[Anti-Japanese Iron Blood King] Chapter 551: Recovering Handan (Ask for subscriptions, ask for monthly passes, ask for everything!) ）

After two days and three nights of arduous marching, the 108th Division finally arrived at Xingtai, 65 kilometers north of Handan, at about 7 o'clock in the evening of September 3. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

At this time, the 108th Division had been sharply reduced from more than 1,070 to 9,200, a reduction of more than 1,200 troops, which was equivalent to the strength of a reinforced brigade.

More importantly, directly north of the 108th Division, more than 10,000 troops of five regiments of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region had already completed their assembly, and had completely destroyed the roads and railways between Xingtai and Shimen, cutting off the retreat route of the 108th Division. At the same time, the 129th Brigade of the 385th Division and other units completed the assembly in Lincheng, Renxian and other places, and the 30,000 troops were encircling Xingtai.

Feeling that the time was ripe, Ma Zheng on the southern Hebei front issued the order for the final general attack on Handan. Ma Zheng gave Xie Wensheng and others a death order, Tokugawa Yasuichi must be completely annihilated or withdrawn from Handan City within two days, no matter what methods Xie Wensheng and others use, but the strategic goal must be achieved.

At the same time, Ma Zheng ordered the soldiers of the first brigade not to care about the escaped Japanese puppet army, and those defeated Japanese puppet army had their own troops from the Southern Hebei Military Region and the Southern Hebei Administrative Office to clean them up. What the 1st Brigade wants to do now is to advance, advance, and advance again, and the Wu'an, Cixian, and Fengfeng mining areas near Handan have now become unguarded air defense areas, and troops are urgently needed to occupy them.

With Ma Zheng's order, the battle situation in southern Hebei suddenly became out of control. Perhaps the Japanese army had reached the critical point of collapse, or perhaps Ma Zheng's death order really worked, under the fierce attack of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the Independent Division, it took only one day for all the Japanese positions in the outer city of Handan City to be captured, and the main force of the 2nd Brigade even attacked the city of Handan.

At this moment, Major General Tokugawa Yasuichi was really frightened, seeing that the reinforcements were still more than a day away, even if he put on his wings, it was impossible to appear outside Handan City at once. Tokugawa Yasuichi knew that his troops would probably not be able to wait for reinforcements, so he "wisely" chose to break through, and at this time there were less than 3,000 defenders left in Handan Castle.

Under the command of Tokugawa Koichi, the remaining more than 3,000 Japanese elites took advantage of the siege of the outer city of Handan by the independent division, and ordered more than 2,000 puppet troops to block the attack of Ma Zheng's troops in the southern position, and then suddenly concentrated the main force to attack the north gate of Handan, and then broke through to the north, trying to converge with the Japanese 108th Division in Xingtai.

And Xie Wensheng and others didn't expect the Japanese army to break through at all, after all, in their opinion, breaking through is a dead end, and it is better to stay in Handan City to be safe, so they did not prevent it, and were caught off guard by the Japanese army, and the northern front position was torn open by Tokugawa Yasuichi and escaped.

When the news of Tokugawa Yasuichi's escape reached the headquarters, Ma Zheng was reading the telegram from the headquarters of the Suicha Military Region. Just when the 2nd and 3rd Brigades launched a siege on Handan, Ma Desheng's cavalry division also launched a surprise attack on Chifeng City.

This time, the opponent of Ma Desheng and others was the Eighth Wing of the Fourth Division, a well-known strange unit in the Japanese army, the Fourth Division was called the "Imperial Army's Nest Waste Division", and the Eighth Wing, the core unit of the Fourth Division, was even more famous Nest Waste Wing, because of its repeated defeats in the Russo-Japanese War, so it won the nickname of "the Eighth Wing that is not afraid of defeat".

This time, due to the suddenness of Ma Desheng's department, and the fact that the Eighth Wing focused its attention on Liu Fengchi's reorganized third division on the southern front, there was no defense at all that the cavalry division would suddenly come to the city, so it was surrounded to death.

Although Chifeng City has a long history, the city wall is not high, and it is not even a city wall at all, not to mention the rammed earth masonry city wall to withstand artillery attacks, sometimes heavy machine guns can penetrate it, and the defense effect is surprisingly poor.

In addition, the morale of the Japanese army was low, so the Japanese Eighth Wing held out in Chifeng City for only three days before being defeated by Ma Desheng's cavalry division. This time, Ma Desheng did not give the enemy a chance to escape, and the Japanese Eighth Wing was beaten back several times during the breakout, and in desperation, the Eighth Wing disarmed Ma Desheng's headquarters under the command of the wing commander Chichai Dazuo.

Only one of the high-ranking Japanese puppet troops in the entire Chifeng area led a cavalry squadron of the enemy fled, and it can be said that the battle on the northern front was basically over, and Ma Zheng's division won a complete victory.

Handan City and Chifeng were captured one after another, which greatly alarmed the headquarters of the Japanese North China Front. This was only paid back in less than a day, and the imperial army actually lost two big cities in a row, although there were not many imperial guards in Xichifeng, plus the defense areas of more than ten surrounding banner counties, there was only one wing of the Eighth Wing. But even so, General Sugiyama still clearly felt the threat, a mortal threat.

Ma Zheng's repeated big moves really made General Sugiyama unable to step down, and Sugiyama Yuan, who has always been insidious, was really angry this time. In Sugiyama Yuan's view, Ma Zheng did not know how to lift, and the two sides had reached a strange tacit understanding in the past few months after the end of the Northern Jin Campaign, that is, Ma Zheng's troops stuck to the territory they now occupy, and did not develop to Hebei and Jinzhong, and the North China Front Army did not launch a large-scale offensive to the Suicha region, especially not to send air forces to the cities and industrial areas controlled by the internal military region.

Now, Ma Zheng's department took the lead in breaking this tacit understanding and really slapped Sugiyama Yuan in the face. Sugiyama Gennai is the commander of the North China Front, how can he be afraid of Ma Zheng's "provocation" because he thinks very highly of himself, since Ma Zheng has issued a war letter and argues with him, the commander of the front army, the general of the great empire, then Sugiyama Yuan can only fight back-for-tat.

However, General Sugiyama wanted to fight back, but at this time the life of the entire North China Front was not easy. Judging from the battle with Ma Zheng's headquarters during this time, with the current state of the North China Front, it is not very likely that they want to recover Chifeng.

Sugiyama Moto had the intention of letting the Kwantung Army enter the pass to participate in the war, but thinking that the Kwantung Army had just been beaten all over the ground by the Soviet Red Army in the Nomenkan area, and the tens of thousands of casualties had already greatly damaged the vitality of the Kwantung Army, and it was impossible to recover Chifeng.

Going back to the battles between southern Hebei and Jinzhong and the Xuanhua front, the Tuba Road in Jinzhong had already defeated the 20th Brigade of the 40th Division, and the main force was advancing towards Yuanping. If it weren't for the large number of planes sent by the Front Army Command to participate in the exhibition, it is likely that the Tuba Road would have captured Yuanping. However, even so, the situation on the Xinkou front was already very bad for the front army.

Once Yuanping falls, there is no doubt that the spearhead of Ma Zheng's attack in the next battle will inevitably be Xinkou.

Although General Sugiyama Motodai believed in Umezu Mijiro's tactical command level, he still did not dare to take it lightly, after all, the safety of Xinkou was related to the situation in Taiyuan. If the heart can't be contained, Taiyuan will open the door.

The battle in Jinzhong was not smooth, and the battle situation in southern Hebei was even less optimistic, and the slightly better one was the Xuanhua front. Due to the arrival of a large number of reinforcements, the Japanese puppet army on the Xuanhua front line increased rapidly from more than 30,000 to 80,000 at this time. Coupled with Yamashita Fengwen's proper command, the Japanese army, which was originally on the defensive, actually fought several beautiful counterattacks one after another, and pushed Yang Chengwu's troops back from the Xuanhua front.

However, it was just a retreat, and it was not a complete victory, let alone a great victory, so the defeat of the war between Jinzhong and Southern Hebei was likely to be reprimanded by the base camp for this.

Sugiyama Moto, who is now in urgent need of an explanation of his achievements to the base camp, has a rare strong hand this time, and turned his attention to Xuanhua, and even directly intervened in the battle on the front line of Xuanhua without even holding a military meeting.

At this time, General Sugiyama still had eight infantry divisions and five independent infantry brigades in his hands, which was much more than Ma Zheng and others imagined, and at the same time, the two or four infantry divisions and regiments that had been withdrawn from the Wuhan battlefield had already returned to Anhui and could be transferred back to North China at any time. General Sugiyama Mototo's 10th Division, 26th Division, 110th Division, and the 16th Division, which was basically disabled, were all deployed on the line of Xuanhua, Zhulu, and Xiahuayuan, and at the same time concentrated all the defenders in Baoding and other places on this line.

The reason why all the chips were pressed on the Xuanhua front line in a desperate gamble was mainly because it would be impossible for several other battlefields to produce results for a while and a half, after all, it had been eroded to that point, and it was not possible to complete it in a short time if it was wanted to clean up, so the Xuanhua front line became a lifesaver for General Sugiyama Yuan. (To be continued.) )