Chapter 216: Changes in Xuzhou (Asking for subscriptions, monthly passes, and various !! ）

After receiving the telegram from the Chengde front, Chen Feng immediately sent a telegram to the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, and he still insisted on his previous opinion, that the troops must stay in the counties and districts in eastern Hebei to persist in the struggle, and that they must not retreat westward.

In fact, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army did not agree to withdraw westward, and now the joint command is doing a very good job in eastern Hebei, although it is said that the appearance of the three master regiments of the Japanese army at the same time in this area has indeed caused a lot of pressure on the joint command, but in terms of the vast area of eastern Hebei, tens of thousands of Japanese troops thrown into it may not be able to make a splash.

Since the opinions of the two sides are the same, then this is easy to do, the following differences are nothing to the original, since the above has already slapped the board, then the following has to endure despite the differences.

In accordance with the instructions from above, the joint command immediately dispatched capable forces to reorganize the existing armed forces in eastern Hebei, and then conducted unified training.

At present, the personnel of the various units are large and complex, the composition is complex, the discipline is poor, and the combat effectiveness is poor, and there are more peasants than troops. If they are not trained, when the Japanese come, they will probably be scattered.

The enemy is ahead, and everything is simple. After three days of hard work, the joint command finally completed the reorganization of the existing insurrectionary troops in eastern Hebei, and according to statistics, there were 120,000 insurrectionary troops in eastern Hebei at this time, more than 30,000 in the central and eastern parts of Rehe, plus 60,000 people from the 40th Group Army and more than 13,000 people from the Eighth Route Army. The Blue Coat Society and the Military Command Bureau also pulled up a contingent of nearly 40,000 people, so that the Chinese army sandwiched between North China and Northeast China reached as many as 270,000 people.

After discussion, 90,000 of the 150,000 rebel troops were handed over to the 40th Army for training, and the remaining 60,000 were handed over to the Eighth Route Army for training.

Combined with the combat experience of the 40th Group Army in the northern Saibei area, the joint command decided not to fight with the Japanese army for one city and one place, but to play Tibetan cats with the Japanese army and consume the enemy's energy. Because Shi Jianfei and others knew that these Japanese puppet armies in eastern Hebei and Redong would not stay for a long time, as long as the troops turned from light to dark. The Japanese army's attempt to annihilate the insurrectionary forces in a short period of time had to fail.

Just when the rebel troops urgently withdrew to the mountains and the reeds. The Seventh Independent Division and the Air Defense Brigade on the Chengde Front also began to withdraw from the battlefield under alternate cover, and were stationed on the front line of Little Phoenix Mountain.

The Japanese Eighth Division did not pursue, and the fighting during this period also made the Japanese army know that the combat effectiveness of the army on the opposite side of the road was not much worse than theirs, and the weapons and equipment of the others were even much better than theirs. People are taking the initiative to retreat. It's not running away. If you really go forward to pursue, and annoy the other side for another ten days and half a month, then the Eighth Division will be in trouble.

As one of the main forces of the Kwantung Army of the Great Japanese Empire. The top brass of the Eighth Division were well aware of the current predicament facing the empire, and if it was only a one-sided battle, they would have wished that the Chinese army would fight them to the death, but now it was a multi-faceted battle, and there were more than a dozen battlefields fighting at the same time between North China, Northeast China, and Central China, which was already overstretched in strength.

On July 29, more than 53,000 people including the Fourth Division, the 15th Independent Mixed Brigade, the 3rd Infantry Division of the Puppet Mongolian Army, and the 8th Cavalry Division finally passed through Zuoyun and Youyu into the territory of the Japanese army in Xinkou.

At the same time, the remnants of the puppet Mongol army also fled to the Horqin steppe, and Andrei's cavalry group and Tana's Mongolian National Salvation Army took control of the entire Xilin Gol steppe, and the Suidong campaign ended. Soon after, the situation on the Zhangjiakou front also returned to calm, and the battle lines of the two sides returned to the same as before the war.

With the addition of more than 50,000 troops of the Fourth Division, the Japanese army in Shanxi became arrogant again, and the Fourth Division only rested for two days before cooperating with the 108th Division to attack the Chinese troops on the outskirts of Taiyuan. The Second War Zone also knew that it was obviously unrealistic to crush nearly 100,000 Japanese troops with those troops in the Second War Zone alone, so Yan Laoxi ordered several major forces in the Second War Zone to withdraw immediately.

Just when several major battlefields were slowly calming down, China's top military authorities ordered the Fifth Theater to concentrate its forces near Xuzhou, preparing to gather and annihilate the Japanese army again. The Japanese army, on the other hand, used part of its forces to contain the other side in the front, and the main force made a detour to the west, attempting to encircle Xuzhou from the flank and annihilate the main force of the Fifth Theater. The 10th and 5th Divisions of the Japanese Army advanced south from Yicheng, Shandong Province and the Yitang area northwest of Linyi, respectively, and carried out a diversionary attack on the defending 2nd Army, the 20th and 3rd Army Corps, and the 59th Army of the 27th Army Corps. The defenders resisted stubbornly, and by the end of the month, they stopped the Japanese army on the front line of Hanzhuang, Pixian and Tancheng.

Subsequently, the Japanese army began to encircle the west side of Xuzhou from the north and south. In the south, the 9th and 13th Divisions marched north from the Bengbu area along the west bank of the Beiqi River and the Whirlpool River, and after capturing Mengcheng and Yongcheng, they attacked Xiaoxian and Dangshan (now Anhui) in Jiangsu; The 3rd Division entered the Dayingji area from Bengbu and attacked Suxian (present-day Suzhou).

To the north, the 16th Division crossed the canal from Jining, Shandong, and after capturing Yuncheng, Shanxian, Jinxiang, and Yutai, it advanced to Fengxian and Dangshan in Jiangsu; At the same time, after the 10th Division handed over the operations in the Hanzhuang and Taierzhuang areas to the newly registered 114th Division, it crossed Weishan Lake near Xiazhen and attacked Peixian (belonging to Jiangsu).

The Japanese army was deeply ashamed of the Battle of Taierzhuang and was determined to crush the Chinese army in the direction of Xuzhou at all costs. In order to win this battle, the Japanese army mobilized all the resources available to the Central China Front, and the total number of Japanese troops assembled in the direction of Xuzhou was as many as 8 field divisions, 3 independent mixed brigades, and 2 detachments, totaling 230,000 people, in addition to more than 300 fighters, 350 combat vehicles, and more than 80 warships and gunboats.

After learning that the situation on the Xuzhou front was getting more and more serious, Chen Feng immediately sent an urgent telegram to the highest authorities in Wuhan, suggesting that the highest authorities immediately abandon Xuzhou and withdraw their troops to Henan. Gain's current Xuzhou has no value to defend, and of course there is no ability to defend. Although there are still more than 500,000 troops on the Xuzhou front, it is more than twice the total strength of the Japanese army.

However, the troops of the Fifth Theater did not have many elites in the first place, all of them were the miscellaneous armies of the Nationalist Government, and after these months of fighting, all the troops suffered extremely heavy losses. Although Zhang Zizhong's 59th Army, which had the most combat effectiveness, killed and wounded a large number of Japanese troops at the beginning of the battle, it itself "suffered no less than 6 or 7,000 casualties." The battle report sent by the 59th Army to the Fifth Theater clearly stated: "By the morning of the 17th, our army had counted the number of casualties, and since the 38th Division was put into the Linyi Campaign, it had suffered nearly 4,000 casualties, and the 180th Division had also suffered more than 2,000 casualties." By the time the 59th Army, which had reinforced, reinforced Linyi, assembled in the northwest of the city, there were only 13,000 combatants in the whole army, but before the first battle of Linyi, the army had 21,000 combat soldiers, a reduction of 8,000.

After the second Linyi Campaign, the 59th Army was reduced by more than 10,000 people in the Linzhang Division, and Zhang Zizhong had no choice but to merge the division into a brigade, about 1,000 people, and return it to the direct command of the army. The 180th Division, another division of the 59th Army, also suffered heavy losses, with only more than 200 people left in the 39th Brigade of the main force, and the remaining 3,000 people were killed or wounded. The casualties of the 59th Army in the two Linyi battles were about 13,000-14,000, plus the 2,000 casualties in the Huaihe River blockade, and the casualties of the 59th Army in the entire Taierzhuang Battle were about 15,000 or more.

As another main force in the Fifth War Zone, Pang Bingxun's 3rd Army Corps also suffered heavy losses, and Pang Bingxun's secret telegram to the Military Commission said that "the total number of combat soldiers is now less than 1,000."

In addition, Sun Zhen's 22nd Group Army also suffered heavy losses, and the 122nd Division of the 41st Army of the 22nd Group Army lost more than 5,000 people in the defense of Tengxian County alone. The 45th Army, which fought in the area of Jiehe and Longshan north of Tengxian, suffered 4,500 casualties from Chen Li, commander of the 127th Division.

In the first three days of the operation, only the two divisions of the 85th Army killed three battalion commanders, two wounded, one regimental commander, more than 20 platoon commanders of the company and more than 2,000 soldiers. At the end of the Battle of Taierzhuang, the total casualties of Tang Enbo's 20th Army Corps and the subordinate units under the provisional jurisdiction were about 10,000.

Before the Battle of Taierzhuang began, the 27th Division of Sun Lianzhong's 2nd Group Army had only 2,000 combatants left, and the 31st Division had more than 1,400 casualties, and the casualties of the defenders of Taierzhuang on the 6th were also "more than 200." By the time the Japanese army retreated from Taierzhuang, Zhang Jinzhao, commander of the 30th Division, said that there were only more than 4,000 troops left in his command. After the end of the Taierzhuang Campaign, the remaining combatants of the 27th, 30th, and 31st divisions under the jurisdiction of the 2nd Group Army were only about 7,000 or 8,000, and the 44th Independent Brigade was at most about 10,000. The losses of the army group should have been more than 14,000 people.

In the Chihuai Resistance Battle, Liu Shiyi's 31st Army and Yu Xuezhong's 51st Army suffered a total of nearly 6,000 casualties, and Sun Tongxuan's 3rd Army's 56th Army participated in the Jining Campaign, which lasted about half a month from the attack to the retreat, with more than 2,000 casualties. It can be said that after this battle, all the units with combat effectiveness in the Fifth Theater were reduced by more than half, and although there were quite a few remaining troops, there were not many who could really fight with the Japanese face to face with bayonets.

In addition, Xuzhou was already in no danger to defend, and the Japanese army had concentrated so many chariots and planes, and it was unwise to use flesh and blood to resist the enemy's steel weapons on the plains, and when the time came, the Japanese were trapped in Xuzhou, and these five or six hundred thousand troops would have no way to go to the sky.

Thinking about what the consequences would be if the Nationalist government at this time lost five or six hundred thousand troops at once, Chen Feng had to suggest that Lao Chiang withdraw his troops immediately.

At the same time, Chen Feng ordered Suizhong's troops to return to the southern front immediately, and all troops were ready to fight in the south at any time. (To be continued......)