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Chapter 1618: The Battle of Ili

Ili City, located more than 60 kilometers north of Almaty, on the south bank of the Ili River, was once an important city on the ancient silk road, when Su Dingfang was appointed as the governor of Yili Road in the Tang Dynasty, he took Ili City as the governing place, under the jurisdiction of the Ili River basin and the vast area east and south of Lake Balkhash, during the period of Tsarist Russia, most of the area of Ili was occupied by the Russian Empire. Pen~Fun~Ge www.biquge.info If history has not changed, this thousand-year-old city will be completely submerged by the Ili River with the construction of the reservoir in the sixties, and a city called Kapchagai will appear in the west of the reservoir in the future.

Because the railway bridge across the north and south of the Ili River was blown up by the Soviet troops, at 8 o'clock in the morning of 11 August, Hu Jiyang led the Eastern Front Corps to launch a battle to forcibly cross the Ili River.

A total of 144 120-mm howitzers and 36 150-mm howitzers from three artillery regiments of the artillery brigade directly under the command launched an artillery attack on an area two kilometers long and one kilometer wide on the other side of the Ili River, with the air defense brigade, three rocket artillery battalions, and a combat defense battalion equipped with cannons serving as reserves.

Hu Jiyang stood on a hill at the southern foot of the Junggar Mountains 300 meters away on the north bank of the Ili River, and could clearly see the situation on the other side of the river through a telescope.

On the bank of a two-kilometer-long stretch of river where the landing is scheduled to take place, the ground has been shrouded in white smoke from the explosion of artillery shells, and the miniature mushroom clouds look particularly pleasing to the eye.

After a quarter of an hour of saturation shelling, Hu Jiyang looked at his watch and said to Liu Yu, the chief of staff standing aside: "Give the order to let the infantry attack!" ”

Liu Yu hurriedly shook the phone, and after receiving the instructions, Major General Wang Yu, the commander of the Guards Army, immediately ordered the Infantry Brigade and the Engineer Brigade of the Guards Army, which were responsible for the first wave of forced crossings, to attack.

The troops crossing the river were in groups of three or five, the largest of which were groups of 10 people, carrying assault boats and rubber boats and rushing towards the river, and at the same time as they launched their charge, the artillery extended their fire to the depth of the river defense positions on the opposite bank.

"Get on board!"

After throwing the assault boat into the river, Major Jiang Zhekai, a regiment of the engineer brigade, gave an order, and seven sappers, including him, jumped into the boat, and the four sappers picked up the short oars and began rowing.

Jiang Zhekai turned his head to look left and right, and found that dozens of ships were rushing in front of him, and immediately said to the machine gunner: "Shoot!" Use machine gun fire to overwhelm your opponents! ”

"Yes, Captain!"

The machine gunner answered and immediately began to fire, and the ammunition hand next to him did not move the bullets upright.

Jiang Zhekai lay on the sandbag, picked up the telescope and looked at the opposite bank, and suddenly found a pillbox that had not been destroyed by artillery fire, it was half-buried in the ground, only a small part of it was exposed to the ground, and it was shooting at an assault boat in front of the right, but because the assault boat moved very fast, it only caused a splash on the nearby water.

After observing for a while, Jiang Zhekai found that there was no artillery attacking the pillbox, and it was estimated that it was not found.

"There's a bunker there, see? Switch to tracer shells and give the artillery an indication of the target! Jiang Zhekai gave the machine gunner directions.

"See, Captain! Change the bullets! ”

After the machine gunner finished firing the chain of fifty rounds, the ammunition man immediately took the initiative to replace it with tracer rounds.

Turning the muzzle of the gun, the machine gunner immediately fired at the target, and with the sound of tearing rags, tracer bullets formed an extremely conspicuous "electric whip" on the surface of the river, which instantly attracted the attention of everyone on both sides of the Ili River.

The officers and men of the air defense brigade waiting on the north bank of the Ili River did not disappoint the good intentions of the engineer commander, and after seeing the "electric whip," in the blink of an eye, several 88-mm antiaircraft guns were immediately aimed at the unfortunate pillbox.

"Knock-"

The signature sound of the 88mm anti-aircraft gun rang out, and several shells smashed on the pillbox, and the dust and smoke from the explosion engulfed the pillbox in an instant.

The Soviet troops on the other side of the river instantly understood the intention of Jiang Zhekai's assault boat to use tracer bullets, and immediately organized firepower to strafe the assault boat.

Jiang Zhekai had already hid behind the sandbag of the assault boat, signaling everyone to hide, and the assault boat that no one was manipulating stopped on the surface of the river and floated downstream along the river, like a dead boat. The Soviet machine guns stopped firing after carving a row of holes in the assault boat, and it is not known whether they were killed by artillery fire or whether they thought they had eliminated the enemy on the ship.

"Got out of the way and continued rowing." Jiang Zhekai raised his head vigilantly and observed, and then gave an order.

The sappers began rowing again, and the machine gunners re-erected their machine guns.

Under the suppression of the 88mm guns on the bank of the river, the machine gun positions of the Soviet troops on the opposite bank were all silent, only the mortars who did not know where they were hiding were still firing, and the mortar shells set off white waves in the river, but the Soviet heavy artillery never appeared.

Seeing that the opponent's firepower was weak, the assault force increased the speed of rowing, and soon there were assault boats rushing to the south bank.

"Hurry up, hurry up, there's already someone ashore ahead." Jiang Zhekai shouted loudly, seeing that there were already assault boats rushing to the other side of the river, the engineer commander was a little anxious.

After about four or five minutes, Major Jiang Zhekai's assault boat finally reached the south bank of the Ili River, and immediately jumped out of the assault boat with an automatic rifle.

"Follow me!"

With a wave of his hand, Jiang Zhekai jumped out of the crater and rushed to the left front, and the six sappers hurriedly followed.

The ground on the south bank of the Ili River was full of craters left by the shelling, and Jiang Zhekai's team, using these craters as cover, moved quickly forward, and their target was a pillbox that was being fired. The bunker almost blended into the ground, leaving only a shooting hole on the ground, surrounded by grass and dirt, and it would not have been possible to spot the bunker from the outside if it had not been for the flames spewing from the shooting hole that exposed the target.

Hiding in a bomb crater and observing for a few seconds, Jiang Zhekai found that on the ground not far in front of the pillbox, there were the corpses of two Anjia Army infantrymen, and next to the corpses, there was also a bazooka, which seemed to have been knocked to the ground by the sudden fire during the attack. Farther away, more than a dozen infantry were hiding in craters, dodging machine-gun bullets.

Since the infantry successfully landed on the south bank of the Ili River, in order not to injure their own people, the anti-aircraft artillery on the north bank has stopped firing, and now the only way to kill this pillbox is to rely on infantry assault.

Jiang Zhekai turned his head and looked around, seeing that there were no other Soviet positions around him that could form crossfire with this pillbox, and after a careful observation, he found that his position was just at the dead end of the pillbox, so he turned to a sapper behind him and said:

"Knife, do you see that bunker, kill it!"

"Yes, Captain."

The sapper named Knife, carrying a bazooka, jumped out of the crater and rushed past the left front of the pillbox, and in a few steps he rushed to the edge of the pillbox, raised the bazooka, and aimed it at the pillbox.

"Whew-"

A rocket flew over, straight into the hole, and with a "boom", after a violent explosion, the bunker flew into the sky. At this moment, the knife carrying the bazooka, his body trembled violently, and then he fell to the ground.

"No, it's a sniper!"

Jiang Zhekai secretly screamed in his heart, and before he could react, a sapper rushed out from behind him, and came to the knife in a leap, trying to drag the knife back into the crater.

"Put him down and come back!"

Jiang Zhekai knew that something was wrong, and hurriedly shouted to the sapper. But it was too late, and as the shots rang out, the sappers who came to the rescue had already been shot in the eyebrows and fell in a pool of blood.

After the pillboxes were solved, the more than ten suppressed infantry resumed the attack, and the follow-up infantry also followed, and the team of about 100 people, making full use of the craters and various obstacles as cover, gradually pushed towards the deep positions of the Soviet army. As for the sniper, he could not stop the whole rout by himself, and he was soon found behind a tuft of thatch, and was shot into a sieve.

"Alright, leave the matter of attacking in depth to the infantry, and we sappers must hurry up and build bridges! Here, give me the flare gun! Jiang Zhekai endured the grief in his heart, turned his head and said to the sappers beside him.

The commander of the engineer regiment took the signal gun and fired three red signal flares into the sky, and when he saw the three red signal flares, behind the hills on the north bank of the river, one by one the boat and bridge vehicles passed through the mountain road and drove to the river bank.

Two hours later, four steel pontoon bridges were laid on the fast-flowing Ili River, and the armored brigades directly under the 10th Army and the Guards Army continued to cross the river and advance rapidly towards the city of Ili to the south.

"Report! Frontline Emergency! ”

The communication soldiers came to Hu Jiyang's side with brisk steps.

Hu Jiyang was in an extremely relaxed mood, took it and said to Liu Yu with a smile: "We have broken through the defense of the Soviet army on all fronts, and the forward of our infantry brigade has rushed into Ili City and is advancing in depth, the enemy has no intention of street fighting, it will collapse at the first touch, and the soldiers have no fighting spirit, we can spend the night in Ili City at night!" ”

Liu Yu took the telegram and read it, and said suspiciously: "The enemy's defense is much weaker than imagined, could it be that Cui Kefu has some conspiracy?" ”

Hu Jiyang was slightly stunned, and then said: "It shouldn't be!" Now the western front and the northern front have been firmly blocked by us, unless they choose to flee into Xinjiang, but in terms of the overall situation, this is an extremely unwise decision, and it will involve Xinjiang, which is handed over to ** to operate, into the war! ”

"It's possible for them to go south too!"

After Liu Yu finished speaking, he asked his staff officer to bring a map of Central Asia, pointed to the Pamir Plateau and said: "As long as you cross the Pamir Plateau, which is known as the 'Green Ridge' in the history of our country, you can enter Afghanistan, and then find a way to reach the lowlands on the west coast of the Caspian Sea from the upper reaches of the Kara River in Iran, then you will be considered to return to the Soviet Union!" ”

Hu Jiyang looked at the map carefully, and his face changed:

"Not good, according to the reconnaissance of the Air Force, the central cluster of the Soviet army has joined forces with the Tianshan Corps in the Zaral Abad area, and once the Soviet army in Almaty moves south, the three Soviet troops can join forces at the Taldik Pass at the northern foot of the Pamir Plateau and go south together. In this way, there are more than 400,000 Soviet troops......"

Liu Yu shook his head categorically: "There is absolutely no 400,000, it is not so easy to cross the Turkistan Mountains, at least one-third of the troops must be lost, in the case of lack of food and clothing and without any preparation, rashly crossing the snow line of more than five thousand meters, it is estimated that one-third will have to be lost, and in the end it would be good to have 200,000 troops to Afghanistan!" Now I am worried that the Soviets have taken control of the mountain pass area, which will always be a threat to our security. Wasn't one of Commander Li Jinlong's divisions blocked at the Darwa Pass north of Khorog? After several successive attacks to no avail, there was really no choice but to leave one battalion to hold on, and the rest of the troops were transferred back to the Stalinabad area. ”

Hu Jiyang thought about it carefully, and suddenly smiled: "You don't have to worry about this!" What is the Pamir Plateau? All of them are plateaus of more than 5,000 meters, the temperature is very cold, it is difficult to breathe, and it is extremely difficult to replenish supplies. It's good, the chairman of the province has to worry about hundreds of thousands of mouths! However, what the specific situation is, we will not know until tomorrow when we attack Almaty! ”

Liu Yu suggested: "Why don't we jointly tell the theater command our thoughts and listen to the opinions of Commander Hu and the two commanders Ye and Li?" ”

"Okay! You draft, I sign! ”

After Liu Yu finished drafting the telegram, Hu Jiyang signed his name, and Lieutenant Colonel Yang Qiang, director of the communications department, sent the telegram, the Corps headquarters immediately moved forward and stationed in the thousand-year-old city of Ili in the evening.