At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the Japanese army finally could not bear the huge casualties and chose to retreat proactively.
From the morning of November 8 to the afternoon of November 9, the Tenth Army invested a total of three infantry brigades and one mixed brigade, excluding artillery, armor, aviation, engineers and other auxiliary arms, which were directly used for front-line siege.
There are nearly 30,000 people.
In Dongcheng alone, 7 infantry brigades with more than 7,000 people were deployed. An attack of this intensity could be considered large-scale even in the Battle of Songhu.
However, Songjiang City is still in Chinese hands.
The Tenth Army's efforts were not only in vain, but also suffered heavy losses.
The 13th Infantry Brigade located in Nancheng suffered more than 1,000 casualties in two days. Almost an entire infantry brigade was wiped out in this way, which made Ushijima so angry that his nose twisted.
But for Kunizaki and Suematsu Shigeharu, the 13th Infantry Brigade is definitely Versailles.
You are just a man of thousands, but your Major General Ushijima Mitsuru's nose is so angry that he is so angry. If you guys are like this now, are you going to lose your temper?
Songjiang Xicheng was originally the main attack direction of the Tenth Army from the beginning, but unexpectedly, in a small Cangcheng and an outer city block, a mixed brigade and an infantry brigade were almost beaten to pieces.
The Chinese are like stones in a latrine---it's smelly and hard and they've been standing on it for two days, and their hearts, liver, and lungs have almost rotted away.
It took a lot of effort to wait for the Chinese to run away on their own initiative! Then they came back with a carbine.
We haven’t even seen what the city wall looks like yet! The Kunisaki Detachment and the 114th Division, which were the main attackers, totaling more than 20,000 Japanese troops, lost 3,000 to 4,000 people.
But this can only be regarded as the beginning of a nightmare.
After going through painful torture and actually entering the city to attack and defend the city, both Suematsu Shigeharu and Kunizaki Zuo finally understood what it means to be a dog biting a hedgehog, not eating the meat but eating a mouthful of blood.
After two days of fierce attacks under the cover of aircraft and artillery, the infantry brigade of the 114th Division was almost beaten to a semi-disabled state. The Kunisaki Detachment once again suffered more than 800 casualties, so that in the afternoon of November 9, the 114th Division began
No effort was put into working, and it entered the active paddling stage.
The Kunisaki detachment is certainly not stupid. A bunch of scumbags from Baga actually want an elite like me to act as a shield for you? Go ahead and dream like crazy!
Anyway, those who were beaten in Dongcheng were not from our Fifth Division.
Let’s row together!
The two Japanese troops "swinged the oars" together on the moat in a tacit understanding, which the Chinese defenders wanted.
The Japanese have launched a desperate attack in the past two days. Not only are the Japanese dying, but they are also dying with them.
After a total of more than ten rounds of siege, the group of lieutenant generals and major generals stationed in the west city were almost beaten to tears.
Just carrying more than a thousand corpses to the rear, not to mention hundreds of seriously injured people, a full infantry regiment disappeared in the two days of fighting.
The Chinese and Japanese sides located in Xicheng have actually been fighting a tacit war with each other since the afternoon.
Bullets and artillery shells were being fired back and forth in a lively manner, but it was just a lively battle. If the Japanese troops did not charge upwards, the Chinese would not raise their heads. They would hide in the trenches and at most stretch out their arms and fire their guns.
The casualty rate on both sides dropped rapidly.
You two idiots are real dogs! Tokutaro Sakai, who later learned the truth about this day, could only use this sentence to describe his two idiot colleagues.
But whether it was Ushijima Mitsuru with a crooked nose, Kunizaki Zheng with a haggard face, or Suematsu Shigeharu who had long been crying, if these three met Major General Sakai Tokutaro of the 11th Infantry Brigade, they would probably give him a heartfelt send-off.
Give him a comforting look, and then take the initiative to stay away from this guy.
I sincerely comfort you because Sakai Tokutaro is an unlucky guy; and stay away from him because he is really unlucky, so unlucky that it makes people feel that it is safer to stay away from him.
Compared with the unlucky guy Sakai Tokutaro, their losses are nothing to mention.
Two days ago, the 11th Infantry Brigade still had two full infantry regiments and three reinforced infantry squadrons, with 8,000 infantrymen alone.
The term "strong soldiers and strong horses" may be tailor-made for them.
What now? Let’s work together and count all the wounded who are still in the hospital. Let’s see if we can assemble an infantry regiment!
That means that the once-famous 11th Infantry Brigade, which seemed to have transformed from a secondary attack into a main attack, can almost be reorganized into the 11th Infantry Regiment.
Nearly 5,000 people were lost in the battle. This was the answer handed over by Tokutaro Sakai after two days and nights of siege.
Compared to the Kunisaki Detachment and the 114th Division, which were jolted to the point of pain, the "Strongest Division on the Surface", which represented the Tenth Army's strongest combat capability, was jostled to the core by the hard Matsue Castle, and the yolk was almost pushed out.
That kind of.
Of course, such heart-wrenching and horrific battle losses are not unprecedented in the history of Japanese military warfare.
During the Battle of Songhu in March, the army dispatched by Songhu increased from 200,000 to 150,000; in the Russo-Japanese War, a week of fortress assaults alone resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, including Nogi Nogi's three sons.
One and a half were killed in the battle.
However, even the Lieutenant General's division commander became the prey of the Chinese and turned into a cold corpse. This was a bit too much.
Moreover, right next to Sakai Tokutaro, he was shot in the head by a cold gunman from the Chinese side.
Do you think this should mean that this unlucky kid, Tokutaro Sakai, is really unlucky? Or is he a lucky guy?
At least you are lucky to be alive!
But if he was lucky, why was his captain also killed? And it was very humiliating to be kidnapped by a Chinese who sneaked into the headquarters, and then he did it neatly in front of all his subordinates.
Cut throat.
This is a combination of suppressing the upper and lower, which is a very unlucky constitution!
What's even more terrible is that he and his colleagues at the same level were all defeated. If he hadn't sent the report in the middle of the night, wouldn't Tanabe Moritake have come running in such a hurry? If he wasn't riding a horse, he would have been thrown off his horse by a horse that was frightened by the sound of gunfire.
Die?
Moreover, what is even more mysterious is that Tanabe Moritake was not dead at the time. He died only when he arrived at the field hospital of the 11th Infantry Brigade.
I'm afraid he wasn't poisoned to death by the bad luck of Tokutaro Sakai!
It is said that from then on, when the Tenth Army Headquarters held a combat meeting, there must be a blank space within two meters of Major General Sakai Tokutaro.
There is an old Chinese saying: If you don’t believe in ghosts and gods, you have to believe in fate!
This guy's life is in danger.
The Japanese army that suffered heavy losses probably never recovered. From four o'clock in the afternoon to nightfall, the Japanese army, which surrounded the city on three sides, did not launch an attack again.
The Japanese troops who were ready to attack Beicheng finally withdrew.
The Japanese infantry is not attacking, but that does not mean that the Japanese artillery and aviation are idle.
After confirming that it was impossible for anyone to evacuate the city, the Japanese heavy artillery brigade and the light destroyer stationed on the Huangpu River used artillery shells to help their compatriots seek justice.
I don’t know if it was because Sakai Tokutaro, an unlucky boy, couldn’t bear to watch with tears streaming down his face. The commander of the Tenth Army, Yanagawa Heisuke, who arrived at the battlefield in the afternoon, actually ordered the heavy artillery brigade to shell at all costs.
Sixty heavy artillery pieces and more than eighty artillery pieces of various types threw nearly 4,000 artillery shells into Songjiang City, including combustion-supporting sulfur bombs, high-explosive bombs, and even mustard gas bombs.
He looked like he was going to send away the whole city of Songjiang just by relying on cannons.
Fortunately, when the Japanese army issued a retreat signal and began to withdraw from the battlefield, the 108th Division headquarters located on the front line of Dongcheng also issued a military order that the infantry should not pursue in tandem.
Although the Japanese troops in the city were at a disadvantage, they were far from being able to retreat. Many troops actually chose to cut off the rear and let their colleagues leave the battlefield.
From this point of view, the Sixth Division is definitely a strong force that cannot be ignored.
When the troops that surrounded the Japanese army made their final attack on them, the Chinese soldiers on the battlefield were more cleaning the battlefield, looking for the wounded and bodies.
Because everyone knows that without these human shields, the Japanese army eager for revenge will sooner or later bombard the city.
In front of people, equipment and other things can be ignored.
Soldiers from all departments basically cleaned up the battlefield in almost half an hour, and evacuated to air-raid shelters or artillery-proof locations, carrying their brothers who were still alive or dead.
Even the few Japanese soldiers who were still resisting were ignored.
Because, when their own shells hit, their chance of survival will not exceed 5%.
Indeed, there were at least eighty or ninety Japanese troops resisting in the urban area, but when the shells came overwhelmingly, they were basically all dead.
According to the records of the 11th Infantry Brigade, there were only five Japanese infantrymen who returned to the barracks at night after the shelling.
This shows the intensity of this round of shelling by the Japanese army.
However, seeing their own artillery show off its power again, the mood of the Japanese infantry outside the city was not good at all.
Faced with such an offensive by the Japanese army, the Chinese defenders finally no longer suffered in silence this time. All artillery that could fire, whether it was mountain artillery, field artillery or large-caliber mortars, also launched a counterattack.
But it wasn't against Japanese artillery fire.
The Japanese heavy artillery brigade was still ten kilometers away, and the mountain artillery and field artillery were at least five kilometers away. Not to mention not knowing the coordinates, even if they knew that the range of the Chinese artillery was shorter, they could only stare.
But the Japanese infantry are outside the city!
If you beat me, I can't catch the infantry and beat you!
Moreover, I don’t know what kind of mentality Lieutenant General Wu has. All artillery that can fire has its muzzles pointing eastward.
That's the position of the 11th Infantry Brigade.
You have to catch someone and pinch him, right? Standing in the division headquarters two thousand meters away, Sakai Tokutaro looked at the bombs that were blooming on his own position, and he didn't know what kind of mood he was feeling.
They all said that he was very unlucky! The Japanese commanders from other directions collectively felt that this was very reasonable.
There is an old Chinese saying: It is better to cut off one finger than to hurt ten of them!
Lieutenant General Wu's move naturally meant that the Dongcheng defenders suffered too many casualties and he felt uncomfortable not causing trouble for the 11th Infantry Brigade. He also wanted to beat the 11th Infantry Brigade to fractures in one fell swoop.
The Battle of Songjiang on November 9th ended in the fury of the God of War that both sides could possess.
But the Sixing Battalion, which was 40 kilometers away, faced their first ground battle at this moment.
This chapter has been completed!