readx; Dongguan Town, more than ten kilometers southeast of Chaohu Lake, is full of many soldiers of the National Army wearing brown and green military uniforms. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoThis place is called Dongguan Town, from the name you can see that this is an important place, it can be regarded as the southeast gateway of Chaohu Lake, and it is also the first town in the hilly area near Chaohu Lake after leaving the plain along the Yangtze River. Its military value is basically comparable to Yuxikou, the junction of the Yuxi River and the Yangtze River, and Yuxikou is located on the bank of the Yangtze River. After the Nationalist Army crossed the river in a big way, the troops of these Duli brigades retreated to the direction of Chaohu Lake.

According to the predictions of many staff officers in the headquarters of the Second Army, if the Beiyang Army holds on to Yuxikou, it will inevitably bring about its own destruction, and it is reasonable not to defend it, and since it does not defend Yuxikou, then the Beiyang Army may retreat to the area of Dongguan Town, and use these hilly terrain to deploy the direction as the first position to block the northward advance of the Nationalist Army.

In fact, among the orders sent by the headquarters of the Second Army to the Ninth Division, it was also to go north as soon as possible, capture Dongguan Town, and obtain a bridgehead for the army to continue advancing along the Yuxi River towards Chaohu, and Zhuang Xianhe also expected that there might be a tough battle here, so he was extremely cautious to dispatch the main force to arrive before he planned to capture Dongguan Town, and did not give a similar order to the 92nd Infantry Regiment, the vanguard of the whole army, to conquer Dongguan Town.

However, the development of things was unexpected by Zhuang Xianhe, the 92nd Regiment on the front line had not even sent the main force, but only used a battalion to take most of the positions on the front line in Dongguan Town, and Cheng Zixian, the commander of the first battalion who served as the forward battalion, reported that more than 1,000 people of the Duli Brigade of the Beiyang Army who defended in Dongguan Town last night had disappeared, leaving less than hundreds of old and weak soldiers of the Third Division of the Anhui Provincial Army. It took less than three hours for the 1st Battalion to completely defeat the 3rd Division of the Anhui Provincial Army and then take control of Dongguan Town.

Although the result was different from what Zhuang Xianhe and even many staff officers in the headquarters of the Second Army expected, the Beiyang Army did not hold on to Dongguan Town, but gave up Dongguan Town, and chose to shrink and retreat before the battle, which made the National Army puzzled, and did not affect the normal pace of the Ninth Division, after all, the Ninth Division was originally going to take Dongguan Town, and it is always a good thing to take it now, but Zhuang Xianhe was also extremely cautious to report to the Second Army Headquarters and reported in detail about Dongguan Town. And emphatically explained that the capture of Dongguan Town was not because of its fierce combat strength, but because of the initiative of the Beiyang Army to retreat.

There must be a reason behind the Beiyang Army's temporary abandonment of such an important place, although Cheng Zixian on the front line and even Zhuang Xianhe in the rear don't know why the Beiyang Army did this, but what they know is that there must be a reason behind this, but they don't know what the reason is.

After capturing Dongguan Town, the first battalion as the vanguard did not stay, and left Dongguan Town in the afternoon of the same day, and then continued to march to the northwest, and the target was Lintou Town, in fact, the first battalion of the forward had just left, and the remaining main force of the 92nd Infantry Regiment in the rear also continued to advance north. If you look at the map, you can see that the direction of the 9th Division's advance is very simple, that is, to march along the Yuxi River.

This is not without reason, and the reason is simple: the problem of logistics and transportation. Although the Yuxi River is not large, it is enough to undertake the transportation of some military supplies, and it is much more convenient to transport by river than by foot by the army.

Because the Yuxi River is connected to the Yangtze River, then the logistics department of the National Army can make full use of this small river to transport supplies for the front-line army, although due to the problem of transportation can not fully meet the needs of the front-line army, but it can also solve a considerable part, based on the existence of the National Army Navy, as long as the National Army can control the banks of the Yuxi River, then it can enter Chaohu Lake (lake) through the Yuxi River, and then reach Hefei on the north shore of Chaohu Lake, Through small transport ships, a steady stream of supplies were provided for the army in the direction of Hefei.

In this era, the army's operations were extremely dependent on the requirements of logistics and transportation lines, and without a stable and effective logistics and transportation line, it was difficult to support the front-line armies in large-scale battles. When attacking southern Anhui and Jiangxi, in order to provide sufficient logistical supplies for tens of thousands of troops on the front line, the logistics department recruited 60,000 or 70,000 people to provide logistics supplies for the front line army by carrying wheelbarrows and other ways to cross mountains and mountains, but the logistics department suffered enough, and the cost was huge.

After Chen Jingyun announced his Northern Expedition in July, the Nationalist Army attacked Hunan from several directions in northern Guangdong and Jiangxi, relying on most of the supplies on foot on the road, making the logistics department miserable. Therefore, when formulating the battle plan for crossing the river in southern Anhui, Sun Guangliang told those army generals who did not know how to save bullets and shells in peacetime, and would only ask the logistics department for them if they ran out of shells and bullets: If a large-scale river-crossing operation is launched in southern Anhui, and the troops crossing the river exceed six divisions and the distance exceeds 300 kilometers along the Yangtze River, the logistics department will not be able to guarantee the material supply of the front-line troops, even if several arsenals in the rear have a steady stream of ammunition production. The logistics department also did not have enough capacity to transport them to the front line.

In addition to the large quantities of taxed grain harvested in the control areas, the Nationalist Army also imported a large amount of grain from Southeast Asia, which was allocated to the troops by the Logistics Department in accordance with the principle of proximity. In military uniforms, military shoes, and even bullets, shells, guns, ordnance, and other military materials that need to be produced by industry, these factories that produce military materials are generally coastal cities, such as Fuzhou, Zhejiang, and even Shanghai, and when they are transferred abroad, they are mainly transported by sea, and are transported to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing and other places for hoarding. Subsequently, materials were distributed to various units through various means of transportation from these deployment centers, and the transportation of logistical materials needed by the troops in southern Anhui, even Jiangxi, and Hunan was mainly carried out by the Yangtze River, and one or two gunboats often escorted a large number of transport ships to Wuhu, Anqing, and even the Jiujiang region. For example, the transportation of materials in the direction of Jiangxi and Hunan is that the fleet departs from Shanghai or Nanjing, and then arrives in Jiujiang under the escort of naval gunboats, and after going to Jiujiang, it is transported to Nanchang by rail, and the smaller transport ships will also directly enter Panyang Lake and arrive in Nanchang, and then transport them from Nanchang to the troops on the front line.

In fact, most of the tasks of the many naval warships stationed in the Yangtze River are to escort the logistics department's transportation of supplies, except for occasional fire support for the army.

To a certain extent, the current logistics and transportation system of the Nationalist Army is based on sea and river transportation, while the logistics and transportation of the Beiyang Army is based on railways.

Based on the heavy reliance on sea and river transportation for logistical transportation, the Nationalist Army not only manufactures and orders a large number of transport vessels by itself, but also actively entrusts transportation business to civilian vessels, and this civilian vessel is naturally the Pacific Shipping Company to which Huaxia Bank belongs. Basically, the maritime transportation of the Nationalist Army's logistical transportation, especially the section from Fuzhou to Shanghai to Guangzhou, was all undertaken by the Pacific Shipping Company. To this end, Pacific Shipping Company has purchased a large number of ready-made transport ships from the outside world, and has placed many orders for transport ships from two domestic shipyards, Mawei Shipyard and Jiangnan Shipyard.

Unlike other shipping lines in China, Pacific Shipping Company only has a small part of its passenger business, and only opens a few domestic routes, such as Shanghai to Fuzhou to Guangzhou. The main business of Pacific Shipping is the transportation of goods, not only the transportation of military materials, but also the transportation of some civilian materials, such as many enterprises under Huaxia Bank, many of the cargo transportation business is basically taken over by the Pacific Shipping Company.

It can be said that the current plague of the Pacific Shipping Company is not the lack of business, but the lack of capacity, even if it has spent a lot of money to acquire many transport ships, and two domestic shipyards have placed orders for more than ten ships, it is still unable to meet the huge capacity gap of the Pacific Shipping Company, and has to outsource part of the private cargo transportation business to several other shipping companies.

Although the majority of the shipping is supported by the Pacific Shipping Company, the Pacific Shipping Company cannot meet the needs of inland waterway transportation due to the lack of many small ships, so it can only rely on the logistics department to solve the problem by itself, relying on the collection of some small private vessels, and at the same time ordering a batch of 100 tons or hundreds of tons of transport ships, which can generally meet the logistics transportation of the Yangtze River Basin.

Due to the opinions of the logistics department of the Nationalist Army, when the General Headquarters drew up the battle plan for crossing the river, it took the Yuxi River and Chaohu Lake (lake) into consideration. Even the navy has converted a number of small boats of tens of tons, equipped with heavy machine guns, which are used to enter and exit the Yuxi River and Chaohu Lake.

It can be seen from this that the important xing of the Yuxi River, and if we understand the importance of the Yuxi River, we will know why the Ninth Division should attack Chaohu along the Yuxi River, and why we should know that the first combat goal is to take Chaohu.

However, what Zhuang Xianhe couldn't understand was that he knew the importance of Yuxi River, so no one in the Beiyang Army knew about it?

This is definitely impossible, so how to explain the Beiyang Army's abandonment of Dongguan Town?