Before leaving for Xiping, Wu Zijian hesitated again and again, but still gritted his teeth and left the 51 soldiers of the recruit company in Hekou Village, where Li Tianlin, the commander of the 5th Company, personally trained him. Of course, he knew that these fifty-one Xiping disciples wanted to return home urgently, but the so-called good steel had to be quenched, and the fact that these recruits were able to obey military orders and resolutely withdraw from Xiping with the main force of the second battalion had already proved that they were more suitable to become real soldiers than the more than 100 people who deserted. It's just that we have to reorganize it a little more.

Wu Zijian unabashedly announced to the recruit company that he was about to go to Xiping when they were in line; At the same time, he deliberately asked: Is there anyone who wants to go home with him? The deputy commander of the second battalion was satisfied to see that the entire queue of recruits stood silently and solemnly, and there was not a word except for the sound of the wind whirring overhead.

"Very well, you are all qualified soldiers!" Wu Zijian's mood was a little excited: "The second battalion has sent an advance force back to Xiping, and I assure you that the Eighth Route Army Forest Division will definitely not give up Xiping Village, and you will soon go there with the main force!" ”

The advance troops mentioned by the deputy commander of the 2nd Battalion were the two squads temporarily transferred from the 5th Company, led by Zhang Simiao, the instructor of the 5th Company, and Chen Ping, the deputy company commander, who rushed to Xiping Village. However, when Wu Zijian entered Xiping Village to join this advance force, he couldn't help but gasp.

The extent of the looting of the entire village is far beyond imagination. Many houses were set on fire before the Japanese army left; Hundreds of villagers were killed or wounded, some of them from stray bullets during the fighting, and most of them were deliberately killed by the Japanese during the ransacking. More than a dozen young women were humiliated*, several of whom were brutally killed after being brutalized by the Japanese army. In addition, Zhang Simiao, the instructor of the 5th Company, reported that the main force of the battalion hastily withdrew to Guanmen Mountain during the battle that night, leaving nearly 200 corpses of sacrificed commanders and fighters in the village that could not be taken away. Whether to bury or burn, please Wu Zijian speak.

"Have you found any enemies nearby?" Wu Zijian was first concerned about the safety of the defense area.

"No, the people in the village said that since the devil left overnight, he has not been seen again;" Chen Ping, deputy company commander of the 5th Company, replied: "I used the strength of a squad to send mobile posts in the north, southwest, and three directions every day, and there has been no abnormal situation so far. ”

At this time, Zhang Simiao suddenly lowered his voice and reported: "Deputy battalion commander, now the people of the whole village are not very friendly to our Eighth Route Army; There is a saying in the village that the Eighth Route Army provoked the little devils, and if we had not come to Xiping to garrison the army, the Japanese would not have been able to hit the foot of Guanmen Mountain. ”

Wu Zijian was stunned, staring at the eyes of the instructor of the 5th Company, pondering the connotation of these words.

"The point is that some people spread this kind of rumor in the village," Chen Ping, the deputy company commander, snorted a little angrily: "I heard that it was a few landlords who were letting off steam." The battalion commanders and instructors of our second battalion originally implemented rent and interest reduction here, which cut off their financial routes, so they hated the Eighth Route Army the most. ”

Wu Zijian was calm and calm, he did not know much about the matter of rent reduction and interest reduction, but the issue of principle must be explained clearly to the villagers. He instructed the two grassroots commanders to emphasize: It was not the Eighth Route Army that attracted devils, but the Japanese soldiers who were invading our Chinese land; In Shanxi, they occupied Datong, Taiyuan, Wencheng, and Linfen; At present, the Japanese army is still mainly using troops along the Tongpu Railway, but if it is allowed to develop, villages like Xiping, which are more than 20 miles away from Tongpu Road, will sooner or later be controlled by the Japanese army, and the common people in the villages will become slaves of the country. The Eighth Route Army came to Xiping and Guanmen Mountain precisely to protect the villagers and fight devils.

Unexpectedly, instructor Zhang Simiao said to Wu Zijian with a wry smile: They brought more than 20 people in this trip, except for the mobile posts guarding the periphery of the village, the remaining manpower could not organize the masses in the village at all, and they did not have time to explain and publicize to the villagers. Even carrying the bodies of the main commanders and fighters of the battalion who sacrificed their lives, there were very few people in the village who were willing to take the initiative to help.

Wu Zijian fell silent again. After a long time, he ordered in a heavy tone: The bodies of the commanders and fighters of the main force of the battalion who died in battle should be temporarily stored outside the end of the village, and people should be sent to be on duty day and night, and they should wait for the people from the battalion headquarters to come over and carefully screen and make a register before they can be buried or cremated -- the reason why the cremation plan is considered is that it is now the turn of winter and spring, and it will take time for the permafrost to be cultivated.

After making this painful deployment, Wu Zijian sighed deeply, such a bad situation was unexpected. It seems that the restoration of Xiping is far more difficult than that of Hekou Village. At this moment, he suddenly thought of Zhang Xiu: when he was in Xiping, this battalion headquarters clerk had already become the deputy director of the "Xiping Village Battlefield Mobilization Committee", and it was said that the work of the villagers was carried out in full swing - in fact, the instructors who were really suitable for mass propaganda had to be, but now they couldn't count on it, Liu Shu might have led people to Hekou Village now, and then set off from there to look for the regiment headquarters in the area of Zhengtai Road.

Adjust the embroidery out of the mountain!

Looking at the devastated Xiping Village, Wu Zijian made up his mind. At the same time, he also decided to adjust the previous deployment of troops in the area of Hongxingxia, except for the 7th Company, he planned to transfer some troops there to Xiping later. Of course, it also includes the remnants of Xia Lianshan's cavalry company, which has never met again!

He immediately wrote a letter and asked someone to send it to Hongxingxia in Guanmen Mountain as soon as possible, and transferred Wei Xin's 7th Company, the battalion's artillery squad, and Zhang Xiu, the battalion secretary of the battalion, out of the mountain, and immediately reported to Xiping via the Hekou Village route.

Zhang Simiao and Chen Ping on the side felt excited. Previously, the instructor and deputy company commander of the 5th Company had been stationed in Hekou Village, but this time when they came to Xiping, they were immediately shocked by the scale of the village and the vast landform here. Now that the deputy battalion commander has personally dispatched troops, it seems that the second battalion is going to regain its strength here!

"Deputy Battalion Commander Wu, how to deal with the deserters of the recruit company?"

The deputy company commander of the 5th Company suddenly asked: Before coming, he had learned that on the day of the Japanese army's night attack, more than half of the new recruit company composed of the children of the village that had just been formed by the 2nd Battalion had deserted and refused to move with the main force of the battalion to the Guanmen Mountain.

"I think so," Wu Zijian had a plan for this on the way here: "Anyone who deserts with a gun must hand in the gun, otherwise they will be detained after verification; Those who have already run away can re-register if they wish to come back and wait for further orders. ”

The instructor of the 5th Company groaned for a while, and then cautiously said that those who deserted with guns were actually equivalent to defecting to the enemy, and should they be given additional lessons and heavy punishments? Wu Zijian hesitated for a moment, shook his head slowly, and told his two subordinates: Obviously, Xiping's recruit company had problems during the training period, pursued the full strength too much, neglected the cultivation of the quality of the recruits, and did not integrate them into the main force company in time and let the veterans practice words and deeds, so it caused such an ugly incident. It's not the recruits who are at fault.

"Bear with me a few more days!" The deputy commander of the second battalion made a summary: "When the main force and cavalry company of Hongxingxia came over, we first buried our comrades, and then inspected the recruits and mobilized the people; Then, redeploy the troops in this area - the second battalion of the Lin Division, which can't be crossed! ”

When he set out from Hekou Village, Wu Zijian specially asked Xiao Junping to assign five enemy workers to accompany him in civilian clothes. There is one thing that has always made the deputy commander of the second battalion faintly uneasy, that is, when the Japanese army attacked Xiping Village at night, it once sent a small unit to break into the village in advance to search for the captured members of the cavalry wing; According to the oral account of Zhang Xiu, a female clerk who unfortunately fell into the hands of the enemy at that time, the leader of this small Japanese army unit was a Chinese, who was well aware that Japanese cavalry prisoners of war were being held in Xiping Village.

Wu Zijian made a careful analysis of this matter with Xiao Junping in Hekou Village, and they roughly determined that the Chinese who led the Japanese army to infiltrate the village may have two identities: one is the special agent sent by the Japanese army to Xiping Village to reconnoiter the situation before the large-scale night attack, and after quietly inquiring about the existence of Japanese prisoners of war; Second, it is simply the villagers of Xiping Village who have become traitors through some channels. If the latter is the case, then it cannot be ruled out that this person is still in Xiping, thus posing a continuous threat to the garrison of the 2nd Battalion of the Forest Division in the village in the future.

Based on this, Wu Zijian decided to investigate the matter thoroughly to ensure that there were no potential spies in the village.

The enemy engineer captain took into account his familiarity with the formation of the Japanese army and put forward a further view, that is, the Sena division may have been sending forces to search for the missing officers and soldiers of the cavalry wing.

Xiao Junping personally participated in the melee of the Dawangyu infantry cavalry in Xiaoyushu Mountain (at that time he was still the intelligence staff officer of the 12th Brigade of the Jin Army), and after the war, he and Wu Zijian interrogated those Japanese cavalry prisoners. He knew very well that the second battalion of the Lin Division only took away the horses and weapons of the fallen Japanese soldiers after the ambush battle that day; According to the practice of the Japanese army, if it was too late to take the bodies of their own dead from the battlefield at that time, they had to return to the battlefield to search for them in the future. That also means that when the Japanese cavalry returned to the battlefield where Dawangyu was attacked, they would find that in addition to the corpses, there were six other people alive and dead. Therefore, they were able to conclude that the six men might have been captured, and then sent troops to search around.

Wu Zijian was deeply impressed by an analysis conclusion drawn by Xiao Junping, that is, the number of cavalry wings in various divisions and regiments of the Japanese army was small, and many of its members were from famous families in Japan, so they developed the habit of being good at riding horses very early, and only then did they naturally become cavalrymen after joining the army. Following this line of thought, it may be inferred that there may be important figures among the members of the cavalry wing of the Sena Division captured by the 2nd Battalion of the Lin Division this time, so that the Japanese army will send a special small force to risk sneaking into Xiping in advance to search.

This inference directly solved another mystery in Wu Zijian's mind: when he retreated to Hongxing Gorge, he held a military meeting to review and summarize the anti-night raid battle, and Zhao Yejiao, the commander of the artillery squad of the battalion at that time, in addition to telling the excellent performance of the artillery squad, also mentioned that the Japanese army's attack on Xiping Village did not implement large-scale artillery suppression throughout the night; The commanders of the 6th and 7th companies who participated in the battle also corroborated this, pointing out that the Japanese army always used heavy machine guns instead of artillery as cover at the front. At that time, Wu Zijian did not understand, and once thought that the Japanese army did not carry artillery, but in hindsight, it was extremely inconsistent with the common sense of the Japanese army. Now, after this analysis by the enemy engineer captain, the deputy commander of the second battalion suddenly realized: perhaps it was because he learned in advance that there were cavalry prisoners of war held in the village, and the Japanese army was worried about accidentally injuring their own people, so they did not use artillery after the attack began!

In the dark, these Japanese cavalry prisoners of war became the unexpected shelter of the main force of the second battalion - you can imagine that if there were no such concerns, the Japanese army in the night attack first carried out strong artillery fire coverage on the depth of Xiping, and then carried out artillery strikes when attacking the defense line in the west of the village supported by Wang Shuanglong's 6th Company alone, and the losses of the second battalion were undoubtedly much heavier than today.

Wu Zijian, who was shocked into a cold sweat, gave two orders to Xiao Junping on the spot, first, prepare to go to Hongxingxia to re-interrogate the six Japanese cavalry prisoners of war, and strive to dig out their detailed identities; Second, send enemy workers to Xiping Village to try to dig out the lurking traitors!