After 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 18,000 soldiers and civilians gathered from all directions made concerted efforts and finally successfully surrounded the remnants of the enemy's 37th Division, which had barely resisted for more than an hour and were again killed by more than 1,300 people. More than 4,600 frightened remnants of the army crowded between the narrow Dingwang Lake and Xiaoyizhuang and Erlangzhuang, looking at the battle flags and the banners of the model battalions that seemed to be endless in all directions, at the light and heavy machine guns and several mortar positions erected on the surrounding high grounds, and at the surging black pressure of the soldiers and civilians, the psychological defense line completely collapsed and the thousands of officers and soldiers who were almost desperate finally chose to lay down their arms and shouted surrender.

Seeing this, the officers and men of the Model Battalion and the Second Regiment resolutely rushed into the enemy group, and with a single cross-charge, they divided the 4,600-odd enemy into four large parts, and quickly took them to the flat areas on the east and west sides for search and reorganization.

More than 1,000 brothers from the 2nd Regiment took more than 1,000 captives to the broad meadow to the southeast, and before they could be separated again to screen them one by one, more than 5,000 angry fathers and villagers had already rushed forward frantically despite the dissuasion, raised their sticks, poles, hoes, shovels, and other objects in their hands, and began to take violent revenge.

Seeing that one by one the enemy prisoners were knocked to the ground by the angry villagers, knocking their heads and bleeding, Chen Zhibiao, the commander of the second regiment, just crossed his hands and looked coldly, without saying a word to stop him. At first, the officers and men felt quite relieved, but after seeing dozens of prisoners knocked to death one after another, they realized that something was wrong with the situation, and Colonel Zhou Dingcheng, deputy and instructor of the regiment, stepped forward to ask Chen Zhibiao to come forward to stop it to no avail.

Yin Jinan, who was standing on the hillside and commanding the overall situation, was taken aback, and immediately ordered the signal corps to send other troops to quickly escort the frightened prisoners who wanted to riot away from this place, and he ran down the hill and rode on a war horse and rushed to the west, asking Uncle Mogen, the head of the Self-Defense Forces, to help relieve and dissuade the masses and not cause another tragedy.

Without saying a word, Uncle Mogen, who was kind-hearted, gave orders to the captains of the villages and towns, and more than 1,200 self-defense personnel with rifles on their backs hurriedly rushed to the gathering places of the villagers in their respective villages and towns, and tossed for more than half an hour before they could settle down the chaotic order.

After the regiments and battalions finished counting and reported the results to Yin Jinan, Yin Jinan shook his head helplessly: As a result of this disturbance, the commander of the 37th Division and more than 10 generals and colonels who surrendered were knocked to death by the angry people, and their brains flowed into blood, and it was impossible to identify who was who, and the other captured officers and soldiers were also killed and wounded more than 500 people, dozens of whom were dying and could not be saved.

Yin Jinan was very annoyed, but he didn't want to accuse Chen Zhibiao, the commander of the second regiment, who had suffered heavy losses in this battle, for not taking due responsibility, so he could only order Xia Jian and Cheng Guang's troops to escort the prisoners to the mouth of the Tonghe River for concentration, and after crossing the river, they were escorted to Wuhe County overnight and handed over to the teaching team for centralized guarding, and the two regiments were jointly responsible for the defense of Wuhe County and its surroundings.

In the middle of the night, An Yi led the division headquarters to Gupei Town, and immediately convened an emergency meeting, and soon the task was issued: the engineer battalion once again took on the important task of sending more than 1,800 wounded brothers to Mingguang City in the south, and the bodies of 1,298 brothers killed in the battle were sent to Tonghekou for centralized burial. After the burial was completed, Gu Changfeng's three regiments still needed to stick to the front line of Liuxiang Town, closely monitoring the movements of the enemy troops on the north bank of the Huai River, and the rest of the troops would go to Wuhe County to rest tomorrow morning.

After the meeting was dismissed, Yin Jinan thought about it and couldn't make a decision, and finally worriedly told An Yi about the fact that the Second Regiment allowed the people to beat to death 377 people, including the commander of the enemy's 37th Division, who surrendered and surrendered, and wounded more than 560 people, and asked how to deal with the matter.

An Yi was stunned for a while, and did not say anything more, but ordered Zhan Huanqi and Peng Jianqing to report the final statistical results to the General Headquarters and General Headquarters, and quietly counted the 377 people including the commander of the 37th Division into the results of killing the enemy.

Yin Jinan, Yang Bin, Hu Jialin and others immediately knew that An Yi was excusing Chen Zhibiao, so they suppressed the unhappiness in their hearts and no longer mentioned the matter, but shifted the focus of the discussion to the next stage of the action plan, how to appease and repay the villagers and other specific matters.

The next morning, Gupei Town was crowded with people, and it was very lively.

An Yi, Yin Jinan, and Yang Bin accompanied Uncle Mao Gen and more than a dozen other self-defense captains from the east of the town to the west of the town, pointing to groups of pack horses and piles of seized materials on the side of the road, talking happily and smiling.

The streets were full of villagers with smiles on their faces that they had not seen for a long time, and groups of children surrounded the officers and soldiers of the Second Regiment who stayed behind to ask questions and laughs, which also made the brothers of the Second Regiment who had lost half of their comrades-in-arms feel very heavy.

An hour later, An Yi and others and Uncle Maogen came to the town's barn field, in the deafening cheers of tens of thousands of fathers and villagers, An Yi climbed several large tables to temporarily put together a high platform, solemnly saluted, and expressed his heartfelt thanks to the villagers, and then An Yi waved his hand back, and sixteen brothers from the logistics unit carried out four large boxes under the leadership of Lao Chang, and placed them neatly in front of the high platform, and opened the lid of the boxes one by one, revealing the full ocean inside, which immediately attracted the exclamations of the villagers standing in front.

An Yi waved his hand and said loudly: "Fathers and fellow villagers, in order to express the gratitude in the hearts of the 11,000 living and dead officers and soldiers of our Revolutionary Army's Reading Division, and in order to make up for the huge losses caused to the villagers by this seven-day war, after the study of our Reading Division, we have decided to pay 20,000 yuan to the fathers and villagers of all villages and towns to make up for the losses caused to everyone......

There was thunder of joy all around, An Yi had to stop, Uncle Maogen saw that the excited villagers did not mean to close their mouths, and jumped on the high platform to stand beside An Yi with an arrow step, pointing here and that, and tearing off his loud voice to scold, which restrained the noisy villagers. Uncle Mogen apologized for An Yi to continue, An Yi smiled and solemnly announced again in a voice that was not inferior to Uncle Mogen:

"In addition, after studying the situation, I decided to reward the villagers of each village and town with 500 pack horses, 1,500 long and short guns, 50,000 rounds of ammunition, and all the captured materials piled up in the town to be handed over to the Self-Defense Force Headquarters organized by Uncle Mogen, and distributed to the villages and towns after the statistics were completed.

In the afternoon, after Uncle Mao Gen led the villagers to help us deliver the captured military materials to Wuhe County, he transported back the cloth, salt, farm tools and other materials that our army had prepared from Wuhe County, so as to repay the villagers for their full support to our revolutionary army and readers! We will never forget the great kindness of our fellow villagers...... The blood of the officers and men of our reading division has flowed on this land, and our 1,298 outstanding revolutionary officers and soldiers have sacrificed their young lives here in order to defeat the warlords and unify the motherland, and they will be buried on this land forever, and our blood and fellow villagers will always be together! Our hearts are forever connected! Fathers and fellow villagers are our relatives......"

The earth-shattering cheers sounded again, and countless villagers shouted to the high platform to thank them, and loudly told An Yi to lead his soldiers to leave the war with confidence, and the villagers immediately built tombs and monuments for their soldiers, and they would pay tribute to them from generation to generation...... An Yi on the high platform was speechless, with tears in his eyes, he jumped off the high platform and walked quickly into the barn behind him, Uncle Mogen hurriedly jumped off the high platform to catch up with An Yi, who was out of control.

Yin Jinan burst into tears and followed in, among so many people, he was the only one who understood An Yi's pain and the meaning of his words at this time. In order for the 1,298 brothers who died in the battle to rest here in peace, An Yi chose to leave all the captured materials behind; In order to compensate for the losses caused by his ruthless blowing up of the reservoir embankment, An Yi was willing to pay 20,000 oceans and 500 pack horses in disguised compensation; In order to let the villagers be kind to the dead brothers and not destroy the resting place of these brothers who died in battle, An Yi is willing to give all his emotions and pay as much benefit as possible.

Seeing that the scene was so touching, Yang Bin was worried that thousands of villagers would rush forward, so he hurriedly grabbed Bian Jinsuo, the young deputy chief of the Self-Defense Forces, and jumped onto the high platform, commanding the villagers in all villages and towns to gather separately and wait for the Self-Defense Forces to go and announce various distribution and transportation matters.

At noon the next day, 1,298 brothers who had died in this battle were all buried in the ground, and a circular stone tomb with a circumference of 18 meters was erected with the efforts of hundreds of villagers, and an irregular boulder temporarily used as a tombstone was erected in the north, and the tomb was located on a small hill behind the original Second Regiment position on the south bank of the Huai River, just facing the mouth of the Tong River directly opposite the river bay.

Uncle Maogen and Uncle Bian, the respected township elder of Gupei Town, and others pulled An Yi and others to the back of the hill, pointing to more than 20 stonemasons and stone slabs that were transported overnight at the bottom of the mountain, Uncle Maogen said emotionally:

"Rest assured, generals, we will be able to carve the tombstone in five days at the latest, Uncle Bian has been optimistic about Huang Daoji, on the ninth day, when the tomb will become magnificent, we will also erect a stone tablet in front of the tomb, engrave the names of the five generals and the heads of each regiment, and engrave the experience of the war in the past seven days and the deeds of the revolutionary army to the villagers as a family. Generals, please rest assured to go to war, and when the country is truly reunified, you will come back and see. ”

A speech moved more than a dozen generals such as An Yi, Yin Jinan, and Hu Zi to tears, and everyone sighed and returned to the tombstone.

An Yi and the generals finished burning incense, picked up the wine bowl and knelt down on one leg neatly, Yang Bin, who was familiar with etiquette, read the eulogy loudly, and then respectfully respected the heroic spirit, and finally more than ten generals and more than 300 officers and soldiers drank a bowl of wine together, and then said goodbye to the villagers and left with tears.

Lao Chang, who was at the end, led the two warrant officers to put the cloth bags of 2,000 oceans at the feet of Uncle Mao Gen and Uncle Bian, and ran away without waiting for these two affectionate elders to react.

Compared with the Tonghe estuary, where the atmosphere was solemn and tearful, the city of Nanjing was a sea of joy, and the 100,000-person celebration parade organized by the Central Party Department was in full swing, and the big red banners celebrating the "Great Victory of the Five Rivers" and the "Great Victory of Bengbu" were held high, An Yi and his reading group and model battalion became the heroes of the crowd, and the names of Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren, and Bai Chongxi also resounded over the city of Nanjing from time to time.

In the procession of 5,000 people at Southeast University, a large portrait of An Yi appeared. In the past few days, the Political Training Department of the General Headquarters has specially selected the most wonderful clips from the seven-day fierce battle of An Yi's Reading Division, and published them in newspapers and magazines with great fanfare; Commander-in-Chief Chiang has sent three commendation telegrams in succession to give special commendations to An Yi, the First Army's Reading Division, and Li Zongren, the commander-in-chief of the Third Road, throughout the whole army; An Yi, a young general who has only turned 21 years old in a little more than a month, has once again become famous all over the world, and his status has risen rapidly in the eyes of countless young people and people from all walks of life throughout the country, and he has become a model for the whole army and the whole people to study and worship.

It is a pity that all the officers and men of the Reading Division, including An Yi, did not know that their prestige had become so loud, they were extremely tired, and their mood was also very heavy; since the crossing of the river, the number of this unit with outstanding achievements has been drastically reduced from 11,000 to more than 7,600, and the number of officers and men killed in battle has been as high as 2,300 and more than 3,000 have been wounded, of which more than 1,800 need to be sent to rear hospitals for long-term treatment and recuperation.

At 4:30 p.m., An Yi was grateful after receiving a telegram of condolences from General Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren, who generously transferred a special train from Bengbu and specially instructed this special train for the Reading Force Division to transport the wounded and supplies back to Pukou, and that all armies and divisions along the line must cooperate closely to ensure the safety of the train.

After An Yi sent a telegram of thanks, he immediately led more than 260 elderly officers and men including Lao Chang of the Logistics Department to ride on horses and rush to Mingguang County, 45 kilometers to the south, to see off more than 1,800 wounded brothers under his command. After receiving An Yi's urgent call, Lao Shoudao, the director of the base, has begun to prepare for the arrival of the wounded and sick in batches.

An Yi's face on the horse was calm, but his mood was extremely heavy, and his huge military exploits could not make him happy at all, although he knew that fighting a war would inevitably kill people, and a qualified general should not be emotional at all, but he couldn't let it go.

This was the first major battle commanded by An Yi since he joined the army, and he achieved a miraculous victory under the control of his superhuman knowledge and extraordinary courage, but it also caused nearly a third of the casualties in his headquarters, and the young general could not get past this emotional hurdle for a while, and his heart was far from being as optimistic and strong ......~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ as he looked

(To be continued)