Peng Tao thought for a minute. Now the thought that was brewing fiercely in his mind was: the combat operations of the 4th regiment had been exposed, what kind of threat would it pose to his victory on the first ridge? What can be done to eliminate the adverse effects of this situation, turn the disadvantage into an advantage, and make yourself successful?!

The troops on Ridge No. 1 can no longer be exposed! Originally, there were not many Soviet troops to fight on the 164th, 342nd, and 631 heights, and once exposed, the Soviet troops on alert may not come up again, and then the 3rd Regiment would really fall into an embarrassing situation where there were no Soviet troops to fight!

The exposure of the 4th Regiment may also help to divert the attention of the Soviet troops from Ridge No. 1!

As long as his troops on heights 164, 342, and 631 are not exposed, it will cause the Soviet army to be paralyzed in this direction! He immediately resolutely ordered the 2nd and 3rd Battalions to also increase the strength of the Shangshan Liang to one company, lay an ambush on both flanks of the 342nd and 631st heights, and warned the commanders of the three combat detachments with extra severity that they would guarantee with their heads that there would be no incidents such as gun misfire!

He spent his time until dawn in the observation post on the ridgeline. The gunfire in the mountains west of Heights 001 was intermittent, inaudible for a while, and then burst like beans. He understood that the 4th Regiment had encountered great difficulties on the way to the last section, but he was most worried about the No. 1 Ridge under the darkness of night due south, and although he had given the death order to the three battalions, he could not fully believe that there would be no sudden gunfire there!

6:10 a.m. Xu Yanglin hurriedly ran up and shouted to him: "Regiment commander, the phone number of the first battalion!" ”

He hurried back from the observation post to the operational command room. The staff officers stood in unison, their expressions serious and excited. He suddenly realized that as the moment of the battle approached, the atmosphere in the room had become highly tense. He picked up the phone receiver.

"Commander? …… I'm Zhang Yongquan! ”

"What's the situation?!"

"Regiment commander, the Soviet army is up!"

He became excited: "How much? ”

"About a class!"

One class is fine! As long as there are Soviet troops!

"Zhang Yongquan, don't alarm them yet! Wait until our shelling is over! ”

"Understood!"

The telephones of the 2nd and 3rd battalions rang at the same time. The commander of the second and third battalions reported to him respectively: Ten minutes ago, a squad of Soviet troops also came up on the 342nd and 631st heights!

"Great!" Peng Tao couldn't help but scream! He was so excited that his worst fears for hours didn't happen! There was only one platoon of Soviet troops in the No. 1 Ridge, but after all, with the Soviet army, his battle plan could be implemented!

The shelling of the Chinese army has already begun. What started as a few sporadic test launches soon turned into a continuous salvo. In the deafening roar of tearing the sky and clouds, his mood was extremely excited! He did not leave the "hall" and stood by the telephone that was connected to the command post of three battalions at the same time, holding the receiver in his hand and looking at the watch hand on his wrist. He did not see the shelling with his own eyes, but the tremors and reverberations of the mountains caused by the shelling made him feel a great and unprecedented exhilaration!

6:40 a.m. The last few shells were still flying, and he had already ordered the battalions to immediately attack the heights of 164, 342, 631! At the same time, let all the staff officers look at their watches!

Seven minutes later, Zhang Yongquan was the first to report by phone: "Our battalion has occupied the 164th height!" ”

Peng Tao was slightly surprised: after launching the attack order, he had been listening to the gunfire from the sparse shell explosions from the No. 1 Ridge, but he didn't hear it!

"Zhang Yongquan, why didn't I hear the gunshots from you?" He asked.

"I rushed up with three companies, and the Soviet troops were reimbursed by artillery fire!" Zhang Yongquan said very dejectedly.

Before he finished his words, Peng Tao heard gunshots from the direction of No. 1 Ridge. An operational staff officer guarding the observation post ran to report: the gunfire came from the 342 heights! Sure enough, after a while, the gunfire died down, and the commander of the second battalion reported: they had occupied the 342 heights! Peng Tao looked at his watch, it took them ten minutes! It took the third battalion fifteen minutes on the 631 heights to end the battle. The joy of victory filled Peng Tao's heart, but he did not forget to order all battalions to quickly deploy on the high grounds, ridges, and salients above and below the ridge as planned, build fortifications, and transfer to defense.

He didn't put down the phone receiver. Immediately, he heard the gunfire on Ridge No. 1, which was as intense as the gunfire in the direction of Heights 001!

"Chief of Staff, you report to the division command post on my behalf, just say that the offensive battle of our regiment's No. 1 Ridge has ended, and the troops are now further expanding, expanding the results of the battle, building positions, and transferring people to defense!" Peng Tao said to Xu Yanglin in a loud voice amid the gunshots, and his face unconsciously showed the usual arrogant expression. At this moment, he did not report it personally, it was in this way that he wanted to show a little contempt to the division commander, in order to take revenge for all the insults he had given him yesterday morning and before!

Then he walked out of the operations command room and came to the open space in front of the command tent. It's getting dark. The first rays of red sunlight have already reached the ridge. After an unusual night, every mountain peak, every ravine, every forest, and every little tree near him reappeared before him, as if given a second life, and everything seemed real, vivid, and lovely!

Reminded by Xu Yanglin, Liu Erzhu brought "Cabernet Franc" red wine to the people gathered in front of the command tent. Peng Tao picked up a tall glass filled with crimson syrup, and a firm and bright smile appeared on his face, accepting the congratulations of his subordinates. To the southwest of the mountain, gunfire was becoming more and more intense up and down Heights 001. The battle of the 4th Regiment had just begun, and he had already won the victory, but this victory seemed to have come too easily. A hidden question came out coldly: he was only playing a guard post of the Soviet army on the No. 1 ridge, so where is the main force of the Soviet army?

After arriving at the mountain stream last night, Liu Zongsheng did not rest until 4 a.m. He first contacted the command post of the 3rd Regiment through the telephone set up in advance to report the news that they had arrived on time, and then sent people to contact the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Regiment under the 342nd Heights and the 2nd Bandaging Station of the Division Hospital located at the bottom of the valley in the north of the mountain stream, as well as an ammunition supply point adjacent to it, while waiting for the command post of a platoon and battalion of the 7th Company to build a shelter in the dense forest southeast of Jianxi. When the dispatched personnel returned, the shelter of the battalion command post was also completed, and the watch hand was pointing to 3 o'clock in the morning. At this time, he went to the camps of each company to inspect again, and found that the 9th Company, 1st Platoon, and 2nd Platoon were sleeping in the woods. Liu Zongsheng was most worried about this company, and now he was even more annoyed when he saw that this was the case, so he found the cover department of the Ninth Company Company, woke up the company commander Cheng Yukun, and gave him a lecture. Cheng Yukun was about to correct his mistake, but he stopped him again: since everyone has already slept, let them continue to sleep, and wake them up half an hour before the Chinese army shells to dig a hole, otherwise no one will want to sleep this night!

Only then did he return to the shelter of the battalion command post, sit down with his back against the damp earthen wall, and make a telephone conversation with the command post of the 3rd Regiment. Xu Yanglin, chief of staff of the 3rd Regiment, told him that all battalions of the regiment had entered the starting area of the attack as originally planned, and everything was normal. He breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he too should sleep for a while before the war began, so he smoothed himself under the earthen wall, rested his head on a stone, and closed his eyes.

He hadn't fallen asleep for a long time. The nervousness of the imminent war had been affecting him, making it difficult for him to fall asleep; What's more, with the arrival of the 5 battalion of the 3 regiment in the mountain stream, his thoughts about the war and the fate of this unit also quietly changed. Just as a person who is afraid of bathing on the beach has a very different idea when he walks on the beach and when the sea is already empty, he is no longer thinking about whether the troops can fight or what kind of doom Peng Tao will bring to them, but how to deal with the troops in the face of all kinds of dangers that may be encountered, and how to organize the battle. The battlefield is in front of us, and the war has been concretized. At one time, he decided many things, such as what to do if the troops missed the minefield, what to do if they were suddenly intercepted by artillery fire during the movement, how to continue to organize the battle after the death of the first martyr, and so on. In the end, he even thought of the most powerful infantry weapon they could encounter on the battlefield, which was a high-level dual-purpose machine gun modified by the Soviet army, the projectile was the thickness of a thumb, and it was a bowl-sized hole when it hit a person, and he had to warn the commanders of the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Regiment in advance to be wary of this weapon.

But he still dozed off in a daze before dawn, and woke up suddenly after a while. The luminescent hand of the new pre-war Commander's Multi-Watch on his wrist points to 6 o'clock. There was a stagnant silence between the shelter and the surrounding mountains and forests. That time is coming. He sat up straight and found that Xiao Qiang and Cui Shi'an were also awake, so he ordered them to inform the companies to prepare for battle, and then the cat's waist drilled out of the shelter, tightened the loose belt, and walked to the forest slope outside, but his mood was bad because of the dream just now.

The night in the forest was still thick, and the damp cool mist was filled, and it was pitch black, but there was also a faint blue light seeping in, blurring the gray-brown space from the black-brown tree trunks. The layer of fallen leaves on the ground that was wet with night fog made a "clatter" crack sound under his feet. Looking out through the gap in the forest, the trees on both sides of the valley and the stream were still black, a few large and white stars twinkled on the dark blue sky above the cave slope, and a full moon like a silver disk that had lost its light and had a third of the edges blurred was still quietly hanging in the black treetops, and did not finally fall.

Liu Zongsheng climbed a high mound at the edge of the forest. From here, you can not only look south at the N2 highlands on the big mountain beam of No. 1 Ridge, but also see the entire mountain stream at a glance. 342 Heights towered majestically out of the blue-gray sky at dawn, and was silent for now; In the woods on both sides of the stream, a warrior came out, jumped through the dense bushes, and went down to the bottom of the stream to fetch water; In another place, a few soldiers squatted on the edge of the forest and smoked, and a little dark red fireworks were extinguished; In the forest on the northeast side of Jianxi, someone shouted and cursed loudly, and it sounded like the voice of the Ninth Company Commander Cheng Yukun from a distance, and from time to time someone in the forest ran in and out, accompanied by some dull noises, he understood that it was the first and second platoons of the Ninth Company were digging the anti-artillery holes they had not dug last night.

"So they woke up a long time ago." He thought, "Or maybe not asleep at all." The last thought made his mood worse.

"It's impossible to fully recover without falling asleep, and that's a bad thing for combat." The smell of soldiers' sweat, gunpowder, gun oil, and spicy inferior tobacco wafted through the air, mixed with the cold fog that gradually condensed in the forest before dawn, and it was very uncomfortable to inhale into the lungs. He wasn't surprised by all this. This is war, the smell of war, the dawn of the battlefield. He thought endlessly, but his heart seemed to be painfully bound by a thin thread because the war was about to start. "What task will Peng Tao give us today?"

He didn't let himself think about it anymore. He had heard the sound of the first shells fired by the artillery test flying overhead. Liu Zongsheng even heard from the whistling sound with a little trilling sound that it was a 122-mm howitzer shell, the sky was turning from blue gray to gray, and the undulating dividing line between the sky and the big mountain beam of No. 1 Ridge could be seen more clearly; A purple-red firework shone in the dim depression of the morning light in the middle of the 342 Heights, and then turned into a pillar of oblique and slender smoke that rose, and then he heard a long and hoarse explosion sound - not the firelight, nor the smoke, but the last explosion sound, which made Liu Zongsheng feel that the thin thread that was originally tied to his heart was pulled hard, and the breathing in his throat was immediately shortened and difficult due to this sudden tearing pain!

"Here we go!" "But I'm not as excited as I was when I fought for the first time a few years ago," he thought, staring sternly at the excitement and excitement that rose in his heart. For a moment, he recalled his original feelings: the bombardment was about to begin, and the original nervousness somehow turned into simple excitement and excitement, anxiously looking forward to being able to enter the battle soon; Later, it was this psychology that made him forget his fear, and he was engrossed in the 7th Company and pounced on the high ground where the Soviet troops were entrenched. "It seems that I'm used to war," he thought in disgust, frowning unconsciously, "it's not supposed to be, I don't like it, but that's it!" ”

It took a long time for the second shell to explode another fire at the top of Heights 342. Xiao Qiang, Cui Shi'an, and guard Wei Changgui also ran to him.

"Deputy Commander, it's time to do it!" Xiao Qiang shouted happily, blushed, glanced at him, raised his binoculars and looked at the 342 heights. Instructor Cui Sai On just kept pushing up the glasses on the bridge of his nose. But it can be seen that the excitement of this white-faced scholar is even greater than Xiao Qiang!

Liu Zongsheng glanced at them coldly, and suddenly became dissatisfied with Xiao Qiang and Cui Shi'an, and with himself: they are all battalion commanders, and they shouldn't be as excited as a recruit at the beginning of the war!

"Battalion Commander Xiao, you go back to the battalion command post and inform all companies to pay attention to concealment and prevent the Soviet counter-artillery bombardment!" He said to Xiao Qiang.

Xiao Qiang agreed and ran back into the forest. Liu Zongsheng didn't say anything more, a row of 152 mm caliber rockets and artillery shells rose from behind the northern mountains, they carried the hurricane, dragged strips of short and bright flames at the tail, roared over the gray sky overhead, made a crisp sound that pierced through thousands of layers of glass, and fell to the 342 heights, where immediately a large area of black and red smoke and dust rose into the sky, drowning the morning fog that originally permeated the mountains, followed by a series of sound waves, crashing and expanding like drums in the vast space, Let the earth tremble suddenly. The black and red fireworks did not completely sink, and new white lotus-like smoke exploded in the middle of them, and to the original sound was added a dull, like the explosion of a hammer hitting a blunt object, which was the explosion of 152 mm caliber plus howitzer shells, and every time they sounded, the earth that was already shaking violently jumped; Another volley of rockets roared up the shattered sky, rumbling towards Heights 342, extinguishing the fires burning on the heights, and then igniting them, illuminating the dawn sky red like a huge torch. Countless small-caliber curved guns and 122-millimeter cannons, which were originally used for test firing, also joined in the fun, dragging a clear friction sound through the air and falling to the high ground, where they exploded little by little, and the whole world shook like a drum beaten violently by countless drums.

"Deputy Commander, go back to the Shelter Department and hide!" Cui Shi'an shouted in Liu Zongsheng's ear.

According to his military common sense, as soon as the attacking side's artillery fire is rushed, the defender's artillery will take counter-artillery measures to suppress the enemy's artillery fire and attacking troops. The mountain stream is located directly north of the 342 heights, and Soviet shells will hit here at any time!

"No, I'm not going back!" Liu Zongsheng also shouted loudly to Cui Shi'an. A few minutes ago, he thought that the premonition of death had been removed from his heart, but he did not expect that when the artillery fire became dense, his whole body trembled unconsciously. "What's going on!" He got angry and regained his composure, while angrily asking himself, "Are you really worried about being killed by Soviet shells?" …… If you're afraid of death, let them beat you to death! ”

Cui Shi'an saw that he had no intention of leaving, and he did not walk away from the mound, and a heroic and fearless expression appeared on his pale face, as if to say: I will not leave either!

Let the Soviet shells come over! …… But he did not experience the moment of rapid artillery fire on the battlefield, and the result was not the Soviet shells, but the sound of the flying explosions of all the rocket shells, large-caliber heavy artillery shells and small-caliber curved shells of the Chinese army, which filled the entire universe like tangible material fragments, and the sound pressure that people could not bear physiologically and psychologically, made him walk quickly down the earth hill, leaned over and vomited!

(To be continued)