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Amidst the sound of praise, Xue Yue quietly came to the Wanjialing battlefield.
Although the First Corps fought bloody battles with the Japanese on the Wanjialing front line for more than ten days, with tens of thousands of officers and soldiers killed and injured, during this period Xue Yue was always dispatching and commanding from the Corps headquarters, and did not sit on the front line to command operations like Wu Qiwei.
Now that the battle is over, he can breathe a little easier, so Xue Yue proposed to go to the Wanjialing battlefield to have a look!
The flames of war have been extinguished and the battlefield has been swept away, but the scorched earth mixed with flesh and blood under his feet, the smoke floating everywhere, and the remains of soldiers, mules and horses scattered all over the mountains and plains still make this experienced general feel a mixture of sorrow and joy. .
More than a dozen villages near Wanjialing have all been turned into ruins. The people were running to death and no one could be seen. Moreover, Xue Yue also knew that no one might live here again from now on. No one dared to live on the main battlefield where tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers died.
In fact, the 10 square kilometers of land in Wanjialing are covered with tombs of Japanese and Chinese soldiers. The bones, helmets, saddles, ammunition boxes, gas canisters, gas masks and other sundries of the Japanese army's heavy troops and horses can be found everywhere.
Many of the skeletons were wearing rubber shoes with the big toe separated from the other four toes. They were obviously the bones of Japanese soldiers. Some of the bones were rotted by a large pile of maggots. The maggots turned into pupae, and the pupae turned into flies. The pupa shells were piled up to 100 meters high on the skeletons. The battlefield atmosphere is very strong.
And the battlefield is full of mines and unexploded artillery shells. One may be injured if not careful, so the soldiers have to be careful when cleaning the battlefield.
After returning from the Wanjialing battlefield, Xue Yue felt much more relaxed. When he saw the scene of Japanese corpses filling the entire Wanjialing, Xue Yue's mood became happy.
However, Xue Yue's good mood did not last long. When the chief of staff counted the casualties of each unit in the battle, he fell silent.
Although he had expected that the casualties of the troops in this battle would be considerable, he did not expect that it would be so heavy, with 24,786 killed, 25,688 wounded, and 769 missing.
As a result, the total number of casualties in the Wanjialing battle exceeded 50,000, accounting for one-half of the total strength of the First Corps.
More importantly, according to this statistics, Chairman Chiang¡¯s beloved 74th Army was almost crippled, with less than 8,000 of the more than 25,000-strong army remaining, and the rest were either dead or injured.
Ye Zhao's 66th Army also suffered heavy losses, with more than 4,000 killed and more than 6,000 injured, more than half of them casualties.
In addition, Ou Zhen¡¯s Fourth Army also lost more than 8,000 people. These were the elites of the Central Army of the Nationalist Government. After the first battle, they were wiped out by a Type B division of the Japs.
If you look purely at the casualty ratio, the Battle of Wanjialing is really difficult to describe as a great victory.
Of course, whether a victory is a great victory is not judged by the ratio of casualties. If calculated that way, the Chinese army may not have any real great victories.
And just when Xue Yue was thinking about how the troops should act next, a telegram from the Honghualing front line shocked him again - the 27th Division was surrounded.
That¡¯s right, the 27th Division was surrounded, and it was Li Guoyao¡¯s work!
In fact, Li Guoyao's troops have been fighting with the 27th Division on the front line of Honghualing for seven days. During these seven days, the 27th Division has been attacking, and it is getting crazier every day.
Especially five days ago, with the cooperation of the Japanese aviation, the 27th Division was so awesome. There were artillery and tanks on the ground, and aircraft in the sky to assist in the battle. If it was not possible, they would use such dirty methods as poison gas bombs.
"But Li Guoyao's troops were as immobile as mountains. In order to defend the front-line position of Honghualing, Li Guoyao invested the main force of two brigades backwards, plus almost all technical arms.
In order to block the Japanese attack, Li Guoyao personally requested Chairman Chiang Kai-shek to have the air force come to assist in the battle.
Since the little Japanese were eager to defeat the Chinese army in front of them so as to rescue the surrounded Matsuura Division on the southern front, the 27th Division, under the command of Masaharu Honma, attacked day and night, reaching the extreme of madness.
However, this is exactly what Li Guoyao wanted to see. While he ordered the troops to stick to Honghua Ridge, he mobilized the main force of the newly formed 100th Division to bypass the 27th Division from the left side of Honghua Ridge, waiting for opportunities.
After a week of bloody fighting, the Japanese 27th Division suffered heavy losses, with more than half of the three infantry regiments suffering casualties.The soldiers and chariot troops also suffered huge losses. The number of injured and killed troops exceeded 8,000, and the total strength was less than 10,000.
More importantly, the 27th Division only carried the supplies and ammunition needed for a week of combat this time. In such a high-intensity battle, the Japanese army's ammunition consumption rate exceeded Masaharu Honma's expectation. On October 3, The ammunition has been exhausted.
And just when Masaharu Honma asked Neji Okamura for help through the radio, the 61st Army launched a counterattack!
Li Guoyao first sent Zhang Shaolin to command a special force to raid the artillery positions of the 27th Division and seize the headquarters of the 27th Division. Although Masaharu Honma went to the front line to inspect the battle and was not at the division headquarters, he managed to escape. However, the chief of staff and other commanders of the 27th Division were killed in one fell swoop.
After the 27th Division headquarters suffered a devastating blow, the Japanese army's command system was immediately in chaos. Taking this opportunity, the newly formed 100th Division suddenly came out from behind the Japanese army, defeated the 27th Division Engineer Regiment in one fell swoop, and cut off the The retreat of Masaharu Honma's troops.
At the same time, the main force of the Seventh Division of Honghua Ridge also launched a counterattack, launching a counterattack from a high position, and soon surrounded Masaharu Honma's troops within an area of ??less than three square kilometers below Honghua Ridge.
After the incident happened, both China and Japan were stunned!
Let¡¯s talk about China first. Everyone¡¯s attention was originally attracted by the battle at Wanjialing, and no one paid attention to the battle at Honghualing. Even those who pay attention to this front-line battle are worried about how long Li Guoyao's troops can hold on, three days or five days?
After all, they were dealing with a field division. The most important thing was that before the 27th Division arrived at Honghualing, the 61st Army had been at loggerheads with Matsuura Junrokuro's troops for several days, and both sides suffered heavy losses.
Because of this, both Xue Yue and Zhang Fakui, commander-in-chief of the Second Corps, felt that the battle of Li Guoyao's troops was a bit uncertain, and the possibility of stopping Masaharu Honma's troops was slim.
But what they didn¡¯t expect was that Li Guoyao¡¯s troops not only blocked the 27th Division¡¯s attack, but also unexpectedly severely damaged the division and surrounded it in a small area.
Shocked, everyone was excited. They had just annihilated a Class B division of the Japs in Wanjialing. If they could annihilate another Class C division on the Jiujiang front, then the Japs' troops on the south bank of the Yangtze River could be defeated. It has really suffered an unprecedented heavy blow and will no longer have the ability to attack Wuhan.
The Japanese army was also inexplicably shocked by the sudden change, and the high-level officials were shocked. The Wuhan offensive was the largest war between China and Japan so far, and it was full of unknowability. The decision-makers in Tokyo originally planned to make a breakthrough from Jiangnan. , along the Yangtze River south to attack Wuhan, but the development of the war situation took a 180-degree turn.
In the bloody battle in Jiangnan in March, all the elite divisions were exhausted, but there was no progress, and an entire division of Songpu Junrokuro was lost.
¡°The 27th Division is now also trapped in a tight siege. If rescue is not carried out in time, tens of thousands of dead souls will surely be added to the Chinese mountainous areas on the south bank of the Yangtze River. This is what Okamura Neiji, Yan Shunroku and others do not want to see. (Remember the website address: www.hlnovel.com