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Chapter 1576 Killing the devil

Brutal fighting has been going on for ten days and ten nights. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Ever since the Japanese approached Gurskoye along the railway, this gateway to the valleys and plains of the lower reaches of the Amur River (Heilongjiang River) has withstood round after round of Japanese attacks.

"Kill, give!"

With a heart-rending roar, hundreds of fiery snakes emerged from the edge of the forest to the south, and groups of Japanese soldiers pounced on the hill to the north along the fire channel.

The yellow figure like a wave, dense, like an ant that relocates before a rainy day, is shocking. From the dense forest area to the open area of more than 300 meters on the hill to the north, half of the soldiers passed in the blink of an eye.

In this area of the mountain pass, the altitude is actually between 400 and 600 meters, although at a glance, the mountains make people look intimidating, but when you get closer, you can find that the slope is only more than 20 degrees, so the defensive advantage is not as obvious as imagined.

The 3rd Division of the 1st Army of the Mongolian Military Region, which was urgently dispatched by train from Kulen to assist in the defense, arranged a regiment on the front-line position in the north.

Lieutenant Colonel Cai Ziqiang, commander of the Ninth Regiment, stood in front of the lookout of the underground bunker, holding a telescope in his hand, and closely watched every move of the Japanese army.

The movement of the devil soldiers was extremely fast, and in a blink of an eye, they had already rushed to the bottom of the slope, and if they followed this sprint speed, in another ten seconds, the Japanese army would rush into the dense minefield on the hillside.

Not long after Cai Ziqiang's thoughts fell, the Japanese charging team had already entered the minefield.

With the explosion of the first mine, the broken bodies of the two Japanese soldiers suddenly flew into the sky, and the air wave mixed with shrapnel and marbles mixed with it swept across a large area, and the surrounding five or six Japanese soldiers were affected, or covered their stomachs, or stroked their limbs, or covered their heads, screaming miserably.

The frequent stepping on of the mines instantly blew countless gaps in the dense stormtroop formation of the Japanese army.

The first wave of Japanese attacking troops, which had lost the momentum and sharpness of their charge, immediately dispersed left and right, giving up the passage of advance to the second wave of shock troops that followed.

Cai Ziqiang observed the casualties of the devil soldiers, and at the same time kept calculating the total number of troops invested by the Japanese army in his heart, so far there have only been two waves, and the other side has invested thousands of people, it seems that the Japanese army in the woods opposite should really be a wing as estimated by the reconnaissance force.

During this time, the fighting in the area around Vladivostok was tepid, but Gurskoye became a meat grinder in the true sense of the word, because the city was located at the mouth of the gorge, the attacking Japanese army could not be used, and could only use brigade by brigade to launch an attack with refueling tactics.

In response to the Japanese attack, the Far Eastern Army had already made careful arrangements, built hundreds of batteries, fortifications and bunkers on the mountains on both sides, and used fan-shaped fortifications to entertain the Japanese troops attacking in a straight line in front of the gorge, and in ten days, the Japanese army lost at least 10,000 soldiers here.

The Japanese high command deployed in Nikolaevsk (Temple Street) in the area of the mouth of the Amur River to carry out the landing on the one hand, and on the other hand looked for other passages leading from the Sovietport-based railway to Komsomolsk, so that the mountainous area of more than 50 kilometers on the north and south flanks of Gurskoye also became a battlefield of firefighting.

Fortunately, from the very beginning, the top brass of the Far Eastern Army realized that the Japanese army might choose flank attack tactics, and while organizing the troops to withdraw westward, they asked for help from the An Jiajun. After arriving in Gurskoye, Dong Jinming deployed the 2nd Division on the southern front and the 3rd Division on the northern front in view of the terrain.

In order to provide the most powerful support to the front-line troops, the Mongolian Military Region assigned a tank brigade directly under it to Dong Jinming, who split one of the regiments into two parts and used it as a killer weapon for the defensive troops. The remaining two tank regiments and the 1st Division serve as strategic general reserves, ready to plug possible gaps.

......

While Cai Ziqiang was figuring out how to destroy as many enemies as possible, the commander of the 65th Wing of the 127th Infantry Brigade of the 114th Division of the Japanese Army, Tsuneta Tsuneta, was also paying attention to the progress of the battle.

According to the ground intelligence provided by the Air Force, the troops stationed on the opposite hill will not exceed one regiment, and judging by the outfit and flags, it seems that they are not regular Soviet troops. In Yamada's view, the impact of two waves was enough to wipe out all the rabble on the opposite side, and he could completely occupy the opposite hill before evening and advance the battle line to the plains.

However, the reality was so cruel, the dense minefield brought a heavy blow to the Japanese army, and the second wave of the Japanese shock troops finally crossed the minefield, but was firmly suppressed by the powerful machine-gun fire of the An Jiajun at a distance of one to two hundred meters in front of the position.

At this time, the Japanese army's elite individual military and technical superiority was quickly manifested. There is a statistic that more than half of the soldiers who fought against Japan in World War II were killed in close-range firefights, which shows the perversion of the Japanese army's marksmanship.

Within the Anjia Army system, the quality of officers and men and the quality of training of the troops formed in the north are still not comparable with those of the veteran units of the Anjia Army, which underwent strict and systematic training during the recruit period, and they are still slightly inferior to those of the Japanese army.

In the successive undulating explosions, the follow-up troops continued to replenish through the communication trenches, and the fierce exchange of fire continued, and there was a tendency to become more and more intense, and everywhere there were screams of medical guards!

Braving the hail of bullets, the medics rushed into the trenches, helped the wounded soldiers down, and then passed through the parking lot behind the hill to quickly transport the wounded to the field hospital.

The fighting became more and more fierce, and all artillery and mortars on both sides were used, and the casualties continued to increase. Cai Ziqiang endured the grief in his heart and constantly sent out the reserves in his hand.

After another half an hour of fighting, the third wave of the Japanese attack team arrived at the front of the Anjia Army's position, and then, the Japanese army's light and heavy machine guns and grenadiers fired at close range, and began to comprehensively suppress the firepower of the Anjia Army's front-line position, and the devil soldiers had approached more than 20 places in front of the position, and the battle situation had entered the most critical stage!

Seeing this, Cai Ziqiang immediately ordered the tank troops to go into battle.

As twenty tanks appeared on the top of the hill, the Japanese army, which lacked anti-tank firepower, was immediately suppressed by the machine gun fire on the tank, and soon, a large number of steel plates covered the top of the trench, and the tank drove through the trench and carried out a counter-charge, and the general-purpose machine gun at the front of the car frantically strafed the Japanese army.

The Japanese machine gunners and grenadiers suffered heavy casualties in an instant.

Yamada Tsunetachusa's face was pale, in his eyes, the tank was completely the devil that devoured the lives of soldiers, but the anti-tank artillery fire of the troops did not keep up in time due to the rugged mountain roads, and the cluster grenades and explosives packages were not prepared in advance, so he did not expect to suffer such a big loss.

Tsuneta Yamada watched as another of his own machine gun fire points were directly destroyed by the tank, and a water-cooled heavy machine gun accompanied by an arm fell heavily more than ten meters away under the reflection of the flash of the explosion. Yamada Nakasa scolded in his heart, the damned aviation did not even find the enemy's hidden tanks, and did not know what they were doing.

After breaking through minefields and fighting at close range, the Japanese army's will to fight has been seriously weakened, and now in the face of the threat of tanks, morale has fallen to a low point.

Yamada forced himself to calm down, and after half a day of fighting, he found that although the army on the opposite side resisted very stubbornly, the strength was really insufficient, and he could only rely on chariot fire to counterattack, if his troops were assisted by anti-tank guns, they should be able to defeat the opponent, of course, before that, they had to ask for reinforcements, after all, after three waves of attacks, the casualties of the troops were still very large.

As the tide of the Japanese army receded, the tank units of the An Jia Army did not fall in love with the battle, turned their heads, slowly climbed the gentle slope, and disappeared to the top of the mountain.

At this time, Cai Ziqiang did not have the pleasure of winning the battle at all, the corpses of the officers and soldiers were everywhere on the battlefield, in the bloody and cruel battle, life was so fragile, compared to it, everything was so insignificant!

......

At noon, Yamada Tsuneta, the commander of the 65th Wing, who was in the process of placing the wounded in formation, was not willing to be defeated, and in order to take the opposite hill at the least cost and open the passage to the river valley and the plain area, after a simple tactical arrangement, Yamada asked the brigade headquarters and the division headquarters through the radio, asking for the cooperation of the heavy artillery wing.

By evening, the 114th Division, which was in charge of the offensive on the northern front, had sent a brigade of the 120th Field Artillery Wing, which was under the command of the division, to the 65th Wing, along with a battalion of the 102nd Infantry Wing and a battalion of the 114th Infantry Wing.

With the arrival of powerful reinforcements and the replenishment of ammunition during the day, Yamada Tsuneta Nakasa was a little determined, but thinking about it, if it was a frontal attack and braving the fire of the opponent's tanks, he didn't know how many casualties he would have to pay, so it seemed that he still had to use his brains on the flanks. However, only the Brigade Headquarters had a detailed topographical map of this mountainous area, and Yamada decided to rush back to the Brigade Headquarters overnight to see if there was anything to use.

Yamada, with his staff and guards, had just walked down the mountain, when suddenly the ground shook violently, Yamada didn't stand firmly, and a dog ate and fell to the ground, his front teeth hit the hard stone and knocked off two, and his mouth was full of blood. Just when Yamada didn't understand what was happening and opened his mouth to scold, an earth-shattering explosion suddenly came, and the whole earth could no longer hear any sound except for a huge roar.

Yamada looked back in horror, only to see that the sky had been lit up where his troops were stationed, and the huge flames and smoke covered the entire forest.

Above the high ground where the confrontation with the Japanese army was held, Lieutenant Colonel Cai Ziqiang, the commander of the Ninth Regiment of the Third Division, showed a cruel smile on the corner of his mouth.

That's right, because it arrived four days earlier than the opponent, the Ninth Regiment trampled almost all the ten square kilometers of land far and near, and finally decided that the enemy wanted to attack his position, and the ideal place to hide his troops was the woods opposite.

To this end, Cai Ziqiang formulated a careful plan and asked his superiors for instructions, and the above quickly recognized the opinion of the Ninth Regiment and set a trap in the woods, just waiting for the Japanese army to drill.

Previously, even in the most difficult time, Cai Ziqiang did not use this killing move, in his opinion, only to deal with one wing of the Japanese army, it is a bit of a fuss, fortunately, according to the report of the reconnaissance force, the Japanese army sent a large number of troops in the evening, especially artillery and transport trucks, so that Cai Ziqiang was overjoyed.

As night fell, the Japanese army retracted its defenses, and the camp built on powder kegs became the burial place of the Japanese soldiers.

One hundred and fifty blasting points all over the forest, three hundred barrels of simple napalm were thrown into the air to detonate, which can be regarded as a real meteor shower, all the gasoline was mixed with syrup and soapy water, and the angle of each oil drum was carefully designed, plus the dense woods in the Far East, which helped An Jiajun a lot!

The rain of fire turned the woods into a sea of fire, and the highly adhesive napalm turned the Japanese soldiers into a running source of fire, and some Japanese soldiers who fell to the ground and tried to extinguish the flames on their bodies turned into fire men in the blink of an eye, and those wounded and sick who had difficulty moving could only be burned alive in the screams.

The creepy screams, the explosive ammunition, the suffocating scorching smell and flames, even the officers and soldiers of Anjia who were more than 500 meters away felt as if they were standing naked in the snow, and their hearts were chilling!

A few snipers who couldn't bear it aimed at the devil soldiers who were struggling desperately with fire through the scope, helping them to free themselves from endless pain, and some people secretly muttered: Isn't this too inhumane?

All kinds of news were fed back to the regiment headquarters, and the next morning, the opposite woods were still billowing smoke, and Cai Ziqiang summoned all the officers and soldiers of the regiment to speak:

"Brothers, you can't bear to burn thousands of Japanese to death, you think it's too inhumane, have you ever thought that since the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese army has burned, killed, looted, raped women, and committed all kinds of evil on our land, and they have cared about our feelings? After 918 alone, there were hundreds of tragedies in Northeast China and North China, and millions of people died at the indiscriminate massacre of the Japanese army! Have you ever thought that those wronged souls who have nowhere to redress their grievances, have they been humanized?

"The war with the Japanese is a life-and-death decisive battle related to the survival of the nation, since the Opium War, our country has been weak for a long time, and has been viciously slandered by the great powers as the sick man of East Asia. But such days, with the rise of An Jiajun, no longer exist. We have been undefeated in all foreign wars, and if we hadn't fought bravely in North China and Songhu after the July 7 Incident, I don't know how many innocent people would have suffered, and now would be the time for the Japanese to pay for their blood debts! Remember my words, there can be no sympathy and mercy for the Japanese, let them die in the most miserable way, in order to comfort the souls of those who have passed away!

"the little devils! Long live An Jiajun, long live the Chinese nation! ”

......

Moscow, Kremlin.

Stalin had a working lunch with Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria and others, who had been invited. Stalin forked a small piece of beef with a fork, put it in his mouth, and chewed it slowly. Molotov scooped a spoonful of white fungus soup, drank it all, and reported to Stalin:

"We have held many talks with the British ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sisun, and the French chargé d'affaires in the Soviet Union, Payar, but there has been no progress on some important issues, and Britain and France have indicated that they will not get involved in the war with the Soviets and South China in the Far East; The military negotiations between the three countries have not yet begun because the British and French military delegations have only arrived in Moscow today. In addition, tomorrow Soviet-German economic and trade negotiations will begin in Berlin. ”

Speaking of this, Molotov's eyes were grim: "Now the world situation is in a mess, the British are trapped in India, and the French have lost Annan and do not dare to send troops to conscript, because they have to guard against Germany going south, in this situation, the British admiral Drax and the French general Dumanke led their military representatives to Moscow, and they did not take planes, nor fast warships, but only a low-speed mail ship, first arrived in Leningrad, and then took a slow train to Moscow. Isn't this a deliberate procrastination? ”

Stalin saw the fire and said sharply: "Britain and France are eager for the Soviet Union to lose their strength in the battles with the Far East and South China, and tempt the invasion of Germany, which is only looking for soft persimmons, and we must take measures to delay the war." Since Britain and France have no intention of entering into a treaty of mutual assistance between the three countries with us, I propose that military negotiations between the three countries be conducted first. ”

Molotov put the spoon back on the soup plate, nodded and said, "In a while, I will make a suggestion to Britain and France." ”

Stalin took a glass full of orange juice, turned it a few times, thought for a while, and said: "Hitler is the most likely to take advantage of the international situation, saying that he may not really beat our ideas, Ukrainian grain and Caucasus oil have an extraordinary temptation for Germany." No, we should try to push Hitler by all means, and there must be a big progress in the economic and trade negotiations with Germany. In this way, we have made a big deal of propaganda about military cooperation with Britain and France, and Germany, which is worried about fighting on two fronts, will certainly be in a hurry and will inevitably come to us first to conclude a treaty. And the attitude of Germany, in turn, will affect Britain and France, and we, the Soviets, will be able to profit from it. ”

Stalin turned to the People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Voroshilov: "In the final analysis, military strength is the most favorable support for the country's diplomacy, but now the situation in Central Asia is not very good, and I can't believe that our great Soviet Red Army will be so weak when it loses the capitals of three union republics in a row!" ”

Voroshilov put down his knife and fork, stood up and took the initiative to apologize: "I'm sorry, Comrade Stalin, for disappointing you!" However, the General Staff studied Comrade Kulik's opinion and believed that his idea of temporarily preserving his strength for a decisive battle was feasible! If the armies blocking the retreat line of the Far Eastern Army do not withdraw, they will be broken one by one, and in the end we will not have enough strength to counterattack, and the defeat will be irreparable. On the other hand, if we preserve our vital strength and wait for the Far Eastern Army to fight the Japanese and then find the bad luck of the Chinese, we have a great confidence that we can win the war in Central Asia. ”

Stalin motioned to Voroshilov to sit down: "This is also the reason why I didn't deal with Kulik, I don't know if the more than a million Far Eastern troops will go north, will the Japanese be beaten back?" ”

"Not necessarily, although the degree of mechanization of the Far Eastern Army is much higher than that of the Japanese army, the Japanese army has the advantage of the navy, and the two sides are estimated to form a tug-of-war!"

Voroshilov said with some pride: "No matter who wins or loses the Far Eastern Army and the Japanese, it is our Soviets who profit from it, and we just use this time to reorganize the army, strengthen the equipment, take the Ural defense line at a critical moment, and recover Siberia." If all goes well, Kulik will be able to recover Central Asia almost simultaneously. As long as we keep Siberia and Central Asia, we will have sufficient strategic depth, and the Far East will be able to take it back after the threat from Europe is eliminated. ”

Stalin took out his pipe and plucked the tobacco leaves, and Beria quickly struck a match and lit it for Stalin. Stalin took a deep breath and swallowed the fog for a while before he continued: "Diplomatic aspects must be hurried, I estimate that Germany will take action against Poland in the second half of the year, and before that, we must get a treaty with Germany or Britain and France, I don't want the Soviets to be isolated!" ”

Molotov nodded yes, and Stalin said: "Comrade Voroshilov, how are the troops of the Belorussian Military District trained?" ”

Voroshilov affirmed: "Very well, Comrade Zhukov has shown extraordinary command talents, and I am sure that his outstanding abilities will be a great help to the Soviets." ”

Stalin, who remembered the appearance of the commander of the Red Army who dared to give his opinion to himself, nodded: "Well, I'll go and see in the afternoon, whether it's Central Asia or the Urals front, we need an elite army as the main assault force, I hope Zhukov won't let me down." ”

After lunch, Stalin went to the airfield and took a plane to the military airfield of the Belarusian Military District.

Zhukov and his entourage came to greet them. After the ceremony, Stalin looked over the airport and saw that the sky above the airport was blue, occasionally drifting a few wisps of white clouds, the underground lawn was wide and large, and the planes on the apron were shining with sunlight, and the fuselage was shining silver. The pilots came in stride, all heroic, and all of them were mighty and majestic.

Zhukov guided, and Stalin shook hands with the pilots cordially and said loudly: "Comrades have worked hard. ”

The pilots replied in unison: "Serve the Soviets!" ”

Stalin was full of joy when he saw what he heard in his eyes, turned his head and glanced at Zhukov, and couldn't help but think in his heart: "This Zhukov is a talent, the so-called thousands of troops are easy to obtain, and one general is hard to find, and cleaning out those people really brought heavy losses to the Soviet Union?" - No, from Zhukov I see hope for the future! ”

Zhukov saw that Stalin's face was cloudy, and he didn't know what he was thinking, so he said softly: "Comrade Stalin......"

Stalin waved his hand, signaled Zhukov to speak later, and turned to the commander of the air force of the military district: "Look at the live-fire exercises of our warhawks. ”

The commander of the Air Force received the order: "The exercise begins!" ”

The pilots quickly boarded the plane, started up, and the roar resounded through the sky. I saw that the long plane drove faster and faster, getting closer and closer to the end of the runway, the nose of the plane was lifted up, the plane rose into the sky, and the planes behind took off one after another, forming in the air, circling the airport, flying forward, the bombs hit the targets one after another, the "boom" sound continued to sound, and those targets flashed fire.

After a while, some planes appeared in the air. The long cable behind these planes dragged the target, which swayed in the air, up and down, left and right. The captain looked at the towing target, flicked the machine gun button, and a string of tongues of fire spit out, causing the towing target to flash with fire, and the other pilots also hit the towing target one after another.