After night, Huzhuang was also uneasy, and the soldiers of the Beiyang Army patrolling everywhere could see clearly even the sheep and eggs on the side of the road under the illumination of the constantly rising flares. The temperature at night in May was not yet high, and the eyelids of the soldiers sleeping in the open field were shaking, and although they were sleepy, they could not bear the stimulation of the light.

There are less than 100 households in the small village, and even if all the houses are full, they will only carry more than 1,000 people, and the rest can only lie in the open space. When the soldiers finally fell asleep, they were suddenly woken up by a loud bang, and immediately got up, grabbed their weapons and looked around, waiting for orders, and then heard someone shouting: "The Chinese army is buying cannons on the periphery, and the brothers are going up to fight with them!" ”

Under the leadership of the commander, all the soldiers entered the defensive position, Liu Jinbiao also became nervous after buttonhole, what is wrong with the Chinese army, launching an attack in the middle of the night, even if there are flares, it is inevitable to be injured by mistake!

It turned out that the Chinese army did not intend to attack at all, and the shells fell every five minutes, kicking up dust on the first layer of positions on the outskirts of the village, and not even a single soldier was injured, but it was just one after another, and the time was more accurate than the clock. I just don't want us to sleep well! The soldiers of the Beiyang Army reacted that it was a reason to beat the gong near the enemy's barracks in the past, but the Chinese army was wealthy and used the extravagant means of firing cannons.

Boom retreated, where to sleep, and the soldiers slowly fell into a deep sleep again amid the sound of curses. An hour later, the second alarm came, the Chinese artillery fire suddenly became fierce, the first layer of defensive positions fell into a sea of fire, and the nervous mood spread again in Houhuzhuang, there was no way, the soldiers entered the defensive positions under the shouts of the officers. Twenty minutes later, Liu Jinbiao scolded. Waving his hand to let the soldiers continue to rest, the Chinese army was still harassing and did not intend to attack. Liu Jinbiao can see it, even if the shells of the Chinese army fall on his head, he doesn't plan to wake up, the sky is big, and he sleeps the most!

The artillery of the Chinese army was brought by the 1st Division, and the division commander Lü Feng ordered Lefei's regiment as the vanguard after setting out from Xiaogan. Unexpectedly, Le Fei was powerful, and directly took Zhang Zuolin's Beiyang 21st Division. The first division of the Sixth Army became a Henan sightseeing group, at most it was to point a gun at the prisoners of the 21st Division, and after a break for half a day, the 1st Division received an order to go north to snipe the 20th Division of Beiyang, this time Lu Feng did not dare to let Le Fei take the lead, the young man was young and vigorous, and he dared to do it if he met anyone, it is estimated that if they were placed outside Beijing, the troops of his regiment would dare to attack the city directly!

This atypical firepower configuration of the Chinese army makes people very helpless. The artillery that surpasses the times and the artillery towing equipment that surpasses the times is so large that the enemy who does not know the situation still wants to fight hard, so that the enemy who knows the situation cannot have the heart to resist. From a military point of view, Lü Feng meant that the artillery of the artillery regiment and the shells carried could make Houhuzhuang be blown up several times, so that the battle would easily end.

However, things are not counted like that, and it is likely that there are still many villagers in Houhuzhuang, who are innocent. In addition, the dead and wounded in the civil war were all Chinese people. Moreover, the Beiyang Army can be regarded as the elite of the times, and it is impossible to adopt the tactics of the war against Japan.

The ratio of the number of the Chinese army to the Beiyang army was about 1.3 to 1. After the siege, Huzhuang did not have an advantage in terms of troops, if Liu Jinbiao insisted on going his own way and wanted to break through the siege, then the Chinese army really had nothing to do with him. It's just that Liu Jinbiao was heartbroken by Wu Changchun, and he decided to fight to the death in confusion, and stayed in Houhuzhuang just not leaving.

In the second half of the night, Lu Feng did not let the Beiyang army in Houhuzhuang feel comfortable, and the flares and shells alternately harassed. The next morning, Liu Jinbiao, whose eyelids were red and swollen, had the idea of taking the initiative to attack. It's just that the Chinese army finally began to attack tentatively, diverting Liu Jinbiao's attention.

After the detection balloon was lifted into the air, it brought Lü Feng detailed information about Houhuzhuang, and based on the previous information, it can be known that the besieged Beiyang Army belonged to the 20th Division of the Beiyang Third Army. Division Commander Cao Kun, Deputy Division Commander Liu Jinbiao, and Third Army Commander Wu Changchun, but I don't know which high-ranking officers are in the besieged Houhuzhuang. The 20th Division had two infantry regiments, one cavalry regiment, one artillery regiment, one engineering battalion, and one baggage battalion, with a total number of about 13,000 people. In addition, the 20th Division is well-equipped, has relatively strong firepower, and has a lot of artillery and machine guns, which is a hard persimmon. Of course, with his own division, it will not be a problem to take Huzhuang after taking it, but I dare not say how big the casualties are. The Chinese army opened the way with artillery fire, and after several rounds of scrubbing, the infantry assaulted, using mortars, light machine guns, submachine guns, rifles, and grenades to form multiple layers of fire to break the enemy's defenses. When there were armored troops, the offensive was carried out by the cooperation of chariots and infantry, but most of the troops had not yet undergone the training of the infantry and tan, and I heard that the General Staff had no intention of expanding the armored forces.

Even so, the firepower of the Chinese army is a headache, not to mention the superiority of the sky, the battlefield is almost transparent to the Chinese army, they can keep track of the enemy's whereabouts at any time, and weaken the enemy's morale through air strikes.

It's just that a series of precautions issued by the General Staff before the Northern Expedition made the high-ranking officers on the front line fearful, and tried to minimize the casualties in the civil war, which was the most fundamental principle noted by the General Staff Staff. It's just that this kind of purely bureaucratic order does not correspond to the reality of the battlefield at all, and if you want the horses to run, but you don't want the horses to graze, how can there be any reason for doing so?

Lu Feng was in such an embarrassment, he couldn't think of how to solve the battle without blood, and reduce the casualties to a minimum. As a genetic person, he will not think about this kind of thing for too long, nor will he care about the details of officialdom, and directly throw his own problems to his superiors.

The military was very efficient, and within an hour, the problem was transmitted from the first division of the front line, to the headquarters of the Sixth Army, to the headquarters of the group army, and finally to the war room of the General Staff. This is the first time this kind of problem has been encountered in the second Northern Expedition, and it is believed that it will continue to appear in the future, and in the previous battle, Xinyang's Beiyang 21st Division did not resist fiercely, and it quickly surrendered under the blow of the Chinese army, which is an exception and cannot become a universal phenomenon.

In fact, in the final analysis, it is because of Lu Liang's previous instructions, as the chief, every word he says will be regarded as an unshirkable order by the subordinates of the gene people, and it must be thoroughly implemented. The matter was transferred from the General Staff again, but he returned to the General Staff from Lu Liang after half an hour.

Lü Feng at the front sent a telegram requesting advice, and received an accurate reply an hour and a half later: "First persuade the enemy to surrender, then persuade the enemy to surrender again after a heavy blow, and if he does not surrender, he will be completely destroyed!" ”

Lu Liang was also ruthless, this is a war, not a child's game, nor an argument in the university dormitory. War is a continuation of politics, not something that a soldier, an officer, a division commander or army commander can control, the direction of war is in the hands of politicians, and as long as those in control are determined to continue fighting, soldiers and officers have to continue to fight. That telegram was only to end the battle as soon as possible, and perhaps for the enemy, death at the hands of the other side was the greatest humanity for them.

Persuasion does not require the envoy to carry the white flag to the other party's position with fear, and then puff up his chest to show his attitude. Two H-1 modified transport planes flew over Houhuzhuang with more than 10,000 urgently printed leaflets, but it was already noon that day.

Snowflake-like leaflets fell from the planes and spread from the Chinese positions to the Beiyang Army positions, white paper everywhere, and the beautifully printed leaflets were snatched by the soldiers in Houhuzhuang, and even Liu Jinbiao's strict orders to collect, not to transmit, and not to talk about their contents could not stop the enthusiasm of the soldiers.

Later, after investigation, it was found that there was no unrest in morale in the army, that is, the leaflets did not work. The reason is simple, less than one in 1,000 soldiers are literate, no one knows what is written on the leaflets, and the soldiers scramble for the leaflets because they find the paper very soft, beautifully printed, and pleasing to the eye, and it is good to use it as a collection! And some extravagant people will try to wipe their butts with these flyers, and it feels extremely comfortable!

The Chinese army treated itself as its own, but it did not expect that the leaflet offensive would not work at all, and at one o'clock in the afternoon an hour later, Lu Feng could no longer bear to wait, one night and one morning, there was no war at all, and he was simply sorry for his profession! As a result, the artillery regiment of the 1st division set the firing target after calculation under the coordinates provided by the detection balloon and reconnaissance planes, and hundreds of artillery pieces began to roar, and the positions on the left and south sides of Houhuzhuang, which were the main positions, were covered by artillery fire, and the positions after a busy day and a night were instantly wiped out, and the soldiers of the Beiyang Army, who had not yet learned to survive under the cover of artillery fire, suffered heavy casualties, and could not find a place to hide in the improvised positions on the plain terrain, and everyone was floating in the shock wave and shrapnel.

This is the level of artillery of a division of the Chinese army? This TM is better than the eighteen Krupp 150mm heavy howitzers of the Praetorian Guard, and it is only a division-level artillery, it is really more popular than people, and the equipment that Yuan Shikai spent so much money on is still vulnerable in front of the Chinese army!

Especially watching a very heavy machine gun fire point fly into the sky, the baby Makqin became a pile of parts, Liu Jinbiao almost couldn't help but run into the battlefield to grab a few heavy machine guns, the importance of those things for Liu Jinbiao even exceeded artillery, with the application of machine guns by the Chinese army, the world has seen the role of machine guns in combat, countries began to study machine guns as the core tactics of company platoons, and soon got a lot of research results. (To be continued.) )