"Regiment commander, call back from the detachment." Liao Zhifeng looked at Liu Tianshu, who was staring at the map, and handed over a telegram.

Liu Tianshu took a look at it and couldn't help but say happily: "Political commissar, it's really good, the detachment agrees with our opinion, so immediately notify the cadres of each battalion to go to the regiment headquarters for a meeting." ”

A few days ago, Liu Tianshu discussed with Liao Zhifeng that he wanted to concentrate his troops to eliminate the enemy in Pingyuan Town and expand the base area to Pingyuan Town, so that the space for the independent regiment to move would be much larger.

However, for such a major operation, they still used the radio to report to the detachment.

Originally, Liao Zhifeng and those rescued soldiers of the Eighth Route Army of the New Fourth Army, according to the regulations, should actually try to return to their original troops, but the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army took into account that the original troops of these soldiers were extremely far away from Fuya Mountain, and besides, one of the main divisions of the Eighth Route Army was making preparations to advance into Shandong, so these rescued soldiers of the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army all stayed in Fuya Mountain, and at the same time expanded the independent battalion of Fuya Mountain into an independent regiment.

The troops have expanded, and the original base areas naturally cannot meet the requirements, and it is a necessary choice to recover the lost territory from the devils.

Looking at the battalion and company cadres sitting below, Liu Tianshu first asked Political Commissar Liao Zhifeng to report the situation faced by the independent regiment to the battalion and company cadres, and at the same time conveyed the instructions of the detachment.

Although the original independent battalion controlled Songkan Town and Qinglong Gukou, Pingyuan Town in the west was still too close to the base area and threatened the base area from time to time.

If Pingyuan Town is recovered, the space for the independent regiment to operate will be greatly improved, and it will expand from the mountainous area to the hills, which will also be of great help to solve the problem of troop supply.

Seeing that everyone was very excited, Liao Zhifeng raised his hand, signaled everyone to be quiet, and then said: "Next, please ask the head of the regiment to give you a task." ”

How to recover Pingyuan Town, and how to hold Pingyuan Town after the recovery, Liu Tianshu, Liao Zhifeng, Zhu Aiguo and Yang Donghu specially conducted several deductions and discussions, and finally decided to regain Pingyuan Town, and at the same time expand the buffer area of 10 kilometers to the south, within a radius of 20 kilometers of Pingyuan Town, as a prospective battlefield for fighting with the devils, according to Liu Tianshu's estimate, as long as the devils do not send more than a brigade of Japanese troops, they will not want to recapture Pingyuan Town.

At present, the independent regiment not only has three infantry battalions, but also machine gun companies and artillery batteries, and together with the local county brigades and village militia, it can concentrate at least 2,000 troops.

The small army of devils basically does not dare to sweep in the base area now.

"Comrades, the significance of recovering Pingyuan Town, the political commissar has already said it just now, so I won't say more, now I will talk about the tasks of each battalion. The first battalion is still responsible for the defense of Songkan Town, preventing the devils from taking advantage of our opportunity to recover Pingyuan Town and carry out a sneak attack in the direction of our Songkan Town, the second battalion is responsible for eliminating the enemy in Pingyuan Town, recovering Pingyuan Town, the artillery company cooperates with the second battalion to act, and the third battalion is deployed in the area of Wangzhuang in the south of Pingyuan Town. In addition, I have contacted Captain Zeng of the county brigade, whose county brigade is responsible for guarding the direction of Qinglong Valley and the base area left behind. ”

Zeng Wei's county brigade had more than 300 people, and in the last battle of Shiling, the county brigade lost more than half, but after the backbone was drawn from the militia of various villages to replenish, the county brigade returned to its previous size.

According to the above requirements, the task of the independent regiment is to strike at the enemy, crush the sweep of the devils, and regain the lost territory from the devils, while the county brigade is mainly responsible for the defense of the base area.

When Hao Mengxuan and Hua Xiaohu heard that the regiment commander handed over the task of recovering Pingyuan Town to their second battalion, their faces immediately lit up, and they looked at Liu Tianshu and Liao Zhifeng and said loudly: "The second battalion guarantees to complete the task." ”’

Although Jin Zhenbiao, the commander of the first battalion, was a little disappointed in his heart, fortunately, he had already made this kind of preparation in his heart, because since his first battalion was formed, it has been stationed in Songkan Town, and has been responsible for the defense of Songkan Town. It is also reasonable that one of his battalions was left in Songkan Town.

Ma Chaoyuan, the commander of the third battalion, was originally the battalion commander of the New Fourth Army who was rescued, although he was also the battalion commander before, and he also led troops to fight several battles, but he had never carried out the task of capturing a town defended by a squadron of devils, so in his opinion, it was probably not easy for the regiment to use a battalion to attack a town with strong fortifications defended by a squadron of devils and three hundred imperial allies.

On the contrary, he commanded the troops to block the devil's reinforcements in the field, but he was full of confidence in this.

In the end, when the main leaders of the regiment were divided, Liu Tianshu and political commissar Liao Zhifeng followed the second battalion, while Yang Donghu, the deputy head of the regiment, followed the third battalion, and Zhu Aiguo, director of the political department, stayed at the Xiaotangba regiment headquarters.

Considering that the devil's plane could be reinforced during the day, and the devil's reinforcements could also advance boldly during the day, Liu Tianshu put the task of recovering Pingyuan Town at night.

At the same time, in order to confuse the enemy, during the day, he asked Zeng Wei's county brigade to pretend to be the main force and advance in the direction of Songkan Town, while the county brigade in Qinglong Valley was active frequently.

Watanabe's attention has always been on Duliu Tianshu during this time. He still knew about the expansion of Liu Tianshu's independent battalion into an independent regiment, and he knew that the soldiers needed for Liu Tianshu's expansion were mainly from rescued laborers, but after some calculations, he still found that the ammunition problem was the primary problem facing Liu Tianshu.

After all, the arsenal in the Fuyashan base area is still in the formation stage, and even if it is built, it is still a small workshop, and it is impossible to produce sophisticated guns and ammunition, at most, it can make bayonets, mines and grenades.

And Liu Tianshu's independent regiment has more than 1,500 people, and the weapons needed by such a large number of people are not something that a small workshop can solve.

In the end, he judged that Liu Tianshu would definitely launch an attack on his own defense area after completing the training of the troops, and the important strongholds close to the base of the Eighth Route Army were Pingyuan Town in the west, Hekou Town ten kilometers south of Qinglong Valley, and Maotang Stronghold not far from Songkan Town in the east.

He carefully studied these three strongholds that were easy to attack, and felt that the Maotang stronghold was the most likely, because the Maotang stronghold was the farthest away from the county seat, and it was also twenty kilometers away from the stronghold on the southern railway, and this stronghold, like a nail, was in the way of the southward expansion of Songkan Town.

The second is the Hekou stronghold, when the Eighth Route Army knocks out its own Qinglong stronghold, it is equivalent to breaking through its first blockade line from Songkan Town, Qinglongkou to Pingyuan Town.

Of course, this blockade line is now in name only, except for Pingyuan Town in the west, which is still in his hands, the other two no longer exist, which makes Liu Tianshu's independent battalion begin to threaten his second line of defense, and even begin to threaten the safety of the railway line.

The main task of his wing is to ensure the safety of the railway line, so if Songkan Town and Qinglong stronghold are lost, the brigade commander will scold a few words at most.

The last batch of laborers who were to be sent to the Japanese mainland were rescued independently, but fortunately, the location of the carjacking was in Jiping County, not in his defense area. Although he received an order to send troops to block the attack, he returned in vain and lost more than 200 imperial soldiers, but because it was not his defense area that had problems, the brigade commander did not scold him too much.

It's just that Watanabe has suffered repeated setbacks in the face of Liu Tianshu's whimsy, which has made the brigade commander dissatisfied with him.

Watanabe stared at the map and carefully studied the topography of Pingyuan Town, and finally felt that although Pingyuan Town was not far from Xiaotangba, where the Independent Regiment of the Eighth Route Army was located, it was not very likely that the Eighth Route Army wanted to attack Pingyuan Town.

Because the defenders of Pingyuan Town not only have a strong artillery tower, but also built a lot of strong fortifications outside the town, even the bunkers have also been repaired several, so to speak, although the Independent Regiment of the Eighth Route Army has a small amount of artillery fire, but if it wants to easily capture Pingyuan Town, he feels that it is not very likely.

More importantly, less than 20 kilometers south of Pingyuan Town, is the station of the Saito Brigade, once Pingyuan Town is attacked, a squadron of the Saito Brigade can use a car to arrive in an hour, and the rest of the main force can arrive in less than three hours.

Unless the Eighth Route Army concentrated all its troops to attack Pingyuan Town, it would not be the opponent of Saito's brigade at all. After all, the Saito Brigade is currently a fully formed brigade, and there is also an Imperial Association Legion to cooperate with the operation.

He left the Saito Brigade in Chen Gouji, south of Pingyuan Town, in order to deal with the southern criminals of the Independent Regiment.

The terrain of Kawaguchi Town is treacherous, and it is not very strategically significant, so Watanabe is not worried.

After making a preliminary assessment of the current situation, Watanabe sent a squadron to reinforce the Maotang stronghold, and at the same time began to send additional troops to the south of the Maotang stronghold.

After receiving information that the Independent Regiment was showing signs of increasing troops to Songkan Town, Watanabe immediately dispatched the Noeda Brigade to the Nanwan stronghold south of the Maotang stronghold, ready to reinforce at any time.

Nanwan is a large market town on the side of the railway, and the Noeda brigade took advantage of the convenience of railway transportation and quickly arrived there.

Liu Tianshu looked at the information in front of him, constantly judging in his mind the countermeasures Watanabe would take, and finally confirmed that once he attacked Pingyuan Town, the reinforcements of the devils could only be Saito's brigade, he sent a telegram to Yang Donghu, who was blocking, and asked him to immediately take advantage of the dark night to command the third battalion to build three blocking lines in the hilly area south of Pingyuan Town, and try to use artillery fire and darkness to kill and injure a large number of enemies, and be sure to fight for three hours for the second battalion to recover Pingyuan Town.

At the same time, Liu Tianshu ordered Yang Donghu to report the situation to him at any time.

After issuing a series of orders, Liu Tianshu stared at Chen Gouji for a long time, and finally asked Shi Qiang's reconnaissance team to immediately rush to Chen Gouji with a radio station to closely monitor the enemy situation there. (To be continued.) )