At the same time as the encounter of the 1st Company took place, two other companies of the 1st Supplementary Regiment also fought with the enemy. The ambush battles in Zongyang Village and Fuyu Village also started at the same time. After the battle, the battalion commander Bu Zhenglong led the whole regiment to quickly move to the Nanshan Mountains, but the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion, which served as the rearguard, was surrounded by the enemy at a key pass called Tuwang.

Xie Zhuchen, the second lieutenant platoon commander of the company, monitored the movement on the mountainside half a mile in front of Tuwang, and sent another squad to occupy the high mountain in the left front. In the morning, I heard the sound of gunfire coming from the left front and the right front, and the local people kept running to report that a large number of troops were outflanking our rear from both flanks, and Xie Zhuchen immediately ordered the whole platoon to enter the trenches and prepare for battle. As soon as the order was given, the enemy had already begun to attack, and after a burst of small steel cannons, as machine guns rang out, the army quickly outflanked Xie Pao.

When Xie Zhuchen saw it, he organized resistance while ordering the third and fourth squads to alternately cover and retreat to Tuwang. Some soldiers were killed by heavy machine gun bullets and mortar shells while retreating, and one soldier was hit by three bullets, his intestines hung out of a large section, and he ran for two or three miles with his hands before he found a basket and was carried away with a groan of "ouch, ouch."

After running for a while, he approached a quiet village, and was about to enter the village, when suddenly a fellow ran out of the village, shouting and gesturing at them, shaking his hand and pointing back with his hand. The soldiers of Xie Pai were panting and were suspicious when they saw this, and a gunshot rang out, and this unknown fellow had been knocked to the ground.

In order to protect the brothers of the 1st Supplementary Regiment from the enemy's plots, a fellow stepped forward at a critical moment and sacrificed his life, and no one knows his name to this day!

Xie Pai saw that the situation was different, and hurriedly retreated. At this time, the sound of machine guns suddenly rang out from the village, and the bullets "swished, swished" straight in, and several more soldiers were shot. After running for a while, I suddenly heard someone on the mountain shouting and asking, "Which unit is it?" ”

Xie Zhuchen replied loudly at that time: "Five companies." They shouted, "Come up to the mountain!" Xie Zhuchen came up the mountain, it turned out that the head of the regiment, Bu Zhenglong, was on the mountain, asked about the situation, and asked to count the number of people, and half of the platoon was left

The battle went to the most critical moment.

At this time, Bu Zhenglong decided to restart the deployment and launch a counterattack on Anxian with the strength of one battalion to reduce the pressure on the frontal defensive line.

To attack Anxian, it is first necessary to occupy the mule and horse shop.

Located more than ten kilometers south of Anxian County, Luomadian is the largest market town in the south of Anxian County. To the south of the mule shop is a branch that extends from the west.

Therefore, the occupation of the mule and horse shop by the army was like choking the way to break out from the 1st Supplementary Regiment. If our army recaptures the mule and horse shop, it will be like opening a bridgehead to attack northward, and it can break through all the way to the Xuzhou line.

The important strategic location of the mule and horse shop is already indispensable.

After the order was issued, he sent troops to attack the Luomadian twice, and once attacked the town of Luomadian. Yin Wei, the commander of the third battalion who was responsible for leading the surprise attack, was a soldier with both civil and military skills, and he used a big knife to kill the devils in the town of Mumadian, rolling up and down with a big knife, slashing left and right, cutting off the heads of several devils, and when he killed his surname, his body was splashed with blood. After the troops came back, they also called for a few more knives, and the devil was afraid of this.

"At the beginning of Sanyang, the country has reached the last moment of survival, and I am willing to sprinkle blood and dye it all over the spring; Recently, during the long march of 10,000 miles, the soldiers were able to serve loyally and courageously, vowing to annihilate the enemy and maintain world peace. ”

This is a couplet from all walks of life for this great victory.

However, before the attack, although Battalion Commander Yin had convened a meeting of all the officers of the battalion to make life and death documents for the raid on the mule and horse shop, everyone stamped their handprints, indicating that they would share life and death and weal and woe, and would not retreat without orders and abide by them together. However, since the assault troops did not have artillery to knock down the enemy's fortress, the devils, who had been suddenly attacked by our troops, once they came to their senses, hid in the fortress and blocked the road of our army's assault with dense machine-gun fire. As a result, both raids were unsuccessful, and instead there were many casualties.

As a result, Yin was only given one major demerit, and another company commander was punished.

After two night attacks, the devil strengthened the defense of the mule and horse shop, and the strength in the town had a brigade of about 400 men, and four cannons; Gun holes were cut into the brick walls of the garrison, new fortifications were constructed, and artillery positions and mule and horse pens were strengthened. Barbed wire, deer firewood, and bunkers were set up outside the town, and what was especially odious was that the Han annihilators were bought off in the town, and a secret outpost was set up, and as soon as there was any disturbance, they would immediately report to the army!

In this case, the 1st Replenishment Regiment was still preparing for a third assault on the mule and horse shop. This task was still completed by the 3rd Battalion.

In addition, the 2nd Battalion on the left flank of the front was ordered to coordinate the attack with the main attacking force on the right flank in order to cut off the enemy's east-west connection. Acting battalion commander He Xuanrong made full use of his experience in guerrilla warfare and displayed his skills in a big way, using guerrilla tactics to attack the enemy's stragglers and small groups of baggage vehicles, and to sabotage highway and railway communications. Now he personally took Hu Xiqing, a political trainer, to reconnoiter behind enemy lines, selected the terrain of the key passes, and stationed a battalion in the key passes; The other two battalions retreated to Stonewall Village as a reserve, preparing to attack the enemy from the east from the flank, so that the enemy in Jining would not be able to reinforce the mule and horse shop.

The 1st Supplementary Regiment also sent another 2nd Battalion to guerrilla operations between Anxian and Luomadian to wait for an opportunity to attack the devils swimming in the north-south direction, so as to cut off the enemy's reinforcements from Anxian to Luomadian.

In this way, the mule shop is already under attack by our army.

The attack was carried out by four companies of the 1st Supplementary Regiment under the command of Battalion Commander Gu Yueming.

Gu Yueming, a native of Puming Township, Mianyang, Sichuan, was a primary school teacher before joining the army. Gu Yueming was a famous general before, brave in battle, this person has a few pockmarks on his face, known as Gu Hemp.

After the task was implemented, Chief of Staff Guan Siwei summoned relevant personnel to climb Geshan Mountain south of Mumadian and look down on Mumadian from the mountain to formulate a battle plan and offensive route. Everyone unanimously agreed that Zhennan was the enemy's key southward defense area, and Zhenbei's defense was weak. The direction of the main attack should be chosen in the north and the south as the assist, and it must be carried out in the form of surprise attacks, giving full play to the advantages of our army's night battles and close combat, and the death squads should mainly use broadswords and grenades to avoid the enemy's advantage in firepower. Although our army is outnumbered, the key to victory lies in covert approach and surprise attack.

Gu Yueming took on the task of the main attack, and with the experience of two surprise attacks, he also clearly knew that according to the comparison of forces, it was difficult to grasp the chance of victory in this attack, but he pinned his hopes on the speed of the surprise attack and attack. Victory is only possible if the enemy's command can be disrupted during the surprise attack and the enemy can penetrate the core before he has adjusted his firepower. To this end, he selected more than 300 elite soldiers to form a death squad as a sharp knife team in the attack.

On the 30th of January, the soldiers of the 1st and 2nd Companies who were the main workers all wore cotton clothes backwards, and the white cloth lining of the cotton clothes was covered outside, mixing with the snow. In the middle of the night, after the mobilization of Chief of Staff Guan Siwei before the war, everyone had a full meal, and under the leadership of the local villagers, two troops dressed in white and some members of the local anti-Japanese armed "Red Gun Society" quietly set out from the Geshan position and disappeared into the snowy fields in the moonlight. After the main attack force set off, Gu Yueming also followed the reserve into the established command position adjacent to the railway to the north of Luomadian.

An hour before dawn, the troops were deployed, and Gu Yueming ordered the attack to begin. With a single command, all four heavy machine guns were fired at the same time, and the only mortar shell exploded at the pre-selected breakthrough, covering the attack of the two armies from the left and right flanks.

At the front of the enemy's position was an open field of crops about several hundred meters. Groups of figures in cotton clothes flashed swiftly past their eyes, the snow on the ground rattled by the running footboards, and the commandos ran desperately forward in an attempt to cross the vast death zone when the enemy reacted.

Trained for war, he did not sleep much, and after a period of panic, he reacted quickly. Several flares rose in the sky, the earth was as clear as day, and the enemy's light and heavy firearms opened fire together, forming a dense net of fire in front of the attacking troops. Red-green flare shells strafe back and forth, indicating targets to enemy artillery.

The enemy's artillery bombarded the open ground with air-blown submunitions, which were extremely lethal shells, which exploded above the ground and sprayed steel balls and fragments on the ground to strike at our attacking troops. Regardless of life and death, our assault troops rushed forward, and people were shot and fell in the open field, leaving dozens of corpses in the snow, and pools of blood stained white cotton clothes and white earth.

Chen Shijun, the commander of the first company on the left flank, led his troops to take the lead in blowing up the deer firewood on the periphery, cutting the barbed wire, approaching the enemy's forward position, and after a whirlwind of grenades and broadswords, he tore a gap in the enemy's forward position and attacked the town. Immediately afterwards, the 2nd Company, under the leadership of the company commander Chen Longguang, also attacked the town from the right flank, and even the auxiliary troops in the south of the town also took advantage of the chaos to attack from the south. The 3rd Company of the Reserve also sent a platoon to follow the 1st Company into the town.

God, it's dawn. At this time, the troops that attacked the town had reached more than 400 people, and the vanguard troops were close to each other and engaged in street battles with the enemy. In hand-to-hand combat, the devil's 38 guns were obviously inferior to our army's broadswords and grenades, and the devils were defeated and retreated, and there were many corpses of devils lying on the street.

In a short time, our army had captured two tall brick and stone houses in the town, and used them as a stronghold to charge the recalcitrant enemy on the street, and the offensive was extremely rapid. Sure enough, the attacking forces soon approached the enemy's core position.

But here in the core position, the speed of the exchange of broadswords, grenades and blood has weakened, and the momentum of the offensive has been stopped by bullets.

The core position of the devils is set in a deep house compound, surrounded by fortifications and barbed wire, and the surrounding houses have been torn down into open fields, and several slightly protruding houses have been doused with gasoline by the devils and set on fire, and are burning. There is no hiding place in the open field, no dead spots for firepower. From inside the fortifications, from the bullet holes on the walls and from the rooftops, the devils concentrated all the light and heavy firearms to cross fire, weaving an almost airtight web of fire.

Our troops did not have artillery to attack the enemy's forward fortresses, nor did they have light machine guns to cover the charge of the troops, only enemy archers hiding in the fortifications were allowed to fire wildly.

The long tongues of fire spewed from the muzzles of the devil's machine guns shook back and forth, and the attacking troops suffered heavy casualties here, and the battlefield became a terrible slaughter. Gu Yueming ordered the three platoons of death squads to rush out in waves, but the soldiers were all killed in the open field by merciless bullets that pierced their bodies. Blood soaked the way forward, corpses were piled up, and those who charged behind stepped on the corpses of the martyrs. The soldiers of the death squad set up their rifles in the back, carrying only grenades and broadswords, the first team charged, and the second team prepared, looking at death as if they were home!

In the end, our death squad was almost completely dead, and the high morale and the spirit of seeing death as if they were at home were outnumbered by superior weapons. Under the enemy's powerful firepower, the remaining 200 people of our army were gradually compressed into the two brick and stone houses, and with the strong houses and courtyard walls against the enemy, the victory and defeat of the battlefield were reversed.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the reinforcements from Anxian County, with tanks as the lead, had broken through the obstacles along the way and reached the periphery of the mule shop, where they were engaged in a fierce battle with the third company and the covering force that served as the reserve, and the sound of gunfire could be heard. By about five o'clock, some reinforcements from the Syrian army had already entered the town and joined forces with the Japanese army in the town.

The enemy troops were reinforced and their morale was greatly boosted, and they continued to attack our entrenched troops. They surrounded the two houses, easily destroying the tall masonry walls with artillery fire, and swarming with bayonets. The soldiers who stuck to the houses returned fire with grenades, repelling the devil's charge again and again, and the few devils who rushed into the gap became dead ghosts under the big blade. However, the situation is in a state of collapse due to irreversible depletion of combatants and ammunition in civilian homes.

It was supported until midnight, seeing that the general situation was no longer possible, Gu Yueming, the battalion commander who commanded the operation, let out a long sigh, mixed with grief and indignation, and ordered a retreat. The soldiers in the town broke through a bloody road, and under the leadership of company commanders Wu Qinming, Deng Maozhi, Li Yinchuan, and platoon commander Zhou Zhaoguo, they fought their way out of the siege by night, and 300 people survived.

More than 100 people, including platoon commanders, Yang Dexin, Wu Qinming, and platoon commander Zeng Haishan, died heroically. Wu Qinming's body was carried back by his men.

Ancient soldiers firmly believed that "when two armies meet, the brave wins", but this is not necessarily the case on the modern battlefield. In this battle of the mule and horse shop, despite the soldiers' lives and death, due to the huge disparity in weapons, the carefully planned third attack still ended in failure. This battle was a tragic attempt for the replenishment of the 1st regiment. Its results proved that courage and weapons must be unified, and only a combination of both can lead to the final victory over the enemy.

Gu Yueming brought the troops back to the Geshan position overnight to set up defenses and rectify. The enemy did not give up on the defeat of our army's attack on Mumadian, and more than 1,000 devils launched a ferocious retaliatory attack on the Geshan position the next morning, in a vain attempt to completely attack our army's will to fight.

The enemy's offensive was extremely ferocious, dispatching three planes to bomb and strafe and more than 10 artillery pieces to bombard our position, and using tanks to cover the infantry attack in two directions, and the battle was very fierce.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, the enemy occupied the main position of Geshan, and Guan Siwei personally led Yao Chaolun's battalion to reinforce the Geshan position. Fought until midnight, the enemy broke through the line and surrounded the brigade headquarters. Seeing this, Chen Shijun, the commander of the first battalion, led two companies, Fan Zhonghe and Deng Maoyun, to fight desperately and relieved the siege of the regiment headquarters with broadswords and grenades.

In the afternoon of the same day, the enemy used armored trains to transport reinforcements from Anxian County, outflanked our Geshan position to the south, and bombarded our position with dense artillery fire, which made the position full of smoke, the soldiers could not even breathe, the fortifications were completely destroyed, and even the hares on the mountain were killed by shells.

After the shelling, after two hours of fierce fighting, it was not until after 11 o'clock that night that the enemy illuminated our heavy machine gun position with flares and fired anti-aircraft guns, and two heavy machine guns were destroyed. The enemy made a detour to our deep flanks, and our army's positions were gradually broken through by the enemy, and they passively resisted and retreated while fighting.

A platoon led by platoon commander Zhou Zhaoguo was besieged on a hill during the retreat, and saw with his own eyes the devil's ironclad cars running back and forth, frantically bombarding the villages on both sides of the railway. I also saw a group of soldiers holding the sun flag, holding bayonets, screaming and shouting, rushing into the village, burning the houses when they saw them, shooting them to death when they saw the common people, and the flames were rising to the sky everywhere, like daylight. The sounds of shouting and killing, crying and the cries of the common people running away are intertwined, and it is undeceivable! Watching the slaughter of the common people made these 30 or so Chinese men have sour noses and tears.

In this battle of Mumadian, the 1st Supplementary Regiment suffered more than 200 casualties. The troops under the command of Gu Yueming suffered the heaviest casualties and retreated to the main position behind, with the 1st and 2nd companies defending Guannan Village, and the 3rd Battalion defending Longshan in the east of Zhendong.

De'er Village is the most prominent position on the right flank. The name of the place, which seemed to be full of festivity, was in fact just a village in a ravine, defended by a company of the 1st Supplementary Regiment. Before the full-scale assault began, it had been fighting for a day with the enemy's vanguard small forces.

After the general assault began, the enemy bombarded the Del village position with dense artillery fire, and then used tanks along the road as the lead to cover the cavalry and infantry charge. After three hours of fierce fighting, the defender Yang Yiying suffered heavy casualties and was outnumbered, so he had to give up De'er Village and retreat to the left to defend the main position of Fengyang Mountain.

The Fengyang Mountain position is the main position of the front line, and Yao is the location of the command post of Chaolun Company. If Fengyang Mountain is lost, the army can reach Guannan Village. The fortifications here are relatively complete, in addition to the machine guns and fortifications, the soldiers also have trenches and individual bunkers, even the command post has a wide field of vision, and there are telephone lines connected to the position and the rear of the position. At that time, such a configuration was quite good for the 1st Supplementary Regiment.

As the 1st Battalion retreated to Fengyang Mountain, the army followed. The position of Dahuangshan in the left front of Fengyang Mountain was also captured by the enemy almost at the same time, and the 1st platoon guarding Dahuangshan was all martyred.

The army that occupied the position did not stop for a moment, and immediately came straight to Fengyang Mountain.

The two armies, with about two squadrons of devils, quickly attacked the main position under the cover of artillery fire.

Yao Chaolun was not in a hurry, and when he saw that the enemy was swarming in, he ordered to bombard it with mortars first. Seeing the charging devil rushing out of the smoke of the explosion, he ordered the machine gun to open fire. The disadvantage is that there are too few machine guns, there is only one in a company in total, and the firing surface is too wide to form a dense fire net, and a large number of devils still leak out of the fire net and bend down to charge the position.

None of our soldiers used rifles to shoot, because the rifles were so worn out that they would sound in the air, just like a gunpowder gun, and they would not be able to shoot at a slightly longer distance.

Everyone simply put the gun next to it and only used it for close quarters.

The soldiers clenched their grenades in their hands and stared at their running panting opponents. At a close enough distance, at the sound of an order, frets flew out of the position, and the attacking enemy was completely drowned in the fire and smoke from the explosion. Some soldiers rushed close with grenades and threw them at the enemy, and one of them rushed back and forth in front of the enemy line and threw them eight times, and finally died a glorious death. The devil was blown up to the point where the devil cried wolf, and the slightest leakage from the smoke was fired at close range by heavy machine guns, and the enemy was completely unable to organize an effective attack, leaving behind a large number of corpses and retreating downward.

Charging several times, although under the crazy bombardment of the devils and the bombardment of aircraft that continued to increase the density of artillery fire, the casualties of our army continued to increase, but the Yao regiment still held on. The enemy was still unable to break through the Fengyangshan position from the front.

In the afternoon, another more intense shelling began, shells continued to explode near the company's command post, Yao Chaolun felt that the situation was different, and hurriedly took two guards out of the shelter to observe. Just ten or so steps out of the shelter, a shell exploded behind him, and both guards were knocked over, one lightly and one severely, and the seriously injured one had his leg broken, and later became a cripple. Company Commander Yao was splashed with dirt and rocks from the explosion, and he was bruised in many places. Yao Chaolun didn't care about the pain all over his body, and held a telescope to search carefully.

Sure enough, the frontal enemy was only feintting, and the other two armies bypassed De'er Village from the right, first opening the way with tanks and cavalry, and then the infantry followed up with marching columns, and there were planes in the sky to reconnoitre, and the commander was sitting in a jeep, with about several hundred enemy troops, interspersed in the direction of depth in our rear.

The enemy's route was far beyond the range of our mortars and heavy machine guns and could not be intercepted at all. The enemy bullied our army for not having artillery and marched with a swagger. Seeing this kind of deceptive appearance from the telescope, Yao Chaolun's teeth were gritted so loudly that he couldn't wait to tear apart this group of dogs who were showing off their might.

Obviously, the army is not only betting on a frontal breakthrough, but also taking out the roundabout outflanking tactics that have been applied many times! It should be admitted that for our army in the passive defense, it is said that his own hand has done quite effectively. Yao Chaolun immediately returned to the command office and reported to the rear. After a while, even the phone line was cut off.

An even more tragic and tragic battle has unfolded on the front line of Guannan!

(To be continued)