On the night of 28 April, division commander Tang Qiuli was listening to a report by Zhao Yuhe, chief of staff of the division commander, on the eve of the Outer Mongolian Field Corps' upcoming campaign to regain Kulen.

Zhao Yuhe looked at the telegram in his hand and said: "Division commander, according to the report of the reconnaissance unit of the Outer Mongolia Field Corps, the remnants of the 35th Group Army of the Soviet Army in Kulen City have signs of evacuating from Kulen.

"And there are about two divisions of Soviet troops, which have already driven out of the city one after another! According to the direction of the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, they wanted to retreat to the west, in the direction of the Ural Mountains, and the intention was obvious, that is, to move closer to the direction of the main force of the Soviet Outer Mongolian Front! ”

Speaking of this, Zhao Yuhe couldn't help but worry, "Division commander, the troops of the Outer Mongolia Field Corps, and the armored troops of Commander Battle, their vanguard troops will have to reach the periphery of Kulen at about five o'clock in the morning tomorrow at the earliest, but with the strength of the vanguard team, they cannot form a situation of encirclement on Kulen on all sides, and I am worried that once the rest of the 35th Army of the Soviet Army runs away, the Kulen battle plan will fail!" ”

Looking at the division commander with a calm expression, Zhao Yuhe said: "Division commander, do we order the Northern Flying Group to send bomber units to bomb the retreating remnants of the Soviet 35th Army along the way, and order the Outer Mongolian Field Corps to abandon the Kulen campaign plan and annihilate the remnants of the Soviet 35th Army in pursuit instead, and run away with a mouthful of meat in the mouth!" ”

Tang Qiuli shook his head slowly. Asked, "Yuhe, what is the purpose of our Kulen Campaign?" ”

Zhao Yuhe replied without thinking: "According to the deployment of the division commander, with the purpose of recovering Kulen, the main thing is to solve the remaining 70,000 people of the 35th Group Army of the Soviet Army that may be dangerous on the Chita line, the rear of our army, and Kulen is a nail between the five pursuit units of the directly subordinate corps and the troops under the command of Deputy Division Commander Liu, and he must be pulled out!" ”

"Since the Soviets took the initiative to withdraw from Kulen, isn't the purpose of our campaign achieved?" Tang Qiuli said leisurely. "There is no need to pursue, the Soviet army of more than 70,000 people is not worth my use of a field corps, let them go, Yuhe. Ordered Sun Zhenbang to enter Kulun immediately. to his troops. Rest for the day, then assemble in Cullen! ”

Zhao Yuhe wrote down the order in the telegram and handed it to a staff officer, then turned around and said to Tang Qiuli with a smile: "Division commander." I can now be sure that you have given the Outer Mongolian Field Corps less than five days to recover Kulen without destroying the city of Kulen. This is an impossible task, you must have predicted this situation in advance, just to put pressure on the Outer Mongolian Field Corps! ”

Tang Qiuli didn't smile, but instead sighed, and said slowly: "Yuhe, this is war, there are unpredictable changes at any time, I am not a god, the Soviet army took the initiative to evacuate Kulun, which I did not expect, among them, there must be a reason, but we don't know!" ”

"However, this result is the best, without a single shot, Sun Zhenbang's troops, there are no casualties, I don't pursue, the Soviet army was able to run away safely, Cullen changed hands unscathed, solved my worries, and everyone was happy!" At the end, he laughed, like a fresh breeze.

Zhao Yuhe's eyes jumped a few times, and he very much agreed with the division commander's statement, "It's just that I just think that more than 70,000 Soviet troops are turtles in the urn, and it's a pity to let them go!" He added.

"What a pity—?" Tang Qiuli asked with a smile, and without waiting for Zhao Yuhe to answer, he said: "There is no pity, in a few days, millions of Soviet troops will cross the border, and at that time, I am afraid that our appetite is not big enough!" ”

The two were talking, and Chen Feng, director of the division and communications department, came in, "Report to the division commander and chief of staff, I received a telegram from the commander of the first brigade of the directly subordinate corps, Liu Hongzhang, that the first brigade will stop continuing to pursue the Soviet army from this moment on, in order to wait for other troops to catch up, and in the current position, with the purpose of annihilating the Soviet troops of the two divisions." He said clearly.

Zhao Yuhe became nervous and asked eagerly: "Director Chen, did Brigade Commander Liu say in the telegram that the reason for stopping the pursuit of the Soviet army was that the First Brigade was threatened by the Soviet counterattack, and Brigade Commander Liu had a premonition of danger and had to stop the pursuit?" ”

Tang Qiuli took the telegram, read it again, and said: "Yuhe, don't be nervous, it's not as dangerous as you think, I was impressed by Liu Hongzhang, and he went crazy for a few days and nights to beat the Soviet army, and when he was doing it, it stopped abruptly, in terms of Liu Hongzhang's character, it was commendable, he knew that he could stop it just right, and he could resist the temptation of even winning it, which was not simple!" ”

"Annihilated three divisions of the Soviet Army before and after, and bit two more, Liu Hongzhang felt that it was enough! He judged that if the First Brigade continued to pursue in depth, he was afraid that it would suffer a strong counterattack by the Soviet Army, and the strength of one of his brigades was not enough for Vasilevsky to eat. If you have a cool head, at least you know that you can't always take advantage of the cheap - hahaha! Tang Qiuli laughed heartily.

Zhao Yuhe also laughed and said, "Division commander, how can we call back the First Brigade?" The teacher should have an attitude, right? ”

Tang Qiuli asked rhetorically: "What are you calling back?" Being on the front line, the brigade commanders are much more detailed than we know about the situation, and it is still the same sentence, for the pursuing troops, the division commander only requires that the position of the troops be reported at any time, as for how to fight, that is their business, and I will not interfere!"

"Yuhe, it's been more than ten days since the pursuit began, and the division commander has not interfered in the specific combat command, Liu Hongzhang, didn't they fight very well, don't do it with worry and effort, what are you doing with that kind of heart, okay, after Kulun's nail was pulled out, my heart disease went to a large piece, and the rest depends on how the Japanese and the Soviet army played in the Far East! Send a telegram to Deputy Division Commander Liu that the situation in the Far East will be lifted and changed, pay close attention to it! ”

The situation in the Far East is still obscure and uncertain, as if it were dull before the storm, except for the Kwantung Army and the Soviet Far Eastern Front, which were inextricably fighting, quietly pounced on the battlefield between the Bria Mountains and the Kukan Mountains, and the troops of the Japanese Far East Army and the Japanese and Korean Resident Army, like two hungry wolves sneaking in the night, secretly marching towards their destinations day and night.

In order to achieve the goal of suddenly encircling the Soviet Far Eastern Front in the current combat area, Prince Zaihito, chief of the general staff of the Japanese army base camp and commander-in-chief of the Far East Campaign, did not know how much painstaking efforts he had to keep radio silence on the rest of the day, except for minimizing radio contact with the two armies, and only reporting to the campaign headquarters at the specified time every day.

So cautious, Prince Zairen is not at ease, and the Kwantung Army on the front line of the Outer Khingan Mountains, after two or three years, he knows that Zhukov is powerful, he is an experienced and extremely strong command opponent, as long as he hears the slightest disturbance, the Soviet Far Eastern Front will immediately slip away, Zhukov does this, there is no difficulty, as long as there are enough troops left to resist the counterattack of the Kwantung Army, the main force can still be calmly withdrawn.

In addition to taking highly confidential measures in terms of communication, Prince Zairen also did not hesitate to give orders to the two troops, all on the way in, passing through or passing by, encountering rural and urban residents who might expose the goal of the march, all of them were killed, and no chickens and dogs were left!

The Japanese Far East Dispatch Army and the Korean Army stationed in India were more than 100,000 troops, divided into two routes, and after receiving the order of the commander-in-chief, they completely released the bloodthirsty killing intent in addition to the heart, like two hungry wolves with fangs exposed, burning all the way to the past, everywhere they went, the villages and towns were ten rooms and ten empty, the corpses were all over the field, the blood flowed like rivers, and the people were killed, after the Japanese army, the empty villages and towns, even in the daytime, were wolf howling, and at night, the white bones everywhere were as terrible as hell.

The inhabitants of the Soviet Far East were not many, the land was vast and sparsely populated, and it was not like that of Outer Mongolia, Tang Qiuli issued an order, and almost all the residents were evacuated to the interior, leaving only empty and empty villages and towns.

General Zhukov, the commander of the Soviet Far Eastern Front, who commanded more than 1 million troops and repelled the Japanese Kwantung Army's frenzied counterattacks again and again, has recently been a little restless; on the surface, the Far Eastern Front absolutely occupies the initiative on the battlefield, and the Japanese Kwantung Army's troops, which have been beaten to the brink of death by the three armies, have lost most of their troops, and the counterattack at this moment is more reflected in the madness before death.

No matter how you look at it, Zhukov's plan was successful, the Far Eastern Front overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army, making it impossible to separate, and the two units of the Trans-Khinganling Front and the Baikal Front withdrew from the Far Eastern battlefield smoothly, without any obstruction from the Japanese army, and in four or five days, they could pass through the line from Guò Chita to Irkutsk, enter the Outer Mongolia region, and then, over the Ural Mountains, it was equivalent to entering the European part of the Soviet Union.

As for their own troops, according to the plan, after completing the covering task, they dealt the heaviest blow to the Kwantung Army, and then, immediately, broke away from the battlefield and quickly withdrew from the Far East along the path opened by the two fronts.

To this end, Zhukov has already begun to work on preparations for evacuation.

(To be continued)(To be continued......