On March 8, the moment the sun rose to illuminate the Yangtze River, hundreds of small wooden boats and bamboo rafts shone with dazzling light like waves.

At this time, on a low hill on the south bank, a soldier of the Anhui army wearing a dark blue military uniform looked at the river with wide eyes, but in the next moment, he seemed to can't believe what he saw, so he muttered to himself: "What is that?" ”

However, at the same time, the soldiers of the Anhui army next to him became extremely frightened, and shouted loudly in an extremely sharp voice: "It's the Feng army, they have crossed the river!" ”

His shout quickly attracted the attention of the rest of the Anhui army behind, and soon a lieutenant of the Anhui army wearing the officer's uniform walked up quickly, and then picked up his binoculars and looked at the river to the north.

Through the binoculars, he could see a large number of boats rowing towards the south bank thousands of meters away on the river!

Immediately after that, he blew the brass whistle hanging on his chest, and in the next moment, the sharp brass whistle resounded throughout the mountain!

Soon, a herald hurriedly climbed onto his war horse, and then waved his whip fiercely, and the injured war horse instantly opened its four hooves, and then galloped towards Dangtu County.

At the same time, on the north bank of the Yangtze River, Lin Yongquan was standing with a number of middle and senior generals of the Ninth Division, in front of them and behind them, there were countless Fengjun soldiers who were flocking to the Yangtze River one after another.

"The first battalion of the 33rd Regiment has all crossed the river, and the second and third battalions have also been deployed one after another!" The adjutant next to him reported the current situation of crossing the river in a timely manner.

Lin Yongquan did not look back, but continued to observe the Yangtze River through the telescope, at this moment there is no thick fog on the river, the dawn sun illuminates the entire river surface very brightly, in the telescope, he can already see a figure running on the opposite bank, according to the information he learned before, it should be an infantry battalion stationed in the Anhui army at this moment.

The Anhui army had long predicted that the Feng army might cross the river from the line of Wuhu, Dangtu, and Jinling, although they could not judge the exact location of the Feng army's crossing of the river before, but the cautious Duan Qirui still transferred a division to be stationed in Dangtu, which was the seventh division of the Liangjiang Army.

This department is a new unit that began to be organized and trained in the second half of last year, and many provincial armies in the Anhui army surrendered to the Southern Federal Army reorganization, this Liangjiang Army Seventh Division is a newly formed unit, and it can be regarded as Duan Qirui's first new unit trained in accordance with the requirements of the old Beiyang Standing Army after 1906, the soldiers are recruited from good families, paid full salaries, and maintain greater intensity of training, and the weapons and equipment are all Japanese weapons, equipped with Japanese-made 38-year-style rifles, Japanese-made 38-year-old 75-millimeter field guns, The 31-year-old 75-mm mountain gun and the 38-year-old heavy machine gun.

During the Northern Jiangsu Campaign last year, the unit was stationed in Shanghai, Jiangyin, and other places because it was in the period of reorganization, and after the Jiangbei Campaign, it was first transferred to Jinling and then transferred west to garrison Dangtu.

For this force, the information that Feng Jun knows is rather limited!

In fact, in addition to the fourth division and the second mixed brigade, the two elite main forces in the Anhui army know more, the understanding of other units of the Anhui army is quite limited, and now the Feng army knows that Duan Qirui vigorously reformed the existing troops of the Anhui army after the Jiangbei Campaign, and it is said that a large number of local provincial army numbers were revoked, unified and integrated into the Liangjiang Army, and the original many troops were integrated into new troops, but the specific way is not known.

At present, what the Fengjun Intelligence Department can learn is that the Anhui Army has reorganized the first, second, and fifth divisions, but it does not know how many parts of the Liangjiang Army have the number, for example, the intelligence department in Guangdong found the number of the Anhui Army of the 12th Division of the Liangjiang Army, but at the same time it learned that this unit still bears the number of the Guangdong Mixed Brigade.

Contemporary information channels are effective, and the establishment of troops is something that everyone wants to keep secret, so it is very difficult to thoroughly understand the establishment number of the Anhui army, and we can only roughly speculate on the total number of the Anhui army.

What Zhao Dongyun didn't know was that after the defeat of the Jiangbei Campaign last year, Duan Qirui calmly began to vigorously reform the existing establishment and command structure of the Anhui Army, and unified the original large number of local provincial armies, that is, the First Mixed Brigade of the Zhejiang Provincial Army, the First Mixed Brigade of the Jiangxi Provincial Army, the Jiangbei Mixed Brigade, the Guangdong Mixed Brigade, the Ganzhou Garrison, and the Jiangxi Garrison Division, into the name of the 'Liangjiang Army'.

Among them, the Jiangbei Mixed Brigade and the Jiangxi First Mixed Brigade were reorganized into the First Division of the Liangjiang Army; The two mixed brigades in Zhejiang were reorganized into the Second Division of the Liangjiang Army.

With more than two months of hard work, Duan Qirui has successfully reorganized the troops of various provincial armies under the command of the Anhui Army into 13 Liangjiang Army divisions, while the mixed brigade units in the provincial army are only one Liangjiang Army No. 1 Mixed Brigade Brigade, and other mixed brigades and garrisons of various names have been incorporated into the 13 Liangjiang Army Divisions.

So far, the Anhui Army under Duan Qirui has included the Fourth Division, the Second Mixed Brigade, and the Sixth Mixed Brigade of the Central Army; and the 1st to 13th Divisions and the 1st Mixed Brigade of the Liangjiang Army, with a total strength of about 200,000 troops.

However, although the number has changed, the troops are still those troops, the same Liangjiang Army troops, but the difference in combat effectiveness is huge, for example, the Sixth Division of the Liangjiang Army, the combat effectiveness of this unit is relatively good in the Anhui Army, and its soldiers' Suzhì, weapons and equipment, and combat experience are second only to the Fourth Division and the Second Mixed Brigade, which can be said to be on par with Jiang Guidi's Sixth Mixed Brigade.

However, the twelfth division of the same Liangjiang Army, the predecessor of this unit was only the surrender of the Southern Federation after the defeat in Guangdong, and after being absorbed, it began to be organized into a mixed brigade in Guangdong, and then was awarded the number of the 12th Division of the Liangjiang Army, its strength was only 8,000 people, there were no ten artillery, and even the guns were disorderly, and this 12th division was estimated to be unable to defeat a regiment under the command of the Fourth Division led by Duan Qirui.

The original number of the Anhui army was relatively chaotic, and Duan Qirui recently carried out military system reform, unification of numbers and other things, which made the unknown Fengjun intelligence department scratch its head even more, so that now the intelligence force of the Feng army actually can't know what troops the Anhui army has deployed along the Yangtze River, and what are the numbers of these troops?

I can only guess an approximate number of troops.

This situation also made the generals of the Fourth Army of the Feng Army on the front line know very little about the Seventh Division of the Liangjiang Army in Dangtu, only that the Anhui Army has deployed nearly 10,000 troops in Dangtu, and they also know that it is the Seventh Division of the Liangjiang Army, but they have relatively little understanding of the origin of this force, what its combat effectiveness is, and how detailed the equipment is.

However, this is not a big problem for Meng Enyuan and Lin Yongquan, they only need to know that it is not the main force of the Anhui army, the fourth division or the second mixed brigade, it is enough, as for the other troops of the Anhui army, there is not much difference for them.

There is a gap in combat effectiveness between the 6th and 12th Divisions of the Liangjiang Army, but for those arrogant generals in the Feng Army, the difference between the two is nothing more than the difference between the three scum and the five scum.

But they soon discovered that although the three scum of Zhan and the five scum of Zhan are not good, the combat effectiveness of the five scum of Zhan Wu is still much stronger than that of Zhan San.

At least the infantry battalion of the 7th Division of the Anhui Army on the opposite side was not frightened to turn around and run away after discovering the large-scale crossing of the river by the Feng army on the opposite side, although this unit had not yet experienced the test of large-scale warfare, it still launched a defensive operation under the supervision of the front-line officers.

These first-time Anhui soldiers quickly entered the beachhead defensive position dug by sight, then loaded their own rifles, and also set up the only two heavy machine guns, and even after the subsequent Feng army launched a sustained artillery attack, they trembled in the explosion, but they did not turn around and fled.

When the boats crossing the river of the Feng army rowed from the upper reaches and were only a kilometer away from the south bank, the heavy machine guns of the Anhui army on the opposite side also sounded.

The Feng army, who was crossing the river, was naturally not to be outdone, and the machine guns mounted on the bows of several large wooden boats also began to occur, and the huge recoil of the machine guns made the small wooden boats almost fall apart.

As the distance narrowed further, a number of light machine guns on smaller wooden boats also opened fire one after another, splashing countless bullets towards the Anhui army position on the south bank.

At this time, although the distance between the two sides was relatively far, the hit rate of the machine gun bullets was very low, and many bullets fell on the open ground and fell in the river to stir up a column of water, but the machine guns have never paid attention to the hit rate, and people relied on the dense rate of fire and then formed a barrage to form a surface suppression.

Constant heavy machine gun fire, even if you are unlucky, can still get a decent hit.

Soon, a wooden boat with more than a dozen soldiers on board was swept by a barrage of machine-gun bullets, which hit the boat, shredded the planks, hit the human body, and harvested lives.

Soon the blood was mixed with the river!

As time passed, the troops crossing the river got closer and closer to the south bank, and the casualties were getting bigger and bigger, and the original muddy yellow river water was soon dyed red, and in the dawn sun, it looked bright and bewitching!

However, this qiē made Lin Yongquan indifferent, as if he had not seen the casualties of the troops crossing the river, he put down the binoculars and said: "The 33rd Regiment has almost passed, let the 34th Regiment prepare, and when the boat comes back, cross the river immediately!" ”

"Also, let the artillery units speed up the front, and there is no way to support our river-crossing troops if they stay behind!" The Yangtze River is a big river, and the river is several kilometers wide, and if we want to support the river crossing operations on the south bank on the north bank, we must directly deploy the existing artillery positions to the river, otherwise we will not be able to hit the south bank of the Yangtze River.

While Lin Yongquan was making further tactical arrangements, on the south bank of the Yangtze River, Colonel Fang Qingkun, the commander of the 32nd Regiment, stepped on the river and went down the boat, wearing a blue-gray officer's combat uniform, and he was wearing a woolen officer's coat, and he frowned slightly and looked at a mortar shell that fell more than ten meters away from him.

"These mortars, when they haven't been hit, send a letter to the north shore and ask their mortars to stop firing, I don't want to be killed by my own shells!"

Although the bullets were raining down at this time, Fang Qingkun didn't seem to see it, he saw him look left and right, and then said to a lieutenant beside him: "What are you waiting for, let them quickly move the heavy machine guns, machine guns and mortars off the ship and establish a beachhead fire point." ”