Han Yunhua had a very comfortable time throughout the Spring Festival, anyway, the entire military region is now seeking stability from top to bottom. And the army didn't make any big moves, let alone take action against Han Yunhua's department, so Han Yunhua is happy now. However, this state of affairs only lasted until the 15th day of the lunar calendar, that is, on the day of the Lantern Festival, when the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army sent a telegram saying that the army dispatched the main force to invade the southern Hebei region with all its might, and launched a sweep of the southern Hebei region of the Eighth Route Army.

After receiving the telegram from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, Han Yunhua had no choice but to pack up his mood and hold an emergency meeting. Han Yunhua came to the conference room early, because the military region has not held any major meetings during this time, so this conference room has always been empty, Han Yunhua walked into the conference room, spread it on the table according to the military map, and took a magnifying glass to look at it carefully.

After watching for a while, Han Yunhua set his eyes on Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi. Historically, in February 1939, the Chinese Nationalist Axe, which had already judged the intention of attacking Nanchang, ordered the 9th Theater to launch an attack in the direction of Nanxun on the other line of the Japanese Army three times after close deployment, so as to divert the enemy's offensive direction and disrupt the offensive deployment of the Japanese Army. However, the Ninth Theater had a lot of trouble, and it had been delaying the offensive on the grounds of poor preparation. Until March 17, 1939, the Yue army took the lead in attacking, and the [***] team and the Yue Ben invading army fought fiercely in Nanchang City and the surrounding areas of Nanchang. However, from March 17 to 27, the Chinese defenders lost Nanchang within 10 days, and the defenders suffered heavy losses. The Battle of Nanchang was a battle that took place in the summer of 1939 during the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, in which Lieutenant General Okamura Ninji, commander of the 11th Army, commanded three divisions to defeat more than 30 divisions on the right flank of the Ninth Theater commanded by Luo Zhuoying in a short period of time, occupied Nanchang, and repelled the [***] counteroffensive. In this battle, the army suffered more than 13,000 casualties, and the middle [***] team suffered more than 100,000 casualties. This is not only due to the superiority of weapons and equipment, but also because of a series of mistakes by the Chinese side. After that, the army pursued westward and captured the important town of Gao'an on April 2. The [***] team retreated. After that, due to the lack of troops, the army stopped the pursuit and withdrew part of its troops from the Nanchang area, and the battlefield was relatively stable.

However, in addition to the new victory, the Chinese were intensively preparing a counteroffensive aimed at retaking Nanchang, and the 3rd and 9th theaters coordinated the spring offensive (also known as the April offensive). On April 21, the counteroffensive was officially launched, and the main force of the [***] team launched a surprise attack on Nanchang, which temporarily disrupted the enemy's position and connected the outer positions of Nanchang. On the 25th and 26th, they successively advanced to the city of Nanchang. However, because the [***] team of the other line failed to complete the task of cutting off the reinforcements of the Yue army, the marines of the Yue army rushed to support. The squadron launched a fierce attack on the Yue army for nearly a week, but failed to make progress, and on May 1, Chiang Kai-shek had to take Nanchang within a time limit. To this end, on the 2nd, the Chinese [***] team launched a second round of fierce offensive and further approached Nanchang. However, at this time, it had lost the quality of the surprise attack, and could only carry out a strong attack, and under the enemy's insistence, the [***] team suffered heavy casualties, for which on May 9, the order was ordered to stop the attack. And the army was unable to counterattack further. The Battle of Nanchang ended.

The Battle of Nanchang was the first major battle of the Chinese army after the frontal battlefield entered the stage of stalemate, and it was a far-reaching general battle, as well as a natural extension of the Battle of Wuhan and the prelude to the following series of battles. The fall of Nanchang put the liaison between the 3rd Theater and the rear in a difficult situation, and the military supply could only rely on the highway lines of Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, making the situation of the unoccupied areas of the southeastern provinces even more difficult. The Battle of Nanchang also brought profound lessons to future operations: The spirit of the Chinese officers and men who were not afraid of sacrifice and fought to the death embodied the high will to resist the Japanese. Although the counteroffensive against Nanchang was unsuccessful, the action of taking the initiative to counterattack showed that the Military Committee of the Nationalist Political Axe had a certain sense of enterprising in strategic command. At the same time, it also exposed the shortcomings of the strategy and tactics of the Kuomintang army's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression: blindly fighting regular warfare, positional warfare in which simple front defense lacked depth, and despising movement warfare and guerrilla warfare. In this regard, China [***] has repeatedly put forward opinions and suggestions to the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang also adopted some of them, which provided valuable experience for future battles.

In light of the course of historical development and the development of the Sino-Chinese war, it is not difficult for Han Yunhua to judge the strategic intention of the Chinese army to invade southern Hebei on a large scale this time. You must know that a large part of the reason why the Battle of Wuhan ended in failure was that it underestimated the strength of the Eighth Route Army. Therefore, the army learned to be obedient this time, and if it wanted to clean up the Kuomintang, it was going to beat [***] in advance, so that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army would not have the ability to suddenly appear on the battlefield in Jiangxi again.

Thinking about this clearly, Han Yunhua suddenly became interested, this little devil really treats him Han Yunhua as a dish now, and knows how to consider his Han Yunhua's "feelings", the southern Hebei region is the territory of the 129th Division, according to the historical Eighth Route Army division, the location of the army's attack is precisely the defense area of the 386th Brigade of the former Chen Da Brigade Commander.

While Han Yunhua was carefully analyzing, Political Commissar Zuo, Shen Yuquan, Ye Baoguo, Liu Mingyuan, Yang Ruihua, Guo Weidong, and Qian Zhuangfei walked into the conference room one after another. Seeing that all the people had arrived, Han Yunhua sorted out what he had just obtained and officially started the meeting.

"Comrades: Just now the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army sent an urgent telegram that on 2 March, the main forces of the 10th Division, the 110th Division, and the 114th Division of the Chinese Army were each going all out to attack our base area in southern Hebei. After occupying some county towns in southern Hebei, with the cooperation of the planes, the Chinese army continued to attack the central area of southern Hebei by separate routes, in an attempt to destroy the anti-Japanese base areas in southern Hebei. And this time, the commander of the army was none other than the Lieutenant General Yoshio Shinozuka we met in Wuhan. The headquarters of the Eighth Route Army ordered our unit to strengthen vigilance and be ready to support the troops in the southern Hebei region at any time. Han Yunhua said. When he first saw the name of Lieutenant General Yoshio Shinozuka, he was taken aback. Yoshio Shinozuka is also a character, Han Yunhua also has a certain understanding of him, although his record is not too surprising, but as one of the characters in the novel "Bright Sword", his position is the commander of the First Army of the North China Dispatch Army in Shanxi, so it aroused Han Yunhua's idea in his previous life, and he also deliberately went down to check the information of this guy, so Han Yunhua still has a certain understanding of this lieutenant general who will be in Shanxi in the future.

The first to express his opinion was not Zuo Political Commissar or Shen Yuquan, but Qian Zhuangfei, who has never liked to talk: "Commander, during this time, our intelligence department has also collected a lot of useful things for the transfer of the army, but some of them are still being verified and have not yet been determined, so I have not reported to the military region a few days ago." There are more than 30,000 people in the southern Hebei sweep, as long as there is the 8th Infantry Brigade of the 10th Division (division commander Lieutenant General Yoshio Shinozuka), the commander of the brigade is Major General Okada, and the 8th Infantry Brigade is under the jurisdiction of the 39th Infantry Wing and the 40th Infantry Wing, but there is no 39th Infantry Wing in the number of the troops participating in the southern Hebei sweep this time, only the 40th Wing. Secondly, the 10th Infantry Brigade of the 33rd Infantry Regiment under the 10th Division also participated in the sweep. The 110th Division (division commander Lieutenant General Sang Mu Zhengming) participated in the southern Hebei sweep with the numbers of the 108th Infantry Brigade Infantry 139th and 140th Wings. 133rd Infantry Wing, 110th Infantry Brigade. The 110th Cavalry Brigade, the 110th Field Artillery Wing, and the 110th Engineer Wing. The 114th Division (division commander Lieutenant General Suematsu Shigera) invaded southern Hebei with the following numbers: the 127th Infantry Brigade (Brigade Commander Major General Kozaburo Akiyama) and the 65th Infantry Wing. 128th Infantry Brigade Regiment (Brigade Commander Major General Obaov) 115th Infantry Wing. The 1st [***] Cavalry Wing, the 120th Field Artillery Wing, the 114th Engineer Wing, and the 114th Light and Heavy Infantry Wing. The main areas invaded by the Yue army were Wei County, Pingxiang County, Julu County and other counties. And the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army is dealing with it, and now the speed of the army's advance is very fast, and the battle situation is not optimistic. At the same time, the Chinese armies in central Shanxi, northwestern Shanxi, northern Shanxi, northern Hebei, and northwestern Hebei are also ready to move, and their direct operational target is our unit, and the purpose is to hold back our unit and prevent our military region from moving south to support the counter-sweeping campaign in southern Hebei. Among them, Lieutenant General Umezu Mijiro, commander of the First Army stationed in Shanxi, issued an operational order to resolutely block the southward movement of our army in central Shanxi, northwestern Shanxi, and northern Shanxi. The 39th Infantry Brigade was reinforced by two additional wings. The Shuozhou garrison was also effectively replenished, and the total strength reached a terrifying 13,000 men. The garrisons of Chengde, Zhangjiakou and other places have also advanced a lot, and it seems that they have formed a situation of encirclement of our army. Qian Zhuangfei said very quickly and very clearly, as the head of the intelligence department of the Inner Mongolia Military Region, Qian Zhuangfei's current power in the Inner Mongolia Military Region is very great, his intelligence department is not only the only department of the Inner Mongolia Military Region for intelligence collection, analysis and processing, but also the internal defense of counter-espionage, and there is also an armed department with reading power, although there are not many armed troops, only less than 3,000 people, but its combat effectiveness is extremely strong. Therefore, the tide rises, and the Minister of Intelligence has become the most powerful person after Han Yunhua, Zuo Political Commissar, and Shen Yuquan.

Qian Zhuangfei's voice was very high and the news brought was even more shocking, the army not only opened a posture in the southern Hebei region to clean up the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army and local militia and other anti-Japanese organizations, but also set up a dragon gate formation in the northern part of the Saibei region, to compare with Han Yunhua's department, if you add the sporadic battles in the central Hebei Plain and the southeast of Shanxi, then the entire North China region is all involved in this battle, it seems that the army is serious this time, and will not give up if the Eighth Route Army is not destroyed.

(To be continued)