In the war room of the Luoyang First Theater Command, General Jiang Dingwen, commander of the command, was presiding over a military meeting, which was attended by Tang Enbo, deputy commander of the theater, and generals and staff officers at and above the army commander level.

In the Central Plains battlefield at this time, the Chinese army was divided into two heavy groups. The first is the mobile combat unit headed by Tang Enbo, which has four group armies under its jurisdiction and a total strength of 300,000 troops. The Tang Enbo group was nominally a corps directly under the Central Military Commission, but due to the needs of cooperating with operations, it was still under the command of the commander of the First Theater of Operations, so Tang Enbo also served as the deputy commander of the First Theater. The second is the main force of the First Theater commanded by Jiang Dingwen -- the River Defense Army, which is a large army composed of 8 group armies and 1 corps with a total strength of 400,000 troops, and its task is to rely on the existing river defense positions on the south bank of the Yellow River to resist the Japanese army.

In April 1944, the fate of the 700,000 Chinese troops in the Central Plains fell to Jiang Dingwen and Tang Enbo, two high-ranking army generals.

Jiang Dingwen is a veteran soldier who graduated from the Zhejiang Army Martial Arts Hall in his early years. When the Whampoa Military Academy was established in 1924, he was already a colonel and staff officer of Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen's office, and Chiang Kai-shek was only a major general chief of staff at that time, with a military rank only one level higher than Jiang Dingwen, and was collectively known as the "two Chiangs" around Sun Yat-sen. These "two Jiangs" happen to be from Zhejiang, and they speak Ningbo Mandarin, so people always mistake them for relatives. At that time, Jiang Dingwen, who was quite scheming, made the most correct decision in his life, he was respected as a colonel, and he was willing to submit to the lieutenant district captain of the first student team of the Whampoa Military Academy, and he did not hesitate to be demoted by four ranks. In the autumn of that year, the military academy held field exercises, with Chiang Dingwen as the company commander, and Chiang Kai-shek and the Soviet adviser General Galen [1]

In person. General Galen saw that Jiang Dingwen's small body was straight, and his every move was full of military style, how to look at it and how pleasing to the eye, so he asked a few questions on the spot, and Jiang Dingwen answered them all fluently. Afterwards, General Galen said to Chiang Kai-shek: "This man can be reused." This comment is not trivial, with Galen being the chief military adviser of the people, he naturally speaks in a word, and since then Jiang Ding's civil and official fortunes have prospered, and he has become one of the "Eight King Kongs of Whampoa".

To be sure, this duke did not have much to do in the civil war, and his political skills far outstripped his military prowess. In addition, this General Jiang Dingwen also has a bad habit that is not easy to change -- he is addicted to gambling like his life, and he once did the thing of losing all the salaries of the officers and men of the division for three months overnight, and he is a gambler who forgets to die as soon as he sticks to the gambling table.

At this time, Jiang Dingwen's eyes were bloodshot, and he couldn't stop yawning - it seems that he gambled for another night yesterday, and he hasn't slowed down until now.

Jiang Dingwen said slowly: "Colleagues, the situation in this theater has been quite tight recently, and the Japanese on the other side of the river have been frequently moved. According to intelligence, the Japanese army seems to have made a large strategic move. I have reported to the Central Military Commission and Chairman Chiang, and the Central Military Commission has sent people to our theater to discuss the issue of military deployment. ”

Speaking of this, Jiang Dingwen looked at a medium-sized and well-proportioned army major general beside him: "Let me introduce to you, this is Major General Cai Jigang, a war supervisor sent by the Military Command Department of the Military Commission." ”

Cai Jigang, who was only 40 years old, stood up with a "click" and saluted everyone in a chic manner.

Jiang Dingwen continued: "You can consult with General Cai on the operational issues we are discussing, and all major decisions made by our First Theater can be directly reported by General Cai to the Central Military Commission for approval. ”

The eyes of all the generals in the conference room fell on this major general at once.

Cai Jigang bowed slightly: "Late in life, young and ignorant, although he is rough in military affairs, he is mostly talking on paper, the commanders have led the troops for many years, and they have experienced a hundred battles, how dare Cai dare to get an axe?" I hope you will give me a lot of advice! ”

All the generals looked at each other, and they didn't know what background this major general from the Military Command Department had behind him, so naturally no one dared to talk more.

Jiang Dingwen continued: "Our current troop deployment is roughly as follows: four group armies are concentrated on the bank of the river about 200 kilometers along the south bank of the Yellow River from Zhengzhou to Shaanxi County. Sun Weiru's 4th Army was stationed in Zhengzhou; Liu Maoen's 14th Army was stationed in Luoyang; Li Jiajue's 36th Group Army was stationed in Xin'an; Gao Shuxun's 39th Group Army was stationed in the Mianchi and Shaanxi areas. ”

When Jiang Dingwen said this, he turned to Tang Enbo, deputy commander of the First Theater of Operations: "Enbo, tell you about the deployment of troops in your direction." ”

Tang Enbo glanced at the generals and officers, and reported a series of defense data with an expressionless face: "Wang Zhongqian's 31st Group Army is stationed south of Zhengzhou; He Zhuguo's 15th Army and Chen Daqing's 19th Army were all placed on the west side of the southern section of Pinghan Road; In addition, He Cuizhi's 12th Army, Liu Changyi's provisional 15th Army and local troops in the Henan-Anhui border area were deployed on the east side of the southern section of Pinghan Road. The posture and campaign determination of our group's forces were: In Zhongmu, the Yellow Flood Area east of Zhengzhou, the 27th Division of the 15th Army of the outpost defenders was deployed, and the task of the other main forces was to ensure the safety of the southern section of the Pinghan Railway. ”

At this time, a lieutenant general raised his hand and asked to speak, it was Li Jiayu, commander of the 33rd Group Army.

Cai Jigang has known this lieutenant general for a long time because of his work, Li Jiayu is a veteran general of the Sichuan Army, and he was a lieutenant general of the 47th Army before the Anti-Japanese War. He led the 47th Army out of Sichuan in September 1937 and has been fighting against the Japanese army in the Taihang Mountains. In 1939, Li Jiayu was promoted to commander-in-chief of the 36th Group Army, and in 1940, he was transferred to Henan to take charge of the defense of the Yellow River. Because of the good relationship, Cai Jigang always called him "his brother" and never called him an official position. Cai Jigang's character is Yunhe, so Li Jiayu called Cai Jigang "Yunhe's brother".

Li Jiayu spoke worriedly: "Ladies and gentlemen, at present, the Japanese army is repairing the iron bridge over the Yellow River, which shows that the Japanese army is going to make a big move recently, and once the iron bridge is repaired, the consequences will be unimaginable. It was foolish to think that instead of waiting for the Japanese army to attack, it was better to strike preemptively, immediately send planes to bomb the Bishan position south of the bridge, and then send a small force to cross the river to raid the Japanese army, covering our engineers to blow up the bridge again. ”

It should be said that Li Jiayu's proposal is very feasible and has the surprising effect of using special forces in modern warfare.

But Jiang Dingwen disagreed: "I don't think I can be sure of the success of this kind of tactical action, the Japanese army on the other side is heavily defended, and my small group of troops rashly cross the river, isn't it a moth to the fire?" Our theater has been confronting the Japanese army across the river for three years, and the Japanese army does not dare to act rashly, and our army's defense line along the river is solid, which can be called the 300-mile Great Wall of flesh and blood. Therefore, there is no need to adjust the defense line of our theater at present, and our army only needs to stick to the defense line along the river and adapt to all changes without change. ”

Commander Jiang Dingwen made this statement, Li Jiayu immediately shut up, and several generals who were about to speak stopped talking.

Cai Jigang arrived in Luoyang three days ago, and he has not been idle for a minute in the past few days, carefully studying Jiang Dingwen's troop deployment, and privately worrying about his command ability. This second-class army general does not seem to have a good brain, he lacks modern strategic thinking, and his defense is always linear and lacks campaign depth. He placed all his main forces in various strongholds along the Yellow River and the southern section of the Pinghan Railway, while the vast rear did not have any mobile troops and campaign reserves. Of course, this arrangement was formed according to the judgment of Xu Yongchang, the minister of military orders, who believed that the Japanese army intended to open up the Guangdong-Han line, and that the various signs of the Japanese army north of the Yellow River were completely a strategic feint.

The question is, Xu Yongchang is not an all-knowing and all-powerful God, and who can guarantee that his judgment will not be wrong? If the Japanese forces north of the Yellow River were not making a feint, but really intended to break through the natural dangers of the Yellow River and attack from the north first, how would they respond? This kind of wishful thinking, and the deployment of troops based on this judgment, once the Japanese army breaks through the river defense and rapidly advances and intersperses, dividing and encircling the main divisions and towns of the national army, then hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops will fall into a catastrophe.

Thinking of this, Cai Jigang couldn't help but shudder, and he couldn't help but stand up: "Chiefs, can I talk about my opinion?" ”

Jiang Dingwen said politely: "Of course you can, your brother is the overseer sent by the Military Command Department, and he is the one who holds Shang Fang's sword." ”

Cai Jigang spoke cautiously: "I have a concern, judging from the available intelligence, the Japanese army is definitely going to attack on a large scale this time, there is no doubt about it. The key is the direction of its offensive, what is the strategic intention of the Japanese army? How much does our army know about its troop deployment and operational plan? If you don't understand it, relying only on general and vague subjective guesses will make a big mistake. Please Sir Chiang to take a clear look! ”

Jiang Ding nodded and said, "Brother Cai, I know these in my heart, thank you for the reminder." Do you have any other suggestions, brother? ”

His words are equivalent to sealing Cai Jigang's mouth, and if Cai Jigang knew each other, he should shut up at this moment, but he didn't plan to end: "Also, I think Chief Li's proposal just now is very important, Bishantou Overlord City is the bridgehead on the south bank of the bridge, and it has been wedged into our army's defense line for more than two years, as far as the current situation is concerned, it is no longer a thorn in the flesh, but a tumor growing on our army, it will suppurate and fester, and if our army does not get rid of this tumor for a day, our river defense troops will not be able to sleep and eat for a day!" ”

Speaking of this, Cai Jigang paused and continued: "Also, the commander set up the theater headquarters in Luoyang, I think it is very inappropriate, this place is too close to the line of fire, once the command headquarters is defeated by the enemy, my hundreds of thousands of troops are distributed in an area of hundreds of kilometers, how will we unify and coordinate the operation?" ”

The atmosphere in the conference room suddenly became lively, and more than half of the generals couldn't stop nodding their heads and exchanging glances with each other.

Jiang Dingwen smiled and said in the same tone as he treated his juniors: "Don't worry too much, brother, more than half of my main forces are concentrated along the Yellow River, and it is not so easy for the Japanese army to break through my Yellow River defense line, take 10,000 steps back and say, even if my defense line is broken, but I will eat hundreds of thousands of people in one bite, and the Japanese army is afraid that it has not grown such a big mouth." As long as our river defense troops can strangle the Japanese army for a few days, the heavy army group on Pinghan Road on our southern front can go north to encircle and encircle and annihilate the enemy army in the central Henan Plain! What else does Brother Cai have to ask? Oh, by the way, as for why the headquarters is located in Luoyang, I would like to explain to you here that it is my consistent combat style to command the front, and this commander is willing to show with his actions that he vows to be with the front-line soldiers in safety and danger, and to share life and death. ”

As soon as the commander explained this, the generals present naturally had nothing to say, and even Cai Jigang was silent. He knew very well in his heart that he was soft-spoken, and no matter how much he spoke, he would be disgusted, and the commander was polite enough to him.

Jiang Dingwen's majestic gaze swept for a week, and then added: "Now, I ask all group armies and army commanders to transfer the officers' dependents, heavy luggage, and important documents to the rear as soon as possible. ”

After the deputy commander-in-chief, Tang Enbo spoke, he did not speak again, and from time to time he moved his eyes out of the window, appearing absent-minded.

At this time, a staff officer handed over a secret letter to Jiang Dingwen, which was the intelligence of Pang Bingxun transferred by Ma Fawu, the commander of the 40th Army:

"The enemy has planned an offensive in mid-April, so I hope to prepare as soon as possible!"

Jiang Dingwen frowned after reading it, and casually handed the secret letter to the senior officers present to read, and everyone was silent after reading the letter.

Cai Jigang said in his heart, it's not good to express his position, this Pang Bingxun surrendered to the Japanese a year ago, and was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the provisional 24th Group Army by Wang Jingwei, and became a big traitor, and he actually transferred important information to this joint, who believes it? Who would dare to believe it?

In April last year, more than 50,000 Japanese troops swept the Taihang Mountains, and Pang Bingxun's 24th Group Army's defense site was broken through by the Japanese army in Lin County, northern Henan. In the chaos, Pang Bingxun, his son Pang Qingzhen, and two guards hid in a cave halfway up the mountain.

A few days later, through the mediation of Sun Dianying, who had already surrendered to the Japanese army, Pang Bingxun officially surrendered to the Japanese army. Pang Bingxun's defection to the enemy caused an uproar in the Chongqing officialdom, and Chiang Kai-shek was extremely angry, and public opinion was in an uproar for a while. Pang Bingxun was originally a famous anti-Japanese general, and during the Battle of Taierzhuang in 1938, Pang Bingxun and Zhang Zizhong led their troops to fight a bloody battle with the Japanese Sakagaki Division in Linyi, relieved the siege of Linyi, and became a famous anti-Japanese hero. Now even anti-Japanese heroes like Pang Bingxun have defected to the enemy and become traitors, which really makes the people unable to come to Taiwan, and Chairman Jiang is disgraced.

Dai Li, the head of the military command, is a realist, and he believes that if you Pang Bingxun are willing to destroy your reputation and become a traitor, that is your business, but even if you become a traitor, it doesn't matter, I can still turn you into an "undercover agent" and let you, the commander of the group army, become my supernumerary agent, and Lao Tzu will even save his salary. Dai Li instructed the military commanders to plot against Pang Bingxun, move him with affection, understand him with reason, and promised not to investigate Pang Bingxun's defection to the enemy in the future, and to reward him for his meritorious deeds after the war.

Pang Bingxun was also very happy about the olive branch extended by Dai Li, he didn't expect that not only did he lose nothing in this act of defecting to the enemy, but the commander of the group army took care of it, and he also got the identity of a "senior agent", is there such a good thing in the world? Therefore, Pang Bingxun has repeatedly said that he is "in Cao Ying's heart in Han", and he is willing to contribute to the country. In fact, for nearly a year, he has been in secret contact with the Henan Station of the Military Command.

At the beginning of 1944, Pang Bingxun was transferred to the director of the puppet Kaifeng Pacification Office. During this period, Pang Bingxun's appeasement office became a reception station shared by the Chongqing people**, Nanjing Wang Jingwei puppet** and the Japanese military. Pang Bingxun believes that as long as the officials of these three families do not meet each other and do not disturb each other, it is not interesting for him to spend more entertainment expenses.

After various investigations, Dai Li believed that Pang Bingxun's cooperation with the military command was still very sincere, and that some Japanese and pseudo-Japanese information he sent from time to time was verified to be true and valuable.

And Jiang Dingwen is not as realistic as Dai Li, he is a typical nationalist, and the hatred of the Japanese is not shared, his thinking level is relatively simple, thinking that anyone who surrenders must be a traitor, and a traitor cannot be trusted.

So Jiang Dingwen said something very weighty and very instructive: "Everyone, does anyone believe the information of this big traitor?" ”

All the generals and officials are silent, yes, the chief's words are on this, who dares to say that he believes in the big traitor, isn't this self-deprecating?

Only Tang Enbo said with some hesitation: "This information and other information of the Military Command Department seem to be compatible, and they should be carefully considered." But...... What if it's a trap? ”

Jiang Dingwen continued: "Yes, in case there is a conspiracy here, I'm afraid the responsibility will still be borne by the commander of the war zone." Deputy Commander Tang, are you prepared to take responsibility for this intelligence? ”

Tang Enbo shook his head: "No, I can't bear this responsibility. ”

At this time, Cai Jigang couldn't help it again: "Two chiefs, Pang Bingxun's intelligence can't be fully trusted, but it must not be disbelieved, I think it doesn't hurt for us to prepare for the enemy to attack from the north." ”

Jiang Dingwen was a little displeased: "Warlord, your reminder is for me." Our army's deployment plan remains basically unchanged, what else do you have to say? Without? Let's adjourn the meeting first. ”

After the meeting ended, Cai Jigang walked to the edge of the garden in the courtyard of the headquarters and stopped by a row of hedges. The freshly watered boxwood sprouted tender leaves, verdant, but this did not bring him a hint of spring, and he fell into deep thought worriedly.

Cai Jigang is a native of Tongcheng, Anhui Province, and he is 40 years old this year. His father, Cai Chaoyun, was a native of the late Qing Dynasty, studied in Japan in his early years, graduated from Waseda University, and joined the League in Tokyo. After the Xinhai Revolution, he served as a staff officer of the Guangdong Governor's Office and a foreign affairs supervisor. Cai Jigang studied in his hometown since he was a child, and was admitted to the Department of Chemistry of Tsinghua University in 1922, and after graduating from Tsinghua University in 1926, he decided to devote himself to Rong, taking the road of enriching the country and strengthening the army, so he went to the United States and was admitted to the Virginia Military Academy.

At the time of the "918" incident in 1931, Cai Jigang had already graduated from the military academy and was traveling in the Amazon River basin in South America. He had a lot of fun during that time, as he had found the legendary cannibal in the depths of the jungle and befriended a cannibal youth.

The indigenous youth took Cai Jigang as a prey at first, and planned to kill him first, and then dry his body and store it for a slow meal. The process of the two fighting was very simple, although the aboriginal was agile and nimble, but he was not good at fighting, when he held a blowpipe and was about to blow a stinger at Cai Jigang, Cai Jigang slapped his blowpipe away, and then the aboriginal testicles were hit hard by the knee, and he bent down in pain. Cai Jigang grabbed him by the hair and carried his head to hit a tall yerba mate tree again and again. The natives were so uncomfortable with this savage way of fighting that he was knocked unconscious before he could use his fists. When the native woke up, he touched his purple bag and was amazed, he thought he was already savage, but he did not expect this Indian-looking man to look like a man [2]

The guys are even more savage than themselves. Most of the indigenous peoples in the South American rainforests pay attention to fertility worship, they believe that the thing in the crotch is more sacred, and there is a conventional rule when their families fight, never fight in that place, this is a necessary tool to perpetuate the race, not some kind of offensive weapon. The natives really couldn't understand how this guy in front of him could be so ignorant of the rules and kick his genitals without any scruples?

Cai Jigang can't control so much, and once he makes a move, he is extremely fierce. He knew very well in his heart that these aborigines, who grew up in the tropical jungle and were short in stature, although they were not very good at fighting, they could play with their own secret weapons. Shooting stingers with a blowpipe is trivial, and you'll never know what kind of crooked secret weapon they have, they can extract poisons such as alkaloids from tropical plants without a teacher, and then apply them to the hidden weapon, and people will be killed in one fell swoop. After graduating from the military academy, Cai Ji wandered around the world, in order to increase his knowledge, temper his will, and exercise his ability to deal with crises, so that he could return to serve the country in the future, and by no means to be eaten as a snack by an indigenous person in a state of ignorance. If you don't pay attention to this kid's way, it is a trivial matter for a person to lose his life, and if it is spread out, it must make people laugh and lose their big teeth, and it will be shameless to be a ghost.

Cai Jigang was suddenly pleasantly surprised to find that this indigenous man actually knew a little English, because he muttered a few simple words of English: "You are a devil, I don't fight with you...... No one can fight with the devil......"

Cai Jigang replied in English: "You are the devil, and only the devil can take people's lives for no reason." ”

The natives were unashamed: "I am hunting, because I am hungry, and I can eat only if I kill you." ”

Cai Jigang was suddenly furious, what the fuck is the reason? This pragmatic attitude of the indigenous people made him very unhappy, why do you eat Lao Tzu? I still want to eat you. Cai Jigang was angry, and he blurted out the national scolding that he hadn't used for a long time: "Fuck your ......" But after thinking about it, this kid can't understand Chinese, so he still speaks English. Cai Jigang told him in English with a pleasant face: "Now that you have become my prey, I am also hungry and ready to eat you, do you agree?" ”

The natives spread their hands and said with an exaggerated expression, "I don't seem to have any other way but to agree." ”

Cai Jigang was amused by his strange logic: "Then can you give me a suggestion?" Do you like to be grilled, or do you like to be cooked? ”

The natives replied: "You should kill me first, and the rest of the questions need to be considered for yourself." ”

Cai Jigang couldn't help laughing: "If I don't kill you, what can I get?" ”

The natives thought for a moment and said, "You can get a slave, or...... A friend. ”

Cai Jigang said: "Okay, I won't kill you, let's be friends." ”

The natives nodded, and made another suggestion that made Cai Jigang very angry: "We can find another person, partner to kill him, and enjoy his flesh together, you can eat more." ”

Cai Jigang almost scolded his mother in Chinese again.

He decided to give the Aboriginal a name, and he remembered Robinson Crusoe, a work by the English novelist Defoe, where Robinson lived on a desert island for 28 years and took in Savage Friday. The aboriginal youth in front of him, who is bent on cannibalism, simply calls it Friday.

Through talking with Friday, Cai Jigang learned that a few years ago, there was a white explorer of unknown nationality, rowing a canoe down the Amazon River, and when he walked here, the boat capsized, and the white man was caught by the cannibal brothers as soon as he climbed ashore, and he wanted to kill him that night to improve his life, but the tribal leader thought that this person was too thin and might not taste good when eating, so he decided to wait until he was fattened before eating. So, Friday was sent to guard the prisoner and spent several months with him. The white man taught Friday some simple English, but Friday didn't get the chance to further his education, and the white man was eventually eaten.

He did not attend that tribal banquet on Friday, and he refused to eat his teacher's meat.

Cai Jigang originally wanted to go to the tribe to see, but Friday refused to lead the way, he thought that once Cai Jigang entered the tribe, he would definitely be eaten, and he didn't want his friends to become delicious food to fill other people's stomachs. Friday helped Cai Jigang build a shack on a giant yerba mate tree, and he often sneaked out of the tribe to bring him some unpalatable food. During Cai Jigang's stay of more than ten days, Friday also taught him a lot of jungle knowledge and survival skills, and the two got along very happily. If it weren't for the other natives in the tribe who discovered the secret of the two, Cai Jigang might have to live in the shack for a few more days.

On a foggy morning, Friday ran in a panic to inform Cai Jigang that someone in the tribe had found his shack and that the people who had come to arrest him would arrive immediately. Cai Jigang hurriedly said goodbye to Friday and fled the dangerous jungle at the speed of a long run.

A few days later, a ragged Mr. Cai appeared in Quito, Ecuador's capital, where he checked into one of the best hotels in the area, took a hot shower, and then put on his dressing gown and sat on a deck chair on the terrace, sipping Colombian coffee while browsing the Washington Post, which had just arrived on September 20, 1931. Cai Jigang found a piece of news on the 4th page of the newspaper, and he immediately threw away his coffee cup and jumped up. Just two days earlier, on September 18, the Japanese Kwantung Army had attacked the Chinese garrison in Shenyang's Beidaying, and Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army had collapsed without a fight, and the Japanese army occupied the entire territory of Shenyang and Liaoning without bloodshed.

Cai Jigang suddenly surged with qi and blood, and his meridians were retrograde. What should have happened must have happened, and for several years he has been following the movements of the Japanese army, especially the Japanese Kwantung Army. He had long concluded that sooner or later something would happen to those unruly young Zhuang soldiers, who were a group of people who were carrying their heads all day long to exchange their lives with others, who hated peaceful life, and who always dreamed of making meritorious contributions in the war and serving the emperor. If there is no pretext for war at the moment, they will spare no effort to create one. Since China is unfortunate enough to be a neighbor of this restless Yamato nation, war is inevitable.

Cai Jigang immediately decided to return to China, his idea was very simple, the motherland was in danger, as a soldier, he should spill his blood on the battlefield and serve the country. After returning to China, he was introduced by Tsinghua alumni to join the newly established Tax Police Corps of the Ministry of Finance as a captain and company commander.

It was originally a private armed force established in 1930 when Song Ziwen was Minister of Finance, and as the name suggests, it should be a paramilitary armed force used for anti-smuggling and taxation, but under Song Ziwen's painstaking management, it actually built an elite army that even the regular army of Class A could not match. The selection of its talents was all recruited by Soong Ziwen himself, and the commanders of each regiment were all graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and most of the officers above the platoon level were students studying in the United States, and there was also an advisory group composed of eight German officers. The tax police regiment also has high requirements for the recruitment of soldiers, and there is no need for any illiterate soldiers, at least for a few years of "private school".

The weapons and equipment of the Tax Police Corps are all procured by the Ministry of Finance on its own, and all of them are equipped with European and American weapons, and the degree of sophistication is not comparable to that of ordinary troops. The regiment also combined traditional Chinese education with the education methods of US military academies to develop a set of training and drill rules that were different from those of other units of the national army. Cai Jigang served in this unit until the Battle of Songhu in 1937.

After the September 18 incident, Chiang Kai-shek profoundly realized that an all-out war between China and Japan was inevitable. Since the war will break out sooner or later, what the people need to do is to delay the early outbreak of the war as much as possible in order to gain time to prepare for the war. During this period, the National Defense Committee was established, and successively promulgated the 1935~1936 "National Defense Plan Outline", the most important thing in army construction is to take advantage of the opportunity of Sino-German military cooperation from 1933 to prepare for the formation of 80 German armor divisions of the new army, to recover the lost territory in the northeast. In 1936, the National Defense Committee carried out a nationwide rectification and drew up a plan for the expansion of the army by reorganizing 120 elite divisions within three years.

As early as 1933, in view of the lessons of the "January 28 Incident", in view of Japan's aggressive intentions and the direction of the Japanese army's possible attack, it was decided to build a huge scale of national defense fortifications in the Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou area, and built two national defense fortifications in Zhejiang, namely the "Zhapu-Pinghu-Jiashan-Xitang" defense line. In accordance with the advice of German military advisers, this defense fortification was designed by the city fortress group of the General Staff Headquarters and presided over the construction by Zhang Fakui, director of the appeasement of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang border region. The fortifications were known as the "Maginot Line of the East", and the project was huge, and it was not fully completed before the outbreak of the all-out war of resistance.

The people also sent purchasing missions to Germany, France, Italy, the United States and other countries to purchase the latest artillery, combat aircraft, and tanks.

In the years that followed, Cai Jigang often lamented that if the war had broken out a few years later, our resistance would have been more calm and more certain.

The 1937 "77 Incident" was an accidental event, when neither China nor Japan was prepared for all-out war, and all the evidence after the war points to that it was not premeditated, because neither side prepared a plan for the deployment of troops and the development of events. Song Zheyuan, the top military and political commander of the Chinese side who was in charge of Beiping at that time, asked his subordinates to calm down the situation, try not to give the Japanese army an excuse to expand the incident, and buy more time for China to prepare for the War of Resistance.

At this time, the Nanjing Nationalists were negotiating with the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party in Yan'an to reorganize the national army, making arrangements for army reorganization with the southwestern princes, and carrying out financial management and training plans to prepare for the War of Resistance Against Japan, and they did not care at all about the military conflict that occurred in the suburbs of Beiping.

At that time, Japan** was trapped in the aftermath of the global economic depression, and its finances were in a state of financial distress, and it had no intention of making external troubles. The General Staff Headquarters of the Japanese Army, under the leadership of Deputy Chief of Staff Jun Tada and Chief of Operations Ishihara Wanji, was promoting the strategic preparation of the Soviet Union and instructed the Japanese troops stationed in China to reduce military provocations against China. The commander of the Japanese garrison in Hebei, Lieutenant General Tashiro Wanichiro, had just died violently and had not yet been buried, and the new commander, Kiyoshi Kazuki, had not yet arrived. Japan** and the Ministry of War did not decide to intervene directly militarily in the conflict that took place at the Lugou Bridge.

However, no one expected that Japan's hard-liner generals and colonels would decide to take advantage of this unexpected incident to carry out an expanded control over China's Pingjin region. Their purpose is to at least take the Hebei boundary east of the Yongding River and incorporate it into Yin Rugeng's Eastern Hebei Autonomous Region.

Chiang Kai-shek and his strategists believed that although the long-term goal of the Japanese Empire was to conquer all of China, the specific strategy was to gradually encroach rather than swallow it in one go. Its national strength and military strength are limited, and it does not have the ability to occupy the whole of China. At that time, the Japanese military headquarters concluded that China did not dare to counterattack Japan's aggression in all directions, and the strongest counterattack of the Chinese army was only to carry out local and limited resistance on the hot spot of the incident. According to past experience, the Chinese army was unable to defend itself in the face of repeated attacks by the Japanese army, and after suffering huge casualties, China was forced to sign a cease-fire agreement and acquiesce in the established facts.

Chiang Kai-shek believed that Japan's strategy of gradual encroachment was more terrible than waging an all-out war, because it was like a giant beast, and every time it gained a place, it would become stronger, and all the resources of the occupied areas would be incorporated into its overall war system, and finally a qualitative change would be produced by quantitative changes. The Chinese giants were like muscles torn off by wild beasts, weakening with every loss of blood, and one day, the Japanese Empire would be full-fledged and truly strong, and knock the Chinese giants down with a final blow.

In early August 1937, Cai Jigang went to visit General Jiang Baili, a good friend of his father and a senior adviser to the Military Commission at the time. Among them were General Zhang Zhizhong, commander of the Ninth Group Army, General Chen Cheng, political secretary of the Ministry of Military Affairs, General Bai Chongxi, who had just been appointed deputy chief of staff and director of the Military Training Department, and Colonel Sun Liren, an old alumnus of the Virginia Military Academy and then head of the 4th Regiment of the Tax Police Corps. There are also some young officers who have studied in military academies in Japan, Germany, and the United States, most of whom Cai Jigang is familiar with.

Cai Jigang didn't expect to meet so many big people, the big living room of Mr. Jiang's house was full of generals wearing yellow tweed military uniforms and armed belts wearing Zhongzheng swords. He felt that it was a very bad time, and he wanted to say goodbye after greeting Mr. Jiang with a few words, but Jiang Baili was very happy to see this junior, and affectionately took Cai Jigang's hand and asked him to sit beside him, and asked him if he had read the collection of military treatises he had just published, "On National Defense".

Cai Jigang replied cautiously: "Uncle Jiang, the younger generation has read it and admires it very much, especially the inscription on the title page is very inspiring: 'Ten thousand words, just to tell everyone one sentence, China has a way!'" ’”

Jiang Baili smiled: "Oh, it seems that you are looking very carefully, tell me about it!" ”

Cai Jigang said: "Your main arguments on the Japanese army's operations are threefold: First, exchange space for time, 'whether you win or lose, you should not make peace with it'; second, your strategy toward Japan is not to be afraid of swallowing whales, but only to be afraid of encroachment, and it is necessary to fight an all-out war of resistance; third, to start a war in Shanghai, take advantage of geographical conditions to weaken the Japanese offensive, and prevent the Japanese army from forming a confrontation with Hunan on the second ridge line, thus forming a long-term battlefield. ”

Jiang Baili patted him on the shoulder in approval, and followed his train of thought and said: "China is not an industrial country, it is an agricultural country. For the industrial countries, occupying their key areas has no choice but to surrender, for example, New York is half of the United States, and Osaka is half of Japan. But it doesn't matter if you occupy even the most important coastal areas of the agrarian country, which is loose and has no key points to grasp. Therefore, my conclusion is that the anti-Japanese resistance must be based on the people and fight a protracted war. ”

Cai Jigang asked tentatively: "Uncle Jiang, the younger generation heard that Chairman Jiang is preparing to establish a command camp in Shijiazhuang, with Xu Yongchang as the director of the camp, and mobilize 100 infantry divisions to go north and fight a decisive battle with the Japanese army in North China. Is this rumor true? ”

Jiang Baili smiled and asked, "If that's the case, is there anything wrong?" ”

Cai Jigang stood up abruptly and blurted out: "This move must not be!" If the Japanese army wins the decisive battle in North China, then the Japanese army's mechanized troops will quickly move south along the Jinpu Road and the Pinghan Road, cross the Yellow River, enter the Central Plains, enter Wuhan, cut off the strategic channel for the national retreat to the southwest, and complete the strategic cutting of China from north to south, then our country will lose the strategic depth of resistance and will not be able to carry out a protracted war of resistance with the Japanese army, that is to say, strategically, China must be defeated! ”

Cai Jigang's hurried voice alarmed all the generals and colonels present, and they all turned their heads to look at the young lieutenant colonel. Colonel Sun Liren, an old alumnus, also squeezed his eyes at Cai Jigang to show encouragement.

Bai Chongxi, deputy chief of staff, was 44 years old at the time, although he was not old, but he had practiced a set of scheming and calculating ways of dealing with the world in many years of warfare, he looked at Cai Jigang calmly and said: "Lieutenant colonel, please continue, if you preside over the formulation of strategic plans, how are you going to fight?" ”

It is a matter of the overall strategic situation, and Cai Jigang at this time could not care about modesty, and he made a generous statement: "I think that the only strategy of our army at present is to quickly open up a second battlefield in order to gain the strategic initiative and control the development of the strategic axis, even at the expense of paying the highest strategic cost. If the General Headquarters uses the major geo-economic and political interests of the Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou region to attract the Japanese army to change the location of the strategic decisive battle, and then uses the Yangtze River as the axis of China's strategic depth, resists from east to west, and retreats step by step, gradually increasing China's geographical advantage, and at the same time, simultaneously transferring the strategic resources of the War of Resistance to the southwest region in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. I don't think China can do that if we do that, we won't be able to die. ”

Bai Chongxi smiled and asked: "What do you mean is to change the decisive battle in North China to the decisive battle in East China, preemptively start in Shanghai, attract the main division of the Japanese army to reinforce Songhu, and change the strategic axis from the north-south direction to the east-west direction?" ”

"That's the case, I think it has to be so, otherwise the Japanese army will destroy China in three months, and it will not be alarmist." Cai Jigang replied.

Sun Liren handed a cup of coffee to Cai Jigang: "Brother Yunhe, everyone was discussing this issue just now, and it was the same as the heroes. Mr. Chiang, Commander-in-Chief Zhang, Chief Chen, and Chief Bai all thought of a plan to change the strategic axis and prepared to submit it to Chairman Chiang for approval. ”

Jiang Baili approvingly: "Virtuous nephew, I didn't expect that you are young, but you are very strategic, you can ask questions sharply, and immediately think of a solution to the problem, an officer like you has a bright future in the future." ”

"Uncle Jiang, you have won the award, in fact, the commanders have already thought of this, I am just an afterthought." Cai Jigang replied respectfully.

Jiang Baili in 1937 was a well-deserved heavyweight in China's military circles. He graduated from the Japanese non-commissioned officer school in his early years, and later studied military affairs in Germany, and after returning to China, he served as the principal of the Baoding Military Academy and the acting president of the Army University. In his career of more than 30 years, he was successively hired as chief of staff or adviser by Zhao Erxun, Duan Qirui, Yuan Shikai, Li Yuanhong, Wu Peifu, Sun Chuanfang, Tang Shengzhi, Chiang Kai-shek, etc., but he never personally commanded a campaign, but only acted as a senior staff member and tossed among the princes. To be precise, Mr. Jiang Baili was a military scientist, not a military strategist, but his military academic achievements are universally recognized. China's earliest idea of the construction of the air force came from Jiang Baili, who was born in the army. He was also the first person to put forward the theory of protracted war against Japan, and is known as the "father of modern military science" in China.

Cai Jigang has always been proud of his talents when he was young, and there are not many people who can look at him, but Cai Jigang has always regarded this veteran in the military world as his lifelong mentor.

On August 13, 1937, the Chinese army preemptively fired the first shot of the Battle of Songhu at the Bazi Bridge in Shanghai, and an earth-shattering bloody battle broke out suddenly, and the total number of troops invested by China and Japan in this battle reached millions of people.

Cai Jigang participated in the Battle of Songhu as the deputy head of the 4th Regiment of the Tax Police, and under the leadership of the head of Sun Liren, he fought a bloody battle with the Japanese army on the front line of Fuzaobang for two weeks. In the blocking battle, Sun Liren took the lead and was wounded in 13 places and then withdrew from the battlefield, Cai Jigang took over the command of the 4th Regiment, and was not carried off the battlefield until the fifth day after he was wounded in three places.

On the surface, Cai Jigang's military career is perfect, after graduating from the military academy, he started from a company commander to a deputy regiment commander, independently commanded the regimental system to fight vicious battles in the war, and experienced the most tragic and bloody modern war, and his qualifications seem to be impeccable. But Cai Jigang's bad deeds are bad in his mouth, and the founding spirit of the Virginia Military Academy is honesty and honor, and Cai Jigang has always regarded this as a golden rule. He has a straightforward personality, is open-mouthed, and is unwilling to say things against his will; he is not accustomed to seeing the intrigues and intrigues among officers, and it is also difficult for him to tolerate the corrupt atmosphere within the national army. When he was the battalion commander, there was once a quartermaster chief who persuaded him to "make a handful" when handling the food expenses of the whole battalion, Cai Jigang immediately turned his face and unceremoniously exposed the quartermaster to the regiment commander Sun Liren, causing this benevolent brother to be demoted by three ranks.

Originally, the tax police corps was unconventional, with a large number of foreign students to manage military training and daily life, which has stood out from the crowd under the traditional xenophobic national conditions, and the officers who have stayed abroad ignore the environment and speak foreign languages to each other, which makes the officers who do not know foreign languages feel inferior, and they regard these foreign officers as outliers. And Cai Jigang's personality is an outlier among the outliers, so he is excluded everywhere. Cai Jigang was disheartened and gradually had the idea of leaving the tax police corps.

In the Battle of Songhu, the Tax Police Corps suffered heavy casualties. After the battle, Huang Jie, the commander of the regiment at that time, was co-opted by Gu Zhutong, the commander of the Third War Zone, and organized the rest into 40 divisions, and the more than 5,000 wounded were left alone. Cai Jigang heard the news, and before his injuries healed, he rushed to the headquarters of the 40th Division to return to the building, and he really didn't want to return to the Tax Police Corps.

Based on these 5,000 wounded, Sun Liren rebuilt the Tax Police Corps in 1938, and soon led his troops to participate in the Battle of Wuhan. At the end of 1941, this unit was reorganized into the new 38th Division, joined the combat sequence of the expeditionary force, and was organized into the new 1st Army after returning to China, becoming one of the five trump cards of the national army.

The Battle of Songhu lasted three months and ended in a crushing defeat, with the capital Nanjing lost. Cai Jigang learned from the pain and came to many painful conclusions, and he believed that although there were many famous generals in China's military circles at that time, there were very few generals who really had grand strategic thinking. It is not only that the generals lack strategic vision, but even at the level of formulating campaign plans and campaign command, they also lack operability. Taking the Battle of Songhu as an example, the commanders of the Nationalist Army High Command showed that they were very mentally weak, and the Songhu area was covered with a dense water network, flat terrain, and a narrow area, which belonged to the shallow and deep nature of strategic defense. It is extremely foolish in terms of strategic guidance to hastily deploy a 700,000-strong army and set up a posture of a decisive battle in an operational territory where there are no preparations for building fortifications on the battlefield and there is no room for maneuver. Cai Jigang was puzzled, why did the commanders of the Command always keep their eyes on Songhu, a small place, in terms of campaign layout and use of troops? If the Nationalist Army takes advantage of the Japanese army's large-scale increase in troops to land in the Songhu area, adopts the method of alternate cover and gradual resistance and retreat, extends the defense depth to the Yangtze River Delta area, leads the main force of the Japanese army to the preset battlefield, relies on the existing national defense fortifications to carry out frontal blockade, carries out large-depth defense, and then flexibly uses lightly armed troops to carry out counterattacks in the water network area south of the Yangtze River, this will not only lengthen the supply line of the Japanese army, but also avoid the threat of Japanese naval artillery firepower. Moreover, it can reduce the combat radius of Japanese aircraft based on aircraft carriers and weaken their combat effectiveness. If this had been the case, the casualties of the Chinese army on the battlefield would not have been so enormous.

The outcome of the Battle of Songhu made Cai Jigang feel very sad, there was no way, although he had foreseen it, but because of the soft-heartedness of people, this bloody battle ended in failure. Cai Jigang's conclusion on this battle is that strategically, the generals of the Nationalist High Command have geniusly drawn up an operational plan to change the strategic direction, so that China has grasped the strategic initiative with its weakness and defensive position, created a precedent for the inferior side to guide the strategic initiative, and planned almost perfectly in terms of strategic guidance.

However, in the Battle of Songhu, the Nationalist Army High Command was extremely stupid in terms of campaign layout and troop use, and its operational guiding ideology could not adapt to the characteristics of the large-depth assault of the mechanized corps, and it did not form a deep echelon configuration, nor did it lack a powerful reserve for the counter-assault campaign. The first-line corps of the Nationalist Army met the enemy with a thin dotted line defense close to the coastline, and suffered heavy casualties under the attack of the superior air fire and naval artillery fire of the Japanese army. However, the second-line corps was tactically unable to provide strong support to the front line, so it could only do nothing but adopt the "refueling tactic" of increasing its strength one after another, constantly sending a large number of reserve troops to the flesh-and-blood combat territory, and gradually crushing these living forces into the flesh and blood mill.

Fortunately, the generals of the Japanese Army were also just as stupid, their tactics were rigid and inflexible, and they would only blindly push forward the hard attack, relying on their superiority in firepower and troops, and specifically attacking the fortified positions of the Nationalist Army, and adopting a hard-hitting approach. If their IQ had been higher, they had carried out a roundabout attack with superior firepower and maneuverability, and directly cut off the line of communication between Shanghai and Nanjing, then the position of the Nationalist army in Shanghai would have been divided and surrounded by the Japanese army and would have lost its combat effectiveness. If this can be done, the Battle of Songhu will not last for three months anyway, and China's 700,000 troops are in danger of being gathered and annihilated. Unfortunately, history does not allow for assumptions.

In the early days of the war, when the enemy was strong and we were weak, Chiang Kai-shek adopted a protracted war of exchanging space for time. Taking into account various factors such as weapons and equipment, combat technology, and the morale of the soldiers, the National Military Commission's assessment of the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army is: one Japanese soldier can fight against eight Chinese soldiers. During the war, the deployment of the Chinese army was basically in accordance with this ratio. This was an extremely helpless choice, and the weaker Chinese army could only pay huge sacrifices in exchange for the limited casualties of the superior Japanese army. This was undoubtedly an unequal exchange, but Chiang Kai-shek still hoped to use the advantage of the Chinese to eventually wear down Japan to defeat.

Throughout the Battle of Songhu, the strategic guidance of the Chinese side was successful, while the campaign layout and campaign command were failed and stupid. Fortunately, the Chinese army gained time for the long-term war of resistance with correct strategic guidance, and at the same time, it also transferred the industrial and strategic resources from the east to the southwest region in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in an orderly manner, laying the material foundation for the long-term war of resistance after that. With this, China will not perish.

Cai Jigang has always been depressed in the central military system due to personality problems and non-Whampoa background, although he was promoted to the rank of colonel due to his extraordinary academic background, but he was only an operational staff officer at the army-level command and never had the right to lead troops.

At the end of 1942, the Military Command Department of the Military Commission needed a liaison officer and war supervisor to travel to and from the major theaters. Xu Yongchang, the minister of military orders, believed that the preferred condition for this superintendent should be an officer who had no connection with any faction in the army, so Cai Jigang was naturally selected. Considering that he often had to deal with the generals, how could the mere colonel serve the public? The Military Command Department deliberated again and again, reported to He Yingqin for special approval, and promoted Cai Jigang to the rank of major general. In fact, this is just a ceremonial fictitious title, and has no real power.

Time flies, and in a blink of an eye, Cai Jigang has returned to China to participate in the war for nearly 13 years. At this time, Cai Jigang, who had just finished attending the military meeting of the First Theater Command, was in a depressed mood, he looked at the verdant hedge blankly, and instinctively felt that Li Jiayu's suggestion was correct, once the Yellow River iron bridge was repaired by the Japanese army, the outcome of the battle would be obvious. At that time, the vast Central Henan Plain will be undefendable, and the Japanese tank clusters that will rush across the Yellow River Iron Bridge will gallop across the Central Henan Plain as if they were in a no-man's land......

As for Jiang Dingwen's reason for insisting on setting up the headquarters in Luoyang, Cai Jigang couldn't laugh or cry. This army general completely blurred the line between the commander and the command organ, and the presence of a senior commander at the front line is completely different from the setting of a high command at the front line!

Cai Jigang's gaze seemed to cross the city of Luoyang, cross the Yellow River, and stretch out to the north bank of the misty Yellow River, and an ominous premonition gradually rose in his heart: the enemy is deploying troops and accumulating strength, and the huge war machine has been launched, which may deliver a fatal blow to the Chinese army at any time, and we will do nothing, and hundreds of thousands of troops will sit idly and wait for the Japanese attack. Sad! My China!

In all wars in ancient and modern times, China and foreign countries, the struggle for the strategic initiative between the two belligerents is the most important issue, and which side has the strategic initiative will be able to control the course of the war and then win the final victory.

So on the battlefield of the Central Plains in the spring of 1944, who on both sides of the war between China and Japan held the strategic initiative? The answer is clear: Japan. This dying empire, which has been consumed by years of war, still holds the strategic initiative.

In fact, the Japanese Empire had a very bad time, starting in 1944, the US military occupied the Marshall Islands, and then bombed the Japanese Combined Fleet base Truk and the Mariana and Caroline Islands. The head of the Japanese military affairs Sato met with Hideki Tojo and offered to withdraw from the Mariana and Caroline Islands. In this way, the Pacific absolute defense circle announced by Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in 1942 was torn open a gap.

On 26 February, U.S. and British troops landed on the Admeralti Islands in northern New Guinea, leaving Rabaul, Japan's South China Sea Dispatch Command, completely isolated.

On March 5, the airborne corps of British Major General Wingate landed on both sides of the Ayeyarwady River in northern Burma. What was even more fatal was that due to the outstanding performance of the American submarine group, the sea transportation lines of the Japanese Empire to send troops and supplies to the South China Sea Theater were severely blocked. In terms of the general trend of the war, the Japanese Empire was like a boxer in the ring who had been hit hard and was about to be knocked out, and only needed the final blow from the opponent's Allied side to end the fight.

Strangely, the bruised boxer uncharacteristically delivered the fatal blow to the victor before he fell, and then he was surprised to find that his opponent who was about to win was knocked to the ground and almost disqualified.

Modern warfare is a general war between countries, and in 1944, when comparing the combat strength of China and Japan, it was not that the Japanese army was too strong, but that the Chinese army was too weak. Where is the weakness? It is not only the disparity in overall national strength and weaponry, but also the disparity in the intelligence of the senior generals of the two sides.

In the spring of 1944, General Shunroku Hatata, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Dispatch Army, convened a military conference at the headquarters of the Dispatch Army in Nanjing, attended by generals of various armies, field armies, and division commanders and above, and drew up a complete set of operational plans, that is, the "No. 1 Operational Plan."

The content of the operation is that this operation will achieve three strategic objectives:

First, under the condition that the US and British navies blockade the Pacific shipping routes, open up a railway communication line from the northeast in the north, across Chinese mainland, and south to Hanoi, Vietnam, and connect with the empire from the northeast to the Korean Peninsula, maintaining the freedom of entry and exit between the empire and the mainland.

Second, eliminate the Sino-US air bases in southwest China and eliminate the threat of their bombing of the Japanese mainland.

Third, to eliminate the main forces of the Chongqing army, especially Chiang Kai-shek's central descendants.

The battle layout and use of troops by General Toshiroku Hata were as follows: In the first phase of the operation, the railway line between Zhengzhou and Xinyang would be opened, and the heavy army groups in the defense area of China's first theater would be encircled and annihilated, especially the core main force of the theater, Tang Enbo's ace 13th Army.

Senior General Okamura Ninji of the North China Front Army was the commander-in-chief of the operation. The 37th, 62nd, and 110th Divisions led by Lieutenant General Uchiyama Eitaro, commander of the 12th Army of the North China Front, were independently mixed into the 7th and 9th Brigades, the 4th Cavalry Brigade, and the 3rd Tank Division broke through the Yellow River defense line from Zhengzhou and launched an offensive along the southern section of the Pinghan Railway, crushing the Chinese army in one fell swoop, occupying and ensuring the smooth flow of the southern section of the Pinghan Railway.

Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama, commander of the 11th Army, set out from Xinyang with the strength of seven brigades of the main force of the 11th Independent Infantry Brigade to fight against the North China Front. The 13th Army, with a part of its forces, advanced from the Bengbu area of Anhui Province along the southern side of the Yellow Flood Area to fight against the North China Front. Lieutenant General Takuma Yamashita, commander of the 5th Air Force, coordinated the attack of ground forces with an air force. In this battle, the total number of troops invested by the Japanese army was initially set at 200,000.

In order to implement the "No. 1 Operational Plan", the Japanese army base camp poured all the army combat strength and materials accumulated since the Meiji Restoration into this operation. The Japanese base camp decided that the Chinese Dispatch Force would give the highest priority to all the troops and support requirements in the implementation of Operation Plan No. 1. In terms of troop mobilization, the Japanese army base camp decided to mobilize another 510,000 troops, giving priority to making up for all the shortages of the Chinese dispatch army; As much as possible, the B and C divisions that were originally in the Chinese theater were upgraded to the A divisions, so that the combat strength of the Japanese army's A divisions and regiments with all the supplementary and special operations units will reach 32,000. In addition, the Japanese base camp also transferred troops from the Japanese mainland and the Kwantung Army to further support the No. 1 operation of the Chinese Dispatch Army.

The Japanese army's advance logistical preparations for the No. 1 operation plan were almost unimaginably thorough. First of all, the aviation regiment in the Chinese theater was reorganized, and the air force alone had a reserve of fuel for half a year, and a reserve of ammunition for as many as two years.

For the first time, the army sent tank divisions that had never been used on the Chinese battlefield. The armies participating in the war were prepared to use more than half a year's supply of food and ammunition, and mobilized 67,000 horses, 13,000 transport vehicles, and 10,000 supply ships.

The Japanese base camp prepared all the operational needs for Operation Plan No. 1, from field medical equipment to the repair of soldiers' military boots.

The arrow is on the string! The Japanese army's operation No. 1 will soon become a nightmare for the Chinese army.

Now, the Japanese army's repair project at the Yellow River Iron Bridge has obviously been accelerated, and the artillery interference of the artillery of the Han Wangcheng Nationalist Army has simply become a symbolic action to deal with the errand, while the artillery fire of the Japanese army on the opposite side has not slackened at all, as long as the Nationalist army dares to fire a cannon, it will immediately return the 20 cannons, and then the artillery of the Nationalist Army simply did not say a word and remained silent. As a result, under the watchful eye of the Chinese defenders, the Yellow River Iron Bridge was extended to the south bank little by little for nearly three months, and at the same time, the laying of the pontoon bridge was also progressing rapidly under the cover of Japanese firepower.

At the beginning of April, the Yellow River Iron Bridge was finally completed.

Cai Jigang, who was worried, sent reports to Chongqing one after another, reporting that there were serious deviations in the operational plan of the First Theater, and at the same time applying to use the air force to blow up the newly repaired iron bridge over the Yellow River at all costs.

The director of the first department of the Military Command Department reprimanded Cai Jigang on the phone: "I said Xiao Cai, the battle plan of the first theater was issued by the Military Command Department according to the intelligence preparation, and your task is to supervise the implementation of all departments. Moreover, the US military attache in Chongqing believed that the preparations for the Japanese offensive in Henan were nothing more than spring exercises, and the Japanese army would soon be able to return to its original defensive positions. How? Are you better than the staff officers of the Allied forces in the United States? ”

Cai Jigang endured his anger and said: "Director, the lowly position does not think that the low rank should shut up, this is a major matter related to the life and death of hundreds of thousands of troops, the lowly position clearly sees the hidden crisis but does not speak, where is his conscience?" Now the repair of the iron bridge over the Yellow River is a clear fact, and the intelligence that the Japanese army's heavy equipment is gathering in Xinxiang is also confirmed. Once a large number of enemy tanks crossed the bridge, the rivers in the central Henan Plain were scarce and all dry fields, and there was almost no danger to defend. Our army lacks anti-tank weapons, and the consequences will be unimaginable! In my opinion, bombing the bridge with bombers is the last resort. Director, we don't have time, we have to find a way! ”

The hall director's tone softened: "Well...... I could have reported it to the above, but I can't guarantee whether it will be approved or not, and of course, the responsibility is not yours. ”

Hanging up the phone, Cai Jigang collapsed on the sofa in a gloomy manner, and he sadly found that the generals who held a lot of power seemed to have no brains for fighting at all.

Chiang Kai-shek, Xu Yongchang, Chiang Dingwen and others had problems with their brains, and the brains of Lieutenant General Stilwell, the chief of staff of the Allied forces in the China theater, were not much better.

In the past month, the silent battlefield in the Central Plains has shown more and more crises, and the reconnaissance planes of the US 14th Air Force have discovered that a large number of troop transport trucks are heading south of Xinxiang at the twists and turns of the Yellow River, and that Japanese convoys in northern Hubei have crossed the provincial border and are concentrating on Xinyang in southern Henan. Along the Yangtze River, countless Japanese ships were assembling and advancing towards Wuhan. General Chennault, commander of the 14th Air Force, warned Stilwell that the deployment of Japanese troops in Henan was the most dangerous situation since Pearl Harbor, and suggested that the airlift volume of the Hump route be increased to 8,000 tons in April, and that bombers should be immediately sent along the Yangtze River to saturate bombing Japanese ships and the lines of communication in Jiujiang and Yueyang.

Since most of the US airfields were in South China, and the B-17 and B-24 bombers had limited bomb load and range, making it difficult to provide intensive support for the battlefield in central Henan, Chennault planned to mobilize planes to be stationed at the Sichuan-Shaanxi airfields in the Hanzhong and Ankang areas in an attempt to blow up the Yellow River iron bridge before the Japanese army crossed the Yellow River. But Stilwell believed that the Japanese army did not have the ability to attack in a big way on the Chinese battlefield, and Chennault was a little "fussed." The 14th Air Force's first mission was to defend the B-29 bomber base in Chengdu, and the rest he told Chennault to "meddle around" and stop Chennault's suggestions and actions.

Regarding the suggestion to bomb the iron bridge over the Yellow River, Stilwell proposed that the First Theater of Operations must provide information on the anti-aircraft fire of the Japanese bridgehead in Bishan, otherwise it would be "inconvenient" for him to send planes to bomb it. What is puzzling is that the US B-29 planes did not put forward this condition when they bombed the Japanese mainland. The garrison of the national army in Hanwangcheng could not get the air defense information of the other side at all, and it was too late to collect it even if it was about to come, so the bombing of the iron bridge over the Yellow River was over.

The Japanese troops at the bridgehead seem to have increased by several hundred, desperately building fortifications. Their positions were nearly tripling eastward along the chasm, and although the bridge had been built and the shelling on both sides had ceased, the situation was becoming more and more urgent.

100,000 urgent military intelligence reports arrived in Luoyang, and the reply of the First Theater Commander's Department was still the same wording:

"Pay attention to vigilance and surveillance, and don't act rashly!"

April 8 was a sunny day, early in the morning, there was a burst of bells from the position of the defenders of Hanwangcheng, and several ordinary people led their cattle to the position. The leader is a man in his thirties, with a sturdy five-short figure, a beard, and a pair of small eyes that keep looking left and right. He had a pencil in his left ear, a dirty and torn felt hat, and a blue cloth gown, a cloth belt around his waist, and the front and back hems of the robe were lifted and tucked between the belts, looking very lean. The other two donkeys were both lean young men in short clothes, and their black cloth trousers were raised high to their knees.

A second lieutenant of the national army stopped the farmer: "Hey! Where to go? Any idea what this place is? Go, go, stay away from here. ”

The strong man took off his hat and bowed to the second lieutenant and said: "Boss, I am the shopkeeper of the blacksmith shop in Wangcun Town, West, I heard that the team sells cannonball skins, and I came to buy them, which also saves the bosses from spending time and effort to send them to the set." ”

The second lieutenant glanced at the strong man up and down, and said suspiciously: "Every time, we send the shell skins to the shopkeeper Li in Guangwu Town to sell, and no one has ever come to buy them." Besides, haven't you heard that there is a blacksmith shop in Wangcun Town? ”

At this time, the company commander hurriedly came, checked the two donkeys' baskets, found nothing, he said with a happy face: "It's okay now, you have to borrow a mule from the logistics department every time you make a delivery, and if you don't make a good noise, you have to quarrel over the money, are you ......?"

The strong man hurriedly bowed again: "Boss, I am from Wangcun Town, the blacksmith shop has just opened for five days, and it is difficult to do business these days, alas...... As the saying goes, peers are enemies, and in the future, I will wrap up the shells here, and I will pay two cents more per pound than the shopkeeper Li in Guangwu Town, what do you think? ”

The company commander was happy in his heart, but he remained silent on the surface: "The river defense is heavily forbidden for idle personnel to enter, and I let you in, and I still have a role to play, so I can't let the above know." I can't add two cents per catty, so let's add five cents per catty and we'll make a deal. What do you think? ”

The strong man looked very embarrassed, he gritted his teeth and spat on the ground: "Medium!" Add five cents to five cents, this deal I do! ”

The company commander immediately ordered a senior soldier to take two young men to the rear trench to carry shell skins, and at the same time ordered the second lieutenant to supervise the counting here, and then he went back to the company headquarters.

The strong man smiled and pulled out a scale from the rattan basket, and waited patiently for the two men to carry the shell skins and pour them on the ground, while the other two soldiers lifted the scales and the rattan basket with a flat pole, and the second lieutenant wrote down the number in a small book. The strong man took the pencil from his ear, and leaned against the big green mule to write something down in the little book.

The second lieutenant was very unhappy in his heart, and said in his heart that I can count it, what else do you remember? Could it be that you are not at ease, and you still have to reconcile accounts with me? The officers of the national army are all a little temperamental, they are used to running rampant, and they never show much politeness to the common people. The second lieutenant coldly grabbed the small book in the strong man's hand, and glanced at it casually and was about to throw it away, who knew that this glance was not tight, and the second lieutenant was shocked into a cold sweat.

The second lieutenant shouted: "You are a spy! He grabbed the strong man by the collar.

The strong man was prepared, he grabbed the second lieutenant's wrist with his backhand, skillfully used judo throwing skills, threw the second lieutenant out of the big green mule, and smashed it on two unsuspecting soldiers who had passed the scale, the strong man pulled out the pistol from his arms like lightning and fired three shots in a row, and then lifted off the rattan basket on the green mule's back and flew on, and smashed the green mule's buttocks with the handle of the gun, and the big green mule rushed out......

All this happened in just a dozen seconds, the position was in chaos, the company commander rushed out of the company headquarters, and shouted wildly at the beginning of a big dream: "Japanese spies! Shoot me, don't let him run! ”

Wherever shots were fired, the guns were set up by bunkers, and the soldiers rushed to grab their guns and huddled together in the narrow traffic trenches.

The machine guns in the fortifications of the position clattered, and the strong man was already riding a mule into the deep ditch next to the position. The company commander panted and led the soldiers to the edge of the ditch and opened fire on the Japanese spies who were running away. Unexpectedly, the Japanese artillery on the opposite side rang out, and a dense salvo turned the position into a sea of fire, and the company commander and the soldiers were not even stunned, and immediately fled back to the bunker.

As a result of the incident, an officer and two soldiers were killed, and the two young men who were carrying shell skins were caught red-handed and interrogated as Chinese peasants hired by the Japanese army. The company commander had nowhere to vent his anger, and he was even exempted from asking for instructions, so he took out his pistol and killed him on the spot.

Coincidentally, there was also an accident on the defensive ground of the west embankment of Zhongmu County that afternoon, and it was the easternmost post of the position.

It turned out that the sentries at the three posts were lonely, and they calculated that it was still early for dinner, so they left the posts and crowded into a bunker, where they and the two machine gunners pushed up Pai Gow to gamble. After a while, the five soldiers argued over the order of the cards, and the two brothers also started to fight, one of the machine gunners punched a sentry out of the nose with blood, and the other three soldiers hurriedly stepped forward to pull the fight. The brethren were tossing and turning, and at some point eight heavily armed "national army" soldiers came into the bunker. Under the threat of bayonets, the five card-playing soldiers were gagged with rags and tied up with flowers. The soldiers stared at the frightened eyes and stood in a row against the wall with trepidation, they thought that the other party would give a prisoner of war treatment, but the other party showed no mercy and instantly nailed five soldiers to the wall with bayonets......

This is a reconnaissance detachment of the Japanese army, and their task is to infiltrate, reconnoitre, and raid. The Japanese soldiers quickly wiped the blood from their bayonets and walked out of the pillboxes. Three men entered the sentry post and continued to guard as sentries, while the rest of the men disguised themselves as patrols and swaggered along the edge of the communication trench to the depth of the position, recording the positions of the defenders' gun emplacements, fortifications, and pillboxes along the way.

The sky gradually darkened, a cook carrying a rice basket into the bunker, seeing the tragic situation in the bunker, he couldn't help but let out a terrible scream, turned around and rushed out of the bunker to the sky to fire the alarm.

"Horn!" A deafening gunshot broke the silence of the position......

Before the cooks could flee after firing their guns, a bullet was hit in the head, and the Japanese soldiers lurking at the sentry post quickly rushed into the pillbox and ambushed them, and a lieutenant and a platoon of soldiers ran towards the place where the guns rang out, colliding with the Japanese patrol pretending to be a patrol.

The lieutenant just shouted: "Password? The Japanese special forces opened fire, and the national soldiers immediately returned fire, and the guns burst into flames on the position...... The Nationalist army suffered several casualties. The Japanese special forces alternately covered the retreat, and the lieutenant of the Nationalist army swept through the machine gun, knocking down the two Japanese soldiers running behind, and the rest ran as fast as they could, running over the pillbox towards the river beach. The soldiers of the national army swarmed up, and suddenly the machine guns in the pillbox rang out, and the soldiers of the national army were knocked down by surprise, and the rest were suppressed by the heavy fire and could not raise their heads.

The lieutenant was still calm, and knowing that the bunker had been occupied by the Japanese, he took a corporal and jumped into the traffic trench, slowly approaching the back door of the bunker. The lieutenant kicked open the wooden door and threw both hands in. After the explosion, the machine-gun fire stopped. The lieutenant found that there was only one Japanese soldier in the bunker, which had been blown to pieces, while the rest of the Japanese had already disappeared without a trace.

These two incidents were reported to the First War Zone Governor's Department in Luoyang at the same time, and Jiang Dingwen finally realized the seriousness of the matter. At this time, even an idiot will understand that the attack of the Japanese army is imminent! He ordered in a fit of rage: "All the river defense positions are under martial law, the defenders are put on first-class alert, fortifications are reinforced, grain and ammunition reserves are increased, and patrols are sent to patrol day and night to closely monitor every move on the opposite bank." ”

Cai Jigang, who was on the side, took a step forward and said: "Sir, the Japanese army's offensive intention is very clear, and I propose to send additional troops to the Hanwangcheng and Zhongmu County Xidi positions, and urgently transfer anti-artillery reinforcements to the two flanks of the Hanwangcheng position. And also...... The 27th Division of the 15th Provisional Army guarding the West Embankment of Central Mu was poorly equipped and weak in combat effectiveness, so I suggested that a division be transferred from the 85th Army to strengthen the defense of Zhongmu. ”

Dong Yingbin, chief of staff of the Commander's Department, also agreed: "Inspector Cai is reasonable, and it is still too late to deploy!" ”

Jiang Dingwen disagreed: "How can you conclude that the Japanese army is allowed to cross the river at these two locations?" This may be the enemy's trick, and we must not be fooled! Besides, the 85th Army will draw a division to Zhongmu, who will replace them with the task of guarding Linyou? A radish and a pit, who is responsible for the loss of Linru? ”

Cai Jigang was anxious: "Sir, these two locations are exactly the left and right wings of Zhengzhou, if they are broken through by the enemy at the same time, Zhengzhou will face the enemy on three sides, it is too dangerous!" Once Zhengzhou is lost, it will immediately become the advance base of the Japanese army, and this place is the meeting point of the two major railways of Pinghan and Longhai, and it is very convenient for the enemy to receive help, and the battle situation of our army will become very difficult! ”

Jiang Dingwen simply turned around and said slowly: "Xiao Cai, the battle plan was approved by the Military Command Department, and it has now been implemented in place, how can it be changed temporarily?" I can't afford this responsibility, and you Xiao Cai can't afford it! ”

Cai Jigang had to make a final effort, but was dragged outside by Chief of Staff Dong Yingbin.

Dong Yingbin persuaded in a low voice: "Brother Cai, if you insist on it, you will be guilty, why bother?" When the sky falls, there is Chief Jiang supporting him, what about him...... Ouch, dude, you...... What's wrong with you? ”

At this time, Cai Jigang's tears couldn't hold back his eyes: "Brother Yingbin, it's over, it's all over, our platoon is like ten fingers pressing ten fleas, none of which dare to let go, there is no defense focus and mobile forces, once the enemy breaks through and divides and surrounds, ten fingers will be cut off one by one." By that time...... Hundreds of thousands of our troops will die without a place to bury! ”

Dong Yingbin sighed: "But we are soft-spoken, who will listen to us?" ”

"Oh God! Please, save us China! Cai Jigang prayed with tears streaming down his face.

[1]

General Galen, formerly known as Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukhel, joined the Bolshevik Party in 1916, organized the Red Guards in 1917, formed the Red Army the following year as division commander, in 1921 as commander-in-chief of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, and the following year as army commander. In 1924, he came to Guangzhou under the pseudonym Galen and served as the chief military adviser of the National. In the summer of 1927, he returned to the Soviet Union and served as assistant to the commander of the Ukrainian Military District, commander of the Far Eastern Special Army, and commanded the Battle of the Eastern Railway in 1929. Later, he was appointed commander of the Far Eastern Military District. In 1935, he was awarded the rank of marshal, becoming one of the first five marshals of the Soviet Army. In October 1938, he was arrested on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiracy" and subsequently executed. In 1956, he was rehabilitated.

[2]

The yellow race, also known as the "Mongolian race", has the following characteristics: slightly yellow or light brown skin, black and smooth hair, prominent cheekbones, and Mongolian upper eyelid wrinkles. There are two branches of the yellow race: the Asian branch and the American branch. The Asian clade is mainly found in the central, eastern, and northeastern regions of Asia. The American branch mainly refers to the original inhabitants of the North and South American continents, such as the Indians. They were people of the Asian branch who migrated to the Americas through the Chukchi Sea and Alaska. The aborigines in the story have no concept of Asia and China, they have only seen Indians, so they regard Cai Jigang as Indians.