As soon as March, Deng Shicai received more and more reports of the US counteroffensive, although each time the US army was repulsed, but the Ming army suffered a lot of losses, the pressure was very great, and the front-line officers were asking for reinforcements, weapons and equipment and material supplies every day. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The attrition on the front line has increased dramatically.

However, Deng Shicai is obviously arrogant now, the Ming began to recruit troops from the territory of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, a large number of poor northern peasant children were called into the army, the children of immigrants from Nanyang enthusiastically joined the army, the Ming Dynasty from Huguang, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and other places, has recruited two million soldiers, the population of about 10 million in the Nanyang region, there are even 1 million soldiers to join the army, some of these recruits have been trained and sent to the United States, and some are even directly sent to ships and sent to the United States to receive direct field training.

Up to now, the Ming Dynasty has sent 4.5 million soldiers to the United States, and after removing casualties and various attritions, Deng Shicai can use 4 million troops, of which 500,000 are used to maintain communication lines, 500,000 are used to defend and maintain law and order in the north, and Deng Shicai's troops have reached 3 million.

The number of troops in his hands is one million more than that of the US army, of course, this battle is easy to fight, plus it is still a defensive operation, basically waiting for the Americans to die on the position, there is sufficient supply of troops, there is no shortage of weapons and equipment, this battle is not difficult to fight.

It's just that the U.S. army's counteroffensive was really ferocious, and for a time he was a little stretched, so he had to transfer the few remaining reserves to the battlefield again and again, and the reserves in his hands were reduced from 20 armies to only seven corps in less than half a month, but the intensity of the U.S. army's counterattack did not decrease at all.

This made him very difficult to decide whether to transfer the last reserves. But relatively speaking, in this war, the strength of the Ming army has always been insufficient, even if it seems to be more than the US army now, but the Ming army is encircling the US army, is fighting on the outside line, and the US army relies on the inner line, can concentrate as many troops as possible, but the Ming army is scattered around, in this situation, once the other side breaks through, the Ming army is passive defense.

It's just that now the Americans' counteroffensive makes Deng Shicai feel extremely abrupt, because they are attacking to the west, even if they break through here, can they still have the strength to attack west? In connection with the situation that there were US reinforcements in the east, Deng Shicai easily judged that the Americans were attacking the east and west, and planned to attack from the east and outside, open a gap from the east, and lift the Ming army's siege of Houston.

Under this judgment, instead of continuing to increase the strength of the western position, he sent all the last reserves to the eastern front, knowing that once the American troops broke through from the east, their offensive would be extremely fierce.

Sure enough, after ten days of fierce feints in the west, the Americans lost 40,000 or 50,000 troops, and then suddenly began to launch a fierce assault to the east, and their soldiers, under the cover of artillery fire, attacked the positions of the Ming army again and again. And behind the Ming position, American reinforcements also began to advance, the same artillery group fierce bombardment, and then a ground attack.

Not to mention this round of attacks, Deng Shicai was a little dazed, he really hadn't seen this kind of situation where both sides were covered by heavy firepower, after three days of hard fighting, the U.S. army once broke through the peripheral positions on both sides of the Ming army, the most dangerous section, and the Ming army even only held the last trench.

Deng Shicai had no choice but to re-examine the combat effectiveness of the US military, and at the same time, he also completely ignored the intelligence that there was infighting against the US troops in Houston a few days ago.

In fact, the US Department of Defense and the General Staff are also wondering that they have not carried out an active offensive for a long time before, and would rather be surrounded in Hughes, only passively defending rather than attacking, a big reason is that there is some internal instability, before this breakthrough, they ruthlessly rectified military discipline, dismissed a large number of officers who were not very at ease, and transferred a large number of new immigrant troops and black troops to the rear.

Originally, they were worried that problems would arise in these troops, which would lead to unfavorable breakout operations, but they did not expect that when the breakthrough began, the previous chaos would not only not be more serious, but would improve. Even at the height of the fighting, large numbers of black troops were sent to the front, and they fought hard without any rout.

In fact, this situation is not difficult to explain, people are afraid of death, but soldiers are always more mentally prepared than ordinary people, especially in the general environment of the army, everyone is facing the same situation, everyone is fair, in fact, there are not so many changes. The biggest reason why soldiers oppose war from ancient times to the present day is not fear of death, but despair. When they see no hope, they instinctively resist the fight.

It's like during the First World War, the Russian army broke out because of the anti-war, but after the revolution, the Russian army fought more wars, or more tragic civil wars, and I don't know what it was like to fight the civil war because of the anti-war. In fact, it is a psychological problem, the US army was unwilling to rush to the machine gun position of the Ming army in vain, because they could not see the possibility of victory, and now let them break through is to echo everyone's thoughts, everyone has long wanted to stay in this place, so on the contrary, they have stabilized, and what calms them is not fighting, but hope.

In fact, the situation of the US army is much better than that of the French army that was surrounded by the Ming army in Vietnam, at least they have always been well supplied, and they do not have to face the problem of running out of ammunition and food, you must know that the French army at that time has reached the point of continuous small-scale surrender, and the current US army has not yet had any defection of soldiers, but it is just a problem of some troops refusing to fight.

However, although every American soldier hoped to break through and leave this nightmare place, there was a limit to manpower, and after fighting continuously for half a month, with no less than 10 large-scale charges and more than 100,000 dead and wounded soldiers, they had to temporarily suspend this senseless breakthrough.

Both sides have entered a temporary adjustment phase.

The Americans continued to increase the number of reinforcements, trying to mobilize troops from all over the country and recruit more soldiers from Europe, but European countries did not want to see their own people go to the United States to die senselessly, so they successively restricted this behavior. The United States was only able to squeeze the potential of the population from its own country again and again, and finally increased the reinforcement of New Orleans to a million people.

Of course, the Ming army also continued to increase its troops, and the country still sent reinforcements in a steady stream, and China's human resources were obviously much richer than those of the United States. The Ming Dynasty has also expanded the scope of recruitment to Sichuan and other inland areas, although the Manchu government has quite a few criticisms, and the powers have also issued critical voices on this, but the Ming government is still the same, at this time it is the war to do everything, and even when recruiting, the recruitment department deliberately beautified the war, greatly covering up the cruelty of the war, so that one by one young people who are ignorant of the war risk their lives to join the Ming army for high salaries.

More than 700,000 troops were recruited from Sichuan, the most populous province in China, with a population of nearly 50 million, and the economy was very weak, and the situation of more people and less land was more serious than anywhere else, and there were many people who joined the army in order to eat a bite to eat. 300,000 recruits were also recruited in Shanxi, which is also a relatively well-populated place, otherwise so many people would not have starved to death in the famine.

These million recruits were sent to the United States one after another, and under Deng Shicai's urging, they could not even do basic training. Of course, they were not sent directly to the front line, but to the rear troops, constantly replacing the troops maintaining law and order and communication lines in the control area, and then transferring the combat units to the front line.

A month later, the United States increased the number of reinforcements to one million, and Deng Shicai also invested one million on the Eastern Front, bringing the strength of the Eastern Front to two million, accounting for half of the entire encirclement line. But it was still not enough, Deng Shicai also mobilized troops from other directions, transferred 150,000 troops from the northern defense line, 100,000 people from the western front, and prepared a reserve of 250,000 troops, intending to reinforce them at any time.

In May, a major battle broke out between the two sides, and the United States remained the same old as before, with artillery fire and infantry charging against the Ming army's trench machine gun positions.

But this time, the Ming army was well prepared, and during the short recuperation, the thickness of the defensive line was greatly strengthened, the depth of the trenches was deepened, and a large number of artillery tunnels were excavated and reinforced with logs. The most important thing is that Deng Shicai sent a large number of artillery here, and transferred eighty percent of the artillery units of the Ming army here.

The battle began with a sinking hell, with soldiers on both sides being slaughtered on a large scale, and Iron and Fire became the kings who ruled the place, taking thousands of lives every day.

The battle lasted for a whole month, and after the American army suffered 300,000 casualties, it was finally unsustainable, and the soldiers once again refused to go to the front line to die, and the situation in the Ming army was slightly better, because they were in a defensive position, they could only fight passively, and if they did not fight back, they would be pressured by the other side to rush up, so that they had no way even if they did not want to fight.

Based on the situation of killing a large number of American troops, Deng Shicai decided to launch a counterattack, using 150,000 reserve troops to detour east from the outside of the northern defense line, hoping to strike at the flank of the American aid corps.

The two sides fought fiercely in the area of the Sabin River, which is the boundary river between Texas and Louisiana, which means that the Ming army has advanced the battle line to the border of Texas, but this battle has no result, the field level of the US army is as poor as ever, and it was defeated three times by Lu Yunqi's main force, but under the strong strength advantage, the defense line was finally stabilized and the Ming army was blocked on the first line of the Sabine River, but the US army was no longer able to threaten the Houston defense line of the Ming army, declaring their rescue operation in Houston a complete failure, The second phase of the Battle of Houston, the breakout phase of the US army, came to an end.