For a long time, Ding Yuntong repeatedly emphasized that the Japanese officers and men took bushido and imperial thinking as the core, pursued brave sacrifice in attack, charged forward in a dense infantry formation, and regarded death as home. In order to boost morale and show bravery, it is often the middle and senior commanders who charge together with the troops.

These tactics will gradually turn into stupid suicide as the firepower of modern warfare becomes more and more perfect.

Ding Yuntong repeatedly instilled such a concept in the Guards:

What is Brave? What is Combat Effectiveness? Either screaming and rushing stupidly with bayonets, it is bravery, it is combat effectiveness.

Courage is a calm science, in this era, is to be able to skillfully use the weapons in their hands, maximize their firepower, fully display the results of training in peacetime, with weapons, with wisdom, with organization, with tactics, very professionally to destroy the enemy's living liliang, kill the enemy, and still be alive, this is called bravery!

From this point of view, as long as the ammunition is exhausted, as long as the situation is unfavorable, as long as the tactics need it, the retreat must be retreated, and the escape must be escaped, which is also courage, professional courage! Rearm and come back next time!

Therefore, in the face of the Japanese attack, no matter how crazy the opponent is, as long as he thinks well, organizes firepower, guarantees ammunition, and shoots fiercely, it will be difficult for any flesh and blood to resist the metal storm, and the so-called bushido spirit of the Zuihou enemy will only become synonymous with ignorance.

Liu Jintang did just that, and he carried out a strict firepower configuration for the entire Pingcheng position.

The Guards first laid a large number of mines two kilometers in front of the position. Laying mines is not a matter of saying that more is better, it is a tactic.

Minefields can not only detect and delay the enemy's attack, but also provide time for the movement of their own troops. And it also plays an important role, which is to induce the enemy to enter his own preset strike area.

In a large area of mines, leave some passages, so that the enemy's attacking forces will unknowingly advance along these passages, and the placement of their own fire at the end of the passage can inflict great damage on the enemy.

Behind the minefield, the Guards dug several trenches, which were connected by communication trenches. Thousands of well-trained Guards soldiers armed with Mauser rifles were stationed here. And they will also be supported by rear artillery, which is concentrated in a few passages.

This is not enough, in some important areas of the trench, machine gun fire points are set up, and they are not directed ahead, but are aimed diagonally respectively, several fire points form crossfire, and the intersection area is also focused on those passage exits.

Whether it is a machine gun or a heavy machine gun in the future, it is difficult to guarantee its accuracy due to the violent tremor of the muzzle when firing, so its real power is not a direct fire.

However, if the enemy's offensive area can be accurately predicted and covered with crossfire, the lethality will increase dramatically.

The slaughter cage of hell has been set up, just waiting for the enemy to come in.

In the early morning of December 22, with the rumbling of artillery, the Japanese offensive began.

Due to the heavy casualties of the Japanese 2nd Division in the previous battle to attack Pyongyang, it was placed southwest of Pyongseong to monitor the direction of Pyongyang, and the offensive task was to be carried out by the 1st and 6th Divisions, and the actual commander was Major General Nozu Michikan.

The Japanese first sent small units to make a tentative attack, immediately spotting a minefield, and then sent in engineering units.

The Japanese sappers often had a determination to die, and if necessary, they did not hesitate to clear the road with their flesh and blood, and one of them, Fumio Ose, even rolled down a slope and detonated seven or eight mines with his own body.

After several hours of hard work, the Japanese cleared a large number of mines and entered the preset area of the Guards, but when they came out of the clearing, they were immediately met with the terrifying fire of the Guards.

The oncoming dense rain of bullets swept and raged, harvesting lives to their heart's content, turning the front of China's position into a sea of blood, and screaming miserably one after another. Bright red blood sprayed everywhere, looking shocking on the vast snowfield, and broken limbs were scattered all over the ground, like worthless, discarded garbage. One second it is still a vivid and vigorous life, or it is worried by its parents, or it is thought of by a distant lover, or it is admired and looked forward to by young children, and the next second it is a pile of lifeless dead meat. Whether poor or rich, handsome or ugly, they are all equal in this moment.

By noon, the Japanese had already paid nearly a thousand casualties, and had not even approached the Chinese positions.

Then the Japanese cavalry also launched a brave attack, but this action was strongly opposed by Akiyama Yoshiko, who believed that the cavalry should not be used for frontal assault, which would only bring unnecessary losses.

This was also proven by the fact that the Japanese cavalry lost half of it in half an hour, and Nozu Michikan had to abandon the cavalry assault.

After a short break at noon, the two divisions of the Japanese army launched attacks in turns, and the officers and men shouted, and the surging waves of attack, wave after wave, kept coming and retreating, but they kept coming, hardly giving the guards a moment of respite.

There was a time when the situation was so critical that Liu Jintang ordered the troops to retreat to the trenches of the second line, and a brutal tug-of-war ensued between the two sides.

In the fierce battle, the Chinese artillery showed its formidable strength. Although the Guards had only one division, it had 60 field guns of 78mm caliber, as well as four heavy guns. The two divisions of the Japanese army combined had only 48 field guns and 24 mountain guns, which had some advantages in numbers, but they were inferior in power and range, and there were no heavy artillery.

The most important point was that the Guards had sufficient ammunition reserves, which were the envy of the Japanese army. According to the regulations of the Guards, the ammunition base of the field artillery is 30 shells per gun, and the Guards artillery actually has 4 ammunition bases! The total number of shells reached more than 7200 pieces.

The so-called ammunition base is the amount of ammunition that is distributed or distributed to a combat unit in a single supply, and its formulation criteria depend on the country's level of industrial production, the troop's carrying capacity, the performance of the weapon, and the general rate of consumption.

Specifying the ammunition base can greatly facilitate command and support. It is not only convenient for the higher authorities to issue orders and instructions, but also convenient for departments at all levels to calculate the amount of ammunition and report the degree of ammunition support at the Xiangshang level. The use of ammunition bases simplifies and normalizes complex numbers that facilitate calculation, supply, memorization and secrecy. Therefore, when stockpiling, requisitioning, reimbursing, and replenishing ammunition, it is often expressed in terms of the base number.

Due to economic constraints and tight supply, Japan is very economical in the use of artillery shells, and it is strictly forbidden to shoot indiscriminately, and the formulation of its base number is also very conservative; a base number of field artillery is only 20 shells, and the entire army has only two bases, and the total number of shells is only more than 2,800.

In other words, although the Guards had fewer artillery than the Japanese, the number of shells was 2.5 times that of the Japanese, and the effect was that the Chinese artillery fire was obviously more fierce than that of the Japanese.

Fierce fighting continued until dusk, and the two divisions of the Japanese army attacked in turn for a day, and Zuihou did not break through the Chinese positions.

The white earth is vast and immense, and it is dotted with black corpses, human corpses, horse corpses, as if it were black and white silhouette paintings. The orange-yellow sunset floats in the sky, like a severed head, and the soft sunset shines in the clouds, and the sunset is like a military flag, hunting and fluttering in the sky. In the cruel cold of winter, the smell of bloody battles in the air seemed to be frozen, and the stench of dead horses' corpses was dripping.

The cruel reality educated the Japanese army, an ironclad fact in front of them, in front of the well-trained, well-equipped, relying on fortifications to defend, and with a will as strong as steel, if the Japanese army lacked heavy artillery, unless there was a superiority in numbers several times, it would be difficult to break through the defensive line, the war had entered a new stage, and the defender was God.

Looking at the battlefield strewn with corpses, the commander of the First Division, Nozu Michikan, couldn't help but sigh and recited a poem,

The mountains and rivers turn desolate, and the new battlefield of ten miles of fishy wind.

The horses are silent, and the sun is set on the outskirts of Pingcheng.