"The third detachment comes with me! Assault! Advance! Noda Masao lifted the 95-style saber and pointed forward, his thick body was extremely flexible at this time, and the Japanese commander jumped up and jumped on the roadbed with his infantry squad to the French pillbox at the foot of the opposite hill that was spewing tongues of fire.

This was the third assault by the Takeda team, and the first two attacks ended in failure, and the frontal terrain was somewhat unfavorable to the Japanese, while the opponent had more heavy fire than they had ever encountered.

"A dead country, worthy of being a strong army in Europe, even the second-rate troops of the colonies are equipped with so many guns." Squadron Leader Kato crouched behind a rocky on the side of the road, surrounded by a circle of attached personnel from the squadron headquarters.

"Second Lieutenant Ono, you immediately take the high ground on the left side of the road with a machine-gun detachment and find a way to suppress the fire of that pillbox." Kato commanded loudly on the shoulder of the squadron mate.

Kato has always admired this smart and resolute squadron adjutant very much, Second Lieutenant Shizuo Ono has just graduated from the Army Non-commissioned Officer School for two years, and he was transferred to Kato's squadron to accumulate management experience in front-line combat units.

"Huh." Ono gave a brief reply, gave a military salute, and rushed out of the shelter. (PS: Japanese soldiers usually use "Ha" to answer when expressing praise, but when receiving orders from superiors, they often shorten it to a "Ha" or "Ha" sound, which is said to be more samurai.) ）

"Sergeant Nguyen, we're running out of ammunition."

"Watch to the right, fire! Fire! ”

"Reload! Hurry up. ”

"Victor is dying, we need to send him away as soon as possible."

"Mom!"

"Come on, come on, you Japanese monkeys!"

At this time, in the No. 1 machine gun fort at the front of the French A3 stronghold, the French soldiers roared in the deafening gunfire. The battle has entered a fever pitch, except for the comrades in their respective machine gun crews. The soldiers had no time to care. After the communication between Machine Gun Fort No. 1 and the A3 stronghold had been cut off, and some of the Japanese troops had crossed the road and made a detour back to the side of the pillbox, Sergeant Nguyen Phuc Huu knew in his heart that the fort could not hold on for long.

"Lieutenant Domin, the enemy has circled behind us, and I ask your permission for us to retreat." Sergeant Nguyen Phuc Huu covered his ears with one hand and shouted loudly into the telephone receiver, but fortunately the telephone line was buried deep in the ground and was not damaged by the Japanese army, so he was still able to maintain contact with the stronghold.

The past ten minutes have been a nightmare for Nguyen Phuc Huu. The Japanese were completely insane, completely disregarding the life and death of themselves and their companions, and what terrified him even more was that these madmen also possessed extremely skilled combat skills, their shooting was extremely accurate, and they were very good at using the terrain, if the lieutenant had not sent himself over to temporarily increase his firepower, perhaps this place would have been lost by the first attack of the enemy.

Martin. Sergeant Nguyen brought a machine-gun squad armed with two FM29 machine guns. Combined with the four Hatch Chase M1909 machine guns that were originally installed in the bunker, this sturdy double-decker machine gun fort had about the same machine gun firepower as a Japanese squadron.

"Thank you, Lieutenant, I'll do my best to hold on." Ruan Fuyou put down the phone in his hand and looked at the wound on the side of his thigh that was still oozing blood with a wry smile. Why the Japanese provoked this conflict, he is still in a state of confusion.

What Sergeant Martin Nguyen didn't know was that the group of Japanese soldiers opposite him didn't have a question, didn't they say that they had good marching training. How did it somehow turn into an offense.

In order to show a realistic performance, Morimoto Otaji really ordered all the personnel to march on foot, and all the horses and vehicles were left in the barracks. Heavy machine guns and infantry guns were carried alternately by the soldiers on the march. This also made it possible for his brigade to pass through some narrow paths, bypassing several French posts set up on the border, and because of the mountain peaks, the movement of Morimoto's brigade did not even alarm the Japanese garrison on the other side of the hill, including the chariot squad assigned to him, because of the transportation, they were placed in the village of Licha, near the side of the Zhennanguan road, which was much better than the living conditions of the third brigade.

Morimoto's brigade followed the path between the rugged rocks and dense bushes, all the way over the mountains and mountains, and secretly approached the Sino-Vietnamese border. Because the remaining trail had to climb over steep cliffs, and it was difficult for troops carrying heavy loads to pass, Morimoto's brigade returned to the dirt road between the villages, passed through the village of Nong Huai from the side of the Sifang Mountain, and soon came to the No. 16 boundary marker, and further on, it was about to cross the Sino-Vietnamese border.

Morimoto played a trick at this point, he ordered his troops to turn to the right and march down the hillside along the trail, as if they were walking along the national border, looking for the intended target, Boundary Pillar No. 17, which was actually a salient deep into the Vietnamese border, and the boundary pillar they were looking for had long since been left behind them, and down the mountain, below which was the territory of French Indochina.

The soldiers of the Morimoto Brigade walked down the hill in a daze, and naturally walked onto Vietnam's Highway No. 4, the most important arterial road in Vietnam on the northern border, which leads to Cao Bang at one end and Lang Son at the other, passing through Dong Dang city in the meantime. Highway 4, the main artery of the northern border cities, cut off the flow of goods between the northern cities, and the French colonial government built a series of armed strongholds along this road to prevent malicious sabotage by local independent groups. The A3 stronghold is one such highway garrison, which shoulders the responsibility of guarding the passage northwest of Tongdeng, and also bears the important responsibility of guarding the border.

Lieutenant Dominiel's judgment was very accurate, and Morimoto's brigade came to his A3 stronghold, and the first contact between the two sides took place in front of the first machine gun fort. Kato's Iiao team, as the vanguard of the entire brigade, began to move along the highway to the southeast, only after a short period of effort, the forward soldiers felt that something was wrong, the environment around this highway was completely different from the Chinese countryside they had been accustomed to, solid and clean asphalt pavement, smooth highway roadbed and neat street trees on both sides, and English letter street signs standing beside the road, which was obviously not in Guangxi.

The spearheads hurriedly returned to report to the team leader, but the answer was to leave them alone. Stay vigilant and keep going. Immediately afterward, the spearhead saw towering pillboxes along the road and a few French soldiers running in and out with boxes. When they saw the flag of the Federation of French Indochina flying high on the top of the pillbox, several Japanese soldiers stood on the road in a daze, completely unsure of what to do.

By the time the follow-up troops arrived, the French had already prepared for battle, and Sergeant Nguyen, as the supreme commander here, stood on the top of the pillbox, holding an iron horn and began to shout to the Japanese troops.

"This is the territory of French Indochina, the troops in front please identify themselves immediately, this is the territory of French Indochina. The troops at the front immediately identified themselves. Nguyen Phuc Huu asked the Japanese in standard French, and although he had already recognized the other party's identity at a glance, it was a basic diplomatic procedure that had to be followed by rules.

The Morimoto brigade stopped, there was a commotion in the forward troops, and the brigade crossed the border into French Indochina? This is not something that can be easily dealt with in the past, it is an international dispute, and if the French protest, the Japanese side will certainly find some people to take responsibility for it.

At this time, Squadron Leader Kato, who had been ready for a long time, stepped forward with his adjutant. Beginning to negotiate with the French defenders, Kato's main thought at the moment was to launch a direct attack, but before the attack, he had to find a plausible reason to come out, and only then could he deal with the incompetent high-ranking officials in the cabinet and the military department.

Nguyen Phuc Huu with a soldier of Vietnamese origin. Walked out of the bunker and came to the road to meet Kato. Kato's French was not very good, but his English was good, and Sergeant Nguyen Phuc Huu had an amazing talent for languages, so the two began to communicate in English. As a result, he didn't finish two sentences. A dispute ensued.

Kato said that his troops had accidentally entered the French Indochina border after getting lost during training on the march, and he asked Nguyen Phuc Huu to get out of the way and let them pass. The 3rd Brigade was to return to the Chinese border from the direction of Zhennanguan after passing through Tongdeng City.

This is simply a slap in the face to the French people, a complete trampling on the dignity and power of the French colonial government, and if a foreign armed force is allowed to move freely through the French colony, what face will the French have to continue to maintain their rule in this place.

This was discussed by the Japanese early on, and they decided that the French would not agree to this demand, and that if they were any more bad in their negotiations, they would eventually provoke the other side into an armed conflict, and then the brigade would take the opportunity to attack the French garrison and try to take the city of Tongden in one go.

On the other hand, if the French agreed to the Japanese request, their purpose would have been achieved, because it meant that the French were only strong and did not dare to go to war head-on with the Imperial Japanese Army, and the Morimoto Brigade that exposed this would be regarded as a hero, and the men of insight in the military headquarters would inevitably promote the decision to attack French Indochina.

Sure enough, Nguyen Phuc Huu immediately said that he could not let them pass through the defensive line and that he had to get instructions from his superiors, and he asked the Japanese troops to retreat a distance of 500 meters and wait on the spot for the French Indochina government to deal with it. He warned Kato not to make any reckless moves, otherwise the French Army would not hesitate to stop it by force, causing a diplomatic incident, and then both sides would not look good.

Kato, for his part, replied that he had little patience, and that the French had to reply within fifteen minutes, otherwise the Japanese would decide on their own actions. Nguyen Phuc Huu replied that he would immediately call and report to his superiors, and then the two sides shook hands and said goodbye, but less than 20 seconds after the two separated, the exchange of fire between Japan and France began.

The trigger for the conflict was a casual remark made by Nguyen Phuc Huu on the way back to his bunker, where he spat on the ground and then said to his companions, "These damn Japanese devils." For him, this may have been just a personal disgust, but the problem was that the versatile Sergeant Nguyen spoke in Chinese at the time.

"Red Deer Noro!" With the sound of a gunshot, Nguyen Phuc Huu covered his thighs and fell to the ground, and then the machine guns that had been on alert in the bunker immediately launched a fierce return fire, and the Japanese commander and several soldiers around him, who had not had time to put down their rifles standing on the road, were immediately beaten into a sieve.

Eventually, Sergeant Nguyen was dragged back to Fort 1 by his companions, while Kato ran back to his squadron and immediately began to organize the first attack, which would later become known as the Dong Deng Meat Grinder. (To be continued.) )