Xinminfu was only one hundred and forty miles away from Fengtian, and fifteen kilometers ahead entered a narrow mountain road. The advance army and the 2nd Brigade of the Railway Garrison confronted each other in an open field outside the valley, and the distance between the two sides was less than two kilometers in a straight line. The formation of the army inherited the German military system, and the marching formation was always the forward, the rearguard, and the left and right wings.

The 3rd Infantry Squadron of the 2nd Brigade was given the task of rearguarding. More than 200 infantry marched in four columns on the dusty official road. In late autumn, Manchuria was already quite cold, and the cold wind blew the military flags and hunted.

Squadron Leader Fujimoto's triangular eyes and eyebrows are like bending downwards, and he has a sad face, he has been in the army for more than ten years, participated in the Russian War, and survived the hard battle like a meat grinder in the 203 Highlands, and there is still a piece of shrapnel on his body that has not been taken out. There is no doubt about his qualifications as an adjutant, but unfortunately he comes from a low background, but he is just the son of a mud-legged man in the countryside, and that's it, when he was in the army non-commissioned officer school, his grades were not good and he was not admitted to Lu University.

"Squadron leader, Xizhu Shaozuo should be almost in Fengtian, right? It's really enviable, the speed of the cavalry is fast! The deputy squadron leader licked his lips and said enviously.

"Xizhu? This arrogant guy! Captain Fujimoto snorted. For this annoying Shaozuo, he doesn't even have a temper at all. These Chinese guys have never had any bosses in their eyes, let alone people with lower ranks than them. Xizhu often speaks disrespectfully to himself, and he has to pay for the itchy teeth he hates, otherwise the splitting of the face will be two loud slaps.

The 2nd Railway Garrison Brigade had just received an order to rush to reinforce Mukden, and it was said that the Chinese army had attacked the South Manchurian Railway. Fujimoto was overjoyed, thinking that the opportunity for promotion had finally arrived, but he did not expect that his third infantry squadron was assigned as the rear guard of the whole army. And the cavalry squadron of Xizhu Shaozuo, who was born in the Chinese, became the vanguard of the whole army.

Fujimoto couldn't help but feel all kinds of envy, jealousy and hatred in his heart, but there was nothing he could do, Nishitake Shaosa was born in the Chinese nationality, graduated from the fourth place in the "saber group" of Lu University, and carried a sword given by His Majesty the Emperor on his waist, his father once served as the minister to Germany, and his uncle was the former deputy minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What is the comparable surname between a "lawless group" from a mud leg and a "saber group" from a Chinese family?

"Gollum" Fujimoto's stomach rattled, and he couldn't help but smile bitterly, he hadn't eaten breakfast today.

"Eight grids!" An angry curse alarmed Fujimoto.

A teenage soldier was being repeatedly slapped by a squad leader, and a yellow rice ball not much bigger than the mouth of a teacup fell on the ground. Next to them was a 75-millimeter barreled mountain cannon modeled after the French model.

"What's going on?"

"Report to Your Excellency Captain! The man secretly ate on the march! ”

Fujimoto jumped off the horse, picked up the rice ball that had been stained with dust, carefully blew off the soil on it, and then handed it to the soldier who stole the food, and said kindly, "Are you hungry?" I'm hungry too, everybody will be hungry, everybody here hasn't had breakfast, everybody is hungry, but there are still a lot of people in front of us who need to be eliminated, these hateful people are slaughtering the railroad staff of the Empire, insulting the honor of the Empire, and His Majesty the Emperor is watching the path ahead??? Eat! When you're full, move on! ”

The little soldier threw the rice ball out of the distance with tears in his eyes, said nothing, and continued to walk forward with a resolute gaze.

The whole team seemed to be moving a little faster, and even the soldiers pushing the gun wagons stuck in the ditch seemed to have gained some strength.

Fujimoto jumped on the war horse with satisfaction, pointed ahead with his saber and said: "Not far ahead is Mukden, where there are the most beautiful women in Manchuria, for the flower girl, forward!" ”

The team burst into laughter, and everyone seemed to have an inexhaustible strength, and simply turned from walking to trotting.

The 3rd Squadron, which was on the march, suddenly felt a tremor on the ground, and Fujimoto, who was on horseback, looked back and saw smoke and dust rising from a distance.

"Enemy attack, alert!" Fujimoto roared hoarsely.

The 3rd Infantry Squadron, though only a local garrison, was well trained, and they quickly dispersed, each looking for weeds and rocks for cover. The artillery quickly set up the only mountain gun, and the two machine guns were also set up on higher ground.

The trembling of the ground became more and more severe, as if there was a monster about to open the earth and drill out, and the smoke and dust in the distance rose half a day high, and Fujimoto gasped, which was at least the momentum of five hundred cavalry.

"Send a message to the captain in front of you immediately, and tell them that we are being attacked by a large number of Shina people!" Fujimoto roared at the herald.

The Fujimoto squadron had only one artillery piece, two machine guns, and the soldiers were nothing more than a golden hook rifle per man. And he will face a whole cavalry battalion, Zhang Shuyang, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion that commands the troops. The reconnaissance battalion was converted into a forward battalion, which was responsible for clearing the way for the whole army. The forward battalion had two hundred and eighty cavalry, one man and two horses, so it was huge. The scout cavalry, which was galloping at the forefront of the team, spotted Fujimoto's squadron and immediately signaled Zhang Shuyang with the flag.

Zhang Shuyang grabbed the reins, waved his hand, the army slowly tightened the reins, and the galloping war horse began to slow down, and then gradually stopped.

"Fifteen kilometers further into the mountains, after getting there, the road is very narrow, there are cliffs on both sides, if there is a war, the two sides will inevitably be entangled, our speed, maneuver and firepower advantages can not be played, we must enter the mountains before a bloody road, quickly break into Fengtian!"

The Forward Battalion was given the task of intercepting and cutting it off in the open area before the army entered the mountains, opening a passage for the army. Speed is crucial to this tactical purpose. Zhang Shuyang's forward battalion was lightly armed with one man and two horses, and did not carry mountain artillery or howitzers, only four 60-millimeter mortars, and four Gaoping dual-purpose Makqins.

The artillerymen of the forward battalion unloaded the mortars from the pack horses, and the artillerymen began to urgently set up their artillery, while the scouts in front of the assault were already extremely close to the Fujimoto squadron, and the distance of less than 300 meters was less than 300 meters, and the two sides had no time to test and took off their rifles to shoot at each other.

The Scout, who was all cavalry, crossed the front of Fujimoto's squadron, fired a volley of bullets sideways at the galloping horse, and withdrew with a flick of the reins. It is not easy for a scout of more than 20 people to hit the cavalry lying on the ground on a horse galloping at high speed, and it is not so simple for the same army to hit the cavalry running at a high speed. Two soldiers were hit by stray bullets, and a piece of skin was bitten off the shoulder of a cavalryman, and the two sides finally made contact.

"Plow this open field with cannonballs for me!" Zhang Shuyang shouted.

The trumpeter blew the trumpet, and both sides were in the other's field of vision, and it was redundant to even raise the cannon aiming balloon, and in fact neither side had a cannon aiming balloon. The artillerymen immediately measured the distance of the troops with a sextant, and shells were filled into the muzzles.

From the binoculars, the advance army had stopped, but the dust and smoke raised by the horses' hooves did not disperse for a long time, so that Fujimoto could not figure out how many middle [***] people were on the opposite side, and only felt that his eyes were densely packed with soldiers wearing grass-green camouflage uniforms. When the enemy is outnumbered, the best option is to hold on and wait for help. But Fujimoto did the opposite, brandishing his saber and giving the order.

"Attack, all attack!"

Although the Chinese cavalry on the opposite side was numerous, they were not Russian soldiers who were called "gray cattle" because of their tenacity. From his predecessors who participated in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Eight-Nation Alliance, Fujimoto had heard that Chinese soldiers had the courage to shoot at long distances, but when the empire launched a brutal white-knuckle attack, they would lose their fighting spirit and collapse.

Fujimoto is convinced of this. Because there are too many examples of war that can be used as a footnote to this sentence.

White-edged assault, the distance between the two sides should not exceed two hundred meters, the best distance is within one hundred meters, and now the two sides are at least six hundred meters apart, but Fujimoto still gave the order to attack.

Seeing that Yue himself actually stood up, and under the urging of the marching drum, the cat trotted towards his side with a rifle in a sparse line, Zhang Shuyang couldn't help but rub his eyes, he couldn't believe that he had such good luck.

"The mortar ruler is 550 meters, the grenadier ruler is 400 meters, and the army is covered and fired! The first and third companies made a detour to both sides, and the second company rushed forward to meet the enemy! ”

The four mortars quickly adjusted their firing at the Yuan, and the machine guns raised their muzzles and fired in a wonderful arc over the heads of the cavalry.

"Knock, knock, knock, knock" With a soft sound, the mortar shell flew out of the muzzle, cut a high arc in the air, and then smashed down, the shell plunged headlong into the black earth before exploding, turning the fertile oily soil into the air. Shrapnel and the heat wave of the explosion mercilessly harvested all life within a radius of fifteen meters. The high rate of fire of mortars played a huge role in hand-to-hand combat, and the shells with full charge continued to explode, killing and wounding a large number of charging soldiers. Immediately afterwards, Makqin and the grenadiers began to exert their power, and the unobstructed open land became a wheat field for harvesting life. Makqin's tongue of fire is like a serpent's letter, cruelly licking those small human beings. Each heavy bullet can directly tear a living person into two pieces. The grenadier was fired at a rate of twenty rounds per minute. The grenadiers of the advance army were allocated to one for each squad, and the special grenades were in the hands of the experienced grenadiers, and many grenades were almost aimed at the top of his head. Each grenade can cover a space of ten square meters. Sixty-four pieces of cast-iron prefabricated fragments and filled steel balls were thrown through the air like a rain curtain, with almost no dead ends.

There are only more than 200 people in the Fujimoto squadron, how can it withstand such a dense blow, braving the rain of bullets to impact less than 200 meters, and more than 60 people have already fallen. If it weren't for the well-trained army and the very reasonable distance between the skirmishers, the losses would have been even greater.

Four hundred meters, there is still a distance of four hundred meters between the two sides, maybe as long as they can get close to the Chinese cavalry within two hundred meters, the fighting courage of these people will be annihilated, and the victory still belongs to the invincible Great Empire!

(To be continued)