readx; Because Gui Yongqing and Qiu Qingquan both went to Germany to study and were deeply favored by Chiang Kai-shek, they couldn't help but be proud of their talents and be proud of being favored. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe two of them usually looked down on everyone except for Chiang Kai-shek, He Yingqin, Chen Cheng and others.

Some generals were very dissatisfied with the style of Gui and Qiu, and ridiculed them as "German generals."

When the two of them were ordered by Chiang Kai-shek to lead their troops to Lanfeng, they were still the same as usual, arrogant and contemptuous of the enemy, and their eyes were empty.

Song Xilian thought that the two of them really came to understand the situation of the enemy and us, and introduced the situation of the enemy and friendly forces to them in detail, but Gui Yongqing interrupted Song Xilian's words very arrogantly and said: "Okay, I know, what is this enemy!" ”

Qiu Qingquan then boasted: "Commander Song, there's no need to be so cautious, let's see if we beat him." ”

Song Xilian was quite disgusted by Gui and Qiu's arrogant and blindly underestimated enemy, and immediately smiled in a sarcastic tone: "That's good, you two 'German generals' will definitely win a big battle this time." ”

Gui Yongqing did not blush because of Song Xilian's ridicule, and changed the topic and talked about the question of who commanded the troops in the Lanfeng area. Song Xilian had no choice but to call Chiang Kai-shek to ask for instructions on how to divide the command.

Unexpectedly, Song Xilian was surprised by the results of the request, and Chiang Kai-shek actually ordered: The 88th Division (owed to the 264th Brigade), the 46th Division, the 106th Division, the 200th Division Tank Battalion, the Search Battalion, the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment, and the 1st Company of the 12th Artillery Regiment were appointed to fight in front of Lanfeng, under the command of Gui Yongqing; The 87th Division, the 61st Division, and the 1st Battalion of the 9th Artillery Regiment were under the command of Song Xilian, and the main force was moved to the vicinity of the Red Temple.

Song Xilian walked out of the command post and saw that the two "German generals" were pointing fingers at the forward positions and discussing them wantonly, which showed that Gui Yongqing had already had a clear idea of the division of command power. Song Xilian couldn't help but be angry, annoyed, and disappointed -- now not only were all divisions under the command of Gui Yongqing, but even the 88th Division of his own army had fallen into his hands. The attack on the Yifeng also fell short.

But this is the order of the chairman, even if Gui Yongqing makes trouble from it, he can only follow his fate.

He forcibly endured the unhappiness in his heart and conveyed the chairman's order to Gui Yongqing, who did not express a trace of surprise or apology.

Song Xilian ordered the 87th and 61st divisions to rectify for a while, and then led their troops to the direction of the Red Temple.

Unexpectedly, the army took advantage of the fact that the [***] team stopped attacking and replaced the troops in the position, regrouped and launched a counteroffensive. Gui Yongqing and Qiu Qingquan, the two "German generals", could not resist the onslaught of the Yue army, and led their troops to retreat to the outer line of Lanfeng. Newly conquered strongholds such as Dongmaogu, Lizhuang, and Yangzhuang fell into the hands of the enemy again.

The air force was dispatched, but the work was not done, and the battle of attacking Yifeng commanded by Song Xilian became futile.

After Song Xilian led the 87th and 61st Divisions to move to the vicinity of the Red Temple, he soon received a telegram from Xue Yue, ordering him to attack the enemy of Yifeng as the main force of the Eastern Route Army.

After Song Xilian received Xue Yue's order, he couldn't help but let out a wry smile, if it wasn't for Gui Yongqing halfway, he might have led the army to station in Yifeng by now. I just evacuated from the vicinity of Yifeng, and now I have to return to the division to attack Yifeng, and the two armies are fighting, how can I tolerate such a toss, it is like child's play!

Immediately afterwards, he received a telephone call from Li Liangrong, commander of the 46th Division: The enemy's attack to the west was very urgent, the division suffered heavy casualties, and Dongmaogu, Lizhuang, and other villages fell back into the enemy's hands.

Song Xilian turned from the previous unhappiness to anger, of course, he was no longer to Gui Yongqing, but to Yue Jun. He immediately convened a meeting of officers at and above the two divisions to convey the gist of Commander-in-Chief Xue, and then ordered the commanders of all divisions, brigades, and regiments to immediately return to their units and prepare to set off and return to attack Yifeng.

However, before the troops could be mobilized, Shang Zhen suddenly conveyed to Jiang Fenshi by telephone in Kaocheng: "The 61st Division will arrive at Lanfeng before dawn on the 21st of Ming and prepare to use it in the south of the railway, and the 87th Division will be temporarily stationed in Hongmiao." After the 61st Division arrived in Lanfeng, it was placed under the command of Gui Yongqing.

Song Xilian put down the phone and couldn't help but say angrily: "This Gui Yongqing, is he here to fight, or is he here to seize military power." ”

When he first arrived in Lanfeng, he had several divisions, and the appearance of Gui Yongqing made him only one eighty-seventh division left. He understood that this was all Gui Yongqing's ghost. Although he is a general of Chiang Kai-shek's lineage, compared to Gui Yongqing, a close general, he Song Xilian inevitably seems inferior.

"At the critical moment, I can see who is close and who is sparse!" Song Xilian sighed, while sending someone to find Zhong Song, the commander of the 61st Division, and ordered him to immediately lead his troops to Lanfeng according to the instructions of the chairman. Then he ordered the 87th Division to march into the Red Temple and camp there, and advance to Yifeng tomorrow morning.

In any case, the battle still has to be fought, otherwise what is he doing here from Hunan? At present, the great enemy should give priority to national affairs.

In the important battles that followed, Song Xilian and Gui Yongqing formed a sharp contrast between the two army commanders.

Song Xilian, a native of Xiangxiang County, Hunan, was born in 1907 in a wealthy peasant family in Xikou Village. Graduated from the first phase of Whampoa Military Academy. Since participating in the first Eastern Crusade against the rebel Chen Jiongming in the spring of 1925, he has repeatedly participated in major battles and made outstanding achievements, and was promoted to major general and commander of the 36th Division at the age of 26.

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937, Song Xilian, who was stationed in Xi'an, was ordered to go south to participate in the Songhu Anti-Japanese War. The 36th Division waged fierce battles with the Japanese army on the front lines of Jiangwan, Tianbao Road, and Dachang in Shanghai, and fought a bloody battle for more than two months, replenishing troops four times and suffering more than 12,000 casualties among officers and men. On August 20, Song Xilian commanded the 216th Regiment to undertake the main attack task, and rushed through Tangshan Road, Dongxihua Road, and Broadway Road in one fell swoop, and approached Huishan Wharf, an important stronghold of the Japanese army. The army could not resist the onslaught of the Song army, and fled to outside the Waibaidu Bridge and surrendered to the British army south of the bridge.

In late July, Song Xilian was promoted to lieutenant general of the 78th Army and concurrently served as commander of the 36th Division.

After the defeat of the Songhu Anti-Japanese War, Song Xilian participated in the defense of Nanjing.

Song Xilian was one of the important generals of Chiang Kai-shek's army. In his more than 20 years of military career, he was awarded the Huazhou Medal of Honor, the Blue Sky and White Medal, and Chiang Kai-shek's general order, and was known as the "Eagle Dog General" and won the trust of Chiang Kai-shek.

Before Song Xilian came to Lanfeng, he served as the commander of the honorary first division and was stationed in Liuyang, Hunan. This division was formed from officers who had recovered from wounds sustained in the Anti-Japanese War. On May 10, Song Xilian received He Yingqin's telegram order and transferred him to Lanfeng as the commander of the 71st Army.

The 71st Army was originally stationed in Luoyang for training, and the army commander Wang Jingjiu and the commander of the Luoyang regional garrison, Zhu Shaozhou, had a big quarrel, and Chiang Kai-shek ordered Song Xilian to replace Wang Jingjiu.

Song Xilian went to Lanfeng to take up his post, passed through Zhengzhou, and went to Longhai Garden to meet Chiang Kai-shek, and the chairman of the committee gave him full encouragement and asked the 71st Army to be under his personal command to show his respect. Unexpectedly, as soon as Gui Yongqing arrived, he took away most of his military power, making him an empty military commander.

On the morning of May 21, Song Xilian divided the 87th Division into two columns and marched south from Hongmiao, confident that he could capture Yifeng with only one division.

The troops first headed east, then turned south. In May, the wheat fields are already golden, and the villages covered by thick shade are like green islands floating on the sea of yellow wheat. But those villages are empty. Looking around, it is rare to see a single person in the fields, and the rut marks of the Chinese army's cars, motorcycles, and tanks can be seen everywhere on the country roads and wheat fields, and some villages have been set on fire by the Japanese army, leaving only some bare walls. The two columns of the 87th Division marched like two long dragons towards Yifeng, the soldiers' bayonets gleaming in the hot sun, and the sound of motors of cars and artillery tractors breaking the silence of the countryside.

At about 10:30, the troops arrived at the south of the Laojun camp through the White Building, and the Yifeng was in sight.

Yifeng is a village surrounded by earthen walls, and the north side is the sandy land of the Yellow River, which is flat and open, and it is attacked from the northeast, and the casualties are bound to be heavy. Therefore, Song Xilian ordered the 522nd Regiment to flank the enemy in Maogu in the east through Sanhezhuang, and then led the main force to rush south, launching an attack on Yifeng from the platform shed in the southeast of Yifeng.

At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, gunfire suddenly broke out in the northwest direction of Yifeng, and Song Xilian thought that the 522nd Regiment had launched an attack on the enemy in Dongmaogu, so he and the division commander Shen Fazao climbed the soil slope, and after observing Yifeng with a telescope, they decided to attack the east of Yifeng with the vanguard regiment, and ordered the mountain artillery battalion belonging to the 71st Division to support it, and ordered another regiment to make a detour to the south of Yifeng to threaten the enemy's flank.

The villages in Henan Province are mostly walled with earth, the short is three or four feet, the height is more than zhang, some of the walls are several feet thick, and the villagers can move back and forth on the wall when resisting the bandits. In some villages, there are ditches dug outside the wall, which the locals call "Zhaihai". After the first part of the Tufeiyuan Division near the railway captured Yifeng, two brigades were left to garrison, and the main force continued to advance southward.

The attacking troops of the 71st Army were met with stubborn resistance from the enemy defending Yifeng, and when they approached the village, the light and heavy machine guns of the Yue army strafed at the same time, and the dense bullets knocked down the charging soldiers one by one, and in the blink of an eye, more than 100 people were killed or wounded. Under the pressure of enemy fire, the attacking troops had to crawl on the open ground outside the village, unable to advance or retreat.

Song Xilian, who was hiding in a forest in the rear and observing the battle situation with a telescope, cursed a swear word, ordered the mountain artillery battalion to fire fiercely at the enemy, and ordered the troops in the front to concentrate all their firepower and suppress the enemy's firepower points with mortars and heavy machine guns.

The officers and soldiers of the mountain artillery battalion couldn't hold their breath for a long time, and Song Xilian gave an order, and the 12 Dharma Maker Naide Mountain Cannons roared together, and the shells flew towards Yifeng with a sharp whistling sound, exploding in the enemy formation. The walls built by the loess collapsed in the explosion, the fragments of the enemy's corpses, stones, and branches flew into the sky together, and the mortars and heavy machine guns in the forward positions opened fire at the same time, and the enemy's firing points lost their power one after another. Two infantry companies quickly broke into the village and rushed towards the stronghold.

However, when the mountain artillery and mortars of the [***] squadron stopped bombardment, machine guns rang out again in several strongholds of the Chinese army that had not been destroyed by artillery fire. Two companies of soldiers who entered the village, the charge was again blocked.

At this time, the troops outside the village were thrown into battle one after another, and hundreds of officers and soldiers pounced on the enemy, and for a time the sound of machine guns in Yifeng Village was like a torrential rain, and the sound of grenade explosions continued one after another.

However, just as the troops rushed into the village one after another, trying to encircle the stubborn Yue army, the Yue army suddenly abandoned its position and fled to the southwest.

After the army captured Yifeng a few days ago, they killed, annihilated, robbed, and did everything, many people were killed, some women were forcibly annihilated, and those who survived had fled to other places, and there was only an empty village left in Yifeng, and there were blood stains everywhere on the walls, and animal bones were thrown everywhere. After this battle, the situation was even worse.

At this time, the 522nd Regiment reported that the regiment had occupied Dongmaogu half an hour earlier after fierce street fighting with the enemy.

Song Xilian and Shen Fazao led the command post into the village, and it was already around 4 p.m., some soldiers were cleaning up the battlefield, and the soldiers left dozens of corpses and a lot of ammunition and canned food. Song Xilian deduced that the reason for the sudden withdrawal of the Yue army may be that the main force of the 14th Division had advanced to the south, and the enemy troops stationed in Yifeng were afraid that they would be surrounded by our large army and be completely annihilated. He and Shen Fazao climbed the walled street to the south and looked southwest, and could vaguely see that the troops pursuing the Yue army were searching and advancing in separate directions.

Suddenly, several clouds of gunpowder smoke rose among the pursuing troops, followed by a dull explosion. Song Xilian observed with a telescope that behind a small bush, the eight field guns of the Yue army were shooting at our army in a row side by side, and it was estimated that the enemy's artillery position was about 1 mile away from Yifeng. Song Xilian immediately ordered the mountain artillery battalion to enter the position and return fire on the enemy.

Suddenly, the enemy's artillery changed its aim and fired at our artillery positions. After a brief silence, he was shrouded in gunsmoke again.

Because the command post of the 71 st Army was very close to the artillery position, it was "implicated," and the artillery shells of the Japanese army continued to fly, and the surrounding houses were blown up, and the houses of the command post that survived were violently shaken, and dust and rubble were scattered like rain on the bodies of Song Xilian and the generals. In the incessant artillery battle, more than 10 shells fell around the command post, an adjutant of the 87th Division was killed, and a herald had half of his arm cut off by shrapnel.

Before the artillery battle ended, Song Xilian received another report from the front-line troops: The remnants of the fleeing enemy converged with an enemy army in the south and began to counterattack us, but the troops were not many, and they were currently fighting.

Song Xilian and Shen Fazao analyzed the enemy situation and judged that the purpose of the enemy's counteroffensive was not to recapture Yifeng, but to try to prevent the 71st Army from continuing to advance south. Therefore, he ordered his troops to resist on the spot to block the counterattack of the Japanese army, and immediately sent reinforcements to the front.

The battle continued until dusk, when the army stopped its attack. The field, which had been shaken by the sound of gunfire for a long time, gradually fell silent. Song Xilian ordered the troops to build fortifications on the spot and keep a strict guard against the retreating troops in the southwest.

Subsequently, Song Xilian climbed the wall again and looked into the distance, but saw that the remnant sun was like blood, the twilight was like smoke, and the four fields were quiet. Seeing that Yifeng, who had been the focus of Lanfeng's eastern battle for several days, had been restored within half a day, he was in a good mood, but when he thought of what Gui Yongqing had done, he couldn't help but get angry. Ohqing, he was both proud and not without masturbation and said to the fading remnant sun: "There are not many soldiers, but in the fine, although I Song Xilian only has one division, but I will still conquer and win." ”

On the day of 21 May, the Eastern and Western Route Armies launched a fierce attack on the strongholds of the 14th Division of Tufeiyuan in Lanfeng and Minquanwen, and made considerable progress.

Li Hansoul, commander of the 64th Army, led the 155th Division to conquer Yejigang and Neihuang, and Yu Jishi's 7th Fourth Army and the newly formed 35th Division also conquered Chuzhuang Village, Zhuzhuang, Zhifangji and other places respectively.

In particular, the conquest of Yifeng and Neihuang dealt a great blow to the Yue army, and the Tufeiyuan Division lost its foothold for a while, and was oppressed by the Eastern and Western Route Armies in several villages south of the railway.

That night, the 71st Army made contact with the 64th Army and the 264th Brigade.

The two army commanders, Song Xilian and Li Hansoul, held a meeting in Mazhuang, located between Neihuangji and Yifeng, to study the next battle plan.

Li Hansoul, whose name is Bohao, is a native of Lingtou Village, Wuchuan County, Guangdong Province, born in 1895. His father, Li Ciyan, was a beautiful talent in the late Qing Dynasty.

Li Hansoul has been widely involved in the subset of classics and history since childhood, is good at poetry and writing, and especially likes to write, and published a romance novel of 100,000 words at the age of 20. He graduated from the Baoding Army Military Academy in 1919. Li Hansoul participated in the Northern Expedition twice, and then participated in the "pro-Wang and anti-Chiang" movement, and joined forces with Li Zongren to enter Hunan and respond to Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan to oppose Chiang.

In May 1936, Li Hansoul was promoted to deputy commander of the Second Army, and was awarded the rank of lieutenant general by the National Political Axe, and after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937, he served as the commander of the 64th Army and garrisoned Chao'an. Li Hansoul actively prepared for war in Chao'an, prepared to resist the attack of the Yue army, and made a will, swearing to defend the land to the death, and at the same time wrote to the national political axe to ask Ying to go to Shanghai to participate in the anti-Japanese war. In April of the following year, Li Han's soul was ordered to go north for reinforcements and set off for Wuhan.

On 10 May, Li Hansoul flew from Hong Kong to Wuhan via Changsha, where he paid homage to Chiang Kai-shek, received military orders, and led his army to return to Germany.

In a farmhouse in Mazhuang, the two generals, Song and Li, were full of confidence in annihilating the Tufeiyuan Division. Before the meeting, Song Xilian had a telephone conversation with Xue Yue and reported on the battle situation of the two armies that day. Xue Yue received good news from various departments in a row, and his excitement was overflowing, and he asked Li Hansoul and Song Xilian to continue to expand the results of the battle, and strive to inflict heavy losses on the Tufeiyuan Division. Final Command:

1. The 264th Brigade was returned to the 71st Army; 2. The 71st Army was under the command of Li Hansoul; 3. The two armies were in close contact and attacked the enemy in the southwest area of Yifeng.

However, Li and Song did not know that that that night, in a village a few miles southwest of the battlefield, Tu Feiyuan was also convening a meeting of officers above the rank of wing commander to study and adopt new countermeasures.

The headquarters of the 14th Division is located in an earthen ancestral hall, because the people have not held sacrificial activities for a long time, the cobwebs on the corners of the roof are dusty, the incense on the table is extinguished and the candles are dried, the ancestral tablets are crooked, the table of the Eight Immortals used to hold the family meeting has been covered with the combat map of the army, and the Taishi chair for the patriarch to sit has been sat on the officer.

The commander of the Tsuchihara Division, Chief of Staff Sano, the commander of the Sakai Takashi Brigade, and several other officers sat around the Eight Immortals table. Because they have been fighting continuously for several days and always suffering defeats, they all have tired faces and expressions that cannot help but be a little depressed.

When the brigade commanders and wing commanders who participated in the battle at the front reported on the current situation after the fierce fighting of the various units, Chief of Staff Sano reported to Tsuchihara the difficulties faced by the troops:

"Now the railway between Lanfeng and Guide has been controlled by the Central [***] team, the supply line in the rear of our army has been cut off, and the remaining ammunition and supplies can no longer be maintained for a long time. Necessary ammunition and food can be airdropped, but what about fuel?

As soon as the supply of fuel is completely interrupted, then our tanks, armored vehicles will turn into a pile of scrap metal, and the problem of transportation of infantry will not be solved. From this point of view, the replenishment of hundreds of vehicles is the most urgent and serious problem we will face. ”

(To be continued)