The British are definitely not fuel-efficient lamps, and it is still difficult for them to make up their minds to engage in wind and rain. But for the time being, let's shift our attention to the battle near Handan, where the main forces of the 115th and 129th Divisions of the Eighth Route Army are fighting fiercely with the devils.

Let's start again, at that time, Okamura Ninji led the main forces of the 27th, 37th and 110th Divisions, the 7th Independent Mixed Brigade and the 3rd Tank Division from Zhengzhou, and moved north along Xinxiang and Anyang. At this time, the main force of the Eighth Route Army was besieging the Japanese North China Front Army, which had tried to return to North China before, and this part of the Japanese army was surrounded by regiments in Cixian County, south of Handan. This Japanese army included part of the 3rd Tank Division and a part of the 5th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, and the remaining strength of the Japanese army today was about 5,000 people.

At this time, Okamura Ninji's Twelfth Army had just broken away from contact with the scraping army, and it was exhausted. However, in order to go north to rescue the 3rd Tank Division and the 5th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, as well as to find an opportunity to annihilate the main force of the Eighth Route Army, Okamura Ninji didn't care so much, and ordered the troops to go north quickly.

To tell the truth, compared to fatigue, what is more of a headache for the devil is the bad traffic conditions along the way. At that time, the large area north of Zhengzhou belonged to the Yellow Flood Area. At that time, the yellow flood area was overly flailing. The slightest bit of wind and grass is the dust covering the sky. It's not good on a sunny day, and it doesn't reach your neck when you step on it, and it's even worse on a rainy day, it's a swamp. The road in the Yellow Flood Area is nothing more than a foot thick hard soil, and the bottom is full of yellow mud, and the convoy has no road after a few trips. Moreover, there are many sorghum, corn and other stem crops along the way, and the vision is quite bad, and it is easy to be ambushed.

So has the Yellow Flood been like this for thousands of years? The answer is no, the formation of the Yellow Flood Area is closely related to the same person, and this person is the aforementioned Chairman Jiang, and the formation of the Yellow Flood Area is completely his "masterstroke". It is said that in 1938, when the scraping army was beaten by devils, Jiang ordered to blow up the Huayuankou embankment, hoping to block the advance of the Japanese army. The turbid waters of the Yellow River advanced rapidly to the southeast, wreaking havoc in the Huanghuai Plain, eventually forming a Yellow Flood area spanning 44 counties in the three provinces of Henan, Anhui and Suzhou.

At that time, it is said that as many as 890,000 people drowned and starved to death, causing a man-made catastrophe in history. After the Yellow River is discharged, it flows into the Huai River along the Yinghe River in the west, and flows into the Huai River along the Vortex River in the east to Huaiyuan, Anhui. Then the Huang and Huai rivers poured into Hongze Lake, and the shores of the Huai River and Hongze Lake immediately turned into an ocean.

Please note that this man-made disaster is not over, after digging the Huayuankou embankment, the lower reaches of the Yellow River have no fixed river channel, so they rush between the three provinces of Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui, so that a swampy area is formed between the three provinces of Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui, that is, the Yellow Flood Area.

Of course, the fans will not admit that this is a man-made disaster, but will try their best to cover up the chairman. However, no matter how much you wash the ground, it is useless, because the newspapers of the Republic of China recorded this tragedy in detail: on June 22, 1938, the "Declaration" and "Handling the Yellow Disaster Rapid Vibration" recorded: The Yellow River embankment was blown up in the area of Zhaokou, Yangqiao and Huayuankou, and the torrent crossed the Longhai Road to the south, along the Jialu River into Anhui, and will merge with the Huaishui. Southern Henan bore the brunt of the disaster, and the ten counties of Zhongmu, Kaifeng, Chenliu, Tongxu, Weishi, Fugou, Yanling, Taikang, Xihua and Huaiyang were all Chengze country, and the disaster was severe. The Wei River and Guangji River on the north bank of the Yellow River were also bombed by the enemy, and the areas of Mengxian and Qinyang were flooded. Henan Province has been plagued by frequent floods and droughts for many years, followed by wars, and now there are unprecedented floods, and up to now, the number of refugees has reached four to five million......

How much damage has been caused? According to official statistics from 1938 to 1946, a total of 20 counties in Henan formed the Yellow Flood Area, with more than 1.5 million casualties, including more than 320,000 deaths, 1.17 million victims, and more than 1.46 million houses.

And some of the surviving villagers in Zhongmu, Weishi and other places in the Yellow Flood Area, even if they are old, still remember the terrifying scene at that time. Because there was no prior warning of the bombing of the embankment, many people were skeptical about the failure of the embankment at Huayuankou, and it was the time of the wheat harvest, so the farmers who had worked hard for a season were reluctant to abandon the fruits of their labor that were about to be harvested, and they were even more reluctant to drag their families and families away from their homeland, resulting in many people suffering as a result.

The flooding of the Yellow River not only killed people, but also carried about 10 billion tons of sediment to the Huai River basin, covering an area of 54,000 square kilometers, equivalent to more than half of the total area of Jiangsu province. After the flood washed through, it left behind the thickest sand and yellow mud several meters deep, which brought great difficulties to the reclamation of fields in the Yellow Flood Area.

According to the records of the Scraping Mansion, by June 1946, 6.5 million acres of farmland in the Yellow Flood Area of Henan Province were flooded, although there are 2.66 million mu of arable land, but because there are no cattle and seeds, and the fields have been covered with sand and gravel for eight years, it is not easy to dig only by manpower, and it is still deserted.

So how many Japanese invaders were annihilated by creating a yellow flood? Li Xiaofeng's later generations often saw 7,452 to more than 20,000 people on the Internet, which seems to be more than the devils who were annihilated in a battle. But these two data are extremely unreliable, first of all, the 7452 data is the overall loss after the Battle of Xuzhou recognized by the Japanese army, and it has nothing to do with the bursting of the embankment at Huayuankou. If this data is to be believed, there are less than 8,000 people in the entire Xuzhou battle, how many can die in the Yellow River?

There may be scrapers to say that the Japanese army likes to tamper with data the most, and the data of the Japanese army is unreliable. Okay, if you say it's unreliable, then it's unreliable, so let's pinch our noses and believe your data of more than 7,000, the question is, can this be regarded as a major injury to the devil? Look at the losses on the Huaxia side, not to mention the data of 8.9 million deaths, let's talk about the 300,000 data recognized by the Scraping Mansion, which is also completely disproportionate! If you add up the economic losses caused, there is no way to compare. Anyway, Li Xiaofeng can't understand this matter.

Getting back to the point, let's continue to talk about the battle between the Turkish Republic and the devils. Okamura Ninji came quite quickly, and it only took one day to gather his troops and start heading north. At this time, the 115th Division and the 129th Division were still besieging the devil soldiers trapped in Vic County.

Beginning on July 19, the Eighth Route Army successively took the villages and towns around Cixian County, and the devil soldiers saw that the situation was not good, so they hurriedly strengthened the defense of Cixian County, simply blocked the south gate, and even put the remaining tanks of the Third Tank Division on the city wall as a firepower point.

At the beginning, in the face of the reconnaissance attack of the Eighth Route Army, these tanks really showed their majesty, the tankmen turned on the headlights, illuminated the front of the position, and then fired a salvo, and soon hit the "Eighth Route of Dirt" back. It seems that the devil's strategy has succeeded. But today's Eighth Route Army is no longer the "Eighth Route of Dirt" in the past, and when the Eighth Route Army launched a general offensive, the devil soldiers soon couldn't laugh.

At eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, Peng Shuai, who learned that Okamura Ningji had quickly gone north, the acting commanders of the 115th Division, General Chen and Nie Shuai, and Liu Shuai of the 129th Division, and personally rushed to the front line to command, decided to launch a general attack immediately without waiting for dawn!

At about 9 o'clock, after the artillery group of the Eighth Route Army carried out an hour-heavy artillery bombardment of Cixian, the infantry immediately followed up and launched a full-scale attack. The 343 Brigade attacked the South Gate, the 344 Brigade attacked the West Gate, the 386 Brigade attacked the East Gate, and the 385 Brigade served as a reserve.

The Eighth Route Army first swept with machine guns and wiped out all the headlights of the Japanese tanks, so that the tankers could only shoot blindly indiscriminately. Immediately afterwards, the three main battle brigades successively cleared the three deer barricades set up by the Japanese army in the way of blasting and advance, blew up the walled wall, and easily broke through the city defense, and the tanks left by the Japanese army on the city wall all became trophies of the Eighth Route Army.

Of course, the Japanese army is not a gnocchi, can be kneaded casually, after breaking into the city, the Eighth Route Army was met with fierce resistance from the devils, when the devils concentrated dozens of flamethrowers to shoot at the Eighth Route Army assault force knife company, so that the assault troops suffered huge casualties. But this did not stop the assault troops, who were killed in the rain of grenades and grenadiers while the Devil Pyro changed the fuel.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the devils in the city could only choose to break through, Okamoto Shiro Nakasaa saw that the position was difficult to hold, on the one hand, he ordered the soldiers to burn the military flag and other telegram documents, and on the other hand, he got into a tank and led a group of little devils straight to the east gate, hoping to get away with breaking through.

But when this Okamoto Nakasa arrived at the east gate, he remembered that according to his orders, the city gate had been blocked, and the tanks could not get out at all. At this time, the devil soldiers who followed him had been besieged by the Eighth Route Army, and he had to order the tanks to slowly move south.

At this time, a platoon commander named Zhao Yongxin of the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army happened to be on the city wall, so he took advantage of the opportunity of the tank to move slowly and jumped up at once. And the devil's reaction was also very fast, and he immediately turned the turret and threw Zhao Yongxin down, but Zhao Yongxin's reaction was not slow, he got up with a grunt, climbed onto the tank again, and then threw three grenades into the hatch in one go, and with a loud bang, Shiro Okamoto directly reimbursed.

The death of Shiro Okamoto also heralded the great destruction of the devil, and after a whole night of fierce fighting, the 115th and 129th Divisions, which had fought for the first time, finally eliminated this stubborn enemy.

Let's go back and look at Okamura's actions. On the morning of July 20, after a rapid march, the main battalion of his troops arrived in the vicinity of Xinxiang. He has been trying to contact Shiro Okamoto without success, and he has realized that Shiro Okamoto is probably more than lucky. However, he did not realize that a fierce battle would break out next, on the contrary, he was saddened by the fall of Shiro Okamoto, and on the other hand, he was worried that the Eighth Route Army would "disappear" again.

Yes, the Eighth Route Army did not completely fight only guerrilla warfare, and when the time was ripe, the Eighth Route Army also dared to invest its troops to confront the devils head-on. But this kind of battle is generally a short-term ambush war, once the Eighth Route Army is successful, it will quickly clean up the battlefield and then disappear quickly.

Okamura Ningji, who has dealt with the Eighth Route Army many times, naturally knows the characteristics of the Eighth Route Army, and his main task this time is to find an opportunity to annihilate the main force of the Eighth Route Army. And now that Shiro Okamoto is finished, I'm afraid the Eighth Route Army has quickly escaped, right?

At that time, Okamura Ningji was very anxious, and he couldn't wait to fly to Handan immediately, so he could only urge his troops to speed up the march over and over again, hoping to catch the tail of the Eighth Route Army!

At the same time, the Military Commission informed Peng Shuai and others that they would block the Japanese invaders in the Yellow Flood area south of Handan, and resolutely did not allow the Japanese invaders to step into Hebei one step further!

Based on the instructions of the Military Commission, Peng Shuai and others immediately made targeted arrangements, using the 129th Division to drag the Japanese invaders from the front, and the 115th Division to rest and recuperate first and then put the camera into battle, and if everything goes well, they can also consider investing the 120th Division to fight a small-scale annihilation battle, and strive to annihilate at least one brigade of the Japanese invaders.

Looking back at Okamura Ninji's reaction, he ******** wanted to catch up with the eighth road in the "escape", so he ordered the 6th Tank Brigade of the 3rd Tank Division, the 3rd Motorized Infantry Wing and the 3rd Motorized Artillery Wing to go north quickly, and by the way, he also strengthened the 4th Cavalry Brigade and handed it over to Tanaka Kuichi, who had just been transferred from the Xiangxi battlefield, under the command of Kuichi Tanaka.

This Tanaka Kuichi is not a good person, a real demon. Wherever they went, they connived at and even ordered their troops to massacre civilians, destroy property, commit adultery and plunder, forcibly recruit slaves, torture indiscriminately, and commit all kinds of evil.

But it is interesting to note that when this demon was arrested after the war, Zhang Fakui, a member of the People's Party, said that he was a good person, and said: "Tanaka is not a cruel and unscrupulous person, unlike Takashi Sakai who ordered the massacre in Hong Kong." However, Tanaka must be held accountable for the dehumanizing actions of his subordinates, and he is more than innocent of death. It's hard to say about the army. When you are in command of many officers and soldiers, you cannot guarantee that no one will violate military discipline. Tanaka commanded more than 100,000 people, including the Japanese troops stationed in Hong Kong, and he could not control the murder and rape of his subordinates...... He was sentenced to death because he was the leader of the Japanese army that invaded and occupied Guangdong. I was in Nanjing when he was executed. Later, I heard that he was tied up in an open-top truck before his execution. For this, I reprimanded my chief of staff, Gan Lichu. If I were in Guangzhou, I would have put him in a closed prison car and taken him to the execution ground......"

Seeing it, this party scraper even sympathized with Tanaka Kuichi very much, and was a little upset about him. Anyway, Li Xiaofeng has never seen such a strange soldier, of course, Chairman Jiang took the lead, and even Okamura Ningji could be acquitted, what is the point of just one Tanaka Jiuichi?

Tanaka Kuichi is not as innocent as Zhang Fakui said, this demon is quite arrogant, he took the "Tanaka Army" all the way north quickly, and pursued the Eighth Route Army in the "escape" according to Okamura Ningji's order. And along the way, he did not forget to plague the surrounding people, robbed a large number of livestock to help the "imperial army" carry materials, and forcibly recruited a large number of people to build roads for the "imperial army". Fortunately, his task is urgent, otherwise according to his usual personality, not to mention those animals, these people may not be able to escape the poison.

Of course, there is no need for Tanaka Kuichi to be in such a hurry, because the Eighth Route Army did not go at all, but instead built a solid position south of Handan, waiting for his mechanized troops!

Therefore, when Tanaka Kuichi ran headlong into the defense line of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, he was quite surprised, because he understood the Eighth Route Army's blocking action in this way: "The strong blocking of the Eighth Route shows that its main force has not yet escaped......"

In Tanaka's opinion, there are no more than two reasons why the main force of the Eighth Road stays in place: either Shiro Okamoto is still holding on, or his main force is still cleaning up the battlefield. Of course, no matter what the reason, Tanaka Kuichi was very happy, so he immediately sent an urgent telegram to Okamura Ninji, hoping that he would speed up his journey north, because he had already caught the main force of the Eighth Road.

This news naturally made Okamura Ninji overjoyed, and in his opinion, as long as he could catch the main force of the Eighth Road, the next battle would be easy to handle. Of course, he did not mean to look down on the combat effectiveness of the Eighth Route Army, he thought that the next battle would be a bitter battle, but the result of the bitter battle was a complete victory for him!

Equally arrogant was Kuichi Tanaka, who, without the slightest hesitation, ordered the 4th Cavalry Brigade to attack first and give the opposite side a little color. There may be comrades who want to ask, doesn't Kuichi Tanaka have tanks? Why not use tanks first? The reason is very simple, the Yellow Flood Area is a big test for mechanized troops, and at this time Tanaka Kuichi's tank troops are still behind, and he can only let the cavalry go first.

The combat effectiveness of the Fourth Brigade of the Japanese Cavalry was still relatively strong, and these devil cavalry rushed all the way, and after leaving Anyang, they successively defeated the small reconnaissance units and guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army operating outside Anyang. These small victories made the brigade commander Takahashi Tsutosa, a little proud, thinking that the Tubachi Road was nothing more than that, so the brigade continued to ride straight into the battle until it reached the Jiangwu realm before stopping for a while.

Note that Takahashi didn't stop because he was aware of the danger, but because his horse couldn't run. At this time, the 4th Cavalry Brigade was tired, hungry, sleepy, and tired, and it can be said that its combat effectiveness was reduced to the lowest point.

At this moment, General Chen ordered the 386th Regiment of the 771st Brigade to launch a sudden attack, which caught the Takahashijin people by surprise. At that time, the 771st Regiment suddenly killed from all directions under the command of General Chen, and for a time 10,000 artillery salvo shells rained down, and the vigilance was lax during the rest.

In the blink of an eye, the 4th Cavalry Brigade was eaten by a squadron, but fortunately, Takahashitsu personally led the team to fight back desperately to stop the offensive of the Eighth Route Army. Rao is like this, the devils are also in a big formation, and a large number of military horses are running around in the chaotic East without knowing what to do.

Seeing that it was not good, Takahashitsu didn't even care about the war horses, so he hurriedly ordered his subordinates to urgently dig a ditch and dig a hole to stabilize the front. However, at that time, Takahashijin was not particularly anxious, and he had not been surrounded by the Eight Roads before, as long as he held on desperately, everything would be fine as soon as the reinforcements arrived...... (To be continued.) )