"The Japs, what they want is not surrender, but destruction. Only by destroying our Chinese nation can they plunder the resources of our land with peace of mind. They have been coveting our land of China for thousands of years, and finally took advantage of my Chinese nation's weakest condition.
It was time to start a war.
This war is a national war. It has nothing to do with justice or evil, but it is related to the survival of the country. Without a country, there is no home, and without a home, there is no you and me.
This war is a war of nations, related to the survival of the entire Chinese nation. If it fails, it will be just like when the Mongols invaded the Central Plains hundreds of years ago. All life in the Central Plains will be devastated, with ten households and nine empty houses, and people thousands of miles away will starve to death." Liu Lang made of metal.
The sound spread throughout the audience.
There was silence in the wilderness.
"Perhaps, many of you will think that, just like what you just said, anyone can say big words. If you have the ability, you can go to the Songhu battlefield and fight against the Japanese devils before you say this. Then I will tell you, I
The Sichuan Army is on its way to the battlefield. That battlefield is called Songjiang. There are more than 10,000 soldiers of our 43rd Army of the Sichuan Army who have been fighting the Japanese invaders for two days and nights. We, Liu Lang, are rushing to that place to go with you.
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I ask you to bring your robe with you at any time, even if he is dead."
After finishing speaking, Liu Lang once again glanced at the wounded soldier who died next to him, and said to Xia Guozhang, who was silent for a long time beside him: "I can't save him. Please ask Deputy Commander Xia to express my condolences to this brother's family on my behalf. I will tell you later."
The orderlies will send me this month’s military pay as a courtesy.”
"Let's go!" Liu Lang, who got on the bus again, waved his hand, and the huge convoy started again.
This time, Liu Lang did not implement the military confidentiality regulations. Perhaps there was no need to keep secrets for a long time. Ever since the Japanese army used Hainan Airlines to launch a large-scale air attack on the Independence Regiment's convoy, it was no secret among the top brass of the Japanese army that the Independence Regiment went to Songjiang.
The Tenth Army may have set up a net and is waiting, but what's the point? There are still nearly ten thousand soldiers waiting for them. Even if it is not for the chance of survival of hundreds of thousands of troops, the Independent Regiment will still be that moth flying into the flame.
Rush to Songjiang.
For the officers and soldiers of the 21st Group Army, this news is undoubtedly even more shocking.
The hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Songhu all knew that the Songjiang defenders were blocking the Japanese Tenth Army for them. The longer they blocked it, the more troops would withdraw from the large encirclement that the Japanese army was about to form. The reason why they ran so well
This is because no one believes that the 43rd Army can hold on for much longer. Maybe today, or maybe tonight, Songjiang City will be broken, and the troops who have not had time to withdraw will become lambs to be slaughtered in the encirclement of hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops.
However, there was such a colonel officer, leading such a troop of less than ten thousand people, telling him that they were going to Songjiang.
The reason is simply that he wants to die together with Sichuan Army Paoze.
Everyone in the world knows a saying: Even if there are thousands of people, I will still go!
At this moment, everyone who has heard this sentence deeply understands the meaning contained in this sentence.
When everyone is retreating, there is such a lone army, swimming upstream, like a fish that does not care about its own safety, moving forward stubbornly, even if the terrifying fishing nets have been overwhelming.
"The two infantry regiments of the 23rd Group Army of the Sichuan Army are about to rush to the Songjiang battlefield to prepare for the retreat of hundreds of thousands of our troops from Songhu to block the Japanese invaders. The Supreme Headquarters issued a military order to the entire army and ordered the entire army to pay tribute to the brave and fearless Sichuan Army colleagues.
!" A few miles away, General Liao, the commander of the 21st Group Army, who had received Liu Lang's speech from the front, walked out of the temporary headquarters. He was silent for a while and gave a decisive order. "At the same time, the whole army was ordered to collect all the wounded soldiers along the way.
No matter which army he belongs to, if a wounded soldier is discarded at will, military law will be enforced!"
As the military order from the 21st Group Army Headquarters was issued, people and materials on the road were moved away at a faster speed, gradually vacating all roads.
The huge convoy carrying thousands of people gradually accelerated on the road and rushed towards Songjiang.
"All of you, salute!" Xia Guozhang, who was standing by the roadside, watched the military vehicles passing by him, summoned up all his strength, and roared.
Led by him, the 172nd Division Guard Company, the 174th Division, the 173rd Division... rows of soldiers raised their right arms high.
This was the second salute for many of them today. The first time was to the mother of the hero, and this time it was to their fearless comrade Pao Ze.
The eyes that were lifeless due to fear began to glow; the waist that was bent due to fatigue began to straighten.
Fear can be contagious, and so can fearlessness.
In any era, role models are needed.
The hero's mother is a role model, and the thousands of officers and soldiers who go against the current are role models. The power of the example has invisibly penetrated into the bones of all the officers and soldiers standing on both sides of the road.
During the entire long period of the Anti-Japanese War, the bloody spirit of the Guangxi Wolf Soldiers, who never surrendered to the Japanese invaders, returned.
Throughout his life, Liu Lang never met the Army Major General who saw him off again. In other words, very few of the officers and soldiers of the 21st Group he met here and met him could see him again.
Because most of them died in the battle.
On the way to retreat, the 21st Group Army, which was assembled in the Changxing area, was ordered to guard the second lifeline of the Songhu Army retreating along the Beijing-Hangzhou Highway. The 21st Group Army reproduced the glory of the Guangxi Wolf Army and fought against the Japanese aggressors with one force.
The regiment was surrounded by mountains of corpses and seas of blood, but they did not retreat even half a step.
Major General Xia Guozhang, who was promoted to lieutenant general commander of the 172nd Division during the war, sacrificed his life in this battle along with his two regiment commanders, four battalion commanders, ten company commanders and more than 3,600 officers and soldiers of the division. After the battle, Zeng Wan
Only a thousand men of the 172nd Division withdrew from their positions, and everyone was injured.
Of the 60,000 elite Gui troops who rushed to the Songhu battlefield, only 10,000 could eventually participate in the next equally brutal Wuhan battle.
Liu Lang, who had already declared his intention to rush to Songjiang with great fanfare, could no longer hide it. The field radio at the regiment headquarters was turned on, notifying the general staff and the 43rd Army of his approximate location, and telegraphing how long it would take for the 67th Army to rush to the battlefield.
The 67th Army of the Northeastern Army heading to Songjiang along another road was also sailing against the current. More national troops chose to retreat from Kunshan. The entire road was crowded with more than 200,000 troops and a larger number of refugees.
No matter what level of military orders, no matter what level of military orders, it would not work in such a crazy moment. The 67th Army, which was blocked and unable to move, abandoned part of its baggage in desperation. Even the artillery was disassembled and carried by soldiers on their backs as they trudged toward Songjiang in the wilderness.
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Although they are closer to Songjiang, they are still behind the Independent Regiment at this moment, and they will not be able to reach the battlefield until tomorrow evening at the earliest.
That means that the 43rd Army will have to fight the Japanese army in Songjiang City for more than 36 hours. This does not include the time lost if the Japanese army uses bombers to bomb the highway and the wilderness on both sides during the day.
The main force of support is still on the way, but the war is already raging in Songjiang City.
Neither Hisao Tani nor Guo Rudong, nor the lieutenant generals of the Chinese and Japanese armies, probably expected that the street fighting in Songjiang City would be so brutal.
Neither the Sixth Division nor the 43rd Army had experience in street fighting, but one side had to attack and the other side had to defend. Countless soldiers from both sides were thrown into every house and inconspicuous building by the officers without hesitation.
In the alley.
The never-ending sound of gunfire, the explosion of grenades, and the screams of soldiers on both sides were the main theme of this city street battle that neither side was familiar with.
To be more precise, death is the main theme of street fighting.
At the Japanese frontline headquarters 800 meters away from Matsue Castle, Tokutaro Sakai's face turned uglier than yesterday when he learned that more than a thousand of his men had been killed in battle.
In just 4 hours, the battle reports submitted by the three infantry brigades that entered the city showed that more than 700 people were killed and more than 800 soldiers were injured. In addition, the soldiers who were crossing the moat unfortunately drowned and were hit by Chinese machine guns and covered in artillery fire.
More than 200 people died, an amount of imperial officers and soldiers equivalent to an infantry brigade died in the battle.
The tragedy is that so many people died in the battle yesterday, and he managed to occupy two to three square kilometers of the battlefield outside the city. But today, at the cost of such terrible casualties, his troops could only move their positions in the entire Songjiang West District.
The entire city advanced 500 meters.
The entire Songjiang City is like an irregular circle with a radius of more than 1,500 meters. According to this calculation, if he wants to capture the Chinese army's headquarters, he will have to pay twice as many casualties. That means that the five infantry brigades under his command will
The establishment can be cancelled.
It also meant that when Matsue Castle was captured, he, as an army major general, could take the two equally pale army commanders and slash his belly several times with a command knife to apologize to His Majesty the Emperor.
There are only a few polished commanders left. If they don’t die, what else can they do? Do you really think His Majesty the Emperor will give you a salary so that you can live a leisurely life?
This battle cannot be fought again, this was Tokutaro Sakai's first thought after seeing the battle report.
But he is just a major general brigade commander. He can decide the tactics on the front line, but he is not enough to change the strategy of the entire division.
Hisao Tani was far more resolute than his academic general. The huge casualties did not shake his determination. Instead, he ordered the Japanese troops who entered the city from three sides to continue attacking.
Because Hisao Tani knows that once he orders a retreat, the Chinese army will once again reoccupy the buildings and streets that cost a lot of casualties. If he wants to come back, he will have to pay today's casualties. What he has to do now is not to lament the casualties, but to persist.
, compare with the Chinese people in toughness, whoever persists to the end will be the winner.
He believed that the Chinese people's losses were equally huge.
Yes, street fighting is a terrible double-edged sword.
For the entire 43rd Army, the close-quarter street fighting deprived the Japanese army of the assistance of terrible heavy artillery, bringing the heavy equipment of both sides back to the same starting line. However, street fighting also tested the soldiers' individual technical and tactical abilities, and their combat response and shooting accuracy were incomparable.
Importantly, at this point, the overall strength of the Japanese army is obviously greater than that of the 43rd Army. If the officers and soldiers were not familiar with the geographical environment of their respective defense areas more than a day in advance, many firepower points were deployed in advance, and underground pipelines could transport reinforcements, I am afraid that they would have been defeated earlier.
They were defeated in a brutal street battle.
Even so, the horrific casualties of four hours of fierce fighting also caused the infantry commanders in the three cities of the east, west and south to call the military headquarters for help. Even Xie Guji, who was the most proficient in fighting, was no exception.