readx; Due to the lack of sufficient anti-tank weapons, the army could only cower behind the fortifications of the city and watch as the other side took control of the road to Sanshui. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

At four o'clock in the afternoon of 27 February, the follow-up troops of the Nanyang Corps joined forces with Xiao Hanliang's vanguard troops, and behind them, the New Second Division and the 78th Division formed a formation on a frontal area more than ten kilometers wide, and formed a starting position, ready to break through into the urban area of Guangzhou at any time.

Toshiyoshi Ando never expected that in just two days, the [***] team would be in the city, and the power of the opponent's armored forces also made him sideways! In order to cope with the imminent threat, Ando Toshikichi had to temporarily transfer the forces of two brigades from Humen, and after converging the troops that attacked Foshan, they were all strengthened to the southwest of Guangzhou.

However, what made Ando Toshiyoshi feel strange was that after the Chinese [***] team advanced to the city of Guangzhou, there was no movement, and they only cared about building fortifications, and the armored troops that had been in the limelight two days ago also disappeared, and it seemed that they had no intention of attacking Guangzhou at all!

On February 28, the squadron attacked Zengcheng with the superior strength of two infantry divisions, and the defenders abandoned the city and fled after holding out for two hours.

Humen, as the name suggests, is like the gate of the tiger's mouth, which refers to a section of the ocean between Panyu Nansha on the west bank of the Pearl River Estuary and Dongguan Taiping on the east bank. Because of the dense forts along the coast, it is really like the upper and lower jaws of a tiger, choking the gate of the Pearl River estuary, plus the upper and lower rungs in the river, the fortifications of the big tiger and the small tiger islands, and the iron cables and wooden rows on the river in those years, synthesized the fortress known as "golden lock copper".

Although the name of Humen Fortress was not determined until after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, it has a history of more than 500 years. As far back as the Yongle period in the early Ming Dynasty, Hutoumen, that is, Humen, had already built a camp and set up troops to defend against the invasion of the Japanese invaders. In the two areas of Humen and Changzhou, many relatively strong forts were built, and larger-caliber pig iron cannons were installed, so far, the Humen Fortress took a slightly rudimentary shape.

After the "918 Incident" occurred in 1931, Chen Jitang, the king of the Southern Heavens, was afraid that the forces of the Kou would develop further south and invade Guangdong, so he carried out large-scale construction and renovation of the Humen Fortress: using the winter agricultural leisure time, he recruited thousands of people to assist the engineering troops in building fortifications. After four years of painstaking operation, more than 60 kilometers of criss-crossing highways have been built in the Humen fortress area, including the two main forts of Shajiao and Weiyuan; In addition, in Humen Village, Shajiao built a barracks large enough to house an infantry battalion and a medical clinic with 20 beds; A new 25,000-watt searchlight was built in the downstream of Shajiao.

After the army landed in Daya Bay, it directly attacked Guangzhou by land, and did not attack the Humen fortress area, and the next day after Guangzhou was abandoned, the fortress commander Guo Siyan immediately fled with some cronies, and the other officers and soldiers of the fortress broke up on their own, and the army occupied the Humen fortress without a single shot!

For Ando Toshiyoshi, the only point of guarding the Humen fortress was not to let it fall into the hands of the [***] team, thus threatening the Fifth Fleet and its own sea supply lines, so the focus of defense was on land rather than water, so all the cannons on the fortresses along the river were dismantled and transported to Yuben as scrap metal, and then a large number of sappers were used to renovate the fortress, and fortifications were built on the side facing the land, and even basic restoration work was not done on the side facing the Pearl River.

At the beginning of the Guangzhou Campaign launched by the Chinese [***] team, Ando Toshikichi attached great importance to the Humen Fortress, and was quite powerful in terms of troops and firepower, but as the war progressed, he gradually began to doubt his judgment: first Foshan, then Sanshui, and then Zengcheng, the main force of the [***] team almost all appeared, but no force aimed at Humen, and it seemed that there was no intention to recover it at all! Therefore, when the Chinese [***] team approached the west of Guangzhou, he did not hesitate to transfer two infantry brigades from the Humen fortress to reinforce them, so that the defenders here could be restored to the size of two brigades.

Diametrically opposed to Ando Toshikichi's contempt for the Humen Fortress, Gao Fei considered the Humen Fortress as the key to the battle when he began to think about recovering Guangzhou, because in his opinion, he concentrated half of the elite troops in the Fourth Theater, and he had an overwhelming advantage in terms of strength and firepower, and the Yue army lost the support of air power, so it was not too difficult to break through the city fortifications of Guangzhou. However, after entering the city, it will inevitably face the blows of hundreds of large-caliber naval guns of the enemy's Fifth Fleet, and if this deadly threat cannot be solved, the whole operation will definitely be a failure in the end! Therefore, in order to completely solve the threat of the ships of the Yuben Navy and drive the Fifth Fleet out of the mouth of the Pearl River, it is necessary to seize the Humen Fortress!

At about 10 o'clock in the evening of March 1, 1939, the sound of gunfire, explosions, and agitated shouts of killing resounded in the north and west of the city of Guangzhou, and the fire ignited by the explosion reflected the sky in a blood-red color.

Small units had infiltrated through the middle of the criss-crossing waterways, wreaking havoc on the enemy's chain of command and lines of communication, exhausting the military police and slowing down the movement of troops.

At the tense moment of the fierce battle outside the city of Guangzhou, a soldier with a rifle on his back jumped into the icy river water from two kilometers downstream of the Shajiao Fort, and then quickly bent down and walked towards the river.

In Guangdong at the beginning of March, although there was no spring cold in the north, the soldiers in the river also felt unusually cold, their teeth chattering, and in order not to make a sound, the soldiers invariably stuffed the backs of their hands into their mouths. On the wide river, there are only the hideous figures of warships, and several searchlights sweep over the river from time to time, intersecting with the searchlights on the fortress, closely monitoring the river.

The team stopped at the edge of the searchlight, and the warrior at the front, carrying a pitch-black plank on his left shoulder, walked slowly but firmly, and behind him, his comrades watched him with anxious and concerned eyes.

The searchlight from the warship shone straight and passed swiftly over the plank, causing no reaction, and the soldier immediately changed the plank to the other side to deal with the searchlight on the hill, and finally, at the place where the searchlights crossed, he did not hesitate to bury his head in the water, and only one plank on the surface of the river drifted with the waves.

Seeing that the soldiers in the front had successfully landed on the riverbank, the soldiers in the back immediately quickly followed, and in the same way, they passed through the surveillance area of the Yue army, and gathered in the reeds below the Shajiao Fort, two barbed wire fences with empty cans had been thrown behind them, and the flanks of the Yue army were completely exposed to their guns.

At two o'clock in the morning, a 150-millimeter grenade fell on the Shajiao position, and immediately after, hundreds of large-caliber artillery shells fell overwhelmingly, and the flames ignited by the explosion illuminated the Shajiao battery as if it were daylight.

Soon, the warship guns and the large-caliber artillery arranged on the fortress began to return fire, and an equally alarming number of shells flew over the heads of the concealed troops and landed far on the other side of the hill.

Instead of attacking the defenders, the assault team carefully observed the positions of the fortified artillery involved in the counterattack, reporting to the headquarters by radio. In just ten minutes, more than ten heavy artillery pieces of the Japanese army were all destroyed and fell into a situation of being beaten, and at the same time, [***] long-range artillery began to attack the warships on the river under the guidance of the hidden troops.

The artillery battle at the mouth of the Pearl River was a replica of the artillery battle at Madang Fortress, in which the army had the advantage in numbers and caliber, but was defeated by the disparity between accuracy and the opponent, and after being damaged by three destroyers, retreated to the middle of the large and small crossbars.

At this time, the lurking troops immediately and silently touched into the fortifications on the top of the hill, and on the front of the position, an infantry battalion of the 60th Division also began to attack.

Therefore, when the attacking troops rushed to the fortress position under the cover of light and heavy machine guns, a considerable number of Japanese troops ran out of the tunnels with light and heavy machine guns, and quickly cleared out the bunkers and fortifications in the floating soil and gravel.

Suddenly, dozens of grenades flew out from behind the hillside and exploded in the air above the heads of the defenders, thousands of shrapnel took dozens of lives in an instant, and then, the grenades hit one after another, knocking down the defenders in pieces, and at the same time, the commandos shouted and killed from behind, storming the defenders' positions, and the infantry battalion under the mountain took advantage of the opportunity to rush up.

The sound of shooting, explosions, shouts, and groans suddenly mingled, and the army gradually retreated to the bunkers and tunnels while fighting back, while the attacking troops relied on the superiority of weapons and equipment to quickly assault and annihilate the enemy in one fell swoop. Thousands of bullets flew through the air one after another, and every second someone fell in a pool of blood, and the disadvantaged army was even more serious, leaving corpses on the way back. The closer you get to the entrance of the tunnel, the more fierce the attack becomes, most of the Japanese army was wiped out before entering the tunnel and bunker, and less than a hundred Japanese soldiers got into the five bunkers, ready to resist stubbornly.

Unfortunately, their opponents were the experienced 26th Division, and after the attacking troops had disappeared into the tunnels, they immediately cleared the entrance with grenades and flamethrowers, and then blew up the mountain with explosives packs and buried the enemy alive.

At the same time, the 61st Division began to storm Weiyuan, Changzhou, Dahushan and other forts, the defenders of these forts all added up to only three squadrons, and finally collapsed after dawn, and the forts returned to the hands of [***] forced the Fifth Fleet to operate only in waters close to the south bank of the Pearl River, and its influence on the war situation was greatly reduced.

After receiving the news of the recapture of the fort, Gao Fei immediately issued a general offensive order, demanding that all units in the theater carry forward the spirit of courage and tenacity, break through the defense line of the Japanese army, and expel them from the urban area of Guangzhou!

At two o'clock in the afternoon of 2 March, the seven main divisions launched simultaneous attacks from the west and north of Guangzhou, and under the cover of heavy artillery, they continued to assault the defense line of the Yue army.

Saying that the army's defense line was in danger under the avalanche attack of the Chinese [***] team, Ando Toshiyoshi once again sent a telegram asking for help to the base camp and the headquarters of the Chinese dispatch army, and then gathered the military police and all the civilian personnel, distributed guns and ammunition, and asked them to build barricades and barricades in the residential areas, ready to fight to the death with the Chinese [***] team in the city!

On March 4, after two days of hard fighting, the Nanyang Army defeated the defenders, broke through the outer fortifications of Guangzhou, broke through the urban area from the southwest, and then launched a fierce street battle with the Yue army in the city!

Yu Wenzheng, together with the senior commanders of the division headquarters, followed the troops into Guangzhou, at this time, the Nanyang Army had broken through in depth, and what remained in front of the follow-up troops was the devastated streets and still burning ruins: as far as the eye could see, there was hardly a complete house, and the few buildings that survived were struggling in the torment of the fire, and the wood on the roof constantly made a palpitating "peeling" sound, and the wooden blocks with embers peeled off from time to time; The familiar stone pavement, the tall arcades, the shops, teahouses, wine shops, Jiyuan, and money houses on both sides of the street have all disappeared without a trace, only endless gunsmoke and raging fire!

Hundreds of corpses of civilians lay neatly on the side of the street, containing both gray-haired elderly men and babies, each with burnt marks on their bodies. In the ruins behind them, hundreds of soldiers were looking for survivors in the rubble with the help of residents, and more than a dozen bereaved citizens stood in front of their former homeland, crying without tears!

"How so? Who did all this? Yu Wenzheng felt that he was almost out of anger, and roared at the Nanyang Legionnaires.

"After the armored troops entered the city, they were attacked, and they lost three tanks in a row, and the army hid in the residential area immediately after the victory, because it was full of dense waterways and alleys like spider webs, it was difficult to find the enemy's traces, and finally, the division commander ordered an indiscriminate attack, and directly razed the residential area to the ground, so that the army could not hide." A Nanyang legion soldier explained to Yu Wenzheng, seeing that the other party's face was not good, he hurriedly added: "What I didn't expect was that instead of evacuating the residents here before our army attacked the city, the Yue army did not allow anyone to enter or leave, and as a result, the current situation was created. ”

"What does this Xiao Hanliang want to do? Who gave him the power to kill innocents indiscriminately? A staff officer angrily asked the Nanyang soldiers: "What is the difference between what he did and what he did?" ”

Yu Wenzheng slowly turned around, looked at the angry eyes in front of him, and said: "Brothers, if you want to blame it, you can only blame this devil, not Xiao Hanliang, he just did his duty as a professional soldier!" You should remember that it was because our army did not take decisive measures that it was heavily damaged by the army in the street battle in Bao'an County, the difference is that the enemy did not use such despicable means last time, and in retrospect, it seems that only the attack method of the Nanyang Army was effective. ”

Seeing that the mood of his subordinates had stabilized a little, Yu Wenzheng said in a firm tone: "The army obviously wants to pull hundreds of thousands of citizens in Guangzhou to support their backs, Xiao Hanliang can ignore it, but we can't do it!" We must use the blood of our Guangdong children to exchange for the lives of our hometown fathers! ”

Speaking of this, Yu Wenzheng said resolutely to the confidential staff officer: "Call the headquarters immediately: the 78th Division requests to take over the offensive of the Nanyang Corps and guarantee to advance to the front of Ando Toshikishi's headquarters within forty-eight hours!" ”

After that, Yu Wenzheng took off his white gloves, reached out and took a submachine gun from the guard's hand, jumped on a motorcycle, and walked towards the place where the gunfire was most intense without hesitation!

The officers were stunned by his actions, and it took a while for them to react, and they all took up their weapons and followed.

"The division commander is in battle!" The officers and men of the 78th Division looked at Yu Wenzheng and others passing by them, and immediately cheered excitedly, gathered from both sides of the street, and then followed closely behind them.

Xiao Hanliang was alarmed by the anomaly behind him, and hurriedly stepped on a motorcycle and rushed over, just in time to meet Yu Wenzheng and his mighty team.

"Master Yu, what are you doing here?" Xiao Hanliang asked in confusion, his blue eyes constantly looking at the soldiers gathered around Yu Wenzheng.

Yu Wenzheng pointed to the opposite side and said: "On the opposite side of our army, there are not only the extremely vicious Yukou, but also our fathers, elders, villagers, family members and friends, if you follow your fighting style, few people will survive!" ”

Xiao Hanliang hurriedly said, "Master Yu, I really didn't know that your relatives were inside!" I beg your pardon, I am a soldier, there is no better choice, and besides, the army did not give us a chance to choose! With a sincere apology on his face.

Yu Wen said expressionlessly: "I don't blame you!" Maybe I'll use the same tactics as you! Then he said in a consultative tone: "Xiao Hanliang, I want my troops to take over the Nanyang Legion, hoping to exchange the lives of soldiers for the lives of my relatives!" ”

Xiao Hanliang looked at Yu Wenzheng and the silent volcano behind him, nodded silently, and said, "Okay! ”

Yu Wenzheng looked at Xiao Hanliang gratefully and said, "Thank you!" I have already reported the matter here to the headquarters, and I will bear all the responsibilities of the accident, and it will definitely not affect you! ”

Yu Wenzheng jumped up a section of steps next to him and said loudly to the soldiers: "Brothers, the duty of a soldier is to protect the family and defend the country, and now that the country has been broken, will the family die?" ”

"No!" At the bottom of the stairs was raised like a forest's arm.

"Okay, let's let the brothers of the Nanyang Legion see how we have taken our homeland back!" After that, Yu Wenzheng jumped down the steps, stepped on the motorcycle, took the lead, and rushed forward, and the motorcycle team of the guard force quickly followed, and couldn't help but surround him inside.

Immediately afterward, thousands of brothers from the motorized infantry brigade rushed forward along the streets and alleys without hesitation!

(To be continued)