At the end of January of the 27th year of the Republic of China, that is, after the 5th and 10th divisions of the Fifth War Zone surrounded the Yue Army, Chairman Jiang, the leader of the national government, personally flew to Xuzhou.

Chairman Chiang's visit had three major purposes: First, Liu Xiang, the leader of the Sichuan Army, suddenly died of illness in the Hankou Hospital, and the outside world has different opinions about this, some say that he died of illness, some say that Chairman Chiang instructed the military commander to poison him to death, and under the gossip, the officers and men of the Sichuan Army on the front line in Xuzhou have become popular with the people, and Chairman Chiang's main purpose here is to appease the officers and men of the Sichuan Army.

The second is to secretly arrest the Shandong warlord Han Fuyu and rectify the Shandong Front Army, that is, the 3rd Group Army.

Speaking of which, Chairman Jiang and Han Fuyu originally had old grudges, during the warlord scuffle, Han Fuyu did not pull Chairman Jiang's hind legs, and Chairman Jiang wanted to kill Lao Han for a day or two, this time Han Fuyu ignored the overall situation of the resistance, and fled without a fight with his troops, but gave Chairman Jiang an excuse to kill him.

The third is to meet Yue Weihan, a confidant "love general".

Since the Battle of Baoshan came out, Chairman Jiang has been paying attention to Yue Weihan for a long time, but he has never officially met this student and fellow villager, and for this meeting, Chairman Jiang even made a special trip to send Wang Shihe, the chief of the guard of the national government, to return to his hometown in Fenghua to pick up Yue Weihan's old father, and then flew to Xuzhou on the same plane, which can be described as painstaking.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, Chairman Chiang's special plane arrived at the Xuzhou airport on time under the escort of six fighter planes, and Li Zongren, commander-in-chief of the Fifth Theater Command, had already rushed to the waiting apron to greet him.

Chairman Jiang got off the plane and shook hands with the senior generals of the party-state who came to greet him, and when he came to Han Fuyu, Chairman Jiang even gave a few words of encouragement, and he was unwilling to investigate the crime of abandoning the city and losing land by the Shandong army, but this made Han Fuyu feel a lot more at ease.

After all the senior generals had passed the noise, it was finally Yue Weihan's turn to be a small major general.

Yue Weihan pulled the brand-new major general's dress on his body, took two steps forward and saluted: "Take a seat!" ”

This is the first time Yue Weihan has seen Chairman Jiang in real person, but it is no different from the portraits of later generations.

"Well, you don't have to be polite!" Chairman Jiang casually returned the military salute, stepped forward to shake Yue Weihan's hand, and said, "Loyalty, who do you see coming?" ”

With that, Chairman Chiang turned sideways.

Yue Weihan turned his head sideways when he heard the sound, and saw an old figure walking out from behind Chairman Jiang with a cane, Yue Weihan had actually seen this old man a long time ago, and originally thought that it was a high-ranking official of the state government who accompanied Chairman Jiang on patrol, but now it seems that this is not the case, it seems that this old man has a close relationship with him.

Suddenly, Yue Weihan realized that this old man was his "old father".

At that moment, Yue Weihan took two steps forward, saluted the old man with a standard military salute, and said solemnly: "The child has seen his father. ”

The old man's eyes moistened suddenly, and he said with great relief: "Son, you can change your past mistakes and sweep away your bad habits, and you are very grateful for your father, and your mother should also be blind under the Nine Springs." ”

Chairman Jiang smiled and said, "Mr. Yue, Ling Lang is now a pillar of the party and the state, a national hero, hehe." ”

The old man shook his head and said: "Fang Jin said that Kou Tiehoof is raging, my Huaxia is already in misery, and the people are not living, but all the descendants of my Han family have the duty of killing the enemy to serve the country and drive out the Tartars. ”

"Mr. Yue is too modest." Chairman Jiang said, "The meritorious service of loyalty and forgiveness for the establishment of the party-state, even if it is compared with Yue Fei, the ancestor of the Yue family, is not far behind. ”

"How dare you." The old man was very frightened when he heard this.

Chairman Jiang didn't say much, and just as the photo was ready, he beckoned Yue Weihan and a group of senior generals from the Fifth War Zone to come over and take pictures together, and specially asked Yue Weihan and his son to stand on either side of him.

After taking a group photo, Chairman Chiang, accompanied by a large group of high-ranking generals, drove to the headquarters of the commander of the Fifth Theater.

In front of many senior generals of the Fifth Theater and staff officers of the headquarters, Chairman Jiang specially asked Li Zongren to hold a brief ceremony, and in front of many senior generals and staff officers of the Fifth Theater, he personally gave Yue Weihan a Zhongzheng sword, and personally put a Blue Sky White Medal and a National Glory Medal on Yue Weihan's left chest.

The photographer once again took a group photo for Chairman Jiang and Yue Weihan.

In the photo, Chairman Chiang was seated with his hands on his knees and looking kind, while Yue Weihan was standing upright on Chairman Chiang's right, wearing two shining medals on his right chest, and a Zhongzheng sword hanging from his armed belt.

To get back to the point, after the ceremony of awarding medals and swords, Chairman Jiang began to get to the point, and immediately convened an emergency military meeting of all the senior generals of the Fifth Theater, but this time all the generals of the Fifth Theater were present, and there was no more such thing as Yue Weihan, a little major general.

At the military meeting, Chairman Chiang turned his face on the spot and ordered the arrest of Han Fuyu, the commander of the Shandong Provincial Security Command.

The next day, Han Fuyu was rushed to Wuhan, and seven days later, Lao Han was tried and shot.

However, with regard to the generals of the Shandong Army headed by Shi Yousan and Gao Shuxun, Chairman Chiang adopted a strategy of appeasement, and Shi Yousan was appointed commander of the 69th Army, and Gao Shuxun was appointed commander of the new Sixth Division.

After leveling the Shandong army, Chairman Chiang began to pacify the Sichuan army non-stop.

Due to Liu Xiang's death and the vacancy of the director of the Chuankang Appeasement Office, Deng Xihou was immediately relieved of his post as commander-in-chief of the 22nd Group Army by Chairman Chiang, and urgently returned to central Sichuan to preside over the overall military and political situation, and the vacant commander-in-chief of the 22nd Group Army was taken over by Sun Zhen, commander of the 124th Division, and the 22nd Group Army, which suffered heavy casualties in the bloody battle of Tengxian, was also reduced from the original two armies and four divisions to three divisions, but the number of the group army was still retained.

Chairman Chiang's series of actions made Li Zong unbearable.

Bai Chongqi, deputy chief of the general staff, even scolded Jiang for ignorance of current affairs and for making peace behind his back, and that the curtain of the decisive battle of the Battle of Xuzhou had been opened, and it was precisely at the critical juncture that the commanders of all departments in the theater needed to work together and the officers and men to use their lives.

There is also a high-profile praise for Yue Weihan, which is obviously not the time.

If the Battle of Xuzhou has ended, it is not too much for Jiang to praise Yue Weihan, but at this time, such a high-profile award of honors and swords to Yue Weihan will inevitably make the army commanders, division commanders, and brigade commanders who are distinguished by the Fifth War red.

Yue Weihan, who was the party concerned, didn't bother to care about these messy things at all.

After sending off his "old father," Yue Weihan threw himself into the training of the Baoshan Brigade and the special combat team, especially the various training subjects and assessment standards of the special combat team, all of which were designed and formulated by Yue Weihan himself, and although the 18 "quasi-special combat members" had already passed the preliminary assessment, they could be eliminated at any time in the follow-up training.

Yue Weihan's creed is that he would rather have a shortage than an abundance, and he would rather first form a special combat team with the smallest scale than lower the selection and evaluation standards for special combat personnel, because the special combat team will have to fight in a harsh environment where there is no supply, no support, no rear, and even no hope, and it is absolutely impossible to do without excellent skills.

However, the encirclement and annihilation operations of the 5th and 10th divisions of the Japanese army did not go well.

After the curtain of the Battle of Xuzhou was officially opened, Chairman Chiang urgently transferred more than a dozen elite divisions from all over the country, and at this time, the [***] troops gathered on the battlefield in Xuzhou had reached more than 60 divisions, except for a few divisions stationed in the Huaihe defense line, the remaining 50 divisions gathered in the periphery of Hanzhuang and Taierzhuang, and launched a series of attacks on the Banyuan Division and the Isogu Division of the Yue Army.

The Sakagaki Division and the Isoya Division relied on carefully constructed field fortifications, absolutely superior artillery fire, and the support of the Air Force to dismantle the [***] offensive again and again, and the Sakamoto detachment to which the Sakagaki Division belonged even launched several counterattacks, causing great casualties to the [***] units on the periphery of Taierzhuang.

In the fierce battle to mid-February of the 27th year of the Republic of China (1938), the total casualties of each division had exceeded 100,000, and the three divisions of the 22nd Group Army of the Sichuan Army were almost all wiped out.

At the end of February, the Military Command Bureau received top-secret information that the 20 divisions and regiments urgently mobilized by the army's base camp had been basically organized and would urgently leave for the Chinese battlefield in 10 days at the earliest; after these 20 divisions and regiments arrived in North China and Central China, at least 15 of them would be supplemented with a permanent division and regiment veteran wing, and then they would be sent to the Xuzhou battlefield.

At the end of March at the earliest, the 15 reserve divisions after the replenishment of the veteran wing will arrive in Xuzhou.

Once these 15 divisions of the Yue Army arrived, the situation on the Xuzhou battlefield would immediately take a sharp turn for the worse, and what the [***] top leaders needed to consider was no longer how to annihilate the 5th and 10th divisions of the Yue Army, but how to make the 60 or so [***] main divisions gathered on the Xuzhou battlefield retreat safely.

In other words, there is only one month left for [***] now.

If the 5th and 10th divisions of the Chinese Army could not be completely annihilated before the end of March, then the entire Battle of Xuzhou would be regarded as a complete failure, and Chairman Chiang was finally anxious this time, and urgently telegraphed Tang Enbo's Corps, which had been holding its ground, and Huang Jie, who had rushed to the Xuzhou battlefield later, and more than a dozen elite divisions of the Central Army, ordering them to fully cooperate with the Fifth Theater to solve the enemy in front of them.

(To be continued)