Hu Laohu, the commander of the cavalry company of the Red Eighteenth Regiment, can now be regarded as having found the feeling of a cavalry company commander.

After the battle of Xiaoshui, Hu Laohu finally gathered 50 war horses, although there were no professional carbines, but submachine guns, light machine guns, and rifles were picked at random, and dozens of sabers were also found, and the soldiers also had nearly 90 people.

Originally, Hu Laohu could have had more horses, but Li Chang, the commander of the artillery battalion, and Wu Zheng of the baggage battalion were not easy to talk to. Li Chang said that his mountain cannon needs mules and horses, so he can't always disassemble the cannon and let the soldiers carry it, right? Wu Zheng was silent, but after all, he was the leader of the regiment, Hu Laohu was an old Red Army, and he knew what the relationship between superiors and subordinates was. Fortunately, the number of his cavalry company was originally small, there were only about 20 soldiers when the county town was reorganized, and after the battle of Xiaoshui, there were 40 more, plus cadres, and there were only about 80 people when they were full. Hu Laohu selected 10 people from the new soldiers who joined the army from Xiaoshui, plus cadres and veteran soldiers, and gathered a small company of 50 people, and the remaining new soldiers had to let them march with the infantry first.

Since Liu Yimin was given an education lesson on cavalry to be a sharpshooter, sharpshooter, and bombardier on horseback in the passage, this old Red Army who went to the Soviet Union to learn cavalry tactics was an eye-opener, and it turned out that he was very envious of the sword light that covered the sky when the Budyonny cavalry division charged, and longed for the cavalry that would one day lead the whole regiment and the whole division to roar towards the enemy's position, so that the enemy would succumb under his tide-like sword mountain. Now it seems that in the face of powerful firepower, the cavalry rushed to charge purely to send them to death, not to mention more powerful firepower, just the machine gun fire of the 18th Regiment when it destroyed the 16th Hunan Division, and there was no difference between the cavalry group's charge and sending it to death. It seems that the regiment commander still has a clear thinking, and the cavalry tactics of the Soviet army are a little backward from a strategic point of view.

Now, Hu Laohu is leading his cavalry company, wearing the uniform of the 16th Hunan Division, through the mountain road between Xiaoshui and Xikou.

The task given to him by the regiment commander was very clear, to disguise the 16th Hunan Division and put on combat alert in the direction of Xikou. If you encounter a small search force of the enemy's 62nd Division, you can eat it, but try not to shoot; In the event of encountering a large force of the enemy's 62nd Division, it should be covertly monitored, and it was not allowed to attack until the main force arrived, so as not to startle the snake.

Hu Laohu was not at ease, and before leaving, he deliberately ran to ask the regiment commander, what if the main force of the enemy's 62nd Division attacked and advanced in the direction of our army in Xiaoshui? The regimental commander clearly told him that the cavalry company should quickly return along the same route and not engage in a fight with the enemy.

Hu Laohu knew that the regiment commander was afraid of exposing the intentions of the main force of the regiment, and second, he was afraid that if the cavalry company launched an attack on the enemy's large army, it would be completely lost.

The mountain road is very difficult to walk, most of the time is leading the horse, which makes Hu Laohu very unhappy, just had a war horse, but can not gallop on the horse, it is a little too much to understand the cavalry warrior's thirst for that kind of speed like the wind. Hu Laohu kept praying in his heart: Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up and get out of this damn mountain road and get on the highway.

After turning a corner, there was a mountain village in front of me, standing quietly among the mountains. Hu Laohu originally wanted to fight his horse, but as soon as he thought that his task was to be on combat alert, he could not let go of any corner where danger could be hidden, and as soon as he whistled, he galloped towards the village with the cavalry company.

At this time, the mountain village was already full of people.

Outside the courtyard wall of a house on the edge of the village, Pan Mingming, a young soldier of the Red Army, crouched against the wall, surrounded by twenty or thirty onlookers.

Pan Mingliang is a native of Ruijin, who joined the army during the expansion of the Soviet area before the Long March, and was a soldier of the International Division of the First Army of the Young Communist Party. His parents, both Red Army cadres, remained in the Soviet zone and persisted in the struggle.

After the start of the Long March, Pan Mingliang followed the team all the way from the Yudu River and crossed four enemy blockade lines. The day before yesterday, when the 1st Regiment was transferred from the Chang'an Battalion to Linkou, he was assigned to a reconnaissance team to reconnoiter the enemy situation in the direction of Xiaoshui. After all, it's a 14-year-old kid who got lost and fell behind.

When he touched this small mountain village, Pan Mingliang, the little Red Army, had not closed his eyes for two days and two nights, had not eaten a bite of food for two days and two nights, and was weak. He just wanted to find a place to catch his breath and find something to eat.

The villagers gathered around, looked at the little Red Army lying against the wall, and began to talk about it: some said that they should throw him under the cliff to feed the wolves. Some say that it is safer to kill and bury it, and neither the Red Army nor [***] will know about it and will not cause trouble. Some people say that it is better to hand it over to [***] to receive the reward, after all, a Red Army head is worth two oceans. Some also say forget it, after all, it's a child, he doesn't understand anything, it's pitiful, it's better to let him run for his life. But no one went to get something to eat for the little Red Army, not even a bowl of water. A few naughty children laughed and played around Pan Mingliang like a rare animal in the mountains, and competed to see who could hit this dirty red bandit baby with a pebble.

There was an old man who said that he had no children, and that this child was very pitiful, so it was better to let him take him home, so that he could provide for his old age in the future. Immediately attracted a lot of opposition, everyone said that it was okay to adopt anyone, but they couldn't adopt a red bandit baby, be careful that the self-defense group knew, and the whole village suffered.

Pan Mingliang didn't know that at this time in Hunan, under He Jian's policy of preventing and banning the Communist Party, everyone talked about the common color change. Because He Jian is engaged in the method of joint sitting, one person is together, and the whole family suffers; The whole family is in the same together, and the whole village suffers. So, unless a large force of the Red Army occupied this place, under normal circumstances, no one would dare to give him something to eat or drink.

I miss the red Ruijin so much! The villagers there regarded the Red Army as relatives, and when they were thirsty, they had water, and when they were hungry, they had red rice and pumpkin porridge. When the Red Army soldiers were free, they helped the villagers to plant the land and harvest crops, and during the war, the villagers helped the Red Army carry ammunition, carry the wounded, and take prisoners. The Red Army and the villagers, that's a family. Why are the folks here like this, don't they know that the Red Army is a contingent of workers and peasants?

I don't know what happened to the parents who stayed in the Soviet area to fight guerrillas, they know if their Liangzi can no longer walk? Ryoko wants to drink water, Ryoko wants to eat, Ryoko wants to sleep beautifully next to them.

Slowly, Pan Mingliang seemed to see his parents in Red Army uniforms walking towards him, shouting Liangzi as he walked. Pan's bright, sleepy eyes slowly closed.

When Hu Laohu led the cavalry company into the village, Pan Mingliang, a little Red Army, was already full of stones and clods, and only the faintly visible red collar badge could still identify that this was a Red Army soldier.

Seeing the arrival of [***], several villagers who were greedy for money rushed forward to report the discovery of the red bandit baby, and some clever ones had begun to say that they had captured it in the mountains.

Hu Laohu stepped forward to pull Pan Mingliang up, and couldn't help but want to cry when he saw it: the military uniform was tattered, there was only one straw sandal left, the bottom was gone, only a few straw ropes were still tied to the neck of the foot, the foot was full of blood, and the left leg was swollen as thick as the mouth of a bowl. Hu Laohu knew that this little Red Army must be a red imp of the first legion.

Hu Laohu didn't say a word, picked up Pan Mingliang and put him on the war horse.

Several villagers saw that [***] wanted to take the red bandit baby away, and stopped Hu Laohu to ask for a reward. Hu Laohu lifted the leather whip and crackled a few whips: "Wang Ba lid drop, dare to reward you with [***], do you want to beat you?" ”

Only then did the villagers know that [***]'s reward was a leather whip, and they didn't care to correct Hu Laohu's inaccurate pronunciation of "Wang Ba Lid Drop", so they dispersed in a hurry.

Out of the village, Hu Laohu took out the kettle and poured some water on Pan Mingliang first, and when he woke up, he let him eat some dry food, and then took out a pair of cloth shoes that had just been removed from the corpse of the Hunan army in the Battle of Xiaoshui for him to change. The shoes were too big, and Hu Laohu untied the straw rope on Pan Mingming's rotten straw sandals, rubbed them thinly, and made them into shoelaces, which could barely be worn. Only then did Pan Mingliang believe that he had really met a comrade-in-arms disguised as an enemy, and reported his situation to Hu Laohu.

In this way, Pan Mingliang of the Little Red Army followed Hu Laohu's cavalry company all the way to search and advance, and began his legendary military career in the sequence of the Red Eighteenth Regiment. When the family of later generations excavated the legendary experience of the two generals, they interpreted this story as the old Red Army outwitting the red imp, and the novels, operas, movies, and TV were released together, which was very popular.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the cavalry company of the Red 18th Regiment, led by company commander Hu Laohu, crossed the mountain road between Xiaoshui and Xikou and came to the side of the road from Shanmu Bridge to Xikou.

The guide told Hu Laohu that this road is the closest avenue from Suining to the passage in a straight line, and that a bend to the south along the road is Xikou, and the village on the side of the road in the north is called Beishan Village. Their location is exactly from the entrance of this road to Xiaoshui, and they are not locals and generally do not know.

Hu Laohu arranged for the soldiers to hide their horses and occupy favorable terrain, and then began to rest in shifts and monitor movements on the road.

At half past four o'clock, Luo Yan and the soldiers who had gone out of Xikou to reconnoiter in front of the reconnaissance platoon returned, and after contacting Hu Laohu, they said that the situation was basically clear, and a brigade of the enemy's 62nd Division entered Xikou at more than one o'clock, and at two o'clock advanced to the front line of Zhaitoubao and Jingwuzhou. The chief of the security department in Xikou was leading the people to kill pigs and cook vegetables, saying that when the enemy's vanguard brigade arrived at Xikou, they had brutally ruined the common people, and after a while, the headquarters of the enemy's 62nd Division and the large army would arrive, so they hurried to prepare to meet them, lest the commander of the 62nd Division would not be dissatisfied and plunder.

Hu Laohu arranged for Luo Yan to report to the commander of the guiding regiment, and he and the cavalry company continued to monitor the enemy.

At this time, Liu Yimin was leading the Red 18th Regiment to advance rapidly along the mountain road that Hu Laohu had walked.

The march on the mountain road was already slow, and with Li Chang's artillery battalion, it was a mountain artillery, a mule and a horse, and a cannonball, and the speed was even slower. Although the two mountain artillery companies were eager to fight, they had already broken down the mountain artillery and used mules and horses to transport them as much as possible, but the speed still could not rise. Liu Yimin really wanted Li Chang to leave 3 mountain cannons and bury the remaining 9 mountain cannons, but when he saw the blood marks on Li Chang's shoulders and thought of the meritorious cannon that the Red Second Front Army brought to northern Shaanxi on display at the later military expo, Liu Yimin didn't want to say anything.

If he can't catch up with the 62nd Division, let the Zhong Guangren Brigade led by Tao Guang and the avant-garde Wang Yuying Brigade converge and occupy the central point of the passage county, once the enemy knows that the 16th Hunan Division has been eliminated, and the 18th Regiment is still in the passage area, the two armies of the Gui Army in the south, the remaining 6 divisions of the Hunan Army in the north and the 7 divisions of the Central Army will swarm up, shrinking the encirclement, and the living space of the 18th Regiment will be greatly compressed. Sacrifice is a trivial matter, and the task of covering the transfer of the main force of the Red Army to Guizhou may not be completed. In that case, the main force of the Red Army in Guizhou will soon be squeezed by the enemy's heavy army group again, exhausted from running for its life, and the Long March will inevitably leave tens of thousands of unyielding heroic souls in the snow-capped mountains and meadows, as it did in the original history.

This kind of ending is something that Liu Yimin absolutely does not want to see.

Only by catching up, destroying all or one brigade of the Hunan 62nd Division, and forcing the entire Hunan Army to shrink, can we gain the initiative, concentrate on meeting the Central Army or the Gui Army, gain time, and complete the task. Even, the Gui Army and the Central Army will shrink temporarily, and they can free up time for their troops to calmly catch up with the main force after resting.

After a brief discussion with Cai Zhong and Liu Jianjian, Liu Yimin decided that he and Liu Jianli would lead two mortar companies of the sniper platoon, six combat battalions, a heavy machine gun battalion, an engineer battalion, and an artillery battalion to advance at a rapid marching speed, and Cai Zhong would lead two mountain artillery companies of the artillery battalion and the recruit battalion to follow.

After the order was issued, Li Chang, commander of the artillery battalion, handed over the mountain artillery company to the instructor, and he took two mortar companies to follow the main force of the regiment and began a rapid march.

On the winding and hidden mountain road, the main force of the Red 18th Regiment rushed in the direction of Xikou.