The mountains are still full of wild grass, and the shrubs on the mountains are still bare and dry branches, but after all, spring in northwest Hebei is still coming as promised.

The March sun is getting warmer and warmer, and the earthy mountain breeze no longer hurts like a knife in winter.

The Japanese side is going all out to carry out operations in Southeast Asia, and there has been a short period of confrontation on the Chinese battlefield, especially on the North China battlefield, after almost a year-round sweep and counter-sweep in 1941, the devils will no longer carry out small- and medium-sized sweeps in the mountainous areas of northwest Hebei for the time being before the next sweep begins, and the Eighth Route side will also use this time to train troops and hoard food and materials.

After Yang Bangzi accompanied Director Shu back to Kawaguchi Town, he handed over the big director to Hong Mei, who is a teacher-student relationship, Hong Mei is better at speaking than he Yang Bangzi, and now Yang Bangzi has more important things to do in his heart.

In the past, there was no territory, and those who ran around were under the eaves of other divisions, reaching out to others to order bullets or something, and they had to rely on deception and robbery, for example, they obviously saved the logistics department, smelter, and repair institute of the entire Sixth Division, and in order to grab some bullets or something, they even sent a small report to the military region.

Now the territory is there, the place is not small, the east and west are more than 400 miles apart, from the easternmost Majiataizi to the westernmost Luoshui, Duyu, Xiaguan Township, from the plain to the hills, from the hills to the mountains, presenting a step-shaped terrain, which is equivalent to the back of the Taihang Mountain, which can fight against the devils from the plains.

The situation in the north-south direction is more complicated, and from the topography, the entire 11th division is like a gourd lying flat. The gourd mouth is in Majiatai to Huataling. The gourd belly of the first section is in the area from Huataling to Chuankou Town to Xiwangzhuang. enclosed in an oval shape of several hundred square kilometers of territory.

The second gourd belly is from the horse post to the north of the Luoshui Township, the west of the Hengjian, Duyu and other places are the bottom of the gourd, the south to the Shentangbao, Xiazhai and other places, surrounded by thousands of square kilometers of big gourd belly.

The connection between the two gourd belly is from Chuankou Town to Huangshikou Village to the military camp town such a small section, which is also the most dissatisfied with Yang Bangzi, the depth is almost none, more than 20 miles north of Chuankou Town is the Yinfang Town occupied by the devil, and 30 miles to the south is the military camp town of the 6th Division.

Last time, the devils swept south from Yinfang Town. At that time, when the Lingman Prefecture organized the villagers to evacuate to the southwest, it received an order from the military region that the troops must be blocked in the direction of the devil's attack for three days, so that the smelter and other units on the side of the military camp town could do a good job of transferring.

That is to say, as long as the devils still want to attack from the direction of Laiyuan to the front line of Chuankou and Junying Town, Yang Bangzi and their 11th Division will not be able to leave, and they must resist the attack of the devils for the logistics department of the 6th Division, and once Chuankou Town is abandoned, it will also mean that the 11th Division will be divided into two, which will bring great disadvantages to the transfer of troops and the transfer of fellow villagers.

If you can solve the problem of this gourd stuck neck. Being able to take down Yinfang Town is equivalent to the strategic depth of the north-south direction of Lu Shang suddenly increased by more than sixty miles. Being able to confront the devils on the edge of Laiyuan County and Yixian County, and at the same time the connection with the First Division is not only limited to the north and south sides of the Yilai Highway, but also very helpful for joint operations.

Before Yang Bangzi did not stand alone, he did not have to consider this territorial problem, but now that such a large area is in his hands, the unique regional psychological characteristics of the Chinese have been revealed.

If you have your own territory, you must manage it well, and you must be able to survive the confrontation with the devils, which coincides with our party's anti-Japanese guidelines.

Let's look at the little devils first, they implemented a compulsory volunteer service system throughout Japan, and in the later stage of the war, a compulsory service system was added, whether it was the former or the latter, conscription was a national act, not just because of conscription in a certain area, the formation of a regional group in the army.

Although the Sendai Division has become a Kyoto Division, it also has regional characteristics, but that is only the significance of the location of the division and the conscription, and there is no question of the mountain, because this regional division is to be incorporated into the national military system.

And what about our party? Since the Nanchang Uprising, when the army and base areas were built, there was a strong regional character, which did not mean that this was done deliberately, but was forced by the times, and only when the local party organization relied on the local people to join the army could it maintain the space for the survival of this army.

You see, the early leaders of our party who were the first to develop the base areas and the armed forces basically returned to their hometowns, first recruited party members among their relatives, friends, and fellow villagers, and then pulled up the armed forces, and then strengthened their ranks to lay down a piece of territory, and all the Soviet districts of the country were established in this way.

At the height of the Red Army, you see, for example, the Red Army and the Jiangxi Soviet District, the troops were basically soldiers from Jiangxi and Hunan. As for the Red Fourth Front Army, they are basically from Sichuan, Shaanxi and Henan, needless to say, the Red Second Front Army is basically the old family of Mr. He!

This brings up a problem: these armies composed of local civilians have a strong sense of territorial belonging, and in this respect they are no different from the local warlords in the Nationalist Government; once the territory they have seized is captured and they are forced to leave the original base area, the morale and combat effectiveness of the troops will be greatly reduced before a new base area and territory is established.

Only after a furnace-like tempering like the Long March, all the commanders and soldiers who still have a strong sense of territory can they integrate together and become a highly united army in the 25,000-mile campaign, without the rear and without their hometown to rely on, and this is what the meaning of a new-style army is.

The meaning of this new-style army of our party is to be tempered by such a cruel process as the Long March, so that it can confront the new-style army established under the ideology of Japanese militarism; on the other hand, the army of the Nationalist Government has not yet solved this kind of regional and territorial problem before the start of the war, and it is naturally difficult to mobilize it when it starts a war, and the upper and lower levels are not united!

For example, on the Japanese side, it is absolutely impossible to say how many troops we have sent to the Kansai region. Serving the Emperor or something. Because it doesn't matter where the soldiers are recruited. They are all members of the Japanese army, and as long as you join the army, everyone has the same equipment, the same training, and the same treatment.

But if you look at our China, the Sichuan army goes out to fight in Sichuan, and it has a strong sense of shame, why? Just because of the Civil War period. The warlords of Sichuan have left the impression that they are too capable of separating and grabbing territory, and there are hundreds of warlords of all sizes in Sichuan! A county can produce a commander and a famous army.

Another example is the strength of several major armies in China at that time, the Northeast Army, the Northwest Army, the Jin Army, the Liangguang Army, the Sichuan Army, the Hunan Army, the Majia Army, etc., in addition to these armies under local flags, there is also the Central Army with the largest system and power, and it is not chaotic!

The local warlords had to reach out to the Nationalist government for guns, food, and military salaries, and they also maintained a commercial system of their own monopoly in the territory they occupied, as if they were a state within a state, and the relationship between the local government and the central government was sometimes only a nominal relationship between superiors and subordinates.

Such a regime and the composition of the army. When you leave the territory where your interests are at stake, are you reluctant? How much combat power is there? Can it replenish the war attrition in a steady stream?

You look at the troops of the Sichuan army who fought in Sichuan in the early days. In less than two years, it was basically exhausted, and after the Nationalist Government withdrew to Chongqing, Sichuan was reduced to an area that only provided strong men.

Returning to the Eighth Road, the three divisions were formed by disrupting the regional groups in the Red Army system, and during the period when they began to establish anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, it was precisely because they did not have the local warlord-like mentality of the Nationalist Government Army that they were able to quickly occupy large areas of mountainous land.

In other words, a group of people who have been far away from their hometowns have recruited locals, established anti-Japanese armed forces and regimes in their local areas, and gone to fight against the Japanese devils who are also far away from their hometowns!

Some people will say that it is not right for you to say this, and there are many generals in the Kuomintang army who are sworn to resist the enemy, so let's give an example here.

In August 1937, he easily defeated the Japanese army of Song Zheyuan's 29th Army and went north to occupy Zhangjiakou and Xuanhua. Liu Ruming's 29th Army, which was stationed in Zhangjiakou and Xuanhua, was the same as his old boss Song Zheyuan, who retreated in order to preserve his strength and not occupy it. The 61st Army of the Jin Army, which rushed to the rescue, was one step late, and Zhangjiakou had fallen into the hands of the Japanese army.

Yan Xishan sent his Shanxi troops, the 61st Army, to rush to the aid in order to block the war outside Shanxi Province and in Hebei Province. It's a pity that it was a step too late, so Yan Xishan formulated a plan for the "Battle of Datong", intending to fight to the death with the Japanese army attacking Shanxi in Datong. With the support of the Jin Sui Army, the Northwest Army, and the Kuomintang Army, Yan Xishan fought against the Japanese army with more than 100,000 troops, and he did not worry about defeating the Japanese army.

At this time, a well-known historical story occurred. Mr. Yan Baichuan and Mr. Jiang Zhiqing both studied in Japan in their early years, and they do not have much bad feeling towards Japan. In 1936, Mr. Sakagaki, who was currently the commander of the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army, visited Mr. Yan in Taiyuan and inspected the geographical terrain from Hebei to Shanxi in detail. Therefore, the current attack of the 5th Division of the Japanese Army on Shanxi is completely the same path that Mr. Sakagaki visited Mr. Yan a year ago. Can't you, Mr. Yan, think of it?

When the war was about to start, someone around Mr. Yan asked him, "Can't you fight it?" ”

It is said that Mr. Yan thought about it and said, "No, you have to fight." The GC Party has arrived in Shanxi, and if I don't fight again, they will scold my ......"

You see, Mr. Yan's resistance to Japan was, firstly, to keep his interests from being infringed upon in Shanxi; The second is that we are afraid that our party will expose him in front of the people of the whole country. He had no choice but to resist the Japanese.

If it is not a sincere anti-Japanese war, there will be problems with the operational plan formulated. Chen Changjie, then commander of the 61 st Army, an old subordinate of Yan Xishan, commented: This was an operational plan formulated by Yan Xishan on the basis of "erroneous judgment of the enemy's situation." He thought that the next target of the Japanese army who took Zhangjiakou was Datong, the gate of Shanxi.

As a result, the Japanese army did not have a "set". They bypassed Datong, went straight to Lingqiu and Guangling, walked through the Pingxing Pass, and turned to the back of Datong. In this way, Yan Xishan, who was in a hurry, temporarily formulated a plan for the "Battle of Pingxingguan". It was only then that the Eighth Route Army urgently entered the war.

In the Battle of Pingxingguan, Yan Xishan and various armies totaled 11 armies, with more than 100,000 people, and dealt with more than 20,000 people of the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army. Yan Xishan boasted that this deployment was a "pocket array", and his two descendants, Chen Changjie and Guo Zongfen, both participated. But Yan Jun's military spirit is not unified, and there is intrigue. In particular, Gao Guizi, the commander of the 17th Army, believed that the deployment of the Yan Army Headquarters was "to sacrifice them and let the Jin Sui Army monopolize the limelight."

This suspicion is not groundless and unfounded. So, at the beginning of the battle, Gao Guizi lied that he was "onslaught" by the enemy and "suffered heavy casualties", abandoned his position without authorization, gave way to the road, retreated to Heng Mountain, and together with Liu Maoen's 15th Army, jointly preserved his strength and avoided fighting with the Japanese army. And the various units of the Jin Sui army who bravely killed the enemy, such as the Guo Zongfen department of the Jin army, suffered heavy casualties.

In the Battle of Pingxingguan, there is no doubt that Yan Xishan's Jin Sui army was the master, led by Chen Changjie and Guo Zongfen. There were three guest armies that came to participate in the war: Liu Maoen's 15th Army, Gao Guizi's 17th Army, and the Eighth Route Army. Liu Maoen and Gao Guizi were originally Kuomintang troops, and they had supplies, and there was no shortage of guns, ammunition, and military salaries.

But the Eighth Route Army was different, after the adaptation, only one single clothes were provided for each person, and there was no change of clothes; He was also given a few days' living expenses, which was not even enough to travel from Sanyuan County in Shaanxi Province to the front line in Shanxi Province. In addition, not one gun and not one bullet. Did you say Yan Xishan didn't? He has his own arsenal, and he can build cannons. The introduction of Japan's 38 gun production line is the only one in the country. The 79 rifles and shell guns made in Taiyuan have become the favorite of the cadres of the Eighth Route Army. But he didn't give the Eighth Route Army a single shot.

A landlord and old fortune all know that the hired workers in the autumn harvest season must first let the hired workers eat well and be full. You, Yan Laoxi, asked the Eighth Route Army to work for you, but you were so stingy that you were unwilling to give weapons, food, and supplies. If you treat someone with a false heart, how can he treat you with sincerity? Therefore, the Eighth Route Army finally separated from Yan Xishan's army and parted ways, how can the Eighth Route Army be blamed for breaking away from his leadership without authorization?

This is the idea brought about by the psychology of the territory, and the Eighth Route Army is also passing by in the eyes of the warlords in these places, not its own people, so our party then formulated the plan to go deep behind enemy lines, mobilize the masses, and establish their own base areas. (To be continued......)