In the spring of March, the wildflowers in the mountains and forests of eastern Yunnan have bloomed, and the purple and red under the green mountains and white clouds are beautiful, but Major General Jiang Zhiqing, the commander of the first brigade of the Second Army of the Protector Army, regards it as nothing, and Yang Zhizhi's revival army is attacking rapidly, if his army is defeated again, then Qujing will not be able to hold it, and Qujing will not be able to hold it, then it will be Ma Long, if Ma Long can't hold it, then ......

The brigade commander frowned and pondered, and the local man Liu Yucun was introducing him to the Battle of Baishijiang six hundred years ago.

In the fourteenth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang personally deployed, mobilized an army of 300,000 people, with Fu Youde as the general, Lan Yu and Mu Ying as the deputy generals, and led the troops to Yunnan. When he left the school, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted Fu Youde to teach him face-to-face, and said: 'Qujing, the throat of Yunnan, that is, Qujing, the army will go straight to Yunnan, and it will be broken!' ’。 In December of that year, the Ming army captured Puding and Pu'an, and advanced to Qujing, and the general of the Yuan army, Darima, led more than 100,000 troops to garrison in Qujing.

At that time, the Yuan army deployed along the south bank of the Baishi River, built a camp of ephedra and rushed to the Meijiayuan area; The Ming army was stationed on the north bank of the Baishi River in the area from Fengdeng to Dapo Temple. On the day of the decisive battle, the Ming army feinted to cross the Baishi River from the garrison, inducing Darima to transfer elite troops to defend, and the general Fu Youde personally led the main force to smuggle across the river from the upper reaches and go around to the rear of the Yuan army, forming an encirclement of the Yuan army. During the general attack, Mu Ying's longitudinal iron cavalry smashed the base camp of Darima, and the Yuan army responded to the battle in a panic, resulting in the annihilation of the whole army. It was a battle, tens of thousands of people were captured by the Yuan army, and the general Darima was captured alive......"

I thought that the literati could say some strategies in their mouths, but what I didn't want to say was that the Yuan army was completely annihilated, and then I thought of the current strategic situation of the Protector Army and the Revival Army, and the deputy brigade commander Wu Zhongxin's eyes were cold, like whipping Liu Yucun with a horsewhip. However, he was stopped by Jiang Zhiqing as soon as he whipped the whip. "Liqing, why bother with a sour Confucian. The battle between the two armies of the Ming and Yuan dynasties. This is a historical fact, if he doesn't say so, can he still say that the Yuan army won a big victory and the Ming army was defeated? My original intention was to get in on the gains. The Baishi River was used as a barrier to establish a defense line here, but judging from the battle of the Ming and Yuan Dynasty, it may not be able to hold it here. ”

Jiang Zhiqing didn't read much, and it seems that Xiucai went to the military academy without being admitted, so he has more respect for learned people. Wu Zhongxin knew that this younger brother was like this, so he had to glare at Liu Yucun sideways before saying to him: "Then where the hell is guarding?" Is it just in Qujing City? If this is the case, then the few mountains in the city are the most important land, and this mountain is lost. The Baath Army's cannons and machine guns can sweep through the city. ”

"Hey! What is the use of guarding the mountain? "Jiang Zhiqing understands the fierceness of the artillery fire of the Fuxing Army very well, and knows that they actually carried more than 200 centimeters of siege field artillery with them on this march, and he really doesn't know how these heavy artillery were transported here." Let's defend here and defend against the enemy with the White Rock River. If you retreat to the city, as soon as the heavy artillery comes, many people will die. ”

Jiang Zhiqing decided to set up a second line of defense in the Baishi River, and he carefully looked at the north of the Baishi River through a telescope, and when he saw a large tomb due north, blocking the shooting boundary, he had the intention to bulldoze it. I was just worried that this big tomb belonged to the local clan, so I had to ask the cold and arrogant Liu Yucun beside me, "Mr. Liu, whose feng shui is that?" ”

"Where?" Liu Yucun is 50 years old. In 1893, he served as the commander of Annan County, Guizhou, and was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War because of his anger at the corruption of the government. After the expiration of his term, he will work as a farmer. At the beginning of the new dynasty, there was a new atmosphere, and I didn't want a rebellion in Yunnan. Openly said to protect the law, secretly betrayed the country, and took the rubles of the Russians. Although the old gentleman is a widow of the Qing Dynasty, he is Chinese, so he is very contemptuous of these Jiang Zhiqing and others at the moment.

Not too happy, Liu Yucun followed the direction pointed by Jiang Zhiqing, although he didn't have a telescope, but when he saw that it was the direction of Ephedra Village, he said proudly: "This is the tomb of the former Ming Dynasty Vice Capital Yushi Tang Shiyingtang Gong." ”

Of course, Jiang Zhiqing, who is Tang Shiying, is semi-literate, and Liu Yucun once again disdainfully said: "Tang Gong is the ancestor of Tang Geng that you killed in Kunming City, and he has now been buried by the villagers near his ancestor. The rise and fall of dynasties, the reincarnation of the world, only the public heart will always flow in the world, the general is dignified, as a Han Chinese, what is the lackey of the Russians? ”

"Presumptuous!" Liu Yucun's sarcasm was not only harsh for Wu Zhongxin to hear, but even Jiang Zhiqing couldn't listen to it anymore. After he drank it, he said to the adjutant, "Take Mr. Liu down." After he left, Jiang Zhiqing smiled bitterly: "Niang Xipi! The whole country is denouncing our ruble party, but don't they know that the Revival Society also took rubles back then, so why did the Revival get rubles, but we, the Chinese Revolutionary Party, could not get them? Without taking rubles, how can China be democratic, how can it be republican? ”

"Brother Xian, you shouldn't be too polite to these fools!" Wu Zhongxin grabbed the horsewhip and waved it vigorously a few times to vent his dissatisfaction. "Mr. is still right, the feudal legacy of our people is too deep, and they must be forced to accept a democratic republic. These fools should be killed! ”

Wu Zhongxin's killing word made Jiang Zhiqing think of the night of the Lantern Festival, when Tang Jiyao hurried to the French hospital to visit Cai Yi, not wanting to be intercepted and killed by the Guangdong army that had already been ambushed, at that time his guard of more than 100 people, so he was strangled by the Makqin machine guns at both ends of the street, for a time the entire Luofeng Street was full of blood, only a few people escaped, but the escape was only temporary, the entire Kunming city was blocked by the Guangdong army, and the seriously injured Tang Jiyao was only barely carried by his guards to the Dadongmen and was found by the patrol again, a bloody battle, Among the guards, only Long Yun, who could play Baguazhang, escaped, and the others all corrected the Fa on the spot.

Jiang Zhiqing thought about that bloody night, and suddenly felt a chill under the sun, and at this time, in the revival army more than ten miles east of Zhanyi, the Long Yun he was thinking about was sitting in front of Tang Jiyu. After escaping from Kunming, relying on being a local, he traveled day and night for more than 20 days, and finally found the organization. After staying in the political department for three days, the first person he saw when he came out was Tang Jiyu, who was Tang Jiyao's younger brother.

"You don't have to say what." In the green military tent of the Fuxing Army, Tang Jiyu's voice was indifferent, and what was suppressed under this indifference was anger and grief. He has long known what happened in the city of Kunming, in Tang Jiyu's opinion, the first sinner in the death of the eldest brother was Cai Yi, it was his ambition not to die, and he led the wolf into the house to cause the eldest brother to suffer this catastrophe; Then there are the traitors such as Sun Wen and Chen Qimei, in order to occupy Yunnan, they poisoned Cai Yi and blamed others.

Long Yun, as the chief of the guard, should have protected Tang Jiyao thoroughly, but now that Tang Jiyao is dead, he is alone. In terms of benevolence and righteousness, he was condemned, but he fled after Tang Jiyao died in anger. Therefore, the Ministry of Politics did not criticize its actions. It's just that he was ashamed in the face of Tang Jiyu, and he didn't want to speak by himself at this time. It was to say in a deep voice: "Yun Zhi lives alone to avenge the commander." This time the troops are beneficial, Yun Yuan is the vanguard and kills all the Cantonese bandits! ”

Seeing that Long Yun obviously misunderstood what he meant, Tang Jiyu said: "The hatred of the eldest brother, the hatred of the Yunnan army, and the hatred of the people of Yunnan are not only your hatred, but also my hatred, but also everyone's hatred. The Cantonese bandits are vicious, and you can escape from Kunming after the death of your eldest brother. It should be nine deaths and one life, I don't blame you at all, you go down and have a good rest first. ”

"When will we be able to attack?" Long Yun breathed a sigh of relief, but his fighting spirit became more and more high, and he couldn't wait to kill in Zhanyi City now.

"In two or three days." Tang Jiyu was only a battalion commander, and only the regiment commander in the army held a meeting at the division headquarters.

Garrisoned at the mouth of the Pinghe River in the northeast of Zhanyi City was Li Liejun's division of the First Army of the French Protector Army, with a total of more than 8,000 troops, in addition to most of the elite of the Guangdong army, there were also many soldiers of the Yunnan Army who were determined to devote themselves to the democratic republic. The west of this Pinghe estuary is more than 30 miles away from the county seat of Zhanyi. It is sixteen miles to Baishui Town, which is a post road out of the mountain. To the north is the 2,265.4-meter-high mountain ridge, and to the south is the 2,100-meter-high Changchong Mountains, which are located in the north and south of the post road. They turned into horns for each other and stopped the entire post road.

Attack the peaks on both sides of the post road and the enemy is high and low, and the mountains are steep, because of the anticline fortifications. The role of artillery is very limited, and it is really a hard attack. It doesn't matter if it can be captured, even if it can be captured. It was also a heavy casualty; However, if you want to march from the direction of the ridge according to the custom of mountain warfare, you can enter the mountain and not connect with the Longclaw Mountain in the east, and the troops must first go down the mountain and then go up the mountain when they arrive here, and the result is still from the foot of the mountain, and the Changchong on the south side of the post road is a lonely hill, let alone connected with any mountain peaks.

It seems that it can only be a detour, but it is in the southwest of the mouth of the Pinghe River, and it can only be farther and farther to the north, and to the south, the mountains are stacked and stretched, even if there are planes to probe, the staff officers of the front finger also think that in addition to the small troops can pass, it is indeed difficult for the large troops to pass, and it is very easy to get lost in the implementation of a big detour in an unfamiliar mountainous area, and once it is lost, the lack of supplies will be in vain.

In addition, the most important thing is that the rainy season is coming soon, once the rainstorm pours, not to mention the attack, the army's self-protection is a big problem, in addition, there is a wind disaster in Qujing, a broken place, and the record of pulling out trees in the wind is common in the state chronicles. Who knows what the climate will be like this year, but it is only right to seize the time to capture Qujing and then threaten Kunming. If the Protectors fled in a hurry, it would have been fine, but if they resisted, the ensuing battle would have to drag on until after the rainy season, when the situation would no longer be so rosy.

In the headquarters of the 15th Division, staring at the huge sand table in the military tent, the division commander Xu Ma'er became more and more annoyed the more he looked at it, and he didn't know how to fight. The 15th Division is an old unit in Yanzhou, whether it is a soldier or an officer, all of them are treasures, and in the name of the 15th Army, it is really a heavy casualty, which is not only face-saving, but also emotionally unacceptable. Moreover, if the first blow is not successful and time drags on, then the future losses will be even greater, and that is the real gain outweighs the loss.

"Hey! Hey, hey! Hey, hey!! Sparrow Sparrow ......" The call signs of the communications squad next door came and went one after another -- in the mountainous area of Yanzhou, the inherent attenuation of radio is about 40 percent, but here, a bad attenuation is 100 percent, because the communication between the troops is extremely poor. At present, although the former finger is on Longclaw Mountain, which is more than 2,200 meters above sea level, the signal attenuation is still 60 percent.

"Mom, so many things were sold to Omaozi, and Omaozi was given to Sun Wen to rebel against the party, this is simply asking us to beat ourselves! Division Commander, do you want us to have a lurk operation? Looking at Xu Shunda's worried face, the commander of the first brigade, Ni Jinlianjian, said that the lurking operation he said refers to the troops sneaking hundreds of meters in front of the enemy position in the middle of the night and suddenly launching an attack at dusk the next day. Such an attack is the most sudden, and the soldiers are right under the nose of the enemy, and the impact distance is extremely short, which can greatly reduce casualties.

"Is there a good place?" Xu Shunda is also a veteran of lurk warfare, and this tactic was summed up when he was the commander of the 30th Brigade. He also thought about launching an undercover operation against the high ground of the mountain, but the problem was that the mountain was too steep to find a suitable place to stay, and if it was exposed, the hidden soldiers would die in vain.

"How's it going here?" Ni Jinlian pointed to a place on the sand table and said. "And here. And here, and here....... As the saying goes, there are many groups of paths. We can take the squad as a unit, and the small amount adds up. As long as we rush into the enemy line at dusk the next day and shake it, I think that as long as we are in front of us, the will to fight will not be too strong. ”

"Whose men are you sending?" There is no place to lurk large troops, so there are only small units lurking. Xu Shunda thought of this, and then thought of the renaissance army mines used by the Protector Army, he scolded a few words in his heart and then said: "And be sure to let them be careful of the mines, don't expose them." ”

"This ......" Ni Jinlian's mind turned, he originally wanted to promote Lu Arong's group. But Lu Arong is from the 30th Brigade, and he and the division commander are both from the 30th Brigade, so he had to change his words: "Let's let the regiment that should be guarded and attacked, that guy likes to fight at night the most, and everyone has nothing to say if he goes." ”

"Call him over right now!" Ying Wei's attack is from Shengzhou, Xu Shunda is from Jinhua, and these two places plus Liaodong, then the backbone officers of the Fuxing Army are all there. Xu Shunda is very satisfied with the defense attack, this is a master with brains and daring to work hard.

The 29th Brigade was stationed south of Longclaw Mountain. As soon as the phone call passed, Ying Weizheng came, they were all acquaintances, and Xu Shunda was not polite. When they met, they said, "How about letting your people go into the mountains to fight an undercover battle?" ”

"Report to the division commander, promise to complete the task!" The command was in such a hurry to find itself. Ying Weizheng had already been mentally prepared, and he heard the task at this time. Immediately jumped up like a spring.

"Sit down!" Xu Shunda was happy in his heart, but his expression was stern. "The staff officers have already calculated. The slope of this hill is between 30 and 60 degrees, which means that the impact distance must be about 80 meters in front of the enemy's front, otherwise you will not be able to rush into it within two minutes after the shelling......"

Artillery preparation - opening up access - breaking through the front line - fighting in depth - countering the counterattack. This is the five-part offensive of the Baath Army's infantry. It is not difficult to prepare for artillery fire, and it is okay to open up passages, but it is the most important thing to break through the enemy's front line and win the battle. Generally speaking, the defenders are in a state of stupor for about two minutes after being hit by the enemy's artillery, while on flat and hilly grounds, the speed of the impact is generally one hundred and fifty meters per minute, so that within a minute and a half, the attacking infantry can reach the enemy's front line and then take advantage of the enemy's daze to break through.

However, the speed of impact in mountainous and jungle areas is only one-third or slower than that of flat land, and it is simply impossible to reach the front of the enemy from the position of conventional attack within two minutes, which gives the defending enemy time to resurrect firepower, so that the attacking side will engage the enemy as soon as it reaches the front line, or will be blocked by enemy fire before reaching the enemy's front line, and the impact is likely to be defeated. Therefore, like the artillery shooting table, the infantry also has impact parameters, according to the slope, soil quality, vegetation and other factors to obtain the optimal impact distance under various terrain.

It's just that the impact parameters are well calculated, and the shorter the impact distance, the closer the infantry will be to the barrage of your artillery. Generally speaking, placing the starting position of the assault 200 meters away from the enemy is to prevent accidental damage to one's own artillery, and the shortest impact distance is 150 meters, which is the current limit of interfiring 75 howitzers, and it is simply impossible to shorten the barrage security boundary to 80 meters.

"Division commander, this has to be done by Jiong Wu himself." Ying Wei is not afraid of death, but it would be a pity to die in his own shells.

"Okay! After a while, I will talk to him personally. Xu Shunda also knew that eighty meters was too dangerous, so he nodded and replied immediately.

Wang Jiongwu, who participated in the Sino-Japanese War, is now a lieutenant colonel, and he was transferred from the 142nd Division to the deputy of the artillery regiment of the 15th Division of the old army. He was stunned when he received the order, this eighty-meter safety realm is that even the gods can't do it, the real way is to shoot directly, but this is not the Zhili Plain, the mountains are undulating, the artillery can only shoot at the intermittent sight, as for accidental injury, then you can only ask God for blessing.

At 7 o'clock in the evening, the artillery commanders and gunners of the artillery regiment stood quietly on their gun positions to wait for the order of the forward command post.

At 7:30, not long after the red Port of the Sun fell, the order from the Forward Observatory came. So, after repeating the various commands, the cannon with its head raised to the west finally roared, and the cannonball seemed to ignite the sky on the west side, and the fire was on the hill.

Li Liejun, the commander-in-chief of the First Army, who was forced by the heavy artillery fire of the Revival Army, had already arranged his position into two roads at this time, the first was a trench on the ridge, and the second was an anticline fortification of 34 meters under the ridge of the mountain. Hearing the sound of the artillery of the revival army, he remembered again, and when he entered the army command post five miles away from the mountain, Fang Shengtao couldn't help but glance east, but he was used to the irregular artillery fire of the revival army in the past few days.

"Didn't you say that the price of shells has increased more than ten times, how can their shells fight as if they don't need money?" Fang Shengtao, who heard the sound of cannons, couldn't help but sigh.

"Where will Yang Jingcheng be short of money?" Li Liejun said helplessly. He knew that compared with the Renaissance Army, the Protector Army was just a flower child, even if the artillery was dragged here with great difficulty, because of the limited number of shells, he was reluctant to give the order to open fire. "The explosives from the Fuxing Army's military factory have blown up Yunnan and there are still left. As long as we can hold on to this battle, as long as we can hold on for a month, when the rainy season comes, their attack will be blocked, and the rear troops will be trained and sent up, and we will have a glimmer of life. ”

"Vitality ......" Fang Shengtao read these two words, although he didn't say anything, but the meaning was self-explanatory. Our troops have a lot of new recruits, and the recruits are the most ammunition-hungry, and those soldiers may not be able to hurt a revival army when they run out of bullets. ”

"Arms have been ordered in the United States." Li Liejun said lightly. This is Sun Wen personally told him when he came to the front to replace Hu Yisheng, saying that the ammunition had been ordered by the United States and would be shipped to the Far East. However, he didn't believe this kind of thing himself, not to mention that the last time the ammunition was destroyed by the revival army halfway, if there was really one out of ten people who arrived in Kunming, that is, if the revival army did not destroy it, then it would take a month to transport it from the United States to Annan, and then from Annan to Kunming and finally transfer it to Qujing. In this month's time, anything can happen on the front line, and with the fierceness of the Baath Army's offensive, he estimated in his heart that he would not be able to withstand that time.

Thinking of this chaotic situation, Li Liejun was very helpless, he didn't know how the revolutionary situation would become like this? Is this because Chen Qimei handled it ineffectively, or did Yang Jingcheng infiltrate Yunnan too much? Since Yang Jingcheng infiltrated Yunnan so strongly, why didn't he launch an attack when his own people entered Yunnan? Could it really be that, as they had guessed, Mr. Sun was sent to Yunnan in order to find an excuse to expel the Russians? If this qiē has been calculated by Yang Jingcheng, what will happen to his people?

Thinking about the ending of his own people, Li Liejun didn't hear what Fang Shengtao said later, so that when Fang Shengtao shouted in his ear, 'It's not good', he came back to his senses and looked at him and said, "What the hell is going on?!" ”

"Xiong Kewu can't hold it!" Fang Shengtao's face turned pale, and he seemed to be frightened by the emergency report on the phone. The words also followed Xiong Kewu's words: "The revival army suddenly rushed into our formation, our army was caught off guard, and the defenders were defeated!" ”

"He ......" Li Liejun's face also began to turn pale and black, he began with a sentence but didn't know how to end, and only said after a while: "Order him, even if you die, you have to keep it!" ”

It was useless to give orders, Xiong Kewu was already dead at this time - the camp he lived in was too conspicuous, and the horse lantern was lit so it was targeted by the mortar group of the Revival Army just over the ridge, and he died tragically in the headquarters after two shells. The positions of the first echelon regiment of the First Army were panicked by the revival army that appeared out of thin air, and now that the regiment commander has died again, the situation is even more chaotic. And then the second echelon regiment composed of the Dian army, seeing the enemy break through the defense line, the soldiers of the first echelon regiment rushed to retreat, they had no fighting spirit and suddenly panicked, at the beginning of the regiment commander Zhao Youxin could still hold the position, but the first echelon of the regiment was rushed by the rout, he himself had no intention of fighting, and retreated sharply with the guards.

I thought that the iron wall into the mountain heights, just such a charge to win, the commander of the main attack regiment should be angry and funny, he laughed at himself why he was so stupid, for fear that the other party would resist stubbornly, so well prepared, I don't want to really fight, the fighting spirit of the Protector Army is much weaker than the previous two battles.

I didn't have time to think about why the enemy was suddenly so unbeaten, so Ying Weizheng said to the adjutant: "Immediately report to the forward command, our unit has taken the high ground into the mountain, and the two regiments arranged here in front and rear of the enemy have retreated in panic, and our unit is planning to launch a pursuit." (To be continued......)