On the morning of August 13, two towns newly arrived on the battlefield in Beiyang were put into attack, Feng Guozhang's fourth town in the direction of Wuqiao in the east, and Li Chun's second town in the direction of the ancient city in the south.

In this way, a full-scale war broke out around Dezhou, with three infantry brigades of the Sixth Division, the 16th Brigade in the middle against the old opponent 3rd Town, the 17th Brigade against Li Chun, and the 18th Brigade defending against Feng Guozhang. The sound of guns and artillery on the hundred-mile front was deafening, and the battle for Texas entered its climax.

It is controversial why the Beiyang Army chose the direction of Texas to attack the main attack, and the biggest problem is the barrier of the Grand Canal. Although many sections of the canal can be crossed, it is an obstacle after all. Especially with the increasing use of heavy firearms into the Chinese military, the forcible crossing of rivers is a major military issue.

Why don't you attack from the direction of Wu Bridge? Isn't it possible to avoid the Grand Canal? The answer is the road! Due to the rise of industry, Shandong, which has more than enough financial resources, vigorously repairs the roads in the province, which is not only a manifestation of surplus financial resources, but also the demand for its own development. The rise of industry will inevitably put forward higher requirements for transportation. In Shandong, the highway from Jinan to Dezhou is one of the best sections, most of the road surface is cemented, and there are only a handful of such roads in the country.

Beiyang saw this precisely because the army also had strict requirements for transportation. Once you hit Dezhou, along the high-grade highway from Dezhou to Jinan, you can push it to Jinan in two days if it goes well. After the attack of Cangzhou and the entry into Shandong, there were three rivers of different sizes to be crossed in Wuding Prefecture alone, and the road conditions in that direction were much worse.

In this way, the main force of Beiyang, which had deployed troops on three sides around Texas, had to overcome the barrier of the Grand Canal.

The third town has crossed the river after paying heavy casualties. The second and fourth towns could not use the crossing point of the third town, because then the local area would be too densely populated, and the road and the opponent's artillery would be limited, which would be very detrimental to the subsequent attack.

In the early morning of the 13th, the attack was launched from Li Chun's second town at about 6:40 a.m., and in the following hour, Cao Kun's third town and Feng Guozhang's fourth town both launched attacks on the enemy in front of them.

The fiercest part of the battle was in the direction of Li Chun's second town, and the opponent was the 17th Brigade of the Shandong Army.

"Watching the battle" for several days, listening to the sound of gunfire from the north flank, and witnessing the smoke and dust that obscured the sky. The commander of the 17th Brigade, Gao Huzi, asked for reinforcements of the 16th Brigade several times, but Ye Yanbing refused. The Shandong Army, which had received accurate information, knew the military deployment of the Beiyang Army, and the 17th Brigade was facing Li Chun's second town, and Li Chun, who had stumbled to the high position of commander, must have had a strong desire for revenge against the Mengshan Army, and the burden of the 17th Brigade was very heavy. It is forbidden to divide the troops and respond to them. Existing fortifications must be strengthened and reinforced. In particular, use the barbed wire that has just been shipped.

Barbed wire is a novelty, although it has been used in exercises, and it has proven to be quite useful for the defenders. However, it has not yet been used in actual combat, and the military barbed wire made by Zhongxing Industry in an emergency was transported to the front line after the official start of the Dezhou Campaign, and the 16th Brigade did not use it for the first phase of the operation of Cao Kun's Third Town, but the 17th Brigade used it.

Lu Guangda, commander of the engineer regiment of the Shandong Army Headquarters, who personally brought the barbed wire, personally guided the arrangement of the barbed wire array, and he believed that the position of the 50th Regiment on the first line of the 17th Brigade needed to be moved back a little. Hey, Brother Huzi, don't let me down on my hard work all the way, let alone the workers who rushed to make this thing, they have been working in shifts for seven or eight days. ”

Gao Huzi is a soldier of the old guard company, and he once had the experience of being born and dying in an ambush with Long Qian in Yizhou Road, and has a deep personal relationship with Lu Guangda, "Don't worry, Guangda, my brother must have called Li Chun, that bastard is bleeding in front of my position, and it is difficult to move an inch." ”

Coincidentally, Zhang Ping, the commander of the 50th Regiment deployed in the front line of the 17th Brigade, was also a party to the ambush in Yizhou Road, and he was wounded in the arm in that battle, and soon after he recovered from the injury, Long Qian was about to send him to the company, and later went to the military academy, and after seven or eight years of hard work, he took the position of regiment commander.

The 6th Standard of the 3rd Association of the 2nd Town of Beiyang Waded across the canal under the cover of artillery fire and did not suffer great casualties, and the artillery fire of the Shandong Army in the direction of the 17th Brigade was not strong, and only a few of their unique mortars blocked the river crossing operation, and the 6th Standard lost one officer.

The forward troops are all selected elites, and the third battalion of the sixth standard, as the vanguard of the whole army, has the task of breaking through an opening and opening a gap in the depth of the assault for the second echelon. After summing up the unsuccessful attack on the Third Town, the top brass of the Beiyang Army believed that it could no longer be fought by the method of the Third Town, and that it was necessary to concentrate its forces and firearms at one point and pierce through the opponent's defensive line like an awl. Moreover, the troops should spread out as much as possible when attacking, because the opponent's firepower is quite strong.

The idea of improving the way of attack was proposed by Chen Xiao, a former Wuwei Zhongjun officer who had fought alongside the Mengshan Army at Niangzi Pass, and now he was thinking about dealing with his comrades nine years ago.

Li Chun immediately adopted Chen Xiao's suggestion, selected the defensive line of the 50th Regiment as his breakthrough, and his order to the sixth target was to break through the enemy's first line position, and then stick to it, waiting for the fifth target to take over them and launch a surprise attack to the depth.

The third battalion is the most elite battalion leader of the sixth standard.

They rushed to the opposite shore, shouted and ran forward, and the battle formation won the admiration of the Shandong soldiers, worthy of the elite of Beiyang! But here comes the trouble, intermittent barbed wire blocks their way, and the attackers can only concentrate their forces towards the open section, but there is naturally a large concentration of opponents' machine guns!

Barbed wire, like a bloodthirsty devil, was completely on the side of the user, bringing a devastating blow to the 3rd Battalion. A large number of attackers were swept down by the defenders' water-like machine guns, and the corpses were piled up in two or three layers, and a small number of attackers who attacked from other roads were blocked in front of the barbed wire and could not advance, and were killed by the grenades thrown by the defenders, and the corpses were hung on the barbed wire, forming a tragic scene.

The first wave of the attack was over after only fifteen minutes, the pipe band (battalion commander) was killed, and the sixth standard, which organized the second battalion to cross the river on the other side of the river, jumped to his feet in a hurry, but there was nothing he could do. The third battalion could not be withdrawn, and the remnants could only lie down on the spot to resist, and the fifteen-minute battle caused sixty or seventy percent casualties in this elite battalion! The sixth standard brought back the first battalion, which was crossing the river for reinforcements, and the attack was a crushing failure!

The casualties of the defenders were minimal, and with the exception of a small number of men killed and wounded by artillery fire, very few died under the guns of the attackers.

Wang Pinan, a light machine gunner of the 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 50th Regiment, had exhausted nine magazines in 15 minutes, and when his assistant Xiao Gao skillfully replaced the barrel of the gun that had been shot red, his voice trembled and said to him, "Look, look at the dog. Oh my god!!! ”

Kodaka, who threw away the replaced barrel, began to vomit.

Wang Pinan, who was in the fierce battle just now, didn't have time to take a closer look. Now I can see clearly, just across from him, gray corpses are stacked in two or three layers, and among them there are still wriggling and not dead struggling at the end!

It's impossible to count how many people died. Due to the barbed wire barrier. Opponents can only concentrate on empty lots. His Huayuan-2 light machine gun and a Maxim effortlessly blocked the opening. Nearly 300 bullets were poured out, causing a miserable situation in the world that they had never seen before!

The Huayuan II light machine gun is an improved version of the Huayuan 1 light machine gun, which was "gifted" to German drawings and highly valued by the German military, and the main change is to change the original 20-round magazine to 30 rounds. While the firepower has increased, the failure rate has also decreased. The heavy and continuous firing just now did not fail in any way. The only drawback of this light machine gun, which is deeply loved by officers and soldiers, is that because the quality of the steel in the Yizhou Steel Mill is not up to standard, the barrel needs to be replaced after firing about 100 rounds. But the tense battle just now didn't take care of it at all, and it wasn't until the end of the battle that Xiao Gao replaced the barrel of the red gun.

Of course, the results in front of him are also the one fifteen meters away on the right. However, due to the high firing position, the heavy machine gunner had his head shattered, and while Takaka was vomiting, the heavy machine gun's ammunition driver was grieving the death of his partner.

They train and live together every day, and the members of the machine gun crew are very good friends with each other.

"Hey, hey," Wang Pinan, who was from the same village as Xiao Gao in Qingzhou Mansion, stared intently at the pile of dead people, unable to utter a complete sentence.

"Quick, go get the wounded back." It was the company commander who spoke, and he ordered Wang Pinan and a few other soldiers.

Wang Pinan accepted the order of the company commander, climbed the trench with seven or eight soldiers, bent down and ran over, and carried down the three Beiyang troops who had not yet lost their breath.

"First aid kit, quick." Wang Pinan shouted to Xiao Xiao, who was still in a daze.

"Hey, hey," Xiao Gao came to his senses, shouting at the medical guard, and at the same time took out the hemostatic bag and pressed it on the bleeding thigh of the unconscious Beiyang soldier.

The paramedic with an orange cloth wrapped around his arm came running, examined the wounded soldier and rebandaged it, "It doesn't matter, you should survive." Someone, help me get him down. ”

"Don't go," Wang Pinan grabbed Xiao Gao, who was about to carry the man, and waved his hand to another rifleman in the company, who dropped the rifle and carefully carried the wounded soldier onto the stretcher with Xiao Gao, and went to lift the stretcher with the medical guard.

Rescuing the opponent's wounded soldiers when the battlefield allowed was one of the Mengshan Army's regulations, and the commander of the sixth company faithfully carried out the order and rescued several Beiyang wounded soldiers from the pile of minced meat.

"Into the defensive hole!" The hoarse voice of the company commander came, and Wang Pinan woke up from the extreme shock, put away the machine gun, got into his anti-artillery hole, and dragged Xiao Gao in.

"I'm sick to death." Kodaka, who had finished vomiting, turned pale.

"They deserve it, who let them come to our Shandong?" Wang Pinan scolded, "Hurry up and prepare your ammunition, it won't end like this." ”

The artillery fire really covered it, and a loud sound of a large-caliber shell that fell about ten meters behind the trench interrupted the communication between the two lowest soldiers, and the dirt rained down.

After the news was reported level by level, and after arriving at the front line and observing it with a telescope, Li Chun's conclusion was that if a large number of artillery were not concentrated to blow up those barbed wires, this battle would not be fought!

The attacks of the Third and Fourth Towns suffered from the same problem, and thanks to the help of barbed wire, the carefully prepared first wave of attacks was easily crushed by the opponents.

Compared with the anxious Beiyang Army, the headquarters of the Sixth Division was jubilant. Ye Yanbing's hanging heart was put down, he had made the worst plan for today's battle situation, after deploying three brigades, the reserve force became extremely tight, and it was difficult to deal with the counterattack in three directions, now it is okay, the barbed wire has helped a lot, he can not only win time, but also save troops.

Qu Hongxiang immediately called the military headquarters, and after reporting the division's repulsion of the first round of Beiyang offensive and preliminary casualty statistics, Qu Hongxiang did not forget to add, "Bring more barbed wire!" ”

In a hurry, where can the Beiyang Army find a way to break the barbed wire? Yuan Shikai strictly ordered to continue the offensive and not slack off! Li Chun could only concentrate his artillery fire on a narrow section to the maximum, and no longer hit the artillery of the Shandong army, but concentrated his fire on destroying the damned barbed wire fence to cover the continued offensive of the infantry.

The battle was concentrated on the positions of the 50th Regiment of the 17th Brigade of the Shandong Army, especially the first section of the 2nd Battalion. Before sunset that day, the 3rd Association, which had suffered heavy casualties, finally broke through the opponent's position after moving up to the fifth bid - the opponent seemed to have retreated on his own initiative, their position was clean, and nothing was left except for a large number of bullet casings.

The fifth standard, which was originally intended for the second-line assault, was used in advance, while the sixth standard lost its ability to attack due to excessive casualties on the first day of the battle, and withdrew from the battle ahead of schedule like the famous eleventh standard in Beiyang.

Li Chun, who swore revenge and vindicated his name, personally crossed the river after dark to inspect the battlefield despite the threat of cold artillery, and carefully studied the bombed barbed wire by moonlight, unable to say a word. That night, Li Chun personally drafted a report to Yuan Shikai, "In view of the enemy's extensive use of barbed wire, our army cannot afford the huge casualties caused by this!" Please immediately adjust your deployment and concentrate all your firepower on our second town, otherwise, you will not be able to achieve a decisive breakthrough. ”

And Ye Yanbing, who was in a very happy mood, called Ning Shijun, "There is no need for the Seventh Division, our department is confident that it will hold its position and firmly drag the three towns of Beiyang in Dezhou!" ”

The ensuing battle proved that Ye Yanbing was too optimistic. (To be continued......)

PS: Two changes today