Rise From Eight Hundred

At 9 o'clock in the morning of the same day, the reconnaissance plane that had been conducting almost 12-hour uninterrupted reconnaissance in the 30-kilometer area around the battlefield suddenly brought a frowning message to Saburo Okabe, who had already begun to consider how to evacuate the Zishan battlefield in a decent manner.

A large number of soldiers wearing camouflage clothes suddenly appeared in an area only 10 kilometers away from the Zishan battlefield.

This Japanese Army Aviation pilot was very conscientious. He risked being shot down by Chinese anti-aircraft guns and lowered the altitude to 1,000 meters. He finally confirmed that there were definitely no fewer than 1,000 troops.

Although the Japanese North China Front Army Aviation Corps did not send out bomber groups to bomb the Zishan area after the first day of the ground-to-air battle, under the strict order of Commander Duo Tianjun, it still patrolled and reconnaissanced around the Zishan war zone with 10 sorties per day.

Because the Ji'nan area is not only the Four-Line Regiment, which is a big problem, but also the 80th Army Group with a larger force.

Both Duo Tianjun and Okabe Saburo knew that no matter how powerful the Four-Line Regiment was, it was only an infantry regiment and could only defend at most. However, the 80th Army was different. It was a large military group with nearly 100,000 troops.

What made the Japanese commanders even more distressed was that an army with such a large force never confronted the Japanese North China Front Army head-on, but always attacked them in small groups.

Since the Japanese army entered North China, it was common to be attacked quietly. It was incredible for the Japanese army stationed in North China that there was no attack by the 80th Army that week.

Although the losses were not large each time, with hundreds of casualties and even only a few injuries, you can't stand the accumulation of such piecemeal attacks!

The Japanese North China Front Army Headquarters has made statistics internally. Since the attack on Pingbei City in July 197, the various divisions stationed in North China have suffered about 100,000 personnel losses in various brigade-level battles.

To be honest, this kind of loss is too large for a front army, but considering that the size of the Chinese army against them is more than 200,000, and the time span is as long as two years, this is within an acceptable range.

But in fact, after a detailed statistics of personnel loss data, it was found that in two years, the combat losses of various divisions exceeded 140,000, which means that in addition to the 100,000 people lost in large-scale operations, there are about 40,000 losses in daily public security maintenance or clearing out the rebels.

And these are basically the masterpieces of the 80th Army Group, which also means that the 80th Army Group, which has only participated in two large-scale battles, has quietly eaten up nearly two Type B divisions of the Japanese North China Front Army.

With such a record, it is not obvious at all, and even their opponents are not alert. If the 80th Army Group continues to do this, and the time span is extended for a few more years, wouldn’t they be able to swallow up half of the front army?

This is undoubtedly a statistical result that makes the senior officials of the Japanese North China Front Army, headed by Duo Tianjun, feel cold in their backs.

As early as November 1939, when Duo Tianjun returned to Japan to seek support from all parties, the Four-line Regiment and the 80th Army Group had been listed as the two major troubles in North China, both of which must be eliminated.

It was for this reason that several bigwigs in the Japanese Army Headquarters agreed to loan the 1st Division from the Kwantung Army to the North China Front Army, and without using the main divisions on the front lines of Zhongtiao Mountain, Yellow River, and Taihang Mountain, they gathered heavy troops in southern Hebei to attack the two major troubles.

Although the 1st Division and the 3rd Division of more than 40,000 troops were trying their best to attack the Zishan Defense Line in the early stage, in fact, Okabe Saburo had nearly 11,000 troops and more than 40 tanks in his hands.

To put it bluntly, Duo Tianjun, who was stationed in Pingbei City, and Okabe Saburo, who led his troops, were strictly guarding against the 80th Army Group.

It was expected that the tough nut of Zishan would be hard to chew, but if the enemy appeared in the plains, Saburo Okabe, who had more than 60 tanks of various types, had enough confidence to defeat them.

It can even be said that attracting and annihilating a part of the Chinese 80th Army was originally part of the Zishan battle plan.

But as the war progressed, the Sihang Regiment's defense line in the Zishan area was no longer a hard nut, but a porcupine covered with thorns. Before the skin was chewed, he was stabbed all over the face. Don't be too frustrated in the battle.

Saburo Okabe, who was gradually getting excited, had long forgotten the battle plan to attract and annihilate a part of the 80th Army. Even the reserve force had already transferred 4 infantry battalions to the Zishan battlefield.

That is, the Zishan area is really not suitable for armored warfare, so there are more than 40 tanks of various types placed in the plains for defense.

Then, at this time, another big worry finally appeared near the Zishan war zone.

Although this was within the original plan of Duo Tianjun and Okabe Saburo, at this time, Okabe Saburo did not expect the opponent's intention at all, but felt an inexplicable headache.

Although the report sent by the reconnaissance pilot was that there were about a thousand troops in the mountainous area 15 kilometers away, Okabe Saburo, who had served as the chief of staff of the front army in North China for two years, was still very familiar with the style of the old opponent, the 80th Army.

What is the biggest characteristic of the 80th Army? Is it poor equipment? Or is it the determination of the soldiers?

None of them

It is that they like to bully the few with the many!

Based on the battle reports of the 80th Army in southeastern Shanxi, northwestern Shanxi, and southern Hebei, the 80th Army either does not fight, and once it takes the initiative to fight, it is basically several times the strength of the empire.

At this time, the Imperial Army still had at least 30,000 people on the Purple Mountain battlefield. The 80th Army Group showed up on its own initiative. How many troops would they have?

Just thinking about the dark gray with branches sticking out of the sky, even though Okabe Saburo was at the command post 12 kilometers away from the front line, he couldn't help but feel a chill in his back.

"Send a telegram to Commander Kataoka Kaoru of the Army Aviation Corps, asking him to send out more reconnaissance planes to scout out the enemy's attack direction and approximate strength. This is related to the honor and disgrace of the North China Front Army, the Kwantung Army, and even the Imperial Army. Please!" Okabe Saburo ordered some troops to be withdrawn from the front line to the flank defense line that had already been built on the plain, and asked his chief of staff to immediately send a telegram to the North China Front Army Aviation Corps.

In fact, at this time, Okabe Saburo still had the style of a general. Except for a little headache, he still maintained the calmness of a military commander.

No matter how powerful the 80th Army Group was, they were only good at small fights and had never proved themselves on a battlefield with tens of thousands of people. Their weapons and equipment and individual quality of soldiers were also relatively poor in the Chinese army.

According to Okabe Saburo's estimation at this time, the 80th Army Group that came from Taihang Mountain was probably more likely to break the siege of Zishan Mountain. Maybe the 4th Regiment was also at the end of its strength.

After all, the 1st Division and the 3rd Division were both the first-class permanent divisions of the Empire. They were exhausted from the battle and wanted to evacuate temporarily. It didn't make sense that the 4th Regiment on the defensive side would be intact.

It was normal for Okabe Saburo to have this idea. In the minds of the Japanese generals at this time, upgrading the 4th Regiment, an infantry regiment, to an object that could only be eliminated by an imperial division was already a great honor for the 4th Regiment. In the past, it was a big joke that an infantry battalion failed to defeat a Chinese infantry regiment.

The easy occupation of the three northeastern provinces and the opening of the two major gateways to the north and southeast of China without much effort did give the Japanese army generals great confidence. Even though the Four-Line Regiment had continuously caused losses to the Japanese army in the past two years, the Four-Line Regiment always acted in conjunction with other friendly forces in the Second War Zone of China. These two reasons also made the Japanese generals form a sufficiently wrong perception of the Four-Line Regiment.

Tang Dao and the Four-Line Regiment he led were only tactical enemies of the Japanese North China Front Army and could not rise to a strategic threat at all.

Wrong perception will of course lead to wrong judgment!

Therefore, Okabe Saburo lost the most precious 4 hours.

In fact, Okabe Saburo had not taken it lightly. On the plain defense line northwest of Zishan, he deployed 3 infantry battalions and two armored squadrons. The remaining 105 howitzers were also transferred to them for use. There was even a heavy artillery squadron with 4 150 howitzers moving towards the area under the escort of an infantry squadron.

With the support of such troops and heavy firepower, let alone a force of several thousand people, even a 50,000-man Chinese infantry division could not break through this line of defense and threaten the Japanese infantry attacking Zishan.

Even in the view of Major General Hattori Akitaro, the commander of the First Brigade, he might be able to lead his troops to counterattack, relying on the powerful strength of his 40 tanks to destroy the opponents who dared to attack on the plain.

Lieutenant General Okabe Saburo guessed the beginning, but not the end.

By 1 pm, the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft finally determined through intensive reconnaissance that the Chinese troops entering the plain from Taihang Mountain would not be less than 50,000, and their direction was exactly the flank of the attack group in the northwest direction of the First Division.

Okabe Saburo had a complete plan for the characteristics of the old opponent, the 80th Army, and he was worthy of being a famous general who had served as the chief of staff of a front army.

But neither Duo Tianjun nor Okabe Saburo guessed that the 50,000 troops about to enter the battlefield were not ordinary Chinese troops, nor were they ordinary 80th Army.

That was China's first infantry brigade in the battlefield of North China, or even in the entire Chinese battlefield - the 683rd Brigade of the 921st Division.

Brigade Commander Cheng personally led the four main regiments under his command, the Teaching Regiment, the 771st Regiment, the 772nd Regiment, the Independent Regiment, and the brigade's direct guard battalion, artillery battalion and other units to fight.

The four main regiment commanders will all be bright stars in the future, and even the battalion commanders will have at least one star.

Not to mention that the commanders are veterans who have fought on the battlefield for more than ten years. After all, no matter how rich their combat experience is, if you give him a fire stick, he can't beat a kid with a pistol, right?

But now, the 683rd Brigade, except for the supplementary regiment and other units that are fully equipped with Japanese weapons, all other main forces have replaced them with German weapons.

The artillery battalion directly under the brigade now has 12 Bofors 75mm mountain guns and 12 Type 41 mountain guns, totaling 24 guns with a range of more than 6,500 meters. Not to mention that at the infantry regiment level, it is equipped with 150 heavy mortars and 37mm rapid-fire guns, and 82 mortars have been equipped at the battalion and company levels.

That's fine, the 6 Maxim heavy machine guns originally equipped to the battalion level, because of the fierce battle with the 1st Division this time, Tang Dao spared no expense to take out 72 MG42 heavy machine guns and 200,000 rounds of ammunition, and added 6 machine guns to each infantry battalion.

If you add the 6 20mm twin-mounted machine guns equipped in the infantry regiment, the 4 regiments have 24 anti-aircraft machine guns for air strikes.

If the First Division put the same effort it used to deal with the Fourth Regiment into dealing with the Eightieth Army's most elite troops, whose combat power was comparable to that of the 88th Division in the Battle of Shanghai, and if they sent out dozens of fighter planes to bombard them indiscriminately, they might even cause some serious trouble to the 683rd Brigade.

Unfortunately, the fierce ground-to-air battle on the first day of the Zishan Campaign had chilled the hearts of the Japanese North China Front Army Aviation Corps. The newly equipped Type 97 heavy bombers now only had two or three left. No one would take these heavy weapons of the Empire, which would take at least half a year to be replenished, to Zishan, a place full of anti-aircraft guns, to waste them in vain.

Even if they were to be deployed, at most only small aircraft like the Type 96 Land Attack would be available, and the number and scale could no longer be compared with the previous ones.

It's like two people fighting, you take off and do a cool spinning kick, but your opponent kicks you backward with a simple whip kick, almost bursting your balls. Do you dare to show this trick again?

Anyone who has been beaten will remember the pain of being beaten!

Moreover, for Hattori Akitaro, who once served as the Lieutenant General of the First Division, they were just a bunch of idiots. What kind of airplanes would they need? The tracks of the tanks were enough to crush them to pieces.

The vanguard of the 683rd Brigade, the 772nd Regiment, was still building field trenches a kilometer away from the Japanese defense line. The threatened Japanese infantry turned the tables and attacked the 772nd Regiment with 6 Type 97 medium tanks, 16 Type 97 light tanks on both wings, and 4 infantry squadrons with nearly 800 people under the cover of tanks.

If we say that the weapons and equipment of the Kwantung Army are indeed better than those of the North China Front Army, the current tank squadrons of the various divisions of the North China Front Army are generally still mainly equipped with the old Type 89 and Type 94 small bean pins. The tank squadrons of the Kwantung Army that confronted the Russian bear have already replaced the Type 97 that was only equipped in 1937.

The Type 97 tank is a masterpiece of Japanese military industry. Light tanks are equipped with a 37mm cannon and an armor thickness of 16MM. Medium tanks have a 57mm howitzer and two 7mm machine guns, and the front armor thickness is 25MM.

Although they can't beat the T-tank of the bear, Major General Hattori Xiaotaro is voting with his feet when facing a group of pure Chinese infantry.

This may also be the first time that so many steel behemoths have been deployed at one time on the battlefield of the Ji'nan Plain in China. The battlefield with a width of 1,500 meters seems to be trembling under the huge roar of the tank engine.

The officers and soldiers of the 772nd Regiment, lying in the trenches that were only dug half a meter deep, looked at the 22 steel monsters hundreds of meters away, dragging thick black smoke and roaring violently, and inevitably showed fear in their eyes.

Many of them had dealt with this kind of steel monster. Not to mention that machine guns and rifle bullets could not penetrate the iron shell of that thing, even grenades tied together could hardly blow it up. Many times, they spent the lives of more than a dozen or even dozens of people. They finally threw the grenade cluster under the tank, but sadly found that they could only blow off its tracks. Even if it lost its mobility, its equipped machine guns or tank guns could still provide terrible firepower support for the Japanese infantry.

That's why they would never easily launch an attack on the Japanese army without gathering more than several times the Japanese army's troops.

Because the Japanese consumed ammunition, and they needed to consume lives.

I don't know how many elite soldiers who crossed the snow-capped mountains and grasslands fell under the firepower of this steel monster of the Japanese army.

They are not afraid of sacrifice, but they are powerless in the face of the Japanese army's equipment that is several levels ahead of them.

The commanders at all levels of the 772nd Regiment with combat experience also had solemn eyes. They had no time to consider sacrifice. They just frantically calculated in their minds how much they would have to pay in order to kill these broken iron shells.

Some battalion commanders even estimated that they would need to sacrifice at least one infantry company in this battle. In fact, he had already asked each company and platoon to put the death squads that had been formed before the war on the front line.

Each death squad member was tied with an explosive pack and 6 grenades, which could turn themselves into a running large bomb at any time.

There was no way. Although the troops were now equipped with shotguns and cannons, with heavy machine guns and mortars, those things were useless against the broken iron shells of the Japanese. In the end, they had to use courage and sacrifice to solve these problems.

Only Wang Xiaoqiang was laughing!

"The damned little Japanese thought I was the old millet plus rifle! I should have laughed secretly that I didn't rush to fight him. He actually dared to leave the trench to fight me.

Order the anti-tank artillery company and the heavy mortar company to get ready for me. If they get within 500 meters, I will beat them up.

However, we can't learn from the prodigal sons of the Four-line Regiment. We don't have so much money to waste. My requirement is that we must shoot accurately and not waste shells. Whoever is so bad at this time will wash my socks after this battle.

Send a telegram to the artillery battalion of the brigade , request artillery support, the whole battalion, listen to my orders and start shelling, target, 400 meters in front of my position!

In addition, send a telegram to the headquarters of the Four-Line Regiment. I have already sent the coordinates of the Japanese army. I am here to help them this time. They must bring some artillery shells to support us. Otherwise, I will not leave the Four-Line Regiment after the battle. If I don’t give them good food and drink, I will say that his Tang Dao is not authentic. "

"Shouldn’t you send a telegram to the commander first? Also, should you word it a little more to Captain Tang so that he won’t say anything about us? "

The regiment chief of staff standing next to Wang Xiaoqiang had a bitter smile on his face. He really didn't treat himself as an outsider. He not only ordered the brigade's artillery battalion to follow his command, but also sent a telegram to ask the Four-line Regiment, which was fighting fiercely on the Zishan battlefield, to provide artillery support. God knows whether the brigade commander and the Tang regiment commander would roll their eyes at him.

"Hehe! Listen to me and send it according to my original words. As long as the battle is fought well, the commander will not be surprised. As for Tang Dao, he will still accept my tricks. If you are too polite to him, he will be a little uncomfortable. I am afraid he will think that I have fought too many battles and my brain is damaged." Wang Xiaoqiang saw that his chief of staff looked embarrassed and laughed.

What is rough but delicate? Tang Dao figured out the crazy general thoroughly, and this famous general with his own ravines in his heart is actually the same.

In this world, no one can achieve the name of a general by relying on the word "brave" alone!

Meeting Wang Xiaoqiang is destined to be a disaster for Hattori Xiaotaro!

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