Age of Rebirth

Chapter 630 The Battle of Shijiazhuang

Shijiazhuang, an important strategic location in central and southern Hebei, fell into the hands of the Tang Qiusheng troops of the Sulu Mobile Corps of the Independent Division. This battle was aimed at attacking the weak points of the Japanese defense. He was very satisfied. He found that as the battle got bigger and bigger, commanders at all levels, especially brigade-level commanders, were keen to fight with large corps. Almost there.

With two brigades of nearly 4000 troops and a large amount of artillery fire, they attacked Shijiazhuang, which was defended by only one Japanese regiment with less than [-] people. His request, so even though the battle is over, he is still very dissatisfied, if this attack on Shijiazhuang is completed by his cousin Tang Qiuquan's special operations detachment, it will only take four or five detachments, no more than four hours, The battle will be ended neatly.

Tang Qiusheng is a very thoughtful person, and he has been sharing important responsibilities for his younger brother. As the strength of the independent teacher continues to grow, the problems exposed make him feel uneasy, and he feels that it is necessary to have a detailed discussion with Qiuli , However, he has no time now, and the 15 Japanese troops who have been reinforced from Beiping and Tianjin have already approached the outskirts of Shijiazhuang.

If this Japanese army is repelled or severely damaged, his regiment can choose two attack targets, one is Beiping and the other is Tianjin, and it can also target the Japanese troops on the outskirts of Pingjin, including Chahar, Rehe, and eastern Jidong. , swept away, echoed Liu Tiehan's troops in the direction of Cangzhou, and he smiled knowingly in the headquarters in Shijiazhuang. [

Qiuli's strategic intention was to take advantage of the time when the main mobile force of the Japanese army in North China was trapped in the Taihang Mountains, smash the Japanese in the strategic rear of North China, and mobilize Ningji Okamura to return to Pingjin. Choose a favorable time to annihilate one or several routes, change the balance of forces between the enemy and us in North China, and lay the foundation for the next strategic decisive battle with the Japanese army in North China.

This is also the task that Tang Qiuli gave him. The staff officer came in and interrupted Tang Qiusheng's memories. The troops of the four brigades of the Niangziguan Garrison Corps assigned to our Corps have arrived. The brigade commanders are waiting outside the headquarters to be summoned by the commander. , Accepting the task, it came very quickly, Tang Qiusheng thought to himself, with the strength of these four brigades of nearly 5 troops, the Battle of Shijiazhuang will be much easier to fight, and 19 people against the Japanese army of 15 troops is a struggle to consume , It can also wring out the blood of the Japanese army.

In Tang Qiuli's words, the Sulu Mobile Corps, don't worry about the sky falling, it must be nailed to Shijiazhuang like a nail, attracting more Japanese troops to come to fight for it. I don't believe that Neiji Okamura saw his lair being occupied, He could still focus on sweeping the Taihang Mountain base area. In a sense, this was also a small-scale decisive battle between the independent division and the North China Japanese army. Therefore, Tang Qiusheng reserved all the four brigades assigned to him as strategic reserves.

After listening to the task assigned by Tang Qiusheng, the four brigade commanders under Feng Jiwu glanced at each other, but no one spoke, and their expressions were obviously dissatisfied. Get up, why do other brigades fight the little devil face to face, and we sit on the bench. In terms of combat effectiveness, we are a little worse than them?

On April 4th, the Japanese reinforcements from Pingjin began to attack the outskirts of Shijiazhuang. The battle became fierce from the very beginning. After receiving the order from Neiji Okamura to recapture Shijiazhuang at any cost, the Japanese army launched more than a dozen alliances at the same time. From the northeast, the troops of the Sulu Mobile Corps violently attacked the positions of the Sulu Mobile Corps on a front that was more than [-] kilometers wide. The number of troops dispatched in the first attack wave reached more than [-].

The support of the Japanese army and the suppression of artillery fire blasted the positions of the Sulu Mobile Corps, flying sand and rocks, and billowing smoke. The artillery of the Sulu Mobile Corps did not let the Japanese artillery go wild for long. On the Japanese artillery position, the Japanese artillery ignored the bombardment of the Chinese defenders' positions, shifted their targets, and started an artillery battle with the artillery of the Independent Division.

The Japanese infantry who lost their fire support suffered heavy casualties under the intensive automatic firepower of the Sulu Mobile Corps, with corpses strewn all over the field. The first wave of attacks were smashed without much effort. The Japanese infantry who participated in the attack However, less than 3 people were able to go back. With a blow to the head, the Japanese commander who directed the attack was blinded. The Japanese army stopped in shock until dusk. The blocking position of the Sulu Mobile Corps did not lose an inch, and the Japanese army stopped at Around Shijiazhuang.

During the one-day artillery battle, the artillerymen on both sides fired real fire. Metal pellets piercing the air were flying densely in the sky, and the sound of rumbling cannons was endless. Yes, five of the eight Japanese field artillery regiments attached to them were beaten into incomplete formations. According to estimates from the Sulu Mobile Corps after the incident, the two sides fired nearly 20 rounds of various caliber guns on this day.

Such a large-scale artillery battle is rare in the North China battlefield. It left a deep impression on the Chinese and Japanese soldiers who participated in the battle. In advance of this matter, almost all of them said in an exclamatory tone: "That artillery was so good, Half the sky is red, and the two of them have to lie in their ears and shout!" The artillerymen of the Sulu Mobile Corps also paid a considerable price.

The number of artillery pieces lost exceeded 160, and as many as 800 artillerymen were killed. After that, the Japanese artillerymen no longer dared to blatantly provide fire support for the infantry attack. Retaliated by the artillery of the Sulu Mobile Corps.

The Japanese infantry who had lost the suppression and cover of ground artillery firepower suffered from the firepower of the squadron's automatic weapons. The single-shot [-]-type rifle and the Suomi submachine gun with dense firepower like a torrential rain were no opponents at all. As soon as a soldier fired a shot, he would be greeted by more than a dozen shots. The Japanese soldiers who fell on the ground had no wounded at all, and they were all beaten into sieves.

Moreover, the soldiers of the Independent Division fought extremely smartly. Outside the range of the submachine guns, even though the Japanese soldiers' three-eighth cover made the trenches full of dust, when the Japanese army spread out the skirmish line and accelerated the charge, they suddenly opened fire together, like a torrential rain. The house, like a three-dimensional metal wall, knocked the Japanese soldiers to pieces. From the front of the squadron to the range of the Suomi submachine gun, it formed a death barrier. None of the Japanese soldiers who entered could survive. Go back alive.

The battle on the front line was busy, but Zhou Yushan, the deputy director of the logistics department of the independent division and the commander of the transportation headquarters, had over 800 trucks transporting supplies and medicine to the front line day and night. Zhou Yushan was very good at planning, because Huang Ya The cave base is surrounded by heavy Japanese troops and is in a state of secrecy, unable to accept the wounded.

He established a transportation line from Shijiazhuang to Dingbian via Taiyuan. The trucks back and forth were never empty. What they returned to Dingbian were the wounded, materials from Shijiazhuang, machinery and equipment from factories and mines, and everything that could be used. Zhou Yushan was the most thorough in the Sanguang policy. In his words, he did not leave a nail behind for the Communists. He was deeply influenced by the life of the Minister of Logistics Zhang Quanhui. Zhou Yushan and his soldiers almost moved Shijiazhuang. all empty.

In particular, the Communists took a lot of effort to restore the Jingxing mining area, and all the machinery and equipment were cheaper than Zhou Yushan. Later, they simply transported a large amount of coal to Dingbian. A large amount of explosives were buried in the tunnels and roadways, and when the switch was pressed, the Jingxing mining area was reduced to ruins in the sound of violent explosions. In less than two or three years, the Communists would not even think about digging out a piece of coal.

The front line was fought hard, and Zhou Yushan was busy dismantling and transporting. According to him, as long as Shijiazhuang was fighting, his transport troops would be busy. After the war, Tang Qiusheng said to his subordinates with emotion: "Without the logistics support of the transport headquarters, we The corps fought much harder, at least, the nearly [-] tons of medicine consumed every day is a big problem, and there are so many wounded."

10,000+ Japanese troops fought outside Shijiazhuang for three days, and were beaten to death by the Sulu Mobile Corps. If they didn’t fill in the thousands of people every day, they felt as if they hadn’t fought. In the early spring of April in North China, there was no smell of spring at all. The strong smell of blood and pungent gunpowder smoke permeated every cell of the commanders and soldiers on both sides.

On the fourth day, he took out the trump card in his hand, the only tank brigade, and launched the largest attack since the beginning of the war. There was no way, the damned Commander Neiji Okamura sent another telegram to urge him, except for cursing In addition to the power of the frontline commander, he also issued a restriction order. If Shijiazhuang cannot be regained within three days, all senior officers above the rank of major general will be dismissed on the spot and sent to a military court, or they will have their own seppuku to apologize to the emperor. !

Hundreds of tanks, covering tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, frantically attacked the forward positions of the Sulu Mobile Corps. The Japanese commander went crazy. He didn't want to die, so he had to let the soldiers die. This is the battlefield in North China. The Japanese army used armored forces The most, and the most concentrated one, the tanks rolled up the thawed ground dust, mixed with the thick smoke from the tank engines, rolling towards the front position of the independent mobile corps like a billowing dragon. [

Tang Qiusheng had already moved his headquarters from the downtown area of ​​Shijiazhuang to a pole less than ten kilometers away from the first-line defensive positions. He understood the psychology of the Japanese commanders and was eager to retake Shijiazhuang. Relying on the repaired field fortifications, without the threat of Japanese artillery and with superior firepower from their own artillery, the Japanese attack with pure infantry was suspected to be courting death.

Fighting like this, mass killing and injuring the active forces of the Japanese army exposed in the wild is also one of the key points of the combat plan formulated before the war. For this reason, he severely rejected the repeated requests of the front-line brigade commanders for counter-assaults, and it was not yet time.

(To be continued)