The battle in northwest Hebei became the focus of the entire North China battlefield for a while, starting from the attack on the garrison team in a small mountain village, as if a small pebble had been thrown into the water, stirring up layers of waves, and the attacks of the Japanese army in various places gradually appeared on the map as a dense area.

After the village was blocked, the sneak attack of the Suzuki detachment turned into a strong attack, and then the troops were divided to Shimizu Daisa, and the headquarters remained in place. As a result, the flood and the subsidence of the ground will be over, and the headquarters will not be much better! The Eighth Route concentrated three regiments and thousands of local forces, and divided the entire detachment into several sections overnight.

The battle lasted until dawn, and a squadron of Taipingzhuang shattered. Most of the baggage team and logistics team were annihilated, and the rest were taken over to break through. Even Major General Suzuki's headquarters in Nyokojin Village was besieged, and the headquarters was hit by several shells, and if Major General Suzuki hadn't temporarily decided to go to the village to observe the enemy's situation, he would probably have ended up the same as Lieutenant General Abe.

After dawn, the planes of the Imperial Army Aviation were dispatched, and the siege of the Eighth Route stopped, taking advantage of the support of the Air Force, the Suzuki detachment, which had lost more than half of its troops, contained the wounded soldiers or something, and under the response of the 110th Wing of the 139th Division, it retreated to the direction of Xiwangzhuang, which was regarded as getting rid of the nightmare siege of the Eighth Road.

At this time, Shimizu Dazuo had already made a report to General Gangcun, preparing to use the 139th Wing to form two fast mountain columns, attack and advance to the north, and cooperate with the road repair troops on the first line from Mancheng to Lingqiu, and cut off the connection between the two subdivisional base areas of the Eighth Road in one fell swoop.

It's a pity that this jihua was executed for less than a day, and there was a mess again. The Suzuki detachment on the way south was once again caught in the bitter battle of being besieged, and there were really no troops nearby that could be mobilized, so Okamura had no choice but to telegraph to Shimizu Osa and Okamoto Osa to retreat and rescue the Suzuki detachment.

After a fierce battle for a day and a night, it was only then that the eight roads that seemed to emerge from the ground were dispersed, and at this moment, Qing Shui Dazuo didn't know that in the north where he was going to go, Yang Bangzi had already led people to start from a small mountain village, and he was going to set off a huge wave of the entire mountainous area of western Hebei!

However, after all, it was after many years of hard work with the Anti-Japanese Federation in the three eastern provinces, and Qing Shui already clearly felt that using the old method of dealing with the Anti-Japanese Federation to encircle and suppress the Eighth Route in North China was simply the wrong medicine. The Eight Roads in North China are like mercury in the ground, you can't see or touch, and when you are careless, thousands of people will appear in front of you in an instant, this form of war, Qing Shui is puzzled.

Therefore, after receiving the order to withdraw south to Tang County with the Suzuki detachment, Qing Shui did not want to go alone after arguing with the same spirit as last time, he also wanted to go back to rest and sort out his experience since participating in the sweeping operation, and see if he could find an effective way to contain the Eighth Road.

Not only the 139th Wing and the Suzuki Detachment received the order to return to the starting point of the sweep, but the entire southern and eastern front units involved in the sweep received this kind of order, of course, it was not a comprehensive retreat, the Japanese army's Jihua was the first-line participating troops to withdraw from the encirclement and suppression area to rest, and the second-line troops and a large number of Imperial Allied Army and Public Security Army marched in, using the villages that had been occupied, building strongholds and artillery towers, and using barbed wire and trenches to form a rope to block the base area.

Compared with the fierce fighting on the northern front, after the withdrawal of the Japanese mobile sweeping troops, the combat units of the Eighth Route Army on the outer line also retreated to the base areas, and the transferred masses began to return to their hometowns one after another, and the anti-sweeping struggle became a contest between "encroachment" and "anti-encroachment."

After two days of rest in Tang County, Shimizu Daisa moved to Baoding with the 139th Wing, where he met with General Okamura Ninji. He made a report on his experience in participating in the sweeping operation in the past month. Gangcun still has some preference for this subordinate, and in addition to encouragement, he also deliberately explained to Qing Shui and some ideas that he had carefully prepared and fought with the Eighth Route for a long time.

Regarding the "iron-walled encirclement" and "combing grate tactics", Shimizu Dazuo still agrees with it, but he also has different opinions. This method of warfare required a large number of troops, a large consumption of materials, and a long duration, and once the imperial troops were withdrawn, the Eighth Route and the Chinese villagers would appear in the scorched earth again, and once again take root and become a problem for the imperial army.

Gangcun also thought of this, but he considered it from a strategic height, and a large-scale encirclement and suppression could at least limit the excessively frequent activities of the Eighth Route and lead the flames of war to the base areas of the Eighth Route, which would relieve a lot of pressure on the cities and communication lines of the Imperial Army.

After all, Gangcun's purpose in coming to North China was for the upcoming southward march to Jihua, and his thinking was based on using an iron and bloody hand to brutally eliminate the opponent, and he really didn't think as much as Qing Shui did on the question of eliminating the Eighth Route or fighting for living space with the Eighth Road.

Shimizu Daisa expressed his idea, to fight with the Eighth Road for the common people and land, village by village, to use the Chinese to win over the Chinese, and after minimizing the living space of the Eighth Road, relying on specially trained fast troops, to eliminate the command center and main force of the Eighth Road.

This may not have any obvious effect in the short term, but in the long run, it is indeed a very practical way to solve the problem of the Eight Roads in North China. After listening to this, Gangcun was very inspired, and after muttering for a while, he gave Qing Shui two tasks, and asked him to go to Mancheng County with the 139th Wing to prepare to participate in the task of opening up the highway line.

This mission actually wants Shimizu Daizota to enrich his mind on the battlefield and learn more about the tactics and activities of the Eight Routes. This is also a rare opportunity for Shimizu.

Another task was to study the feasibility of setting up a rapid special column together with the staff officers of the special high-tech department on the front line. This mission suited Shimizu's appetite, and the mountain raid team he had established in the northeast was similar to a special operations force. Judging from the current sweeping situation, it is very necessary to set up a special force specifically aimed at the command center of the Eighth Road.

Gangcun wanted to use the line from Laiyuan to Lingqiu as a bait to induce the Eighth Route Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region to concentrate the main force and the 33rd Division to fight fiercely, and when both sides were exhausted, they launched a siege of the Eighth Route from the outside line to the Eighth Route from all sides.

Even if we can't completely annihilate the troops participating in the battle, at least we can inflict heavy damage on the main force of the Eighth Road, so that we can achieve the goal of eliminating the armed forces of the Eighth Road, and at the same time solve the dilemma of the main points of the highway being encircled, so as to use the highway network to divide the base areas of the Eighth Road.

I can't help but admit that General Gangcun's hand is still very old and vicious, allowing the 33rd Division to sink deep into the inner line, attracting the Eighth Route Army and a large number of Chinese civilians in the mountainous area of more than 1,000 square kilometers.

After Shimizu Daisa understood the deployment of this campaign, he followed the 139th Wing to Mancheng and began to rest in advance for the decisive battle of Zuihou. He also has a task that Gangcun does not know, that is, he is responsible for the collection and analysis of battlefield intelligence, cooperates with the personnel of the special high-tech department stationed in Mancheng, and closely pays close attention to the movements of the main forces and organs of the Eighth Route.

However, since meeting General Gangmura, Qing Shui has added a lot of troubles, among which there are a few points that puzzle him the most. First, the mountainous areas of North China are very different from the three eastern provinces. The mountains in the northeast such as the large and small Xing'an Mountains and Changbai Mountains are all high and densely forested, sparsely populated, and there is a heavy snow closure period for nearly half a year.

It is very difficult to make use of such mountainous areas as a long-term base area, and although there is a lot of room for maneuver, it is impossible to obtain long-term and stable replenishment of grain and provisions. As long as the encirclers control the settlements and the main roads in and out of the mountains, the resistance to the resistance itself that hides in the mountains will slowly be consumed by nature.

But the mountains in North China are different, with no vegetation and barren mountains and bald mountains. Such a barren mountainous area is densely populated, and ten households and eight households can live in a village and a ravine for more than ten miles, guarding the thin fields cut out of the cracks in the stones, and several generations or even more than ten generations do not move or migrate.

This makes Qing Shui particularly incomprehensible, and Weishenme in the poor mountains and remote areas will not come out to find a good place to live? It is incomprehensible that thousands of villages have become the base to support the Eighth Road, and the rear base that can provide food, soldiers, and provisions.

There is also a little Qing Shui who has been thinking about it for a long time, but he can't come up with a reasonable explanation. How did the Eighth Route manage to effectively control the population and land? The Anti-Japanese Federation in the Northeast is basically a mobile war, and it has not consolidated any local political power, so the fewer people are fighting, and the territory is getting smaller and smaller.

North China is different, if you look at the base areas operated by the Eighth Road, the political power ranges from large inter-provincial military regions to the scale of the village level, and there are governments and departments at all levels with a clear division of labor. Even in the areas occupied by the Imperial Army, there were cases where officials appointed by the Eighth Route and officials of the Imperial Army-backed North China Autonomous Government existed in the same village.

And the most terrible thing is that if the Chinese people pay one bucket of grain to the maintenance association, they secretly pay three buckets of grain to the Eighth Road. This assumption also changed frequently, often because the grain for the imperial army could not be harvested for a long time, but the grain supplied to the Eighth Route had already been transported away.

It seems that although the imperial army has occupied North China for so many years, it has never found an effective solution, so the encirclement, suppression and sweep again and again will have little effect, and the Eighth Route has been a small armed force from the beginning, and now it is actually controlling hundreds of thousands of troops, and the base area is sandwiched between the communication lines of the imperial army and large and medium-sized cities.

If these two problems cannot be solved, then this mobilization of the army, which can be called the largest sweeping operation in the history of North China, will still not be able to achieve the expected results. And no matter how many troops are invested, they will be dragged to the death by the guerrilla warfare of the Eighth Route Army, consuming manpower and material resources.

Shimizu Daisa decided to accompany the 139th Wing at the same time, and first selected a squadron of soldiers to be used as an experimental subject of the special operations force, for which he submitted reports to the 110th Division and the North China Dispatch Army Headquarters. With the prior acquiescence of Senior General Gangmura, the report was quickly replied to and approved for implementation.

However, because of the stalemate in the war, it was not possible to draw too many troops for training, so only two squadron leaders and 10 squad leaders were transferred to form a field observation team with Shimizu Daisa, and while fighting with the army, they studied and compared the tactics of special operations.

The two squadron leaders were Mashiko Shigeo Nakasa and Okawa Nakasa, both of whom were officers who participated in the Manchurian Incident, and had received special operations training at the Army Noncommissioned Officer School, and they were also very good at leading troops. In particular, Mashiko Shigeo led his subordinates to make up eight roads in eastern Hebei and northern Hebei many times, and fought the front station for comprehensive sweeps and encirclement.

Qing Shui and these two people are also old acquaintances, they have all met in the military headquarters of the Kwantung Army, and they have also exchanged experiences in mountain operations, so it seems that General Gangmura still took great pains to transfer these two people to participate in the demonstration of the establishment of special operations forces this time.

The battle in the northwest of Hebei and the battle in Yinfang Town, the garrison of Mancheng County has spread all over. In addition, the intelligence of the North China Special High-Tech Organization also showed that the Eighth Route Army was very likely to organize a large-scale sabotage and siege war in the Lingqiu-Laiyuan-Yixian area, and it seemed that the garrison near Mancheng would be drawn westward in the near future.

For this reason, Shimizu Daisa also set the basic purpose of this trip for his battlefield observation team, to get as close to the opponent as possible, study the opponent, and find out the weaknesses of the eight roads.