812. Landing on the stars, behind the attack
The 101st Division has four infantry wings, as well as four wings of cavalry, artillery, baggage troops, and engineers, totaling more than 20,000 people, and the division commander is now Lieutenant General Masaki Ito.
The 101st Division has been fighting since it came to China, and its own casualties have been heavy, but this time it was replenished and incorporated into the Japanese 11th Army to support the 106th Division.
They are all ad hoc divisions, most of them are veterans, they have a lot of combat experience, even the division commander, this time Ito Masaki did not support behind the butt of the 106th Division, but learned a trick of China's siege of Wei to save Zhao.
The 101st Division forcibly landed on the shore of Poyang Lake in Xingzi County a little unexpectedly, and then immediately swung its division to the rear of the First Corps of the Central **, wanting to cut off the retreat from De'an to Nanchang on the Nanxun Line.
Once successful, it will immediately break the deadlock of Jinguanqiao's frontal attack on the Nanxun line, so as to relieve the predicament of the 106th Division of Songpu.
At the same time, the rear road of Xue Yue's First Corps was directly copied, and the positions painstakingly managed by more than 10 divisions of the First Corps will be loosened on the entire line, and more than 100,000 troops will be ignored from the beginning to the end, and even be attacked by two Japanese divisions from the north and south, and finally they can only abandon their positions and move westward.
After the Ito 101st Division, under the cover of the navy, forcibly landed in the Xingzi area, it frantically headed south towards the Deseong Highway and pounced on Dean.
If the Japanese army wants to make a detour and capture De'an to cut off the rear road of Xue Yue's First Corps, they must first take Passpass Street on the Dexing Highway, and if they want to take Passpass Street, they must first take Dongguling and Xiguling.
East and West Guling are like two door gods, towering on both sides of the Dexing Highway in front of Pass Street, and for a time, East and West Guling have become the focus of contention between the enemy and us.
The center of gravity of the battle south of the Yangtze River instantly shifted to the south of Lushan, fortunately, before the war, Xue Yue realized that this was his backyard lifeline, and in view of the fact that the Japanese army liked to outflank the back road, he placed two armies here.
One of these two armies is the 25th Army of the Central Army and the other is the 66th Army of the Guangdong Army.
The 25th Army is a newly established unit, composed of the 52nd Division and the 190th Division of the Central Army, the commander Wang Jingjiu, the first phase of Huangpu, the Eastern Expedition to the Northern Expedition, fought bravely and was wounded many times, made great achievements, and was promoted from platoon commander to regiment commander.
Later, he became the commander of the First Guard Division of the Capital Guard, and the First Guard Division was changed to the 87th Division, the first batch of elite divisions with German armaments, participated in the Battle of Songhu twice, and was the main division to resist the Japanese army.
The 87th Division was later expanded to the 71st Army, participated in the defense of Nanjing, fought bloody battles with the Japanese army in the area of Guanghuamen and Tongjimen, and then withdrew from Nanjing. By the time of the Battle of Wuhan, General Wang was appointed commander of the newly formed 25th Army.
The 66th Army is the old Guangzhou army, and it is also a heroic unit that fought in the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing, and it is also one of the few troops that resolutely carried out the Nanjing breakout.
At that time, the 66th Army, under the leadership of the commander General Ye Zhao, faced the Japanese army's death, although there were heavy casualties, but it was much better than dying unjustly on the Yangtze River and in Nanjing.
The 66th Army, which broke through from Nanjing, was transferred back to Guangdong for more than half a year to repair, and then was transferred to northern Jiangxi to participate in the Battle of Wuhan.
It can be said that these two units are both veteran units that have fought several battles with the Japanese army, and they have experience in fighting the Japanese army and do not need to be mobilized, so they will be pinned on by General Xue Yue and guard the backyard.
Among them, the 190th Division of the 25th Army is a relatively special unit, although this division was only newly formed in the autumn of 1937 in Hengyang, Hunan, but all the officers and men of the division have embroidered the word "loyal and brave" on their sleeves, so the division is called the "loyal and brave" division.
Liang Huasheng, commander of the 190th Division, is also a native of Guangdong, and is also a Huangpu Phase I, brave and good at war, and has made many military achievements, in 1937, General Liang graduated from the Army University, and is a rare graduate of the Army University among the division commanders of the whole army.
Most of the soldiers of the 190th Division were brave and bold Lianghu, Liangguang and Sichuan, and the whole division was fully established, and they were trained by the division commander General Liang to look good and have good combat effectiveness.
This time, the first line of positions in the East and West Guling was handed over to the 190th Division, but although the East Guling was steep, it was a bare mountain, and not a single decent tree could be found in the mountain.
Towering cliffs and piles of weathered boulders made it very difficult to defend East Lonely Ridge. The 190th Division had to hide its troops on the anticline of the mountain, and at the same time made a lot of scarecrows on the frontal hill to confuse the enemy.
On August 22, the Japanese 101st Division launched a fierce attack on Dongguling, and aircraft artillery poured tens of thousands of shells on Dongguling.
After the indiscriminate bombardment, the Japanese army overwhelmingly rushed to Dongguling, and the men of the 190th Division also pounced on the hidden position 100 meters away from the anticline behind the ridge line, occupied the main position, and shot the Japanese army condescendingly.
The 106th Wing of the Ito Brigade of the 106th Division was caught off guard and fell down one by one like leeks, and the two sides fought fiercely for many days.
In the end, even the captain of the 101st Wing, Kunigoro Iizuka, was killed, and the entire wing was disabled, but he still couldn't take down Higashiguling.
Ito, the commander of the 101st Division, was so angry that he ordered the release of poison gas bombs, and the poisonous fog on the entire hill of Dongguling was filled with a long time, and the defenders were poisoned in large quantities, and finally had to withdraw from Dongguling.
However, the good times of the 101st Division did not last long, and the commander of the division, Ito Masaki, was suddenly hit in the head by mortar shrapnel from the 79th Division of the 29th Army at the Wucun Headquarters in Xiguling, and was seriously injured.
Due to the stalemate in the war, the headquarters of the 11th Army in the back was in a hurry, and Ito Masaki himself was also in a hurry, and moved the division headquarters forward to Xiguling, which was very close to the center.
I don't know what kind of nerve the mortars of the 79th Division will fire at an inconspicuous place, and this shot will almost kill the commander of the 101st Division.
At present, the 101st Division and its lost troops have lost their heads and are beaten to lie on their stomachs in Dongguling, and they are no longer able to launch a new attack. The battle in Dongguling has reached a stalemate, and the two sides have formed a state of confrontation.
Okamura Ninji wanted to cut off Xue Yue's back road behind De'an, but this time he went bankrupt again and was in trouble again. After all, the Japanese army has this absolute advantage in combat power and has the absolute initiative on the battlefield.
The 9th Division of the Japanese army also rushed over, giving Okamura Ninji the bargaining chips to dominate the battlefield again.
The Ninth Division, Japan's oldest permanent division, has two infantry brigades and four special forces wings, with a total strength of more than 23,000 people, and is one of the most combative divisions of the Japanese army.
Since landing in Shanghai during the Battle of Songhu last year, the division has participated in the Battle of Songhu, the capture of Nanjing, and the siege of Xuzhou, and was also one of the executioners of the Nanjing Massacre.
As soon as the Japanese 9th Division arrived in Ruichang, Okamura Ninji ordered Yoshisumi Ryosuke's 9th Division to immediately move south from Ruichang and occupy Minshan.
This Minshan is not Bi Min Mountain, not a plateau mountain, but a high mountain on the edge of a small town, belonging to a place in the west of Lushan, at this time, Minshan belongs to the rear of the First Corps.
According to the convention, the defense of the deep rear should be relatively weak, and if Minshan is occupied, the entire defense system of Xue Yue's First Corps will be shaken.
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