[Anti-Japanese Iron Blood King] Chapter 553: It's time to close the net (ask for subscriptions, ask for monthly passes, ask for everything!) ）

When the independent division made a big disturbance in southern Hebei, Lei Zhenhua, who stayed in Shandong, also received an order from Ma Zheng, asking him to do his best to contain the Japanese puppet army in Luxi, so as to prevent the 12th Army from sending troops to southern Hebei and disrupting his plan. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Lei Zhenhua did not disappoint Ma Zheng, although he had less than 2,000 men in his hands, but after careful analysis, Lei Zhenhua decisively made a method of attacking the Japanese army's communication lines, focusing the attack on the main railway lines and highway lines of the Japanese army.

As we all know, food and ammunition are needed to fight a war, and this is the reason why soldiers and horses go first before they move grain and grass. The Japanese army in Shandong wants to go north as soon as possible to support the battlefield in southern Cha or southern Hebei, so the assembly of troops and logistics support will be the most important thing for the 12th Army.

It was precisely because of this that Lei Zhenhua led more than 2,000 elites to paralyze all the railway lines from Shandong to Hebei, Pingjin and south to Xuzhou within a week.

Lei Zhenhua knows better the truth of hitting a snake and hitting seven inches, and the place where the bomb explodes is often the tunnel bridge that the Japanese army attaches great importance to, and a sound often means that the Japanese army needs ten days, half a month, or even more to repair it.

At the same time, the special operations team next to Lei Zhenhua also came in handy, the Tai'an arsenal was the second largest arsenal of the Japanese army in Shandong, due to the paralysis of the railway to Xuzhou in the south, a large number of weapons and ammunition and the Japanese army were stranded in Tai'an.

Although Lieutenant General Odaka Kamezo had realized that so many weapons and ammunition stranded in Tai'an was a time bomb that could be detonated at any time, and would definitely bring major security risks to Tai'an, he urgently transferred reinforcements from two infantry brigades to Tai'an to strengthen Tai'an's defense and assist the defenders in maintaining order.

But no one expected that the pervasive Ma Zheng's special combat team was also eyeing the Tai'an arsenal, and several soldiers who were familiar with the Japanese language had already mixed into a Japanese expatriate unit. On the same night that the reinforcements from Jinan arrived, Lei Zhenhua's unit blew up the Japanese arsenal in Tai'an, with the cooperation of the special combat troops.

The violent explosion leveled the entire Tai'an Railway Station, and the Japanese puppet troops guarding the railway station were killed and wounded more than 700 people, and four military trains parked in the railway station were overturned, causing huge losses to the Japanese army.

The series of blows made Lieutenant General Ogaka Kamizo realize that the situation in Shandong was actually unstable, and that there was a hateful army of Shina like a hungry wolf, eyeing his defense area and troops in the shadows. This made Otaka Kamezo very worried, and immediately ordered the 21st Division, which was to be transferred to Hebei, to be changed from a complete infantry division to a reinforced brigade, and forcibly cut off an infantry wing and an artillery wing from it.

And the Fifth Division, which was originally going to go to southern Hebei to quell the turmoil, also stopped in Jining, after all, although there are four divisions in Shandong now, but two are transferred at once, and the defense area will be really empty.

In the next few days, news favorable to Ma Zheng's department continued to reach the front-line headquarters, and Ma Zheng analyzed it and thought it was time to close the net. The troops on the northern front have reached the limit of troop expansion when they have taken Chifeng, and further east they will go deep into the eastern grasslands, and there is the traditional sphere of influence of the Kwantung Army, and the strength of the reorganized third division and cavalry division will not be able to withstand the counterattack of the Kwantung Army at all, so they must seize the time to digest the territory while the Kwantung Army and the Soviet Red Army are stumbling at Nomenkan, so as not to be caught off guard by the Japanese army after the armistice between the Soviet Union and Japan.

In addition, the battle on the front line of Xuanhua was very unfavorable to Yang Chengwu's department, and General Sugiyama Yuan made a desperate bet to put a lot of pressure on the defenders of Zhangjiakou, if he could not defeat the Japanese puppet army on the front line of southern Hebei and Xinkou in a short time, the consequences would be unimaginable, so Ma Zheng had no time to delay.

Immediately call the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, the guests have arrived, and they can open their seats.

Immediately, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army sent a telegram to the joint headquarters of the southern Hebei front, ordering Division Commander Liu and Commander Nie to immediately complete the encirclement of the Japanese 108th Division and prepare to close the net.

At the same time, Ma Zheng also ordered the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Brigades of the Independent Division, the 334th Brigade of the 115th Division, the New 1st Regiment, the 2nd New Regiment, and the 7th Independent Regiment of the Southern Hebei Administrative Office to follow the Tokugawa Yasui Division to the north, and cooperate with the 129th Division and the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region to complete the final attack on the Xiayuan Xiong Yasuo Division.

In fact, at this time of the battle, Xia Yuan Xiong Mi had already felt the danger, after all, the Japanese reconnaissance planes were constantly hovering over the head of the Eighth Route Army, and there was an earth eight road in that direction, and the approximate scale was how big it was, and Xia Yuan Xiong Mi would soon be able to know the approximate situation.

Since learning that there were a large number of dirt roads around the 108th Division, Xia Yuan Xiong Mi noticed that the people of Shimo seemed to be playing tricks on him and his troops, so Xia Yuan Xiong Mi did not continue to go south after entering Xingtai City, but on the one hand urged the Tokugawa Yasuichi Division, which had broken through the siege, to speed up the march and go to Xingtai as soon as possible to join the 108th Division, and on the other hand, to repair the city fortifications on a large scale and prepare to hold on to the reinforcements.

However, what Lingxia Yuan Kuami didn't expect was that he didn't wait for Tokugawa Yasuichi and others, but waited for the main force of the 129th Division first.

A tragic positional offensive and defensive battle began on the periphery of Xingtai, with the attacking side being the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, the New First Brigade and the New Fifth Brigade, and the defending side being the Japanese 108th Division. Among them, the 386th Brigade attacked Neiqiu County north of Xingtai and attacked it overnight, while the New 1st Brigade of the 129th Division attacked Ren County in the northeast of Xingtai, and the New Fifth Brigade attacked Nanhe County directly east of Xingtai. More than 20,000 men from three brigades attacked from three directions, like three sharp swords aimed at the heart of the 108th Division.

Xia Yuan Xiong Mi panicked and immediately commanded the troops to counterattack, and the two sides launched a fierce battle around Xingtai and the surrounding three counties. Because the Japanese army had an absolute advantage in weapons and equipment, the Eighth Route Army did not have an advantage at the beginning of the battle. However, as reinforcements from several brigades of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region arrived one after another, the 108th Division gradually felt the pressure and began to shrink its strength.

On September 5, the 386th Brigade defeated the Japanese army in front of it, captured Guanzhuang Town, an important town south of Neiqiu County, and advanced the battle line to 20 kilometers north of Xingtai City. At the same time, after two days and nights of hard fighting, the New First Brigade and the New Fifth Brigade finally took Ren County and Nanhe County to justice, and the balance of victory gradually tilted to the side of the Eighth Route Army.

But even so, Division Commander Liu, Commander Nie and others also felt a lot of pressure, mainly because the 108th Division now has more than 7,000 people, plus the defenders of a reinforced brigade and a puppet infantry group in Xingtai City, there are at least more than 12,000 puppet troops in Xingtai City. More importantly, Xingtai City is relatively strong, and the fortifications are relatively perfect, and it is not easy for the Eighth Route Army to break the city.

On the one hand, it is because the Eighth Route Army does not have heavy weapons for attacking fortifications, not to mention howitzers for siege, and there are not many mountain artillery and field artillery of 75mm caliber. First, because the Eighth Route Army itself lacked artillery, and secondly, because the troops were assembled in a hurry, coupled with the factor of transportation, these heavy weapons were not carried.

Second, neither the 129th Division nor the troops of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region had any experience in attacking fortified cities, and in peacetime they used guerrilla tactics to deal with the enemy, and rarely fought with the enemy in cities, let alone fought with the Japanese army in attacking fortified cities, and they would only hurt themselves if they attacked rashly.

However, just when Division Commander Liu and others were struggling, they suddenly received a telegram from Ma Zheng from the front line, which was very short, which roughly meant that the two units should prepare to attack Xingtai at one o'clock in the morning of the 7th.

To tell the truth, this telegram made several bigwigs in the joint command a little confused, and they could understand that Ma Zheng sent them a telegram to discuss attacking Xingtai, after all, their two troops were just guest troops in this battle, and they were a chess piece in Ma Zheng's big chess game. But the problem is that the content of Ma Zheng's telegram is really too strange, except for the time of the attack, the rest does not say anything, there is neither a battle plan nor the main direction of attack, nothing, how should this battle be fought?

Division Commander Liu and Commander Nie discussed, and out of trust in Ma Zheng, they still decided to launch an attack on the Japanese troops outside Xingtai in the early morning of the 7th according to Ma Zheng's arrangement. (To be continued.) )