At dawn on June 28, 1944, the 116th and 68th Divisions of the Japanese Army, under the command of the division commander Iwanaga Wang, launched the first general attack on Hengyang City.

The first was the heavy artillery bombardment, and almost simultaneously from the east and north came the mind-numbing screams of shells breaking through the air, and the defenders of the east and north cities were immediately enveloped in the midst of heavy artillery fire. The bombardment effect produced by the Japanese 105 caliber howitzer and 150 howitzer caliber howitzer is far from being comparable to the shells fired by 80 mortars and grenadiers.

Even in the command post, Zhang Xiaohu could feel the intensity of the devil's shelling, and after the cannon sounded, he calmed down, because what he was most worried about would not happen, that is, the devil's plane would not come, compared to the bombs thrown by the plane, he really preferred his subordinates to endure the artillery fire, at least the devil's howitzer can't hit incendiary bombs, and the devil's howitzer can't hit hundreds of pounds of aerial bombs, he has tried this kind of giant bomb, and within tens or hundreds of meters of the explosion point, it is really impossible for any more life to survive.

The time of the artillery bombardment lasted from dawn to eight or nine o'clock, and the devil's shells kept falling to the defenders' positions as if they didn't want money, but fortunately, the various units of the Tenth Army went through the brutal Battle of Changsha and the Battle of Changde, and although the Japanese artillery bombardment was very powerful, the damage caused to the defenders who had been prepared for a long time was not very great. Although there were quite a few recruits shivering in the anti-artillery holes, after a long time, they got used to the loud noise.

It is not that hiding in the anti-artillery holes and fortifications will be absolutely safe, under the bombardment of the intensive artillery fire of the Japanese army, there are many fortifications along with the defenders inside were "named", and there are also several large Tibetan soldiers who were directly bombarded, and the defenders hiding in it are equivalent to being buried alive, and when the soldiers in other Tibetan caves snatch out to dig people, they are left close by shells, causing secondary casualties.

When the Japanese artillery fire stopped, Fang Xianjue counted the casualties and learned that the devil's artillery fire had killed nearly half of his subordinates.

"The little devil raised by the son of a bitch, as soon as he comes up, he will kill him!" Fang Xianjue scolded in the war room.

"Yes, Junzao, it seems that the devil has put on a posture of not giving up if he doesn't take Hengyang." The chief of staff responded.

"I think they treat Hengyang as Changsha, thinking that if they bombard these cannons, they will scare us." Fang Xianjue sneered, and then said: "Even if Hengshan Yong personally comes to supervise the battle, my tenth army will not take half a step back, if you want to capture Hengyang, you have to pay some price first." Immediately order all units to enter the position, and the devil infantry is about to start attacking! ”

"Yes, Throne!" The chief of staff replied loudly.

The first to put in the infantry to start the siege was the 68th Division of the Japanese Army, which was the unlucky division that happened to be "beheaded" by Chen Kan, at this time their new division commander had not yet taken office, although it was assigned to the command of the 116th Division Commander Iwanaga Wang, but it was the Chief of Staff Harada who actually commanded the troops to fight.

Although this Harada was only a chief of staff, he was a soldier at the grassroots level, a real military commander, and a bold and reckless militant, when Sakuma was a lieutenant general of Tamama, he was leading the rest of the 68th Division to the south, and did not participate in the attack on Changsha, so he was spared.

This guy didn't take Sakuma's death as a warning, but was even more arrogant, he actually put his headquarters on the almost most front-line position, according to his words: the Chinese army は sticky り強いが, 68 師団でトラブルを起こし、Several years of training training 紴しなければならない。 (The Chinese army, though tenacious, will have to train for a few more years if it wants to cause trouble for the 68th Division.) ）

The era of arrogance of the Japanese army is long gone, and the Chinese army is no longer the persimmon that was pinched in the early days of the war. Harada sent a squadron of the 62nd Infantry Brigade of the first wave of attack to attack the main position of the 28th Regiment of the 10th Pre-10th Division on the Huangcha Ridge, but before it could get close to within 100 meters, it was repulsed by the fire of the defenders, and dozens of corpses were thrown down in disgrace and fled in disarray.

Harada naturally did not expect a wave of attacks to take the position of the Chinese army, the reason why he only sent a squadron in the first wave was to expose all the firepower points of the defenders, and then order the fifth wing of the mountain artillery assigned to him to carry out precision strikes, so that only the next wave of attacks only needs to send a few more troops, and the positions of the Chinese defenders will "certainly" be captured.

Harada is rarely able to command a large-scale battle, and his desire to express is so strong that he has lost some basic battlefield knowledge, and he said that he put his headquarters around the front line, and he said that he had such a strong force as the mountain artillery wing, and he also gathered a wing of mortars around his headquarters, his idea was very simple, that is, he wanted to see his artillery fire with his own eyes and tear the Chinese defenders on Huangchaling to shreds.

However, he underestimated the strength of the Chinese defenders, and underestimated the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army too much, or that sentence, it is no longer than the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, although the war has caused the country to become poorer and poorer, but the equipment of the Chinese army has kept up, compared to the Japanese army, the number of artillery may not be comparable for the time being, but the individual equipment is really ahead of the devil soldiers, and each regiment can create a machine gun platoon, take Zeng Jing's 28 regiment as an example, there are also more than a dozen 82mm mortars.

Therefore, when its position was shelled again, the 28th Regiment no longer dared to withdraw from its position, because the devil infantry who was about to charge was already eyeing it not far away, no matter how ruthless and fierce the artillery fire was, it had to bear it hard.

The bodies of the warriors are not steel and iron bones, they are all flesh and blood, how can they withstand such ferocious artillery fire.

Looking at the second battalion in dire straits on the battlefield, Zeng Jing was very distressed, he knew that he had to do something for these brothers to relieve their pressure. He asked the commander of the machine gun platoon: "Can you calculate where the ghost artillery position is?" ”

"Report to the regimental seat, there are two kinds of artillery attacking our position, one is a 75mm caliber mountain artillery, and the other is an 80mm mortar, the position of the two types of artillery has been calculated, but our artillery can only hit the devil mortar position, the mountain artillery position is too far away, and we can't reach it." The platoon commander of the cannon platoon replied.

"Report the location of the mountain artillery position to the division, he will have a way to deal with it, let's knock out the devil's mortar first!"

Zeng Jing never expected that his order would "behead" the command post of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army again, the previous time was Chen Kan's blind cat encountered a dead mouse, and this time luck befell Zeng Jing.

Harada, with his cronies Matsupu Shaozo and a few officers, was watching the artillery attack on the edge of the artillery position, and when he was looking at the defenders' positions from the distance of the Wangyuan Realm, he suddenly heard a strange sound in his ears, and was about to ask what the situation was, when more than a dozen 82 mortar shells of the Chinese army fell.

It seems that the sky is destined, Harada's arrogance has been retributed by reality, and a damn mortar shell of the 28th Regiment deviated from the direction and happened to fall next to Harada and a few of them, this originally missed shell once again wiped out the command system of the 68th Division.

When the 68th Brigade of the 57th Brigade of the 62nd Division was attacking Huangchaling, another brigade of the 58th Brigade and the 116th Brigade also launched an attack on the Zhu Guangji of the 29th Regiment on the railway line.

Unlike Huangchaling, which is dangerous to defend, the 29th Regiment only has two small mountains less than 100 meters high that can be defended, and the defense is very difficult.

The commander of the 58th Brigade, Sadamasa Ota, discovered the predicament of the defenders, so after tentative contact, he immediately launched a full-scale attack, and the entire 116th Brigade was mobilized in the first wave of attacks.

The thin gunfire of the defenders made Ota Sadamasa's judgment extremely serious, he thought that the previous shelling had caused the Chinese army in front of him to lose its combat strength, so he wanted to use a large brigade of troops to capture these two small hills at a lightning speed.

Seeing that they were about to rush to the bottom of the slope, as long as they attacked the top of the slope, the main position of the Chinese army would be declared occupied.

The corners of his mouth raised a smile, but soon this smile turned into a stunned, although the gunfire on the two hillsides was sparse, but suddenly, countless grenades were thrown down on the slope, Ota Sadamasa clearly saw from the binoculars, these grenades were not single, but three cluster grenades tied together, only to see a series of explosions, the 116 brigade that participated in the attack, threw a corpse at the bottom of the two slopes, and fled back in panic, only this rain of grenades, The entire 116 Brigade may have lost nearly half of its troops.

"Eight Tooth Road!" Ota Sadamasa was so angry that he threw the telescope in his hand to the ground.

After the devil's infantry went into the attack, the Hengyang Xiangjiang Railway Bridge, the Zhishendu Bridge on the steaming water, and the Qingcao Bridge on the steaming water that was blown up last night completely prevented the Japanese army from attacking the central city of Hengyang, and also made it impossible for the devils to connect the troops in the east and north of the city.

On the first day of the attack, the Tenth Army showed the demeanor of the "Taishan Army", they repelled all the attacks of the Japanese army, so that the two positions defended by Zhang Xiaohu, except for the shelling, did not see half of the devil hair, and also made the soldiers on the position spend a leisurely day.

After personally contacting and witnessing the heroism of the Twelfth Army, Zhang Xiaohu understood why the boss respected Fang Xianjue so much, this person does have two brushes, and his troops can indeed afford the title of "Taishan Army". Knowing heroes and valuing heroes, Zhang Xiaohu can also be regarded as a hero, he has no doubt at the moment that the Tenth Army will flee like the Fourth Army, and he has made up his mind to protect the gateway of South China with such an iron army: Hengyang City!

…………

The overnight march made the troops of the 12th Army have stepped into the boundary of Hengyang, and the 81st Division of Shi Zhonghua, which is in the vanguard, has discovered the alert troops placed by the devils in the periphery.

The 81st Division is not a good offensive force, but a very good defensive force, originally not as the vanguard of the whole army, but helplessly Dai Cunxiang and Dong Wenbin two goods, in Xiangxiang for half a day, so that Sun Yumin had no choice but to put the 81st Division in the forefront of the whole army, and the 139th Division Wang Heng and the military headquarters followed, but Dai Cunxiang's new 34th Division and Dong Wenbin's brigade fell behind and became a vigilance force.

Before dawn, Shi Zhonghua sent someone to report it, saying: Our department has found the devil's alert troops, to fight or not? Please make it clear from the military seat.

Sun Yumin did not rashly give the order to attack, he knew that the troops fought from Yiyang to Xiangxiang, and then marched to the vicinity of Hengyang, they were already exhausted, and if they started a war at this time, they could not really exert their combat power, so the order he replied was: establish a warning position and arrange for the troops to rest.

He originally wanted the troops to rest and rest, recover their physical and mental state, and then prepare to attack the devils. Unexpectedly, as soon as the sky dawned, he could hear a faint roar from the sky far away in the south, like thunder in the clouds, only because of the distance, this roar would make people feel not very afraid.

As a veteran soldier, Sun Yumin certainly knew that the roar coming from the direction of Hengyang City was not thunder, but the bombardment of the devil's cluster of heavy artillery.

After being bombarded by those terrifying naval guns, giant cannons and heavy artillery on the Songhu battlefield, and after being deterred by aerial bombs weighing more than 100 catties in Nanjing, Sun Yumin actually had some allergic reactions to these cannon sounds.

The use of 105 caliber and 150 caliber howitzers by the devils is enough to show that they have launched a full-scale offensive. Although he knew that it would not be too difficult for Fang Xianjue and Zhang Xiaohu to withstand the devil's attack, this rumbling cannon still made Sun Yumin upset, and he was now in a particularly mood to fly into the city immediately to meet them.

Sun Yumin wanted to order the 81st Division to immediately launch an attack on the guard positions on the periphery of the devils, but when he saw the scene of the tired little girl's sleeping saliva flowing, he dispelled this idea again, because it had only been two or three hours since he gave the order to rest, and if he wanted the troops to recover eighty percent of their combat effectiveness, they had to be allowed to rest for at least twenty-four hours.

Although he was very anxious in his heart, Sun Yumin still suppressed the urge to attack, and he suffered until noon, and finally waited for Dai Cunxiang and Dong Wenbin to lead their troops to arrive.

At this time, the cannon sound in the direction of Hengyang City was not as fierce as in the morning, although it would still sound from time to time, but it was no longer enough for Sun Yumin to worry about it.

What the Twelfth Army needs most now is rest, and Fang Xianjue and Zhang Xiaohu in the city are looking forward to their arrival.

Fortunately, although Tang Chunhong was also very tired, she still led her subordinates and took advantage of the rest time of the troops to set up the radio station, which was the news of the Twelfth Army that appeared in the ears of Xue Yue, Fang Xianjue and Zhang Xiaohu again in recent days.

The god of war is here, the ace of the 12th Army is here, and after the battle of Hengyang, the three of them immediately felt much more confident.

And only Sun Yumin did not have half of the joy and excitement, because he knew that even if the 12th Army was fully invested in the battle of Hengyang, it might not play a decisive role, and if the other troops in the Ninth Theater could not complete the joint attack according to the established plan, Hengyang City would be broken by the Japanese army sooner or later!