readx;? Guo Rudong, who was guarding the command headquarters, couldn't help but be shocked when he heard the news that two battalions of the first regiment had lost their combat effectiveness after only one and a half days of defense. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 Although he knew that Little Japan was not easy to deal with, it was only a day and a half, and the most capable group had such a big loss, which Guo Rudong did not expect. In Guo Rudong's heart, with the new weapon, the combat effectiveness of his own troops is definitely not worse than others, but in this way, coupled with the strong fortifications, there are still so many casualties, Guo Rudong can't help but worry about how long his troops can hold the position.

After thinking for a long time, Guo Rudong called the signal corps to pass on the order, asking the second regiment and the third regiment to draw a main battalion each to stand by after the Wujiazhai highway bridge position, ready to reinforce at any time. With two battalions as reserves, Guo Rudong's heart relaxed slightly. On the Wujiazhai Highway Bridge position, the Japanese army was still attacking again and again, and the Sichuan army guarding the position, braving the Japanese artillery fire and heavy machine gun suppressive fire, was stubbornly resisting the repeated attacks of the Japanese army.

The defensive battle has been fought for more than 20 days, and the most idle position on the entire defense line is the Xie family house position guarded by the soldiers of the first battalion of the 543rd Regiment. Whether it is Luodian or Chenxiang Highway Bridge, there is a pot of porridge around, only the Xie family house is calm here, and not a single Japanese soldier can see it. Even after several days of large-scale bombing by Japanese planes, only a few sporadic bombs fell on the Xie family's house position.

The calm of the Xie family's house was finally broken on the morning of 30 September, and the Japanese army was still unable to capture Luodian Town two days after launching a joint attack on Luodian Town with the Taiwan Shigeto Detachment and the rest of the 9th Division. Although the three defending lines outside Luodian Town were captured, the Chongdo Detachment was also reduced by nearly half of its personnel, and now the Chongdo Detachment and the Ninth Division outside Luodian Town together only have two infantry wings.

Moreover, the Japanese army was equally worried that the Shina army would launch a sudden counterattack as it had done a few days earlier, because until now the heavy artillery and chariot units of the Shina army were still hidden somewhere and did not appear. In order to prevent such a thing from happening again, Matsui Ishine telegraphed the 3rd Division, which had been resting for half a month, to launch an attack on the flank of Luodian Town, Xie Jiazhai, in order to cope with the attack of the Chongdo Detachment and the 9th Division.

After resting for half a month, the strength of the Japanese Third Division was reorganized into a brigade, and the number of field artillery and cavalry was also more than 18,000. After receiving the order of General Matsui Ishone, the commander of the division, Lieutenant General Fujita Shin, did not dare to slack off, and pulled the third division to pounce on the position of the Xie family's house. Lieutenant General Fujita led the 3rd Division to occupy the town of Ronan, which was only two kilometers away from the Xie family's position.

Ronan Town is a small town with only a hundred households, and at this time the residents of the town have fled, and there is only one empty town. Fujita Jin set up his division headquarters in one of the best houses in the town, and the two wings of the merged Fifth Brigade were led by Major General Riichiro Katayama, the brigade commander, to set up the brigade headquarters one kilometer before the Xie family house position, and dozens of artillery pieces of the division's field artillery wing also set up artillery positions here.

The 1st Battalion of the 543rd Regiment, which defended the position of the Xie family's house, set up a command post on the high ground of the Xie family's ancestral temple. When Wang Haitao designed this position, it was designed together with Luodian Town, and the Xie family house itself is a gentle slope type, and the highest place is the ancestral temple of the Xie family, which is dozens of meters higher than the outside.

After receiving a relocation fee from the logistics office of the New 90th Division, all the people of Xie's house moved out of Xie's house, and the ancestral temple on the high ground with five courtyards in front and back also gave up. After Tang Yiqiang, the commander of the first battalion, came here, he took a fancy to this ancestral temple at a glance and built a battalion command post here. The original walls were all replaced with concrete walls, and four forts were built at the four corners that were higher than the walls, and heavy machine guns were erected.

Originally, the 12 mortar positions of the battalion's heavy firepower company were also set up in the courtyard, but after Wang Haitao put forward his opinion, he changed it to the courtyard of a private school on the west side of Xie's house. It should be mentioned that the first battalion had 10 100 heavy mortars specially strengthened by Wang Haitao, and Tang Yiqiang alone used these 10 heavy mortars to set up a heavy mortar platoon, which was directly under the battalion headquarters, and the position was set up on a rice field north of the position.

The fortifications are built around the high ground layer of the ancestral temple, like a flower scroll, with an interval of 50 meters is a layer, and each layer of bunkers, trenches, and sandbags are densely arranged. On the outermost layer was a platoon of fighters with two heavy machine guns and four light machine guns. The second layer is also a platoon of fighters, and the two heavy machine guns in the second layer of bunkers can hit a few hundred meters outside the first layer of positions, which can support the first layer of positions, and the two 82 recoilless guns of a battalion and a company are also arranged in the second layer of bunkers.

The brigade commander of the 5th Brigade of the Japanese Army stood on the sortie position, constantly observing the huge position in front of him with a telescope, and couldn't help but gasp. The position in front of him can be said to be a complete defense system, and it is too difficult to take the position in front of him with the strength of one of his brigades, and it is the most difficult position to capture since the landing.

Fortunately, the task of his own brigade is only to distract the Chinese army and pay attention to the frontal attack on Luodian, rather than having to take the position in front of him, so it is best to be able to capture it, but if it can't be attacked, it won't be blamed much. So Major General Riichiro Katayama asked the field artillery wing to launch an artillery attack on the Shina position according to the regulations, and then asked the 6th Infantry Wing to send a squadron of infantry to prepare for the attack.

The field artillery wing first launched an artillery bombardment on the defenders' positions, and the shells rained down on the defenders' positions, causing gunsmoke, fire, and dust to rise from the defenders' positions. It's just that the small-caliber artillery of the field artillery wing is, at best, a certain destructive power against trenches and sandbag fortifications, and powerless against those bunkers. More than 50 officers and men in a platoon sat quietly in the anti-artillery holes and bunkers, waiting for the Japanese to end the shelling.

Twenty minutes later, the shelling of the Japanese field artillery wing ended, and the machine gun squadron and artillery squadron of the 6th Wing again began to suppress fire against the defenders on the ground, and as the suppressive fire began, a squadron of the 6th Japanese Wing attacked. The Japanese troops of this squadron had long since lost the arrogance they had when they first landed, but under the leadership of the squadron leader, they pulled out the stragglers and cautiously bent over to the defenders' positions.

The platoon commander saw that the Japanese did not have many troops, so he did not rush to order shooting. When the Japanese troops of this squadron came to a hundred and fifty meters in front of the position, they were faced with a meter of barbed wire and did not know what to do. It turned out that starting from 15 meters in front of the first line of defense, the officers and men of the battalion set up a one-meter-high barbed wire fence every 30 meters. Although some of them were damaged by Japanese artillery fire, most of them were still intact, and these barbed wire fences became difficult obstacles for the Japanese to deal with.

When the Japanese began to break the barbed wire with the bayonets on their guns, a platoon commander let two heavy machine guns in the bunker start firing. Two heavy machine guns formed a crossfire, sweeping down the Japanese troops in front of the barbed wire, and the remaining Japanese troops hurriedly retreated, and the first attack of the Japanese army was repulsed so easily, which also made the platoon commander feel that something was wrong.

In this way, the Japanese shelled from time to time for a while, and then sent a squadron of infantry to attack, and then withdrew after a slight resistance. At the end of the day, the Japanese attacked six times, but they could not destroy all five barbed wires. Of course, such an attack did not cause much damage to both sides, and the Japanese killed and wounded more than 100 people, while only a dozen people in a platoon were wounded by Japanese artillery fire.

Time passed day by day amid artillery fire and gunsmoke, and the pattern on the position of Wang Haitao's new 90th Division became more and more serious. The officers and men of the 1st Regiment of the 26th Division of the Sichuan Army were killed and wounded, and the guard battalion had already been put on top. The Japanese 16th Division also landed at Chuanshakou, replacing the Shigeto Detachment and the 9th Division, which were unable to fight again, and continued to attack Luodian. All the positions on the outskirts of Luodian Town were lost, and now Zhang Lingfu's 547th Regiment has taken over the 544th Regiment, which suffered heavy casualties, and is fighting with the Japanese 16th Division around the wall of Luodian Town.

The more critical form was the Chenxiang Highway Bridge position guarded by the 3rd Battalion of Wu Conglong of the 546th Regiment, and the 13th Division of the Japanese Army had been attacking the defenders' positions to the death at any cost in the past few days. Wu Conglong's third battalion was under tremendous pressure from the moment it took up the position, and after two days of fighting, a battalion of 600 people had only more than 200 people left, and what was even worse was that the position west of the bridge was lost, and the remaining officers and soldiers of the third battalion retreated to the reserve position on the west side of the bridge to do the last guard.

Wang Haitao had ordered the 545th Regiment to urgently enter the second-line position and prepare to resist the Japanese attack. The 50 75 infantry guns transferred to the 543rd Regiment also lost more than a dozen in the two-day defense, and Tang Weimin, the head of the 543rd Regiment, no longer dared to use them easily. Faced with such a situation, Wang Haitao had the idea of retreating. When Wang Haitao telegraphed General Zhang Zhizhong about the situation of the new 90th Division, General Zhang Zhizhong replied: The second-line position has been basically completed, and your unit and the 26th Division of the Sichuan Army can wait for an opportunity to retreat.

What finally made Wang Haitao decide to retreat was the telegram for help from the Wusongkou Fort. Although the Wusongkou Fort position was fortified and the first battalion of the 546th Regiment guarding it was also the battalion with the largest number of people and the best firepower, they were faced with the repeated bombardment of large-caliber naval guns and more than 200 warships, and they were also the most stressed of all the troops; from the beginning to the present, a battalion of nearly 1,000 officers and men remained, and only one Gaoping dual-purpose twin heavy machine gun and a Type 59 medium tank were left as the last reliance.

And the 11th Division of the Japanese Army did not win favor, and in the past few days, no less than 2,000 soldiers of the 11th Division have fallen under the guns of the defenders. On the morning of 5 October, the Japanese suddenly sent 4,000 marines to join forces with the last wing of the 11th Division to launch a tidal attack on Wei Erxi's battalion. The first battalion suddenly fell into a bitter battle, and at ten o'clock in the morning, Wei Erxi was forced to helplessly use the radio to ask Wang Haitao for help.