Fan Ziying held the binoculars and looked anxiously ahead, and in the darkness he could only judge the progress of the battlefield by the explosion of grenades and the flashing firelight.

Tonight's battle is like a stage specially built for him Fan Ziying. The actors on the stage are Zeng Xuehua and his two battalions, and the director off the stage is Fan Ziying. Except for the gunfire of guns and artillery on the battlefield of Lujia Village, and the sound of killing shook the sky, the more than 10-kilometer front was completely silent, and there was no gunfire anywhere. Commanders on both sides and soldiers with guns seemed to be engrossed in the performance.

Fan Ziying continued to send heralds to inquire about the progress of the battlefield, judging from the explosion of grenades and gunfire, the battle line was advancing, and the faint shouts of killing gradually faded away. When the sky was about to dawn, the herald sent a message: Our army has captured the position of Lujia Village and is consolidating. Fan Ziying's face suddenly relaxed, and he immediately conveyed the order of the Military Committee, and promoted Zeng Xuehua to colonel and regimental commander.

But he didn't make Fan Ziying feel comfortable for long. As soon as the morning dawned, several observation balloons rose into the sky, and heavy artillery fire and planes bombed the Lujiacun position in turn, and at the same time, they continued to block the reinforcements in the rear with artillery fire and bombs, covering the counterattack of the Japanese army, and repeatedly charging with infantry. There was smoke rising from the position, and sand and rocks were flying. Reinforcements could not come up, and only two battalions of the 863 Regiment held this position on their own. Fortunately, the enemy left behind a large number of weapons and ammunition, which was enough to hold on.

On the position, it was impossible to distinguish the battle line, the enemy and the enemy were staggered, Zeng Xuehua ran back and forth, relying on the military horn to command the troops.

Zeng Xuehua has always been strict in leading troops, active in tactics, and paying attention to individual combat training. The usual training has been effective at this time. As soon as the soldiers heard the sound of the charge, they jumped out of the trench and swung their broadswords, raising their bayonets to meet the enemy. As soon as the enemy retreated, he immediately looked for a place to hide from shells and bombs. Sometimes a shell came down and hit our fortifications, often a few or a dozen soldiers were blown up to pieces. The fortifications were blown down, and the corpses were pulled for cover and the battle continued.

The wounded could not be sent at all, and the seriously wounded were lying there and groaning; If the injury is light, the hand does not leave the gun, and if you knock it down, it will be counted as one. A veteran surnamed Tang of the Fourth Company was blown off his legs by a shell, and Zeng Xuehua ordered the stretcher team to carry it down. But as soon as the words fell, Old Don had already raised a grenade, grabbed the fuse with one hand and shouted: "Whoever wants to carry me down, I will die with him!" The brothers were stunned, and then they jumped up and hugged the veteran and cried bitterly. At the end of the battle, Don veterans died on the position.

On the 24th, another day was fought, and the position was still under Zeng Xuehua's control. On the night of the 24th, brigade commander Tang Mingzhao ordered the 864th Regiment to reinforce Zhaoyuan, and the 864th Regiment reinforced under artillery fire, suffering heavy casualties, and finally entered the position, and fought with the 863rd Regiment until three o'clock in the morning of the 25th, and the army completely retreated. The battle lasted more than twenty hours, and the soldiers did not eat a single meal. At this time, the 863 regiment was withdrawn under the leadership of the regiment commander Zeng Xuehua. There are more than 1,000 people in a regiment, and there are only more than 120 people who can walk down on their own, of which only one is the battalion commander Jiang Shubin and four platoon commanders.

At the same time that Zeng Xuehua's regiment was fighting with the enemy, a fierce battle that made Fan Ziying's heart even more worrying unfolded on the right flank of the 863 regiment.

Connecting the left flank of the 863rd Regiment in Lujia Village was the Taohuatan position. Here, after continuous attacks, the army has occupied a position about one kilometer wide on the south bank of the Taohuatan River, forming a bridgehead fortress that tears through our army's defense network to the south. When the 863rd Regiment resumed its position in Lujiacun on the night of the 23rd, the 866th Regiment led by Hou Zongyang of the 144th Division's Liao Jing'an Brigade moved up to cover its flank and prevent the Japanese army from breaking through from the flank. The position is directly facing the "bridgehead" of the army.

The next morning, when the army attacked Lujia Village, it also launched a ferocious attack on Hou Zongyang's regiment. The severe test was placed in front of Hou Zongyang in an instant.

Hou Zongyang is strict in governing the army, good at approaching soldiers, happy to share weal and woe with soldiers in peacetime, and taking the lead in wartime and moving forward heroically. He has never had vices such as lack of food and salary deductions, and has won the support of soldiers and the love of Fan Ziying, and is a young and promising general under Fan Ziying.

The offensive began, with heavy bombardment by aircraft artillery. The enemy bullied our troops and had no power to fight back, and they wreaked havoc at will, and the planes frantically dropped bombs and strafed in the sky, tumbling up and down, and doing all kinds of strange air shows with a whistling voice. The position of the 866th Regiment was in an open field, and there was no danger to rely on, only to dig deep fortifications and soak in water to avoid the explosive shrapnel flying everywhere.

When the enemy infantry charged, they put themselves within range and opened fire on the soldiers who were running out of breath and also sweating on their faces, and then a burst of grenades, as the smoke of the grenade explosions rose, rushed up and mixed together.

The plain dam was unconcealed, and when the artillery fire was ineffective, the brave won when the two armies met, which was the same for the soldiers on both sides. It is said that the soldiers are skilled in piercing thorns, well-trained, and under the drumming of the bushido spirit, they are all brave and extraordinary; Our soldiers have already been burned to the point of madness by the anger of hatred, and as long as the two sides are close, the broadsword slashing is no less than the bayonet of the Type 38 rifle! This is the experience that Hou Zongyang summed up during his inspection of the battlefield, and it is also the mantra he used to guide the battle!

He persisted in this method of warfare for a whole day, repelled more than 10 frantic attacks by the enemy, and the corpses of both the enemy and us were strewn all over the field, and the ground was full of broken arms and stumps, and there were blood stains on the beaches.

It was nearly dusk, and the enemy was about to attack again, and six or seven more observation balloons were raised in the rear of the battle line, followed by heavy shelling. The soldiers braved the rain of bullets to bring food and rice, and the soldiers who had not eaten rice all day were already very hungry, so they were able to pick up the rice balls and stuff them into their mouths, and then pinch the rice balls and put them into the mouths of the wounded who could open their mouths.

The attacking enemy, under the cover of dense machine-gun fire nets, began to charge again, and Hou Zongyang commanded the battalions to counterattack, and then ordered a countercharge to the enemy. As the trumpet suddenly sounded, Hou Zongyang took the lead in jumping out of the trench and commanding the soldiers to rush forward desperately. Bullets whizzed past his ears, and at this moment, Hou Zongyang, who was charging, suddenly held his head with both hands and fell to the ground.

Hou Chenghui, the company commander who rushed to the side, was Hou Zongyang's cousin, and when he saw that the situation was not good, he screamed and pounced, holding him in his arms and seeing that the machine gun bullet hit the head, his face was covered with blood, and he could not speak.

Hou Chenghui shouted at the guards: "Take the white medicine!" ”

Hou Zongyang shook his hand with difficulty, and Hou Chenghui knew that he meant "Leave me alone!" He pointed forward with his hand again, and Hou Chenghui knew that he meant "Charge!" ”

Follow his head tilted, unconscious.

Hou Chenghui hurriedly found a wooden plank and carried it to the brigade headquarters. When brigade commander Liao Jing'an saw this, he couldn't help but burst into tears, and braved the enemy's bombardment to personally send him to the division headquarters, but unfortunately Hou Zongyang died of anger on the way to the division headquarters and died heroically at the age of Chinese New Year's Eve.

After Hou Zongyang died, the brigade commander Liao Jing'an immediately took his communications staff officer Xi Quan Yong and rushed to the place where Hou Zongyang died to command and supervise the battle.

The soldiers who were fighting hard and persevering were greatly boosted when they saw the brigade commander coming in person. This fortification has been completely destroyed, enemy planes came to bomb and strafe again, a bomb exploded behind the brigade commander, Xi Quanyong was pushed far away by the wave of air set off by the explosion, and the two guards around the brigade commander were blown to the ground, one killed and one wounded. A piece of shrapnel went into the brigade commander's chest, a piece of shrapnel slashed through his arm, wounded in two places, covered in blood, but still insisted on directing the battle and did not get out of the line of fire.

The commander of the 2nd Battalion commanded the whole battalion to storm the enemy, but the enemy fiercely strafed and bombarded the advance battalion with dense machine-gun fire and artillery fire, and the 2nd Battalion suffered heavy casualties, was suppressed by the fire, and could not raise its head. The battalion commander also gathered all the men and miscellaneous servants of the battalion, took off their shirts, went shirtless, and under the cover of machine guns and other firepower, opened the way with grenades and pounced on the enemy.

When Fan Ziying learned that Hou Zongyang had died, his heart was like a knife. As soon as he shook his head, he immediately ordered Chief of Staff Cheng Hanmou to come to the front line to command. Cheng Hanmou said to Fan Ziying on the phone:

"There is still an old mother in the family, if she dies, please ask the military commander to take care of her."

Cheng Hanmou picked up a big knife and commanded a battalion of reinforcements to rush up in the face of artillery fire, and the battle became a tug-of-war. A shell exploded near Cheng Hanmou, and with a flash of fire, Cheng Hanmou fell to the ground and was seriously injured. Cao Shaowu, the commander of the 2nd battalion, stepped forward again and continued to command the operation. A burst of machine guns came, and Cao Shaowu was shot several times and died honorably.

In the next company, company commander Xie Peng and two platoon commanders were all knocked to the ground one after another, and there were seven or eight people left in the company, commanded by Wu Yunchun, the second platoon commander. Another burst of machine-gun bullets swept like the wind, and two bullets pierced Wu Yunchun's left and right thighs, and at the moment when he felt his legs numb and tumbled to the ground, a bullet hit his tail vertebrae again, his eyes turned black, and he fell into a blood pit. The charging men did not care about the fall of anyone next to them, nor the bullets flying around them, until they repelled the enemy and consolidated their positions.

When the battalion commander saw the enemy retreating, he immediately led the remaining soldiers of the battalion to jump out of the trench in pursuit. The soldiers chased and killed, saying that they could not form an army and were full of corpses. The battalion commander commanded the soldiers to slash at those close and shoot at those far away, and the anger of hatred burned so that he lost the calm that a commander should have, and chased him all the way to the bank of Taohuatan, not thinking that he had entered the enemy's three-sided fire net on the other side of the river. The cotton fields here have long been flattened, and there is no hiding on the flat ground. The enemy on three sides opened fire in unison, and dozens of machine guns, small cannons, and grenadiers formed an impenetrable network of fire, enveloping this group of opponents who were chasing them to the death in the smoke of death.

The battalion commander and the soldiers he led were all killed.

At this time, there were only 200 of the more than 1,000 people in Hou Zongyang's regiment, which were organized into a battalion under the leadership of the battalion commander Ma Guoping and merged into Zeng Xuehua's regiment.

But at this time, Zhangdu on the right flank of the 144th Division was lost again, and the task of recovering Zhangdu fell on Zeng Xuehua's shoulders.

The Zhangdu position is located on the left bank of the Taohuatan River, here is an open cotton field, the cotton stalk has been withered and yellowed, the cotton with white flowers has not been harvested, it has already been beaten by artillery fire, and the cotton stalk half a person deep looks boundless.

After Zeng Xuehua received the order, he ordered all units to run forward under artillery fire regardless of casualties. When they arrived near Zhangdu, they saw a palpitating sight: the defending troops had been routed and were fleeing in all directions in the cotton fields. The Yue army occupying the Zhangdu position followed closely behind, using machine gun fire to strafe the fleeing soldiers. The merciless bullets cut the soldiers to the ground like they cut down the yellowed cotton poles. When the fleeing soldiers saw the reinforcements coming up, it was like seeing a savior, and those who couldn't run simply lay on the ground and gasped for breath.

Zeng Xuehua immediately ordered the soldiers to disperse the formation, bend down and use the cotton pole to cover the approaching target. Seeing that the two sides were about to meet, with a terrible trumpet, the soldiers of our 794th Regiment suddenly puffed up their chests, picked up their guns and fired, and the light machine guns spat out tongues of fire. Yue, who was pursuing forward, did not expect such a team to emerge in the cotton field at all, and he was dizzy for a while. This time, it was their turn to fall to the ground like crops cut down by bullets.

The 863rd Regiment took advantage of the momentum to launch a charge, and rushed over the whole line, the big blades splashed with blood and tumbled up and down, and the knives on the Sichuan-made rifles were all red. The army that was hit by the sudden blow came to its senses and quickly organized resistance, and those devils screamed in their mouths and rushed forward with bayonets. The two sides were white knives together, mixed together, shouting and screaming when they were injured and fell to the ground, and it was impossible to distinguish whether it was the enemy or me.

At this time, in the twilight and twilight, the enemy's observation balloon lost its effect, the long-range fire lost its power, and the follow-up troops led by the brigade commander continued to kill in. After a fierce fight, the army finally could not support it, leaving the corpses of the dead to flee backwards and retreat to the original defense. The Zhangdu position was occupied by the 863rd Regiment, and in addition to leaving the corpses of the enemy on the position, there were also weapons and ammunition that had not had time to be withdrawn, which became the trophies of the 863rd Regiment.

It was getting late, the army stopped attacking, and their positions fell silent.

The soldiers were busy treating the wounded and cleaning up the bodies of the fallen soldiers. The bodies were gathered and prepared for burial in the cotton fields; The corpses of the enemy soldiers were also dragged into several craters and hastily covered with a little soil, not for the sake of benevolence, but for the sake of odor.

Some of the cotton that was originally snow-white was dyed bright red by the blood of the soldiers, like a blooming flower. If the writers of the book were to describe this scene, they might say that it was cherry blossoms, because the cotton dyed red also had the blood that flowed from the soldiers!

I really don't know why there is such a war in the world? The officers who patrolled the positions did not have time to think about it, or they did not think so at all, that the duty of a soldier was to fight. When the enemy enters the homeland, the soldier should resist with his body and life.

As for these people who fell here, why did they come all the way here to die, this is their own business!

The 144th Division, with their loyalty and bravery, created a miracle in the Chencun Reservoir, forcing the Yue Army to put more troops here, directly relieving the frontal pressure of the 26th Division.

Just when the 144th Division was fighting bravely to kill the enemy, the 1st Company guarding Guanzi Village also reached the last moment!

(To be continued)