Glorious Mission 1937

Chapter 210 Six: Changes in Xuzhou

After receiving the telegram from the front line in Chengde, Chen Feng immediately sent a telegram to the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army. He still insisted on his previous opinion that the troops must stay in the counties and districts in the east of Hebei and persist in the struggle, and they must not retreat westward. Consider talking to the Eighth Route Army headquarters in detail.

In fact, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army also disagreed with the westward withdrawal. Now the Joint Command is doing a good job in the east of Jidong. In terms of a vast area, throwing tens of thousands of Japanese troops in may not necessarily cause a splash.

Since the opinions of both parties are consistent, then this is easy to handle. The differences at the bottom are nothing at all. Since the top has made a decision, even if there are differences at the bottom, they have to endure it.

If the opinions are unified, then the next thing will be easy to handle. The joint command will immediately mobilize capable forces to reorganize the existing armed forces in East Jidong in accordance with the instructions above, and then conduct unified training.

Now each army has a large number of personnel and complex composition, poor discipline and poor combat effectiveness, more like farmers than like troops.If no training is given, these people may have to disperse as soon as the Japanese come.

The enemy is ahead, and everything is kept simple.After three days of hard work, the Joint Command finally completed the reorganization of the existing uprising troops in East Jidong. According to statistics, there were 12 uprising troops in East Jidong at this time, and there were more than 3 in the central and eastern parts of Rehe, plus the No.40 Army Group The 6 people of the Communist Party of China and the more than 4 people of the Eighth Route Army. In addition, the Kuomintang also shined in this great uprising.The Blue Shirts Society and the Military Control Bureau also recruited a team of nearly 27 people. As a result, there were as many as [-] Chinese squadrons sandwiched between North China and Northeast China.

After discussion, 15 of the 9 uprising troops were handed over to the No.40 Group Army for training, and the remaining [-] were handed over to the Eighth Route Army for training.

Combining the combat experience of the No.40 Group Army in the Saibei area, the Joint Command decided not to compete with the Japanese army for one city and one place, but to play hide-and-seek with the Japanese army to consume the energy of the enemy.Because Shi Jianfei and others knew that these Japanese and puppet troops in Jidong Redong would not stay for long at all, as long as the troops turned from bright to dark.The Japanese army's attempt to annihilate the uprising troops in a short period of time had to fail.

Just when the uprising troops withdrew urgently to the mountains and reed marshes.The Independent Seventh Division and the Air Defense Brigade on the front line of Chengde also began to withdraw from the battlefield alternately, and stationed on the front line of Xiaofenghuang Mountain.

The Eighth Division of the Japanese Army did not pursue them either, and the fighting during this period also let the Japanese Army know that the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army on the opposite side was not much worse than theirs, and their weapons and equipment were even much better than theirs.People are taking the initiative to retreat.It's not about running away.If they really went forward to pursue and annoyed the other party and fought for ten days and a half months, then the Eighth Division would be in trouble.

As one of the main forces of the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Empire.The top leaders of the Eighth Division are well aware of the current predicament that the empire is facing. If they only fight on one side, they would like the squadron to fight them to death, but now they are fighting on multiple fronts. More than a dozen battlefields were fighting, and the Japanese army, whose strength was already stretched, was miserable.

Fortunately, the entry of the Kwantung Army relieved the pressure on the Japanese army in North China a lot. On July 7, the Fourth Division, the independent mixed No.29 Brigade, the Third Infantry Division of the Pseudo-Mongolian Army, and the Eighth Cavalry Division totaled five troops. More than 15 people finally passed through Zuoyun Youyu and entered the territory of the Japanese army in Xinkou. Soon after, the army entered Taiyuan City, and the Suizhong Campaign ended.

At the same time, the remnants of the Puppet Mongolian Army also fled to the Horqin Grassland, while Andre's cavalry group and Tana's Mongolian saviors took control of the entire Xilin Gol Grassland, and the Suidong Campaign ended.Soon after, the battle situation on the Zhangjiakou front line returned to calm, and the front lines of both sides returned to the way they were before the war.

Thanks to the addition of more than 108 troops from the [-]th Division, the Japanese army in Shanxi became arrogant again. The [-]th Division only rested for a short two days, and cooperated with the [-]th Division to launch an attack on the squadrons on the outskirts of Taiyuan. .The World War II area also knew that it was obviously unrealistic to defeat nearly [-] Japanese troops with those troops in the World War II area alone, so Yan Laoxi ordered the main forces in the World War II area to retreat immediately.

Just when several major battlefields were slowly returning to calm, China's top military authority ordered the Fifth Theater to concentrate its forces near Xuzhou, preparing to gather and annihilate the Japanese army again.Instead, the Japanese army used part of their forces to contain the opponent from the front, and the main force turned to the west in an attempt to encircle Xuzhou from the side and rear and annihilate the main force of the Fifth Theater.The 10th and 5th Divisions of the Japanese Army marched southward from Yicheng, Shandong Province, and the Yitang area in the northwest of Linyi respectively, and carried out diversionary attacks against the 2nd Army, the 20th, 3rd Army, and the 27th Army of the 59th Army.The defenders fought tenaciously, and by the end of the month, the Japanese army was stopped at the front lines of Hanzhuang, Pixian and Tancheng.

Subsequently, the Japanese army began to roundabout and surround Xuzhou from the north and the south.In the south, the 9th and 13th divisions marched northward from Bengbu along the west banks of the Beifei River and Guohe River respectively, and after falling into Mengcheng and Yongcheng, they attacked Xiaoxian County and Dangshan (both in present-day Anhui) in Jiangsu Province; the 3rd Division The regiment entered the Dayingji area from Bengbu and attacked Su County (now Suzhou).

In the north, the 16th Division crossed the canal from Jining, Shandong, and after falling into Yuncheng, Shanxian, Jinxiang, and Yutai, advanced to Fengxian and Dangshan, Jiangsu; After being replaced by the newly registered 10th Division, they crossed Weishan Lake near Xiazhen and attacked Pei County (belonging to Jiangsu).

The Japanese army was deeply ashamed of the Battle of Taierzhuang, and determined to defeat the Chinese squadron in the direction of Xuzhou at all costs.In order to win this battle, the Japanese army used all the available resources of the Central China Front Army. The total number of Japanese troops assembled in the direction of Xuzhou was as many as 8 field divisions, 3 independent mixed brigades, and 2 detachments totaling 23 people. , In addition, there are more than 300 fighter planes, 350 tanks and more than 80 warships and gunboats.

After learning that the situation on the front line in Xuzhou was getting worse, Chen Feng immediately sent an urgent telegram to the highest authority in Wuhan, suggesting that the highest authority immediately abandon Xuzhou and withdraw troops to Henan.Gein's current Xuzhou has no value to keep it, and of course it doesn't have the ability to keep it.Although there are still more than 50 troops on the front line of Xuzhou, which is more than twice the total strength of the Japanese army.

However, there were not many elite troops in the fifth war zone, and they were all motley troops of the national government. After these months of fighting, all the troops suffered extremely heavy losses.Although Zhang Zizhong's 59th Army, which had the most combat effectiveness, killed and wounded a large number of Japanese troops at the beginning of the battle, its own "casualties were no less than six or seven thousand."The battle report sent by the Ninth Army to the Fifth Theater clearly stated: "As of the morning of the 17th, our army counted the number of casualties. Since the No. 30 Eighth Division entered the Linyi Battle, it has suffered nearly 4000 casualties, and the 0th Division has also suffered casualties. more than 59 people."When the 1.3th Army, which reinforced Linyi again, was assembled in the northwest of the city, there were only 2.1 combat soldiers in the entire army, while the army had 8000 combat soldiers before the First World War in Linyi, a reduction of [-].

After the second battle of Linyi, the Yulinzhang Department of the 2th Army reduced its personnel by more than 59 people. As a last resort, Zhang Zizhong decided to merge the division into a brigade with about 59 people and return to the army for direct command.The 180th Division, another division of the 39th Army, also suffered heavy losses. There were only more than 200 people left in the 3000th Brigade, the main force, and the remaining 59 people were all casualties.The casualties of the 1.3th Army in the two battles of Linyi were between 1.4 and 2000. In addition to the 59 casualties in the Huaihe blockade, the 1.5th Army had more than [-] casualties in the entire Taierzhuang Battle.

As another main force in the fifth war zone, Pang Bingxun's 3rd Army also suffered heavy losses. Pang Bingxun's secret message to the Military Commission stated that "the total number of combat troops is less than a thousand."

In addition, Sun Zhen's 22nd Army also suffered heavy losses. The defense of Teng County alone cost the 22st, 40nd, and 40nd Divisions of the 5000nd Army's No. [-] First Army Defending Forces a loss of more than [-] people. Annihilated, only a dozen people escaped from the whole division.The No. [-] Fifth Army, which fought in the Jiehe and Longshan areas north of Teng County, suffered [-] casualties from the commander of the [-]th Division, Chen Li, down.

In addition to these miscellaneous troops with strong combat effectiveness, Tang Enbo, the direct descendant of Chiang Kai-shek, the No.20 Corps of Feng Yizhong, and the temporary affiliated troops also suffered heavy casualties. In the first three days of combat, only two divisions of the 85th Army were killed. There were three battalion commanders, two wounded, one regiment commander, more than 2 casualty company platoon leaders, and more than 20 soldiers.At the end of the Battle of Taierzhuang, the total casualties of Tang Enbo's [-]th Army and its temporary subordinate ministries were around [-].

The 2th Division of Sun Lianzhong's 31nd Army had only 6 combatants before the Taierzhuang Battle, and the 30st Division had more than 4000 combatants. In addition, the casualties of the Taierzhuang defenders on the 2th were "more than 27."When the Japanese army retreated from Taierzhuang, Zhang Jinzhao, the commander of the 30th Division, said that there were only more than 31 troops left in his department.After the Battle of Taierzhuang, the remaining combatants of the 44th, 1.4th, and [-]st divisions under the jurisdiction of the Second Group Army were only about [-] to [-] combatants, and with the addition of the independent [-]th Brigade, the maximum number was about [-].The loss of the group army should be more than [-] people.

In the Chihuai blocking battle, Liu Shiyi's 31st Army and Yu Xuezhong's 51st Army had a total of nearly 6000 casualties. Sun Tongxuan's 3rd Army and Gu Liangmin's 56th Army participated in the Battle of Jining, which lasted about half a month from attack to retreat. About 2000 people.It can be said that after this battle, more than half of all combat-capable troops in the fifth theater were reduced. Although there were many remaining troops, there were not many who could really fight the Japanese face to face with bayonets.

In addition, Xuzhou has no danger to defend, and the Japanese army has concentrated so many tanks and planes. It is unwise to use flesh and blood to fight against the enemy's steel weapons on the plains. When the time comes, the Japanese will be trapped in Xuzhou. Five or six million troops will have nowhere to go.

Think about what the consequences would be if the national government lost 60 to [-] troops at once, so Chen Feng had no choice but to suggest that Chiang withdraw his troops immediately.

At the same time, Chen Feng ordered the troops in Suizhong to return to the south line immediately, and all the troops were ready to go south to fight at any time. If Lao Jiang insisted on going his own way, Chen Feng had no choice but to bleed heavily and deal with the Japanese army in order to reduce the pressure on Xuzhou. (To be continued..)