The Longyou raid launched by An Yi's Reading Force on the first day of the Lunar New Year broke the balance between the revolutionary army and the Anhui Zhejiang army for only half a month, and the war in Zhejiang began on a large scale.

It was not easy to drive Zhou Fengqi's 26th Army and other troops to southern Zhejiang, and just stopped trying to take advantage of the Spring Festival period to recuperate, the sudden outbreak of war in Longyou made all the units of the Zhejiang army move again, and they had to enter a tense state of imminent battle.

Meng Zhaoyue, commander-in-chief of the Zhejiang Army, who was visiting the military and civilians in Fuyang, made a statement to the reporters of the "Declaration" who accompanied him for the interview, angrily condemning the Northern Expeditionary Army for having no traditional moral values and launching a heinous surprise attack on the first day of the Lunar New Year, killing and wounding hundreds of kind-hearted and unguarded officers and men of the Zhejiang Army.

The raided Longyou City was no longer garrisoned, and both Zhejiang and the Northern Expeditionary Army tacitly regarded Longyou as a buffer for both sides. Bai Chongxi, the former commander-in-chief of the Northern Expeditionary Army, was keenly aware of the positive significance of occupying Longyou City, which not only suppressed the enemy defending the middle of the Zhejiang Army and forced the enemy to transfer the main force to Youbu, Lanxi, and Tangxi to fight a decisive battle, but also had great benefits in boosting the morale of the whole army and creating political influence.

Therefore, at a military meeting attended by the commanders of the divisions of the second, third, and fourth columns the following afternoon, Bai Chongxi handed over the "important task" of occupying Longyou City to Liu Zhi's Second Division, which was brave enough to turn over after being ashamed.

At eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, Liu Zhi convened a pre-war mobilization meeting of the battalion commanders of the Second Division and handed over this task to the An Yi Reading Regiment, for a very simple reason: the other three regiments had just completed replenishment and had not been trained, and only the Reading Regiment, which had preserved most of its combat effectiveness, could take on this important task. The heads and deputies of the regiments did not fight this time, and no one was jealous of An Yi, on the contrary, they all smiled and wished An Yi a victory and success.

On the night of receiving the order, all the troops pulled out the camp and advanced to Longyou City, which was 28 kilometers to the east, at the speed of a rapid march, and it took only six hours to enter Longyou City, which was silent.

At nine o'clock in the morning, Liu Zhi, who was holding a meeting of the divisions in Quzhou City, received an urgent report from An Yi and immediately reported the good news of the bloodless occupation of Longyou City by the Reading Force Regiment to Bai Chongxi and the generals attending the meeting.

Everyone was taken aback, admiring the bold advance and rapid maneuvering speed of An Yi's reading group, Chen Cheng praised loudly while being happy: I didn't expect An Yi, a guy who always has a smile on his face, to be so powerful!

Xue Yue, commander of Gengzhi's 1st Division, made a slight calculation, and praised An Yi's reading regiment for its preparation work and excellent combat effectiveness.

The praise of everyone made Liu Zhi and Xu Tingyao, who were in pain of breaking their wings, extremely relieved, and at the same time, they also secretly regretted that they always took care of this and appeased that in the way of face, and did not promote and reuse An Yi's reading group as soon as possible.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the enemy scout team was ambushed at the foot of Goutou Mountain, 3.8 kilometers northeast of Longyou City, seven people were killed, two were captured alive, and only the team leader with excellent martial arts and riding skills broke through with injuries.

Zhou Qian, the former commander-in-chief of the enemy guarding Youbu, Situ Wei, the commander of the mixed brigade, and Yang Shijun, the brigade commander of Reading Li, who was twice beaten by An Yi's subordinates, were extremely angry after receiving the emergency report, and immediately held an emergency meeting to dispatch troops. At the end of the meeting, Zhou Qian, he personally went to Zhangjiabu at the junction of the two armies and used a high-powered telescope to climb the heights and look.

The battle flags on the heights of Goutou Mountain in the east and north of Longyou City are like clouds, and the frightened Zhou Qian and the generals roughly estimated that at least 15,000 revolutionary troops were stationed on both sides of the Qujiang River in the north and south of Longyou City, and saw that a group of revolutionary troops were desperately rushing to repair the fortifications, putting on a strange posture of resolute defense, Zhou Qian and the generals were very puzzled, and they couldn't figure out why the revolutionary army that suddenly occupied Longyou County and the strategic places on both sides of the strait stopped advancing, but instead dug fortifications and put on a posture of long-term defense?

In the face of the unknown tricks of the revolutionary army, Zhou Qian hesitated, and cautiously ordered the Situ Wei Brigade to advance to the first line of Shiyuan Town at the southern foot of Dongfeng Mountain to build fortifications, and hold the strategic point on the north bank that leads to Youbu 2.2 kilometers wide, and ordered the 3rd and 4th regiments of the headquarters and Yang Shijun's brigade to go to the first line of Huzhen, 12 kilometers east of Longyou, relying on the natural danger of Zhaojiashan, to deploy the defense line from south to north, echoing with the Situ Wei Brigade on the north bank, constituting the first barrier of the port, and at the same time urgently telegraphing Meng Zhaoyue, commander-in-chief of the Zhejiang Army, to request support.

The next day, Zhou Qian, the former commander-in-chief of the enemy who learned that the Eighth Division of the Zhejiang Army was rushing from Tonglu to the aid of Youbu, was slightly relieved and immediately received an urgent report from the front:

The scouts of the revolutionary army carried out a large-scale activity, ambushing our scout squad everywhere, and its main force continued to dig fortifications on both sides of the Qujiang River in the Longyou section, and the banner of the famous main force of the revolutionary army, the "Model Battalion", was planted high on the top of the Longzhou Pagoda on the bank of the Lingshan River, and along the bank of the Lingshan River all the way to the south, the banners of the "Fourth Regiment" and the "Second Reading Regiment" appeared, and the banners of the revolutionary army's "Reading Regiment", "Fifth Regiment", "Teaching Regiment", and "Second Division Supplementary Regiment" appeared on the dog head mountain on the north bank. It was preliminarily determined that the total strength of the revolutionary army on the front line of Longyou had increased to about 25,000 people.

Zhou Qian was taken aback, and immediately rushed to the front of Huzhen to observe, and was shocked to find that the revolutionary army in the east of Longyou City seemed to have built three wide trenches extending in all directions overnight, from the north bank of the intersection of the Lingshan River and the Qujiang River in the north, to the south to the southeast of the city, stretching for five kilometers, all of which were densely packed with firepower points and highland fortifications.

Zhou Qian immediately rushed back to the Youbu headquarters, strictly ordered all the troops under his command to make all defensive preparations, and quickly telegraphed this sudden situation to Meng Zhaoyue, the commander-in-chief in Hangzhou, and once again asked Meng Zhaoyue to send reinforcements to help Youbu to the front line of Lanxi.

On the edge of the trenches on the east bank of the Lingshan River in Longyou City, An Yi and Hu Zi and others were accompanying Zhang Benqing, deputy of the fourth regiment, Li Yannian, commander of the fifth regiment, and Tan Fulie, commander of the sixth regiment, to inspect the progress of fortification construction.

The crooked trench is as wide as three meters wide and about two meters deep, leaving a high ridge of about 80 centimeters along the east wall of the trench, so that the officers and men can climb the high ridge and shoot at the front of the position, but once the enemy occupies the trench, the ditch wall is too high to shoot westward because the wall is more than two meters high. Secondly, the officers and men of the Reading Regiment dug anti-artillery holes along the trenches with an interval of about 15 meters, and each anti-artillery hole could accommodate about 10 people, so that the officers and men could take safe shelter when the enemy was shelling.

Thinking of the engineer experience of An Yi and nearly half of the commanders of the Reading Regiment, the commanders of each regiment could only sigh with envy, first, because the officers and men under their command were not as well-trained as the brothers of the Reading Regiment, and second, the equipment and tools equipped with the engineering companies of the various battalions of the Reading Regiment were really advanced, and they could not be compared with ordinary steel pickaxes and shovels.

An Yi seriously explained the role of trenches and fortifications to the senior brothers, and saw that the senior brothers did not pay enough attention, An Yi immediately proposed to carry out on-site simulated offensive and defensive deductions with the senior brothers.

Li Yannian and others suddenly came to the spirit, and they all disguised themselves as enemy units to attack An Yi's position, and in only half an hour, the commanders of each regiment were convinced, and the troops of the three regiments attacked An Yi's model battalion and two machine gun companies, and they still couldn't approach within 100 meters of the second line of defense in the east of Longyou City at a heavy price, and finally were defeated by An Yi, who had preserved his strength, with a countercharge.

After this exercise, Li Yannian, Tan Fulie and others benefited a lot, and they all bid farewell to An Yi and rushed back to supervise the construction of defensive positions by the battalions under their command.

An Yi, who had achieved his goal, immediately summoned his battalion and company commanders to assign combat missions, and thus the special operations and raids that made the enemy miserable began.

In the former enemy headquarters in Quzhou City, Chief of Staff Zhang Dingfan took a stack of telegrams and reported to Bai Chongxi in front of the large map:

"Dai Yue called: The two divisions of the Second Army have conquered the towns of Qixi, Majin, and Fenkou, and are advancing towards Chun'an; Chief He of the General Headquarters of the Eastern Route Army called, and the four soldiers and horses of each department under his command attacked the enemy troops in eastern Zhejiang in three ways; General Zhou Fengqi's two divisions of the 26th Army and Lai Shihuang's 14th Army had been ordered to turn around and attack Jinhua; Xue Yue's 1st Division was advancing towards Lanxi, and the serious 21st Division was moving to Tangxi from the left flank, and all divisions basically met the requirements of the battle plan, and it only took three days to launch a full-scale general attack. ”

Bai Chongxi nodded with satisfaction: "Our four-way column is advancing hand in hand, coupled with the rapid attack launched by Chief He Yingqin on the front line in eastern Zhejiang, Sun Chuanfang and Meng Zhaoyue will not be able to divide their troops to help at all, as long as our army is defeated in one place, the enemy's defense line of hundreds of kilometers will immediately shake the whole line, and we can only quickly retreat to the second line of defense in central Zhejiang, and we will be much easier to fight at that time." ”

"If it weren't for your arrival, which ended the chaotic situation of the four columns acting separately and blindly attacking, where would there be such a big deal to control the overall situation?" Zhang Dingfan was sincerely admired.

Bai Chongxi smiled noncommittally, turned to the map and asked calmly, "What is Liu Zhishi's performance?" ”

Zhang Dingfan replied: "Yesterday morning, the headquarters of the Second Division had moved forward to Anren Town, behind Longyou City, and it was within 15 kilometers of the positions on both sides of the front. The 5th Regiment of the 2nd Division has entered the position of the 3rd Battalion of the Reading Regiment on the north bank, the 4th Regiment has entered the position on the south bank where the Model Battalion and the 2nd Battalion of the Reading Regiment are stationed, and the 6th Regiment, which has just been replenished, has been stationed in Longyou City as a reserve.

Interestingly, starting yesterday morning, An Yi's Reading Force Regiment successively inserted the war chess pieces of the three main regiments into the northern and southern positions, and then successively planted the battle flags of the so-called 'Reading Force Second Regiment', 'Teaching Regiment', and 'Supplementary Regiment' on the northern and southern positions. ”

The charcoal pen swimming in Bai Chongxi's hand stopped to the east of Youbu, and it took him a while before he turned around, returned to the big table, sat down, and sighed:

"This An Yi is indeed a genius, it seems that he has vaguely guessed my strategic deployment, and he has been prepared to be invincible early on. His position was the focus of the battle, the center of gravity of the confrontation between the two armies. If Sun Chuanfang and Meng Zhaoyue were determined to fight hard, there would be a difficult and tragic battle on the front line from Longyou to Youbu.

The reason why I only put Liu Zhi's division in this position and did not send reinforcements is that I am confident that Meng Zhaoyue and Sun Chuanfang do not have the courage to fight to the death, and if any of them dare to gather forces to storm Liu Zhi's division, it will leave us with a great opportunity for all other roads, therefore, I am not worried that the battle situation will change after Liu Zhi's division is defeated, but I hope that the enemy will attack Liu Zhi's division on a large scale, so that Xue Yue and the two serious divisions can quickly break through Lanxi and Tangxi, Zhou Fengqi's 26th Army and Lai Shihuang's 14th Army were able to greatly reduce resistance when attacking Jinhua. The above three roads will definitely complete the task of attacking the fortification, and then turn back to carry out counter-outflanking, and the enemy army will have no way to escape.

And this young An Yi seems to see this, otherwise he would not have spent so much effort, and used a series of false and real means to confuse the opponent, so that the opponent did not dare to act rashly, if my estimate is good, this guy is probably ready to bluff and take the initiative to attack! ”

"What? The Second Division has just experienced a fiasco, and it has so many troops on hand, and most of them are supplementary recruits who lack systematic training, does An Yi really dare to take the initiative to attack? Zhang Dingfan asked in surprise.

Bai Chongxi smiled slightly: "This guy is brave and strategic, open-minded and tolerant, his fierce generals are like clouds, officers and soldiers use their lives, three religions and nine streams are everything, plus there is Commander-in-Chief Jiang behind his back to support him, there is nothing he dare not do." It's a pity that such a rare general is succumbed to a group of mediocre people who are brave and unscrupulous......"

(To be continued)