"General, we have a detailed work within the high-level around Yan Xishan," Kojima Masao continued meaningfully: "Since the Battle of Taiyuan last year, Yan Xishan led the rest of the Jin army to defeat the southwest of Jin, and the main force of the Lin Division of the Eighth Route Army has reached the area of the Fen River and the Luliang Mountains under the personal leadership of Lin Biao. In this regard, the soil emperor of Shanxi is like a fish in his throat, and he has been guarding against the strong Lin Shi to expand his territory under his nose. ”

The brigade commander Hagiwara Akira had already heard about this section of the Kuomintang and Communist armies, so he did not say anything but kept listening.

"At present, under the strong blows of the two wings of our division and the Shangang division, Yan Xishan's position in the southwest of Shanxi is shaky, and it is possible to cross the Yellow River west and take refuge in Shaanxi at any time; But has the general thought about it? Once this Shanxi Tu Emperor went to Shaanxi, wouldn't the southwest of Jin become a monopoly of the Eighth Route Army! ”

Hagiwara Akira was casually playing with the hand of the white child in the chess box, suddenly stopped, and then asked: "Lin Biao has left after being shot, won't his troops be deeply affected by this?" ”

The head of the secret service shook his head, saying that the overall combat quality of the Lin division was very strong, and the command talent in the army was even more crouching tiger, hidden dragon, and it was reported that Chen Guang, who had taken over as the division commander, was also a fierce general who could fight well, and the impact of Lin Biao's departure should be limited.

"The communist army, unlike the Kuomintang army, faced us head-on, but always hid in the corner and stabbed a sword coldly. Itagaki Seishiro suffered a loss at Pingxingguan last year, and a few days ago, the detachment of the Xia Yuan Division suffered the same loss at Shentouling in the southeast of Jin; Also, the attack on the flight group at the Yangmingbao airport - these are the sneaky works of the Communist Eighth Route Army. ”

The brigade commander, Major General, snorted angrily, and the expression on his face was full of disdain. Masao Kojima lost no time in adding:

"When the Otsuka Wing of our division had just attacked Fengdian, the cavalry wing was also attacked by the Eighth Route Army in Little Elm Mountain."

As soon as the words fell, Hagiwara Akira stood up suddenly, his look of disdain changed to anger, of course he knew that the Eighth Route Army that attacked the cavalry wing at that time was also from the Lin Division, and this Eighth Route Army was still entrenched at the foot of Guanmen Mountain and on the bank of the Qinglong River!

Kojima Masao was startled by the actions of the brigade commander at first, but he soon found that after the other party took the case, there was no further words and actions, on the contrary, he slowly sat back in place - he understood Hagiwara Akira's unspeakable secrets very well, now that the garrison of Wencheng is lacking, and the Songjiagou comfort women's secret camp in Xiaoyushu Mountain needs to be guarded, the general himself actually has no troops to adjust, even in the face of a small force of the Eighth Route Army of a few hundred people at the foot of Guanmen Mountain, he is currently powerless against it.

However, this just confirms the cunning and shrewdness of the Communist Eighth Route Army from another angle, they absolutely did not appear in front of the front of the heavy assault of the imperial army, but singled out the weak links to provoke, not only successfully preserving their own strength, but also unknowingly expanding their territory. If in the near future, both Yan Xishan and Wei Lihuang's forces withdraw from Shanxi, then only the Communist Army can cause trouble for the First Army.

"There is a saying among the people of China: The dragon is trapped in the shallows and is played by shrimp, and the current situation of our brigade can be described by this saying;" After a while, the brigade commander and Major General, who spoke again, had calmed down a lot: "This is also a matter of no choice, let's let the communist army be proud for a while!" Next, whether it is the main force of the division led by General Sena, or the Saijo Wing of our brigade seconded to the Yamaoka Division, as long as there is a force to end the battle in southern and southwestern Jinjin and return to Shiwencheng, it will definitely annihilate the communist army here in one fell swoop with the momentum of thunder! ”

Speaking of the last sentence, Hagiwara Akira's right hand clenched into a fist and struck the pear blossom wooden chessboard hard, shaking the round and bulging chess pieces on the board, and all trembled.

The main force of the Sena Division, which was talked about by Hagiwara Akira, and the Saijo Wing, which was temporarily assigned to the Yamaoka Division, were in a situation of ice and fire at this moment.

The so-called main force of the Sena Division was actually the two infantry wings of the Kato Brigade, plus the artillery, cavalry, engineer, and baggage wings directly under the division, as well as a railway brigade and a chariot (tank) brigade reinforced by the North China Front Headquarters, as well as dozens of planes attached to the flying group. Under the personal command of the division commander, Lieutenant General Sena, and the brigade commander, Major General Kato, assumed the command of the former enemy, the direction of attack was along the Nantongpu Railway. Now, they have advanced to the southwestern border of the mountain, which is wrapped in the Yellow River, and are about to launch a general attack on Fenglingdu, the terminus of the Tongpu Railway, and they can complete the battle at any time.

However, in stark contrast to the triumphant advance of the main force of the Sena Division in southern Jinnan, the troops on its right side attacking southwestern Jinxi suffered repeated setbacks. In this direction, it was actually a mixed brigade, which was temporarily formed by a wing of the Honkawa Brigade of the Yamaoka Division and a wing of the Hagiwara Brigade of the Sena Division (i.e., the Saijo Wing, which Hagiwara Akira never remembered), and was commanded by Major General Honkawa Province of the Yamaoka Division.

Considering the proximity of the battlefield to the south of Jinnan and the southwest of Jin, the unification of the two forces was carried out by Lieutenant General Sena for general coordination. While Hagiwara Akira was in the rear of Bunjo day and night hoping for the battle on the front line to end as soon as possible, Lieutenant General Sena was also frequently inquiring about and remotely controlling the battle in southwest Jinxi without a headache, and the telephone and telegraph exchanges between him and the third major general of Motokawa Province have been happening every day recently.

For the commander of the Benchuan Brigade of the Shangang Division, the setback he suffered in the southwest of Jin was far from expected before the offensive began: after all, the mixed brigade he commanded was facing the Jin army of Yan Xishan, and from past experience, the combat effectiveness of the Jin army was obviously not the same as that of the Central Army in China.

In late February, almost simultaneously with the main force of Sena's division starting from Wencheng and attacking southward along the Tongpu Railway, the mixed brigade of Benchuan also set out from Fenyang and Xiaoyi and began to attack southwest Jin; The difference is that the Benchuan Mixed Brigade took the mountain road, and the forward pointed directly at Xi County, where the main force of the Jin army in Yan Xishan was located.

Pre-war intelligence showed that the Jin army that retreated to the southwest of Shanxi with Xi County as the center was mainly two armies, Wang Jingguo's 19th Army and Chen Changjie's 61st Army, which were distributed in several county towns such as Xi County, Daning, Puxian, and Xiangning; In actual combat, the two sides fought repeatedly around the above-mentioned counties.

However, the commander of the Motokawa Brigade had two major miscalculations in this attack.

First, it underestimated the courage of the Jin army to defend its hometown. The ground where the two sides fought was already the last large territory of the Jin army in Shanxi, and their Yan commanders were even ready to cross the Yellow River west to escape Shanxi, but at the time of the final decisive battle, both Yan Xishan himself and his Jin army showed a lot of decisiveness, which made the battle quite fierce.

Second, I did not expect that in addition to Yan Xishan's Imperial Forest Army and Jin Army, the Lin Division of the Communist Eighth Route Army also appeared on the battlefield in the southwest of Shanxi; And it has now been ascertained that this unit is a complete main brigade of the Lin Shi Chen Brigade, which was secretly interspersed in the southwest of Shanxi at the end of last year; It is personally commanded by Lin Biao, a famous general and division commander who can fight well. This time, in many battles, large and small, the Jin Army and the Eighth Route Army echoed each other from afar, serving each other as horns, and the results were remarkable; Caused considerable trouble for the mixed brigades.

Now that more than a month has passed, the battle situation in southwest Jin is still very chaotic, and the mixed brigade of Major General Benchuan has not yet achieved the tactical goal of expelling Yan Xishan and the Jin army from Shanxi; On the contrary, in order to maintain the mobile combat capability of the main force, Major General Motochuan could not leave too many garrison troops in the conquered county, and even captured a county town in the morning, and had to abandon the city at night after looting and destroying, so that the Jin army and the Eighth Route Army could repeatedly "recover lost territory".

During the just-concluded telephone conversation with Lieutenant General Sena, Motokawa Shosan again raised a new and grim reality: The logistical supply capability of the mixed brigade combat units has recently declined markedly, and the troops are in danger of losing effective supplies.

Lieutenant General Sena knew that Motokawa's mixed brigade had entered the mountainous terrain of southwest Jin, and its transportation was backward, which was completely different from the Jinnan Plain, where his division was located. Moreover, they had the Tongpu Railway, the main artery of transportation, while the baggage troops of Benchuan had to rely on a small number of cars (because many areas in that area were not even passable by cars) and more mules and horses.

"Your Excellency Division Commander, could you please send some planes to our theater of operations to carry out the tasks of bombing enemy troops, transporting and airdropping supplies?" The three provinces on the phone almost pleaded.

This made Lieutenant General Sena hesitate. Several combat squadrons sent by the flight group, mainly bombers and light bombers, are now all stationed at the temporary airfield urgently built in Yuncheng, very close to Sena's division headquarters. Next, the main task faced by these combat aircraft was to cooperate with the main force of the division to attack the last line of defense of the central army in Fenglingdu and Zhongtiao Shanzhina. In other words, he wanted to keep them against Wei Lihuang, not Yan Xishan.

However, the predicament faced by the third province of Motokawa cannot be ignored, and he is still a subordinate of Lieutenant General Yamaoka, so it seems that it is not appropriate to completely ignore the face of his colleague's division commander.

After a repeated sigh, Lieutenant General Sena picked up the phone and wanted to call the rear of Bunjo, and he made a request to his brigade commander, Akira Hagiwara, to prepare another set of supply plans, specifically for the mixed brigade of the three provinces of Honkawa. The supply baggage was transported by train from Wencheng to Linfen; After unloading in Linfen, the trucks were transported by car to the Puxian area: At present, Major General Benchuan's headquarters is temporarily located in the county seat of Puxian County, west of Linfen, which is about 100 miles away from Linfen on the Tongpu railway line, and is connected by highway.

Hagiwara Akira, who originally hoped that the main force of the front line would return to the division victoriously as soon as possible, received this call from the division commander, as if he had been poured a basin of ice water on his head, and his hands and feet were cold: his own wish had not been realized, but he had added such a difficult and heavy supply task!

However, Hagiwara suppressed the discontent of his chief of staff, who had always been dissatisfied with the battle record of the Motokawa Brigade commander in southwest Jinxi, and at the same time pushed him on the specific implementation of this task.

After finally leveling his chief of staff, he stood outside the freight yard of the Bunjo Railway Station, looking at the railroad tracks that shimmered in the moonlight, and Major General Hagiwara's head began to ache faintly. And until this moment, he didn't realize that in front of this railway line leading to the far end, an extremely tragic bloody battle was about to start.