On February 2, 1938, the third day of the Lunar New Year, Chen Feng, who had returned to the front line in Beiping, received very bad news that the Kwantung Army had entered the customs.

This news was discovered by an independent battalion sent by the 61st Army to eastern Hebei, when this independent battalion was preparing to attack a railway station in Qianxi, but they were surprised to find that this railway station actually came to three military trains that night.

It was a group of neatly dressed Japanese soldiers, and the number was estimated to be five or six thousand. This was not over, and in the second half of the night, more than a dozen military trains came to this station in a row, and each train was full of soldiers, and the commander of the independent battalion quietly calculated that there were more than 50,000 Japanese soldiers passing from this small station overnight, and there were also more than a dozen wagons of heavy weapons.

Where did these Japanese soldiers come from, and what are the little devils going to do? Thinking that Junzuo was now fighting the Japanese army in the Pingjin area, Liu Guodong, the commander of the independent battalion, did not dare to slack off, and immediately transmitted the news back to the military headquarters.

After reading the telegram, Chen Feng's brows were tightly wrinkled together, Qianxi is an important military town in eastern Hebei, located between Zunhua and Qian'an, and Zunhua is the northeast gateway of Beiping. Although there are also a large number of Japanese puppet troops in eastern Hebei, it is impossible to gather more than 50,000 people in a short period of time, and I am afraid that the only Kwantung Army that can boast such strength in a short period of time is the Kwantung Army that is boasted to the sky by the Japanese army.

Thinking of this Kwantung Army, Chen Feng was furious, and the Kwantung Army was named after Kwantung Prefecture. However, this Kanto Prefecture is not in Japan, and the Kanto Prefecture, which has been mentioned many times in the history of the Japanese invasion of China, is actually the Jinxian and Dalian regions in present-day northeastern China.

In 1898, the Russian government forced the Qing government to "lease" Lushun and Dalian Bay to Russia, that is, the leased land was designated as a Russian state, known as the "Kwantung Prefecture". In February 1904, the Russo-Japanese War broke out, which lasted one year and five months, and ended in the defeat of Russia. After the war, according to Articles 5 and 6 of the Treaty of Portsmouth concluded between the two sides, Russia "leased the territorial waters of Lushun, Dalian Bay and the adjacent territories and associated leases" and constituted "all privileges", as well as "all public housing property in the areas where the lease is in effect". "The railways and all branch lines between Changchun and Lushun...... unconditional concede to Japan".

As a result of seizing all the privileges of the Russian invaders in the southeastern part of Northeast China. Japan gained colonies on the Asian continent. In 1905, in order to consolidate their colonial rule in the South Manchurian region of northeastern China, the Japanese invaders soon renamed the Liaodong Peninsula the Kwantung Prefecture. The Kanto Prefecture was established in Lushun. It consists of the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of the Army. In 1919, on the basis of the War Department of the Kanto Prefecture. The headquarters of the Kwantung Army was set up at the mouth of Arthur. In order to safeguard its colonial interests, Japan sent two divisions of 40,000 troops to the Kwantung Prefecture and the South Manchurian Railway Annex, and later added six independent garrison battalions, the Lushun heavy artillery battalion, and the gendarmerie.

To be honest, Chen Feng never expected that the Japanese army would send the Kwantung Army to fight in Guannei. This is not because Chen Feng did not attach much importance to the Kwantung Army, but because Chen Feng knew that the main tasks and energy of the Kwantung Army were used to deal with the anti-Japanese coalition forces in the northeast and to guard against the Soviet Red Army, and of course, a small part was used to defend against the Mongolian cavalry units controlled by the Soviet Union. If there were no particularly important reasons, the Japanese army would not have dropped the Kwantung Army to enter the customs, after all, the current Soviet Union was already very strong.

Another reason is that the Japanese army had already transferred the fourth division and two puppet Manchurian divisions into the battle sequence of the Mongolian army, and the Kwantung Army at this time was far from reaching the huge establishment of 31 infantry divisions, 11 infantry and tank brigades, 1 death squad brigade and 2 aviation armies at the end of World War II. It is okay to transfer one or two divisions and regiments, but if there are more, I am afraid that it will affect the relatively stable order in the puppet Manchurian areas, and if it is taken out by the Soviet Red Army, it will be very bad.

However, according to the analysis of the telegram sent back by Liu Guodong's camp in Qianxi, the 50,000 Japanese troops must have come to Beiping, and nine times out of ten they came from the Kwantung Army. If that's the case, then the problem is a problem. 50,000 Japanese troops should be the strength of two divisions. There were no divisions with a three-unit system in the battle sequence of the Kwantung Army, and all of them were permanent divisions with numbers before 20. The Kwantung Army has always been composed of the most elite units of the Japanese army, and because the Japanese troops stationed here often have the opportunity to fight, their combat effectiveness far exceeds that of other units in the country, so the Kwantung Army has always been crowned with the title of the flower of the imperial army.

Although Chen Feng didn't know how many divisions, regiments, brigades and regiments there were in the Kwantung Army now, there were definitely more than 40,000 people in the two divisions and regiments when the army was first established. After the September 18 Incident, the Japanese army invaded and occupied the entire territory of Northeast China. In order to exercise colonial rule over Northeast China, suppress China's anti-Japanese army and people, frantically plunder grain and mineral resources, and build Northeast China into an important strategic base for Japan's further aggression and expansion. Under the leadership of the Kwantung Army, the Japanese army concocted the puppet Manchukuo in 1932, and moved the headquarters of the Kwantung Army to Changchun, the commander concurrently served as the Japanese ambassador to the "Manchukuo" and the director of the Kwantung Agency, and held the military and political power of the puppet Manchukuo, so the Kwantung Army received the full support of the high-level in Japan, and in a short period of time it became the largest military group in Japan.

If it was really the Kwantung Army that went south, the only thing Chen Feng could do now was to retreat. Because under the high-intensity combat for more than ten consecutive days, the troops were very tired, but the Japanese army was a new war division and its morale was strong. In addition, there is a huge disparity in the strength of the two sides, and a single Kwantung Army is enough for the 61st Army to drink a pot, not to mention that the Japanese troops in Shandong and Hebei have also rushed to reinforce it, and if the Japanese army forms an encirclement on the periphery, the consequences will be serious.

Now that all the materials in Tianjin City have been rushed back to Zhangjiakou, and the rest are some things that cannot be moved.

Chen Feng ordered Yehelina to take charge of the retreat of all troops on the Tianjin side, with the aircraft and chariot troops going first, followed by the newly recruited recruits, and the old birds of the cavalry group in the rear.

After consuming more than 5,000 tons of explosives, Tianjin's port collapsed, the railway station was destroyed, the headquarters was burned, the barracks were leveled, and all the factories and equipment of the warehouse company were also destroyed.

What's more, under Chen Feng's orders, the cavalry group actually took away more than 8,000 young Japanese expatriates, and it seems that these are also their trophies.

Due to the early preparations, it only took one day for all the troops from Tianjin to be withdrawn. Then the troops in the direction of Beiping also began to retreat, before the retreat Chen Feng personally commanded the troops to launch the last attack on the city of Beiping, this time the 61st Army once captured the city wall of the West Gate, but finally fell short due to the stubborn counterattack of the Japanese army. In the second half of the night of February 2, Chen Feng ordered all the troops to withdraw from Beiping, and it was not until the morning of the 3rd that the Japanese army found that the Chinese army that had besieged the city for more than a week had disappeared.

After receiving the news of the retreat of the Shina army, General Terauchi Shouichi was not very happy, but was furious. Just yesterday he received a telegram from the base camp that the Eighth Division and the Second Division of the Kwantung Army had arrived in Zunhua, and it was expected that they would arrive at Sanhe and Pinggu at 10 o'clock this morning.

Although Shouichi in the temple was not happy, the Japanese puppet army in Beiping City was happy, and after such a few days of fighting, the city of Beijing was already full of corpses. Not only did the Japanese army suffer heavy casualties, but even the residents of the city suffered heavy casualties, and the Chinese troops finally withdrew, which was a good thing for the soldiers defending the city or the people in the city.

At 10 o'clock in the morning of February 3, the city of Beiping, which had been closed for eight days, was finally opened, and to the delight of the citizens of Beiping, as soon as the city gate was opened, only Japanese soldiers were transported corpses outside the city. The city was full of ruins, and the traces of smoke and fire were everywhere.

While the Japanese army was busy disposing of the corpses of soldiers killed in battle, Chen Feng returned to Zhangjiakou with the remaining troops of the 61st Army.

I haven't seen it for a few days, and the city of Zhangjiakou is much more lively than before, and as soon as the army enters the city, it is learned that there is an endless stream of refugees who have fled from the Pingjin area to Suinan in the past few days. Coupled with the transport fleet from Xinghe to Zhangjiakou, not only Zhangjiakou City is busy, but even the entire highway from Zhangjiakou to Xinghe is also very busy.

In addition, since the main force of the Shanxia Brigade was annihilated, the Zhangjiakou to Datong section of the Pingsui Line has also been reopened to traffic, and now there are at least 15 trains to and from this line every day, and a large number of materials have been transported back to Datong through this railway. At the same time, a large number of recruits and refugees were also transported back to Datong.

The strength of the two divisions of the Kwantung Army moved south, the two divisions in Shanxi returned to Beiping, and the 15th Division in Shandong was also about to arrive in Tianjin. Soon there will be a large army in the Pingjin area, and the old thing Shouichi in the temple will soon have at least 100,000 elite troops in his hands, and Chen Feng is thinking about what this old thing will do next.

After all, Zhangjiakou is too close to Beiping, a distance of 300 kilometers, and it will be a day to get there, and the 61st Army will control Zhangjiakou for a day, and the headquarters of the North China Front Army will not be at peace for a day, and a large number of troops must be retained at any time to prevent the 61st Army from coming to the city again. (To be continued......)