Ouyang Yun's worries are not unreasonable. Although from the decipherment of the telegram and the movement of the Japanese troops, he judged that the main direction of the Japanese army's attack was on the northern half of the fortress, that is, on Cotton Boat Island, he did not know the specific distribution of the Japanese troops because the communication of the Japanese ground forces in Jiangbei mainly relied on wired telephones and manpower.

The total strength of the Japanese army is now about two divisions and two brigades, the two divisions are the 112th Division and the 11th Division, and the two brigades are the remnants of the 106th Division and the direct units of the 11th Army. The Cadet Army now has the information that the remnants of the 106th Division will launch a fierce attack on Hukou, and the main force of the 112th Division has advanced eastward to the area around Wangjiang County to join up with the 11th Division. According to the transfer of the Japanese army, Ouyang Yun transferred a regiment of the Xuejiu Brigade to the southern half of the fortress, and transferred the Xuejiu Brigade to Mianchuan Island to strengthen the defense.

According to this arrangement of the Japanese army, there should be no obstacle to the 36th Brigade crossing the river, but why did Ye Zhao not reply for a long time? Could it be that the radio stations they were carrying fell into the water while crossing the river? This is a very lucky reason, so the probability of it being established is almost zero. The more this happened, the more uneasy Ouyang Yun became, and in the moment before the start of the Japanese general attack, he was restless, his heart was pounding, and he lost his previous composure.

Ye Zhao: What happened to them?

Ambush.

Whether it was Ouyang Yun or Ye Zhao, they all ignored the other Japanese army.

The 2nd Division of the 10th Army of the Japanese Army. At the beginning of the formation of the Japanese 2nd Army, there were three divisions, namely the 10th Division, the 16th Division and the 108th Division, and after Shunroku Habata became the commander of the Chinese Dispatch Army, the 5th Division was once added, and with the 5th Division being sent to cooperate with the 5th Army, in fact, the 2nd Army now has three divisions. After the 108th Division was ordered by Shunroku Habata to rescue the Japanese army in Anqing, the 2nd Army actually only left the 10th Division and the 16th Division in the area of the Greater Wuhan Area.

The commander of the 2nd Army was still Nishio Toshizo. When Nishio Shouzo was the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, he had a lot of dealings with the Cadet Army. It can be said that Nishio witnessed the rise of the Cadet Army in North China, and it is precisely for this reason that he has a deeper understanding of the Cadet Army than those senior Japanese officers in China. As far as the dispatch army is concerned, he is also one of the few people who are close to Shunroku Hata and Mijiro Umezu. Shunroku Hata changed the original intention of the Wuhan Campaign and decided to give priority to the annihilation of the Scholar Army's northward marching corps, which he deeply agreed. At this time, it happened that Li Zongren, Yang Sen, and Lu Hanzheng were leading the Sichuan army and the Yunnan army to use troops in the northwest of Wuhan. Seeing that it was strong, Nishio also intended to shrink the defensive line, so he decided to respond to Shunroku Hatata's call and turn to the military soldiers, so there was this scene tonight.

Nishio's goal was to penetrate deep into the south of the Yangtze River through the Jiujiang River, thus cutting off the retreat of the Scholar Army to the north. The Japanese army, from the cabinet to the military, had a serious factional concept, because they belonged to a different faction from the commander of the 11th Army, Okamura Ninji, so Nishio Shouzo did not inform him, but was only ready to say hello to Nakajima Kemura. In Nishio's opinion, Nakajima, as a division commander, will not make things difficult for himself even if he is not subordinate to himself. However, after he sent messengers across the river, he learned that Nakajima had led the 106th Division to Hukou. Nakajima actually gave up the Jiujiang stronghold that he had built up with great difficulty without authorization, which made Nishio very angry.

Nishio thought that this was the idea of Gangmura, who had always been determined to win Madang, and for this reason he did not hesitate to hit all the forces of the legion, and wanted to go down with one drum. Nishio disagreed. Having experience in the Second Battle of the Great Wall, Nishio was impressed by the defensive capabilities of the Cadet Army, and in his opinion, if he wanted to capture Madang, even if he could win the battle in the end, the losses would be unbearable. Rather than this, it is better to adopt a policy of encroachment, weaken the peripheral living space of the student army little by little, and force the student army to give up Madang and take the initiative to fight.

At that time, he said to the chief of staff, Yumachi Kugayoshi, "Okamura did this to attack the enemy's chief in a short time, and he will regret it." Jiujiang must not be lost, Jiujiang is in hand, and we have the qualifications to compete with the people of China in Jiangnan. Hmph, it seems that we have to speed up our march and enter Jiujiang before the Chinese army accepts Jiujiang. ”

"Your Excellency, are you going to march overnight?"

"Of course."

When Nishio decided to march towards Jiujiang, the location of the 10th Division was Luotian County. Luotian is only about 100 kilometers away from Jiujiang, and the 10th Division marched from Luotian at about eight o'clock, and when the main force arrived at Huaqiao Town, Huangmei County, its vanguard reconnaissance unit reported that it had found the Scholar Army in Xiaochi Town, and that the Scholar Army was continuing to cross the river.

As early as when Zhongdao Qing Village attacked Hukou, the 106th Division looted all the fishing boats around Jiujiang. Many of these fishing boats were sunk by the 34th Brigade, and the rest were taken to the mouth of the lake by Nakajima. Ye Zhao was ordered to recover Jiujiang, but he didn't realize that he had to cross the river to Jiangbei, so they didn't continue to borrow the fishing boats of the Gao family and the Dong family in Wuxingli. Ouyang Yun gave him the order to cross the river and go north at about eight o'clock in the evening, and it was more difficult to collect fishing boats at night, and it was not allowed to mobilize fishing boats from Wuxingli in terms of time. Therefore, although the 36th Brigade and the 12th Division of the students only had about 4,500 people, crossing the river became a problem.

In Ouyang Yun's order to Ye Zhao, he did not explain what to do after crossing the river, but only because there was a regiment of students on Xiaogu Mountain who was holding on, Ye Zhao felt that there was a lot to do in the north this time. Moreover, Ouyang Yun's order required him to complete the crossing of the river as quickly as possible, which also forced him to make up his mind at the end of the day, and use an engineer battalion in his hand to collect a number of door panels and other timber, tie them into a raft, and use this primitive method to cross the river.

The first of the 36th Brigade to cross the river was a reconnaissance platoon. After swimming to the opposite bank, these cadets immediately conducted reconnaissance of the surrounding area. The Japanese 11th Army originally only stationed two brigades in Huangmei County, and these two brigades belonging to the 112th Division have now followed the large army to Wangjiang, and the scouts naturally found nothing. Ye Zhao had already learned of the movements of the Japanese army in the previous war briefing, and now that it had been confirmed by the scouts, he was relieved to boldly organize the troops to cross the river.

At the beginning of the sapper battalion, it took about an hour to set up twelve rafts. Each of these rafts can carry about 50 people at a time, that is, nearly 600 people can be carried across the river at a time. In this way, as long as there are about seven round-trips, all the troops can complete the crossing of the river. At 9:20, the first batch of troops crossed the river, and it took nearly an hour and ten minutes to go back and forth. Considering that these rafts have no power, they need to be propagated by the cadets with planks, which is actually fast enough. However, it was still a little far from Ouyang Yun's request. Ouyang Yun ordered them to complete the crossing of the river before 12 o'clock, and according to this progress, it was already five o'clock the next day when all the troops crossed the river. On the battlefield, speed is sometimes a symbol of victory. Ye Zhao, as the chief official of the old Cantonese department, knows this very well. The military situation was like fire, and he made a decision in a hurry, picking out the soldiers who would be in the water, and preparing to let them swim with the raft in batches.

In the equipment of the cadet army, there are no swimming support tools such as life jackets. Crossing the river in the dark and using a hastily built raft is a very dangerous thing. The water potential in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is much more complex than that in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and there are endless whirlpools and other things, so it is very dangerous to swim across the river even during the day. The scouts were fine, they had been trained to swim professionally, and it was not a problem for them to swim across the river, which was about three miles wide. But for soldiers who could only swim, it was a largely impossible task. During the first ferry crossing into the river, there were several cases of soldiers falling into the water, and in the end, two more soldiers went missing. Of the nearly 4,000 people left, there were about 1,500 people who knew how to water. These 1,500 people had to hang on rafts to complete the river crossing, and the probability of their wreckage and disappearance doubled. How many of these thousand people will be able to reach the other side smoothly in the end, even Ye Zhao, who made this decision, has no bottom in his heart.

"I don't agree with this decision, it's just a child's play with the lives of the soldiers!" As soon as Ye Zhao made this difficult decision, he was opposed by political director Jiang Hongming. He kindly reminded: "Old Ye, the commander-in-chief did not give us a specific combat mission. I don't think we should take that risk. Lao Ye, think about how you got to learn the Twelfth Division - after all, it is a matter of the lives and safety of the brothers, and it is not a child's play! ”

After the Battle of Nanjing, the Scholar Army was expanded, and at that time, Ye Zhao was promoted to the deputy commander of the Fourth Army because of his performance in the battle. In a relatively serious safety accident in an exercise not long afterward, a soldier was accidentally injured and died, and Ye Zhao was sued by the soldiers' committee for a military court, and thus lost his post as deputy commander.

This was Ye Zhao's heart disease, and his face immediately changed when he heard this. Under the faint light of the campfire, his brows furrowed deeply, and he looked into the dark distance, and lost his voice for a moment. Suddenly, he stretched his face and said, "Yes, use a rope to connect the brothers in the water with the raft, isn't that okay?!" ”

It's a good idea. There is no need to be silent when crossing the river this time, so that with the protection of ropes, the soldiers in the water can be rescued immediately if they shout if they encounter danger.

Jiang Hongming thought about it and felt that this was not a good idea, so he immediately agreed.

The second crossing began, and this time, in addition to the fifty or so soldiers on each raft, about thirty soldiers were dragged by ropes on the sides of each raft. And in order to ensure the safety of the soldiers in the water to the greatest extent, each of them also tied a wooden board or a bamboo or something.

Originally, it took eight round-trips, but now it can be completed in four times, and the speed of crossing the river has undoubtedly been greatly improved. However, what Ye Zhao and Jiang Hongming did not expect was that it was precisely because of this measure that the sound of crossing the river was greatly increased, which directly led to the whereabouts of the troops being detected by the devil scouts of the 10th Division.

The 36th Brigade also fell into a bitter battle because of this-