The Osaka soldiers, originally subordinate to the Fourth Division, should not have appeared in Burma, but the Eighteenth Division suffered heavy casualties in the confrontation with the Chinese army.

According to Kawabe Shozo, that is: although the Osaka soldiers are incompetent, they are also veterans, and they are better than those recruits who have never fought in a war.

But at this point, Kawabe Shozo is wrong, the veterans of the Osaka soldiers do have experience, but their experience is more of the experience of running away to save their lives and deserting, and they will slip away as soon as they fight, or they will be sick...... When other Japanese soldiers enter the hospital to recuperate, they must at least have a hole in their body, which is still a minor injury, but the Osaka soldiers can go to the hospital to recuperate after only corns.

Other Japanese soldiers will definitely be reprimanded by their commanders if they do this, but the Osaka soldiers are very good at doing business, and they usually bring the business set to the troops, so they quickly accumulated a certain amount of materials and wealth, and these wealth can bribe the commander at a critical moment, so many Osaka soldiers can justifiably get the "admission session" (note: the certificate of hospitalization of the Japanese army, which indicates what injuries the soldier suffered and why he was hospitalized).

At this time, dozens of Japanese soldiers who escaped from Mandalay were Osaka soldiers, and their luck was as good as ever...... Rice had actually laid an ambush on their escape route, but in order to make more Japanese soldiers choose to escape, these ambushes did not shoot, but watched these Osaka soldiers flee from front of them.

Rice chose to start at 2 a.m.

The reason for choosing this time was that Rice felt that this should be the time when the enemy was most asleep, and he thought that it would give the Japanese troops stationed in Mandalay a surprise attack.

But when Zhang Chi heard the sound of the British artillery, he couldn't help but shake his head, and only said two words: "Nonsense!" ”

It is not unreasonable for Zhang Chi to say this, as long as anyone who has a little experience in fighting with the Japanese army knows that the best thing for the Japanese army is night fighting...... This was determined by the good military qualities of the Japanese army.

To be precise, the better the military quality, the more tacit cooperation there will be. Then they should choose to fight in the dark, because even in the dark they can identify friend and foe through cooperation with each other or various means, that is, they can fight with their eyes closed. On the other hand, troops with poor military quality should choose to fight during the day, because they can easily fall into chaos in the dark.

Especially for the side with advanced equipment, it is difficult or even impossible for advanced equipment such as artillery, aircraft, and tanks to play a role at night, but the advantage of the Japanese army in hand-to-hand combat can be more reflected.

It is precisely for this reason that when the Chinese army is in a stalemate with the Japanese army, it is often during the day that the Chinese army has the upper hand and captures some positions. At night, they immediately went on the defensive, and even if they did, they would often be recaptured by the Japanese.

Therefore, unless it is a last resort or a surprise attack, the Chinese army generally does not choose to start a war with the Japanese army in the dark of night.

Rice, on the other hand, did the opposite...... This is obviously his blind command with insufficient combat experience and insufficient understanding of the Japanese army.

Sure enough, the British and Indian troops rushed forward under the cover of artillery fire, but were quickly beaten down by the Japanese firepower.

The whole process was undoubtedly a tragedy for the British and Indian troops, because in this battle alone, they were destroyed by more than 10 tanks and suffered more than 500 casualties, but they didn't even see where the Japanese army's firepower was, and they inexplicably suffered such heavy casualties.

This made Rice very frustrated. Only then did he realize that his troops were unfit for a night attack, so he let the artillery continue to pour a single round of shells into Mandalay and then stopped the attack.

What Rice didn't know was that although his attack was unfortunate, it was also a great luck: if the Japanese army took advantage of the British and Indian army's hasty retreat and pursued at the tail, he was afraid that it would be able to take advantage of the situation to enter the British and Indian defense line and even defeat the British and Indian army.

This was a common tactic used by the Japanese army. It's also the right tactic...... The Japanese army was not as well equipped as the Chinese army, so it tried to wrench itself with the Chinese army so that its tanks, planes, etc. could not be functional. But the commander of the search wing, Genuchi Shoichi, who commanded the battle, did not do so, and Genuchi was a little cautious, he could not believe that the enemy would send him to the door in the dark of night to slaughter the Imperial army. This is completely unreasonable, so I hesitated, thinking that this was a conspiracy set up by the Chinese. The purpose was to get the Japanese troops to leave the fortifications before launching an ambush, and ordered all parts not to launch a counteroffensive.

It should be said that Genuchi Shoichi also has a reason for doing this, after all, there are not many defenders in Mandalay, only more than 3,000 people, and there are complete fortifications in Mandalay, if you want to hold Mandalay for a long time, you must preserve your strength and be cautious, but this makes him lose a chance to expand the results of the battle.

However, the nightmare of the British and Indian armies did not end there.

After dawn the next day, the Anglo-Indian army, driven by Rice, launched another attack on Mandalay.

The opening line of the attack was still heavy artillery fire, because it was bombardment during the day, and the artillery could easily find their "target...... But in fact, this "target" was only a few civilian houses, which soon fell one by one under the fire of the British army.

Then the British army sent more than 30 tanks to cover the infantry and charge in, and almost at the same time, gunfire was heard in Mandalay...... The Chindit troops, who had infiltrated Mandalay, came into play at this time, joining forces with the British to launch an assault on the Japanese lines.

At first, the British attack was very successful, which made the British think that the Japanese lines or fortifications had collapsed under their artillery fire, so they accelerated their pace and rushed towards the city of Mandalay.

But it wasn't long before a dense burst of gunfire and artillery could be heard from the ruins and under the shade of the trees, and the Anglo-Indian troops who rushed in fell in pieces like harvested rice.

Soon after the tank drove in, it quickly fell silent, and after a while the Anglo-Indian army retreated like a tide again...... This may also be one of the advantages of the British and Indian forces, as they will quickly retreat if they are attacked with the slightest casualties, so there will always be no too many casualties.

Zhang Chi, who was watching the battle with Wang Mazi from a distance, was also a little puzzled...... This is understandable if the infantry went in and was quickly defeated, but why did the tanks go in like meat buns beating dogs, you must know that those tanks in the British army even had seven or eight Shermans, and this tank could basically be said to be invincible in front of the Japanese army. (To be continued.) )