All countries thought that Hua would tremble and fear to death in the face of a powerful Allied force, and washed and pouted before the arrival of the expeditionary fleet, but no one expected that Hua would react so strongly and counterattack so strongly. In addition to the navy, which is fully armed for warfare, the Chinese army and air force are expressing their attitude of counterattack in their own way.

The fall of Hong Kong within two days brought to a height the anger of the British, the last stronghold of the empire in East Asia, on which the sun never sets, and its capture by the Chinese meant the complete disappearance of the British military presence in East Asia. The loss of economic interests and the right to speak is still secondary, and the key will be that the world will think that Britain is not good, is it starting to carve up British colonies around the world? Will Britain be as powerless in the face of the loss of other colonies as East Asia? Has the time come to seize India and South Africa?

From Whitehall and 10 Downing Street to the Viceroy of India, to the streets of London, every Englishman is strongly calling on the British government to severely punish China and use the supreme force of the empire on which the sun never sets to teach the shameful Oriental dwarfs in the Far East a lesson.

The British, including all countries in the world, believed that Britain had such strength that the name of world hegemon was not shouted out, but piled up with countless battles and warships all over the world. The eyes of the world are focused on the Far East, or more precisely on the expeditionary fleet that is about to reach the Strait of Malacca. High-ranking officials, the media, and passers-by are all talking about this epic battle, and the results do not need to be discussed, and the focus is on what kind of price China will pay to extinguish the anger of Westerners.

China, which was hostile to the entire West, was doing its own thing in a down-to-earth manner, and on the day of the end of the Battle of Hong Kong, China's second counterattack began.

Fifteen kilometers north of Taichung, Taiwan, the winding trench fortifications were like cobwebs, and the trenches were full of stagnant water, and the soldiers of the Japanese Taiwan Garrison Brigade had to continue to hold on to the trenches in this terrible environment. The low-lying terrain of the plains made drainage very difficult, and every step of the soldiers was torture, and many of them had rotting feet and extremely low morale.

But such an existence is necessary, and the Chinese army has hoarded a large number of troops and materials near Taichung. The Japanese army was not superior in numbers, equipment, or logistics. The Japanese army spent a lot of resources on the troops on the expedition to China, and some of them were used as funds for the reconstruction of the navy, so the rest of the army was tragic.

Taiwan's Governor Sakuma Zuomattai, who was lucky enough to escape from the Chinese army, repeatedly asked Tokyo for support, but what he was waiting for was only a mixed brigade of soldiers, the weapons and equipment were neat, and the mixed brigade was also a standing army, which had experienced the Russo-Japanese War and could be regarded as elite, but the ammunition was pitiful. There is no logistics at all. The intention of the Tokyo Military Department was to let the troops of this brigade come to Taiwan for food and relieve the pressure on the mainland.

There are two garrison brigades in his hands, and one is a mixed brigade, Sakuma Zuo Matthew still feels uneasy, the ammunition in the hands of the soldiers is only enough for a small-scale combat consumption, once the Chinese army launches an attack, the guns in the hands of the soldiers will become spears, is it possible for the soldiers to fight a battle in the era of cold weapons?

When the Chinese army in the south began to assemble and rearm for war. The Japanese forces in the north were also immediately put into combat readiness, especially after the Chinese army began the Battle of Hong Kong. Sakuma felt that his next goal was himself. According to his opinion, he should directly abandon Taiwan, retreat to the mainland, and wait for the British army to defeat the Chinese army.

But Tokyo considered northern Taiwan to be Japan's last colony, with far more symbolic significance than practical significance, and at this time the Japanese army withdrew. Perhaps they will lose their right to speak in the post-war negotiations, knowing that there are other countries eyeing Taiwan, and perhaps the United States or France will take advantage of the absence of the Japanese army to send troops to land, and then it will be troublesome to pull up the skin.

On 3 June, the 1st Garrison Brigade, which was responsible for the front-line garrison in Taichung, was dispatched to Guguan in the northeast of Taichung to carry out a secret mission. The 1st Garrison Brigade, which had reduced its strength, struggled to survive, and the brigade commander, Major General Tyumen, was so worried that his hair was gray, and he did his best to improve the conditions of the defensive line, but unfortunately the congenital deficiencies made him have no rice to cook.

Even if the hard days of the garrison brigade began after the start of the rainy season, there was a lack of ammunition, food, medicine, everything, and Major General Tyumen even doubted that he would be able to hold out for a few days after the start of the war. What he didn't know was that this was the case for the entire Japanese army in Taiwan, and the 2nd Garrison Brigade, which was responsible for the defense of the Eastern Front, set up a defensive position north of Hualien, where the rainfall was even heavier, and a typhoon was about to strike, and the commander of the 2nd Brigade, Major General Tie Nan, was soaking in the hot springs all day, regardless of the life or death of the soldiers. Ordinary Japanese soldiers enslaved the Taiwanese people to build fortifications and carry materials for them, taking advantage of the last bit of time to make a fortune, and since the defeat of the war, a trend of thought has emerged in Japan, and some people believe that Japan has been a vassal state of China since ancient times, and the ties between civilizations have never been severed. In modern times, Japan has been fully Westernized, but now that China has shown the strong side of Eastern civilization, as a neighboring country, shouldn't it be reluctant to seek the near and far and turn to the arms of China?

This trend of thought was not strong, but it succeeded in making the Japanese begin to doubt their choices, and ordinary Japanese, including Japanese soldiers, were no longer determined under the influence of this trend of thought, and the Japanese upper echelons had not yet made efforts to correct these fallacies.

The 35th Mixed Brigade, which had the strongest troops, also did not enjoy happiness in Taipei, and the Governor ordered Lieutenant General Nakazaburo Noma, commander of the brigade and commander of the Taiwan garrison, to lead the troops to Wulai.

Lieutenant General Nakazaburo Noma already knew what the Governor meant, and it was not wise to go head-to-head with the Chinese army, because the Japanese garrison in Taiwan did not have that kind of strength, and the native army, the British Army, and the German Army did not have this kind of strength, and this was the difference in equipment and firepower projection, which could not be made up.

Under the circumstance that Tokyo did not allow retreat, in order to preserve its strength to the greatest extent and wait for the results of the naval battle and the surrender of the Chinese army, it could only shrink its forces and retreat to the mountainous areas of central Taiwan. The terrain was extremely complex, wooded, and steep, making it impossible to find the main Japanese force hiding without a guide.

Lieutenant General Noma's task is to make early preparations for entering the central mountainous area, and for more than ten years of obtaining Taiwan, the Japanese have maintained a low level of development and management of Taiwan's mountainous areas, and many fortresses and villages and towns have been set up in the settlements on the periphery of the mountainous areas for the indigenous people in the mountainous areas to come to exchange materials and plunder the furs, forests and other resources here. In addition, the indigenous people of the periphery have been registered, and the hunting areas of ethnic minorities have been artificially demarcated, and some tribes have been co-opted for their own use.

But the interior of the mountains was still a blank for the Japanese, where the environment was harsher, the terrain was more complex, and the tribes and natives were more fierce, and it was not worth investing a lot of effort in exploitation. For Noma, the central mountainous area is his destination this time, and if he wants to avoid the siege of the Chinese army, he must go deep into the central mountainous area. Therefore, his main tasks were to survey roads, find storage points for supplies, rest points for troops, barracks, and clear the obstacles of the indigenous tribes.

At the same time, the 1st Division of the 4th Army of the Chinese Army in Taichung and the 2nd Division in Hualien were ready to attack; on 4 June, the heavy rain in Taichung and Hualien temporarily stopped, and four hours after the sun came out of the clouds, more than 300 artillery pieces of the Chinese Army in Taichung fiercely shelled the Japanese positions, and the minefields, barbed wire, and other fortifications in front of the Japanese positions were destroyed one after another, and an offensive channel more than 1,000 meters wide was opened, and the infantry immediately launched a charge.

Under the cover of artillery fire, the Chinese infantry successfully reached about 150 meters outside the first line of defense of the Japanese army, and the Japanese troops, who were overwhelmed by the artillery fire, waded through the water and entered the position with difficulty.

As soon as the 25 field artillery mountain guns in the rear began to counterattack, the Chinese artillery shells smashed over their heads and faces, and they had long known that the Japanese artillery positions with strong Chinese firepower were set up quite loosely, and fortunately they were not completely wiped out in the first place.

A few shells exploded on the road, and the rifle bullets fired by the Japanese could also bring the threat of death, and the battlefield was covered with gunsmoke, once again obscuring the sun. The mud and stagnant water made the soldiers slow down, objectively helping the Japanese army to defend, but this did not make the two sides evenly matched, the multi-level firepower configuration of the Chinese army allowed them to fully suppress the Japanese firepower, and the excellent individual quality also made it difficult for the Japanese to aim.

The 1st Garrison Brigade was not an elite, and after a long period of torture in the trenches, its combat effectiveness declined again, and soon, the Chinese infantry rushed into the Japanese defense line, and the white-knuckle battle that the Japanese soldiers expected did not take place, and the submachine guns, pistols and shotguns of the Chinese army in close combat rendered the Japanese bayonets useless, and large swaths of soldiers fell under the fragments of grenades.

The situation of the Hualien offensive and defensive battles launched at the same time was extremely similar, but the Japanese defense there was even weaker, and from top to bottom, from Major General Tetsuo to ordinary soldiers, the will to resolutely resist had long since disappeared. After receiving the order from the Governor's Office to delay the time of the Chinese army and then retreat to the mountains, the 2nd Garrison Brigade continued to retreat, and in the face of heavy casualties in the 2nd Division of the 4th Army of the Chinese Army, the soldiers' thinking became that as long as they ran faster than their comrades, they could survive. (To be continued.) )