Chapter 160: Recovering the Dragon Tomb (I)
The focus of the Stilwell incident was the struggle for military power, but its main cause was the Longling War, which was gone, but the Longling War could not be delayed again and again.
In order to show Roosevelt his determination and command ability of Chiang Kai-shek's counterattack on western Yunnan, Chairman Chiang personally called the headquarters of the commander of the expeditionary force: "The remnants of the enemy in Chalong and Mang, are exhausted and there is no follow-up reinforcement, so I hope that we will quickly adjust the deployment of the existing forces in this theater and actively launch an offensive, with a view to recovering the ....... of Longmang in one fell swoop."
"In one fell swoop", the words came out of the mouth of the chairman of the committee, with a very rigidity, and even more so, no one dared to defy his authority after passing through the line of fire? !
All the work revolves around this order: the wheels are rolling on the Yunnan-Burma Highway, the car horns are once again breaking the silence of the mountains, and on the winding mountain road from Songshan to Longling, the logistics vehicles transporting the baggage one after another, and the convoys form a series of lines around the mountains, which is magnificent. All the baggage units of the expeditionary force headquarters have been transferred, and the siege troops will no longer be short of food and ammunition.
The 11th Army, which had been tired from the long battle, had a recuperation for nearly a month, and the units of the 71st Army, which was seriously short of personnel, were also replenished with new recruits, and Wei Lihuang transferred the 82nd Division from Lushui to Longling.
At this time, there were only more than 1,000 Japanese troops left in the Longling garrison, and the Japanese army in Mangshi was no longer able to organize a counterattack on Longling after two failed attempts to reinforce Longling.
Huang Jie took advantage of the right time and place, and the time was ripe to attack Longling again.
On October 25, the 11th Army issued an attack order: with the 200th Division as the right flank, attack Yiwanshui, Zhang Jinshan, and Fulong Temple; With the 87th and 36th Divisions as the left flank, they attacked Sanguanpo, Miaofangpo, Guoditangpo and Shuangpo; With the 1st Honor Division as the central force, it attacked Guanyin Temple and Hongtu Slope; With the 2nd Army and two mountain artillery companies belonging to the 6th Army, they attacked Hongyan Mountain and Mukang Houshan on the way from Longling to Mangshi, destroying the road from Mukang to Fangmaqiao to cut off the road from Mangshi to aid the Japanese army; At the same time, the 10th Heavy Artillery Regiment, the 7th Artillery Regiment Mixed Battalion, and the 8th Army Mountain Artillery Battalion cooperated with the 200th Division and the 71st Army. In order to increase the attacking force, artillery and air force coordinated the attack with ground forces.
The attacking forces were deployed and in their readiness positions by 28 October. The 88th Division, as a general reserve, assembled near Huangcaoba.
On October 29, the third battle to conquer Longling began.
More than 300 heavy artillery pieces and 17,600 mountain artillery shells fired at once, and the white parabola formed a large area of graffiti, messily tearing apart the clean blue sky. The sharp whistling sound still stayed in the air, and the cannonballs exploded in the four mountains of Longling, and in the rising mushroom clouds, the black gunpowder smoke was mixed with red firelight, and Longling was locked in a cloud of smoke and dust. Compared with the previous two offensives, the power of this artillery fire has increased dozens of times.
The sky was clear, and the Allied planes were coming. The air cannon advantage that Song Xilian had longed for for a long time finally came to Longling with the end of the rainy season.
The Japanese army was still very stubborn, and the battle for the positions was still very hard.
The 200th Division, which stormed the high ground in the western suburbs, attacked the Shilaohu position head-on with the 600th Regiment and took the fence slope on the side. The 2nd and 3rd battalions fought for one day and only captured the first, second, and third heights of the fence, and the next day the two battalions attacked the fourth and fifth heights one by one for three days, and finally conquered the fence slope on the 31st. When the 600th Regiment attacked Shilaohu, in order to detour the Japanese flank and respond to the frontal battle of the army, the Gaojiren division commander used the left flank of the 599th Regiment to attack Shilaohu, and the right flank just took the wind slope. In this way, it is equivalent to rushing the Japanese army into three sections, so that they cannot take care of each other. The Japanese army made mistakes left and right, and in a panic, the main force of the division commander of the Gaoji people came out and assisted the right wing troops to successfully capture the windblown slope. On November 3, the 200th Division conquered Laoliangtai and completely occupied the highest point in the western suburbs of Longling.
The battle for the commanding heights in the southeastern suburbs of Longling, Sanguanpo and Miaofangpo, was equally fierce.
After several days of shelling, the Japanese Sanguanpo position has fallen silent. On the 31st, with the cooperation of artillery fire, the 107th Regiment of the 36th Division rushed to the highest point of Sanguanpo in one go, but the Japanese army lurking in the shelter suddenly appeared, and the bunker spit out a string of tongues of fire, knocking down the warriors who had just rushed up the mountain, and the warriors of the 4th company swarmed up, and the Japanese army also drilled out of the bunker, surrounded the soldiers of the expeditionary force who rushed up the mountain, a fierce battle at close range, lightning broke out, and the protracted battle was consumed, and only by persisting until the end could we win. After several hours of fighting, the 4th Company suffered heavy casualties, the ammunition was running out, and the gunfire on the Sanguanpo Heights gradually became scarce.
Huang Jie could see it clearly in the command shed, and he was very anxious:
The Japanese army was about to attack, and suddenly saw a tall soldier crawling out of the crater in the smoke of gunpowder, braving the flying missiles and stray arrows, and searching for ammunition on the dead and wounded in front of the battle, and he searched almost all the fallen people, and there was no second person who could stand up.
The Japanese army frantically pounced on the high ground, and there was only this brave man with dozens of grenades on the position...... Xu Qingrui, the sergeant squad leader, threw out a series of grenades in front of an enemy dozens of times his own, and the enemy fell one after another in the firelight. In this way, Xu Qingrui alone held on to the top of the mountain and repelled the Japanese army's attacks again and again until reinforcements arrived.
The 36th Division finally captured the highest point.
What a hanging! If it weren't for this squad leader, the Sanguanpo Heights would have been taken away by the Japanese army.
After capturing Longling, Huang Jie naturally personally comforted this lone hero, and when he handed over a large box of banknotes to Xu Qingrui, squad leader Xu only gave a military salute to this commander humbly. The large box of banknotes did not have much attraction to him, he followed the advance of the army, the money could not be brought back to his hometown at all, on the contrary, it could only become a burden to fight with the army, for a warrior who put life and death out of the way, his belief was very simple, that is, on the battlefield to desperately overwhelm the other party, in order to survive.
The 87th Division, which attacked Miaofangpo, also encountered hard nails.
The 87th Division, with the 260th Regiment as the main force, the 259th Regiment as the right flank, and the 261st Regiment as the left flank, attacked the No. 8 target. The regiments quickly reached the Japanese positions with the extension of artillery fire, but the shells did not destroy the strong fortifications, and the enemy put up a stubborn resistance with the strong fortifications.
Seeing that there was no result in the fierce battle before the battle, the commander of the 260th regiment, Jia Yunhong, had to urgently send a platoon of spies to reinforce him. The two sides were in close arms, the artillery had long lost its advantage, and the planes could only go around in the sky, and there was nothing they could do to help. Without flamethrowers, the regimental commander had to deal with the stubborn enemy in the most stupid way, and he ordered the spy company to bundle the grenades one by one, and then selected soldiers to quietly approach the Japanese fort and throw bundles of ammunition from the mouth of the Japanese fort. The solution is simple, but there are dangers lurking at every step. The machine gunner sealed the entrance of the fort with a machine gun, and just when the Japanese troops were dumb off, the soldiers holding the grenades approached the fort, and the grenades were quickly thrown in. A group of death squads repeated the simple actions of the previous one, repeatedly delivered grenades to the mouth of the fort, and threw more than 700 grenades in a row, finally annihilating the Japanese troops who were cowering in the fortifications.