From the beginning of the devil's sweep of Dayun Mountain on September 7 to the head-to-head confrontation between the Japanese army's third and sixth divisions and the 12th Army on September 27, in just 20 days, all Xue Yue heard was the news of the defeat and retreat of the national army, and the headquarters of the Ninth Theater in Changsha City were forced to move out.

Until he received Sun Yumin's battle report, informing him that the 139th Division and the 81st Division of the 12th Army joined forces to break the 18th Wing and the 5th Wing of the 3rd Division of the Japanese Army, so that he had suppressed all the depression for many days was released, and said to Wu Yizhi, the chief of staff: "Sun Yumin is really a tiger general, with the power of one army to resist the two main divisions of the Japanese army, and he is still at ease, and he really deserves the title of 'God of War'. ”

"Yes, commander-in-chief, if we can have a few more troops of the Twelfth Army in the Central Army, then the expulsion of the Japanese invaders is definitely not a fool's dream." Wu Yizhi responded, in this new headquarters, everyone's mood has not been good recently, the Ninth War Zone, as a star in the national army, was pressed and beaten by devils this time, who will be in a better mood?

"Yes, who doesn't want the troops under his command to be the Twelfth Army and the Seventy-fourth Army......" Xue Yue said this, as if he suddenly remembered something, and asked: "Where is the Seventy-fourth Army now?" ”

"Commander-in-chief, in the morning received a telegram from Commander Wang that his troops had entered the territory of northern Hunan and were at most a day's journey from the place of battle. It's just that they have stopped advancing now, and the Japanese reconnaissance planes have already discovered them, and Commander Wang is worried that there are too many targets during the day, which will lead to large-scale bombing, so ......"

"So they're not going to rush to the battlefield, are they?" Xue Yue's tone began to rise, which was a prelude to anger.

"Commander-in-chief, this really can't blame Commander Wang, as soon as the 74th Army came from Jiangxi, it has become exhausted and in urgent need of rest; Moreover, the Japanese planes are too powerful, and when Sun Yumin's troops rushed to the scene earlier, they were bombed several times in one day, and I heard that the losses were not small, and Sun Yumin scolded you twice. Wu Yizhi explained that although he borrowed Sun Yumin's matter, there was no ridicule in his tone, and his expression was even more distressed.

"But didn't Sun Yumin's Twelfth Army come over? People can come, why can't he Wang Yaowu come? Xue Yue was a little unable to listen to the persuasion, just like Sun Yumin's persuasion at the beginning, he also couldn't listen to it, Wu Yizhi's explanation was so pale and weak.

"What do you mean?" Wu Yizhi asked cautiously, the time he has been partnering with Xue Yue is not too long, and when he encounters major matters, he will completely follow Xue Yue's opinion, this is the tactfulness and sophistication he has learned since he has been the chief of staff for so long.

"Send a telegram to Wang Yaowu and limit him to lead his troops to the battlefield within one day, otherwise he will be engaged in military law." Xue Yue was completely blinded by anger, as the best of the generals in the broad lineage, although he was not the most outstanding, but he was by no means the kind of general who talked on paper, the reason why he made mistakes again and again in the Second Battle of Changsha was entirely because hatred and anger made him completely unable to calm down.

"However, Commander Wang may not be able to ......" Wu Yizhi's words were not finished, and he would not finish them all, he has been in the army for so many years, so he naturally knows that there are some things to say and some things not to say. Wang Yaowu and his 74th Army, as He Yingqin's descendants, although they are under the operational sequence of the Ninth Theater, are by no means something that you can mobilize and drive by the commander-in-chief who has just taken out the word acting.

"First call Chief He, explain to him the urgency of the war, and then ask him to help urge the 74th Army." Xue Yue sighed, and lowered his voice a little, "The telegram I told you earlier that the 74th Army was ordered to arrive within one day has also been issued, and we will grasp it with both hands." Xue Yue was also very helpless, in the entire Ninth War Zone, he had almost no troops of his own, and the Nineteenth Army could be regarded as his descendant, but since Luo Zhuoying took over, the Nineteenth Army has also been firmly labeled as a civil engineering department.

"Commander-in-chief, do you want to think about it again, if you forcibly march under the nose of the Japanese planes during the day, you will definitely suffer a lot of losses, if the 74th Army is disabled, I am afraid it will be difficult to explain to Commander-in-Chief He, and it is not easy for Commander-in-Chief Lu Hanlu to speak." Wu Yizhiming seemed to be persuading on the surface, but in fact he was dissociating himself from these two telegrams, even if there were some bad consequences because of this matter in the future, he would not have much to do with him.

"Come on, the 74th Army arrives a day earlier, and Sun Yumin's pressure will be much less. If the 12th Army was wiped out because he was worried about the loss of the 74th Army, then do you think Chen Cheng would give up? Will Chen Bui give up? I'm afraid that even Luo Zhuoying will come to Xingshi to ask for guilt. ”

When Xue Yue said this, he completely lost his previous anger. He knew better than anyone else that he, the commander of the Ninth Theater, not only had to balance the forces of all sides, but also achieve good results in this operation, and to achieve this goal, it was not just up to him and the three deputy commanders Luo Zhuoying, Wang Lingji, and Yang Sen to use their mouths.

Although Xue Yue was thinking about the Twelfth Army and Sun Yumin, he would rush to the Seventy-fourth Army to participate in the battle so quickly, but this obviously extremely wrong order still led to serious consequences.

Wang Yaowu, who had already let the troops recuperate, scolded his mother angrily after receiving Xue Yue's telegram, and he didn't plan to carry out this ridiculous order, which was exactly the same as Sun Yumin's previous reaction and approach. But Xue Yue was not stupid, he used the original trick again, knowing that he couldn't call these "uncles", so he directly found the homes of these "uncles", if it wasn't for Chen Cheng's urgent telegram, Sun Yumin would not have braved the bombing of enemy planes in broad daylight and rushed to northern Xiangbei. Now it was Wang Yaowu's turn to enjoy this treatment, He Yingqin's urgent telegram made Wang Yaowu silent, he stood quietly for ten or twenty minutes, and in desperation, Wang Yaowu had to take the risk and order the vanguard 57th and 58th divisions to march forward during the day.

Troops of more than 10,000 men marched in broad daylight, and were soon discovered by Japanese reconnaissance planes, and what followed was endless bombing, perhaps because the 12th Army slipped away from under their noses almost without damage, so that the pilots of the Japanese Third Flying Regiment felt faceless, and when they bombed the 74th Army, they resorted to tricks and came in several batches, and when the troops of the 74th Army thought that the enemy planes were far away and re-entered the road, the following groups of planes came again, and the 57th and 58th Divisions suffered heavy losses as a result.

Xue Yue's counteroffensive plan for the convergence of the 12th and 74th armies had not yet begun, and something unexpected happened to him.

On September 29, 1941, the 4th Division of the Japanese Army captured Changsha City, because it did not confront the elite troops of the National Army, and the two armies of the 27th Group Army of the Sichuan Army Yang Sen deployed in northern Hunan were suppressed in Dayun Mountain, so that the 4th Division of the Japanese Army, nicknamed the "Osaka Merchant Division", took the lead in attacking Changsha City.

Perhaps Xue Yue was a lucky general, and seeing that this war would end with the fall of Changsha, something strange happened.

Not a day after the Japanese Fourth Division occupied Changsha City, the division commander Kitano Kenzo found that the food and grass supplies brought by his troops were almost out of supply.

Having said that, the reason for this scene was inseparable from the policy of "destroying roads to make fields and transporting grain up the mountains" implemented by Xue Yue in the Ninth Theater, so that the Japanese army basically could not grab enough food to supply the huge food needs of the Fourth Division along the way.

That's not all, the ridiculous thing happened, for some reason, the devils who captured Changsha City couldn't contact the headquarters of the Eleventh Army in Wuhan, and they didn't know which tendon was wrong in Kitano's head, and they actually asked Anan Weiji for supplies in the most primitive way, and they sent out a carrier pigeon!

As a result, this unlucky carrier pigeon was beaten down by the soldiers of the national army, and the important information of the 4th Division's grain and grass will be exhausted fell into the hands of Xue Yue, the commander of the Ninth Theater, in an unheard of way.

After Xue Yue, who was in Xiangtan, learned this information, he was overjoyed, believing that the Japanese army was at the end of its strong crossbow and would definitely retreat in the near future, and it was time to take a counteroffensive.

Xue Yue's guess was right, Anan Weiji, who was in Wuhan at this time, was troubled by this matter, because the Japanese 40th Division did not clear Yang Sen's 27th Group Army in the Dayun Mountain area before September 18, Yang Sen's troops frequently attacked in the rear to cut off the Japanese army's supply troops, causing difficulties in the supply of the Japanese army's various units, and the predicament of the Japanese Fourth Division in Changsha was caused by this.

The news that Sun Yumin single-handedly carried the two main divisions of the Japanese army with the strength of one army and stabilized the decline of the war in northern Hunan soon spread from the Ninth Theater Headquarters to Lao Jiang, and also to the ears of Chen Cheng, who had been transferred to the Sixth Theater as commander.

The attitude of the two is completely opposite, Lao Jiang is naturally smiling, for more than 20 days, he has been anxious about the war in northern Xiangbei, and he also knows that the Sichuan army has done its best, but what no one wants to hear is only the continuous report of defeat.

Chen Cheng is different, he has already regarded the Twelfth Army and Sun Yumin as a strong force in his civil engineering department, in order to envelop Sun Yumin, the weapons and equipment and material supplies he gave have not been less expensive, and even the personnel replenishment is a priority supply, and even after he was transferred to the Sixth War Zone, he also asked Luo Zhuoying to take care of it. A unit that was so valued by him naturally did not want to see it scrapped after a battle. So when he learned that Sun Yumin was independently carrying the two main divisions of the Japanese army, he was more nervous than anyone else, and even scolded Sun Yumin for being "stupid" and "fool". Xue Yue would rather fight to the death in Changsha than give up the great Huxiang landscape in order to preserve his strength, but Chen Cheng is the opposite, he can accept the destruction of Changsha City, but he must not tolerate his troops fighting hard, just like the sentence he pursued, "Leave the green mountains here, even if there is no firewood".

Although Chen Cheng was very annoyed, the 12th Army had already confronted the Japanese army head-on, and it was not so easy to withdraw. He didn't dare to interfere too much with Sun Yumin at this time, because the generals knew that too many external factors would definitely affect a person's basic judgment ability. But if Sun Yumin is not contacted, the devil knows if this guy will be reckless and "throw" an army of such a scale on this war.

Chen Cheng was very hesitant, he wanted to contact Sun Yumin privately and ask him not to be stupid and fight for his family. I was also worried that if I contacted Sun Yumin and asked him not to fight hard, if it fell into the ears of some "people with a heart", it would cause a little trouble.

When he was upset, the telecommunications officer sent a telegram, and after the chief of staff read it, he handed it to Chen Cheng's hand again, and said with a serious expression: "Commander-in-chief, this is a telegram sent to you by Commander Sun of the Twelfth Army asking for help. ”

"Asking for help?" After hearing these two words, Chen Cheng felt bad, he quickly took the telegram, and read the telegram with a full sheet of paper in one go.

"Commander-in-chief, I don't think Commander Sun's proposal is advisable, we can't press everything up because of the rescue of the Ninth War Zone, no one will do this." The Chief of Staff expressed his opinion.

Chen Cheng didn't say anything at first, and after reading all the contents on the paper, he walked quickly to a map, looked at it for a while, seemed to have figured out something, a smile suddenly appeared on his face, and he was also muttering in his mouth: "This stinky boy, his grasp and analysis of the battle situation is really worthy of his reputation." ”

"Commander-in-Chief, you ......"

"Chief of Staff, I know what you want to say, but now that I have thought about it and decided it, you will arrange it according to what is said in this telegram now, and I hope that the first cannon will be heard tomorrow." Chen Cheng's mood seemed to be very happy, and his words were not so angry.

Sun Yumin's telegram to Chen Cheng was a request for Chen Cheng's Sixth Theater to launch a counteroffensive against Yichang.

Part of the strength of the Japanese 13th Division garrisoning Yichang was withdrawn to form the Hayabuchi Detachment to participate in the "Plus Operation" (the Second Battle of Changsha), the strength was much weaker, facing the siege of Chen Cheng's army in the Sixth Theater, the commander of the 13th Division, Uchiyama Eitaro, who was defeated by Sun Yumin in Huoshan and had a slightly damaged division, could not resist the offensive of the national army at all, and frequently sent distress telegrams to Anan Weiji, clearly telling him that if there were no reinforcements, Yichang would be lost.

Yichang was a springboard for the attack on Chongqing, and its strategic significance was more important than that of Changsha. After careful consideration, Anan Wei thought that there was no point in defending the empty city of Changsha, so on October 1, 1941, he ordered the Japanese Fourth Division, which had occupied Changsha for less than three days, to begin to retreat, and then the rest of the divisions also received orders to return to Hubei to rescue Yichang.

On the same day that Anan Weiji ordered the retreat, after asking Lao Jiang for instructions, Xue Yue ordered all units of the Nationalist Army to attack the retreating Japanese army, try to delay Anan Weiji's pace, and ordered the 12th Army and the 74th, which had just arrived, to launch a counteroffensive.

How could it be that we had to wait for Xue Yue's order to start a counterattack, these days the Twelfth Army alone carried the hardships suffered by the Third and Sixth Divisions, so that Sun Yumin and the soldiers of the Twelfth Army had already been "hungry and thirsty", and the Japanese army had not yet shown signs of retreating, and the Twelfth Army began a comprehensive counterattack.