Chapter 70: Pursuing while Victory
The embarrassed Sato Guards fled back with more than 100 scarred soldiers, and what happened along the way was unforgettable for his life, those who walked through the mountains were not human, and every time a gun rang out, one of his men would fall, and only more than 100 of the 400 people who broke through the siege escaped, and more than 200 people died on the way to escape.
"Retreat, go back to Madian to rest, I will take responsibility to the division commander" Looking at Sato Bei with an embarrassed face, Takeda Dingzo closed his eyes a little lonely, he had already lost this battle. From the very beginning of crossing Madian, he was doomed, but he understood it too late. Takeda Dingzo didn't want to admit defeat, but when he met Sato Guard, he finally changed his mind and retreated, and the 225th Wing in charge of the 37th Division would be removed.
"If you want to go, it's not so easy" Zhao Zhi, who followed Sato Bingwei all the way over, would not let them go like this, and through the walkie-talkies carried by each team, Zhao Zhi issued the order. The armored squad that retreated from the county town reopened the county town and became the main pursuing force, and Chekov would lead the armored squad to be the straw that broke the 225th Wing. The mercenaries who followed Sato back also walked along the retreat route of the 225th Wing according to the formation of the squad, and they will send the 225th Wing out of the country with the best fighting style of the mercenary troops.
The rumbling motor sounded, the tank armored car with black smoke at the tail drove out of the county town, and the armored squad, which had rereplenished fuel and spare ammunition, changed the way it fought step by step at the beginning, and this time it was directly pulled into a horizontal line and pressed towards the Japanese defense line. In order to defeat the remaining strength of the 225th Wing, Zhao Zhi made a desperate effort this time to use all the mercenaries who could still fight, and all the mercenaries who stayed in the barracks were transferred to serve as escorts for the armored squad except for the wounded, and only the supplementary company of the Eighth Route Army was left in the county.
"Fire" Chekov gave the order, the tank in the center of the shock formation took the lead in firing, accompanied by the "boom" explosion, the machine gun on the armored car also "clicked" and began to shoot, the strong attack of the armored squad made the Japanese defense line full of holes become even more fragmented. The crumbling Japanese defense line finally began to collapse after losing almost all the machine-gun fire points, relying on the Japanese bolt-action rifles were no match for tank guns and machine gun strafing, and after another wave of daredevils were all killed, the Japanese lost the will to fight again and began to collapse.
"Press up, press up, mow the grass and harvest the wheat" Chekov shouted loudly with the machine gun on the armored car, commanding the armored team to drive into the Japanese defense line, "Da da" The Japanese troops in the rout ran away, screamed, and convulsed in the strafing machine gun fire, and the armored team led by Chekov was simply the Grim Reaper who had just crawled out of hell, and used the machine guns and chariot guns in their hands to harvest the lives of the Japanese army. Of course, the 225th Wing is not all cowardly deserters, and some of the Japanese soldiers want to blow up the tanks, but they are not the opponents of the stragglers of the armored team, they can only be the ghosts of their guns.
"Continue to chase, all the way to the rocky beach, chase across the river" The 225th Wing that escaped was a flock of sheep, and the armored squad commanded by Nachekov was a group of hungry wolves, a group of hungry wolves who carelessly drove the flock. As long as the Japanese army dared to turn around and find trouble with the tank armored car, the mercenaries assigned to the Garand would immediately meet it, and those Japanese soldiers with grenades and explosives bags would be beaten into blood by bullets before they could get close to the tank armored vehicle.
The 225 Wing, which couldn't take care of so much, still returned the same way, but Zhao Zhi's mercenary team that had been reduced to pieces had already been waiting on their way, and they were all waiting to tear off a piece of flesh from the 225 Wing. The gunshots kept ringing from both sides of the mountain road, and the bullets that whizzed like locusts shot out from the shadows, knocking the soldiers of the 225th Wing to the ground one by one, but the officers who led the team had no choice, these nasty people just hid in the shadows to attack them, and they didn't show their bodies at all to fight face to face with them, and several sharp squads sent out to protect the two wings also lost contact. At most, it is enough to cover the area where the attackers are likely to be.
"The machine gun fires, cut them off" Kessler, who hurried to the pass, didn't care about resting, so he ordered the machine gunners to open fire, this ambush position was something that Zhao Zhi had long been optimistic about. After rescuing Sun Jin and them, Kessler rushed here with machine guns according to Zhao Zhi's orders, but he didn't expect the Japanese army to rout so quickly, they just set up a machine gun position, and the vanguard of the Japanese army passed under their noses. Kessler had no choice but to order the interception of the Japanese army, as many as he could, anyway, there were other squads waiting for the Japanese army behind, whether he could take all the 225 wings, it was not his concern.
The terrain occupied by Kessler was the best terrain for ambushes, and the high pass just blocked the retreat route of the Japanese army, and the Japanese army had to pass through this pass if they wanted to return to Madian, and the Japanese army could not have imagined that the Chinese troops who had just fought fiercely outside the county would rush here to set up an ambush in the blink of an eye. The machine guns commanded by Kessler opened fire, Chekov's tanks and armored vehicles were not few, Kessler's light and heavy machine guns exceeded 30, and the 30 light and heavy machine guns opened fire at the same time to seal the entire mountain road below the pass, and the retreating 225th Wing was directly cut in two.
"Go back, attack the pass, and knock out the machine gun position of the people of China" Takeda Dingzo didn't want to turn back, but half of his subordinates were intercepted by the machine guns of the people of China at the pass, which was nearly 1,000 living people, and the hard-hearted Takeda Dingzo couldn't be regarded as an empty thing. The Japanese troops who had already passed through the pass turned around en masse under the command of Takeda Dingzo, and under the leadership of several officers, they divided into several waves and launched an attack on the back of the pass, in the delusion that the Japanese troops on the side of the pass were flanking Kessler and them on the pass.
Takeda Dingzo is good, there are indeed not many people on the pass, but he forgot the tanks and armored vehicles that are in hot pursuit behind him and those elusive attackers, just when Takeda Dingzo commanded the front team of Japanese troops to reflexively attack the pass, the armored team commanded by Chekov also rushed here, just a few rounds of artillery fire and machine gun strafing, the Japanese rear team that was intercepted on the inside of the pass was let go, and the Japanese army that was suppressed by artillery fire and machine guns was fleeing all over the hillside, The mercenaries hiding in the mountains just picked them up one by one until they lost their combat strength and surrendered on their knees.
The Japanese army on the inside of the pass has collapsed, Kessler on the pass naturally does not have to use all his strength to deal with them, leaving a few machine guns to hold the inner defense line, Kessler turned the rest of the machine guns around, and the front team of Japanese troops commanded by Takeda Dingzo is a fierce blow, they have no scruples at all when they occupy the terrain advantage, and the current Japanese army has no effective long-range firepower except for a few light machine guns, and the days when the Japanese army used mortars to control the battlefield are gone, Now dominating the battlefield was the machine-gun group commanded by Kessler.
Kessler, who had suffered a big loss at the hands of the Japanese search team, also learned smartly, at first he only used half of the machine gun to fire, and waited for the Japanese army to use the tactics of crowds to attack upward, he suddenly ordered all the machine guns to fire at the same time, just one salvo killed almost half of the Japanese troops who attacked the mountainside of the pass, forcing the Japanese army to stay in the middle of the mountain and shoot at them, and the machine gun position on the pass was naturally impregnable. Zhao Zhi's order to Kessler was only to ask him to rush to the pass to ambush the Japanese army, so that he could use the strong fire of the machine gun to kill the Japanese army to the greatest extent, so Kessler already felt that he had picked up a bargain when he intercepted half of the Japanese army, and he was not interested in the Japanese army who had already passed the pass.
"Boom" "Boom" shells fell on the ground and exploded craters one after another, the soldiers who were jacked up by shrapnel and gas fell heavily to the ground, and the tanks and armored vehicles painted black all over their bodies had occupied the position of the pass, and were constantly bombarding the Japanese troops inside and outside the pass with their tank guns. The armored squad that firmly occupied the pass was like a watershed, completely dividing the 225th Wing into two halves, and while the Japanese army under the command of Takeda Dingzo was caught in a bitter battle, the Japanese rear team that was blocked on the inside of the pass was not having a good time. Zhao Zhi also chased after the mercenaries who had just gathered, and the supplementary company of the Eighth Route Army stationed in the county seat rushed over, and after receiving the report that Kessler had completed the interception, Zhao Zhi mobilized the trucks in the county town to pull the mercenaries and the supplementary company of the Eighth Route Army to catch up, and Zhao Zhi wanted to annihilate all the Japanese troops intercepted in the inner side of the pass.
After receiving the information from the military commander and the Eighth Route Army about the 225th Wing coming to Zhangwu County, Zhao Zhi took Yu Dazhi and a scout team to travel all over the mountains around Zhangwu County, and had a very detailed understanding of the terrain here. According to the terrain here, Zhao Zhi formulated several sets of plans to meet the 225th Wing, and finally decided to make a decision after ambushing the heavy weapons formation of the 225th Wing at Stone Beach, but fortunately, Zhao Zhi's early foreshadowing was very good, and the route and steps of the 225th Wing were almost the same as he expected.
Since the 225th Wing has been intercepted into two sections, it is not possible to leave the entire 225th Wing, and it is not bad to leave half of it, so Zhao Zhi chased after him with all the troops he could command, preparing to completely annihilate half of the living forces of the 225th Wing here at the pass, which can be regarded as adding a winning chip to the entire battle situation in the Shanxi battlefield.