The deputy battalion commander of the puppet Mongolian army took advantage of the night to break away from the ranks of the cavalry company of the Eighth Route Army.

Just now, when following Xia Lianshan out of Hekou Village and flanking his old troops, the deputy battalion commander had roughly clarified the offensive and defensive layout around Hekou Village, and he even heard the shouting and scolding of several subordinates he was familiar with on the opposite side. When Xia Lianshan was forced to lead the soldiers to retreat to the place where the horses stopped, the deputy battalion commander lay motionless on the icy frozen ground; In the thick of the night, no one noticed that he was left behind.

He lay on his stomach until the end of the nearby battle, and the cavalry of the Eighth Route Army had already ridden away and disappeared, and then he dared to shout his name and call for answers. In this way, the deputy commander of the cavalry battalion of the puppet Mongolian army returned to the crowd of fellow villagers and the old department.

Du Dongqiang immediately brought this old unit, which controlled the deployment of the second battalion of the Eighth Route Army Forest Division in Xiping Village, to Kosuke Otsuka. The commander of the Japanese army has already learned from the call from the Wencheng Brigade Headquarters that the attack on Xiping is also unfavorable, and now the unexpected return of the deputy battalion commander of the Mongolian Xinjiang Army is tantamount to sending charcoal in the snow.

The commander of the Hagiwara Akira Brigade was equally pleased to receive the report and instructed Kosuke Otsuka to immediately send the deputy battalion commander to the chief of staff of the river in Xiping Village.

More than an hour later, the chief of staff of the brigade outside Xiping Village, Hebian Dazuo, learned in detail the details of the Eighth Route Army in this big village in front of him: the battalion headquarters of a battalion of the Lin Division, two infantry companies, a cavalry company (which had galloped to Hekou Village, more than ten miles away), a recruit company, an artillery squad, and other health teams and baggage personnel; To the surprise of the chief of staff of the riverside, the deputy battalion commander of the cavalry regiment of the Mongolian Xinjiang Army swore that he had seen several prisoners of war of the Imperial Army in the village letting off steam. Looking at the color of his uniform, he seems to be a member of the cavalry wing of the Sena Division.

It should be the officers and soldiers of the cavalry wing of the division and regiment who were captured in the attack on Dawangyu in Little Elm Mountain! The chief of staff of the riverside could not help but feel a burst of ecstasy.

On the list of the attack and missing Iwata Squadron of the Sena Division Cavalry Wing, there is a 22-year-old warrant officer, the eldest son of a Nakasa staff officer of the First Army of the North China Front, whose family is a Japanese nobleman. When the Iwata Cavalry Squadron later returned to the battlefield to collect the bodies, it did not find the whereabouts of the six men, including the warrant officer. For this reason, the divisions and brigades are under considerable pressure. Now there is nowhere to find the iron shoes, and it takes no effort to get it.

At this time, the siege of Xiping had been frustrated, and the two sides were facing each other in tension and silence. The chief of staff of the riverside, who learned a series of important information in the village, immediately made tactical adjustments; In addition, a crack infantry squad was specially dispatched, and it was planned that the deputy battalion commander of the Mongolian Xinjiang Army would lead the way, and after breaking through the village, go straight to the place where the imperial prisoners of war were held, and make every effort to rescue them. He even ordered a complete cessation of artillery fire on Xiping Village, lest the shells accidentally injure the prisoners of war in the dark.

This invisibly delayed the time of the rout of the second battalion of the Eighth Route Army Forest Division in Xiping Village.

When Feng Changzhi, the commander of the second battalion, led less than a platoon of soldiers to the end of the village to plug the leakage, he encountered a vicious Japanese soldier halfway; They were the spearmen of the Tyumen brigade that had just broken through from the end of the village. This group of spearhead soldiers was quite fast at first, but the soldiers of the 7th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Eighth Route Army Forest Division, although they lost the position at the end of the village, they were always stubbornly entangled with this group of Japanese soldiers advancing towards the village; Once inside the village, the Japanese troops were also blocked by the scattered courtyards of houses from time to time in the dark, and the pace of the assault slowed down.

Feng Changzhi and the others collided with the Japanese soldiers at this time, and then it was another hand-to-hand fight.

After Wang Shuanglong, the commander of the 6th company, found that the Japanese army in front of him was adopting feint tactics, he immediately thought that the enemy's real target might be the head and tail of the village on both wings, and at this moment, the news of the fierce battle at the end of the village came, Wang Shuanglong did not hesitate to order a platoon to rush out to help, this platoon, just when Feng Changzhi led his troops to start a white-knuckle battle with the Japanese soldiers, it was killed in time. The soldiers of the 6th Company, like the 5th Company of Hekou Village, belonged to the main force of the 2nd Battalion of the Forest Division, and their combat strength was very strong. The rear team that had just followed up was intercepted and harassed by the rest of the 7th Company along the way, and in the end, this squadron of the Tyumen Brigade was expelled from Xiping Village in a fast-in, fast-out way.

At the same time, a squadron of Japanese troops that appeared at the head of the village had just finished a not very successful sneak attack. The reason why it was not very successful was that the timing of their attack was not well timed. According to the plan, after the Japanese squadron at the end of the village succeeded, this squadron would take advantage of the panic within the Eighth Route Army to launch an attack and strive to enter the village, at least, to seize a few houses at the head of the village as a bridgehead.

However, the rumbling sound of artillery affected their judgment, and they failed to attack in time. Moreover, defending the head of the village were two platoons personally led by Wei Xin, the commander of the 7th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Lin Division, not only two platoons, but also two crooked handles - the Japanese Taisho 11 light machine gun.

These two crooked machine guns were all captured from the recent battle of Hekou Village, when a total of three were captured, one of which was damaged by a cannon in Zhao Yejiao and has not been repaired so far. The two good ones are fully loaded with eight* and use the same 6.5mm rounds as the Type 38 rifles. However, half of the soldiers of the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion are currently using the captured Type 38 rifles, and the ammunition should be supplied to them first. What's more, this kind of Japanese machine gun has a complex structure, and as a light machine gun, it also needs a special sub-shooter to reload and reload, so Wu Zijian did not take this trophy in his eyes at that time, but gave it to the battalion headquarters; The battalion commander Feng Changzhi assigned all of them to the 7th Company.

The 7th Company originally had a Czech light machine gun, and this time it was unexpectedly cheaper, although there was not much ammunition, and it would take a lot of effort to figure out these two Oriental goods, but the company commander Wei Xin was still very happy. The 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion, which was also stationed in Xiping, had asked the battalion headquarters to take one away, but first, the 6th Company already had two Czech-style, and second, the bullets of the crooked sub-machine guns were not common to the Czech-style.

Tonight, the two crooked machine guns were set up in two bunkers at the head of the village, one on the roof of a house and the other in a cylindrical stack of firewood, forming a horn of each other. When the squadron of the Tyumen Brigade quietly rushed from the wilderness to the head of Xiping Village, the two crooked men of the 7th Company opened fire one after the other.

Wei Xin is a native of Suide, Shaanxi, has no experience in the Long March Red Army, but is a martial arts family, and likes to study the ancient art of war, after joining the Red Army in northern Shaanxi, he was quickly promoted to a middle-level commander, and the Eighth Route Army was reorganized as a deputy company commander of the Lin Division, and the second battalion set off from the Wutai area to the eve of Guanmen Mountain in central and southern Jinzhong, he was promoted to the commander of the 7th Company.

Just now, the commander of the 7th Company personally commanded these two crooked machine guns to tightly seal off the wilderness in front of the village with crossfire, causing this squadron of the Tyumen Brigade to suffer many casualties and retreat at the first touch.

The squadron leader of the Japanese army was shocked that the position set up by the Eighth Route Army at the head of the village actually had a Taisho 11 light machine gun. Although the Japanese-made machine gun uses bullets of the same caliber as the 38 big cover, the special internal structure of the machine gun makes it emit a completely different sound from the 38 gun when it fires, and this sound is really familiar to the Japanese officers and soldiers, and they can be distinguished from a distance of several miles.

Because the Japanese soldiers were only a dozen feet away from the two domestically made machine guns when they were cross-fired, some of their soldiers were beaten to the ground, and the surviving officers, both officers and soldiers, felt that it was two Taisho 11 types roaring at the same time.

While urgently ordering the retreat to a safe place, the Japanese squadron leader reported to the group commander Tyumen Shaozo: The Eighth Route Army used our light machine guns to block the advance route at the head of the village, and the fire was very fierce, and asked the brigade to provide artillery support.

How did they know that the two Taisho 11-style rapid shots of the Eighth Route Army just now almost consumed more than half of the ammunition. If you continue to fire at this rate of fire, you will soon be declared.

The chief of staff of the Hagiwara Brigade, who was in charge of the battlefield, received reports of the failure of the attack at the end of the village and the head of the village; The assault at the end of the village was almost successful, but at the last moment, it was desperately driven out of the village by the Eighth Route Army.

Damn the night!

The chief of staff by the river cursed, but looked up helplessly at the dark night sky—if there was moonlight or daylight, the battle would have been over. With the strength of more than 1,000 people in the Tyumen brigade, it is absolutely impossible for the hundreds of Eighth Route Army troops in this large village opposite to be opponents. But now, the Eighth Route Army made good use of the cover of night and started a chaotic battle with the imperial army. The people actually have cannons, and they hit them very accurately, and just now, I found out that they also have Taisho 11 machine guns!

According to the preliminary battle reports, the squadrons had suffered some casualties. In desperation, the chief of staff on the riverside gave Tyumen Shaozo an order to temporarily shrink his troops. Dazuo was already looking at his watch, and the brigade commander and major general sitting in Wencheng clearly ordered the Tyumen brigade to return to the Wencheng railway station in the morning by the automatic convoy of the brigade station, and the Pulu front line was also in urgent need of this elite army.

Just when the chief of staff of the riverside was about to re-discuss the attack plan with Tyumen Shaozuo, the captured deputy battalion commander of the cavalry regiment of the Mongolian Xinjiang Army escaped, and when he poured beans into a bamboo tube and took out the virtual reality of the entire Eighth Route Army in Xiping Village, the chief of staff of the riverside finally relaxed his painful frowning brows, and turned to show a smug smile.