It turned out that after the army near Xuzhou withdrew westward, the Japanese army pursued relentlessly, and the 10th Division and the 16th Division in the south rushed to Dangshan and Yongcheng successively, and the 14th Division of the Japanese army in the north, under the leadership of Kenji Tufeiyuan, crossed the Yellow River from Fanxian in Puyang, and after capturing Heze and Caoxian, they began to attack towards the area of Lanfeng (Lankao) and Guide (Shangqiu), trying to cut off the Longhai railway line and hinder the retreat of the Xuzhou army to the south.

Gui Yongqing's 27th Army, Huang Jie's 8th Army, Li Hansoul's 64th Army, Wang Yaowu's 74th Army (51st Division), Song Xilian's 71st Army (87th and 88th Divisions) and other 100,000 troops defending the Lanfeng area, but they failed to block the attack of the Japanese 20,000 people, which can be described as extremely humiliating. In particular, the 27th Army led by Gui Yongqing lost ground one after another and fled, and was crushed at every touch with the Japanese army.

As for why Song Xilian served as the commander of the 71st Army, it was because during the Battle of Nanjing, the generals retreated against the order, although they retained a large number of living anti-Japanese forces, but after all, they failed to hold on for many days, which was far from Chiang Kai-shek's expected goal, so except for a few people (such as Bai Fei, who was not punished for his meritorious service in the Yuhuatai air battle), most of the generals were punished with varying degrees of severity. For example, Sun Yuanliang, Wang Jingjiu, Song Xilian, etc., were all removed or demoted to the cold palace. Song Xilian himself sat on the cold bench for more than a month, and it was not until late January this year that he was activated by Chiang Kai-shek and transferred to the post of commander of the 71st Army, with jurisdiction over the 87th and 88th divisions. The 88th Division was merged into the 1st Pre-Division, and Long Muhan, the former commander of the 1st Pre-Division, served as the commander of the 88th Division.

Due to the unfavorable war in the Lanfeng area, Chiang Kai-shek was furious, and he was afraid that the loss of Lanfeng would endanger Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, so he strictly ordered the defenders to recover the lost territory and defend Lanfeng; At the same time, Xue Yue was ordered to serve as the commander of the former enemy and have full command of the operation; In addition, he also ordered Hu Zongnan to lead the army to cooperate in the battle from west to east.

However, even so, Chiang Kai-shek was still not at ease.

So Chen Cheng suggested on the side: "You can order Bai Fei to lead the regiment directly under the gendarmerie to supervise the battle." In this way, the armies of all units will definitely fight hard, and even if the war is unfavorable, relying on the combat effectiveness of Bai Fei and his subordinates, it is expected that they will not suffer a big loss..."

Chiang Kai-shek thought that Bai Fei had completed the task very beautifully in several battles to defend the city in Shanghai and Nanjing, and his eyes lit up. So he immediately gave Bai Fei an order to go to the battle.

Bai Fei received the order in the morning. After receiving the order, he immediately terminated the training and immediately began to conduct a final assessment of his subordinates. According to the method agreed before, all the officers and men of the regiment directly under the gendarmerie spent the whole day in a tense examination.

Bai Fei made his rounds around, and the results of several months of training seemed to be good, and almost all of them had mastered the driving skills of various vehicles and ships, of course, the skills were high and low, and so on. But this is enough, Bai Fei's requirements are not high, as long as he can start. In addition, people who have a complete grasp of radio communication also account for one-sixth of the total number of people in the group, and Bai Fei also agrees with this, after all, this thing is not as easy as learning to drive.

The most difficult part was Japanese, with more than 2,000 people in the group, and after months of hard study, most of them could only communicate with each other in the end. Although Bai Fei was a little disappointed by this, he also understood that language was not something that could be mastered overnight. However, there were all exceptions, and there were nearly ten people in the group who stood out in the Japanese language test, not only did they speak very well, but they also spoke very fluently, and most importantly, they also spoke with some native Japanese accents, which was simply too important to confuse the Japanese in future operations.

Bai Fei was very happy to hear this, and asked them how they learned. After asking, I found out that several of them had learned Japanese in schools run by the Japanese before (the Japanese had opened some schools in Northeast China and other places to teach Japanese to Chinese students in order to better enslave and rule); There are also a few people who have never studied Japanese and are particularly gifted with languages. Bai Fei was also envious when he heard this, this is a genius!

In addition to the above three assessments, shooting, fighting, and physical fitness are also being carried out simultaneously. After Bai Fei evaluated and weighed together with Wang Weiguo and others, he announced the names of the people selected for the special combat team. The most important thing in this selection is to form a system of survival of the fittest, so it is inevitable that some of the original special combat personnel will be eliminated and replaced with new blood. Those newcomers who joined the special combat team were naturally extremely happy, but those who were eliminated were depressed and very sad.

Seeing this, Bai Fei said: "In the future, we will often engage in such training, and the assessment will be normalized, basically once every three months, and the fittest will also be survived, so don't be proud and don't be discouraged, hard work to learn is the last word, this time you will be eliminated, maybe you will be selected again next time!" ”

In this way, the eliminated brothers were no longer depressed, and each of them had a determined look in their eyes, as if they wanted to wait for the next assessment to regain what they had lost.

After a busy day, Bai Fei didn't fall asleep until 2 o'clock in the evening.

In the early morning of the next day, after Bai Fei said goodbye to Zhang Yueqing and Mr. Song, he led the team to the railway station. Just as he was about to board the train, he saw Shi Wuflawless and Kong Lingyi running towards this side from outside the station.

Wang Weiguo smiled and said to Bai Fei: "Go, have a good chat, I'll lead the team to the car first." ”

Bai Fei nodded, greeted him and smiled, "Why are you here?" ”

Because he ran in from outside the station, Kong Lingyi had a layer of blush on his face, and he looked particularly attractive. She said, "I heard that you are going on an expedition today, so I want to see you off..."

Shi Wufeng complained beside him: "How did you do it, the troops didn't notify me when they went out, don't forget that I'm a member of your regiment." ”

Bai Fei smiled bitterly.

Since the last Battle of Nanjing, Bai Fei has learned Shi Wufang's "unorganized and undisciplined" style of acting, which is not to say that she did something wrong to save lives and help the wounded, but if you act privately on the battlefield, it is easy to lose your nickname. Let's take it back to the last time, if it weren't for the special combat team members who found out that there were people in the hospital, and then he ran to check on it, he took Shi Wuflawless out of Nanjing intact, otherwise she would have been tortured by the Japanese and didn't know where she died.

In view of her performance last time, this time, Bai Fei only selected a few male doctors and male nurses from the medical team, and even the remaining female doctors and nurses did not bring one, so Shi Wufeng couldn't bring it.

Bai Fei said: "I'm going to fight, not to play." Besides, this mission is very urgent, so don't follow it..."

Shi Wuflawless said: "It's because I went to war that I need a doctor like me even more, otherwise what would I do with so many wounded?" ”