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The army began to focus its attacks on the Fifth Theater.

In the eyes of the army commander-in-chief, as long as the fifth theater is defeated first, then the ninth theater can be swept away, and then the sworn enemy of the "imperial army" can be defeated in one fell swoop:

Goofy!

At dawn on August 1, 1940, the army marched westward in three ways, and the prelude to the battle was finally opened.

At dawn, the army first tested fire on the 84th Army guarding the front of the Xianghua Road, and then started to dry up, and the shells smashed fiercely into the positions of the 174th and 189th divisions of the 84th Army's avant-garde, and then, under the cover of cavalry and tanks, the infantry launched an impatient attack.

After dawn, the planes of the Chinese army came in groups and bombed in turn, and the battle situation began to become tense. The foundation of the 84th Army is the veteran unit of the Gui system, which has been tempered by the Battle of Wuhan and the Battle of Suizao, and its officers and men are far from being comparable to the local troops in Guangxi, and it is a powerful force.

The new army commander Mo Shujie is a veteran of the Gui family, a strong general when Lu Rongting was in the old Gui department, and the head of the Gui group during the Northern Expedition, with outstanding achievements. Now, the officers and men are under his command to meet the battle, and although they have suffered heavy casualties, they are unwavering on the whole front.

Mo Shujie became more and more angry. Before the war, he judged that if the war started, the army must be the 84th Army, which had selected a frontal position like the Suizao Battle, and broke through from the middle to take Xiangfan. But neither the theater nor the army group agreed with his judgment. After taking over the defense, the 84th Army proposed to transfer engineering troops, issue stones to build semi-permanent fortifications, and add artillery units, but they were not approved. Now that the war has begun, Shangfeng has strictly ordered the officers and soldiers on the front line to live and die with the position. didn't let the horses graze, and asked the horses to run violently, which made Mo Shujie very annoyed, not afraid of staring at King Kong, afraid of the blindfolded Bodhisattva, but he was a new official before taking office, so he had to hold back and not get angry. Since Shangfeng strictly ordered to live and die with the position, Mo Shujie also strictly ordered all divisions:

"You can't evacuate your position without an order, even to the last man. Violators of military law are engaged! ”

Because the fortifications were not too hard, in the afternoon, the position of the 189th Division was opened because of the heavy bombardment of the artillery fire of the 189th Division, and as soon as the tanks and cavalry rushed, two gaps were opened, and the deputy commander and commander of the 189th Division, Ling Zhuxi, immediately organized the side fire force to carry out cross-strafing, and the devils behind did not dare to go deeper, and quietly retreated on their own in the middle of the night, so that the officers and men of the 189th Division did not lose their positions, and repaired the gap overnight.

The position of the 174th Division was also the same as that of the 189th Division, and it was attacked by the combined arms of the Chinese army, and the battle was very fierce, but the casualties were not large, and the position was still safe. Because the focus of the attack was on the 189th Division in the left garrison area, the casualties of the 189th Division were greater than those of the 174th Division.

Second, the army changed its offensive route and advanced from the mountains to attack the important strongholds of the 84th Army. The 174th Division's Rolling Mountain in the right garrison area and the 189th Division's Dazhushan were the places where they stormed, and the battle was even more tragic than yesterday. The army used artillery as its main attack weapon, and the sound of artillery was as dense as the sound of machine guns. These shells were the deadliest for the 84th Army. Because they hit quite accurately. The army's balloon in mid-air is the best artillery observation post. As long as the heavy machine guns of the [***] squadron are fired, they will be bombarded by enemy artillery; The mortars behind the position were also spotted by the devils in the balloon and suppressed by artillery fire.

After the indiscriminate bombardment, there was no movement on the Dazhushan position of the 189th Division. Thinking that the defenders had been wiped out by artillery fire, the army stopped bombarding the first line, and the sparse sound of artillery shot at the rear of the position. Why did it smash to the rear? That is, in order to prevent the reinforcement of reserves in the rear of the 189th Division.

At the moment when the cannon was extended, the soldiers on the ground took the tanks as the lead, and the infantry and cavalry swarmed forward. Unexpectedly, the defenders in the trenches suddenly jumped out and fired fiercely and intensively with rifles, machine guns, and grenades, causing the devils to fall on their backs and suffer heavy casualties. The tank was not afraid of stepping, machine gun fire, and still continued to rush forward "suddenly", and some soldiers saw the devil tank rampage, as if in a no-man's land, they were angry, so they jumped out of the trench, climbed onto the tank, and threw grenades into the car. The devil infantry, under the cover of tanks, rushed to the edge of the trenches. However, in front of the position, the superiors of the 189th Division did not allocate stones, and the officers and men had already artificially cut a large steep slope, and the devil began to climb, the slope slipped, and the grenades on it rolled down in piles with smoke, so frightened that the devil screamed, and immediately turned sharply like a monkey, and retreated backwards.

But the devil commander was very unwilling. At 2 p.m., the officers and men of the 189th Division were repairing their positions that had been damaged by artillery fire, and the artillery of the Japanese army began to bombard again. In less than two hours, most of the trenches of the 84th Army were flattened or blown into funnels, and even the steep slopes that had been artificially cut in front of the battle were flattened, and the defenders suffered heavy casualties. Seeing that he could not stop the enemy's surprise attack, the commander of the Ling Zhuxi Division ordered to withdraw to the second line of positions.

After the army occupied the stronghold of Dazhushan, it did not pursue.

The defenders of the 174th Division's line from Rolling Mountain to Liangshuigou also suffered heavy losses because of the attack by the Japanese army, and they successively moved to the second line position in front of Lishan and formed a line with the 189th Division.

After the two divisions were transferred to the second-line position, in order to carry out the combat mission of "holding on to the front for seven days" by the superiors, Commander Mo Shujie ordered the 174th and 189th divisions to organize a night attack by commandos in an attempt to recover important strongholds such as Dazhushan and Rolling Mountain.

The Yue army had much better weapons than the Gui army, and the defense was quite strong; And after they occupied the position, they transformed the fortifications of the position and used it for them in turn. Therefore, when the night raiding team of the 84th Army approached the stronghold, the blockade fire of the devils was very dense, and the searchlights and flares illuminated the front of the position as if it were day, and the night raiding team was finally unable to break through, so it had to retreat back in the darkness of the night.

After dawn on the third day, the army launched an attack on the second line as the old way of fighting the day before, but the battle situation of the 84th Army was very different from yesterday. The second line of positions consisted only of foxholes, with no trenches to cover them and no communication ditches to move around. As soon as the officers and men saw the devil's big balloon rise into the air, it was as if the enemy was already standing above their heads, and their confidence in resistance was shaken. As a result, as soon as the devils attacked, the troops were forced to retreat step by step.

Just before noon, the front-line troops of the 189th Division retreated to the vicinity of Dujiabi, where the division headquarters was located. Du Jiaguo had also been bombarded by enemy artillery, and then, the devil's machine gun also strafed to the gate, and the enemy troops on the left flank had galloped towards Gaocheng, almost cutting off the rear road of the 189th Division. In such an urgent situation, Ling Qianxi asked Commander Mo Shujie by phone for instructions on the transfer route and the subsequent assembly location, but the phone had not been connected, and the front-line troops had retreated to both sides of the division headquarters, so Ling Qianxi had no choice but to order the 565th Regiment close to the division headquarters to be the rearguard, lead the division headquarters to retreat to Xiajiabha, where the military headquarters is located, and then follow the military headquarters to the south side of Tongbai Mountain through Liujiahe, Wushandian, Lutou Town, and Taiping Town to Zaoyang. The remaining 566th, 567th and supplementary regiments and the 174th Division were concentrated along Xianghua Road through Jingmingpu, Tangxian Town, Tangwangdian, and Suiyangdian to Zaoyang.

The 173rd Division was originally the second line of the whole army, which built field fortifications near Jingmingpu, and was responsible for the task of launching a battle on the second line to block the enemy when the first line position was lost. However, the division commander Zhong Yi usually only sent some sentries to guard the fortified area, and he did not expect that the front would suddenly collapse. When the first-line troops retreated to Jingmingpu, the tanks and cavalry of the army pursued at the tail of the army, but the troops of the division did not have time to deploy, and as soon as they entered the position, they were forced to retreat to Tangxian Town with the rout troops who had retreated from the first line, and changed to a covering team to cover the main force of the army to ensure the safe retreat of the military headquarters.

After the completion of the task of retreating the main force of the 173rd Division from Tangxian Town to Zaoyang, it broke away from the line of fire, Zhong Yi did not see the enemy chasing after him, and expected that the enemy's main force must be directed at Zaoyang, and there was a possibility of copying the [***] team, so it was decided that the two columns would assemble from Lutou Town through Qingliang Temple, Xiaohe Street, Taiping Town and other areas to the vicinity north of Luyanyi. The action starts in the afternoon. The 518th and 519th regiments of the left flank column under his direct command and the troops directly under the division marched. The large army walked about 20 miles through Qingliang Temple, and the 518th Regiment at the tail end was threatened by the army on the left side, so it immediately turned to the southern foot of Tongbai Mountain, marched from the trail, and broke away from the main force of the division. Master Zhong walked and walked, dropped a regiment, and he didn't know it. The commander of the 518th regiment, Li Junxiong, also did not contact the division headquarters and fled in a hurry.

As a result, when Division Commander Zhong Yi led the left column through Taiping Town to the east bank of the Tang River in Cangbei, he was stopped by devils, and the 519th Regiment immediately fought with the enemy. Because a regiment was dropped, the troops only knew about it as soon as they were sold. Without a rearguard, the officers and men were suddenly quite confused, and the large army "hula" and rushed through the encirclement, running forward desperately, leaving behind a small part that could not break through the encirclement, and most of the rest marched westward. In this chaotic breakout, Division Commander Zhong Yi was also left behind. He led the guards and pistols of thirty or forty men to the south from the west bank of the Tang River, trying to find a way to break out of the siege to the west. This guard company did not carry heavy weapons, all of them were pistols, and a dozen firepower would not work, and because the soldiers were all wearing pistols, the devil judged that there must be high-ranking officials in it according to the sound of the pistols, so the siege was more fierce.

The pistols tried their best to resist, but they were exhausted, the casualties were exhausted, and the commander of the division Zhong also died heroically, only two or three soldiers survived, and the rest all died.

Although the 518th Regiment did not experience the tragic scene of the division headquarters being besieged just now, the first part of the regiment was also surrounded by devils on the east bank of the Tang River in Taiping Town.

Regiment Commander Li personally led his troops to fight the enemy, and finally ran out of ammunition, and dozens of officers and men below Regiment Commander Li Junxiong were captured.

The 519th Regiment of the division was blocked by the enemy on the east bank of the Tang River more than ten miles north of Cangbei, and after fierce fighting, the main force broke through to the north that night.

The main forces of the 517th Regiment of the right wing column and the 518th Regiment of the left flank of the division were unable to break out of the enemy's encirclement line, and retreated to the mountains south of Qiyi Town in Henan Province before noon the next day to rest and wait for their orders.

The 84th Army, which had retreated with the Northern Front, in addition to the 173rd Division, the military headquarters, the 174th Division, and the 189th Division, arrived at Zaoyang on the second day after leaving the battlefield.

The 84th Army was ordered to "hold out for seven days", collapsed in 3 days, and sacrificed a division commander.

Mok's judgment was not entirely correct. This time, the army advanced westward on three routes, and only feinted against the frontal defensive positions of the 84th Army to attract the main force; In addition, with more than 100 tanks and 70 or 80 planes, they marched north from the east bank of the Xianghe River and stormed the Xu Shaozong Department of the 29th Group Army of the Sichuan Army. As a result, his recommendations also disrupted the decision-making of the theater command. In the fierce battle, Xu Bu was not supported and retreated into Dahong Mountain. The army then drove straight into the army, smashing into Shuangman, intending to join forces with the army attacking in the north, to encircle the main force of the Fifth Theater and fight a war of annihilation.

The situation has become more dangerous.

Around 5 May, when the 84th Army was assembling in Zaoyang, Li Zongren, commander of the Fifth Theater, ordered the 84th Army to immediately occupy positions on the outskirts of Zaoyang, resist the enemy advancing westward, and ensure the safety of Xiangfan.

After receiving the order, Commander Mo Shujie immediately convened a meeting of officers above the battalion commander level of the Zaoyang unit, conveyed the order, assigned tasks, and finally said: "If the enemy situation is urgent and there is no time to build fortifications, use the city wall and the natural features in the eastern and western suburbs to block the attack." ”

At noon on the second day, outside the south gate of Zaoyang City and on the road, enemy tanks and cavalry had been discovered, but they only reconnoitred back and forth and did not attack. They did not fight, and the defenders of the city fired at them, and the army did not return fire.

The defenders did not go out of the city to pursue. They have become frightened birds, as long as the slightest wind and grass is suspected of the enemy attack, a few shots are actually just a strong courage.

At dawn the next day, the enemy still did not attack Zaoyang City from the front, but only bombed by aircraft and fired artillery. Suddenly, the main force stormed the defenders' positions on the western slopes in an attempt to bypass the north of the city, cut off the retreat of the defenders in the city, and encircle and annihilate them.

The 84th Army fought fiercely with the enemy at the foot of the hillside, and because of the gentle slope of the terrain, it was soon rushed into the position by cavalry and tanks. The defenders retreated step by step, retreating to more than half up the mountain, the mountain was steep, and the attacking troops of the army were limited by the terrain before they could gain a foothold. And the defenders reached the top of the boundary, condescending, the machine gun also worked, don't throw grenades, just throw them down, this time the majesty came up, the army was suppressed in the middle of the mountain, staring dryly. One couldn't go up, the other didn't dare to come down, and the two sides confronted each other one after another.

At about 1 p.m., the enemy's cavalry, about six or seven thousand, and thirty or forty tanks, rushed from the Jijia River northeast of Zaoyang to the left rear of the 84th Army. When it was discovered, the vanguard of the army was already close to the headquarters of the 84th Army, almost encircling the entire army. Mo Shujie hurriedly ordered the troops defending the city and outside the city to retreat quickly.

Before the troops had completely withdrawn from their positions, the headquarters of the 189th Division was attacked by the cavalry of the Japanese army, and it was chaotic. The military headquarters hurriedly led the 174th and 189th Divisions to rush along the left bank of the Tang River and retreat, ran to Yang, crossed the Tang River, and escaped from the encirclement of the Yue army. That night, the main force camped in a village west of the Tang River.

At this time, the military headquarters and the 173rd Division were still in contact, and the Zhou Jingchu Regiment of the 174th Division, the Bai Mianchu Regiment of the 189th Division, and the Menguoan Battalion were all scattered by the devils when they retreated in Zaoyang, and they also lost contact with the military headquarters. After Commander Mo arrived at Laohe, he learned that the remnants of the 517th and 518th regiments of the 173rd Division had fled to Qiyi Mountain; The first battalion of Zhou Jingchu's regiment and Bai Mianchu's regiment joined up with the two regiments of the 173rd Division in the mountain, and only then did they get in touch with the headquarters of the commander of the fifth theater, so they were under the direct command of the commander's department and attacked behind enemy lines. The 519th Regiment retreated early in Tangxian Town and was not surrounded or intercepted by devils, but the team was still very scattered and retreated to Gwanghua in batches.

After camping overnight on the west bank of the Tang River, Commander Mo led the main army to camp overnight, and then moved towards Deng County at dawn, preparing to collect and assemble the troops in Deng County before driving back to Laohekou. At 6 o'clock in the afternoon, most of the troops entered the county town of Dengxian and were being assigned camp, when gunfire broke out outside the city, and the troops who had just entered the city gate hurriedly climbed the city tower and returned fire. The troops in the city also shouted everywhere: "The devil is coming!" The devil is coming! "The officers and soldiers had no time to resist and fled for their lives to the west and north gates. The streets were crowded and the streets were narrow, and most of the vehicles carrying infantry guns, heavy machine guns, and their baggage were abandoned in the city.

When the team withdrew from the city, it was already ** o'clock in the evening, it was dark and it was raining lightly, the troops who escaped from the city from the west gate took Lin Pao and Mengjialou back to Laohekou, and the troops who escaped from the city from the north gate detoured to Zhangcun and returned to Laohekou, preparing to go to Guanghua City to concentrate. On the morning after leaving Deng County, Ling Zhuxi received a report that the rear guard had been attacked, and only then did he learn that the "enemy" who suddenly attacked the city gate yesterday afternoon was not the Yue army, but the militia group of Bei Tingfang, a local armed force in the inner countryside of Henan.

Why do the Chinese fight the Chinese?

Blame themselves. The Fifth Theater has several group armies under its jurisdiction, all of which are very poorly disciplined. Tang Enbo's 31st Group Army ranked first, and the 84th Army of the Gui Department ranked second. After Mo Shujie took office, he shot a soldier who bullied the people, imprisoned a few officers and soldiers who gambled, and made an example of chickens and monkeys, but he still failed to stop the unhealthy trend. The Kuomintang army became a troubled army, as soon as they passed through the villages, the villagers fled one after another, and the troops forcibly pulled the people, looted property, and made a great enemy, but the Kuomintang army itself became the enemy of the common people, and they were red when they saw it.

The code name of the military headquarters of the 84th Army and the armbands of each division, the military headquarters is the word "hair", the 173rd Division is the word "Yang", the 174th Division is the word "light", and the 189th Division is the word "big". Annihilation, captivity, burning, killing. "The 84th Army burned, killed, annihilated, captured, scooped, and gambled, completely revealing the surname of the wolf, not only the officers and soldiers, but also the political workers, the 174th Division Political Department from the director, down to the secretary, section chief, section members, in the area of the two ditches in the defense of the land have concubines, each with a pair of mahjong, a pair of poker. The folk customs of Henan have always been strong, and there are many poles. They plagued the people, and when the people saw them, they naturally had the word "kill".

Ling Zhuxi and the others didn't expect that they escaped death from the hands of the devils, and they were chased and killed by the militia, and they were so angry that they scolded their mothers. After the troops were concentrated, the officers and men heard that it was the local militia that was chasing and killing them in the city of Dengxian County, and they were even more enthusiastic and demanded that they be killed again. When Mo Shujie learned about it, he scolded Ling Zhuxi and said: "A small militia has driven out thousands of of you, are you ashamed?!" ”

But the officers and men under his command couldn't swallow this breath and wanted to fight back. Mo Shujie said: "The enemy is current, to avoid affecting the War of Resistance, let the Governor's Department negotiate with the county magistrate of Deng County!" ”

As a result, the Fifth Theater Governor's Department stepped forward and ordered the county magistrate of Deng County to return the confiscated weapons and baggage and punish the militia group.

Although the political axe of Deng County hated the soldiers who "opened their teeth and claws internally and scattered sand externally", they had no choice, and they did not dare to ask for their lives for the people, so they sent a few "first offenders" and hastily solved this troublesome matter on the grounds that "the masses did not know the truth and were deceived and attacked by the first offender, and there were too many people to be caught"!

(To be continued)