The Japanese troops approaching the Zhujiaping position of the 3rd Battalion are the 231st Infantry Regiment of the 39th Division!
If the Japanese 232nd Infantry Regiment, which had been successfully ambushed and nearly annihilated by a mountain infantry company, was one of the culprits that led to General Zhang's sacrifice, then the 231st Infantry Regiment was the culprit.
According to the description of the guards who snatched General Zhang's body, it was an infantry brigade of the 231st Infantry Regiment that broke through the defense line on the flank that day. General Zhang had to personally lead the guards and civilian personnel of the headquarters to fight with it, and was eventually hit by a bullet.
Chest leads to sacrifice!
You said, when Tang Dao heard that the culprit who caused the death of his elder brother arrived in front of his battle, how could he not be afraid of others?
"Li Jiujin, in this battle we not only have to stop the 231st Regiment, but we also need to find a way to hold them back and keep them all here!" Tang Dao directly dialed Li Jiujin's phone number.
"Yes! The 3rd Battalion promises to complete the mission!" Li Jijin assured, patting his chest.
However, when Lao Li hung up the phone, he was far less relaxed than when he promised Tang Dao. The usually carefree veteran Youzi frowned tightly.
The Japanese troops rushing toward the 3rd Battalion's position from fifteen miles away were said to be the 231st Infantry Regiment, but in fact they were much larger than just one regiment.
It turns out that the 39th Division is one of the main divisions in the 11th Army, and the division commander Murakami Kisaku is also a personal friend of Yokoyama Isamu. He is highly regarded by Yokoyama Isamu. For this Shipai battle, Murakami Kisaku was designated as the commander.
As the supreme commander on the front line.
Murakami Kisaku, the top frontline commander of Japan's 11th Army, also has his own Xiao Jiujiu in his heart. From the perspective of tactical deployment, the central position of Shipai Fortress is a must-break point. It is natural that China has placed a main infantry division there to stand ready.
It is the hardest nut to crack.
Therefore, Murakami divided his 39th Division into three, with two main infantry regiments entering from the mountainous area to attack the flanks, and one main infantry regiment attacking the front of Shipai Fortress. This would not only satisfy the population but also allow
Reduce the troop losses of the 39th Division.
Among the two infantry regiments, 231 and 232, Murakami made another choice. He chose to put his treasure on the 231 Infantry Regiment, so the division artillery regiment, engineer regiment, baggage regiment, and field hospital were all assigned.
Under the control of the 231st Infantry Regiment.
To put it bluntly, the 232 Infantry Regiment entering the battlefield from Changyang direction and the 233 Infantry Regiment in front of Shipai Fortress really only have one infantry regiment, but only the 231 Infantry Regiment has an army with 36 mountain field guns and more than 900
The artillery wing of the artillery, plus more than 500 engineers, more than 2,000 heavy equipment and other auxiliary arms, is equivalent to a small detachment in terms of strength and diversity of arms.
Its combat strength is as high as 6,000!
In the past, a battalion of the Four Lines Regiment plus reserve soldiers could have a strength of 2,000. It was mainly for defense, so it was not afraid of 6,000 Japanese troops. But now for the expedition, each battalion has been reduced to about 900 men, and the strength comparison is 1:
7.
Not only that, Tang Tuanzuo's request is not only to block, but also to hold back this Japanese army. This is obviously to prepare for the annihilation of this Japanese army. This level of difficulty is simply hellish.
"Ask all company and platoon commanders to come to the battalion headquarters for a meeting. Let me brainstorm on how to fight this battle!" After thinking for a moment, Li Jijin directly ordered the communications soldiers around him.
Three cobblers are equal to one Zhuge Liang. Lao Li, who has no tricks, believes that the guys under his command can always come up with tricks.
The company commanders and platoon commanders were really running all the way from the trenches. This had nothing to do with the military orders of Battalion Commander Jiujin. In fact, the Japanese were only 10 miles away from the battlefield, and they were about to start a fight.
Well, how can they, the grassroots commanders, not stay on the ground?
The regiment headquarters may have military regulations. During wartime, regardless of battalion, company, or platoon, if the chief officer is not at the headquarters or at the fighting position, he will be punished according to the military law of being absent without authorization.
"My battalion commander! What are you going to do? The little devils are coming soon."
The first captain to arrive was a veteran who had followed Li Jijin for more than 4 years. He had been on the Songhu battlefield, Sihang Warehouse, Songjiang, Guangde, and North China. Li Jijin had a cheerful personality.
The relationship between the two is that of brothers, and they are usually used to it casually, but now they start to complain.
"Zhang Dabiao, stand at attention!" Li Jijin glared.
The captain and company commander suddenly stood up and stood at attention.
"Tell me, am I the battalion commander or your son is the battalion commander!" Li Jijin glanced sideways at his old comrade.
"Of course it's you, Battalion Commander Li Jiujin!" the captain and company commander flattered him with saliva on his face.
"Then I asked you to come to a meeting, and give me a hammer. The Japs are coming, and there's still more than ten miles to go! Just give him one for the little Japs' short legs.
I can't make it in an hour, you're so impatient!" Li Jijin scolded angrily.
"The battalion commander was right, I was wrong! Come on, battalion commander, have a cigarette to calm down." The captain and the company commander quickly admitted their mistake and took out their cigarettes.
"Okay, just know you're wrong. The regimental commander just gave an order. Think about it carefully, how to complete it, and come up with a good idea. Just pretend this never happened." Li Jijin took the cigarette.
, nodded with satisfaction.
But he has found an unlucky kid to help him use his brains. How can veteran Youzi be dissatisfied?
The captain and company commander thought it was nothing at first, but when the battalion correspondent explained the content of the order, his face turned into a bitter gourd.
"Batalion Commander, can you return the cigarette to me so that I can continue to stand?" the captain and company commander asked in a low voice with a grimace.
"This is a task assigned by the regimental commander to me as a whole in the 3rd Battalion. Even if you stand very well, I have to think about it." Li Jijin took a puff of cigarette and almost didn't come out of his ears.
The dozen or so captains, lieutenants, and second lieutenants who arrived were all squatting in the air-raid shelter at the battalion headquarters without even a chair, each one lighting a cigarette and thinking hard.
These brave and fearless veterans were confident of blocking 6,000 Japs, but it would be too difficult to hold the Japs back.
A clever woman cannot make a meal without straw. Three infantry companies have to defend a defense line of 3,600 meters in length, with a total of 15 highlands. This is the limit. If the troops are divided again, how can they defend it?
Besides, there are 6,000 Japanese troops. How many troops can you send out to harass them in order to hold them back?
From the perspective of military strength, this is an unsolvable problem!
Time passed by, but no one could come up with constructive suggestions. Li Jijin, who was originally calm, looked at his pocket watch, and his eyes showed anxiety.
"Batalion Commander, I have a question!" Boss Cao, who had already achieved the rank of second lieutenant, stood up and asked.
"Old Cao, tell me." Li Jijin nodded.
"The regimental commander asked us to find a way to hold back this group of devils because he wanted to kill them all, right?"
"That's right? That's what you mean. I know the regimental commander very well. He is probably planting a small flag on the sand table right now. Once the time is right, the mountain infantry company, the reconnaissance company, and the two main companies of the 4th Battalion will
Even the guard company will go into the battlefield, and none of the Japanese he wants to kill has been able to escape so far.
But the difficulty is, how can we prevent these devils from running away without a fight!"
"That's enough. Since the commander of the regiment means to kill these devils, we might as well kill them here." Boss Cao's one eye was full of cold light.
"What do you mean?" Li Jijin didn't come back to his thoughts for a while.
"We have seen a lot of creatures like the little devil. The harder you beat him, the less likely he is to leave. He always wants to regain his position. Then we will take out the battalion commander in the first wave of general attack after they test the firepower points.
The "sledgehammer" tactic you formulated, if one guy kills them and makes them retreat, they will lose. If you don't want to lose, you can only stand up and fight us here. We will beat them to a semi-crippling state and wait until they want to leave again.
It’s too late.” Boss Cao said.
"Old Cao is right! If you don't want to delay, just kill the little Jaap right here and that's it. Anyway, that's what the regimental commander wants to achieve." The captain and company commander slapped his thigh.
"Haha! Lao Cao, you are good! You solve problems straightforwardly and don't play around with twists and turns." Li Jijin also laughed.
Boss Cao's words can be said to have awakened the dreamer. Tang Tuanzuo asked to hold back the Japanese army because he wanted to kill the Japanese army! As long as he could kill them, it didn't matter what the process was. Tang Tuanzuo wanted to
is the result.
Since this is going to be done, there is no need to keep the trump card that was originally planned to wait for the Japanese army to attack with all their strength. As long as they dare to launch a thousand-man level attack, then take it out and knock them out all at once, causing them to suffer massive casualties.
Forced to stay here.
Moreover, isn’t it said that the 39th Division is the elite of the Japanese 11th Army? It once defeated the Chinese 33rd Group Army in the Battle of Zaoyi, and even General Zhang died on the front line against them. You can’t scare them away with too many casualties.
Right! This is not in line with the temperament of the elites of the 39th Division.
Don't tell me, the "stooges" of the 3rd Battalion really have the weak spot of the 231st Infantry Regiment.
Since the 232nd Infantry Regiment was wiped out the day before yesterday, there are only two or three sick kittens left in the entire regiment. The important task of maintaining the honor of the entire 39th Division has fallen to the strongest 231st Infantry Regiment.
superior.
"In this battle, we must only win and not lose, even if we fight to the last soldier!" This was the military order from Murakami Kasaku to Colonel Masakichi Yamada, the commander of the 231st Infantry Regiment.
If the losses were small, Colonel Yamada Masakichi might still want to find a way around the Zhujiaping battlefield, but once the losses were serious, Yamada Masakichi would have no choice but to fight to the death with the 3rd Battalion.
Yamada Masakichi can lead the main force of the 39th Division to the expedition, so of course he will not be a man with a missing head.
In fact, the reason why Yamada Masakichi, who was born into a poor family, is second only to the division commander Kisaku Murakami in the 39th Division is entirely due to his accurate judgment on the battlefield.
Just like the battle that surrounded the 33rd Group Army Headquarters in the Zaoyi Battle, it was entirely due to Yamada Masakichi's emphasis on radio wave detection that he determined that the 33rd Group Army Headquarters was actually on the front line.
And if it was just that, it would not be enough to kill the general who had at least 4,000 troops and an elite guard battalion around him. After using two infantry regiments to complete the encirclement, Yamada Masakichi extremely boldly used the infantry brigade.
Level by level, they penetrated the Chinese positions and finally separated the main infantry force from the headquarters. This forced the general himself to go to the front line with a gun, which ultimately led to tragedy.
From a certain perspective, Yamada Masakichi and the 231st Infantry Regiment are the most ferocious enemy forces that the Four Troops have to face.
Therefore, when the 231st Infantry Regiment arrived at Zhujiaping, they first conducted observation and reconnaissance with advanced soldiers and discovered that there were sufficiently complete infantry defense positions here, so they were not in a hurry to launch an attack.
Instead, with the intention of fighting a protracted war, they built a field position in the mountainous area opposite, and they continued like this throughout the day.
This, on the contrary, made the iron fists that the officers and soldiers of the 3rd Battalion tried to smash hit empty-handed!
Even on the second day, the 231st Infantry Regiment only sent three infantry squads to attack three small highlands at the forefront.
There were only 150 Japanese troops in total. Their formation was sparse and they were not active in attacking. As soon as they encountered Chinese fire, they immediately crawled on the slopes and retreated.
The distance between the two sides never narrowed to more than 200 meters!
Then, after another two or three hours, an attack similar to this scale will be repeated again. Once attacked, they will retreat immediately without any hesitation.
Throughout the day, no more than three attacks were launched, and the intensity was so low that even the artillery attached to them did not participate.
The most intense shelling was the 70mm infantry artillery deployed 1,000 meters away, which symbolically fired more than a dozen shots on the attacking hilltop.
This made the officers and soldiers of the 3rd Battalion extremely uncomfortable. This was completely different from the Japanese troops they encountered in North China. This group of Japanese soldiers were just playing house, without even the intention of testing fire.
Throughout the whole day's battle, the Japanese suffered no more than an even number of battle losses, and only a few soldiers on the Chinese side were injured by stones blown up by infantry artillery shells. Apart from a little pain, it did not affect their participation in the battle at all.
You're talking about the old suspicion formation! It's not like, visible to the naked eye, the trenches dug by the Japanese army on the opposite mountain are at least more than 2,000 meters long. Groups of Japanese troops entered them, and there were at least a thousand soldiers.
No one knew what kind of medicine the Japanese commander opposite was selling in his gourd, but Li Jijin didn't think too much about it. No matter what tricks the Japanese army played, they would eventually pass through this mountainous area, otherwise they would have to continue to circle around the mountains.
A mountain stream more than 20 meters wide is a natural chasm for an army dragging artillery.
To put it bluntly, no matter how many strategies you use, your subordinates will have to see the truth in the end.
Apart from the eerie silence here in Zhujiaping, the battlefield at Niuchangpo, 5 kilometers away, was already in full swing.
The enemy opposite the 2nd Battalion was no weaker than the 3rd Battalion. It was the famous Yegou Detachment of the Japanese 11th Army.
The Nogochi Detachment was drawn from the Japanese Fifth Division, codenamed "Guang". It was commanded by Major General Nogo Shikihiko, the leader of the detachment and the commander of the 51st Infantry Brigade. It had jurisdiction over two independent infantry brigades with an infantry strength of 3,300.
It has jurisdiction over a strengthened artillery brigade, heavy baggage troops, several engineers, and more than 20 artillery pieces of various types.
Perhaps the infantry strength is less than that of the 231st Infantry Regiment, but the combat effectiveness of the 5th Division is undoubtedly the best among the 17 permanent divisions in Japan.
Therefore, the Yegou detachment did not pay attention to the situation in front of them at all. After spending half a day testing the firepower points of the 2nd Battalion's position, they started a mad attack mode.
More than 20 artillery pieces fired a volley, blasting the four highlands that were the focus of the attack into smoke. More than 700 infantrymen launched the attack accompanied by the continuous explosion of artillery fire.
Recently, the Japanese artillery shells were only 120 meters away from their infantry. In this era, it was the ultimate operation of infantry and artillery coordination.
Even for the Four Lines Regiment, it is stipulated that the artillery fire covering the advance of the infantry must not be lower than 150 meters, unless it is a life-and-death crisis that requires a desperate fight.
But the Yegou detachment did just that, and even once covered its own infantry until it was less than 120 meters from the trench on the high ground, which was already an extremely dangerous distance.
If the officers and soldiers of the 2nd Battalion did not get out of the anti-gun holes, the Japanese infantry would only need up to thirty seconds to enter the attack range of throwing grenades.
This also forced the 2nd Battalion Artillery Company's three 80mm howitzers, which had been hidden, to fire at the front of the position. Four 150mm howitzers also began to fire, and only then did the fierce Japanese assault stop.
"The Chinese heavy firepower is not weak, but what's the use?" Nogo Shikihiko, who arrived at the front line in person, did not feel frustrated because of the setback in his first round of fierce attacks. Instead, he felt a sense of relief.
Nogo Shikihiko's combat style was somewhat tough, but not mindless. He used the lives of nearly a hundred Japanese infantrymen to test out the Chinese's heavy firepower, which was what he wanted most.
He does not regard the lives of ordinary infantrymen as trivial, but he wants more of his subordinates to return home alive, find where the Chinese heavy firepower is and eliminate them, this is his real purpose.
Because, in addition to enough artillery, he also has sufficient air support.
After testing out the presence of artillery behind the high ground, a fleet of 24 Japanese fighter planes flew over the Niuchangpo battlefield and carried out saturation bombing.
The Japanese naval aviation personnel who had suffered repeated attacks were probably very aggrieved and wanted to vent their anger on this mountain forest. In addition to heavy aerial bombs, the bombs they dropped also included many incendiary bombs and poison gas bombs.
However, the Air Defense Battalion of the Fourth Line Regiment did not tolerate them. The eight 40mm anti-aircraft guns fired continuously, shocking Major General Yegou who was previously so confident that he could swallow a watermelon in his mouth.
The Japanese naval aviation, which had been severely beaten here, did not dare to enter the mid- and low-altitudes. The dense fire nets at mid- and low-altitudes in the past few days were still vivid in their minds. After dropping the bombs at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters, they immediately flew away.
Of course, not to mention the accuracy, there was even a 250-pound aerial bomb that hit the Yegou detachment position hard. If the trenches of the Yegou detachment had not been dug deep enough, an infantry squad would have been destroyed.
But that also resulted in 10 deaths and 18 injuries in the Yegou detachment, and half of the infantry squad was also wiped out.
"The so-called one-stop effort will lead to failure, and three will be exhausted!" Yamada Masakichi, 5 kilometers away, told his subordinates his tactical guiding ideology in his headquarters. "The Chinese saw us coming, and they were full of enthusiasm.
They want to fight with my troops, but I won’t, I want to consume their desire to fight!”
This ancient Chinese tactical concept derived from "Zuo Zhuan" was unexpectedly used by a Japanese officer on the Chinese battlefield more than 2,000 years later.
Although I don’t know whether it will be useful in the end, many officers and soldiers on the 3rd Battalion position were really upset by Yamada Masakichi’s delaying the war. It was already cold in winter, and they had to stay in the cold trenches to eat and sleep. They all wanted to finish the fight as soon as possible.
Call it a day, but the Japanese still did this inexplicably.
This guy is holding back his fire even more, and he's just waiting for the Japanese to come up and give him a hardcore!
