The soldiers of the reconnaissance regiment of the 500 Army successfully assassinated Takehiko Yokoyama and other murderers of General Zhang. Victory in a small battle cannot hide a defeat in a large-scale battle. Although the morale of the Japanese Third Division was low because of Gao Quan's strategy, the devils are devils, and they are still more advanced than ours in terms of weapons, especially when the three divisions and several detachments of nearly 100,000 devils are combined into one unit, its combat effectiveness is even more unimaginable.

Although our side has two group armies with strong combat effectiveness and more than a dozen divisions, it still can't stop the crazy attack of the devils. The 75th Army, which was in the front position, bore the brunt of the attack, and in a head-on battle, it encountered a frenzied blow from the superior enemy, and the troops suffered heavy losses, and the rest of the armies were also seriously damaged.

The three divisions of the Japanese army were too fierce in the early battle, and even if they wanted to pursue at this moment, they were more than willing to do so. So, after our army retreated, the devils also retreated to the front line of Zaoyang, and the battle of Zaoyang in the Battle of Zaoyi came to an end temporarily.

In the Battle of Zaoyang, the Japanese army occupied Zaoyang, which caused hundreds of thousands of our troops to retreat one after another, and General Zhang Zizhong, commander-in-chief of our Right Route Army, died heroically in the battle.

While the Japanese army achieved this series of brilliant results, they did not achieve the goal they had at the beginning of the battle. There was no large-scale annihilation of the main forces of our five theaters, nor did it cause our five theaters to lose their combat effectiveness. Several of the main divisions of the Japanese army suffered heavy losses in the battle, and the losses of soldiers were serious. In particular, its Third Division, since its departure from Xinyang, has not had a smooth journey, being blocked and pursued by the Second Army all the way, and after joining forces with the 13th and 39th Divisions, the offensive launched by the three divisions to the north can be said to be the manifestation of their last strength. Our army does not know the reality of the enemy now, otherwise, as long as the main force of the entire theater is gathered to launch a major offensive against Zaoyang at this time, the devil may collapse on all fronts.

The commander of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army, Kazuichiro Sonobe, of course, knew the situation of these divisions under his command, although he had the meaning of hating iron but not steel, but he couldn't let these uncompetitive guys withdraw from the battle!

In this battle, the Japanese army mobilized all the forces that could be mobilized, spent countless money and food, and made great sacrifices, and the greatest result achieved was only the killing of the Chinese general Zhang Zizhong. If this is reversed, it means that the battle plan of the commander of the garden department in the previous section has completely failed! As the commander of the 11th Army, who has just taken over the position of Okamura Ninji, he lost the battle in the first battle after taking office, and his prestige as a commander will be discredited, and he will lose his voice in the base camp, and it is even possible that the entire 11th Army will lose the trust of the emperor because of this! All this is not something that the commander of the garden department can bear, let alone what the commanders of these divisions of the 11th Army are willing to accept!

So, after listening to the opinions of the division commanders under his command, Kazuichiro Sonobe made the decision to continue fighting.

The Japanese invaders occupied a large area in our country, and while they mobilized heavy troops to engage in large-scale battles with our army, they also had to maintain a certain size of troops to maintain the occupied areas. This is the reason why the Japanese 11th Army had seven divisions and four brigades, but during the general battle, three or four divisions were always the mainstay, and the other divisions and regiments could only send wings or brigade-sized detachments to participate in the battle. He can't send all his divisions to the front to fight, and then lose Wuhan or Nanjing, right? And the more territory is occupied, it means that the larger the area that needs to be defended by troops, in this case, the occupation of Zaoyang is not a victory.

The commander of the garden department is also in trouble, he has a lot of soldiers in his hands, but the territory he occupies is also large, and he doesn't have so many people in his hands! There was no way, in order to keep his position and not lose his job, the commander of the garden department had to scrape together, squeeze the few left-behind divisions at hand again, and find his predecessor, Okamura Ningji, who is now serving in the headquarters of the Chinese Dispatch Army, for help. After saying good things countless times, and the promises were flying all over the sky, Sonobe and Ichiro finally succeeded in moving General Gangmura and drew three infantry brigades from the 22nd Division of the 13th Army to him, and a mountain artillery brigade was supplemented to the 11th Army.

Lieutenant General Naojiro Amaki of the 40th Division led his large army to the front line, and when he arrived there, he took over the entire Ishimoto detachment.

The Ishimoto detachment suffered heavy losses some time ago, and the stupid man Sadachi Ishimoto threw more than half of the chariot brigade directly under the army of the commander of the garden department on the road! So that the general Sonobe, who knew the news, was depressed and drank half a bottle of sake in one go, causing alcohol poisoning and almost going to the Yasukuni Shrine!

Where did the sober-up General Sonobe dare to let this head of the Ishimoto Brigade go to the front line again? If this broom star goes again, maybe something bigger will happen! Forget it, anyway, the commander of the Tiangu Division has already arrived at the front line, so just let them go to Dahong Mountain to sweep! There is also a 29th Group Army in the mountains, Wang Zan Xu led two Sichuan army cats to the mountains, and gave the imperial army a hard time, that is not for fun!

General Tiangu ran over excitedly and wanted to show his face, but he was sent to Dahong Mountain by a fluttering sentence from the commander of the garden department to deal with the Sichuan people. I wanted to come out and show my face, but I was sent to do dirty work, and I became a killer and gave someone someone a hand. It's all the fault of this stone! Lieutenant General Tiangu is now more and more unpleasant to Shi Benzhen, if he hadn't been afraid that there was someone behind this guy, he would have been shot a long time ago!

In addition to increasing the number of troops, the commander of the park department also mobilized six automobile squadrons to transport more than 1,000 tons of military supplies to Zaoyang. By the end of the month, the supplies were sufficient, the soldiers were replenished, and the soldiers had rested for nearly ten days.

At 19:30 a.m. on 31 May, the 39th Division of the Japanese invaders launched the first attack, and after shelling the west bank of the Han River for an hour and a half, it crossed the Han River from Wangjiqiang, north of Yicheng, and at 24 o'clock on the same day, the 3rd Division also began to cross the river northeast of Xiangyang.

Since the upper echelons of our army have always thought that the Japanese army will return after the battle this time, as in the previous battles, the tactical plans made by the senior generals of the military are all pursuit plans when the Japanese army retreats, and they never thought that the devil would not leave this time!

The Japanese army broke through the defense line of the 41st Army that night and captured Xiangyang the next day! It was only at this time that the theater and the Military Commission saw the strategic intention of the Japanese army, and hurriedly dispatched troops, and Chen Cheng, director of the Political Department of the Military Commission in Chongqing, also came to the aid of the Fifth Theater with his 18th Army.

With the devil's westward crossing of the Han River, hundreds of thousands of troops in the entire Fifth War Zone moved again. Due to the addition of Minister Chen, the Military Commission decided to divide the troops of the Fifth Theater into two corps, the left and right, with Director Chen in charge of the Right Corps, commanding the 33rd and 29th Group Armies, as well as the Jiang Defense Army, and other units, responsible for ensuring that Yichang was not lost. The Left Corps, under the personal command of the 2nd, 22nd, and 31st Group Armies of the theater, attacked Xianghua Road, Jingzhong Road, and Hanyi Road, cut off the lines of communication, cut off the Japanese supplies, and responded to the right corps with powerful troops to attack the Japanese troops crossing the river between Xiangyang and Yicheng.