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Chapter 386: The Battle of Yili (6)

After pulling out the safe mine in his hand, gently covering it with ice chips, and then carefully planting a small red flag next to it, Li Baohua couldn't help but sigh, installing this kind of big guy with a charge of hundreds of kilograms, a diameter of 320 mm, and a length of 1.2 meters is much more difficult than burying a mine with a weight of only a dozen kilograms. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info (To emphasize here, Ding Shuangxi buried a mine in the previous chapter, not a mine, and it was a mistake at the time, sorry!)

After stretching out his hand to wipe his sweat, he stood up, looking at the busy soldiers around him, and the white bulges densely filled with small red flags in the moonlight, Li Baohua's face couldn't help but show a look of satisfaction and expectation.

"Lao Li, more than 400 mines, as well as the mines scavenged from the army, have all been buried!" Zhang Zijing, political commissar of the 13th River Fleet, said with a hint of excitement in his tone.

"Okay, more than 3,000 mines have been buried in two days, I hope they will be able to play a role and destroy the American ** team a lot! When the time comes, we can also be a little easier when we defend Coniot!" Li Baohua said with a smile.

"Yes, I hope the gods and Buddhas will bless me, and call the American ** team to come over from Yili Lake, otherwise our hard work will be in vain!" Zhang Zijing said with a hint of piety in his tone.

Hearing his words, Li Baohua couldn't help but nodded, there are thirty kilometers between Connie Ott and Erie City. If the Americans choose to land first and then attack Connie Ott from the road, then with the more than 1,500 navies in his hands. and a company of the Fourth Garrison Division of the Huo Family Army, which was originally stationed in Connie Ott, with less than 500 troops, and no strong fortifications, could not hold the small city of Connie Ott at all.

And the headquarters of the Northern Front Corps of the Huojia Army did not expect that they would be able to hold this small city along the railway line with less than 2,000 troops, and the reason why the officers and men of the 13th Fleet were sent here was to hope that they could contain the offensive edge of the Americans a little. Figure out the size of the forces of this roundabout attack of the Americans, and then they can follow the railway and retreat to the rear!

However, as the commander of the 13th River Fleet. Li Baohua was unwilling to leave in such a gloomy manner, especially after seeing the battle of hundreds of thousands of people under the city of Yili, the brother troops of the army fought bloodily and brutally defeated the nearly 500,000 troops of the US Northern Front Army. And can not go a step forward after the feat. In his mind, his determination to kill the enemy and serve the country became even stronger.

However, he also knew that the little power in his hands could not play much role in the face of the tens of thousands of troops in the face of the Americans, so after receiving the order and racking his brains for a day, he finally came up with this uncalculated plan, and moved all the mines originally equipped by the 13th River Fleet and the mines equipped by the army, using 3,000 mines according to the number of 30 meters. Beyond the small town of Connie Ott, on the jagged ice of Lake Erie. A massive minefield with a length of 15 kilometers and a width of 8 kilometers was laid out.

Of course, if it weren't for the fact that the frozen surface of Lake Yili was too wide, and the number of mines and mines in Li Baohua's hands was insufficient, and the remaining shells in the fleet had already been handed over to his own army in Yili City along with naval guns and machine guns, resulting in not enough ammunition to blow up the ice, and the time was too short, Li Baohua would have preferred to arrange this minefield on the ice outside Yili City! At that time, not only could the gap be plugged, but also the Americans' sneak attack troops could be fed to Wang Ba in one go!

"I can only gamble this time!" Li Baohua said secretly in his heart.

"Commander, I just received a telegram from the reconnaissance unit, and the Americans are dispatched!" At this moment, a communications soldier with the rank of sergeant on his shoulder ran over with an excited expression and said.

"Really? How many Americans have come this time? From what direction? Are the numbers of the troops clear?" Li Baohua asked a few questions in succession, and the expression of concern and excitement on his face was unmistakable.

"Commander, the telegram has been checked and is accurate, as for the numbers of the American troops, we can't see them clearly because they are too far away, but most of them are cavalry, and their number must have exceeded 100,000! By the time the telegram was received, the American troops had bypassed our fortress twenty kilometers outside the city of Erie. Now, they're coming at us!"

Hearing the words of the communications staff officer, Li Baohua couldn't help but rub his hands, and said in an excited tone: "The ice is too slippery to ride a horse, so the Americans must come on foot, and the straight-line distance from Erie to Connie Ott is also twenty-five kilometers, and if it comes from the lake, it will be about fifty or sixty kilometers, and it will take more than ten hours at the earliest......!"

"Commander, the Americans came on horseback!" said the communications staff officer standing on the side.

"Horseback riding?" asked Li Baohua with some surprise. Almost everyone knows that the harder the thing, the easier it is to slip on the ice, so horses with horseshoes nailed to them generally use a thick coarse cloth to wrap the hard hooves before they can walk on the ice.

"Yes, that's exactly what the wireless telegram from the front line says!" said the communications staff officer with an affirmative expression.

"It seems that the Americans have made special treatment of the soles of their horses! otherwise it would not have been possible for them to move so freely on the ice, let alone ride horses. Zhang Zijing said on the side.

"Well, that's what I said!" After answering, Li Baohua touched his chin, "If you ride a horse, the speed of the Americans' actions will definitely be greatly accelerated, and they will arrive here in two or three hours at most, it seems that we should hurry up!"

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Looking at the cavalry galloping by on horseback, with his own guards, Martin Van Buren, the commander of the First Cavalry Corps sitting on a black Arab horse, couldn't help but show a hint of satisfaction on his face.

"It's better to pay attention to the commander, after changing into a special horseshoe, the war horse will be on the smooth ice!" said Deputy Commander Henry Clay with a smile next to him.

In order to overcome the slippage of horses on the ice and allow the troops to quickly pass through Lake Erie, Johnston told the logistics department before the start of the war in Erie that a special horseshoe with spikes on the bottom could make a horseshoe with spikes on the bottom, which is like the special sneakers of modern track and field athletes, which can make the horses stand firmly on the ice. Of course, it is very easy to make this special horseshoe, and after making the corresponding mold, it only takes two days before and after hundreds of thousands of horseshoes to be made, but it took a little time to nail the horseshoe later.

"It has been more than two hours since we crossed Erie City and separated from the Fifth Cavalry Corps and the Independent Second and Fourth Cavalry Divisions, and at our current pace of march, we will be able to reach Coniot City in another half an hour!" continued Henry Clay.

"Well! This time we must teach those yellow-skinned monkeys an unforgettable lesson!" Martin Van Buren, who was born in the United States, was a typical Englishman, full of white pride in his bones, and did not have any good feelings for the Chinese who occupied most of the United States and dragged the United States into endless wars.

After listening to his words, Henry Clay secretly shook his head, after this period of battle, especially after seeing the tragedy of the war in Yili, he no longer had the slightest contempt for the Chinese and the squadron in his heart.

"Commander, now that we are not far from the town of De Konyot, should we send out the Scout Cavalry?" asked Henry Clay.

"No need, now most of the Chinese army has been pinned down by us on the battlefield of Yili, there is no regular army in the rear at all, and this time we are a secret operation, they did not expect that we would use the frozen Lake Yili to make a detour to attack their rear!" Martin Van Buren said with a hint of contempt in his tone.

Through the intelligence of the Intelligence Section of the War Department, the Second Division of the Chinese Black Servant Army, which was originally stationed in Conneote, had already been transferred to the front line of Erie because of the fierce fighting on the front line, and now there is only one company left in Conneote, less than 500 troops, and this company is still a second-line garrison, which is far from the regular army in China. And all the squadrons within a hundred kilometers of Coniot's rear combined were less than 10,000. With nearly 50,000 of America's most elite cavalry at his disposal, there was no chance of defeat at all.

Hearing his words, Henry Clay did not insist anymore, because he also knew that almost all the regular troops of the nearby Chinese were pinned down on the front battlefield of Erie City, and Coniot did not have many squadrons to defend at all, and with the cavalry in their hands, it was almost impossible to take down this small city on the edge of Lake Erie.

But I don't know why, at this moment, there is always a faint sense of uneasiness lingering in his heart. And, as we get closer to the small town of Coniot, this lingering uneasiness is gradually expanding.

"Bang...!" the crisp and dense sound of horses' hooves could be heard far away in the quiet night. At this moment, the time has passed five o'clock in the morning, and the bright moonlight that originally sprinkled the earth has long since disappeared, but Lake Erie, which is located in the northern hemisphere, has a particularly long night at the moment, and there is still no light in the sky. However, the surface of a silver-white crystal lake does look very bright, but it is not difficult to see the road clearly.

"Commander, that's not right!" Henry Clay frowned and couldn't help but say, looking at the thin black line that was already faintly visible in the distance.

"What's wrong?" Martin Van Rumb, who was thinking about how to kill the squadron and win the first victory of the Sino-American war after entering the city later, turned his head and asked with a hint of unhappiness in his tone. (To be continued.) )