After taking the two mountain passes, the First Brigade not only ensured the safety of its own rear road, so that the follow-up troops could rest assured that they could follow their old road to the south without having to go through the Rocky Mountains with great difficulty, but more importantly, the First Brigade could set off from here to cut off the North Pacific Railway, the lifeline of the US Northwest Theater, which was not far from the south. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

As for Missoula, an important town southeast of the mountain pass, due to the large number of garrisons and the fact that a large number of reinforcements could be obtained from the eastern part of the United States by rail, Zhao Hu did not plan to risk attacking it at first, but Missoula's American troops took the initiative to attack, and it was impossible to show mercy to his subordinates at this time......

With the lesson of the Eighth Army, the top brass of the US military has long known what will happen if they attack the heavily defended positions of the Chinese army, but the US troops in Missoula have to come, because the consequences of the North Pacific Railway being cut off are really terrible!

You must know that long before the Chinese Fifth Mountain Division approached Spokane, another railway trunk line in the north of the United States that runs through the east and west, the Great Northern Railway, has been cut off, there is no way, this railway is too close to the border, the Fifth Mountain Division did not fight for a few days, and captured the northernmost inflection point of the railway, Bonnesfery, after which the American army in Spokane can only rely entirely on the North Pacific Railway to provide supplies, once this railway line is also cut off, the consequences can be imagined.

Well, theoretically, the Eighth Army can still ask the US Ninth Army in Seattle for help, but the problem is that the logistics supply of the Ninth Army is completely dependent on the only north-south railway line on the west coast of the United States, which is already very difficult, and if the Eighth Army is also squeezed in, the per capita supply of the US Northwest Theater will have to be reduced by at least 1/3. You must know that the situation in the US military's northwest theater is already very unoptimistic, and if the logistics supply is cut by one-third, then this battle will be even more impossible to fight. In this case, Missoula's U.S. troops can only seize the opportunity of the Chinese army's unstable foothold to gamble, hoping to successfully snatch back the mountain pass in the south to turn the tide.

However, military gambling has always been rarely successful, not to mention that Zhao Hu's first brigade, even if it is not the brigade with the strongest combat effectiveness in the Chinese army, can at least rank in the top three, how can it not stand the test like a rabble? As a result, Missoula's U.S. military hit the iron plate with almost all its strength in this attack, and instead of recapturing the vital mountain pass, it lost the lives of countless young Americans in a hopeless charge. It is worth mentioning that many American soldiers actually died under the machine guns of their own combat team, and the latter also found that they were more productive on offense than on defense......

The American GIs, who rushed up the hill under the pressure of machine guns, once had the hope of victory, and because even if the soldiers were brought in, they could not immediately enter the battle, so the American troops east of the Rocky Mountains sent the ironclad train that was originally going to be sent to Spokane to help in the war. Although this kind of ironclad train was only temporarily modified after the outbreak of war, the thickness of its steel plate was enough to prevent the blasting shells from the field artillery, and the two 150mm heavy guns on the train had a long range and great power, which posed a considerable threat to the position of the First Brigade.

At this time, the mountain artillery unit of the first brigade has kept up, because it has a length-diameter ratio close to that of cannons, even at a long distance, the armor-piercing shells fired by the 105mm mountain artillery can easily penetrate the armor of the American ironclad train is actually not thick, although it is not easy to hit the high-speed moving armored train thousands of meters away, but the number of mountain artillery of the first brigade is too much, and there are always more shells that can hit, and as long as it hits a shot, it explodes inside the carriage, In fact, the armored train, which has a very fragile internal structure, is over......

The destruction of the two armored trains seemed to drain the strength of the American soldiers at once, and even if the overseers pointed guns at them, no one was willing to launch a death charge again. The commander of the American army sighed when he learned about it, and could only reluctantly give the order to retreat.

"Can't beat it and want to run? I have to ask your grandfather if he agrees! As soon as the charge horn sounded, the commanders and fighters of the First Brigade immediately rushed up the mountain like tigers, and the remnants of the American army, whose morale was already extremely low, quickly collapsed, and countless remnants of the defeated soldiers lost their weapons and fled eastward in despair, but only a small part escaped back to Missoula alive.

After defeating the attacking American troops, the first brigade was actually quite tired, and everyone wanted to stop and rest for a while, but Zhao Hu remembered what Li Hui said in the past: "Difficulties are relative, as long as the enemy is more difficult than us, we can't miss the fighter." He asked his subordinates to muster up all their courage and take advantage of the victory to pursue, and as a result, he not only succeeded in forcing the landing of more than 10,000 remnants of Missoula's troops, but also seized the mountain pass east of the city before the American reinforcements in the east arrived. As for the mountain pass leading to Spokane to the west, it had already been taken by sending people to take advantage of the victory long before Zhao Hu ordered the march to Missoula.

With these two natural dangers in hand, no matter how many American troops come, as long as the ammunition and food and grass of the First Brigade are sufficient, it will be impossible for the US troops to open the North Pacific Railway from the east, and the "surprise attack on Missoula" campaign has finally come to a successful end.

From the day it left Cranbrook in the south until it took the east and west mountain passes, Zhao Hu's First Brigade killed a total of 16,584 American soldiers and captured 28,405 prisoners, and the rest scattered into the mountains and forests, most of them died of cold and starvation, and the number of officers and soldiers who fled to the American-controlled area alive was less than 1,000, while the First Brigade itself only paid the price of 375 casualties, 1,449 wounded, and 694 sick. Considering the hardships they went through along the way, it's nothing short of a miracle!

From a strategic point of view, the significance of the 1st Brigade is incalculable, completely blocking the North Pacific Railroad, the lifeline of the Northwest United States, and at the same time clearing the obstacles for the southward movement of nearly 100,000 friendly troops behind it, so that it can start their respective missions in the best state with almost no loss. It is no wonder that later generations generally regarded this "surprise attack on Missoula" as the most critical battle in the early stage of the First Sino-American War, and Li Hui even awarded the title of "the first brigade in the world" coveted by the First Brigade for this reason...... (To be continued.) )