After all, it was night, and across the Yellow River, although the little devils on the north side of the railway bridge were hit by artillery fire, there were always pillboxes that survived. No, when the first battalion and one company of the fourth regiment rushed to the railway bridge less than 500 meters, the devils opened fire again, and the bullets hit the iron bridge deck, rubbing sparks one after another, and immediately some soldiers were hit, and blood flowed on the tracks. Zhao Zhengbi, who was following behind the first battalion, was furious and immediately ordered, "Pull up the anti-aircraft guns to Lao Tzu!" ”

The anti-aircraft gun was pulled up, and at a distance of 700 meters, the gunner adjusted it slightly, and with two toms, two shells were fired, and one of the devil's pillboxes that was spitting bullets was overturned. The soldiers who climbed on the railroad immediately began to run in a low position and rushed towards the south bank.

When the devil squadron that set out from Nanluokou to reinforce the railway bridge arrived at the bridgehead, it collided head-on with the Jiaodong Group Army that had just solved the bridgehead defenders and was about to attack Nanluokou.

After capturing the railway bridge, the main force of the 2nd Division continued to drive to the south bank of the Yellow River through the railway bridge. On the south bank, the division of troops was implemented, and one part went to capture Nanluokou, and the large army embarked on the Jiluo Highway and marched towards Jinan City.

At this time, the Jiaodong Army artillery group on the front line of Wangshe Renzhuang in the east of Jinan opened fire. After the war, Zhao Zhengbi, the commander of the Second Division, had a question, that is, did the little devil know that anti-aircraft guns could be used to fight tanks, turrets, and pillboxes horizontally? Do you know if the Jiaodong Army has bazookas and 107 rocket launchers?

Chief of Staff Liu Jianli replied very well: "The little devil knows a ghost!" If they knew, would they dare to show off their might everywhere with a turtle shell as thin as an iron sheet? Will it take so much effort to build these brick and wood turrets? That can only bully and bully local armed forces and guerrillas, in the eyes of Lao Tzu, it is all a pile of garbage"!

Tani sat on the cold bench in Tokyo for a month, and finally sat on the throne of the commander of the 12th Army, and his heart was very high.

According to Gu Shoufu's idea, it was to use Jinan City as a bait to lure Jiang Qiang's main force of the Jiaodong Group Army to attack the city, and then mobilize the elite divisions of the Japanese army to gather Jiang Qiang of the Jiaodong Group Army and annihilate under the city of Jinan. His plan was affirmed by the North China Front Army and the base camp, which originally only asked for the transfer of the first and second divisions of the Kwantung Army to the customs to participate in the battle, but as a result, the base camp transferred three divisions at once. Among them, the 23rd Division was reinforced by the Kwantung Army, and unlike the garrison divisions in North China, the strength reached 18,000 men. The 14th Division, which was subordinate to the First Army, also returned east from Zhengzhou to reinforce the Jinan battlefield. All this made Gu Shoufu ecstatic, and he felt that his time to shine had come.

This afternoon, Gu Shoufu felt particularly good.

The reconnaissance troops and aircraft air reconnaissance sent out all reported that the main force of the Jiaodong Group Army had reached the territory of Zhangqiu, and the specific strength was unknown. The reconnaissance team was unable to penetrate deep into the defense area of the Jiaodong Group Army, and it was not clear what the size of the Jiaodong Group Army was. The plane deduced from the smoke area that the main force of the Jiaodong Group Army had arrived in Zhangqiu.

That's enough! Gu Shoufu took a ruler and measured it on the map, and then transferred the telegrams sent by the troops of the 25th Brigade of the 10th and 8th Divisions to read it carefully, and felt that according to the normal marching speed, the main force of the Jiaodong Army could not reach Zhangqiu, and it should be their vanguard. It seems that the fish has bitten the hook!

What made Gu Shoufu even more pleased was that the battle in Lunan was progressing smoothly, and the 114th Division, with the cooperation of the Manchukuo National Defense Force, implemented the tactics of a little breakthrough, broke through the defense line of a regiment of the Jiaodong Army, and forced the Jiaodong Army to retreat step by step. The battle in Taixi was even more gratifying, the 35th Division made a successful surprise attack, and the Jiaodong Group Army lifted the encirclement of the 13th Brigade of the Independent Mixed Brigade and began to retreat. The 35th Division and the 13th Brigade of the Independent Mixed Regiment had already pounced on them under the cover of the aviation group and eliminated the rearguard units of the Jiaodong Army.

These two battles allowed Gu Shoufu to figure out the numbers of the Taixi Jiaodong Army and the Lunan Jiaodong Army, one is the Lunan Independent Regiment, and the other is the Taixi Garrison Brigade Garrison Third Regiment.

Gu Shoufu immediately reported this information to the headquarters and base camp of the North China Front, and won another round of praise. You must know that since the Japanese army fought with Jiang Qiang's Jiaodong Group Army, it has always only suffered losses and not taken advantage, let alone found the corpse of the Jiaodong Army and identified the number of the unit. Prince Zaihito of the Imperial Palace was excited, and he did not hesitate to praise him, saying that Tani Shoufu was a leader in the Japanese Army, with both wisdom and courage, and a sharp style.

Gu Shoufu was overjoyed, and strictly ordered the Japanese troops in Lunan and Taixi to speed up their attacks, and completely defeated the enemy in front of them with the heroic and tenacious style of the Japanese Army and the tactics of sneak attacks in a roundabout way, thus making a good start for the Jiaodong Group Army, which completely annihilated Jiangqiang.

While having dinner, Gu Shoufu received a report from the defenders of Luokou about the Jiaodong Army's sneak attack on the Luokou Yellow River Bridge. Gu Shoufu was shocked, he didn't expect that the Jiaodong Army would make a move on the Luokou Bridge. What does Jiang Qiang want to do? Does he want to blow up the bridge, block the reinforcements on the northern front, and encircle Jinan?

Gu Shoufu strictly ordered the defenders of Luokou to repel the attack of the Jiaodong Army, and ordered Lieutenant General Guan Guizhi to quickly reinforce Luokou, and at the same time ordered the Japanese troops stationed in Dexian County to quickly dispatch to flank the Jiaodong Army that attacked the Luokou Bridge.

As soon as the order was issued, a report was received from the defenders of Luokou, saying that the North Luokou and Luokou Yellow River bridges had been lost. Gu Shoufu's good mood for a day was completely dispelled in this short period of time. He was the commander of the 6th Division, the most elite of the Japanese army, and knew that the Jiaodong Army attacked the Luokou Bridge first, which was to block the retreat of the Jinan defenders to the north and cut off the support of the Japanese army on the northern front to Jinan.

Gu Shoufu did not dare to slack off, and immediately reported the situation to Terauchi Shouichi, and strictly ordered the Japanese troops stationed in Dexian County to recapture the Yellow River Iron Bridge. At this time, Gu Shoufu heard the sound of cannons shaking the ground and mountains. Kobayashi Asaburo stumbled in, opened his mouth and said, "Your Excellency, the Jiaodong Group Army has begun to attack." They used massive artillery groups. Judging from the sound of artillery, there were at least more than 300 field and mountain artillery. ”

Gu Shoufu now understood that the 107th Division and the Fifth Division were all killed under the artillery group of the Jiaodong Group Army. Such a powerful artillery fire is his original Sixth Division, if he fights in the field, it will also be blown up by the Jiaodong Group Army.

Gu Shoufu was shocked and scolded Kobayashi Asaburo: "What are you panicking about? The city walls of Jinan are strong, the Jiaodong Group Army is the army of the Chinese, and Jiang Qiang will not bombard Jinan with so many cannons. As soon as the morning dawns, the air force group can be dispatched to blow up Jiang Qiang and his Jiaodong Group Army to death. Go and send a report to Commander Shouichi Terauchi, asking him to urge the reinforcements on the northern and southern fronts to move quickly. I'll go up to the city wall and see. ”

When Tani Shofu went up to the top of the city wall, Lieutenant General Seki, the commander of the 34th Division, was already there.

Seeing Gu Shoufu coming, Guan Guizhi saluted respectfully, and then pointed to the direction of Licheng in the east and said: "Your Excellency Commander, please look, the headlights have lit up the sky, indicating that Jiang Qiang's troops have a lot of vehicles!" ”

Gu Shoufu realized that his judgment of the strength of Jiangqiang's Jiaodong Group Army was simply ridiculous, just thinking that he would not be able to reach Jinan now at the normal infantry marching speed, how could he forget that this guy had been to Tianjin, Dezhou, Lianyungang, and had eliminated so many imperial troops, and must have captured many cars, rubber-floored vehicles and war horses, and his mobility ability was probably stronger than that of the Sixth Division!

At this time, Gu Shoufu realized that this Jinan City was probably in danger. Jinan used to be called Jinan Road and Daibei Road, and it was only changed to Jinan City on July 1, 1929. Jinan City is different from other cities, it is a set of cities, which is typical of easy to defend and difficult to attack.

Before the Qing Dynasty, Jinan City was just an old city with four city gates, the east gate was called Qichuan Gate, the west gate was called Leyuan Gate, the south gate was called Shuntian Gate, and the north gate was called Huibo Gate, that is, North Water Gate. The walls of the old city are 12-14 meters high and 10-12 meters thick. Every 70 to 100 meters there is a fort (commonly known as a horse face) protruding 4 meters outward, and the moat is 5 or 6 meters to 20 or 30 meters wide. There is an urn city inside the city gate, so each city gate is a double city gate.

In the Xianfeng period, due to the increase in the number of households in the east, south and west of the city, commerce prospered, and the outer city was built. The circumference of the outer city wall is 20 kilometers, and it is an earthen wall built for slabs, commonly known as the polder wall. During the Tongzhi period, the earthen wall was rebuilt into a stone polder wall, the north earthen polder was abolished, and it was shrunk to the northwest corner and the northeast corner of the city wall, with a circumference of 12,221 meters, a height of 5 meters, a base thickness of 5 meters, a top width of 3.3 meters, 14 forts along the polder, and more than 3,300 battlements. There are 7 Weizi gates: the east is the Yonggu Gate, commonly known as the East Shefang Gate; The south is Dai'an Gate, commonly known as Nanweizi Gate; the southwest is Yongsui Gate; The west is Yongzhen Gate; The northwest is Ji'an Gate, commonly known as North Small Gate; The north is Haiyan Gate, commonly known as the vegetable market Weizi Gate; The northeast is Yongjing Gate. There is an outer trench dug outside the polder wall, which is eight meters wide and four meters deep.

In the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, because the old city wall seriously affected the traffic inside and outside the city, on the basis of the city wall of the Ming Dynasty, a gate was added on each side: Kenji Gate was opened in the east of the north gate, Xunli Gate was opened in the south of the East Gate, Kunshun Gate was opened in the west of the South Gate, and Qianjian Gate was opened in the north of the West Gate.

After opening up the commercial port in 1904, in order to facilitate the traffic between the city and the commercial port, the Puli Gate was added to the Weizi Wall in the outer city, and the phosphorus Xiang Gate was opened in the fifth year of the Republic of China, and after the establishment of Qilu University, in order to facilitate the traffic with the medical school and hospital in the Weizi, a new gate was opened at the south entrance of Nanxin Street opposite the school gate, and in the early 30s, the Zhongshan Gate was opened in the southeast corner of the Weizi Wall.

So far, there are 19 city gates in Jinan City, including eight city gates in the old city and eleven city gates in the outer city polder wall.

Due to the 1928 Jinan tragedy, the old city gates in the east, south and west and the urn city tower were destroyed by Japanese artillery fire, Han Fuyu was unable to repair it when he was in charge of Shandong, and Jinan had another polder city to protect it, so he simply demolished all the three gate towers and opened the city wall as a ring road.

After the artillery group launched an attack, Jiang Qiang led his headquarters to leave the Hudi Catholic Church in Zaoyuan, and went to Wangsherenzhuang by car, where he established a headquarters in the reading hall in the village. Wangshe Renzhuang is 15 kilometers away from Jinan, which can be reached in more than 20 minutes by car and an hour by horseback riding.

After the location of the headquarters was determined, the communications battalion was busy setting up radio antennas and pulling out the telephone lines connecting with the divisions and regiments. The telephone line was not connected for a while, but the radio was quickly connected.

Jiang Qiang first sent a telegram to General Tang Juwu and General Jiang Baili, who were in Shanghai, reporting that the attack had been launched and that it was progressing smoothly. He then sent a report to all brigades and to Hong Chaoyuan of the Lunan Group, Yun Qichang of the Fourth Division, Zhao Shan of the Eighth Brigade, and Li Shucun of the Fifth Division, asking them to report on the progress and changes in the enemy situation in a timely manner. Chang Yuan reminded Jiang Qiang that the battle plan allowed the artillery group to directly shell the city wall and the tanks to directly enter the city to launch an attack.

The reason why Chang Yuan reminded him like this is mainly because in the past battles, the Jiaodong Group Army paid great attention to the protection of cultural relics. Under normal circumstances, Jiang Qiang strictly forbids the bombardment of urban buildings. But what time is it? On both the north and south lines, there were elite divisions of devils rushing to Jinan non-stop, in an attempt to gather the main force of the Jiaodong Group Army under the city of Jinan. And Jinan City is a typical easy to defend and difficult to attack, the city wall is strong, not to mention, there is a city in the city, and then to be confined to the concept of protecting cultural relics, do not dare to let artillery, tanks into the city, just to attack the city by ordinary means, I am afraid that the attack on a day and a night can not be taken, after dawn the Japanese army is coming, the Jiaodong Group Army is really going to be a river of blood under the city of Jinan!

Jiang Qiang nodded and told Chang Yuan that according to the battle plan, except for the residential buildings, any other place where there is stubborn resistance from the Japanese army can be attacked!

Since the Japanese invasion of China, I don't know how many sieges have been fought and how many famous Chinese cities have been occupied. Like Jinan in front of us, the Japanese army occupied it twice. Once in 1928, Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition to capture Jinan, in order to prevent the reunification of China, the Japanese army sent the Sixth Division to invade Shandong, in a vain attempt to stop the Northern Expeditionary Army's Northern Expedition, and created a horrific May Third Massacre in Jinan, slaughtering more than 17,000 Chinese people, and once trapped Chiang Kai-shek, commander-in-chief of the Northern Expeditionary Army, in the city of Jinan. The second time was in December 1937 after Japan's full-scale invasion of China, Han Fuqu fled without a fight, and the Japanese 10th Division successfully captured Jinan. The group photos of the little devils on the gates of Jinan were published in major Japanese newspapers and magazines, and the smug smile of the invaders like devils still echoed in the cracks and stones of the bricks and stones on the city wall of Jinan.

November 9, 1938 is the year of the lunar calendar, the month of Renxu, and the day of Yisi, that is, the 18th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, just the beginning of winter. The fifteenth moon is sixteen round, and when it reaches the eighteenth, the moon becomes a little broken. Such evenings are conducive to the movement of large forces. In siege warfare, the besieging side must be the one with strong troops, that is, the big wins the small and the strong bully the weak.

Now, it is the powerful Jiaodong Group Army that has surrounded the city of Jinan. After the artillery group launched a saturated artillery bombardment on the Japanese positions on the first line of Wangshe Renzhuang, Chen Zhengnian, the commander of the 1st Division, issued an order to attack, and the tanks of Hu Dawei's 1st Regiment and Zhao Dahe's 2nd Regiment took the lead in driving out of the concealed positions, guiding armored vehicles, automobiles, cavalry, and infantry to run over the little devil's position and drive towards Jinan City. Zhou Hao's tank Ji drove into Jinan City with a Tiger tank

The distance from Wangshe Renzhuang to Yonggu Gate and Yongjing Gate in the east of Jinan City is very short, and it only took about 20 minutes for the first and second regiments to arrive. Guan Guizhi, the commander of the 35th Division, would have thought that Jiang Qiang would arrive so quickly that he would not even have time to blow up the bridge connecting the city gate, so he hurriedly ordered the 35th Wing of the Field Artillery to open fire to prevent the Jiaodong Group Army from attacking the city. The 35th Field Artillery Wing, with a total of 36 field guns, was one less mountain artillery brigade than the permanent division.

In Guan Guizhi's mind, although the Jiaodong Group Army had an air force, they could not be dispatched at night, and during the day the powerful North China Front Air Group provided sufficient air cover, and his field artillery positions were safe wherever they were placed. Therefore, according to the principle of taking the old city and the new city of Jinan as the core of defense, Guan Guizhi put all the three field artillery brigades in the city, and built positions with the help of the city wall, and the infantry guns and grenadiers of each infantry brigade were all on the city wall, forming an artillery coverage network that matched near and far and took care of all directions. The reason for this deployment is mainly that Guan Guizhi believed Gu Shoufu's words, and the Jiaodong Group Army would not destroy the city buildings.

As soon as the Japanese artillery fired, the speeding Jiaodong Army convoy had to quickly disperse. That's a cannon after all, and a single shell can overturn a car. No, a car of the 2nd Regiment was hit by a shell from the little devils, and all the fighters in the car were blown up and overturned under the car.

According to the battle plan, the task of the 1st Division was to attack from the northeast and east, take advantage of the superiority in armor, break through the city gate before the devils blew up the bridge, and enter the city.

As soon as he saw that the Japanese army was blocking with artillery fire, and his own artillery group had not yet kept up, Chen Zhengnian immediately ordered to stop the advance, retreat back, evacuate the troops, avoid the artillery fire of the devils, organize the troops in regiments, prepare siege equipment, and wait for the strong attack.

Starting from the Third Group Army, Chen Zhengnian rose all the way up the route of the commander of the first regiment, the commander of the first guard regiment, the commander of the third division, and the commander of the first brigade, and always led the troops with the strongest combat effectiveness under Jiang Qiang. Originally, when the Jiaodong Military Region was upgraded to the Jiaodong Group Army, several regiment commanders of the Jiaodong Military Region had a bit of shallow qualifications, such as Zhang Hongtao, Chen Dayong, and Hong Chaoyuan, who failed to serve as the commanders of the three divisions, but let Liu Jianli and Chen Zhengnian become the commanders of the first division and the commander of the first division, and the first division of the Jiaodong Group Army, which has the strongest combat effectiveness. This point is clear not only to Chen Zhengnian, but also to all cadres.

When a cadre becomes a first-class commander of a main brigade, fighting a war is not based on whether he is brave or not, but on the level of command.

Since the Japanese army did not have time to blow up the bridges on the outer trenches outside the Yonggu Gate and Yongjing Gate, it shows that the Japanese army did not expect our army to attack so quickly from the beginning, and now it is too late for them to blow up the bridges.

If you rashly launch an attack before destroying the devil's heavy firepower, the soldiers will be exposed to the fire of the little devil, and then your own elites may be covered with corpses outside Jinan City.

The artillery group commanded by Tao Zhuanghai soon came up, and their artillery trucks were all pulled by pack horses, and the speed was naturally not as fast as that of cars, but it was not too slow. It's time to fight Jinan, which fighter isn't excited? Naturally, the riders beat the horses to run fast.

Although Tao Zhuanghai sometimes likes to joke with Jiang Qiang, no big or small, but really speaking, I am afraid that he is the smartest person in the Jiaodong Army, and every time he frolicks with Jiang Qiang, he can get some benefits. This guy is shrewd!

When approaching the east gate, Tao Zhuang Haishou gave an order, and the cavalry brigade artillery regiment followed the cavalry brigade westward with its subordinate artillery units, and the other three artillery groups all stayed. Because Li Chang found that his original plan needed to be adjusted, as long as he concentrated artillery fire to blow up the east gate and the northeast gate first, and let the elite first division attack the city, this little devil in Jinan City would be finished.

The devil's cannon kept shelling, forcing the first and second regiments to extinguish the lights, Chen Zhengnian and the others were impatient, urging Tao Zhuanghai to hurry up and hurry up, he couldn't wait.

There are no cars in the artillery group of the Jiaodong Group Army, their cannons are horse-drawn, and the shells are transported by rubber trucks, because the road here is really difficult to walk, and you can march quickly by taking advantage of the moonlight. The artillerymen of the little devils did not know that the nemesis had arrived, and the Grim Reaper was dancing above their heads, and thought that their shelling was working well, and they were still shelling non-stop. However, they shifted the direction of the artillery bombardment and began to shell the southeast, south, and west of Jinan City, because the Japanese artillery observers found that the large forces of the Jiaodong Army were advancing in a roundabout way towards these places, needless to say that they were going to encircle Jinan City on all sides.

The artillery brigade of the Jiaodong Army has gone through the test of the great war, and has not only formed a complete set of cadre education and artillery technical training system, but also has much richer actual combat experience than the field artillery wing of the 35th Division. It was night, and the Japanese artillery kept firing, which was tantamount to marking the direction and coordinates of the shelling for the Jiaodong Army.

Tao Zhuanghai studied artillery when he was studying in Germany, and the artillery commanders, battalion commanders, company commanders, and platoon commanders of the Jiaodong Military Region were all personally trained by Tao Zhuanghai. Now there is no need for Tao Zhuanghai to personally calculate the specific data such as distance and wind speed, which are the work of the technical cadres of the artillery regiments.

It was decided that dozens of tanks of the first and second regiments would be lined up and bombarded the city walls and city gates, and that all the flying thunder artillery, infantry guns, mortars, grenadiers, and heavy machine guns of the whole brigade should be solved by the devil's firepower points on the city walls, and that the artillery groups of Taozhuanghai should blow up a gap between Yonggumen and Yongjingmen, and then take the tanks as the forerunner and all the first, second, third, and new regiments to enter the city. After entering the city, quickly clear the devil's defensive forces in the outer city, let the artillery group enter the city, directly attack the inner city gate, and smash the Yellow Dragon. After taking control of the inner city, it will attack westward, with the ultimate goal of capturing the merchant port and the devil's airfield.

Before launching the Jiaoji Road Campaign, all units of the artillery unit received an urgent training task from the Jiaoji General Staff Office, that is, to practice the coordinated tactics of infantry and tan. For the cadres of the main brigades of the Jiaodong Army, this is an old tactic, and Jiang Qiang's military academy in the Jiaodong area has a military academy in the Jiaodong area, where he was transferred from Shanghai, and the infantry training outline clearly explained that the last all-division competition before the anti-Japanese resistance had this subject exercise. However, this time it is different, and the training of earth tank subjects has been added. The so-called earthen tank is to use a square table, covered with a bedding soaked in cold water, so that the devil's bullets cannot penetrate, and can cover the rapid attack and advance of the soldiers.

When the devil's field artillery first began to fire, Gu Shoufu and Guan Guizhi, the commander of the 35th Division, stood on the inner city tower and saw clearly, the artillery effect was good, the convoy of the Jiaodong Army was quickly evacuated by the bombing, and the cavalry behind also had to bypass the city wall and make a detour to the west, and the infantry also extinguished the torches and scattered around Jinan.