Okamura Neiji had no intention of sending "regular troops" to the battlefield to deal with the guerrillas. This was actually a misunderstanding.

From the beginning, Okamura Neiji's strategic goal was to block the Eighth Route Army in the mountainous area.

If he has enough troops, he only needs to send troops to build a defense line outside the mountainous area.

The problem is that the North China Front has too many areas to defend... railway transportation lines, highway transportation lines, quasi-security areas, non-security areas, and even Ye'an District all need troops to ensure security.

The cost of occupying the army is that there are dangers everywhere, and every civilian here is a potential enemy, so troops need to be invested everywhere, otherwise there will be unexpected troubles.

Therefore, not to mention that there are only more than 300,000 troops including the puppet army now. Even if it is 400,000 or 500,000, it will be difficult to block the Eighth Route Army in the mountainous area while balancing multiple aspects.

In order to do this with limited troops, it is necessary to occupy a part of the mountainous area and take advantage of the terrain to build a defense line.

Okamura Neiji made a comparison:

Build a gun tower in a plain area. Although the area it can control is wider, it is full of loopholes and it is easy for the enemy to get through or even capture the gun tower directly... because the plain means that everywhere the enemy may pass or break through

At this point, the enemy will choose to infiltrate everything after dark.

But it is different to build gun towers on high ground and block the highway from a high position. This kind of gun towers can effectively block the highway while ensuring its own safety. It does not invest more troops than the former but can have better results. This is the gun tower.

What Neiji Murura pursues.

Therefore, Okamura Neiji's tactics for the "non-security areas" were to occupy high ground and build field fortifications to organize defenses until gun towers were built, barbed wire fences were pulled up, and minefields were set up to complete the blockade.

Occupying high ground and organizing defense is what the regular army is good at. The firepower and equipment of the mixed brigade are slightly insufficient in front of the already developed Eighth Route Army.

For example, a brigade of mixed brigade appears in a certain highland or a certain village and is surrounded and annihilated by the Eighth Route Army.

If it were a regular army with tanks and large-caliber howitzers... there would be no such situation.

Originally, Okamura Neiji thought there was no difficulty in this. After all, the Japanese army dispatched a second-class field division. Most of the soldiers were retired veterans and young people who had received military training. Their combat effectiveness should not be underestimated. (Note: The Japanese second-class divisions in World War II were numbered 21 to

110)

The Eighth Route Army has always adopted the guerrilla tactic of "withdraw if it cannot defeat".

Therefore, Okamura Neiji estimated that the difficulty in fighting the "non-Ye'an area" lies in "defending", that is, after occupying it, he will be endlessly harassed by the opponent.

What Okamura Neiji didn't expect was that this time the Eighth Route Army, uncharacteristically, started an offensive and defensive battle with the Japanese army in the mountainous area, and it was quite tenacious.

"Did they know my battle plan in advance?" Okamura Neji felt doubtful about this.

He had such thoughts not only because of the fighting in the "non-security areas", but also because of the intelligence coming from the "quasi-security areas" that the Eighth Route Army had changed its tactics.

Yoshio Shinozuka, who is in charge of this aspect, said this: "There seems to be no trace of the enemy in these villages, but in fact they are hiding underground. We found many tunnels, and our army encountered great resistance when attacking these tunnels!"

"

The tunnels in the plain areas and the fortifications on the reverse slopes of the highlands were almost the fish-scale encirclement tactics implemented by Okamura Neji in the "quasi-security areas" and the blockade tactics implemented in the "non-security areas".

Could it be that someone leaked information?

But Okamura Neji quickly overturned this idea.

Because these tunnels and these reverse slope fortifications cannot be constructed in a day or two, they should have been started before making plans.

so……

Okamura Neiji finally attributed it to "coincidence".

How did Neji Okamura know that this was actually not a coincidence, but that someone really knew about his battle plan and made preparations in advance.

The Japanese 37th Division, codenamed "Winter", is a force formed in Kumamoto Prefecture.

The division commander, Lieutenant General Adachi 23rd, was named because he was born in the 23rd year of Meiji (1890). He was a student of Okamura Neiji, and was a classmate of the same period as Yan Xishan, He Yingqin and others.

At this time, he was looking at the map and listening in detail to the description of the battlefield by the surviving soldiers of the Yoshida Battalion.

Anda Twenty-Three was a little strange. It had been more than three years since he entered this land as a captain in the Battle of Songhu, and he had never seen or even heard of such strange tactics.

But what these surviving soldiers said seemed to be right, because he was facing this problem now. The field howitzer was completely useless, and the same was true for the tanks and machine guns.

Is the only way to go up and fight them with bayonets?

If that's an option, then that's not a bad idea!

"Nishihara-kun!" Adachi Twenty-three raised his head and ordered to the commander Chisa Nishihara standing beside him: "Send a small team to conduct reconnaissance to see if this is the case!"

"Yes!" Chisa Nishihara responded, turned around and gave the order to the staff.

Then, Anda Twenty-Three glanced at the dozen or so surviving soldiers standing beside him covered in wounds with cold eyes, and said: "As for you, you can be loyal to the empire!"

"But, Lieutenant General!" The leading Japanese captain looked at Anda 23 with disbelief and explained excitedly: "We did not escape or surrender, we fought until the last moment..."

"Really?" Anda Twenty-three impatiently interrupted the captain: "If you fought until the last moment, why are you still standing here now?"

The captain was speechless, or he already knew that things could not be changed, so he simply did not explain.

As soon as Anda Twenty-three waved his hand, soldiers escorted the surviving soldiers down.

Then there was a burst of gunfire, and each of these soldiers was hit in the back of the head by a rifle at close range and fell to the ground. Their bodies were placed beside the road, lined up in a neat row, to be displayed to the soldiers passing by along the way.

Anda 23 took a deep breath, raised his telescope and looked at the high ground a few hundred meters away.

He actually believed what these surviving soldiers said. They fainted during the battle and were only alive until now.

After all, it is a battlefield where thousands of people are fighting. It is inevitable that there will be some "accidents" when the corpses of the enemy and ourselves are mixed together.

From this perspective, they should be heroes who survived the battlefield.

But Anda Twenty-Three still couldn't let them go.

For no reason, because Anda 23 cannot let his soldiers take any chances and let the soldiers hold on to the hope of coming back from the battlefield alive. Anda 23 wants to send a message to the soldiers: if they are defeated, they should all be loyal to the empire.
Chapter completed!