Rise from eight hundred.

Chapter 1498 Have you all learned how to borrow arrows from a straw boat?

The Japanese army, which suffered a heavy blow, remained silent for the entire day.

However, in the evening, the 190th Division Headquarters reported to the Hengyang Command that they found that Dingjia Wharf, Wangjia Wharf and Yuehan Wharf on the east bank of the Xiangjiang River were crowded with people, and there seemed to be signs of large-scale Japanese troops crossing the river again.

Tang Dao stood on Yanhui Peak again and looked far toward the Xiangjiang River with a telescope. He saw that the Japanese troops in the east part of the river were busy tying wooden boards and car tires and gathering various materials for crossing the river, as if they were planning to cross the river again.

At this time, a phone call came in saying that the Japanese troops in Jiangdong seemed to be gathering again. All the evidence seemed to indicate that the Japanese troops would use the cover of darkness to force a crossing again tonight.

Even Zhao Zili called to discuss with Tang Dao, asking the artillery battalion of the Fourth Regiment to be vigilant and prepared at night. If the Japanese army intended to make a desperate attempt, the heavy company of the artillery battalion of the Fourth Regiment would need to join the attack sequence against the Japanese army's river crossing troops.

The artillery command also reported to Tang Dao that it planned to transfer 12 82-gun mortars from the battlefield in the west of the city back to the city to assist the 190th Division in defending the river bank.

"All units should wait and see and not make any rash moves!" Tang Dao issued an unexpected military order to all units.

If Tang Dao had not interceded with Fang Xianjue to allow the 190th Division to retreat to Hengyang City, several officers at the 190th Division headquarters would have even thought that Director Tang was deliberately making things difficult for them.

Although there are not many Japanese infantrymen, the Japanese artillery on the other side of the river has more than 20 cannons. If the Japanese infantry are really allowed to land, once their firepower points are exposed, it will not be easy to withstand the bombardment of more than 20 cannons.

"This type of military operation requires suddenness and secrecy, and I have never heard of such a high-profile operation.

Besides, the Japanese army suffered such heavy losses during the day and also witnessed the power of our artillery fire. If you say that there are destroyers and gunboats to escort them across the river, I would believe it. But if you want to transport troops across the river with these broken wooden boards tied to some tires, you must be crazy.

This is probably a pretense to trick our army into changing its position and providing support for the Japanese attack on the other three fronts." This is how Tang Dao explained to Rong Youlue on the phone.

What he said made sense and well-founded, so Rong Youlue naturally had nothing to refute. He could only order his three battalions to deploy more sentries at night to increase vigilance.

Sure enough, in the middle of the night, the sentries of the 190th Division discovered that Japanese ships were sailing down the Xiangjiang River from the upper reaches. Light and heavy machine gun fire points opened fire one after another, and miserable howls continued to sound on the river.

However, no ship was seen approaching the 190th Division's defense line, but throughout the entire night, all officers and soldiers of the 190th Division stared at the dark river surface with wide eyes, fearing that Japanese ships would emerge from the night.

Although they had not received any order to fire, the Chinese artillerymen in the city did not dare to sleep and sat in the fortifications around the artillery waiting.

It was not until dawn that the 190th Division realized that they had been fooled.

It turned out that the Japanese were actually playing a trick, imitating Zhuge Liang's "borrowing arrows with straw boats" in the Three Kingdoms period. They tied chickens, ducks, dogs, and sheep to the wooden boards and tables, and then let them drift down the river to create the illusion that the army was crossing the river.

In the darkness of the night, the sentries could only see dark shadows. Due to the high tension, they fired their guns for most of the night, consuming a lot of bullets and killing many livestock. They also caused two or three thousand people to be unable to sleep all night.

Yesterday, Matsuyama Yoshimasa suffered a great loss as hundreds of his infantry were killed by Chinese artillery and fighter planes. However, under the pressure of Yokoyama Isamu, he came up with the strategy of "borrowing arrows from a straw boat" and won a victory over the Chinese side.

At least throughout the day, all the officers and soldiers of the 190th Division, from the division commander Rong Youlue down, were listless and yawned constantly, but no one dared to sleep.

Because in the upper reaches of the Xiangjiang River, they discovered several Japanese gunboats weighing hundreds of tons, which could arrive in Hengyang at any time.

Gunboats are different from motorboats and wooden boats. They have armor protection, several anti-aircraft guns, and a 100mm main gun. They are definitely the overlords on inland rivers.

Because the Japanese river crossing fleet was almost wiped out by the ambush of the Chinese Air Force yesterday, the number of Japanese fighter planes deployed over Hengyang increased significantly today. From time to time, fighter planes would roar in the sky, trailing long trails of thick smoke, and then plunge into the ground.

In the past, we didn't have an air force to rely on, but now that we have an air force, we can't rely on air force fighters to solve everything! The Chinese infantry, who are used to living in poverty, will never have the arrogance of American cowboys.

"You should pay attention to rest and arrange the shifts of vigilance reasonably. If nothing unexpected happens, the Japanese will still focus on harassment tonight. They are not only playing the strategy of borrowing arrows from straw boats, but also the strategy of tiring the soldiers out." Tang Dao said on the phone when he was discussing the river bank defense with the commander of the 190th Division, Rong Youlue.

"What I know is that we are afraid that the Japanese will pretend to be strong and pretend to be weak. None of my brothers dare to take it lightly." Rong Youlue's face was full of worry.

Since the outbreak of the war, this major general has not slept more than 4 hours a day. His eyes are bloodshot and he hasn't shaved for almost a week. If he takes off his general's uniform and puts on ordinary people's clothes, and says he is an old farmer, I guess everyone will believe it.

"Haha, the Japs are getting desperate and playing tricks on us, but they don't think about it. When it comes to playing tricks, how many nations in the world can compare with our Chinese nation?" Tang Dao laughed easily on the phone.

"It's fine if they just pretend to be serious, but if they really want to do that, we will make them pay the price."

"Director Tang, please don't fool me." Rong Youlue naturally heard that there was something else behind Tang Dao's words, but he also knew that since it was not reported to him, it must be a military secret.

"Haha! I promise to satisfy you, Commander Rong. We may need the help of the brothers from the 190th Division by then." Tang Dao laughed.

"Of course it is my duty. If Director Tang really has a way to defeat the Japanese in Jiangdong, I won't say anything else, but as for the battle of Hengyang, under Commander Fang, my 190th Division will only follow the orders of the General Staff and will never shirk or delay." Rong Youlue replied in a firm tone on the phone.

As the commander of the 190th Division, Rong Youlue's promise was truly extraordinary. It meant that except for Fang Xianjue, his 190th Division would only obey the orders of the General Staff.

It is almost impossible for a major general to announce that he would obey the orders of an army colonel in any army. However, in response to Tang Dao's words that he would make the Japanese in Jiangdong pay the price, the commander of the 190th Division actually promised to do so. This was not only to repay Tang Dao's favor a few days ago, but also to test the world-famous Tang Da Tuanzu to see if he really had the strength.

As for Tang Dao, he did not care whether the 190th Division really followed his orders. His command ranking in the Hengyang Command was fifth. Unless there was a one in ten thousand chance that the four in front of him were wiped out, there would be no situation where he, a small operations chief, would unify the command of the entire army.

However, Tang Dao thought that this was a good choice as it would allow the officers and soldiers defending Hengyang to see the power of his Four-Line Regiment and increase their confidence in defending the city.

After all, "reinforcements will arrive tomorrow" will become the eternal words that the Military Commission will use to comfort the Hengyang defenders 10 days later.

But the legendary reinforcements will never appear.

Among the tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians, only Tang Dao himself knew that the fate of Hengyang did not lie with external reinforcements or the Japanese, but in the hands of the tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians inside and outside the city of Hengyang.

Confidence will become more valuable than food and ammunition.

Sure enough, just as Tang Dao had guessed, for the next two nights, the Japanese army adopted the same strategy. They used a large number of simple homemade wooden boards and rafts to tie pigs and sheep to the waterline of the rafts, and let their limbs move around and make paddling sounds to confuse the defenders.

The 190th Division still did not dare to be negligent and fired indiscriminately with machine guns and rifles, leaving the entire river bank defense line in turmoil for most of the night.

When the Japanese army came again in the early morning of June 6, there was obviously less gunfire.

For three consecutive days, the officers and soldiers of the 190th Division had not been able to get enough sleep and were already exhausted. Many soldiers were still lying on their battle positions firing at the river, but they fell asleep at some point.

"Yoshi! The Chinese are finally tired!" As the commander of the 6th Infantry Regiment, Colonel Matsuyama Yoshimasa actually arrived at the river bank in person, and made this judgment after observing the firepower on the other side of the river with a telescope for half an hour. "Order the fleet to set off, this time, we will definitely win the battle!"

In a calm river bay 30 miles upstream of the Xiangjiang River, two gunboats with a displacement of 650 tons were parked there. Teams of Japanese troops kept quiet and quickly boarded the ships. In the shadow of the gunboats' huge hulls were 10 newly transferred 25-ton gunboats of the Japanese army.

An infantry battalion of a thousand men will be transported by this fleet directly to the dock near Hengyang City for landing operations.

In order to prepare for this landing operation, Matsukami Yoshimasa tried his best. He not only persuaded his division commander to use his personal connections to find the commander of the China Expeditionary Army, Shunroku Tadashi, but also transferred the two gunboats Hozu and Hira from the 11th Squadron of the Japanese Navy's Third Fleet stationed in Jiangxia.

The displacement of these two gunboats is about 400 tons. They are equipped with 120mm main guns, several anti-aircraft guns and several anti-aircraft machine guns. Except for mines, they basically run sideways in the Yangtze River Basin.

In order to ensure that the two gunboats could reach the Xiangjiang River smoothly, the already weakened Japanese Navy even dispatched a flying squadron divided into three waves to escort them in turns, all the way from the Yangtze River into Dongting Lake and then into the Xiangjiang River basin.

The 10 gunboats were also equipped with 80mm mortars and 25mm machine guns, with strong strike capability against the opposite shore. They could also carry two squads of infantry, making them a powerful weapon for the Japanese army to control the Yangtze River and other inland river basins.

Yokoyama Isamu praised the combat tactics of the 3th Infantry Regiment of the 6rd Division and promised Matsukami Yoshimasa in a telegram that as long as the 6th Infantry Regiment could plant the military flag on the west bank of the Xiangjiang River, he, as the commander of the 11th Army, would be fully responsible for Matsukami Yoshimasa's promotion to Army Major General.

All I can say is that no matter in China or Japan, the superiors always have their own way of drawing big cakes. The key is that the subordinates have to swallow the cake, even if they know it is just a picture. They have no idea whether it can really fill their stomachs until the very end.

Given that Yokoyama Isamu's eyes are almost red, anyone who dares to disobey his military orders will probably end up in trouble.

The well-prepared Japanese fleet turned off all engines and lights when they were 10 miles away from the pre-selected landing site. By the time the Chinese sentries discovered them, the Japanese fleet was less than 2 miles away from the landing site and less than 400 meters away from the river bank.

In the flash of flares, the huge figure of the Japanese gunboat seemed to come from hell. The 120mm main gun spewed out terrible flames, and a heavy machine gun fortification made of sleepers and sandbags on the shore along with the three machine gunners inside were blasted into the sky.

The 190th Division on the shore was like a cat whose tail was stepped on. All kinds of light and heavy machine guns, including rifles, were madly pouring down on the slowly approaching Japanese fleet. Two minutes later, the artillery in the city also madly poured shells into the river.

From time to time, shells exploded around the gunboat with a draft of 1.8 meters, stirring up columns of water into the sky.

If it had been the motorboats and wooden boats that the Japanese troops were riding in the past two days, there would have been no need to directly bombard the hull. The waves caused by the explosion of the shells alone would have been enough to overturn them. However, this kind of water column did not seem to be of much use except for giving the gunboats a bath.

At this moment, the two artillery battalions deployed by the Japanese army on the Jiangdong Plain also opened fire.

However, this time the Japanese army no longer engaged in a bombardment with the Chinese artillery, but instead targeted the positions of the 190th Division in the fortifications on the river bank.

The power of the covering bombing by 24 75mm mountain cannons is definitely the nightmare of all infantrymen. After one round of artillery fire, an area as big as a football field was shrouded in smoke. The infantrymen hiding in the trenches could not even shoot at the Japanese fleet in the center of the river. Anyone who dared to look up at the river at this time was a warrior.

Thick gunpowder filled the air on the position of the 190st Battalion of the 586th Regiment of the 1th Division. The battalion commander Yang Jihe rushed from the communication trench to the front-line trench with a submachine gun in hand. He bent over and pulled up the soldiers hiding at the bottom of the trench: "Mala Gebi, all the men get up. If you hide any longer, the damn Japs will come ashore."

Seeing their battalion commander running and roaring amid the artillery fire, many soldiers regained their courage, gripped their guns tightly, and fired desperately towards the center of the river, emptying the bullets in the chambers.

Yang Jihe did not stop, and ran to the next position in the trench with his back bent. If he remembered correctly, it was the position of the spearhead platoon of his 1st company.

There were gunshots on other positions, which meant that many officers and soldiers were still firing despite the Japanese artillery fire, but in the spearhead platoon there was only the rumbling of artillery and no sound of gunfire, which made Yang Jihe somewhat annoyed.

However, when this infantry battalion commander, who was famous for his bravery, entered this position, he suddenly stopped.

The tragic scene before him made this iron soldier who had experienced the test of war burst into tears.

The trench was like hell on earth, with corpses and blood everywhere, and the entire trench was almost dyed red.

Based on his experience, Yang Jihe could guess why this situation occurred. It was because all the officers and soldiers of the spearhead platoon were in the trenches shooting at the river. Even when the Japanese artillery fire came, they did not rush to hide in the anti-artillery caves.

According to probability, the chance of a shell falling into the trench was extremely low, but unfortunately, their luck was very bad this time.

At least two shells landed squarely in the trench of the spearhead platoon, one after the other. The blast and shrapnel swept through the trench, which was less than 120 meters long, and almost wiped out the spearhead platoon of 37 soldiers.

In the blood-red trench, there were only a few figures crawling with difficulty, stopping in front of each body, probably looking to see if any of their comrades were still alive.

"Go and dispatch two squads to defend this position for me, and carry those guys away." Yang Jihe almost gritted his teeth to squeeze out this order.

Looking at the dark shadows of the Japanese fleet slowly approaching on the river behind the smoke, despair rose in the eyes of the usually tenacious infantry battalion commander.

"The Japanese army is using gunboats and our troops need artillery support!" Rong Youlue's voice was already hoarse on the phone.

"Fight for me. The 1st and 2nd rows, each gun, aim 50 incendiary bombs at the river surface to support the 190th division brothers! The 3rd row, beat the Japanese artillery for me, according to the artillery coordinates sent by the reconnaissance company." Pang Dahai also gave the order.

Suddenly, the eight extra mountain cannons used incendiary bombs to turn the river into a sea of ​​fire. After a gunboat was hit, it burned fiercely in the middle of the river. Dozens of firemen screamed and jumped into the water from the boat.

But this is obviously of no use, the severe burns will soon make them lose their strength and eventually drown in the water!

Another shell hit the rear of the "Hojin", turning the more than 25-meter-long rear into a sea of ​​fire and blowing the two mm anti-aircraft guns installed at the rear into flying parts.

Dozens of Japanese sailors carried water pipes and tried desperately to put out the fire. Obviously, the 6.5-kilogram projectile alone was not enough to pose a fatal threat to this armored gunboat.

However, the eight Bofors mountain guns that were madly firing incendiary bombs still posed a great threat to the Japanese fleet. They had to maneuver on the river and spread their formation more sparsely to reduce the threat from the desperate counterattacks from more than a dozen Chinese artillery pieces.

但日军布设在陆地上的24门山炮对江岸上190师1营的威胁依然巨大，没有足够也不能就此退入防炮洞的400余官兵只能在深达1.8米的战壕内赌运气，赌炮弹不会轻易掉入战壕内。

The suppressive firepower of the four guns of the mountain artillery company of the Sihang Regiment Artillery Battalion was too weak. Just as Lieutenant Colonel Masaru Kawai, then commander of the 4nd Artillery Battalion of the 3rd Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Division, said while standing in the fortifications: "There is no need to move positions. All the Chinese artillery is attacking the navy's ships. Gentlemen, please continue to make the Chinese tremble in our artillery fire!"

This time, the two artillery battalions of the Japanese army had already learned from the previous two lessons and began to deploy their positions early in the evening. The distance between each artillery piece was more than 300 meters. Let alone 4 guns, even 40 guns would not necessarily be able to destroy their artillery position covering an area of ​​2.5 square kilometers.

  As for the threat from the ground, are there Chinese infantry here?

It can only be said that they still lack experience.

If they had asked the veterans who were in Tongguan back then, they would have known that the crazy Chinese dared to cross even the surging Yellow River, let alone the Xiang River which was only 600 meters wide?

In the darkness, there were at least 200 Chinese soldiers crawling in the mud no more than 500 meters away from them.