In late November 1937, two Chinese battleships and two aircraft carriers that had not been outfitted sailed thousands of miles into Italian shipyards for repair and refit.

It became a diplomatic tidbit.

The Chinese abandoned the Daxinganling defensive line, large areas of the Hulunbuir grassland were occupied by the Japanese, and the Far Eastern Army stubbornly resisted the Soviet attack, greatly slowing down the Red Army's offensive. However, their defenses against the Japanese were lax, and as a result, the Japanese preemptively occupied Nizhne-Udinsk and Kulen before the arrival of Soviet troops.

Zhuyashvili was furious in Moscow, Timoshenko was punished, and the deputy chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army, General Zhukov, was appointed commander of the newly formed Far Eastern Front. In order to seize Lower Udinsk, the Soviet army fought with the Japanese army, and the two sides increased their troops to each other, and they had the posture of fighting first, which gave the Northwest Frontier Army and the Far Eastern Army, which were retreating southward, a chance to breathe and adjust.

As the Japanese army and the Soviets fought for control of Nizhny Udinsk and Outer Mongolia, the two sides mobilized forces in the Far East and formed a confrontation. The Japanese army temporarily abandoned the operational plan of attacking Rehe and was making every effort to deal with the possible attack of the Soviet army.

The main forces of the Chinese side were now concentrated on the line from Shanhaiguan to Rehe, and the Japanese army carried out two attempted attacks at Tianjin and Qinhuangdao, but both were repulsed. The Chinese side has concentrated about 1,200 combat planes of four air divisions in North China, with a total strength of nearly 700,000 troops, while most of the Japanese naval forces are now pinned down in the Yangtze River valley, and at the same time, due to insufficient troops, they are unable to carry out simultaneous attacks in three directions at the same time.

Unlike the fierce Songhu Battlefield, the Japanese offensive in Jiangbei met little resistance, and the Japanese occupied Yangzhou in early November. began to approach Nanjing. At the same time, the Japanese landed at Jinshanwei in the northern part of Hangzhou Bay, and the Chinese abandoned Shanghai and began to retreat gradually.

The Sichuan, Hunan and Guizhou armies, which were preparing to reinforce the front, were defeated by Ulysses. The Austro-Hungarian military advisory group led by Ringel blocked Wuhu and forbade them to go to the front.

"You guys are joking with the lives of soldiers, you don't deserve to be a front-line commander at all, I want to report to the top. Remove you all! As the chief of the general staff of the East China Theater, Jiang Fangzhen did not know what was happening, he quickly rushed to Wuhu, and as soon as he walked into the garrison headquarters in Wuhu, he heard Lingel's roar.

"What's going on?" Jiang Fangzhen walked into the conference room of the headquarters and saw Yang Bojian, commander of the 20th Army of the Sichuan Army, and several division commanders sitting in the conference room, looking at Lingle blankly, and no one spoke. He first said hello to the thunderous Lingel, and then asked Yang Bojian, the commander of the 20th Army of the Sichuan Army.

"Who knows what's going on. As soon as our warship arrived in Wuhu, it was stopped by this foreign devil, and a few of us asked him to reason about what the turtle son was still jumping there. If it weren't for his lieutenant general rank, Lao Tzu would have tied him up a long time ago. Yang Bojian said with an innocent face, "Headmaster, you want to give us a rating." ”

Jiang Fangzhen nodded, then turned around and asked Lingel. "Julius, what's going on?"

"Their troops are not formally trained at all. Each company was understaffed, only about 120 men, and a third were unarmed. A company had only one machine gun, some of the rifles were worn out and basically no rifling, and some of the weapons were damaged. They even wanted to go to the battlefield with such a team. What a joke, why don't you let these soldiers charge with sticks! Lingle said angrily.

Hearing such a situation, Jiang Fangzhen felt very embarrassed. After the war began, the local provinces enthusiastically supported the central government's war of resistance and were very enthusiastic about participating in the war. The Sichuan army recruited nearly 300,000 people. Six armies were formed to fight in Sichuan, three armies were formed in Hunan, two armies were sent from Yunnan, and one army was also sent from Guizhou.

He actually knew that the equipment of the local army was much worse than that of the divisions of the Central Army, and they all used the equipment that had been eliminated by the previous Central Army, but he did not expect that one-third of the soldiers in these units could not even be fully equipped with weapons. He originally thought that although the equipment of the armies in the southwest would be worse than that of the troops in Liangguang, he did not expect that there would be too much difference.

"Zihui, are your troops like this?" He turned his head to Yang Bojian and asked.

"Everyone is similar, Tang Baozi and Pan Huaer are covered by Liu Xiang, and the situation of the 21st and 23rd armies is better. Although the central authorities had previously reorganized the Sichuan Army into six armies, the number of troops in everyone's hands had never been full. This time out of Sichuan, everyone felt that they could not be ashamed, so they recruited some new recruits to supplement the troops, but they had no weapons, so they made do with it and came out first. But everyone can't help it, the Sichuan Arsenal has long been destroyed, and it can't make thousands of guns a year. ”

"Okay, I'll go to the troops first to see the specific situation, you definitely can't go to the battlefield first in this situation, everyone will stay in Wuhu to rest first, and I'll do my best to contact and transfer a batch of weapons to complete your troops first."

"But the morale of the troops is very high after they leave Sichuan, and the whole army is seeking battle!" Li Jiayu said on the side.

"What's the use of high morale? How did you graduate from the military academy, such a unit pulled into the battlefield, only increased losses, and could not complete the task, and then the fighter plane was delayed, do you think I should shoot you first! Jiang Fangzhen looked at him and said, most of the generals of the Sichuan Army graduated from the Baoding Military Academy, and they still have a lot of respect for the old principal, so Li Jiayu simply lowered his head and stopped talking.

"Jiang, it seems that our previous plan is a little wrong, the 450,000 troops transferred from these provinces cannot be sent to the battlefield for the time being, we still need to retreat the defensive line, and we may have to abandon Nanjing." "These troops need to be reorganized and equipped to be put on the battlefield, and it will take at least two or three months." ”

Jiang Fangzhen personally went to the troops to understand the situation, and the forward of the Sichuan army had reached three divisions, which was blocked by Lingel in Wuhu, and the follow-up troops began to leave Sichuan one after another. Jiang Fangzhen sent a telegram to Wu Ziyu, telling him that the local troops were not well equipped and needed to be retrained, and that he should not count on these local troops to defend Nanjing.

At the same time, he also sent a telegram to Hunan to inquire about the situation, and the situation of the Hunan army there was similar to that of the Sichuan army, and although the two armies of Cheng Songyun and He Tienong were well manned, their equipment was also about one-third worse.

After consulting with Wu Ziyu, Linger and others, Jiang Fangzhen agreed that the southwestern armies would not participate in the war for the time being, that the Hunan and Guizhou armies would be reorganized and trained in Changsha, and that the Sichuan army would be re-equipped and trained in Wuhan. Yang Bojian's 20th Army of the Sichuan Army remained in Wuhu.

At the end of November, the Japanese army occupied Shanghai and began to divide its troops into three routes, approaching Nanjing from the north of the Yangtze River, the south bank of the Yangtze River and the south of Taihu Lake, intending to capture this important town in the south of the Yangtze River. (To be continued......)