The army of Shiqi Town, under the attack from both sides, finally could not support it and began to rout, part of it fled to the Kazikou in the direction of Wuhu, and part of it fled to the bay site!

The 78th Brigade successfully occupied the town of Shiyi.

At this point, after the start of the Wuhu counteroffensive, the first phase of the 26th Division's operational plan was completed.

The 76th Brigade connected Yijiang Town, Xihe Town, and Xinyuan, and the 78th Brigade captured Shiqi Town, forming an encirclement and attack on the bay site.

The gunfire in Shiqi Town is still ringing out sporadically, and the battle to encircle and suppress the remnants of the enemy continues.

But what can be seen everywhere in Shiqi Town is no longer those hateful Orientals, but tired, bloodstained, but still mighty and majestic Chinese soldiers!

Goofy stood there straight, looking at every brother who walked by, his face serious.

Such a victory, in Gao Fei's opinion, did not have much to show off, and the frontal fight was too tragic.

The 78th Brigade was killed and wounded nearly 1,000 brothers, and it was completely with a breath of blood that rushed to kill there. Although it is completely inferior to the army in terms of equipment and training, this is also a helpless choice.

However, before the war, there was a serious mistake in intelligence work, and the town of Shiqi, which was defended by more than 1,000 enemies, turned into only 300 people in the intelligence of intelligence officers. Moreover, the 78th Brigade did not know anything about the fact that the army had mountain artillery, machine gun positions, and the construction of hidden bunkers, which were critical to the attacking side.

What's even worse is that after the attack of the 78th Brigade was frustrated on the first day, Wang Kejun tried his best to call for ammunition support, but after the recovery of Shiqi Town, he did not see even a shadow.

The equipment and training are inferior to the other side, and they can be made up for by courage and blood, but the serious lag in intelligence and logistics cannot be effectively solved in a short period of time.

This is the fatal wound of the Sichuan army!

They do not lack people who dare to die, and they do not lack loyal and enthusiastic soldiers, but they are not congenitally deficient, and they are destined to rely on human life to fill these deficiencies now and for a long time in the future.

Is there anything we can do to make up for these problems? This is where Goofy meditates

If there is a bright spot in the battle of Shiqi Town, it is that Gao Fei chose Xujia Village as the location of the raid, and chose the best time to attack, and avoided greater casualties of the 78th Brigade with the meager strength of one battalion.

However, the strength of a battalion is too small after all

From a distance, I saw Wang Kejun, the commander of the 78th Brigade, walking very slowly, his steps were also very heavy, and he was holding the corpse of a soldier in his hand.

"All of them, Lizheng!"

With Goofy's order, the brothers around him all stood up straight.

Wang Kejun approached, and Gao Fei also saw clearly, in his hand, he was holding the body of head Mao Dingyuan.

"Brigade," Goofy called softly.

Wang Kejun's body paused, glanced at Gao Fei, did not speak, and held Mao Dingyuan's body, his steps were heavy, and he walked forward with difficulty.

Gao Fei led his brothers and silently followed behind Wang Kejun

When he came to the town of Shiqi Town, Wang Kejun gently put down Mao Dingyuan's body, upright, and his hands and feet were very light, as if Mao Dingyuan had not left, but was just sleeping there, and Wang Kejun was afraid of waking up his sleeping brother

Mao Dingyuan's body has been re-put on a new set of military uniforms, which Wang Kejun personally helped him put on. Your own brother, go, you have to go clean!

Staring at his brother for a long time, Wang Kejun slowly pulled out a pistol from his waist, raised it, his fingers wrenched, and the gunshot, "bang", sounded in the sky above Shiqi Town

Good go, my brother

After the 26th Division completed the intended goal, the 23rd Army launched a fierce attack on all fronts!

On the 19th, the 26th Division captured the bay site with the two regiments of Zhu Zaitang's brigade, and destroyed the Jiangnan Railway passing through the bay site, cutting off the enemy between Wuhu and Xuancheng.

At the same time, after the left flank Wang Kejun's brigade captured Sanshan Town, which was fifteen kilometers northwest of Shiqi Town, the advance headquarters of the 23rd Group Army immediately moved to this place. So far, Wuhu City only has three peripheral strongholds in the southwest suburbs of the city, Kazikou, Baima Mountain and Lugang on the Yangtze River.

Wuhu City is close at hand!

On the 19th, the 23rd Group Army adjusted its deployment and prepared to make persistent efforts to launch a strong offensive on all fronts.

That night, the officers and men of each unit had a full meal, and the soldiers wrapped a towel of vegetable rice in a face towel and tied it to their waists, preparing it for the next day's brunch, and then marched to the strongholds.

Kazikou is a hill that is nearly east-west in the direction leading to the southwest of Wuhu, it is about five miles long from east to west, there are three layers of defense line arranged on it, each layer is equipped with barbed wire, there are two mountain guns on the top layer, and there are more than 1,000 people in the army to defend it.

White Horse Mountain is located between Kazikou and Lugang on the Yangtze River, there are about 2,000 enemies, and there are ten mountain artillery, which can support Kazikou on the one hand, and Lugang on the other hand.

The task of attacking Baima Mountain was given to the 144th Division, and the 26th Division, which had been fighting continuously, was adjusted to the General Reserve.

In order to deal with the two enemies of Kazikou and Lugang, Zhang Dechang and Li Tang of the 144th Division quietly touched the slope of Kazikou Mountain at dusk and laid an ambush. The divisional engineer battalion was used to covertly remove obstacles such as barbed wire at the passes. Tang Yinghua's group, led by local villagers, made a detour and climbed from the left wing path to Baima Mountain to ambush.

At dawn on the 20th, Zhang and Li's regiments rushed out of the ambush point and suddenly attacked the enemy at Kazikou. The Tang regiment also rushed out from the flank and attacked in front of the enemy's main position on Baima Mountain, where both sides repeatedly rushed and killed.

The enemy's strategic airfield was in Nanjing, and he frequently dispatched planes to bomb and strafe us repeatedly, and then bombarded us with artillery and warships and guns in the Yangtze River; Chen Xiejie, commander of the second battalion of the Zhang regiment, was killed in the charge, and the battalion commander of the Li regiment Cao Zhipan was wounded, and more than 400 corpses of our troops were present before the battle.

Fan Ziying, deputy commander of the 144th Division, who was supervising the battle on the front line, ordered the pistol battalion commander Gao Shaoan to lead two pistol companies to reinforce Kazikou, and said to him: "Advance and live, retreat and hit the back!" ”

He also ordered Regiment Commander Qiu to lead two battalions to support White Horse Mountain. Fan Ziying's eyebrows were upside down, and he slapped the table at the command post fiercely, saying: "If you don't capture Kazikou and White Horse Mountain, you will never withdraw your troops!" ”

At the same time, the two regiments of Li Kai and Wu Shouquan of the Shi Zhaoyi Brigade of the 147th Division also attacked Baima Mountain from the left side, and joined Tang Yinghua's regiment of the 144th Division to attack the enemy's main position.

At this time, God also seemed to deliberately make trouble, heavy snow fell from the sky, and all the troops braved the rain of bullets in the heavy snow to charge forward regardless of casualties, and the defenders of White Horse Mountain finally could not support under our strong attack, and the corpses began to flee to the north after a large number of corpses. At this time, my Xia Qifeng regiment attacked Beishan, and the four regiments of men and horses violently swept away the remnants of the stronghold on the top of Baima Mountain.

The two regiments of Zhang and Li at Kazikou have broken through the front line, and one has already entered the vicinity of the top.

After a hard battle, the Zhou Ruilin Regiment of the 147th Division of the Zhang Anping Brigade that attacked Lugang eliminated the resistance forces outside the port and attacked Lugang. The enemy hurriedly blew up the road and railway bridges near Lugang and retreated to defend in the harbor.

The 146th Division, which is the second line, has moved forward to the vicinity of Baima Mountain and Lugang, reinforced the front line, and is ready to take over the first line of troops to continue to attack, continue to deal a ruthless blow to the enemy, and further expand the results of the battle.

With the success of the south and west, the roundabout troops of nearly three divisions of the 23rd Army advanced in a roundabout way to the east of the city as planned. The 148th Division had crossed the Qingyi River and bypassed the south of Wuhu City, swept away the enemy along the way like a broken bamboo, and was outflanking Wuhu City in a roundabout way. Meng Haoran's brigade had followed the 148th Division across the Qingyi River, and Tian Zhongyi's brigade was crossing the river, preparing to cooperate with the 148th Division to attack Wuhu from the east and prevent enemy reinforcements.

After five days of fighting, the 23rd Group Army's offensive was extremely fierce and rapid, and it had basically cleared the outlying strongholds of Wuhu City, forming an encirclement of the defenders of Wuhu City with nearly ten times the strength.

In the morning of the 21st, the 23rd Group Army continued to attack, and the Yue army of Kazikou and Baima Mountain had been completely defeated, and Fan Ziying stepped on the enemy's corpse to climb the commanding heights of Baima Mountain, leaving a famous saying:

"White Horse Mountain is already at my feet, please continue the attack!"

Zhang Dechang's regiment had already circled to the right rear of Lugang, which had been surrounded by our army and cut off from Wuhu, and the last three strongholds on the outskirts of Wuhu had been completely cleared.

The 23 rd Group Army has completely encircled Wuhu City, except for the Yangtze River waterway in the west, and has surrounded it on both sides in the south and east, saying that the army has become a turtle in an urn. Climb high in the White Horse Mountain Heights and take a look, Wuhu Street is in full view, and Kecheng is between one and two.

At this time, the 23rd Division, which acted as the general reserve, was transferred to the front line to prepare for the final attack on Wuhu!

Liu Yuqing, who received the order, quickly ordered all units to move forward in the direction of Wuhu. The commanders of all regiments and battalions were all elated when they saw that Wuhu was within reach, but only the commander of the 3rd battalion was flying high, but he kept his brows tightly locked, as if he was unhappy.

Yu Wenzheng is a little strange, Wuhu is at his fingertips, why is the battalion commander unhappy?

Gao Fei had no way to say what he said to his subordinates.

He couldn't be clearer that the counterattack on Wuhu could only go so far, and soon, something would happen. In the period of history that I knew, when the officers and men of the 23rd Group Army were gearing up and preparing to make persistent efforts to launch a final general attack on Wuhu, they suddenly received an urgent telegram from the headquarters of the Group Army, saying:

"Commander Liu Xiang died at 8 p.m. on January 20 at the Hankou International Hospital."

Suddenly, it was like a thunderbolt on a sunny day! When the officers and men heard the bad news, they lost all their fighting spirit, and they were informed by Xue Yue that the two divisions of the army reinforcements had already moved forward. So the besieging division was ordered to withdraw from the battlefield and counterattack Wuhu fell short.

For Goofy, there is nothing more painful than this, he clearly knows what will happen and what is about to happen, but as a small battalion commander, he is powerless to change anything.

No, there must be some way! Although it can't change everything, there must be some way to change the outcome of the Battle of Wuhu locally!

Gao Fei thought so in his heart, he must be able to think of the best way!

(To be continued)