The situation is deteriorating further.

The next day's siege battle was delayed due to the fact that the 40th Wing of the Yue Army and the troops in the direction of the Jiehe River arrived late and entered the battle late. Despite the fierce fighting, the defenders of the city continued to support it until the evening. The third day was different, the battlefield was even more tragic and the defenders were more difficult.

The 10th and 40th Wings are all elite devils, well-equipped, and have high tactical quality. However, the defenders were China's poorest-equipped troops, and they didn't even have anti-aircraft guns that could hit tanks, and the only relatively adequate weapons were a train of grenades that were brought in before the war in the Fifth Theater. Hand grenades can be thrown at a distance of tens of meters at most, but the guns and machine guns on devil tanks and armored vehicles can hit thousands of meters away, and this battle is destined to be a one-sided battle. What's more, now that the devils have entered the city, they are a hundred times more vigilant, and the defenders are no longer brave and afraid of sacrifice, and if they want to use cluster grenades to blow up the devil tank again, then they must have a chance, and under normal circumstances, the soldiers will be killed by the devil if they can't get to the tank.

The devils have strong troops, this time it is a full-scale attack, blooming everywhere, and by noon, the defenders have been divided into several pieces by the devils, and they are struggling to support, seeing that if they don't break through, the troops will all be sacrificed in this Tengxian county.

Wang Mingzhang sent a report to Sun Zhen again, explaining the situation in the city, and finally expressed his attitude: "With the weak strength and broken weapons of the Sichuan army, it has undertaken the major task of defending the first line of Xuzhou on the Jinpu line, and it is self-evident that the strength is no longer enough. We are soldiers. Sacrifice used to be a vocation, but now there is only a sacrifice of everything to complete the task, although there is not a single soldier left, there is no complaint. Otherwise, there is nothing to do to the country, let alone to atone for the sins of the Sichuan Army's twenty years of civil war! The grade is determined to fight to the death to repay the country! ”

After Sun Zhen received the report, he knew that the situation in the city was extremely dangerous, and Wang Mingzhang sent a desperate telegram, so he ordered Chen Dingxun to lead the three regiments of the 22nd Group Army outside the city to attack to the death to contain the army and reduce the pressure in the city. At the same time, Wang Mingzhang's telegram was forwarded to Li Zongren, with a telegram asking where the 20th Army Corps was and why it did not launch an attack on the army in Lincheng and Zaozhuang? If the 20th Army Corps could not launch an attack as scheduled, could Wang Mingzhang be ordered to break through the encirclement and maneuver behind enemy lines to deter the army?

Li Zongren was already very angry at this time, Tengxian Xiang Sichuan Army was fighting bloodily, but the Tang Army was slow. It seems that this Teng County must hold on for a few more days, otherwise, it will be impossible for the Tang Army to be deployed in place, let alone encircle and annihilate the Yue army.

However, the current situation is already obvious, Teng County has been holding on for three days, it is impossible to hold on any longer, and it may fall today. The problem is that after Tengxian is lost, the follow-up troops of the Yue army may flock to Lincheng and Zaozhuang, until they attack Taierzhuang. At that time, if there is another change in the direction of Linyi and the southwest of Shandong, and the 16th and 5th Divisions of the Yue Army concentrate their forces to kill Xuzhou, not to mention the elimination of the troops of the Yue Army attacking Taierzhuang, it will be a question of whether they can hold Xuzhou.

Li Zongren wandered around the room for a long time and sent another telegram to Chiang Kai-shek, demanding that the troops of the First Theater must cooperate with the Third Army to block the Fifth Division of the Third Army so that it could not advance eastward. He asked Chiang to personally send a telegram to Tang Enbo, urging him to make rapid deployment to ensure the encirclement and annihilation of the Seya Detachment of the 10th Division of the Yue Army, which was prominent.

After sending the telegram to Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren sat down at the table, his fingers kept tapping on the table, and as he tapped, he thought, since it is a pocket, it is a pack for one wing, and it is a pack for two wings, so what's the harm in loading three? After several days of desperate fighting by the 22nd Group Army, the 10th Division of the Chinese Army must have suffered heavy casualties, so they were allowed to come to Taierzhuang and mobilize a large army to give it a pot of stew, so as to win a great victory that had never been achieved before by the [***] system, and to boost the spirit of the Chinese people's resistance to the Japanese language. The elimination of the 63rd Wing alone was a bit petty, and it did not have much impact on the battle situation.

Thinking of this, Li Zongren called Xu Zuyi, chief of staff, and asked him to go to the Linyi front again, coordinate and command the actions of the various armies in Linyi, and make sure to ensure that the Linyi army would not be allowed to come to reinforce before the Segu detachment of the 10th Division of the Yue Army was eliminated.

Xu Zuyi happily accepted the order, and after discussing the battle situation in Linyi with Li Zongren for a while, he went to prepare for departure.

Li Zongren took a sip of tea and wanted to be quiet for a while, but his mind was like a horse, one moment was Sun Zhen's telegram, and the other was the tattered military uniform and black and thin face when the Sichuan army first arrived. After thinking for a while, Li Zongren felt that the major aspects of the battle had been decided, and instead of letting Wang Mingzhang's troops sacrifice all in the city, it was better to withdraw from the city and cut off the enemy's rear route. At the very least, it can be used to harass the enemy's rear. Then he sent a telegram to Sun Zhen to all units of the 22nd Group Army outside Tengxian County to immediately enter the battle and fully support Wang Mingzhang's troops in the city. At night, it is necessary to launch attacks and harass operations against the enemy, so that the enemy cannot clearly understand the reality of our army. As for when the troops in the city would break through, Li Zongren clearly pointed out: The 22 nd Group Army fought bloody battles in Jiehe, Beishahe, and Tengxian for several days and nights, showing the spirit of the Sichuan Army's heroic resistance and setting an example for the whole army. It was not easy for Teng County to hold on for three days. In order to ensure the victory of the follow-up operation, the defending troops of the 22nd Group Army were specially ordered to choose the right time to break through. After the breakout, the troops moved west to rest. Two days later, they crossed the Beisha River, seized the Jiehe River, cut off the retreat route of the Yue Army, and contacted the Third Army to jointly undertake the task of cutting off the retreat of the enemy's 10th Division.

After receiving a telegram from Li Zongren, Sun Zhen hurriedly sent a telegram to Wang Mingzhang, ordering him to organize all forces to hold on, concentrate the troops, and break through after dark. He also reported that the three regiments outside the city had been ordered to attack with all their strength and defend the city.

Sun Zhen's telegram was tantamount to a shot in the arm for the already extremely difficult defenders. was already a person who died frequently, but suddenly knew that there was a glimmer of life, and the will to survive that broke out was very strong. Under Wang Mingzhang's order, the various units that had been divided by the Yue army fought back to the death, and Wang Mingzhang, Zhang Xuanwu, and Wang Zhenwen all took the guards directly to the line of fire to fight, but they simply beat the offensive of the Yue army, and the defense lines of the various units took the opportunity to restore contact.

From the morning to the present, the army is also tired, seeing the Sichuan army desperately counterattacking, Seya Kai thought it was a return to the light, and ordered the troops to consolidate their positions, besiege them on all sides, and seize the time to eat. After eating, they wiped out the defenders in one go.

Chen Dingxun was ordered to lead the troops to reinforce the defenders of Teng County, and he knew that the army had completed the encirclement of the defenders and compressed to a corner of the county. It can only attack the enemy, force the enemy to divide his forces, and reduce the pressure on the defenders. So, Chen Dingxun set his eyes on the artillery position of the Yue army. However, the enemy's artillery position was at Dongguan in Tengxian County, and if the troops wanted to go around there, they had to move to the front line of the first ten miles and the rear tun before they could copy the rear road of the army's artillery position. At this time, the heavenly machine was worried that it could not find its target, and if it went around so far to attack the enemy's artillery position, it would be no different from going to death.

After thinking about it, Chen Dingxun decided to attack the nearest Xiguan first, and strive to open a passage with the defenders in the city. Wait for the evening to attack the artillery positions of the Japanese army and cover the retreat of the defenders.

Before the attack, Chen Dingxun kept an eye on it, and after the movement of the troops was in place, he used one regiment to attack the devil's position in Xiguan, and the two regiments set up an ambush between Chongzhai and Dayan Village, preparing to give the pursuing devils a guy.

When the battle came to this, the soldiers had already beaten their eyes, and their lives were nothing, because there were too many brothers who died, and they really responded to the sentence: "People are not people when they go to the battlefield, and their lives are cheaper than grass when they go to the battlefield." Therefore, the three regiments competed to take up the attack mission, and in the end, the downsized regiment of the 125th Division, which had a relatively large number of people, won the attack mission.

Chen Dingxun graduated from the second phase of the Baoding Army Military Academy, can be regarded as a general in the army, and loves to watch Sichuan opera, and admires the strategy of the ancients. He told the regiment commander who led the team not to attack to the death, but to use two companies to arrange suspicious soldiers, bring all the military trumpets, and blow all the charge trumpets to Lao Tzu after the sound, so that the little devils knew that our army reinforcements had arrived, so that they would automatically shrink their positions and dare not let go of the encirclement and annihilate the defenders. Be quick when retreating, otherwise the devil's cavalry and tanks will catch up with you, which will not be good.

Chen Dingxun's meaning is clear to the officers and soldiers, that is, he wants to set up a suspicious array like Zhuge Liang to scare off the devils.

The time of the 125th Division's attack was when the army changed its guard and ate, and at the same time, more than a dozen military trumpets sounded at the same time, and the soldiers of a regiment pounced on the Yue army in Xiguan, Tengxian County.

The army that was responsible for the security cover task of Xiguan saw that the [***] team was fierce, and while asking for help, they shrank towards the west gate, trying to hold on to the city wall fortifications.

After receiving the report, Kei Seya thought that it was really the reinforcements of the [***] team, so he hurriedly ordered the 40th Division to reinforce Xiguan and resolutely repelled the reinforcements of the [***] team. Later, seeing that this squadron of [***] troops would soon retreat, Seya Kai felt that he had been fooled, this army was at best a regimental size, and it was a dream that they also wanted to come to the rescue of the defenders of Teng County. However, it is also troublesome for another army like this to be watched outside the city, and perhaps they will attack the baggage troops.

As a result, Kei Seya ordered the 40th Wing to send a cavalry brigade and two squadrons of infantry to pursue and destroy this force.

The devil went out of the city to pursue, and it was in the hands of the Sichuan army outside the city, without heavy firepower, he couldn't open the city gate, so it was always okay to fight a small ambush! As a result, the Yue army that chased out of the city naturally got into the ambush circle of the Sichuan army. However, the Sichuan army was indeed too poor in firepower, allowing the devils to escape part of it.

The devils who fled back reported to the 40th Wing that they had been ambushed in Chongzhai and Dayan Village, and that they had suffered heavy casualties, and Seya Kai was convinced that there was indeed a large force of the [***] team outside the city, at least at the division level, and it could copy the rear road of the army at any time. Kei Seya was not surprised, and immediately ordered the Fourth Wing to go out of the city and destroy the Chinese division.

The 40th Wing went out of the city to pursue, Wang Mingzhang and others felt the pressure suddenly lightened, and concentrated on dealing with a new round of attacks by the Yue army.

This fight was fought until dark, and the defenders naturally suffered more and more casualties, and the army was no better. In the words of the Wing Commander of the 10th Wing, Akashiba Yaezo Daisa, since entering China, the 10th Division has been invincible. Only two operations were significantly disadvantaged. Once was ambushed by Liu Yimin's tutor in China, it was creepy to think about, it was a blur of flesh and blood, and the elite imperial soldiers were smashed by Liu Yimin's troops like bricks and tiles. The second time was this Tengxian attack battle, of course, the Tengxian defenders can't be compared with Liu Yimin's instructor, it is a group of invisible devils who eat meat and don't spit out bones. However, although the defenders of Tengxian County were not as terrifying as Liu Yimin's instructor, they fought for their lives, and even the wounded pulled grenades and died together with the imperial army, causing huge casualties among the attacking troops, and the small county seat of Tengxian County turned out to be a nail that could not be gnawed.

After dark, Wang Mingzhang and Zhang Xuanwu contracted their troops and stuck to the area of the southern city wall, preparing to break through. With this contraction, Wang Mingzhang bit out two of his teeth. At the beginning of the defense of the city, there were more than 5,000 people, and after three days of fighting, 5,000 people turned into more than 1,000 people, including more than 300 light and serious wounded. In other words, 4,000 soldiers of the Sichuan Army were buried in Tengxian County.

Wang Mingzhang wiped away his tears and ordered Zhang Xuanwu to reorganize all the troops into three battalions, Zhang Xuanwu took a battalion as the vanguard of the breakthrough, Wang Zhenwen took an operator to send the wounded, and he personally led a battalion to cover the troops to break through.

Zhang Xuanwu and Wang Zhenwen thought that if they wanted to go, the division commander would go first, and there was absolutely no reason to let the division commander go behind.

Wang Mingzhang stopped the two people and said: "We held on to Tengxian for three days, plus the Jiehe Blockade Battle, the Beishahe Blockade Battle, and the Longyangdian Blockade Battle, to say the least, more than 3,000 devils were killed, and although my 22nd Group Army was disabled, it was worth it." We're basically 5 lives for one life for a little devil, although it's a bit of a loss, but that's also something that can't be helped. So many brothers have died, and where can I have one more life? Don't worry, I'm a big man, and there will be no problem. ”

Zhang Xuanwu and Wang Zhenwen did not follow, and finally decided that Wang Zhenwen would be the pioneer of the breakthrough, and after Zhang Xuanwu's palace, Wang Mingzhang led a battalion to transfer the wounded.

As a result, all the more than 300 wounded refused to retreat, unwilling to drag the troops back, and demanded that each person be issued five grenades, and that they be placed in different places, and that they be the last troops of the palace.

Wang Mingzhang couldn't bear it in his heart, but reason told him that it was unrealistic to break through with the wounded. Besides, now that it has become a pot of porridge, even if it is ordered to break out, it is difficult to say whether it will be able to return to Xuzhou, and it will be difficult for the wounded to survive if they are not treated. He gritted his teeth and ordered the wounded to be concealed and 5 grenades per person were issued.

Before the breakout began, Wang Mingzhang sent a telegram to Sun Zhen, asking if he could answer. Sun Zhen called back, Chen Dingxun led three regiments to fight fiercely with the pursuing devils in the afternoon, and has not been able to get out of contact with the enemy, and plans to retreat at night. Only when they get rid of the pursuing devils can they attack the devil's artillery position and meet the defenders to break through.

Wang Mingzhang thought about it, and took advantage of Chen Dingxun's battle with the devil, just to break through. He immediately ordered Wang Zhenwen to act.

The breakthrough began smoothly, and after several days of fierce fighting, the 10th Wing suffered heavy losses, suspended its attack at night and was on alert. Wang Zhenwen They did not force an attack, but leaned on a ladder on the south city wall, climbed the city wall and used a rope to go down.

At the beginning, Wang Zhenwen led the lead battalion to the city wall first, set up machine guns on both sides, and prepared for the fire to cover the breakthrough. Then let the warriors climb the rope and slide down.

When the vanguard camp successfully left the city, Wang Mingzhang led people up the city wall, and just climbed the rope down, the devils on both sides of the south city wall noticed it and began to fire with machine guns to block the breakthrough.

As soon as Wang Mingzhang saw that the devils began to blockade, he shouted under the city wall: "Suppress with firepower, cover the brothers to climb quickly!" ”

Before he finished shouting a word, the devil's machine gun came over and hit him directly. Wang Mingzhang glanced at the direction of the devil's machine gun, scolded "turtle son", and fell down with a bang.

Zhao Weibin, chief of staff, and Zou Shaomeng, deputy chief of staff of the 124th Division, saw that Wang Mingzhang had been shot, and hurriedly ran forward to check the injuries.

Seeing that the division commander and chief of staff were martyred, the guards of the 122nd Division who were still on the city wall were all red-eyed, shouted and rushed towards the devil and killed the enemy. It's a pity that the devil's firepower is too strong, and all this platoon died heroically.

Finding that the defenders had broken through, Seya Qi jumped like thunder and strictly ordered the troops to pursue and intercept him. The devil was under the southern city wall, fighting fiercely with the covering troops led by Zhang Xuanwu.

Seeing that the troops were about to protrude, Zhang Xuanwu ordered the covering troops to climb the city wall in batches and quickly conquer the city, and at this time the news of Wang Mingzhang's martyrdom came. Zhang Xuanwu didn't quite believe it yet, but when he saw that the soldiers of Wang Mingzhang's guard platoon pounced on the devil like crazy, he knew that it was true.

Zhang Xuanwu picked up the machine gun, stood up and swept at the devil who caught up, shouting while shooting: "Little devil, I say you are the ancestor of the eighth generation!" ”

After a shuttle, as soon as he put on a new magazine, Zhang Xuanwu felt that he had been pushed violently and fell directly to the ground. In the haze, Zhang Xuanwu felt several brothers carry him on his back, climb the ladder up the city wall, and then fell unconscious.

In the end, it was the more than 300 lightly and seriously injured people who really stopped the pace of the devil's pursuit.

Seeing that the troops' breakthrough was blocked, the lightly wounded immediately went into battle with guns, firing behind the buttocks of the devil's pursuers, shouting and scolding while firing to attract the attention of the devils. When the devils turned to eliminate this group of wounded, the rumbling explosion of cluster grenades came to mind, often a wounded person blew down a group of devils, that kind of tragic scene completely frightened the devils, no longer dared to pursue, and watched the soldiers who broke through the siege hide into the night with the corpse of the commander on their backs.

After the breakthrough troops and the troops outside the city converged, Sun Zhen, commander-in-chief of the 22nd Group Army, inspected the more than 500 warriors who broke through and saluted each soldier one by one. Finally, Sun Zhen checked the remains of Wang Mingzhang, Zhao Weibin, and Zou Shaomeng, solemnly saluted, and moved with the troops.

At 2 o'clock in the evening, after the troops were moved to safety, Sun Zhen tearfully sent a report to Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren, and Deng Xihou, reporting the story of the defense of Tengxian County and the martyrdom of Wang Mingzhang, commander of the 122nd Division of the National Revolutionary Army and lieutenant general of the army.

(To be continued)