Just as the media of the United States, Britain, and other countries reported that although the Japanese government had achieved an unprecedented victory in the South Pacific theater, it had encountered Waterloo in the Chinese theater, not to mention that the Kwantung Army in northern China was fully besieged by the army of the Chinese warrior Chen Feng, and that the Japanese Burma Front on the Indochina Peninsula in the South Pacific was also comprehensively blocked by the Chinese and British troops.

Beginning in mid-September, the Japanese army, with the 55th and 33rd divisions as the main forces, launched an attack from Thailand on Dawei and Mawlamyine in southern Burma, and in less than a week, they broke the defense line composed of more than 80,000 British and Burmese troops and occupied Yangon, the administrative center of Burma.

After occupying Yangon, the Japanese army was not satisfied, and immediately formed the Burma Front, with Army General Kawabe Shozo as the commander-in-chief, commanding the 18th, 33rd, 55th, and 56th divisions stationed in Burma. Subsequently, Kawabe Shozo ordered the Burmese troops to march north in three routes, pursue the retreating British army, invade Mineva, go straight to Ka Yuanli, occupy the Ringanqiang oil field, and cut off the retreat of the British army; At the same time, it planned to capture Tonggu, advance to Mandalay, and encircle and annihilate the main force of the Anglo-Burmese army; In addition, Hebian Zhengsan also used a division as the main force, from Tonggu to Dongzhi to attack Lashio, and north to Bamo and Myitkyina to meet the Chinese expeditionary force moving south.

In order to win this battle, Lao Chiang also made a bloody investment, directly from the battle sequence of the Central Army, 9 divisions and 150,000 people participated in the battle, with Luo Zhuoying as the commander-in-chief and US Army Lieutenant General Stilwell as the chief of staff.

In addition to the Nationalist Government's Expeditionary Force, there was also the Anglo-Burmese Army of the British Commonwealth in Burma. The total number of troops was about 100,000, with Alexander as commander-in-chief. In terms of troops, the Sino-British coalition army was about three times that of the Japanese army, and in addition, various materials and equipment were not much worse than the Japanese army, so the allies were still relatively confident in this battle.

According to the movements of the Japanese army, the General Headquarters of the Burma Campaign immediately responded, and before the Nationalist Government completely took over the defense of Burma, the British and Burmese troops wanted to defend Burma together with the Nationalist Government, after all, if Burma was lost, it would not only be China that would suffer. After all, Myanmar is the eastern gateway to India. Burma lost the main forces of the Japanese army and would soon be able to enter India.

The British Commonwealth, though unwilling to pay the Chinese government, had to agree to such an approach, because they could not tolerate the removal of the most beautiful pearl from the head of Her Majesty's head by the Japanese. The Sino-British coalition agreed to use the Yangon-Mandalay railway as the boundary. East of the railway to the Thai border, the Chinese Expeditionary Force defended area. To the west of the railroad was the British defense. The allied forces of China and Britain were deployed in three ways to meet the enemy in accordance with the route of the Japanese attack. In the area from Pyongmanna to Mandalay, Ji Lu fought with the Japanese army and surrounded and annihilated the enemy.

End of September. The 5th Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force is the Middle Route Army, with its headquarters located in Piaobei, and its vanguard 200th Division arrived in Tonggu to take over the defense of the 1st Division of the British Army and defend Tonggu, and the new 22nd and 96th Divisions belonging to the Fifth Army are assembled in the northeast area of Mandalay. The 6th Army of the Expeditionary Force is the Eastern Route Army, with its headquarters located in Leleem, the 55th Division, which is tentatively located in the Leigu area, the 49th Division, which is located in the Mengpan area, and the 93rd Division, which is located in the Jingdong area, to prevent the Thai army from attacking from the east and to cover the left back of the 5th Army. The 66th Army of the Expeditionary Force, located between Mandalay and Lashio, is a mobile force.

The 200th Division (division commander Dai Anlan), the vanguard of the 5th Army entering Burma, was a mechanized and equipped unit that had repeatedly performed miraculous feats in the War of Resistance against Japan. The trucks were plastered with slogans written in Chinese and Burmese scripts: "The Chinese army is here to defend the people of Myanmar!" "Strengthen Sino-British military cooperation!" "Myanmar is China's best neighbor!" "Expel the Wakos and exalt the Alien Land!" "Win glory for the country, don't win!"

Tonggu is 250 kilometers south of Yangon, 320 kilometers north of Mandalay, is an important city and strategic point of the Yangman Railway, and there is also Keyonggang Airport in the northwest, which is a place that the Japanese army "must quickly occupy". The expeditionary force, on the other hand, believed that it echoed Prome on the Western Front and Moltke on the Eastern Front, and constituted a barrier to prevent the Japanese army from attacking north. After the fall of Yangon, the battle for Tonggu became even more important.

The morale of the Anglo-Burmese 1st Division stationed in the Tonggu area was extremely low, and they did not understand the enemy's situation and did not prepare for battle, so they only prepared to retreat safely and preserve their strength. On 26 September, the Japanese advanced towards Tonggu, and the British withdrew to Prome at the same time. From the 27th, the 112th Wing of the 55th Division of the Japanese Army launched an attack on Tonggu, and the 143rd Wing entered the battle on the 29th, and the two sides fought fiercely until October 8 for 14 days, neither of them could force the other side to retreat half a step, and the Japanese army was met with fierce resistance not encountered since the beginning of the Pacific War.

Because according to Chen Feng's proposal at the recent Chongqing military conference, he believed that the British and Burmese troops would not and could not actively act and cooperate, and if the British army was regarded as an important part of the strategy, it was very likely that the British army would cause huge losses to the expeditionary force because of the mistakes of the British army, so Chen Feng suggested that the Nationalist Government should only use the British army as an auxiliary force, rather than the main defender, so although the Battle of Tonggu was as tragic as in history, the result was completely different.

Of course, this is also related to Chen Feng's shot, with the support of a large number of weapons and equipment of the Chen family, the national government has also become rich in the equipment and establishment of the expeditionary force, the original establishment of 100,000 people has become 150,000 people, when the 150,000 elites arrived in Burma, the impact is extraordinary, coupled with the British government's announcement to give up the ownership of Burma, which also makes the attitude of the local military and civilians in Myanmar towards the Japanese army completely different from history.

Historically, the reason why the Japanese army was able to be so rampant and marching forward with a triumphant march and fighting more than 100,000 expeditionary forces and more than 100,000 Anglo-Burmese troops that could be fought by just three or four divisions was that on the one hand, it was because the Japanese army had high combat quality and strong combat effectiveness, while the Allied forces were demoralized. However, there is another point that cannot be overlooked, and that is the support of the Japanese army by the vast number of Southeast Asian people, including the local residents of Burma.

That's right, it's support. Because in the eyes of the people of Southeast Asian countries, the US and British armies are both aggressors and colonizers, while the Japanese are liberators, is it ironic, but it is a fact. In Burma, before the war, many Burmese hoped that the British colonial rule in the country could be ended with the help of the Japanese, and many volunteered to serve as guides for the Japanese army, leading the way for the Japanese army, and providing the Japanese army with information on the British and Burmese troops.

In addition, the Burmese Independence Army, led by Aung San, the leader of the Burmese independence movement, directly joined the Japanese army and launched an attack on the British and Burmese army together with the Japanese army, which was also an important reason for the victory of the Japanese army.

But with the Commonwealth's public declaration of relinquishing ownership of Myanmar and handing it over to China, the suzerainty of Burma, this greatly calmed the wave of opposition within Myanmar. In addition, the leaders of the Burmese Independence Army quickly saw the cunning and hypocrisy of the Japanese "allies" in the process of cooperating with the Japanese army, so many people were unwilling to fight the Chinese expeditionary force, so the Japanese army encountered unprecedented resistance in Tonggu.

As of noon on October 8, the expeditionary force assembled in the periphery of Tonggu had exceeded 60,000 people, while the Japanese army on the periphery of Tonggu had less than 15,000 people left, and its main force had fallen into the semi-encirclement of the expeditionary force, and if it did not retreat, it would be dumpled by the expeditionary force.

On the evening of October 8, the commander of the Japanese Burma Front, General Shozo Kawabe, issued a final order, ordering the 55th Division to immediately withdraw from Tonggu and the Battle of Tonggu ended. The 14-day Battle of Tonggu finally ended with the Chinese army's greatest victory, and although the ancient city of Tonggu was in ruins by this time, its significance was extraordinary.

First of all, the Battle of Tonggu contained the rapid advance of the Japanese tanks and reduced the crisis on the southwestern border of China and India. Secondly, the Yunnan-Burma Highway was preserved, which was good news for the domestic war of resistance. The last thing is that the Japanese army finally suffered defeat in Southeast Asia, which is equivalent to breaking the golden body of the Japanese army in Southeast Asia, which is a great encouragement for Southeast Asian countries.

When the news came, the whole country was excited, of course, the happiest person was Chen Feng himself, the expeditionary force actually won the victory in the battle with Gu, which was really beyond Chen Feng's expectations. Although he provided a large amount of weapons and equipment for the expeditionary force, and also made a lot of suggestions, Chen Feng also knew that there were many things that were not transferred by human will, and he was not confident at all whether he could change the fate of the expeditionary force.

Historically, it was because of the Japanese army's capture of Tonggu that the entire front of the expeditionary force began to collapse. The Japanese pursued all the way to capture Lashio, cut off the Burma Road, and then occupied Mandalay. Chinese and British troops were forced to retreat into India and China. During the retreat, Du Yuming saw that Myitkyina on the Yunnan-Burma Highway had been occupied by the Japanese army, and ordered his troops to go northwest through the Savage Mountains and return to Yunnan. Except for Sun Liren's new 38th Division, which withdrew to India, the rest of the troops followed Du Yanming to return to China via Savage Mountain.

Bypassing Myitkyina and returning home through the Savage Mountains is not only a long way, but also a difficult road, uninhabited, and difficult to provide. The large army of the 5th Army in the Savage Mountains quickly fell into a predicament, the food was exhausted, the morale of the army was weakened, the disease was epidemic, a large number of officers and soldiers died of disease and starvation, and even the corpses and bones were all over the field along the way, one after another, and there were only more than 3,000 people left, among which the commander of the 200th Division, Dai Anlan, the regiment commander, Liu Shuren, the regiment commander, Hu Yibin, the deputy commander of the 96th Division, and Ling Zemin, the regiment commander, sacrificed their lives and died for the country.

Du Yuming, who only had half a life left in the end, still led the army directly under the army and Liao Yaoxiang's new 22nd Division to withdraw to India, and the 5,000 people of the 28th Division of the 66th Army who followed the 5th Army into the Savage Mountain were in an even more miserable situation because the 5th Army had eaten all the bark, grass roots, banana leaves, etc., and only more than 100 people were left to survive after the last time, and the ending was extremely tragic.

Unexpectedly, after the expeditionary force was remodeled, it finally changed its fate, and at the same time changed the fate of Myanmar. With the victory of the Battle of Tonggu, it is certain that we can hold Burma, and at the worst we can hold northern Burma, so that we will not be beaten to Yunnan by the Japanese. (To be continued......)