Yang Jicai looked at the two commanders in front of him, hesitated for a moment, and said: "When we retreat north, all bridges and tunnels, as long as we pass through, will also be blown up." This time, we want to ensure that the North Tongpu Railway will not be able to be used for at least one year. As for what the people think, we don't care about it at all. During the Datong operation of our army, cutting off the strategic supply lines of the Japanese army was more important than anything else. ”

"Before we prepare for the evacuation, I will apply for massive air cover. I would now like to discuss with the two chiefs a plan for the withdrawal of troops. The two chiefs, are they going to evacuate by train with us, or are they using the experience of the counter-sweep to drill through the gaps in the Japanese army and withdraw directly to the Dongshan area? ”

"If you choose to drill through the cracks of the Japanese army, the troops of the Southern Hebei Military Region and the Taihang Military Region on the periphery of the Japanese army can cover everyone's evacuation. I know that the two leaders are cadres from the old Red Army, and in this situation where the enemy is strong and we are weak, there are many ways to get through the cracks of the Japanese army. ”

"But I hope that the two chiefs will be able to evacuate with us with their troops. This 32 nd Division has dealt with our army in Shandong for many years and has rich experience in counter-guerrilla warfare. Don't ambush us with your backhand, we'll have too much fun. ”

"And our army must be quite tired after a long battle, and with the number of casualties, it is difficult to fight another war of attrition with the enemy for a long time. So I still built yì, and the troops of the 4th and 8th divisions were evacuated with us through the railway line. Take advantage of the maneuverability of the railway to break away from the encirclement of the Japanese army as quickly as possible. ”

Regarding Yang Jicai's words, the two old comrades-in-arms glanced at each other, and after a short period of consideration, they finally agreed unanimously. Although the young man in front of him is not very old, he is decisive in killing and has an extremely tough style. Moreover, there is quite a set of analysis and judgment of the enemy's situation.

This retreat was covered by the anti-coalition air force, and it was naturally a good fortune. However, his own troops have no experience in ground-air coordinated operations, and if they are bombed by their own men when they retreat, they will be completely wronged. The airplane is not artillery, and it is not so easy to distinguish between friend and foe in the sky.

Seeing the two commanders nodding, Yang Jicai was not ambiguous. Immediately, the commander of the 8th Division personally called the troops in Hexi, withdrew all the troops in Hexi to the city of Taiyuan, and completely blew up the Fenhe Bridge from the piers. If the Japanese army wants to repair this bridge, don't think about it for a year.

After the troops in the west of the city withdrew to Taiyuan, he placed his troops in the south and north of the city. At the same time, the troops in the city also began to plant explosives at various points in the city. Including the water tower, coal yard, shunting yard, and freight office in several railway stations in Taiyuan, a large number of explosives have been installed.

All wagons and fronts that did not go, whether they were vans, were all pressed with explosives. Even on the roads outside the headquarters of the First Army of the Japanese Army, they planted explosives. However, Yang Jicai hesitated for a long time for public facilities related to people's livelihood, such as the Taiyuan Electric Light Company and the Telegraph Office, and finally gave up his plan to blow them all up.

However, when preparing for the blasting of the railway, all the explosives installed were placed under the roadbed. Yang Jicai's plan is to blow up the roadbed completely. The Tongpu Railway was an important line of communication for the Japanese army in Shanxi to plunder resources and mobilize troops, and if the Japanese army was blown up, it was bound to go all out to repair it.

If it is bombed, the Japanese army will rush to repair it in a few days, then it will not be interesting. For Yang Jicai, either don't do it, or do it thoroughly. At the very least, it is necessary to make this railway unable to resume traffic within a year, so as to reduce the pressure of the Japanese army on the battlefield in northern Jin.

While preparing for evacuation and completely destroying Taiyuan. Yang Jicai assigned Du Kaishan to his reconnaissance troops, and all of them were released to the north at the first time. The change of enemy situation in the north is very important for the evacuation work, and Yang Jicai does not dare to take it lightly.

Seeing that the anti-union engineer company was preparing for the blasting, choosing the location, amount, and method of installing the explosives, the two commanders shook their heads. Where are these ordinary sappers, they are simply specialized in sabotage. If this is blown up, the Japanese army wants to repair it, unless it is completely torn down and restarted. Otherwise, it is almost impossible to restore it in situ.

Especially the one who was in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, he had eaten the lack of blasting skills. The occupied Japanese mines and key positions on the railroad could not be completely blown up. Even if a section of the railway was barely blown up at a considerable price, because it was not completely blown up, the commander of the Jin-Cha-Ji Fourth Division, which the Japanese army often repaired within three days, shook his head and said nothing.

Of course, this has something to do with the general lack of high-explosive explosives in the Kannai troops and the formulation of their own tactics. However, the lack of excellent blasting technology is not a good reason. Blasting is a science, and there are strict standards for the selection of explosion points and the calculation of equivalents. This is not something that can be solved by increasing the charge indefinitely.

People who know how to use explosives may not be able to understand the technique of blasting. The selection of explosives, as well as the calculation of the equivalent and the selection of the explosion point, are particularly critical. Otherwise, even if a large amount of explosives is installed, it may not be able to completely destroy the target to be blasted. On the contrary, it exceeds the standard of the charge, and it is easy to injure one's own people by mistake.

When the troops in the Sekinai attacked or destroyed the Japanese strongholds, they were often unable to completely destroy these Japanese fortifications. The lack of high-explosive charges, which led to the resort to arson, which could not cause fundamental damage to reinforced concrete fortifications, was a partly reason. However, the lack of blasting professional and technical personnel is also another reason.

This was well known to the two commanders who had always fought on the front line with the Japanese army. It was precisely the technology of seeing the anti-union sappers to install explosives that made the two people sigh. If the troops in the Guannai also had such blasting technology during the Battle of the Hundred Regiments that year, coupled with enough high-explosive charges, I am afraid that the results of this battle would have been much greater.

At least the Zhengtai and Tongpu railways, which are the focus of the destruction, will not be repaired by the Japanese army so quickly. An important stronghold on the Zhengtai Line, the destruction effect of Jingcheng Station will also be much greater. I dare not say that there is absolutely no problem in making the Zhengtai line unable to open to traffic within half a year.

It's just that there is not much time left for the two commanders to sigh. After working out a rough retreat plan, the three of them divided the labor. Yang Jicai was in charge of the Japanese troops in Taiyuan City, as well as the command of all artillery. And commanded operations on the Southern Front, as well as the final relocation of the remaining equipment.

The commander of the Jinsui Eighth Division, on the other hand, commanded some of the troops withdrawn to Hedong, as well as a basic battalion of the Taihang Military Region that had infiltrated him, and immediately rushed to the line from Shicheng to Donghuang Town, northeast of Niutuo Village. The troops of the four divisions of Shanxi, Chahar and Hebei were all strengthened to the line from Niuhuozhai to Mazhuang. All troops in the eastern part of Taiyuan City were under the unified command of the commander of the four divisions.

Considering that the radio stations of the Jin-Cha-Ji Fourth Division were lost during the winter anti-sweeping battles, they have not yet been replenished. Yang Jicai handed over the captured 15-watt radio stations to two divisions of the Fourth Division, and transferred three radio stations from his own troops to the troops of the Fourth Division of Shanxi, Chahar and Hebei.

Although a plan for the retreat has been drawn up and preparations for the retreat have already begun. However, it does not mean that the pressure outside the city will be reduced in any way during this time. Although the air raids of the Anti-United Nations during the day became more and more intense, the activity space of the Japanese army outside the city during the day was greatly compressed, and the defensive pressure on the periphery of Taiyuan was reduced.

But after nightfall, the Japanese offensive force also increased. In particular, the Japanese troops in Hexi, who had already occupied the Hexi Corridor, under the cover of artillery, used rubber boats and rafts as means of crossing the river, and constantly launched attacks on Hedong. The Japanese army, which finally waited for the main force of the 41st Division in the south of the city, adopted the tactics of attacking from multiple directions. Almost all night the defenders of the south of the city were not given any respite.

Although the strength of the 41st Division arrived under the city of Taiyuan, it was only half of its strength. However, under the repeated orders of the two superiors of the North China Front Army and the First Army, they could only attack with their lives. The commander of his division, Lieutenant General Shimizu Rule, personally went to the front line to command and supervise the battle.

The 41st Division rushed to two and a half infantry wings under the city of Taiyuan, and with the squadron as the formation, it launched continuous attacks to the south of the city. Even during the day, when the Anti-United Nations dispatched a large number of bombers, it also took advantage of the opportunity of the return of the anti-United Nations planes to launch an uninterrupted offensive. In the last two days of Yang Jicai's insistence, the Japanese air force, which had never been seen since the battle began, also appeared over the battlefield one after another.

These air units, which were transferred from Wuhan, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hong Kong, were based in Kaifeng and Yuncheng, and constantly took off in an attempt to intercept the bombers of the Anti-United Nations. Some Type 99 light bombers and some of them were dispatched, taking advantage of their fast flight speed to continuously bomb the anti-Japanese alliance and the 18th Group Army units around Taiyuan. Tried to cooperate with the two Japanese divisions to recapture the city of Taiyuan.

In other words, the Japanese air force was still making frequent sorties under the condition that the performance of the fighters was inferior to that of the Anti-United Nations, and the tactics of touching and leaving to provide air support to the Japanese troops around Taiyuan as much as possible. At the same time, as the outcome of the Southeast Asian battlefield has been decided, the Japanese army is mobilizing aviation troops from the East Indochina battlefield to China at the fastest speed.

Faced with the new situation in which the Japanese air force began to reappear on the battlefield, the anti-union air force immediately mobilized the fighter unit that was serving as an air defense mission in Yan'an and threw itself into the battlefield to compete with the Japanese army for air supremacy. Although the scale of the air battle was not large, it lasted the last two days of fighting.

The planes dispatched by the air forces of both sides had an advantage in numbers, and the other was a generation ahead in performance. The contest between the air forces of the two sides was inextricably linked in the skies over Taiyuan. Its fierce Cheng dù is not inferior to the ground combat too much. In particular, the tactics of the Japanese air force using fighter planes to entangle the anti-coalition planes and bombers to sneak attack brought a lot of trouble to Yang Jicai's defensive battle.

The fight in the sky is inseparable, but Yang Jicai on the ground feels more and more pressure. There was no rear support, no supplementary troops, and even after the Japanese air force was put into the battlefield, because of the threat of the Japanese air force, the number of transport planes dispatched by the Anti-Union Union decreased, and the ammunition supply obtained from the air gradually began to decrease, which made Yang Jicai extremely difficult.

The appearance of Japanese aviation on the battlefield made it so that in the last two days of fighting, the Japanese daytime offensive gradually began to intensify. It turned out to be a small-scale assault during the day, as well as a tactic based on flank detours. It was also changed to a frontal group assault, interspersed with large depth and detours on the flanks.

The last two days of the battle allowed Yang Jicai to spend almost every day under the offensive of the Japanese army. In addition to casualties, the front-line troops were already insufficient, so he could only use the 20 trucks left behind to continuously mobilize troops to adopt the method of mobile defense.

In the event of a crisis in that direction, some troops will be drawn from other directions to support. But the Japanese soldiers who copied it from the three breads never gave him a moment of respite. In the last two days of fighting, the two divisions of the Japanese army outside Taiyuan City significantly strengthened their coordination. The offensive made Yang Jicai more and more stretched in the use of troops.