Li Tianlin was stunned for a moment, and then asked rhetorically: "Didn't Qin Zhongxiao want to unify the firearms configuration of the six main companies of the whole regiment?" Each company is equipped with a grenadier canister. ”

Wu Zijian shook his head: "It's not that simple. Although the mortar is more powerful, it is not easy to carry, and several people have to assemble and disassemble it before and after use. The grenadier is different, it can be fired at any time, and it is shorter and lighter than a rifle in the hand. Moreover, as long as it is hit accurately, the small * that thing shoots out is no worse than the shells of a mortar! ”

During last year's Battle of Northern Jin and the Battle of Xinkou, Wu Zijian learned a lot about the power of the Japanese army's grenadier canisters, and he also heard friendly officers and soldiers talk about the Japanese tactics of using grenadiers to specifically remove the gunfire points of the national army's machine guns. It seems that the colonel of the Central Army should have also suffered losses in this regard.

"Deputy battalion commander, when will we get more grenadiers, and each company will be equipped with one branch like the 391st Regiment?" The company commander of the Eighth Route Army asked very hotly.

Wu Zijian rolled his eyes disdainfully, and ridiculed the commander of the 5th company for his shallow eye sockets: The Japanese army's grenadiers are configured to each detachment (squad), even if we are not as good as the Japanese army, we will have to match one platoon in the future!

"That's a good dare," Li Tianlin said happily, "I'll just wait!" ”

"I can't wait! Do you think our second battalion can suddenly dig out a batch of munitions from the ground like the 391st regiment? Don't do that dream, we have to snatch it from the Japanese! It's like a cavalry company, from horses to equipment, everything is snatched up directly. ”

"It's okay to spend money on it. Captain Xiao, they have already established themselves in Wencheng, didn't you agree to let them look for the arms black market? ”

Hearing Li Tianlin talk about this, Wu Zijian continued to roll his eyes at him: "Then don't you spend a lot of gold bars?" Why spend gold bars to buy it if you can grab it for nothing! ”

"Except for robbing, have you ever thought about stealing?" The commander of the 5th company suddenly said with great interest: "The people of the enemy engineering team saw with their own eyes that the freight yard of the railway station in Wencheng was full of Japanese baggage, all of which were transported from the direction of Taiyuan, loaded into cars and transported to the Jinnan front. How much can we grab in a battle with the Japanese army? But if you steal it from the yard, it's all dry! ”

The eyes of the deputy commander of the second battalion clearly shone brightly: this method is too worth trying! At present, Xiao Junping is in Wencheng with the backbone of the enemy labor team, and may have arranged for the team members to work in the freight yard of the railway station. Wonderful.

"You Li Tianlin can come up with such an idea, it really impresses me!" Wu Zijian patted the other party's shoulder heavily and praised: "I will immediately inform Captain Xiao and let his team members touch the situation first, maybe, there is really a chance to start." ”

"Hehe, I'm just saying it casually, but you have to think about it, the place where the Japanese pile up their baggage must be heavily guarded, and it's not so easy to steal."

"It's okay, just get the information right, if it's not easy to start at the station, you can also consider ambushing in advance on the railway line south of Wencheng and taking the train!"

As soon as he heard about the train, the commander of the 5th company also became excited, and frankly said that the small train running on the Tongpu railway must be very easy to fight.

Unexpectedly, Wu Zijian, who was originally dancing with his eyebrows, instantly wrung his brows, and at this moment he thought of one thing: the upcoming joint operation of the Tongpu Railway is bound to cause a great shock to the Sena Division in Jinnan and the Hagiwara Brigade in Wencheng. And just now, he and Li Tianlin had the idea of touching the Japanese army's baggage distribution center at Wencheng Railway Station, but I was afraid that it would come to naught.

Li Tianlin didn't understand why the deputy battalion commander became a little frustrated in an instant, and was about to ask, when the battalion headquarters suddenly ran from Xiping Village to report a messenger: The carrier pigeon transmission with the 391st regiment has just been successfully tested!

This is a huge surprise. Among the two armies, the 391st Regiment has an old squad leader of nearly 40 years old from Shanghai's lane, and the second battalion of the Xu Brigade of the Lin Division has a young man from the alley of Beiping. At a time when the battle to attack the Tongpu railway line was about to break out, the success of the flying pigeon transmission between the two armies could not have come at a more timely time.

The correspondent reported that the test results showed that from the small village of Dayushu Mountain, the regimental headquarters of the 391st Regiment, to Xiping Village, the battalion headquarters of the Second Battalion of the Xu Brigade of the Forestry Division, it took only more than 20 minutes for the carrier pigeons to fly, which was several hours faster than the mutual communication of liaison officers sent by the two sides on horseback, and the safety was self-evident.

Wild pigeons in the mountains of this area are commonplace, and it is difficult for the Japanese, no matter how shrewd, to imagine that among the pigeons flying above their heads there will be well-trained air delivery personnel from the Chinese army.

Wu Zijian immediately ordered to try to establish the same method of flying pigeons and transmitting messages between Xiping Village and the underground intelligence station of the enemy engineering team in Wencheng as soon as possible. He opened the paper scroll carried on the foot ring of the carrier pigeon of the 391st regiment, on which were eight small characters written by Colonel Qin Zhongxiao: Jin Ge Iron Horse, Soldiers on the Battlefield. The deputy battalion commander of the second battalion of the Xu Brigade was full of excitement, and immediately replied with eight words: expel the Japanese and return the mountains and rivers.

Every day, the Japanese army from Taiyuan to Wencheng continuously transported war materials, and the first heavy wing of the Sena Division stationed in Wencheng and the military station of the Hagiwara Brigade were again divided and loaded into trucks, and transported them to the main force of the Sena Division on the Jinnan Front by railway and the highway parallel to the railway.

Wencheng Railway Station, located in the west of the city, has become the busiest location in this railway line town.

At this moment, in the headquarters of the chief of staff of the Hagiwara Brigade, Kawabe Osa, in addition to the chief of staff himself, the brigade commander Major General Hagiwara Akira and the head of the Bunjo secret service Masao Kojima were also present. The two, who had just finished inspecting the operation and defense of the railway station, sipped the flower tea served by the riverside Osa, while scanning the glass window at the adjacent railway line, where a small train was being loaded and unloaded—the headquarters of the chief of staff by the river, located on the edge of the south freight yard of the railway station.

According to the intelligence report sent back by the division headquarters, the main force of the Sena Division had sent forward troops to continue the attack after capturing Yuncheng in southern Jinnan and establishing the division headquarters in Yuncheng, occupying Puzhou, which was only one step away from Fenglingdu, the southernmost terminus of the Tongpu Railway; At the same time, Lieutenant General Sena ensured the safety of the flanks of the forward and division headquarters, and also sent a powerful force to occupy and control Pinglu and Ruicheng on the border of Shanxi and Henan, thus forming a favorable situation of pincer attack on the stubborn Chinese army that was stubbornly defending Fenglingdu, and was ready to launch a final blow at any time to completely expel the central army of the Chinese army Wei Lihuang from Shanxi.

"There's not very good news," Hagiwara Akira said indifferently to his two right-hand men: "When the main force of our division was frequently playing triumphant, a detachment of the Xia Yuan Division was sent from Hebei to support Shanxi, but it encountered many difficulties in the southeast of Shanxi. ”

Hagiwara Akira's Shimoto Division, that is, one of the four divisions under the First Army of the North China Front, with the number 108, and the division commander, Lieutenant General Shimoto Kumaya, belonged to the reserve division formed from the Japanese mainland during the war; At the beginning of this year, the division was transferred to Hebei by the Front Army Headquarters and the First Army Headquarters, and together with the Tufeiyuan Division, it was preparing to cooperate with the Second Army to attack Xuzhou in the south. However, in February this year, that is, the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar, after the Japanese First Army left behind in Shanxi launched the Jinnan Offensive, the North China Front Army Headquarters, taking into account the factors of the First Army's Sena Division's extensive operational area and excessively heavy combat tasks, specially ordered the Xia Yuan Division to form a mixed detachment, starting from Handan in Hebei Province, along the road from Handan to Changzhi, attacking the southeastern part of Shanxi, and rapidly advancing to the Changzhi area to cooperate with the main force of the Sena Division on the Nantongpu Railway.

As a matter of fact, this combat detachment dispatched by the Xia Yuan Division to the southeast of Shanxi Province had another ulterior purpose, that is, to clear the enemy forces south of the Japanese Otsuka Wing in the area of Fengdian and Xiaoyushu Mountain, and to ensure the safety of the wide front of the Songjiagou comfort women's secret camp in Xiaoyushu Mountain. Of course, this purpose of the operation was part of the top-secret "Wind Plan", even if the commander of the division, Lieutenant General Kuma Shimoto, was not aware of it.

However, at this time, the three Japanese chiefs of the Sena Division who were sitting in the Wencheng railway station were all aware of this, and this was the main reason why the commander of Hagiwara Akira's brigade was worried - the mixed detachment of the Xia Yuan Division was marching in the southeast of Jin, which was Licheng, Lucheng, Changzhi, Gaoping, and Jincheng, and if it went well, after completing the above-mentioned occupation, they would wait for the opportunity to wave their divisions to the north and sweep away the remaining Zhina Army in the areas of Wuxiang, Qinxian, Qinyuan, and Pingquan, that is, the operation to remove the frontal threat of Songjiagou in Xiaoyushu Mountain. According to some intelligence, at present, in the areas of Wuxiang, Qinxian, Qinyuan, and Pingquan, the remnants of the Chinese Army are relatively complex, including the main force of the Xu Brigade of the Eighth Route Army, a division of the 17th Army of the Central Army, and the main force of the 12th Brigade of the Jin Army. Although these Chinese troops were all stragglers, they were distributed in the broad frontal direction south of Xiaoyushu Mountain, and the closest to the secret camp of the comfort women in Songjiagou was only about 100 miles. If the remnants of these Chinese Army invaded northward and colluded with the Xu Brigade of the Eighth Route Army at the foot of Guanmen Mountain and the 391st Regiment of the Central Army in the Great Elm Mountain, it would inevitably pose a fatal threat to Little Elm Mountain.

"General, isn't the mixed detachment of the Xia Yuan Division already completing the task of breaking through and occupying the marked Zhuyuan in the southeast of Jin?" The chief of staff of the riverside asked puzzled.

"Indeed, the beginning was very smooth," Hagiwara replied in a solemn tone, "but the battle has recently turned to a stalemate, and the Shina army has begun to carry out raids and harassment against this imperial army that has broken through from Hebei; A few days ago, the main force of the Xu Division of the Eighth Route Army (author's note: that is, the 129th Division, division commander Xu Xiangqian) and the Xu Brigade of the Lin Division adopted the cunning tactics of besieging the city and sending reinforcements in the vicinity of Licheng and Changzhi, and ambushed the Xia Yuan Division into a mixed detachment, causing heavy casualties of 1,000 people. ”

The atmosphere in the command headquarters suddenly became tense. Unexpectedly, the Eighth Route Army had such a fierce force in the southeast of Shanxi, although the Xia Yuan Division was a reserve, and its combat strength was not as good as that of a permanent division like the Sena Division, but the dispatched detachment was mixed into special forces such as chariots, heavy artillery, and cavalry, and it was by no means an idle army.

"In addition, the miscellaneous army of the Zhina Army defending the area around Jincheng also created a lot of trouble for the mixed detachment of the Xia Yuan Division. Lieutenant General Sena informed me on the phone this morning that he could not rule out the possibility that this mixed detachment of the Shimoto Division would be expelled from the defense zone by the Shina Army! This will cause the flanks of our division to be exposed to emptiness, and the general has ordered the garrison troops in the counties and towns along the Nantongpu railway to strengthen their alert; At the same time, inform our brigade and regiment Otsuka Wing to strictly guard the front line of Wencheng, Xiaoyushu Mountain, and Fengdian to ensure the absolute safety of the Wencheng base camp and the Songjiagou comfort women secret camp! ”

At the end of Hagiwara's speech, Kawabe and Kojima Masao stood up together and shouted, "Hey! ”