The 25th of the month, a day of despair for Barreev.

On this day, the three armies of the East Siberian Front: Bilokhov's 1st Siberian Army (1st and 2nd Western Divisions) and Antonov's 2nd Western 4th (4th and 9th Western Divisions, with 9th Cavalry Division) were all caught in the net of the Chinese army.

According to the order issued by Bareyev the day before, the above-mentioned divisions must break through the encirclement by their own strength and assemble towards the Irkutsk fortress.

Rely on your own strength......

The 1st Siberian Army, which controlled the railway line, acted first, withdrew the main forces from the front line early, and rushed north to Irkutsk by train in batches before dawn, but was intercepted by Chinese armored forces in the town of Shelikhov on the way. Broken by the Chinese tanks, Bilokhov did not dare to immediately attack Shelikhov head-on, so he ordered the 1st Division and 2nd Regiment, which were the first to arrive at Shelikhov, to throw up their pretense and march, in an attempt to drill through the mountains east of Shelikhov, and the vanguard battalion of the regiment was discovered by the Chinese sentinel when crossing the road between Shelikhov and Baikal.

With no way out, Bilokhov stubbornly ordered the whole army to attack Shelikhov and open the way back to Irkutsk.

The 100 cannons, including the military artillery, were deployed in two layers, and there was a fierce bombardment inside and outside the town, including two companies of field artillery specially used to bombard the pontoon bridge on the Alkut River to the west of the town. It really made two or three notches in the pontoon.

Commander Xing Xiaoqiang in the interior of the town was furious when he learned that the pontoon bridge had been bombed, and first summoned air support, attracting nearly 100 light and heavy bombers, and washed the Russian artillery positions and trains carrying heavy ammunition gathered along the railway line with bombs of various levels, and then ordered the three artillery battalions in his hand (the brigade mobile artillery battalions equipped with the 12th and 14th brigades, plus the military dependents) to fire back at the same time, and the killer weapon was finally shown: the main force of the 12th Brigade was installed from the left, and more than 120 combat vehicles were killed at the same time with the accompanying 130 half-track personnel carriers. Like two long walls of steel, spitting a blazing rain of bullets, covering the vast smoke and dust that swept through the enemy formation—

On the other hand, the 1st Army of the Chinese Army, which had been confronting the 1st Siberian Army in the easternmost section of the Irkut Line for more than a month, suddenly bombarded a small section of the front railway line of the 1st Western Army with earth-shattering and devastating artillery fire in the early morning of the same day. The 480-meter giant siege mortar cannon was fired one after another from the inland gate cannons, and in the first quarter of an hour, an average of more than 1,000 shells whizzed through the air every minute! On the narrow front of the attack for 5 miles, the whole land seemed to be overturned, the barbed wire and pillboxes were wiped out, and the criss-crossing trenches disappeared in large sections. Under the guidance of a radio-equipped calibration aircraft in the air. The all-engulfing net of fire passed from the front of the Russian positions little by little to the deep ploughing, leaving no dead ends. There is no way to hide until the entire narrow area of 5 x 3 km is completely reduced to the surface of the moon!

Due to the wrong direction of the wind, the Chinese army did not fire special smoke bombs this time, and as soon as the artillery fire advanced into the enemy's depth, the 3rd Division, which had spread out on the front of the main attack, launched an assault in the form of a line of scattered troops covering the dense battalion column.

On the messy position, where large and small craters are like stars, several battalions of Russian troops who stayed behind to cover the retreat of the main force have long been bombarded by the fierce artillery fire that broke the ground, and the stumps and broken flesh are scattered scattered, and the few survivors who are deeply hidden in the face of the Chinese soldiers who are surging like a sea tide, and dare to put a few shots are naturally swept into a sieve by gunfire grenades in the blink of an eye, and those who kneel on the ground and beg for mercy will inevitably be hit with a rifle butt. As for the unlucky ones who were blown up into idiots, they were told to raise their hands and not raise their hands, and they should be pierced with bayonets on the spot, and they should go to God to plead their grievances.

Within a day. The eastern section of the Alkut Line (the section where the land meets), which was expected to be broken through by eight divisions of the 1st Army in three days, has collapsed and disappeared. The 1st Army, with two attached cavalry brigades (10th and 23rd), quickly crossed the breach. The Western Army's ass was pushed over.

The 4th Regiment Army, which was trapped by the Russian army in the middle of the defense line and besieged for three days and three nights, was finally able to bid farewell to the "feint mission" of the nest fire on this day, and the whole army cheered up, and the 2nd and 5th Infantry Divisions, which were the most well-preserved in combat power, each with an independent medium tank battalion (equipped with 45 units of Iron Leopard, each battalion had 25 to 30 available), counterattacked the Russian Siberian 2nd and 4th armies in front of them in two ways, and the cavalry of Major General Vonshov with the reserve of the group army: between the enemy's 2nd and 4th armies, in order to divide and surround the enemy.

On the west side of the encirclement, the 3rd Infantry Division of the 3rd Regiment was slowly pressing its mouth eastward

To the northwest of the encirclement, the Praetorian Cavalry Corps was approaching West 2 and West 4 from north to south in two routes, and the gap in the pocket was shrinking little by little.

To the north of the encirclement, the 4th Army, which had occupied the rear transport hub of the Arkut Line, Shelikhov, held the mouth of the bag.

To the east of the encirclement, the boats and boats of the Chinese army in control of Lake Baikal are constantly transferring reinforcements and supplies to the shore, and the area around the mouth of the bag is stronger and tougher.

There was nothing Balyev could do about it, and the Irkutsk fortress where he was located was about to be put into the second pocket by the Chinese army at this time.

The transport hub behind the fortress, Angarsk, fell into the hands of the Chinese army yesterday. On this day, the 1st Panzer Corps was divided into two: the commander Yintianqin led a group to cross the Angar River eastward, marched 100 miles in a row between woodlands and pastures with only carriage roads, captured the communication points of Ust-Oldensky and Oloy leading to the landing site of the Belu Movement on the 1st Lake, Tutai, and occupied the 1st Bellu Movement on the Lake (with the 106th Light Infantry Division as the backbone).: The mechanized detachment (15 armored vehicles and 50 truck companies) attacked and advanced to Yelanzi, 40 kilometers to the southwest, and routed the battalion before nightfall. Entering Yelantsy, at this point, the second pocket that closed Irkutsk was left with a gap of 80 miles.

The northward detachment of the 1st Panzer Corps, commanded by Yuan Xu, commander of the 1st Armored Brigade, broke through along the railway line to Krasnoyarsk at the Kitoy Iron Bridge north of Ersk in the early morning of the same day. Due to the long distance of the planned march (the total distance from Angarsk to Kecheng is about 700 miles), in order to preserve the detachment's own mobility and reduce the loss on the way, the detachment placed half of the armored vehicles and most of the baggage on the three groups of captured Russian trains, using the trains as mobile warehouses, the whole army formed a formation around the trains, and continuously advanced under uninterrupted air support, and attacked Usoliye, 40 miles away, before noon of the same day, and completely captured the Usoliye railway bridge, and before nightfall, the detachment had already driven to the village of Kutulik, 120 kilometers away.

On the night of the 25th, in the mountains and forests a few kilometers east of Shelikhov, several panting Russian officers and soldiers were gathering by a basin-sized spring to drink water......