Tiger Troops: The 74th Army of the Kuomintang Anti-Japanese Ace

Chapter 3 Where is the Secret (Battle of Songhu) (3)
The 58th Division has a battalion commander from Guizhou named Tong Gang.He had a Huangpu classmate with a good personal relationship in the 34th Brigade, and it happened that the defense line of the 34th Brigade was next to the 58th Division, so Tong Gang took time to visit his old classmate.The two hadn't seen each other for nearly ten years, so they were very close and warm. That day, the classmate asked Tong Gang to stay for dinner. Before the meal was finished, the deputy battalion commander called Tong Gang to go back, saying that the troops were going to attack Luodian at night.

When saying goodbye, Tong Gang said to his classmates: "See you when you come back from the victory." But he failed to fulfill this promise. Tong Gang was shot in the head during the night battle, and unfortunately died for the country.

Even if you don't take the initiative to attack, it is not a pleasure to stay at home and defend.Because it is located in the coastal area, the water level is relatively high. You can see the water when you dig one meter below the ground. The deeper you dig, the more water will accumulate in the pit. The soldiers' feet can only be soaked in the muddy muddy water for a long time. .At the same time, for air defense, many positions cannot light fires for cooking during the day, and can only rely on meals delivered from the rear to eat at night.In case of bad luck, the logistics staff who delivered the food were blown up halfway. In that case, they would not even be able to eat dinner. Accumulated water to satisfy hunger and hunger.

"The battle was bitter." Wu Yafu, acting battalion commander of the 58th Division, couldn't remember how he survived the time in the trench. He only knew that the dense shells whizzed past his head continuously. , The explosion was deafening.

The Chinese soldiers who were covered under the rain of death were not intimidated by the hardships and hardships. When the Japanese stopped shelling and launched an attack with infantry, they were still greeted with violent machine gun bullets. Position back.

As of September 9, the two Japanese divisions that had landed on the south bank of the Yangtze River were unable to launch an offensive due to heavy casualties.The Japanese High Command was forced to increase its troops again.With the arrival of reinforcements, the frontal Japanese army became active again.After two unsuccessful attacks on the Shi Xianggongmiao position where the 9st Division was stationed, they used the method of coordinated combat by infantry and vehicles to target the 51th Division.

As a Class A division, the 58th Division is well equipped with firepower in the Chinese army, ranging from mountain artillery to mortars and flat-fire artillery. Although the number is small, it is still very useful if used in battle. When the 58th Division entered the position, many local residents did not evacuate. Knowing that the troops were going to deploy artillery positions, the common people not only took the initiative to demolish their houses to clear the shooting range for the artillery shells, but also found things like greenhouses and sacks to set up on the ground. Cover the dug trenches.

As soon as the Japanese army attacked, the 58th Division immediately organized concentrated artillery bombardment.It had just rained that day, and it was muddy after the rain. Most of the Japanese reptile-like tanks were stuck in the mud, and the infantrymen who lost their cover were blown into darkness. The 58th Division took advantage of the situation to charge and start a hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese army, and the shouts of killing resounded all over the world.

When it comes to hand-to-hand combat, I am afraid that no country among the great powers attaches as much importance to it as Japan.Even Carlson knows that bayonet fighting has always been the best and best of the Japanese infantry.In addition to the general implementation of high-intensity training for soldiers, the Japanese [-]-type rifle (that is, "[-] big cover") is almost tailor-made for this purpose.Its gun body is both long and light. As the saying goes, an inch is long and an inch is strong, which gave Japanese soldiers a big advantage in stabbing.In addition, the quality of the steel mouth of the bayonet equipped with the "March [-] Cover" is also extremely high.During World War II, some people conducted a comparative test on the main rifle bayonets equipped by various countries. The conclusion was that the bayonet of the "[-] big cover" had the best steel, and it was the only bayonet in the test that did not curl the blade or break the mouth.

However, in the hand-to-hand combat on the Songhu battlefield, the Japanese army did not have an overall advantage. Instead, the Japanese army was often driven back by the Chinese soldiers with bayonets.There are many reasons for this. First of all, most of the Chinese troops who first went to Shanghai to participate in the war were the main elite, and many veterans had relatively skilled fighting skills.Secondly, the Japanese soldiers wore leather boots like Carlson's. If they walked on the road, they would naturally protect their feet, but if they were running around on muddy roads with ponds and ponds, it would be different. Don't pay attention. , the boots would sink into the mud.In contrast, Chinese soldiers wearing cloth shoes, straw sandals or even bare feet are much more flexible and quicker in response.

During the mechanical hand-to-hand combat training, Japanese soldiers had developed the habit of first unloading the bullets when fighting stabs, and then fighting wholeheartedly.The Chinese army is not so routine. According to the experience of the civil war, soldiers usually throw a row of grenades before rushing forward with bayonets.Don't underestimate this row of grenades. Even if they can't kill the Japanese soldiers in front of them in advance, they will affect the performance of the opponent's technical moves in the next fight.

After observing, Carlson deeply felt that "the disadvantages of Japanese infantry in hand-to-hand combat are surprising." The 58th Division repelled the Japanese army through hand-to-hand combat. When cleaning the battlefield, the division seized a Japanese regiment flag and a considerable amount of military supplies.

Having tasted the taste of Chinese artillery, the Japanese army began to use planes to bomb the 58th Division positions.As the war continued, they basically grasped the position structure of the Chinese defenders through aerial reconnaissance, so this kind of bombing is still somewhat accurate.

The bombing lasted for three days, and the plane bombs fell from morning to night, with almost no gaps. After the bombing, the ground with a radius of hundreds of miles was full of large craters.In the Wu Yafu battalion alone, more than a dozen officers and soldiers were killed or injured, and the entire cooking squad three miles behind was taken away, and none of the cooking soldiers survived.

The Japanese army estimated that the bombing had achieved its intended purpose, that is, it dispatched infantry to attack.After this bombing, the 58th Division did not dare to use artillery to focus on shooting anymore, for fear of being destroyed by Japanese aircraft or artillery after locking on to the target.A Chinese teacher said it very honestly: "(Using artillery) can't be forced, we are inferior equipment, if the two guys are smashed, there will be nothing."

Fortunately, the combat power of the 58th Division was still there. The three battalions of the [-]th Regiment where Wu Yafu belonged to attacked from three sides, repelled the Japanese attack again, and seized a whole truckload of sabers, mortars, guns and ammunition.

The Japanese always want to pick the softest persimmon on the front line of Luodian.After being deflated on the side of the 58th Division, they hurriedly turned around and headed towards the 51st Division. On September 9, the front line of Shi Xianggong Temple suffered the last powerful attack of the month.However, the 30st Division was quite experienced in dealing with this type of attack. When the Japanese army was far away, the troops would not fire a single shot to avoid unnecessary consumption of ammunition.

The battle at the front of Shi Xianggong Temple continued until dawn. The 51st Division tried its best, and five officers under battalion commander Liu Zhenwu were killed in the fierce battle. After a bloody battle, the division finally blocked the Japanese army from the main defensive position.

Hindenburg Line

The perspective of observers is often much more macroscopic and comprehensive than that of the parties involved, because they can see the situation of the entire battlefield.Carlson noticed that the center of the Chinese army's defense line had actually been lost due to the Japanese artillery and air superiority, but this loss was inch by inch, which meant that it was not enough to shake the whole.

As a U.S. military officer with combat experience himself, Carlson was fully able to analyze why the Japanese army was ineffective in attacking.As far as the degree of fighting is concerned, the Japanese soldiers have nothing to say. Carlson even believes that there is nothing braver than the Japanese soldiers on the battlefield, which is even inferior to the Chinese soldiers.The crux of the Japanese army was mainly the lack of flexibility and creativity at the command level. The army was trained too rigidly. Soldiers would only fight according to a fixed procedure. When the procedure didn't work, they didn't know what to do.

The Japanese army's formula for attacking was the "one bomb, two bombs, three attacks".It's not that it's bad, for example, if the 74th Army doesn't build strong positions, it's actually effective.The problem is that they have already built protective bunkers and know how to repel your infantry after the artillery fire ceases. In this case, it seems a bit too brain-dead to continue to repeat "one bomb, two bombs and three attacks".

Since modern times, Japan has been able to majestically rank among the Western powers as an Asian country because it defeated Russia in one fell swoop in the Russo-Japanese War.Once upon a time, Japan's military machine was also considered difficult to deal with by the West, but now Carlson has to say that the Japanese army is actually only third-rate-measured by European standards.

The third-rate Japanese army was able to show off its power in China, of course, because the Chinese army was even more inferior.Precisely for this reason, the tenacity of the defenders on the Songhu battlefield is also unbelievable. This fully shows that the Chinese army, which was originally considered weak in the eyes of the world, has initially possessed the ability to resist and even attack powerful enemies.

How long the Chinese can last has become the focus of almost everyone in Shanghai.Carlson admired the tenacity of Chinese soldiers, but he did not think that the Chinese army could hold on for a long time.Among the Chinese troops participating in the war, the first batch of troops to fight were the German weapon divisions, which were the strongest in terms of the strength of the domestic troops at that time.Then there was the elite main force like the No.11 Division, and then it was the turn of the fledgling secondary main force such as the No.70 Fourth Army.The question is, what to do next?
Behind the Songhu defense line, new reinforcements are still arriving, but these reinforcements are obviously not the backbone of the defense.They are mainly recruits. Although the officers and soldiers are also full of enthusiasm for the war of resistance and the spirit of national self-help, their lack of experience and training is their fatal weakness.After all, war ultimately depends on strength to speak.

Carlson was disturbed to see that young soldiers from various provinces drove to the front line with vigor, but within a few days, they were either bloodstained on the brown ground in late autumn, or lying in medical trucks disguised with tree branches. He was slowly sent to the rear hospital.

During this period, the number of Japanese army units that successively went to Shanghai to participate in the war had reached six divisions and one brigade, and they were equipped with a large number of artillery and tank units.At the beginning of the Battle of Songhu, the Japanese army did not fully understand China's defensive deployment in Shanghai. They only knew that the Songhu area belonged to the delta water network area, and it was inconvenient for heavy equipment to move, so they did not put too many heavy artillery on the battlefield at the beginning.

In fact, the Songhu area had been fully fortified before the war, and fortifications were built from the river bank, embankment, road side, villages, highlands, and even earthen mounds.The tops of important firepower points are also covered with wood and sandbags to form earth fortresses.With such a group of fortifications as the basis, as long as the garrison troops add more processing and dig the trenches a little deeper, a relatively strong line of defense can be formed, which is difficult for the Japanese light and medium artillery to destroy.Because the entire fortification system was constructed based on the opinions of German military advisers, the Japanese called it the "Hindenburg Line of Defense".

After suffering from the "Hindenburg Line of Defense", the Japanese High Command thought of adding heavy artillery. According to the report of the front-line combat troops, the existing road conditions in the Songhu Theater can completely use heavy artillery.In order to provide more effective fire support to the infantry, heavy artillery was the majority of the artillery units to reinforce Shanghai this time.

On October 10, under the cover of superior artillery fire and tanks, the Japanese army broke through the land bridge and Liujiaxing positions, and the Chinese army gradually retreated to the Dachang line on the south bank of Yunzaobang.

Even so, the Japanese high command was not satisfied with the progress made on the front.At the beginning, the Minister of War (Lu Xiang) Sugiyama Moto boasted to Emperor Hirohito that the "China Incident" could be resolved in just three months, but now that the Battle of Songhu has entered its third month, China's comprehensive resistance not only Instead of weakening, there is an increasing trend.

Senior Japanese commanders grew impatient. Iwane Matsui, commander of the "Shanghai Dispatch Force," issued a statement saying his troops would "punish the Chinese government and military." On October 10, according to Matsui's order, the Japanese army began to forcibly cross Yunzaobang.

fist to bone
When the Japanese troops crossed the river, they were violently blocked by the Chinese defenders. Machine gun bullets made a noise like popping beans. Some iron boats crossing the river were all killed before they reached the opposite bank.Japan's "Yomiuri Shimbun" followed up and reported on the battle of crossing the river. The reporter once photographed a Japanese army corporal who was shot in the chest five meters from the shore. The corporal was still holding the oar when he died.After this type of film was included in the news documentary, it was screened in Tokyo cinemas, which aroused great repercussions.

In Japan, people's mantra is usually "the Chinese are idiots and will surrender soon." Many young people also joined the army happily after listening to this kind of flicker.Now that everyone has watched the movie, they know that this is not the case. The Japanese army suffered great losses on the Songhu battlefield, and the Chinese people were shocked by their strong anti-Japanese awareness and heroic spirit of resistance.

After paying a considerable price, the Japanese army finally captured some positions on the south bank of Yunzaobang.A few days later, another fierce attack was launched on Dachang Town, and the Dachang Battle began.

Behind the big field is Zhabei.The Chinese army had little leeway and space to retreat, and various corps and units competed to participate in the battle. Some units entered the combat position as soon as they arrived in Shanghai, even before they even had a clear understanding of the terrain and the enemy's situation.

In the battle for the commanding heights of a hill, the Chinese side dispatched more than a dozen regiments, and the Wu Yafu Battalion of the 58th Division was also urgently dispatched to serve as cover for the main charge.It was a real large-scale battle, not fist to flesh, but fist to bone.The shouts of killing resounded everywhere, and the soldiers on both sides who were close at hand were all fighting with their lives, and countless fresh lives disappeared in an instant.

The battle continued until about 3 p.m., and Wu Yafu and his subordinates were already so red-eyed that they forgot that their mission was just to cover, and rushed up the hill recklessly.

Neither side could fully take the hill, and at night each dug foxholes in the mud below the hill to rest and wait for the next day to fight again.

After more than a week of bitter fighting, the Chinese army occupied this hill, but this did not change the passive situation of the entire battlefield.In addition to the sharp increase in the number of soldiers and the strengthening of firepower, the Japanese army also improved in tactics.

The previous "one bombing, two bombing and three attacks" often failed to form a gradually advancing covering artillery fire. The shelling was used to bomb fixed fortifications. As for whether it can really play a role in the attack of the infantry behind, the artillery basically doesn't care.

At Dachang, Carlson saw the only covering fire that could be called a "gradual advance." The shells always fell six to seven hundred meters in front of his infantry, which provided enough time for the infantry to occupy the Chinese position.

In late October, Matsui Iwane issued an official statement that the Chinese army was in full retreat.At this time, the British and American diplomats stationed in Shanghai paid close attention to the progress of the war. They set up observation posts in multiple locations, and observers standing on the observation posts could clearly see the situation on the Chinese front.After learning of Matsui's statement, Carlson hurriedly contacted the observers, and the report he got was that everything was normal and the Chinese army did not retreat.

Having said that, the stone in Carlson's heart did not fall safely.As the saying goes, where there is no wind, there are no waves, and there is no trouble. How could a commander of Matsui's level issue an official statement for no reason?

The situation on the front line must have changed.Carlson made up his mind and decided to drive to the Chinese reserve position on the south bank of the Suzhou River to take a look.

When we arrived at our destination, we heard the rumble of artillery on the north bank of the Suzhou River, indicating that the artillery battle was still in progress.The local situation seems to be exactly as the observers said, and even the mood of the common people is very stable. Along the way, Carlson can see women standing in knee-deep water rubbing their clothes from time to time.

However, this is only the appearance.All of a sudden, one after another Japanese bombers rushed over screaming, the bombs falling from the fuselage glistened in the sunlight, and the sky, which seemed peaceful just now, was immediately shrouded in bursts of murderous aura.

(End of this chapter)