In March, Xinjiang Province is still bitterly cold, and during the day, because the sunshine conditions are better, the temperature will warm up.

At dawn, the earth is cold and clear, and the wind is gloomy.

Because Hu Chuyuan was in the rear to dispatch supplies, Li Kaiye had no worries, so he personally led the Northwest Army to attack.

A few days earlier, he had commanded a campaign to recapture the forward front of Daban, and the mechanized troops had begun to pass through the pass in an orderly manner and begin to regroup in the Salt Lake area.

As a general who really understands the tactics of the mechanized corps in China, Li Kaiye discovered the biggest advantage of the mechanized corps very early on -- mobility and speed.

Therefore, Li Kaiye arranged the 2,755 armored vehicles in his hands in four divisions, namely the first, third, thirty-third, and thirty-fifth divisions of Huguang, and around these armored vehicles, a large number of trucks, off-road vehicles, other auxiliary supply vehicles, and light infantry fighting vehicles.

In addition to the Third Division, the other three divisions were formed into the First Group Army in the Northwest, and a cavalry division and a Huguang infantry division of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Corps were also deployed.

The 3rd Huguang Division, three infantry divisions, and the 32nd Division of the Xinjiang Provincial Corps were formed into the Second Group Army.

In Li Kaiye's plan, the First Group Army in the northwest was an assault force, pursuing the fastest possible impact, the Second Group Army was the main force in positional warfare, and the Third Group Army, which was equipped with only a small number of armored vehicles, was the reserve force.

He was ready for the attack, and the First Army was ready to go in the Salt Lake area, with 5 divisions totaling 147,000 men, armed with 945 TZB-2 cannon armored vehicles, 244 TZP-3 self-propelled artillery armored vehicles and 115 TZA-1 main armored vehicles, equipped with 7,740 trucks and other auxiliary vehicles, and a sufficient number of trucks and tank trucks.

The yellow sand is mighty.

The time has come, the armored vehicles and trucks scattered with each other have been activated, and in the desert and the Gobi desert, it is very difficult to drive in a longitudinal formation, because the dust and smoke are always billowing off.

Most of them were divided into three lines, with more than 400 TZB-2 assault vehicles in the first array in front and hundreds of trucks transporting infantry in the back, and Sun Daoyuan's 33rd Division was the first to rush to the front and attack Urumqi County.

The Yarkand rebels stationed more than 60,000 defenders in the area of Urumqi County, where they held for a long time, digging trenches with more than a dozen layers in front and back, and building various pillboxes and other fortifications.

The distance between the two sides was very close, only a few tens of kilometers, when the main force of the 33rd Division reached the position, a large number of 25mm caliber machine guns were exhausting ammunition, and a small number of TZA-1 armored vehicles hidden in the TZB armored vehicles were responsible for attacking pillboxes and blowing up other fortifications, and the 55mm caliber smoothbore guns were basically enough.

The Yarkand rebels were basically Kazakhs, and they simply could not understand what was in front of them, and soon retreated in a large area.

After occupying Urumqi County and making a slight renovation, Li Kaiye directly bypassed Urumqi and led the First Army in the Northwest to attack the Tsarist Russian Eastern Army in Central Asia stationed in Changji.

At this time, the Russian army was still in the stage of advocating Slavic racial superiority and bayonet offensive, and their resistance in the face of this ironclad torrent was even more pitiful, even inferior to the Yarkand rebels.

It was nothing more than a one-sided massacre.

The Russian Eastern Army Group of nearly 170,000 men in Central Asia did not have time to organize any defense, and the front-line defense was torn apart by the strength of two battalions of the 33rd Division, the artillery positions were occupied, and the large force was surrounded by two mechanized divisions, and finally the 1st Division completed the sweeping frenzy.

In the absence of tanks and large-caliber machine guns in the enemy's army, the TZB-2 infantry machine gun armored vehicle is invincible, the 5.3 cm thick main steel plate armor can withstand almost all attacks, and the strafing effect of 25mm machine guns and 7.62mm Browning light machine guns on the position is amazing.

Trenches and obstacles below 2.2 meters wide, and slopes below 40 degrees cannot block the TZB-2 infantry cannon armored vehicle, and the maximum crossing height can reach 0.53 meters.

Compared with the dozens of armored vehicles used by the British in the South African theater, the TZB-2 armored vehicle was completely ahead by ten years.

Of course, this is also due to the long-term research and development in China for nearly ten years.

Some armored vehicles of the TZB-2 type were also equipped with flamethrowers for clearing shallow mines, attacking trap-type pillboxes, and also sweeping positions.

In the first large-scale battle of the Northwest Counterattack Campaign, Li Kaiye did not intend to leave any prisoners at all, he wanted to use this absolute superiority to crush the fighting psychological quality of the entire Russian army.

For this reason, he did not hesitate to prolong the blitzkrieg into a war of annihilation.

After the First Army fully completed the encirclement and sweep, the entire Russian Army in Eastern Central Asia was annihilated, and only the outer line troops of less than 20,000 people were given the opportunity to surrender.

March 20.

At a lightning speed, under the leadership of Li Kaiye, the First Army in the Northwest crossed the western part of Xinjiang Province at an average speed of 110 kilometers per day, directly attacked Wusu, and lost a large number of positions in the middle to the Second Army.

As the capital of the Yarkand Khanate, Usu's fortifications were stronger, but they didn't make any sense.

On March 24, after joining up with the Second Army in the Northwest, Li Kaiye continued to bypass the Jinghe defense line, attacked from Tacheng, directly captured Aledka, and easily defeated the Russian Army in the South of Central Asia stationed here.

In the rear, Hu Chuyuan mobilized all the engineering forces he could mobilize to rush to repair the damaged section of the railway from Urumqi to Bancheng, and used the Russian railway to connect the railway line from Shanshan to Aledka, and a large amount of supplies were directly transported to Aledka.

The Russian army was routed all the way, and the amount of supplies discarded was enough for China to organize a large force of another 300,000 men.

Without waiting for the Second Army to converge, Li Kaiye rushed to Semipalatinsk in the remnants of the Russian Army's Southern Central Asian Army Group, and he personally led three mechanized divisions to attack in a straight line, breaking through the defense line of the Russian Army Group in North Central Asia and capturing Semipalatinsk in one fell swoop.

The 300-kilometer trek takes only four days.

In just four days, Li Kaiye defeated the 750,000 troops deployed by the Russian army in Central Asia and the more than 120,000 troops of the French Sixth Group, and his goal was to occupy the key points, protect the entire railway line, and ensure the capture of Barnaul and Omsk.

Therefore, Li Kaiye actually did not fight with the Russian-French coalition army on a large scale, basically, wherever he attacked, the Russian-French coalition army began to retreat frantically.

I can't stop it at all.

Nearly 400,000 troops of the Russian army were trapped in the Charsk area by the Northwest Army, and nearly 100,000 troops of the French army were directly disarmed by an infantry brigade of less than 10,000.

Throughout the northwestern region of Kazakhstan, a large number of remnants of the Russian-French army are scurrying around.

This counterattack was destined to leave an unprecedented mark in the entire history of world warfare, and relying on the coordinated operations of the railway and the Xinjiang Provincial Corps, the northwest front had stabilized the area from Shanshan to Aldeka.

First, strategic objectives are the most critical.

At this time, we will not talk about the issue of exterminating Yarkand.

After stabilizing Aledka, the large army quickly moved north, joined up with Li Kaiye's First Army in the northwest, and eradicated the remaining more than 400,000 Russian troops in the middle area.

April 11th.

The Northwest First Army completed its supply and maintenance, re-attacked northward, bypassed Barnaul, and directly attacked Omsk, the first stronghold of the Russian army in Central Asia, because the main forces of the Russian-French alliance were concentrated in Barnaul and Novosibirsk, the 40,000 garrisons in Omsk were simply unable to resist the offensive.

With only the 33rd Division stationed in Omsk, Li Kaiye and the Northwest Second Army encircled on both sides and attacked Barnaul and Novosibirsk.

At this stage, the speed of logistics supply could not keep up at all, and Li Kaiye was already at the end of his crossbow, and he could only get a certain degree of supply after joining up with the Second Army in the Northwest.

Even at the end of the crossbow, the Russian-French army could not withstand it, nearly 600,000 troops desperately fled, the capacity of the Far Eastern Railway was simply insufficient, and a large number of troops fled on the spot, crossed the Yenisei River, and fled towards Bratsk.

Due to the lack of supplies of the First Army, it was on standby for renovation, and only the Huguang Third Division of the Second Army was responsible for the pursuit alone, and even so, the speed of the Russian-French army's escape could not keep up with the speed of the pursuit.

20,000 men chased after the 600,000-strong army and slaughtered.

This is probably the most terrible miracle in the history of warfare.

From the beginning of the counterattack on 14 March to the occupation of Bratsk and Irkutsk by the 3rd Division of Huguang on 21 April, the Russian-French army was completely defeated in the northwest battlefield in more than a month, nearly 1.4 million army units were scattered, the number of dead and wounded exceeded 300,000, about 600,000 surrendered, and the rest fled to various places.

The Chinese Army's all-out victory in the Northwest Theater soon shocked the world, and in fact, since March, the whole world has been in an unprecedented state of surprise, and the kind of creepy and shocking news has been transmitted to the rest of the world one after another.

It was said that the news had been completely blocked at home, and did not dare to reveal the defeat of the Entente in the northwestern theater, but in Russia and France, the news had completely spread, and the people were angry, but extremely afraid.

Yellow ...... The rise of the problem has become the most feared problem for everyone.

At this time.

Hu Chuyuan was already preparing to leave Shanshan, and before leaving, he carefully sent a congratulatory message to all the officers and men of the Northwest Front, thanking them for their hard work in the past two years and in these two months.

His mission has been successfully completed, although there are some regrets, at the last critical moment, the supplies still cannot keep up with the advance speed of the front-line troops.

This is also beyond his ability, there is not much problem with the quality of domestic trucks, although the quantity is somewhat insufficient, but the real problem is the road. In Central Asia and Novosibirsk, there are no suitable roads, and trucks are transported much less efficiently.

Now that the railway lines have been preserved in their entirety, especially the railways built by Russia and France in Kazakhstan, the current logistical supply has begun to depend mainly on the railway system.

The Northwest Second Army assembled in the Novosibirsk, Omsk, Barnaul, and Irkutsk regions, responsible for guarding the northern part of Central Asia, cutting off the supply capacity of the Far Eastern Railway, and waiting for the Russian-French troops to starve to death in the northeast.

The First Army of the Northwest regrouped, withdrew along the railway line to Al Deka, and began to attack the Almaty area, while the Third Army sat in the Ili, Urumqi, and Shanshan areas, using the new units reorganized by Russian and French materials, and cooperated with part of the main forces of the Third Army in the Northwest to advance towards Kazakhstan.

In order to reduce the material loss of the Northwest Front, at this stage, Li Kaiye ordered the Northwest Army to use the guns and ammunition left by the Russians and the French on a large scale.

Now, the main force of the Russian-French coalition army, which was stationed on the northeastern front and was preparing to launch an all-out offensive a month ago, is embarrassed, and the more than 1 million troops who were originally in Korea are embarrassed.

(To be continued)