The Japanese army's infantry tactics were early to learn from France, and at that time, the Japanese Army, which was extremely envious of the powerful French army, almost became an Asian copy of the French Army, but when France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, the Japanese found that the French tactics seemed to be a little outdated, and then quickly turned to learning the German Empire on the side of the victor. During World War I, Germany faced a bunch of great powers fighting on two fronts, but still fought back and forth, and the Japanese Army unanimously believed that Germany's final defeat was due to the country's internal reasons, not the army's tactical fault, so it still respected the infantry tactics of the German Army, and after years of experiments, it finally developed a unique tactic suitable for the conditions of the Japanese Army.

The imaginary enemies of the Japanese army have always been Russia and China, and they have never learned how to fight European countries, so when the battle began, Kato's squadron suffered a lot.

The 5th Division was invincible in the Chinese theater, and the officers and soldiers of the division were always full of confidence in their combat effectiveness, and perhaps at the beginning the soldiers were still vaguely afraid of the French army, but Sergeant Ruan's appearance dispelled their concerns. Because Nguyen Phuc Huu was also carrying a Vietnamese soldier with him, it caused Captain Kato's misjudgment, he thought that the bunker opposite was also full of Vietnamese soldiers wearing French uniforms like Nguyen Phuc Huu, like that shameless slave who died in the country could not be the opponent of the Japanese army, in front of the imperial army's mighty power, these foxes and fake tigers would definitely collapse at the touch of a touch.

So Kato's squadron launched an infantry assault on the French pillbox in accordance with the tactics used on the Chinese battlefield. As mentioned earlier, the Japanese army's tactics have a lot of shadows of the German army in World War I, paying attention to the configuration and use of machine gun fire, as well as the penetration and roundabout attacks of small troops. The Iio team and the Takeda team relied on the rocks and drainage canals on both sides of the road to open up the formation, and launched a diversion attack on the bunker in the front. The remaining Tajima squad sent a rifle detachment to try to approach the enemy fortress from the flank.

The Japanese army is now facing a very difficult operation, and the main culprit for all this is the stupid plan of Morimoto Nakasa. Because the soldiers were told that this was an ordinary marching training, the soldiers did not carry any offensive equipment at all, and usually encountered enemy fortifications. The usual practice of the Japanese army was to carry out explosive attacks by sappers or infantry under the cover of heavy firepower, but now the Japanese soldiers were only accompanied by their weapons and ammunition for the day.

Moreover, a large machine gun fort like this in front of you must be destroyed with a large dose of powder packs or blasting canisters, and the Morimoto brigade did not carry a baggage squad at all when it came out this time, and the infantry did not even have explosives bags on hand now, let alone a special version of the "Bangalore torpedo (large blasting canister)" of the Japanese army.

So in the face of the cement bunkers of the French army, the only ones the Japanese infantry could use were the grenades they carried with them. The grenadiers in the squad used the Eight or Nine grenadiers to make several tentative attacks on the bunker in succession, and the small-caliber cast iron grenade was not even a tickle against the half-meter-thick reinforced concrete walls, and the only effect obtained here was that the explosion and smoke could temporarily obscure the sight of the shooter in the bunker.

But the problem is that this bunker does not have only one shooting window, and what is more troublesome is that it is actually two levels above and below. The observers on the upper floor had a very good field of vision, and every move of the Japanese could not escape the sight of the observers. As expected, the actions of the Tajima squad were detected by the French lookouts as soon as they began, and Nguyen Phuc Huu hurriedly mobilized a fortress machine gun to take care of this roundabout detachment.

The so-called fortress machine gun equipped by the French army is the famous Hatch Chase M30, a frantic 13.2mm heavy automatic weapon, which is actually designed for the Maginot Line, calling it a fortress machine gun, which means that this thing is not very convenient to move. Only suitable for use as a stationary weapon in forts and bunkers. This expensive large-caliber weapon was originally intended to fight cavalry and armored vehicles, and only about two dozen of them were deployed throughout the Tokyo regiment, two of which were placed in Machine Gun Fort No. 1 on the side of Highway 4, because this weapon could destroy light vehicles. It can be very useful when you need to block a road.

As a result, in the face of this terrible weapon, which had a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute, Tajima's first detachment was torn to pieces by bullets under the expectant gaze of the officers and men of Kato's squadron. In particular, the detachment commander, Tsukamoto Juncao, was hit in the lower abdomen by two large-caliber machine gun bullets, and the whole person was almost beaten in two by the waist. Jun Cao, who had an unusually strong vitality, scratched the ground and wailed for half a minute, and was finally killed by the captain of the Tajima team, who couldn't stand it.

The first attack was badly thwarted, and the soldiers of one detachment died in front of everyone. The Japanese soldiers were not afraid of death, but the death was so tragic that they couldn't help but feel a little frightened. The location of the No. 1 machine gun fort is very tricky, this was originally an uphill section of Highway No. 4, the two sides of the top of the slope are hills more than 90 meters high, the No. 1 pillbox is set on the side of the road on the top of the slope, the Japanese army wants to bypass here, must climb the two hills under the fire of the pillbox machine gun, this is simply a natural killing trap, it can be seen that the French are really wasted when setting up this pillbox.

"Assault! Take out the spirit of a Japanese boy and rush forward with me! Under the cover of rifles and grenadiers, the second detachment of the Iiao squad jumped out of the shelter and began to advance rapidly. One of the infantry tactics of the Japanese army is that when encountering a strong enemy, when it is impossible to find the enemy's weak points, it should launch continuous tentative attacks without interruption, disrupt the defensive rhythm of the defenders, and find out the weak points of the enemy's battle line.

Just when the Onizawa detachment was bravely attacking under the fire of the French machine guns, Lieutenant Nobi, the adjutant of Morimoto Otakuji, came to the front of Sosuke Kato with the captain's order. Morimoto was very dissatisfied with the course of Kato's squadron, believing that fighting like this in the first battle would really damage the majesty of the Imperial Japanese Army, but he considered that the conditions available to Kato were really limited, so he was not prepared to criticize the other side's performance too much. But the whole brigade could not have been blocked on the road by a small bunker, and then the operation of the Morimoto brigade would have become a big joke.

Don't look at Morimoto, who has a bunch of faults and flaws, but when it comes to fighting, he can be regarded as a battle-hardened general. He had accumulated a wealth of combat experience in the Chinese battlefield, so when the offensive was blocked, he immediately made a corresponding disposition plan. He ordered Kato's squadron to hold back the attention of the pillbox and cover the two squadrons of Hasegawa and Okubo from the flanks, and the two squadrons would go around the hills on either side. Advance directly to the rear of the enemy army and take the enemy by surprise. Morimoto judged that this should be the main line of defense of the French army on the perimeter, and as long as this point was broken, the defenseless Tongden Castle would be completely exposed to the Japanese army.

This really cannot be blamed for Morimoto's simplistic thinking, which is actually a manifestation of the Japanese army's lack of intelligence information on French Indochina. Morimoto's map only shows the distribution of external traffic and roads in the Tongdeng area, and except for a fort built by the French army on a flat-topped hill southwest of the city, the rest of the military arrangements are completely blank.

At that time, the total number of Japanese expatriates in the whole of French Indochina was less than 500, most of whom lived in Haiphong, Hanoi, and Saigon. The map in the hands of the Japanese was bought by Japanese spies from a French bookstore. It only shows a variety of civilian roads and facilities, and as for the distribution of military units on the map, the French are not stupid enough to do so.

In French Indochina, the Japanese army's usual intelligence gathering methods were not very effective, and the nature of the French colonists doomed them not to easily trust the locals, such as the construction of the Tongdeng Fort, the French were looking for workers from the Cochinchina hired area, and did not recruit any local people from Tongdeng to participate, just to ensure that the fort structure would not be leaked. At the same time because of the French background. The Japanese military also cannot use its planes to reconnoiter the terrain as it did in China, because this is a serious violation of airspace and will inevitably cause international disputes, given the hostile diplomatic environment in which Japan is present. It's better not to do something like that that would drive the Ministry of Foreign Affairs crazy.

Therefore, Morimoto Otaji actually didn't know much about the situation on the other side of the border, but out of confidence in the glorious achievements of the Japanese army in the past, he still gave the order to push the entire brigade into the abyss.

"Brigades forward! Destroy all enemies you come across. We're going to spend the night in Tongdengli tonight! ”

The advance of the roundabout troops did not go as smoothly as Morimoto had thought, and the Hasegawa squadron climbed the hillside covered with artemisia annua and shrubs from the left side of the road, and climbed for a long time before finding a cliff of nearly seventy degrees ahead. After turning around at the top of the slope for a few turns, I couldn't find any other road that could be passed, and finally I had to return from the same way, wasting more than 20 minutes in vain.

When the officers and men of the squadron happily drilled out of the artemisia bushes and rushed to Highway No. 4, they found that under the hillside diagonally opposite the road, there was a French stronghold, and the bright yellow Indochina federal flag fluttered high on the flagpole of the watchtower of the stronghold.

The Okubo squadron was in a hurry at that time, and did not pay attention to the reconnaissance ahead and the concealment of the troops, and the officers and men of the entire squadron appeared in front of Lieutenant Dominiel in such a hurry.

The sudden emergence of hundreds of Japanese troops from the grass beside the road really frightened Lieutenant Domine, who was laying out defenses on the wall of the stronghold and preparing to organize some soldiers to support Nguyen Phuc Huu, who was struggling to resist, to transport ammunition supplies and remove wounded soldiers.

Domière was very surprised to find that the Japanese had climbed over a wild slope where there was no road at all, at the end of the dry season, and the Artemisia annua had generally grown to more than 1.5 meters, and the Japanese soldiers threw them into it without being able to see the top of their heads, God knows how they managed to identify the direction and find the way down the mountain. However, it was superfluous to think about anything at this time, and the French lieutenant reacted extremely quickly, and he immediately ordered the machine guns and infantry on the wall to shoot at the Japanese officers and soldiers on the side of the road. In an instant, the soldiers of the Okubo squadron were enveloped in a hail of bullets.

I just looked at the rankings, and it fell to ninety-sixth, and what is even more wordless is that from Monday to Saturday, there are only 1,000 hits on this book, but this month is only half over, I hope that book friends will support more in the second half of the month, your encouragement and support is the most important motivation for me to write. (To be continued.) )