In the early morning of January 28, 1938, the main forces of the Second Division, the Eighth Division, and the Twelfth Division under the command of the First Front Army under the command of the Zhou Libing Army, crossed the defense line of the Daling River and began to attack Chaoyang.

At the same time, four divisions, including the 10th, 22nd, 35th, and 36th Divisions under the jurisdiction of the Second Front Army, also crossed the Daling River.

In the early morning of January 28, 1938, a bad guy should have confessed his guilt, a large number of soldiers began to attack Chaoyang all over the mountains after the sparse artillery preparation, the average half meter of snow made the army's action extremely difficult, but it also made most of the barbed wire and mines ineffective, the frozen Daling River was full of the army's offensive line, and the miserable white flares floated in the air.

The sound of gunfire and tearing shattered the darkness before dawn! Nineteen infantry brigades began to besiege the Chaoyang Fortress from all directions, on the snowy ground, the soldiers of the army were constantly struggling to assault, replacing the yellow side of the coat with white soldiers, which was not obvious in the reflection of the snow, and many of the soldiers of the army were covered with snowshoes on their feet, and these snowshoes with round and flat soles below were woven with rattan, which could not only prevent the soldiers from sinking into the thick snow, but also were non-slip, so it can be said that the preparation of the army was sufficient.

Due to the suddenness of the attack, the artillery group of Chaoyang Fortress did not even have time to intercept the main force of the infantry attack of the Yue army that crossed the Daling River, and by the time the Yue army entered the defense range of the fortress's machine guns, it had already entered the blind spot of the large-caliber artillery.

Under the fire of the reacting fortress, the officers and soldiers still fell to death in the snow one by one, because most of the heavy machine gun fire of the Chaoyang Fortress was carried out to cover the shooting, and under the crossfire of the barrage, the clumsy assault of the officers and soldiers undoubtedly became the best target, and the sound of the bullets breaking through the air with a whistling sound made the officers and soldiers lying on the snow tremble.

It turned out that many officers and soldiers knew that the garrison of Chaoyang Fortress was very complete, and unless it was leveled with artillery, it was not occupied by infantry alone, and many of the soldiers who had attacked Chaoyang Fortress would make a lot of noise and have nightmares at night when they mentioned the name of Chaoyang.

This was out of a kind of desperation, but the commander of the front army, the Zhou Libing, still added many veterans who had participated in the Chaoyang Offensive back to the front line, most of these veterans were used in the first round of the attack, and the Zhou Libing also pinned all their hopes on this first round of surprise attacks, if the sudden surname of the attack could be achieved, then it was not impossible to smash a gap in the sturdy turtle shell of the Chaoyang Fortress?

As long as the breakthrough is opened, then everything seems to be a waterway! With his own troops, he will definitely be able to capture Chaoyang Fortress, but Chaoyang Fortress is not without a weakness, but the freezing of the Daling River has made this weakness even more fragile.

Normally, there should also be corps-level units under the front army of the army, but because of the special surname of this campaign and the major adjustment of the order of the Kwantung Army, the front army is directly under the jurisdiction of the divisions and regiments, and there is no special specific establishment provision for the army's army-level structure, and at least two or three divisions plus special forces can also be organized into one army, and the eleventh army with a maximum of 11 divisions and regiments is also a rare precedent. Therefore, the commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, Kenkichi Ueda, decided to directly control the divisions and regiments with the front army to avoid interference between multiple command structures.

The headquarters of the troops was set up in an abandoned settlement 30 kilometers away from the whole line, and because all the soldiers and civilians rushed to Chaoyang to escape the snow disaster, the settlement did not destroy itself, and no one would have thought that he would attack Chaoyang in such a stormy and snowy weather.

Therefore, the Zhou Li soldiers chose a cheap, hundreds of intact houses, fuel and even a small amount of food, which was simply an indescribable happiness for the Yue army troops who had struggled in the wind and snow for five days, although they were well prepared, the three divisions of the First Front Army under the command of the Zhou Li soldiers still had a total of more than 2,300 non-combat attrition, of which more than 400 were frozen to death and died of various typhoid fever-related diseases, and the other 1,900 people completely lost their combat effectiveness due to the cold. Seventy percent of the officers and men of the front army suffered from frostbite to varying degrees.

Sitting by the fireplace, drinking hot soup and sake, and listening to the sound of gunfire thirty kilometers away, the soldiers seemed to fall into a state of self-absorption, imagining that their troops had broken through the defenses of the fortress of Chaoyang, and at the Imperial Council at the Tokyo base camp, His Majesty the Emperor personally awarded himself a medal to take over as commander of the Kwantung Army under Kenkichi Ueda...... His Excellency the Commander was smirking again with his wine glass, and the staff officers beside the Zhou Libing knew that he must not disturb His Excellency the Commander at this time, otherwise it would be easy for His Excellency the Commander to remember, and the final outcome of His Excellency the Commander's concern was for you to command a squadron to charge the enemy.

On the periphery of the Chaoyang Fortress, the strength of the ten teams of the second attack wave of the continuous reinforcement was blocked by the artillery fire of the Chaoyang defenders, especially the Yue army in front of the Daling River was blown up by the dense artillery fire, and the frozen ice surface of the Daling River was blown open one by one huge ice holes, and the impacting Yue army was shocked into the ice holes by the aftermath of the cannonballs, and there was no shadow in the blink of an eye.

The constantly rising column of water drenched the officers and soldiers, and the drenched coats were like ice armor, and the stiff and slow movements of the officers and soldiers fell to the ground one after another, and the blood flowing out of them condensed almost instantly.

However, there were still a large number of Japanese troops who passed through the blockade of artillery fire, and the officers and men of the Japanese army howled and rushed forward as if they were crazy, especially the Japanese troops who rushed up from the back of the fortress, and the officers and soldiers on the outer positions of the defenders started a white-knuckle battle, and the sounds of tearing and killing, cursing, and screaming were endless.

Dai Peng's special line has been hung up by the wind and snow has not yet been restored, and can only contact Zhang Xuewu who is in command of the Chengde side through the radio, Zhang Xuewu stood in front of the map and frowned after receiving the news that the main force of the army was attacking Chaoyang. What is this? It can be said that the sudden move of the Yue army disrupted almost all of Zhang Xuewu's operations, his troops were scattered to various places for disaster relief, and the assembly of troops took time, and what worried Zhang Xuewu the most was that the attack on Chaoyang by the Yue army was just the beginning of a series of large-scale military operations?

Chaoyang has only one garrison division, and it is necessary to quickly reinforce the Chaoyang defenders, Zhang Xuewu can quickly assemble the troops at this moment can only be the Zhanyang Division of the Fourth Division of the Youth Army near Chengde to carry out disaster relief, plus the reserve of the Eighth Division, Zhang Xuewu, the second garrison division of Chengde, did not dare to move, so he immediately ordered the Zhanyang Division of the Fourth Division of the Youth Army and the Eighth Division of the Reserve Army to reinforce Chaoyang from Chengde through Pingquan and Lingyuan, and attack from the flank to cover the Chaoyang defenders.

In Zhang Xuewu's memory, Napoleon, who swept through Europe in the eighteenth century in history, gathered the largest coalition army in the history of Europe, with a total strength of more than 600,000 troops, Napoleon's plan was to launch a large-scale in-depth attack on Russia, Napoleon did not take the fact that winter was approaching at all, when Napoleon's army captured Moscow, Napoleon's confidence doubled, and the invading French troops sacked the city of Moscow, and then a difficult problem that Napoleon had not considered before gradually came to the fore. Winters in Russia are unusually cold. When Napoleon's army left the devastated Moscow with a large amount of booty, the temperature in Russia had dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius, and finally Napoleon was defeated in the cold weather of Russia, the hungry soldiers fell one by one due to frostbite and hunger, and finally only 150,000 soldiers staggered back to France, Napoleon's attack on Russia opened the prelude to the end of his huge empire, and also heralded the rise of Russia as a great power in Europe, and minus 40 degrees Celsius was a common thing for Russia.

And then Adolf. Hitler's classmates clearly did not learn from the lessons of history, otherwise he would not have repeated Napoleon's attack on Moscow, and the two of them had suffered the same thing in Russia. A battle codenamed Typhoon (Barbarossa) swept across the Soviet Union. The Germans were so confident that they would be able to defeat Stalin's army quickly, and several of them even carried their dress with them in case they were to wear it at the post-victory parade on Moscow's Red Square. However, they did not carry enough clothing to withstand the cold of Russia, and with the onset of winter, Hitler's mechanized troops lost their power and suffered crushing defeats in Moscow and Stalingrad, which became a turning point in World War II.

He said that he had suffered a big loss in the winter battle in Chengde, and he even took the risk of launching an offensive in the winter? Zhang Xuewu found that he really couldn't use normal thinking to understand his own behavior? The battle of Xuzhou for several months of its deployment turned into a cover? The real target turned out to be Xiang Zhuang's sword dance, which meant Pei Gong? Do I have idiot cerebral palsy? Don't talk about the cold winter season? Own 10th theater of war is a soft persimmon? Don't pinch Li Zongren and pinch himself?

Zhang Xuewu did not know that this huge battle plan was actually formulated by Lieutenant General Hideki Tojo, the trusted chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, and if Zhang Xuewu knew that it was Hideki Tojo who formulated it, he would not be surprised, because the most important thing that Private Tojo, who could only manage two machine guns, lacked imagination when he thought about it, and he bragged quite unrestrained.

(To be continued)