People died on the road, cars were scrapped due to bombing, and corpses and skeletons stretched for more than ten or twenty miles along the few retreat roads. The hundreds of thousands of people who came down from the battlefield were all scattered, and the officers could not find the soldiers. The soldiers could not find the officers.

Not long after the Songhu War broke out, a very serious problem was discovered. Even if it was a faction, affiliated to the same army or division, the regiments did not cooperate in fighting back the Japanese army, let alone the crowds on the south bank of the Suzhou River. The hundreds of thousands of defenders are all local armies from all over the world.

Due to the language barrier and the command barrier, this retreat can be imagined.

The order to retreat was too sudden. Before the various units had time to coordinate their retreat routes, Japanese plane bombs fell from overhead.

It is better to say that it is a retreat than a big rout.

In an organized retreat, the situation is not bad. There are troops behind the scenes to block the attack at all levels. Weapons, equipment and various supplies can be delivered step by step.

As for the unorganized retreat, there was no one to care about it, no one was behind, everyone was running away, they were all retreating, most of the heavy weapons were lost, no one was pulling the baggage, and everyone who could run ran away.Throughout the battlefield, corpses, guns, and food can be seen everywhere.

All over the place.

The Japanese planes did not carry many bombs, and Songhu was a large plain with patches of forest.

The Japanese planes threw stones into the forest. The soldiers in the forest started running when they saw it. They had no backbone. One could sweep away ten, ten could sweep away a hundred, and a hundred could sweep away all.

As soon as they saw someone running, the herd mentality emerged, and they all started running, fearing that if they ran slowly, they would be blown up by the Japanese.

The Japanese used machine guns from the plane to shoot at them.

The Japanese army adjusted their tactics. Not only did they pursue frontally and kill the Chinese army's retreating troops, they also organized several small-scale advancing troops to advance from the area west of Qingpu to Nanxiang on the north bank of the Suzhou River and to the Kunshan road to sneak attack on the Chinese army. Headquarters.

The Chinese army originally retreated to the Wufu and Sujia defense fortification lines as planned, relying on the defense fortifications to resist again.

However, the chaos, disorganization, and disorder during the retreat had already made the original plan aborted.

These defense lines are also known as the "Chinese Hindenburg Defense Line". They were built by Baldou at a huge military expense. Most of the defense lines are made of solid reinforced concrete.

Except for the chaos and disorder when the Chinese army retreated, the troops had no command and missed the line of defense.

The construction of the defense line itself is also very problematic.

The Japanese army came from Shanghai, that is, from the east, but the shooting holes of many concrete bunkers were facing north, south, or in all directions.

And the most important point is that when these bunker fortifications are not in use, the doors are locked, and the keys are mostly managed by local security guards and local government street organizations. Whichever village the defense line is next to will be responsible for it. keep it.

As a result, as soon as the Battle of Songhu started and the war situation changed slightly, the people in these villages fled.

Where the key went, I have no idea.

When some troops who still had command and maintained discipline arrived at the rear defense line, all the defense lines were locked with keys and could not be opened or entered into the bunkers.

Unable to enter the fortress, these two lines of defense fortifications were useless. The elite Japanese troops quickly pursued them, and the Chinese army that had escaped from the danger was completely defeated.

Baldhead later said when reviewing the Battle of Songhu that we were not defeated in battle, but in retreat.

Although what he said made sense, in the final analysis, it was because he did not issue the retreat order in time.

On the 18th, the 10 troops of the Japanese [-]th Army had occupied Songjiang City and began to divide the troops into two groups to surround the Chinese army.

When the national army began to retreat that night, the large Japanese army had already approached the national army's defense line.

The order to retreat was given without any warning, and tens of millions of people retreated without any preparation.

In the final analysis, there was still no preparation time and the retreat order was not issued in time.

Later, the great man said: "Don't care about the gains and losses of a city or a land. Save people and lose land, and both people and land will be saved. Save land and lose people, and both people and land will be lost."

If Bald had ordered the troops to retreat to the second position earlier, there might be a chance for the Battle of Songhu.

But Baldhead's idea was to take care of the so-called political influence. When he couldn't hold on, he suddenly ordered a retreat, and the retreat turned into a rout.

But even with such a huge retreat, there were still young soldiers of the national army who came forward and went to the rear.

On November 11, Wu Jiguang, commander of the 9th Brigade, led his troops to retreat to Baihe Port in Qingpu. Seeing the chaotic scene when the major armies retreated, he felt anxious. After thinking about it, he resolutely led his troops to build fortifications here and took the initiative to cover the nearby areas. Friendly forces retreat mission.

Under the cover of aircraft and heavy artillery, the Japanese troops on the other side of Baihe Port launched a fierce attack on the 174th Brigade position.

The 174th Brigade fought a fierce battle with the Japanese army without any reinforcements. The battle was extremely cruel. The entire Baihe Port was shrouded in Japanese artillery fire, and the simple bunker fortifications were torn apart by Japanese heavy artillery and aircraft.

The battle lasted until the 11th, when it was completely surrounded by the Japanese army.

Wu Jiguang led his troops to break out of the encirclement that day, but was hit by Japanese artillery shells and died for his country.

In August, he recited a poem at a moon-appreciation party: "There is no need for a graveyard to bury bones. There are green mountains everywhere in the world."

1937 11 Month 12 Day.

The Japanese army occupied the last position in Shanghai's urban area.

South City.

According to official data from the Japanese Defense Agency's Orientation Research Institute, in this battle, the total strength of the Japanese army reached about 25, including a total of 9 divisions and two detachments of the army, as well as the third and fourth fleets of the navy. As of November 1937, 11, the Japanese army had killed 8 people and injured 19360 people on the battlefield in Shanghai, a total of 79057 people.

The Chinese army has invested 75 troops and suffered about 30 casualties, but so far, there is still no accurate figure.

Too many people are missing.

However, many of the divisions that went to the battlefield were not satisfied with their organization and their strength was uneven.

The Japanese army's initial attack was from north to south, occupying Beiping and Tianjin in sequence, then captured Shanxi and Wuhan, and then moved south to capture Guangzhou.

Wuhan is a very important city and a very important hub of the Yangtze River. Once the Japanese army captures Wuhan, they will be able to divide the Chinese resistance force into two parts from east to west, with one part in the east, including the National Government, and the other part in the west.

The Battle of Songhu disrupted the Japanese offensive and forced the Japanese army to move from north to south instead of east to west, so that in subsequent attacks, Japan followed China.

China's terrain is high in the west and low in the east. The farther west, the more complex the terrain becomes, making it difficult for the Japanese mechanized troops to launch, especially the Three Gorges natural moat. The Japanese army ultimately failed to break through the Yangtze River natural moat.

After the Songhu Battle, the international view of China, a backward country, changed greatly, and China received international support.

However, the bald head's idea ultimately came to nothing.

The international focus was on the mustache. Not long after the rise of the mustache, the Second World War broke out, and Western countries paid no attention to China.

Facing the menacing Japanese army, international mediation could no longer be counted on.

Whether Jinling will defend or not has become the most important issue for the bald head to consider at the moment.

But judging from the bald head's hesitation, whether Jinling will defend or not is still a question that needs careful study and discussion.

Songhu was occupied by the Japanese army, and the national army fled.

It does not have much impact on the people of Jinling.

After staying at Wang Sangou's house for a few days, Xia Yuan couldn't just eat and work. He was not small and needed strength, so he worked as a day laborer in some coolie places in Jinling, and Wang Sangou had no time to spare. So I found a part-time job.

Wang Cui and Wu Youhua's home has many rooms, providing them with a place to stay.

It saves the accommodation fee.

During this time, Xia Yuan had a general understanding of the details of Wang Cui and her husband Wu Youhua.

It seems that they are comrades in the underground gang. The method of contact is temporarily unknown. Since he and Wang Sangou moved in, Wang Cui and Wu Youhua have basically not performed much, but they often go out. I don't know if they are meeting outside.

Xia Yuan was careful, and although he made discoveries, he did not have too much contact with them. During this period, he lived peacefully in Jinling.

The situation in Jinling is better than that in other places. After all, it is the capital of a country.

However, after coming here, I heard Wang Cui mention that the matter of moving the national capital has nothing to do with ordinary citizens like them. If the troops fight, they will not fight each other. They live a good life. Even if the Japanese invaders come, it will not be a big problem. Think about it. The four eastern provinces were occupied, and the people there continued to live as usual, it was just a change of rulers.

Wu Youhua works outside and knows a lot about them. During meals, he chats with Wang Sangou and Xia Yuan, and also chats for a while when he is free.

We would also talk about some major national events, such as moving the capital, or the Japanese invaders.

As they chatted, Wu Youhua discovered that Xia Yuan, who came from Yudi, was actually well-informed. Xia Yuan could answer many of the questions he asked, and the way he answered them was very special and innovative. Secondly, That is, when this person speaks, one or two unpredictable words will always pop out of his mouth.

Moreover, his speaking accent is also very special.

Not like Yudi, but heard clearly.

Every night late at night, Wu Youhua and Wang Cui were lying on the bed chatting. They first talked about Wang Sangou, Wang Cui's younger brother, and then they talked about Xia Yuan.

(End of this chapter)