Flares were fired from the boat behind them, and a group of soldiers moved closer along the river embankment, set up light machine guns and started shooting directly.
The locations of the various bandits in the periphery were all figured out, and special arrangements were made accordingly, and the battle began quickly.
The warships followed behind, providing support with machine guns and artillery, and preventing breakouts and escapes, while the attacking army soldiers, led by officers, quickly pressed forward.
Casualties were naturally inevitable, but the officers still actively led the team to charge. It would be impossible if they were not active! Thinking about the wording in the order, they did not dare to compromise on this matter.
Fortunately, they are just some gangsters after all, and they have no advantages such as geographical location, and it is not like those around the inn where they are forced to fight to the death, so these people are not that difficult to deal with.
After several blows, they were directly defeated and fled. Many people even surrendered directly. Of course, there were also some who pretended to be dead. On the contrary, it took a lot of time to capture prisoners and clean up the battlefield.
Lin Mo couldn't mobilize tens of thousands of troops. Counting the cooperating navy, there were only two standard regiments, and only the number was reached, and the entire regiment was not mobilized.
Basically, they were drawn from small stations in company units. There were also platoons and, of course, whole battalions. But in any case, compared with the bandits, the number of soldiers was very different.
Fortunately, we were prepared in advance. The captured gangsters were searched and seized, strung up with ropes and handed over to special personnel for guarding. However, due to the limited manpower, the capture rate was not high, and most of them were scattered by birds and beasts.
Fortunately, at present, we are advancing gradually in the form of an encirclement. There may be some fish that slip through the net, but most of them will eventually be caught.
However, such ease is only possible near the warship. Further away, except for a few flares, the warship cannot provide much support.
It's not that they can't fight, but that this kind of cooperation requires extremely strict training, and the two parties who are temporarily transferred must have never done it before. If they mess around at this time, they can easily injure themselves.
In these places, one or two hundred soldiers often have to face thousands of bandits. Fortunately, this is a regular army. Although the progress is a little slow, it is not a big problem.
They were able to repel them very quickly, but they couldn't capture many prisoners. The gangs usually didn't collapse immediately, but retreated inward as a group.
However, in this way, the progress of both parties can be basically kept consistent, and they can advance inward simultaneously without having to wait for each other.
"Captain Li, there's going to be a fight later, do you need to arrange for someone to go find out what's going on?"
Captain Su came over to ask. After being soaked in the rain for a long time, he was a little impatient to wait. However, Captain Li didn't respond. He just raised his hand to signal him to stop talking.
After listening carefully for a while, Captain Li said: "There are machine guns, artillery, flares, siege from all sides, and the sound of large ships, and the fighting is quite methodical.
It is estimated that those people are here, so hurry up and give orders to others to guard their front and back, these bandits will definitely not be able to wait for death in peace, and we are caught in the middle, I am afraid we will be greatly affected."
The noise outside and the melee inside were obviously different from the battles they had fought before, so Captain Li had some guesses. Besides, it was a flare and an artillery fire, so ordinary people couldn't handle it.
"...Boom, boom, boom..." Accompanied by continuous heavy machine gun fire, the figures gathered under the thatch not far from the waterway suddenly fled in all directions.
Through the porthole, Wang Mingkun nodded with satisfaction. This was already the third gang they had expelled. He let the ship continue to kill them for a while. He was about to turn the ship around and go to another place, but a crossfire came from the direction where the gang was fleeing.
Wang Mingkun was certain that it was a firefight. Not to mention the faint flash of gunfire, the sound of gunfire alone was very different from a scattered and random counterattack.
However, he did not stop the ship to investigate, but pretended not to see it, turned the ship around as planned, and rushed to the next target.
An accident occurred, indicating that there was something they had not discovered before. It would not be easy to escape the investigation. There was a high probability that at least it would not be an ordinary gangster.
After someone sent the news back, Wang Mingkun took out the map and the simplified map they had drawn before, and studied it carefully. After looking at the nearby terrain, he was basically sure that there was definitely something wrong with the person who was accidentally exposed.
After attacking the next target as usual, Wang Mingkun took the opportunity to turn the ship around, as if he was chasing the remaining bandits, but he actually quietly touched the side and rear of the suspicious target.
The boat slowed down, as if changing direction, and Wang Mingkun and others took the opportunity to quickly jump onto the river embankment and quickly circled behind the suspicious target.
On the command boat, Lin Mo also received a briefing on the situation. There were radio stations on each ship, some already had them, and some were radio stations and transmitters coordinated by the officer.
After reading the reported situation, Lin Mo did not hesitate too much and asked a company as a backup to rush over there and stand by nearby.
"...Puff puff...boom..." As a signal flare was launched into the sky, suppressed gunshots and explosions resounded, and the battle officially began.
When the noise came, Xiao Ban, who had just pretended to leave, quickly rushed back. A large ship also fired a flare from a distance to replace the signal flare.
Under the dim light, the people led by Wang Mingkun quickly spread out in a battle formation, holding submachine guns, shell guns, ZH-29s, machine guns, etc., to support, cover, or attack.
There was not much defense, and the enemy who was caught off guard was quickly strangled in the hail of bullets. The combat performance clearly did not match his ability to hide and cover.
Wang Mingkun estimated that this should be a force that surrendered to the Japanese and was controlled by the Japanese, and there was a high probability that someone from the other side was leading the force.
"...Puff puff..." Wang Mingkun saw someone trying to control the situation in the chaos, and immediately moved in that direction.
Not only him, the fire team also focused their fire almost from the front and back, causing the enemies over there to fall to pieces in one fell swoop, and the rest of them immediately dispersed.
Fortunately, the supporting company arrived quickly, and Wang Mingkun did not let them participate in the strangulation to avoid disturbing them. Instead, he focused on encircling, intercepting, and persuading them to surrender to prevent these people from escaping.
The battlefield was quickly controlled, and a large number of bandits raised their hands to surrender. Of course, the prerequisite for surrender was that there were 30% to 40% casualties, and there were corpses and wailing wounded everywhere.
In this scene, not to mention that the gangsters collapsed and surrendered, even the assisting company felt their scalps tightening, and they were frightened when they saw Wang Mingkun and others.
There are many injured people, and the manpower is limited. The seriously injured ones can only be treated. As for the lightly injured ones, they will not be treated. Whether they can survive depends on their fate.
After Yitong's memory restoration operation, Wang Mingkun quickly got the information he wanted. Of course, the restoration technique only confirmed whether he was lying, and people are actually quite honest.
This is a gang that lives in the middle section of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu. It is a gang that is a boat gang, a wharf gang, and a smuggling force. It is active in Taixing, Yangzhong and other places.
Occupying local small and medium-sized wharves, it also engages in extortion and ship smuggling of small and medium-sized ships. Its members are composed of refugees, poor households, and fugitives from other places.
Of course, the poor people who can be absorbed into the refugee households are also the inhumane ones among them. Many of them are ruthless people. If they are separated from their original situation, they will exploit those people even more harshly.
The gang grew in size during the domestic melee in the past few years. When the situation was unstable, they gathered together and purchased a lot of firearms and weapons. They usually robbed homes and committed various crimes.
When the situation stabilized, these people immediately put away their burials. However, after tasting the sweet benefits brought by violence, how could they be patient? After hearing the rumors about silver, many people were gearing up and eager to give it a try.
Of course, this is just an ordinary situation. According to some people's accounts, they have local officials and powerful families as backers, and there are people behind this dispatch who also gave the signal.
In the gang, there are people arranged by the other party who usually don't show up much and only intervene in some smuggling and delivery matters. But in this operation, the other party followed them. Many of the orders and requirements issued were also done by the other party.
Needless to say, these people are most likely inseparable from the Japanese, and this force is most likely supported by them. It's just that those people were killed.
According to the confession, a small number of people were selected and detained alone, and the place was handed over to the company. Wang Mingkun took people on board the ship, briefly summarized and reported the situation, and continued to perform the task.
On Xu Zhiyu's side, the cleanup and expulsion work was also temporarily suspended because the encirclement and suppression troops encountered hard problems and were almost defeated and broke through the encirclement without fear.
When Xu Zhiyu got close, he heard the clicking of machine guns and the banging of submachine guns, and he knew that he had caught a big fish.
Ordinary gangsters, even if they have such weapons, will shoot randomly when using them. How can they shoot rhythmic bursts of long and short bursts like the one in front of them?
After a brief observation of the situation, the troops besieging the front have been overwhelmed and cannot lift their heads. They are currently struggling to support themselves. Those who have gathered from both sides to support are also blocked. The situation is not optimistic.
However, the two sides should be serious gangsters depending on the situation. Only the front side is mixed with some wrong people to suppress the gangsters.
Xu Zhiyu quickly made arrangements. The commandos followed him to attack from one side, and the snipers and firemen were on the sides, suppressing and killing the opponent's defenders, and at the same time preventing the opponent from counterattacking.
"...Puff...Chirp..." The mobile team quickly intervened on the battlefield, and with the sound of chirping, the frontal offensive immediately came to a halt, and the firepower was greatly weakened.
Then came the flank, where a large number of bandits fell to death. Then they were broken through and pushed back, driving a large number of bandits into the central battlefield. The companies on the front and side also took the opportunity to increase their offensive, and the battlefield was immediately reversed.
Facing these gangsters with little training and little will to fight, the special operations team strangled them, especially in such an environment with little geographical advantage. It was really easier than killing a group of pigs.
Soon, the battle came to an end, but few of the people with problems were left. Seeing that something was wrong, those people immediately fled inside.
After using a powerful memory recovery technique on the gangsters, it turned out that the two were not in the same group. The gangsters captured were water bandits on Taihu Lake. Seeing that they were surrounded and many forces were defeated, the water bandits were extremely panicked.
At this time, someone came, about twenty well-equipped men, who claimed to be key cronies sent by a more peripheral force, to find out whose hands the silver finally fell into.
They didn't want to be surrounded, but because of the limited number of people, they didn't have the confidence to break out. They wanted to join forces with them to break out. The water bandits broke out with the other party without asking too much.
After confirming that the information was correct, the scene was handed over to the frontal company. After Xu Zhiyu reported and asked for instructions, he directly led the team into the encirclement.
Needless to say the purpose, after the frontal company suffered this battle, the casualties were not low, and it was necessary to rotate down to rest and have the reserve company take over.
These people threaten the encirclement, not only to clear it out but also to contain it, and if they come in, they can also attack the gangsters in the encirclement, making them unable to organize a strong breakout. Of course, the risk of doing so is not small, the scene is too chaotic,