Although Ushijima himself has a certain strength, it would not have been possible to achieve the post of lieutenant general and division commander in the fiercely competitive and highly valued army. Although the power of the Yamazaki family in the army cannot cover the sky with one hand, the old patriarch of the Yamazaki family is one of the most trusted leaders of His Majesty the Emperor.

As the head of the Praetorian Guard of His Majesty the Emperor, the old patriarch of the Yamazaki family has a very powerful voice in the military circles, no less than the Minister of War and the Chief of the General Staff of the Military Department. Now if something happens to the eldest grandson of the Yamazaki family in his territory, not only will he, the "small" lieutenant general, be in trouble, but even General Binshan Yuan will be implicated.

Therefore, Ushijima did not dare to slack off, and immediately ordered the chief of staff, Kimura Kuzo Daisa, to lead the 77th Infantry Wing, the 28th Cavalry Wing, and the 26th Field Artillery Wing to Handan to rescue Haruichiro Yamazaki.

As soon as Niu Dao's side took action, Qian Zhuangfei, director of the Intelligence Department of the Inner Mongolia Military Region, received news from the intelligence officers, Qian Zhuangfei was Han Yunhua's descendant, and he was a senior officer who was picked up by Han Yunhua, so he was very concerned about Han Yunhua's safety, so he did not dare to slack off, and immediately connected to the secret telegraph and reported the news to the instructor.

After reading the information sent by Qian Zhuangfei, Han Yunhua was also taken aback, Ushijima is often a character, Han Yunhua still knows this person, the commander of the 20th Division. Han Yunhua has dealt with this division a lot, although he has not directly fought with Ushijima, but he is an old opponent of Ushijima's old subordinate Yoshito Takagi, although the 39th Brigade of Takagi Yoshito later drew out the battle sequence of the 20th Infantry Division, but Han Yunhua still conducted an investigation of this 20th Infantry Division and Lieutenant General Ushijima.

Originally, Niudao should have been stationed in Yuncheng, Shanxi, and the area around Zhengding and Shimen was not the garrison of the 20th Infantry Division, and two months ago the division was also responsible for the vigilance task in the Yuncheng area and along the Yellow River in this section, and fought several battles with the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division, and the 386th Brigade also lost a few companies slightly, so why did it run to Shimen in a blink of an eye. What is the little devil going to do so sneakily? Who is the 20th Infantry Division coming for this time?

Han Yunhua secretly calculated that although the 20th Infantry Division was a division with two brigades and four wings, it was one of the more than 20 or so permanent divisions and regiments in the army, and the most important thing was one of the several field divisions and regiments, not to mention its strong combat effectiveness. Since the beginning of the war, this 20th Infantry Division has made a name for itself in the entire northern region of China.

In Han Yunhua's memory, although the number of the 20th Infantry Division was not as large as that of the 6th and 2nd Divisions, it still had nearly 23,000 people, and the division was under the jurisdiction of: the 39th Infantry Brigade, the 40th Infantry Brigade, the 28th Cavalry Wing, the 26th Field Artillery Wing, the 20th Engineer Wing, the 20th Light and Heavy Infantry Wing, the Signal Team, the Health Team, and the 1st to 4th Field Hospitals. The brigade commander of the 39th Infantry Brigade was originally Major General Yoshito Takagi, but later the 39th Infantry Brigade was temporarily transferred to the northern part of the Saibei to destroy Han Yunhua's headquarters, and after suffering several heavy losses, the North China Front Headquarters had no choice but to rename the 39th Infantry Brigade to the Takagi Brigade, and transferred more than 6,000 recruits to rebuild the 39th Infantry Brigade and reassign it to the 20th Division.

The commander of the newly rebuilt 39th Infantry Brigade is Major General Ichiro Yamaki, and another important figure in the 20th Division is Major General Yoshio Kamitsuki, the commander of the 40th Infantry Brigade. Ichiro Yamaki and Yoshio last month formed the two iron fists of the 20th Infantry Division, and for nearly a year and a half from February 38 to July 39, they monopolized the entire Jin-Cha-Ji region.

As for the commander of the 20th Division, Lieutenant General Ushijima Minoru is not an easy person, Ushijima Minoru is not from an orthodox infantry background, but belongs to the relatively unpopular engineer background in the infantry.

In October 1904, Ushijima graduated from the 16th class of the Army Non-commissioned Officer School. In November of the same year, the second lieutenant of the engineer was appointed officer, and the 8th brigade of the engineer was paid. After the railway brigade supplemented the squadron pay, the temporary railway brigade paid to participate in the Russo-Russian war. He was admitted to the Higher Department of the Army Artillery School and graduated from the 25th Army University in November 1913. Squadron Leader of the 1st Wing of the Railway, Instructor of the Land Officer, Staff Officer of the Guards Division, Member of the Staff Headquarters, Governor of the Kwantung Prefecture (Field Transportation Department), Kwantung Army Command Commander, Staff Officer of the Field Transportation Department of the Siberian Dispatch Army, Instructor of the Artillery School, Captain of the 5th Engineer Brigade in March 1926, and promoted to Dazuo in July 1927. In August 1928, he was a member of the Engineer Superintendent, in December 1930 he was Chief of Staff of the 11th Division, in August 1931 he was Minister of Education of the Army Engineer School, on a business trip to Europe, etc., and in August 1932 he was promoted to Major General of the Army. He was promoted to lieutenant general and engineer superintendent in April 1936. In July 1938, he succeeded Kawagishi Fumizaburo as the commander of the 20th Division and was stationed in the Yuncheng area in the southwest of Shanxi.

Although Lieutenant General Ushijima Minoru himself is limited, he has two older brothers, the eldest brother is the former commander of the Kwantung Army, Hidetaro Hatata, and the second brother, Marshal Shunroku Hatata, commander-in-chief of the Chinese Dispatch Army.

Eitaro Hatata, Army General. On June 4, 1928, the commander of the Kwantung Army, Chotaro Muraoka, and Daisaku Kawamoto, a senior staff officer of the Kwantung Army, conspired to blow up and kill Zhang Zuolin, the generalissimo of the Beiyang political axe, at Huanggutun Station in Shenyang, causing protests from British and American imperialism, and Muraoka and Kawamoto were suspended. On July 1, 1929, Eitaro Hata succeeded him as commander of the Kwantung Army. At this time, the great economic crisis that began by the United States swept the entire capitalist world, and in order to pass on the crisis, the military department advocated quickly turning Manchuria into a colony, and in this way, further expanded into the Chinese mainland and attacked the "Soviet Union, the source of redness." After Hidetaro Hata was instructed, he actively planned a larger operation against the Northeast Army led by Zhang Xueliang, namely the 918 Incident, together with senior staff officers of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki Seishiro Osa, Ishihara Guaner, and others. In the winter of that year, Hidetaro Hata instructed Itagaki to preside over an intelligence meeting of the Kwantung Army to study the war plan against the Soviet Union. At the same time, Itagaki and Ishihara were assigned to form a staff tour group of the Kwantung Army to conduct on-the-spot investigations in western Liaoning to attack Jinzhou, and formulated the "Kwantung Army's Plan for Occupying Manchuria." In January 1930, Eitaro Yan formed the Manchurian and Mongolian Occupied Areas Research Society at the General Staff Headquarters of the Kwantung Army, and served as its president, specializing in the study of on-site combat tactics of the Kwantung Army. On 1 March, Ishihara was approved to make a "Report on the Comprehensive Cooperation between the Military and the Manchurian Railway Investigation Division in Wartime" to the Manchurian Railway Investigation Division. In May, he invited his younger brother, Major General Shunroku Hatata, director of the Operations Department of the General Staff Headquarters, to Northeast China. On May 1, 1930, he was promoted to army general. On May 31, Hidetaro Hatahata died of a sudden illness at the headquarters of the Kwantung Army in Shenyang while he was comprehensively planning to occupy Manchu and Mongolia and create a larger military operation for the Japanese army. He died at the age of fifty-nine. Despite this, many of Admiral Hidetaro Hatata's protégés still held important positions in the army, and Wasuijima was an important ally. And the second brother of Ushijima's wife is even more incredible, Shunroku Hatata, a Class A war criminal in World War II, is one of the culprits of the fascist invasion of China, a native of Tokyo. The last army general to be awarded the title of marshal in the old Empire, he graduated from the Army Non-commissioned Officer School in 1900 and graduated from the Army University in 1910 with the first grade. He served three times in the military attaché of the European countries, and later served as the commander of the artillery wing, the commander of the brigade, the director of the 4th and 1st departments of the staff headquarters, and the director of artillery. In 1933, he was appointed commander of the 14th Division and later head of the Aviation Headquarters. In 1936, after the 226 Incident, he served as the commander of the Taiwan Army and the director of education. In 1938, he served as the commander of the Central China Army, commanding the operation to capture Wuhan. In 1939, he became Minister of War and resigned to lead to the signing of the Triple Alliance. In 1941, he served as the commander-in-chief of the invasion of China, planned the Battle of Zhejiang-Gan and Operation No. 1, and was one of the generals who owed the most blood debts to the Chinese. In June 1944, he was awarded the title of marshal, and in April 1945, he was appointed commander of the 2nd General Army stationed in Hiroshima, where he escaped from the atomic bomb and advocated an armistice. His wartime chronicles are considered to be the most valuable source sources. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1948, parole due to illness in 1954, and was released in 1958.

Although at this time, Shunroku Hahata was only an army general, only one level higher than Ushijima, but there are so many lieutenant generals, ordinary infantry divisions and regiments must be equipped with lieutenant generals to serve as the main posts, and some important or special infantry brigades and regiments should also be equipped with lieutenant generals as brigade commanders, such as Lieutenant General Abe Norihide, the flower of the imperial army who was killed by Yang Chengwu's department in history, is the brigade commander of the second infantry brigade. But once the military rank rises to the rank of general, it is relatively rare, take the Chinese battlefield as an example, now in China and these colonies controlled by China near China, the governor of the Korean Peninsula is a lieutenant general, the commander of the Taiwan Army is a lieutenant general, the commander of the Kwantung Army stationed in the northeast is a general, the commander of the North China Front is a general, and the commander of the Central China Front is a general. In other words, in the entire East Asian battlefield, only three generals were placed in the army, which shows that the number of generals is small and the power is huge.

With these factors, Ushijima's every move as the commander of the lieutenant general's division has also become very unusual. Although Shanxi is now occupied by the Yue army, it is far from reaching the expected goal of the Yue Ben, and there are as many as 200,000 Chinese [***] troops stationed in the area of Zhongtiao Mountain on the border of Shanxi and Henan. If Han Yunhua hadn't hit Haruichiro Yamazaki this time, he really didn't know that there was such a shark near him.

(To be continued)