readx; The commander of the 28th Infantry Brigade, Major General Takashi Sakai, went on to say:

"The opponents we encountered, Song Xilian, Li Hansoul, Yu Jishi, etc., are all famous generals of the [***] team, and the enemy's strength also has a clear advantage. Their purpose www.biquge.info is to form a flanking attack on us and finally complete the encirclement of our army. In addition, the enemy forces of Lanfeng, Guide, and Minquan may reinforce the enemy in front of our army at any time, and for us who are fighting alone, the long-term confrontation and war of attrition will be very unfavorable. ”

After listening carefully to the battle reports of his subordinates and the speeches of Sano, Takashi Sakai and others, Dohihara fell into deep thought in the face of the map. After a moment, the silence in the ancestral hall was broken by Dohirahara's deep and powerful voice: "Major General Sakai Takashi is right, a long confrontation and war of attrition with the enemy is absolutely unfavorable to us. Our combat mission is to cut off the Longhai Road between Lanfeng and Guide and capture Lanfeng, and if we continue to hold on to the enemy, we will not be able to complete the task assigned to us by the army headquarters.

Dohihara paused for a moment, then gestured across the map with his stubby fingers and announced a new battle plan to his subordinates:

1. Takashi Sakai, commander of the 28th Infantry Brigade, led his troops to hold back the enemy's main force, and must hold out until after 9 o'clock tomorrow night before abandoning the position and moving westward; 2. The commander of the division himself led the main force of the division to break through the enemy's defense line between Lanfeng and Qixian, attacked Luowang Station and Luowangzhai west of Lanfeng, and indeed occupied it; 3. The commander of the 27th Infantry Brigade, Toyoshima Fangtaro, led a powerful unit to attack the enemy's outer defense line southeast of Lanfeng, waiting for an opportunity to occupy Lanfeng; 4. After the main force of the division occupied Luowang Station and Luowangzhai, and cut off the Longhai Railway, it quickly attacked Quxingji with one part and Sanyizhai with the other, and indeed occupied it. In this way, the two places formed a horn with Luowangzhai to disperse the enemy's forces, prevent the enemy from the west from reinforcing Lanfeng, and hope to obtain military supplies from the north bank of the Yellow River through Liuyuankou.

At about 4 o'clock in the morning of the next day, Tu Feiyuan, who had rested all night, boarded an armored car in high spirits and led the main force of the division to the southwest under the cover of the remaining night. Major General Toyoshima Botaro also led his troops to withdraw from their positions and made a detour to advance towards Lanfeng.

On the afternoon of the 22nd, Li Hansoul led the 155th Division on the left and Song Xilian led the 87th Division on the right, advancing to the southwest, and soon exchanged fire with the Yue army. Li Hansoul commanded the troops to continue to extend to the left flank, forming an arc-shaped attack line that was several miles long, and gradually pressed the enemy army.

The resistance of Takashi Sakai's brigade and its subordinate units was stubborn, and while they held on to their strongholds in the villages, they continued to rely on their superiority in equipment to launch fierce counteroffensives. The artillery of both sides was bombarding each other's positions, and the tanks and armored vehicles of the Japanese army swung in a horizontal formation and rumbled towards the position of the central [***] team, and the light and heavy machine guns in the vehicles swept wildly all the way, causing the ears of wheat and wheat straw to fly. Behind the tanks and armored vehicles were groups of infantry with bayonets on their 38 rifles. At the same time, the cavalry of the Yue army also cooperated with the frontal counterattack and attacked the flanks of the Song and Li armies. The officers and men of the squadron calmly responded to the battle, firing at enemy tanks and armored vehicles with mortars on the one hand, and dispatching infantry carrying cluster grenades on the other hand, braving the rain of bullets flying sideways, and under the cover of mortars, they rushed forward one after another to blast the enemy's "movable pillboxes."

The tanks and armored vehicles of the army were exploding and burning, the horses that had lost their owners were rushing and neighing, and the shouts of killing when they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat came and went. The counterattacks of the Yue Army were repulsed again and again, and the attack lines of the 64th and 71st armies were gradually advancing.

However, due to the heavy firepower of the Japanese army, the attacking troops had to pay a great price for every step forward.

The fierce battle continued until dusk, and the battlefield gradually fell silent.

The headquarters of the 64th Army was set up in a small village a few miles from the front line, and Li Hansoul had not slept for two nights, his eyes were bloodshot, his face was gray, and his expression was tired. He appeared a little restless due to the slow progress of the battle. Sometimes he bowed his head in front of a military map and pondered, and sometimes he called to inquire about the situation at the front. Because he accidentally injured one ear and damaged his hearing when he was a teenager, he was still not completely cured after treatment, so he was very loud when he called the phone, and it sounded a little rough. Whenever the front line called to report that he had conquered a certain enemy pillbox and that the enemy was retreating to a certain place, he would be overjoyed, and the dialogue microphone shouted: "Pursuit, chase for me!" ”

At dusk, Li Hansoul ordered to stop the attack. He was about to close his eyes when the Chief of Logistics walked in and reported to him that there was not much ammunition in stock and needed to be restocked, and that a large number of wounded who had been evacuated from the front line also needed to be sent to a safe area for treatment, and asked for instructions on how to solve the transportation problem.

Li Hansoul walked out of the headquarters and saw that the roadside in the village was full of wounded, some of their arms or legs were blown off, the severed limbs were dripping with blood, and their muscles and bones were exposed; Some of them were injured in the chest and abdomen, and their intestines flowed out, and their breath was dying. Some of the health soldiers were busy bandaging the wounds of the wounded, moaning and shouting.

Li Hansoul didn't go far, and found several soldiers standing silently next to a stretcher with their hats off, he walked to take a look, and blurted out: "Isn't this Commander Ding, he"

"He's dead." The medic muttered.

A soldier reported to Li Hansoul the martyrdom of Regiment Commander Ding: "At about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the regiment commander was directing us to charge the enemy, when a shell fell near the regiment commander, and the regiment commander was blown down at that time. I rushed to help him and saw that he had been wounded by shrapnel in the stomach. Holding his stomach in one hand, he stood up with a hard prop and waved his pistol in the other, shouting 'Charge!' Chong' passed out before he finished shouting. At this moment, I saw blood gushing out of his fingers, his intestines sliding out of his hands, and blood on his shirt and pants. Later, the chief of staff arrived and ordered us to carry the regiment commander down.

"Halfway through, the regimental commander woke up, and he told us to stop. We put down the stretcher, he dipped his hand in the blood on his body, propped himself up halfway, wrote a few words on the stretcher, and fainted again. By the time we carried him here, he was, already," the soldier choked up.

Li Hansoul leaned over to look and saw that on the stretcher cloth next to the shoulder of the head of Ding, there were seven words in the book, "Death first at the end of ambition", and the blood had turned black.

The battle-hardened commander burst into tears.

Li Hansoul took off his military hat, paid a moment of silence to the body of Regiment Commander Ding, and was busy inspecting the ammunition and supplies. He found that transportation became a serious problem. The people in the vicinity had long since fled to the ground, and it was impossible to find them to help with the transportation, and if men were to be transferred from the battlefield to transport supplies and the sick and wounded, it would inevitably weaken the attack on the enemy. He returned to the headquarters and called Song Xilian to ask him about this situation, and Song Xilian was also worried about these problems.

However, these difficulties did not bother the two generals, and they agreed to launch a night attack on the Japanese army after 10 p.m. in order to inflict heavy damage on the enemy.

Unexpectedly, when the troops were nervously preparing for the night attack, Li and Song received a report at the same time that the enemy in front had retreated to the southwest.

When the Li and Song armies lost their targets, Gui Yongqing was facing the attack of the Yue army, panicked and at a loss.

Gui Yongqing's 27th Army was formed improvised and set out in a hurry to participate in the Battle of Lanfeng. On 16 May, Chiang Kai-shek telephoned He Yingqin, chief of staff of the Wuhan Military Commission, and asked him to issue an order to immediately organize the establishment of the military headquarters of the 27th Army by Gui Yongqing, with the 36th and 46th Divisions under the command of the army, and to immediately advance to the area of Lanfeng and Minquan on the Longhai Line.

He Yingqin immediately issued an order to Gui Yongqing to form the 27th Army.

After receiving the order, Gui Yongqing, who was the chief of education of the "Wartime Cadre Training Corps" under the Military Commission, immediately summoned Dai Zhiqi, chief of staff, overnight to discuss personnel, hastily established the military headquarters on the 17th, and hurriedly set out on the march on the evening of the 18th. The 46th Division departed on the 17th, and the 36th Division advanced behind the army headquarters.

On the 19th, Gui Yongqing led the military staff through Zhengzhou, and then got off the bus and went to Longhai Garden to pay respects to Chiang Kai-shek. In 1933, when he was the chief of the "Central Military Academy Teaching Corps", Gui Yongqing completely used the training methods of the German army to train the cadets, and taught German tactics. Chiang Kai-shek always believed that he was extremely talented in military affairs, and this time he was transferred to participate in the Battle of Lanfeng, so he entrusted him with a heavy task, ordering him to hold the important land of Lanfeng, and to set up defenses in the north and south of Lanfeng City to block the western invasion of the army. Gui Yongqing took the opportunity to raise the point that his troops were insufficient, and he hurriedly went into battle, and asked the "principal" to be assigned some more troops, and Chiang Kai-shek readily agreed. So later, there was a story about dividing the military power with Song Xilian.

After Gui Yongqing arrived in Lanfeng on the 20th, he quickly controlled a large number of troops, and even the 88th Division of Song Xilian's army was "eaten". Qiu Qingquan was his old junior at the "Central Military Academy," and his tank battalion and armored search battalion naturally had to cheer him on for him. By the time Xue Yue ordered the Eastern and Western Route Armies to flank the Tufeiyuan Division, the strength he had was equivalent to the combined forces of the Song, Li, and Yu armies.

However, this "German general" had no combat achievements after the attack began, and even lost the enemy's important position to the enemy when he was busy responding to the enemy, breaking Xue Yue's plan to annihilate the Tufeiyuan division near Lanfeng.

After Gui Yongqing controlled a large number of troops, he actively deployed defenses near Lanfeng, and used the 46th Division as the direct unit of the army to guard against the enemy in the southeast of Lanfeng; The 106th Division occupied the fortifications south of Lanfeng to block the enemy's westward advance, the chariot units of the 88th Division and the 200th Division remained near Lanfeng City, and the 61st Division occupied the line of Huzhai, Madaofu and Dingzhai. In this way, a barrier was set up between Lanfeng and Yang Qiji to block the enemy's westward advance.

On May 21, when the three armies of Li, Song, and Yu attacked the Tufeiyuan Division, Gui Yongqing also led his troops to set out from Lanfeng City and search and advance eastward. Qiu Qingquan led tanks and armored troops to fight side by side with Gui Yongqing.

Outside the city of Lanfeng, the terrain was flat, and the ripe wheat fields had been trampled by the army. Gui Yongqing led his troops to march more than ten miles away from Lanfeng, and suddenly received a report from the vanguard troops, "The enemy cavalry has been found ahead. ”

"How many are there?" Gui Yongqing asked urgently.

"Less than two hundred."

"Pass my orders, meet the battle immediately, and destroy the enemy army."

Qiu Qingquan also ordered the tank and armored vehicle units to be ready.

More than 100 enemy horsemen gradually galloped closer, and when they found the middle [***] team, they immediately reined in their horses and stopped advancing.

When the enemy cavalry immediately hesitated, the machine guns and tank guns of the [***] squadron rang out, and several soldiers were immediately shot and fell off their horses. A frightened warhorse, having lost its owner, neighed and galloped north. In the blink of an eye, Qiu Qingquan commanded several tanks and armored vehicles to rush towards the enemy cavalry, followed by the rapidly running infantry. When the cavalry saw that the tanks and armored vehicles of the [***] team came out together, and a large number of infantry accompanied them, they immediately disorganized, and after a little resistance, they turned around and fled.

Seeing that the opportunity could not be missed, Qiu Qingquan immediately ordered his mechanized troops: "Pursue quickly and be sure to completely annihilate the enemy army." ”

When the cavalry retreated to the vicinity of Lizhuang, they began to occupy positions. and soon got in touch with the Yue army in the two strongholds of Li Zhuang and Huantou, and transferred chariot defensive artillery to prepare to resist the pursuit of the [***] team.

When Qiu Qingquan's tanks and armored vehicles were about a mile away from the enemy, the defensive guns of the chariots of the Chinese army rang out. Smoke rose around tanks and armored vehicles, and the sound of artillery reverberated across the open field. Gui and Qiu couldn't help but be taken aback, and immediately ordered the troops to stop advancing and occupy positions.

After a short artillery bombardment, the army did not attack. But Gui and General Qiu Er never dared to take a step forward.

After the two sides confronted each other for a while, the Yue army shelled the Guibu position for a while, and withdrew on its own initiative without being attacked or suffering casualties.

However, generals Gui and Qiu Er took advantage of this to boast about it, and immediately called Chiang Kai-shek and Cheng Qian in Zhengzhou that night, sent a telegram to the Wuhan Military Committee, reported their "great victory in Lanfeng" and hyped up their great achievements with friendly troops.

While they were boasting about the results of the battle, the Shen Kebu of the 106th Division, a subordinate unit of the 27th Army, fought fiercely with the enemy in the areas of Huzhai, Madaofu, and Dingzhai, and suffered heavy casualties; A regiment of the 61st Division fought a bloody battle with the enemy at Meng Jiaoji and suffered all casualties, but Gui Yongqing kept it secret.

On the afternoon of the 22nd, Tu Feiyuan led the main force of the division to break through the defense line between Lanfeng and Yang Qiji, and the first-line position of Cao Xinzhuang of the 61st Division west of Lanfeng, and attacked Luowang Station. Gui Yongqing was shocked when he heard this, and turned around in the Li Lou military headquarters, slapping the table and scolding his mother. The trust and trust placed in him by the "Headmaster" had made him proud for a while, but now it had become a sword pressing on his neck.

The crowd of troops and divisions could not stop the westward advance of the army with less than one division, so how could he explain to the "principal"? When he was the commander of the 31st Brigade, he neglected the deputy brigade commander Li Mo'an, who came to take up his post on Chiang Kai-shek's orders, and Li Mo'an complained in front of Chiang Kai-shek, saying that he resisted the principal's order, wanted to recommend himself as the deputy brigade commander, and played cards all day long, arrogant and so on. As soon as Chiang Kai-shek was angry, he ordered his dismissal. Now that the position is lost, letting the enemy flee westward is a much greater sin than playing mahjong and being arrogant. If the "headmaster" were to become angry, it was possible to order his execution

In a panic, he calculated that the 46th Division was serving as the defense of the front of Lanfeng, and the subordinate units, except for the 88th Division, were all in charge of defense on all fronts or were in contact with the enemy. So he ordered Long Muhan, the commander of the 88th Division, to lead his troops to Luowang Station, and if the station was lost, it must be recaptured.

This order is completely prevaricated and irresponsible. After the Luowang Station was occupied by the army for several days, the 155th Division and the 78th Division each fought several bloody battles before they were recaptured from the enemy, and the 88th Division only had one brigade of troops, how could it defeat the enemy?

Not long after Gui Yongqing's order was issued, the telephone rang suddenly, and Chief of Staff Dai Zhiqi picked up the microphone and listened to it, his expression changed suddenly, and he said, "Commander, take the call." ”

Gui Yongqing took the microphone and as soon as he shouted "principal", Chiang Kai-shek was furious with him - the news that the army appeared west of Lanfeng had reached Zhengzhou.

He snorted as he tried to defend himself. He also said that the 88th Division had been sent to advance west of Lanfeng. However, the "principal" did not pay attention to his set and still wanted to "severely punish him according to law" and "engage in military law." Until he promised: "Mobilize the whole army that night, and annihilate the enemy south and west of Lanfeng on the south bank of the Yellow River." Chiang Kai-shek's anger calmed down a little and ordered him to act immediately.

His assurances, of course, were emergency words, empty words. As soon as he put down the microphone, he felt that his promise could not be kept. Li, Song, and Yu were all battle-hardened and famous generals in the Kuomintang army, but they all failed to subdue the Yue army and let the soil and fertilizer plain loaches run away, so why did he annihilate the enemy on the south bank of the Yellow River?

But since the big words have been said, we have to do it head-on, otherwise the "principal" will really have to "engage in military law".

He wiped the sweat oozing from the panic with his handkerchief, calmed his emotions, and began to think about his next step.

However, at this moment, Li Liangrong, commander of the 64th Division, called to report that the division was under fierce attack from the front of the army, and that the enemy had attacked the left flank of the division in a detour from the old road of the Yellow River.

Li Liangrong's phone call was no less shocking than the news that the army had broken through the Lan and Qi defense lines and advanced westward. Didn't Tu Feiyuan lead the main force to the west of Lanfeng? Why did the enemy appear in the east of Lanfeng, and it was fierce, could it be that the army sent reinforcements again? The emotions he had just calmed down had become flustered again, and sweat was dripping down his forehead and back.

Originally, he thought that there were two units in the southeast, Song Xilian and Li Hansoul, to clamp down on the enemy army, and the front of Lanfeng could be safe. Unexpectedly, the 46th Division, a unit directly under the army, would be attacked by the enemy. He ordered Li Liangrong to hold his position and try to get in touch with friendly forces, and then he dropped the microphone heavily, at a loss for a moment.

Now, since he had promised the "principal" that if he wanted to lead his troops westward to annihilate the enemy, he would not be able to stand still. And if you want to lead your troops westward, what should the 46th Division do? Who will Lan Feng hand over? At a critical juncture, his full of virtue [***] and things were thrown out of the clouds. All he considered was how not to be "court-martialed" by the "principal". However, in any case, he must adhere to one principle, that is, the 46th Division, which is directly under his command, cannot be lost. Not long after, Li Liangrong called again and told him that the reserves had been exhausted, and there was no hope of friendly reinforcements. The 46th Division is already in a very dangerous situation, please send reinforcements immediately!

At this time, he happened to receive a report: Long Muhan did not follow the order to go west, and Ke was still near Lanfeng. So he ordered: The 88th Division immediately reinforced the right flank of the 46th Division with one part, and stationed one part in Lanfeng. At the same time, he ordered Li Liangrong of the 46th Division to wait for an opportunity to lead his troops to break through to the south.

After all, the 88th Division was a subordinate unit, and after the battle, it still had to return the 71st Army.

Subsequently, he ordered the rest of the subordinate troops to move to the Yangqiji area, and launched an attack on the enemy advancing westward on the morning of the 23rd of the Ming Dynasty.

After taking the above measures, Gui Yongqing breathed a sigh of relief, and was secretly proud of his best of both worlds.

But how did he know that he had made a big mistake!

(To be continued)