When the earth-shattering bloody battle broke out, Major General Cai Jigang was on the west embankment of Zhongmu County in the Yellow Flood Area east of Zhengzhou, which is the defense area of the 27th Division of the 15th Army of the Provisional National Army. He took his adjutant Shen Guangya to hurriedly inspect the fortifications on the river embankment, and then talked with Li Zhenfu, the commander of the 354th Regiment of the defending army, for more than an hour, when he knew it was already evening.

Although he had been mentally prepared for a long time, Cai Jigang still did not expect that the scale of this battle would be so huge, the area of engagement would be so vast, and the number of troops on both sides would be so large, and the degree of tragedy would exceed that of any major battle since the Sino-Japanese War.

Many years after the end of the war, General Cai Jigang often dreamed in his dreams that on this spring night, on the bank of the Yellow River in Zhongmu County, Henan, the hand of fate in the dark chose this place as the flashpoint of the war.

On the evening of April 17, 1944, the Battle of Henan, Hunan and Guizhou, which swept nearly half of China, broke out here, and since then, the total number of troops invested by China and Japan in this war has reached millions of people.

That evening, the officers and men of the 27th Division of the Nationalist Army felt that something was wrong, because the Japanese positions on the other side of the Yellow River suddenly fell silent, and the usual noise turned into a deathly silence.

At about 11 o'clock in the evening, Liu Hongmin, the commander of the 8th Company of the 354th Regiment, raised his telescope suspiciously and observed the other side of the river. Company Commander Liu was very suspicious of this abnormal silence, and he had a faint sense of foreboding in his heart, so he turned his head and said to the herald: "Damn it, there will be an accident tonight, pass my order, fix the double post on the post, double the number of swimming posts for me, and closely observe the movement on the other side." After saying that, he hurried to the regimental command post.

At this moment, a powerful roar suddenly erupted on the other side of the Yellow River, and the ballistic curves of the bright and dense spider web crossed the dark night sky on the river, and the Japanese 150-mm guns and 100-mm cannons on the opposite bank opened fire intensively, and the positions of the 27th Division were suddenly submerged in the smoke of fire, and the stumps and broken arms of the officers and men were thrown high into the air, and then turned into a rain of flesh and blood and fell, making a mess on the living people, and even the water-cooled barrels of the "Makqin" heavy machine guns were splashed with pieces of minced meat......

After 10 minutes, the Japanese artillery fire began to extend backwards, and Company Commander Liu suddenly discovered through the smoke of gunfire that on the river surface that was reflected in the red artillery fire, dense motorboats, wooden boats, rubber boats, and even wooden platoons suddenly appeared, which were full of Japanese infantry. Light machine guns in the bow of the ship were spitting tongues of fire, mortars on wooden platoons were firing fiercely, and the first attack wave, consisting of hundreds of motorboats, was heading towards the south shore at high speed. The officers and men of the 27 th Division of the Nationalist Army were not ambiguous, and immediately returned fire with 75-mm field guns, and all the light and heavy machine guns on the position opened fire at the same time, and countless water columns more than ten meters high rose on the river surface, and dozens of motorboats and wooden boats were suddenly blown over, and fuel leaked on the river surface, igniting a sky-high fire. The Japanese infantry on the ship were swept away by the heavy machine gun fire of the Nationalist army, and the surviving Japanese soldiers still stubbornly swam to the south shore with the blown-up planks and other floating objects.

Cai Jigang, who was watching the battle at the command post of the 354th Regiment, was very excited, he patted the shoulder of Regiment Commander Li Zhenfu, and repeatedly promised to ask for credit to the brothers of the 354th Regiment.

Cai Jigang's excitement did not last long, and the defenders' firepower attracted more powerful artillery fire from the Japanese on the opposite bank. The Japanese artillery corrected the impact points from time to time, the defenders' gun positions were eliminated one by one, and the heavy machine gun fire points were blown up one by one, and the defenders suffered heavy casualties.

Regiment Commander Li Zhenfu ordered several soldiers to set up Adjutant Cai Jigang and Shen who refused to leave, forcibly removed them from their positions, and turned around and picked up heavy machine guns and threw them into battle. Forty-five minutes later, more than 30,000 people of the 37th Division and the Independent Mixed Brigade of the Japanese Army successfully landed on the beach from the east and west, and thousands of Japanese soldiers poured into the defenders' trenches. Half an hour later, the last soldier of the defenders detonated a box of **, and the shock wave of the explosion sent dozens of Japanese soldiers into the sky......

In the service, more than 1,500 officers and soldiers of the 354th Regiment of the 27th Division of the National Army from the regiment commander Colonel Li Zhenfu were all martyred.

The Japanese army then quickly surrounded the county seat of Zhongmu. The officers and soldiers of the 355th Regiment of the 27th Division of the defending army were in chaos, and a wing of the 37th Division of the Japanese Army broke into the city to engage in street fighting with the defenders.

At 2 o'clock in the morning, Zhongmu was lost.

At this time, General Jiang Dingwen, commander of the First Theater of the Nationalist Army in Luoyang, received an extremely absurd piece of information: "Tonight, the enemy crossed the river in Zhongmu, and now there are only more than 100 people, and they are fighting with our army. ”

The second-class army general's order was also very simple, only six words: "Pay attention to the vigilance of river defense." ”

On April 18, just after dawn, the Japanese artillery fire stationed in Bawangcheng on the north bank of the Yellow River suddenly poured down on the position of the Nationalist army in Hanwangcheng, and the edge of the ditch on one side of the chasm was suddenly blasted open a slope about 100 meters wide. The observation post of the 85th Army of the Nationalist Army was suddenly shocked to find that behind the Overlord City, on the iron bridge of the Yellow River that the Japanese army had just erected, the roar of the tank cluster was deafening, and the steel torrent composed of more than 300 tanks of the 3rd Tank Division of the Japanese Army rushed up the iron bridge at high speed and rushed across the Yellow River, followed by thousands of Japanese infantry like locusts.

At 8 a.m., a large number of Japanese tanks appeared in front of the Nationalist positions in Hanwangcheng in the smoke and dust, which was the first time since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War that the Japanese army used large-scale armored clusters, and the deterrent effect produced made the Chinese defenders tremble. The first strike wave, consisting of hundreds of Type 97 tanks, swung up in a wedge-shaped battle formation, followed by the second echelon of more than 200 Type 95 tanks. When a huge tank cluster appeared at the front of the National Army's position, the fighting spirit of the officers and men of the 85th National Army was almost completely crushed by the roaring engine and the clattering of tracks......

The Japanese Type 97 tank was only installed in 1939 and was the most advanced main battle tank of the Japanese army at that time. Its frontal armor is 25 mm thick, and the front armor of this thickness is tantamount to a layer of window paper if it is taken to the European battlefield, but in the eastern theater, especially in the face of the lack of anti-tank guns of the Chinese army, it is simply an invincible giant.

A wave of terror spread like a plague on the Nationalist positions, and some soldiers threw away their weapons and fled back from their trenches. The officers cursed hoarsely, and the machine guns of the Overseers behind the position opened fire, and the deserters were knocked down......

The first Japanese tank roared up the ramp and appeared at the front of the position. The anti-aircraft guns of the 85th Army of the National Army immediately opened fire, and a 37 mm tungsten core *** instantly penetrated the frontal armor of the tank, and with the violent explosion, the tank burst into flames and collapsed there, followed by the second and third tanks roaring up the slope, and were also paralyzed in front of the position.

The three flaming tanks were placed at the front of the Nationalist position like three cupola torches, and the 85 officers and men cheered, and the gunners reloaded their shells, ready to continue capturing the target, but they were immediately stunned by the ensuing scene: hundreds of Japanese tanks rushed up the slope one after another, the earth trembled with the roar of engines and the clicking and rolling of tracks, and the cluster of tanks in the field of vision was like an overwhelming swarm of locusts.

The Japanese heavy artillery group on the north bank of the Yellow River began a new round of fire suppression, and the position of the 85th Army was shrouded in a sea of gunsmoke and fire...... An hour later, the Japanese tank group bypassed the chasm in two groups on both flanks of Bishan, and all rushed into the position of the Nationalist army in Hanwangcheng, and the limited anti-aircraft artillery of the Nationalist army was blown to pieces, and more than 10,000 people of the whole army did their best to fight the Japanese army for more than 20 hours. On April 19, the 37th Division of the Japanese Army, which crossed the river from Zhongmu, divided its troops and approached Zhengzhou and Xinzheng, threatening the rear of the 85th Army.

More than 100,000 Japanese soldiers who broke through the Yellow River defense line from two river crossing points quickly interspersed and divided the river defense troops of the national army in two ways. On April 20, Zhengzhou resisted for only one day before falling. At this moment, it was as if the hand of God had suddenly opened Pandora's box, and a huge disaster befell the Chinese army. The two Japanese armies poured into the central Henan Plain like a flood to the south and west, in front of which was an assault group composed of hundreds of tanks rushing wildly on the road, and on the fields on both wings were cavalry troops composed of tens of thousands of war horses, and behind this formidable assault force, there were several columns composed of more than 100,000 Japanese infantry to cover up and kill, and their fierceness, rapid advance, and strong combat power were rare since the War of Resistance Against Japan. As far as the eye could see, people shouted and horses neighed, chariots rumbled, Japanese planes in the air let out a palpitating whistling sound, large formations swept over the vast fields at low altitude, and an earthy yellow "wave" rose up on the plain of central Henan and swept away in the southwest direction.

The officers and men of the Nationalist army were greatly alarmed by the Japanese army's sudden adoption of a large-scale tank cluster assault method, and the vast majority of generals and colonels had never heard of this new tactic of the Japanese army, and they had never seen such a thrilling formation, and the officers and men of the Nationalist army, who were extremely lacking in anti-tank weapons, were almost resisting this group of steel giants spitting smoke and fire with their flesh and blood, and the fear effect caused by this caused made the fighting will of most soldiers on the verge of collapse.

In June 1937, Major General Qiu Qingquan, who was studying at the Army University in Berlin, Germany, gave a unique tactical lesson to the young officers of the Army University's staff cram school, which left a deep impression on the young officers. On the battlefield in central Henan in April 1944, there were still many officers who had listened to Qiu Qingquan's lectures in those years, and most of them have now become regimental commanders.

At that time, Major General Qiu Qingquan explained it this way: Blitzkrieg is to make a surprise breakthrough against the enemy under the cover of aerial firepower and relying on a highly mobile armored group, and penetrate in great depth from the breakthrough point until the strategic goal is achieved.

In the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, three world-class military geniuses appeared in the Soviet Union, France and Germany almost simultaneously, they were Marshal of the Soviet Union Tukhachevsky, the future president of France, the founder of the French Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle, then a lieutenant colonel in the army, and Colonel Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, then chief of staff of the German Motorized Forces Directorate. The extremely advanced military theories put forward by these three servicemen who served in different countries formed the cornerstone of the theory of mechanized warfare.

In 1928, Marshal Tukhachevsky of the Soviet Union put forward the idea of large-depth operations, and on this basis, he developed the "theory of large-depth campaigns", and for the first time put forward the idea of carrying out surprise attacks on the enemy's all-tactical depth with the help of tank groups, artillery, aviation, and airborne troops. He believed that this was a completely new form of organizing and carrying out modern campaigns, and it was also the most resolute strategic means to achieve the goals of war.

Guderian's brilliance lies in his tactical foresight. He designed the combat form of using tanks in large numbers and concentrations to achieve high-speed attacks of tank clusters, and proposed the three elements of lightning tactics, namely surprise attack, rapid and concentrated. Guderian believed that such tactics would play an important role in the victory of the offensive campaign and the victory of the war as a whole.

Charles de Gaulle of France published the book "Sword Edge" in 1932, emphasizing the role of mechanized troops in modern warfare, and using tanks intensively under the coordination of infantry and air force. However, this work was not taken seriously in France, but was taken seriously by Guderian and others in Germany, so that the study developed into a tactical theory of blitzkrieg.

In the eyes of Western military strategists, the Japanese Army in World War II should theoretically belong to a third-rate army, but due to the limitations of national strength and resources, it lacked the material basis for conducting mechanized warfare, and this also led to the arrogance and short-sightedness of most army generals, their lack of strategic vision, their outdated and rigid tactical thinking, their rigid command methods and lack of change, and their habit of using the stupid tactics of flattening and attacking hard in combat.

In fact, Japan was one of the first countries to use tank clusters in the war. In June 1939, the Japanese Kwantung Army and the Soviet Far East Army fought a real battle in the Nomenkan area on the Sino-Mongolian border. Japan was originally a poor country, this was its only tank division at that time, it had been held in its arms like a baby, and it was not willing to use it in several large-scale battles with the Chinese army, and this time it was also released, and the entire division was sent to the front to start a large-scale tank battle with the Soviet Far East troops.

The generals of the Kwantung Army thought that they had used their "trump card" in the most suitable area and at the best time, and they would definitely be able to achieve the strategic goal of deciding the outcome of the first war, but who knew that their luck was not very good, just like a little ghost who was careless and hit his head on the crotch of the king of Yama, this little ghost was destined to be unlucky. The opponent of the 1st Tank Division suddenly became the famous tank warfare expert General Zhukov, in terms of playing tank warfare, Zhukov can be regarded as a figure at the level of the grandfather, especially in the vast steppes of Asia Minor and Zhukov playing tank battles, the generals of the Kwantung Army really got into the water in their heads, and there was a short-circuit in their thinking.

The battle was fought in an earth-shattering manner, with the result that most of the Japanese tanks were reduced to mechanical parts and sent back to the steel mills on the island of Kitakyushu.

The crushing defeat of the 1st Tank Division greatly shook Tokyo. After that, the Japanese army generals foolishly decided that in the future, expensive tanks should not be used on a large scale. A few months later, Nazi Germany attacked Poland, and Guderian's lightning tactics shocked the world and attracted strong attention from the military of various countries. On the Eastern Battlefield, however, the Japanese army generals turned a blind eye to this latest military achievement and were no longer interested. After that, the Japanese army never used large-scale tank swarms on the Chinese battlefield again, and this situation lasted until April 18, 1944.

It should be admitted that in the final stage of the eight-year all-out war between China and Japan, the Japanese generals suddenly opened their minds and actually remembered to use tank clusters to fight, which cannot but be said to be a belated clever move, although it was the last flash of inspiration, but on the battlefield in central Henan, this assault force composed of more than 300 tanks did cause an avalanche-like rout of the Chinese army.

Speaking of which, things have to be looked back on.

At the beginning of 1944, the all-out war between China and Japan had entered its seventh year, and Zhongmu County, west of the ancient city of Kaifeng, was at the forefront of the first war zone. After the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain in May 1941, the Japanese army and the Chinese army in the First Theater of Operations had been facing each other across the river for three years.

The monotonous confrontation situation lasted for a long time, and the spirit of the soldiers was inevitably a little relaxed, and the Chinese soldiers guarding the front line were only a few hundred meters apart from the Japanese troops north of the Yellow River. At first, the soldiers on both sides still had the strength to speak different languages and curse each other, and there were often Chinese soldiers who spoke in a Henan dialect and named the wife of Emperor Hirohito. Of course, the Japanese soldiers did not show weakness, and once a military officer untied his crotch cloth in full view of the public, dangling his genitals and making obscene gestures to the Chinese defenders as a sign of humiliation. Before the angry hitter had time to aim, the exhibitionist Japanese soldier had already returned to the fortifications bare-chested.

Li Zhenfu, the commander of the 354th Regiment of the National Army, saw this scene in the telescope, and he was so angry that he cursed, claiming that one day he would cross the river to catch this kid, and he had to chop off his stuff and make it into "money meat" to feed to the dogs.

After a long confrontation, the soldiers on both sides lost the interest in scolding the streets, so they began to shout their own folk tunes at the top of their voices. Here there are two sentences of "Little Herding Cattle", and there is a paragraph of "Dragnet Minor", and the songs come and go, so that the soldiers on both sides temporarily forget the cruel war, as if they are participating in a Sino-Japanese youth party.

On the south bank of the Yellow River, the barbed wire fence in front of the Chinese army became a drying rack, covered with tattered uniforms and leggings, like flags waving in the wind. The Chinese defenders' shore fortifications were dilapidated, and some of the heavy machine gun nests were even half collapsed, barely supported by wooden sticks and rags. The soil in the trenches has been piled up higher and higher, and it has long since reached the required depth of 150 centimeters. There were several worn-out "medium-formal" rifles on the side of the bunker, which looked like they had lost their luster of steel due to lack of maintenance. The soldiers on duty spread out straw mats or sheets in the single bunkers, smoking cigarettes and lazily lying down in the sun.

The mountain north of Xingyang was located on the south bank of the Yellow River, but it was occupied by the Japanese army. At the end of the Battle of Lanfeng in 1938, the Chinese army blew up the Yellow River Iron Bridge, and the Yellow Flood formed by the Huayuankou embankment blocked the Japanese army north of the Yellow River and east of Kaifeng.

In October 1941, in order to cooperate with the Second Battle of Changsha, the Japanese army suddenly forcibly crossed the Yellow River from the opposite side of Bishantou, and cooperated with the Japanese army advancing westward in Kaifeng to capture Zhengzhou. However, the Japanese army occupied the overlord city on the south bank of the Yellow River, and used it as a bridgehead for future counterattacks. In this way, the Japanese army wedged a nail in the defense line of the Yellow River, and this "thorn in the eye" will eventually become a serious problem for the Chinese army in the future.

Opposite the overlord city is the Han King City, more than 2,000 years ago when the Chu and Han fought, the Chu king Xiang Yu and the Han king Liu Bang confronted each other here. Today, more than 2,000 years later, the Chinese and Japanese armies are also facing each other on the top of Guangwu Mountain on both sides of the chasm. Hanwang City was defended by the 85th Army of the Nationalist Army, and the closest distance between the two sentry posts was only a few dozen meters. After more than two years of silence, the Chinese defenders at Hanwangcheng were as lazy as the defenders of Zhongmu County to the east, unaware of the potential significant threat posed by the Japanese forces at Bawangcheng to the Yellow River defenses.

In February 1944, some noticeable changes took place around this "thorn in the eye".

The Chinese soldiers stationed in the city of Han Wangcheng found that small groups of Japanese engineers on the opposite bank often rode rubber boats around the remaining piers of the Yellow River Iron Bridge, and seemed to be trying to build a pontoon bridge. This situation was immediately reported to the First Theater Command of the Luoyang National Army.

At that time, Jiang Dingwen, the commander of the First Theater of Operations, was fighting a battle with several staff members of the headquarters, and he was in high spirits, and he did not want to spoil his head, so he casually said to the chief of staff: "The Japanese want to cross the river? It's not that easy, just shoot a few shots and don't let them fix it. ”

The order was carried out to the letter.

After receiving the order, the field artillery battalion of the military headquarters quickly fired a few shots, and the Japanese companies on several rubber boats flew into the sky with their boats, and the remaining Japanese soldiers jumped into the water one after another, and the heavy machine gunners on the positions of the national army unceremoniously "named" these guys.

The Japanese engineering units tried this three or five times, but all of them ended in failure, losing dozens of rubber boats and more than 100 people. It is frustrating that this obvious strategic intention of the Japanese army did not arouse the alarm of the generals of the Nationalist Army in the First Theater.

A week later, in the morning, the observation posts of the Chinese defenders suddenly spotted a black behemoth on the north bank of the Yellow River, with two huge jib cranes on it, surrounded by thick steel plates on both sides of the long fuselage, and 16 wheels on each side of the feet, sliding along the railroad tracks. At the front is the pile driver, after the pile is laid, the cantilever lays the prefabricated steel frame on the pile, the fuselage slowly moves forward, and the bridge extends to the south bank of the Yellow River little by little. The observation post didn't know what this thing was, and hurriedly reported to the regiment command post, and the regiment commander hurriedly used the artillery mirror to observe the opposite bank, thanks to how knowledgeable this regiment commander was, he couldn't help but be stunned when he saw this behemoth, and immediately shouted in Henan dialect: "Damn it, this is a bridge erecting machine, the little devil is building a bridge, and I order the artillery to bomb me off immediately, and fire the cannon immediately!" ”

Several field guns of the 85th Army immediately opened fire, and several shells exploded on the steel plate of the bridge erecting machine, leaving a little dent in the steel armor after the explosion, but the huge bridge erecting machine was unscathed. The regiment commander finally understood that the artillery of the field artillery battalion was equipped with French-made 75-mm field guns, which were like tickling the 60-millimeter steel plates on the bridge-erecting machine.

When the regiment commander was at a loss, a row of dazzling fires suddenly flashed on the top of the mountain on the south bank, followed by a thunderous loud noise, and the sky above the river was instantly covered with dense orange-red ballistics, and the heavy artillery group of the Japanese army on the south bank began to suppress the fire, and the overwhelming shells fell one after another, plunging the position of the national army into a sea of fire...... The artillery battalion of the 85th Army lost more than half of its artillery in 5 minutes.

In the days that followed, the Japanese artillery was on duty, and only two or three hours a day were fired. As long as the artillery of the national army does not return fire, the two sides will be fine. Once the artillery of the national army returned fire, it would immediately attract ferocious retaliation, and one shell often attracted a hundred and ten shells to return fire. The Nationalist army, which was seriously short of ammunition, looked extremely pitiful, and during the more than a month that the Japanese army repaired the bridge, an artillery company fired only more than 200 shells, picking and searching like a miser. According to the regulations, after the shells were fired, the shells must be put away and transported to the rear by cart to count the points, and the number of shells that match the number issued in the previous time can be received before receiving new shells. This was evident in China's declining national power in 1944.

At present, the artillery of the national army thought about it, so they simply hid the artillery in the cave, put on a posture that none of us would recruit anyone, and let the Japanese engineering units build the bridge with great fanfare. The Japanese sappers became more and more carried away, and they actually engaged in a labor competition in full swing within the range of the artillery fire of the national army, with a lieutenant with a foundation in Western bel canto, leading the singing of the labor horn with the vocal range of a lyrical tenor, and 100 Japanese sappers laying steel plates in a neat and orderly manner, while responding to the lead lieutenant in the form of a multi-part chorus, the officers and men of the national army were so angry that they were angry.

A few artillerymen were really angry, so they quietly pulled the field guns out of the cave at night, fired a few shots according to the lights on the bridge, and then hurriedly hid the artillery. An infantry company commander from Tangshan grumbled: "What the hell is this war? It's obviously bullying. ”

But then again, there are advantages to being bullied, the Japanese artillery sent a lot of steel, and the national positions were littered with shrapnel. The soldiers of the national army immediately seized the business opportunity, damn, this is obviously to send silver to our brothers. When the Japanese stopped shelling at night, the soldiers marched in groups with torches and baskets to collect shrapnel from all over the mountain, and then gathered together to carry mules to Guangwu Town to sell to blacksmiths.

Of course, the brothers had to take care of their mouths when they had money, not to mention buying meat and vegetables, and then they had to spend the money on shoes. It is sad to say that the time has come to 1944, the seventh year of the war, and the Chinese army has not yet solved the problem of wearing shoes for soldiers, let alone local troops, even the most elite Central Army, and even the expeditionary force units that go abroad cannot afford to issue shoes, and junior officers and soldiers all wear their own straw sandals. From this point of view, this is probably the poorest army in the world, and a major of the US military advisory group once said in confusion that he has never seen a country in the world whose army is so poor that it cannot afford to send shoes.

The predecessor of the 85th Army was the Central Instructor, which belonged to the Central Army, and even then it was so poor that it was so poor, a platoon commander's military salary was only 38 yuan in legal currency, and at the price at that time, a bowl of noodles in the market cost 3 yuan, and the military salary of 38 yuan was not enough to buy two pairs of good straw sandals. As the saying goes, people are poor and short-minded, horses are thin and hairy, and the poor central army has become a flower child who picks up rags.

During the days when the Japanese army engineers were repairing the bridge, Xu Yongchang, head of the Military Command Department, received information from Xinxiang from the agents of the Henan Station of the Military Command: A large number of military trains were coming from the direction of Beiping, loaded with tanks, large-caliber artillery, antiaircraft guns, and a large number of ammunition, baggage, and oil tank trucks, and this batch of equipment and materials was currently secretly concentrated in Xiaoji Town, south of Xinxiang. It is reported that the starting station of this batch of tanks is Baotou City, Inner Mongolia.

Xu Yongchang's heart was like a mirror, it seemed that the 3rd Tank Division of the Japanese Army, which had been stationed in Baotou City for a long time, was also ordered to go south, and the Japanese army was about to make a big move.

On 4 March, another piece of information came: two groups of enemy planes from Beiping and Shanghai each arrived in Hankou. Chiang Kai-shek judged that the Japanese high command had an attempt to open up the Pinghan line, and he instructed Jiang Dingwen, commander of the First Theater of Operations, and Tang Enbo, deputy commander of the First Theater of Operations, who were deployed in Henan, to make preparations for the battle.

However, Xu Yongchang, director of the Military Command Department, had a different judgment on the current strategic situation; he held that Chairman Chiang's judgment on the Japanese army's attempt to open the Pinghan Road was unconvincing, and that the main force of the Japanese army this time was likely to be "sounding north and attacking south." He judged from a large number of intelligence comparisons that the Japanese army had a strategic intention to open up the Guangdong-Han line, and its purpose was to prepare for a future retreat from Southeast Asia to Chinese mainland. Therefore, he reminded the First Theater to pay attention to the defense of the Xinyang area in southern Henan and not to take it lightly.

Xu Yongchang obviously made an overly conservative estimate of the strength and ambitions of the Japanese army, and his thinking would inevitably affect the preparations and deployments of the First Theater on the Pinghan Line.

The senior generals of the Chinese army apparently did not realize that the attack that the Japanese army was about to launch was an all-out attack operation unprecedented in the history of the Japanese army since the Meiji Restoration, and that the scale of mobilization, material reserves, and the build-up of personnel and technical equipment exceeded that of the Russo-Japanese War during the Meiji period.

The Chinese army is about to be in trouble.