Wingate's expression changed slightly, he didn't realize that the hostility in the mouth of this star major was so serious, he originally thought that he would hear some morale-boosting words. He himself had no experience fighting the Japanese army, and his experience came from guerrilla warfare that helped the Zionists kill Palestinian rebels, and helped the Ethiopian army besiege the Italians in several sneak attacks, all of which were low-intensity battles in nature. Although he has already made a name for himself in terms of tactics, many of Wingate's tactics on how to fight the Japanese are still in the imagination, and he even collected Chu Tingchang's battle examples and figured out some of his own things from them.

"So Major, what do you recommend?"

"I see those mules in your ranks," Chu Tingchang shook his head, "how many days are you going to rely on those provisions?" ”

"A week or so. If the bridge is gone, retreat upstream to the north of Imphal. ”

"Your Gurkhas will be a drag."

"No, they are valiant fighters, IMHO, better at close combat and mountain warfare than you Chinese soldiers."

"They are afraid of water, but northern Myanmar is full of rivers. You have to use the Kachin. ”

Chu Tingchang observed in March that the Gurkha remained on the east bank and were massacred by the Japanese army for fear of reading the Sitang River.

"That's a real problem, but the Kachin troops are training, and I can only use these Nepalese mountain soldiers, but sooner or later I will have Kachin fighters, and in fact, I'm thinking of a new mode of fighting behind enemy lines and a new formation, and the new troops are named after a kind of auspicious beast that is legendary in Kachin."

"It's called Cindet?"

"How do you know?" Wingate was taken aback.

"There are only a few legendary beasts in northern Myanmar, and there is only one with auspicious meanings. There are at the entrance of every temple, and it is similar to our Chinese stone lions. ”

"I see?"

"I suggest you name your troops after the unicorns."

"I'll think about that."

"We found your abandoned narrow-gauge railroad in the forest, connecting your military depots, not on our map, but you should know."

"Ah, it may be so." The British colonel said embarrassedly.

"The Japanese will directly search your warehouses for supplies, and their headquarters must be near a few major nodes, I think if you want to find a target worthy of a sneak attack within a radius of a hundred kilometers and carry out a short attack, this is the first choice."

Chu Tingchang went to the side of the map and pointed out the place where he judged that the enemy might set up a headquarters, and the effectiveness of the drone is now reduced, which is obtained by listening to the Japanese army's communications, and the Araki detachment reported to the headquarters of the 15th Army, one of the two places to be selected, and added a little bit of his own judgment.

"If you don't take medicine, within three or four days, if our army retreats across the river, we will blow up the bridge, which depends on the speed of the Japanese army."

"We were able to come back from upstream despite blowing up the bridge, and we brought equipment to cross the river. Even if the Gurkha people are not water-savvy, they can come back in rubber boats. Wingate said confidently.

"Coming back from upstream...... An increase in the flow rate of the water must be expected. ”

"I will inform the U.S. military to meet on the other side of the river, and everything will be in order. I've seen a few of your recent battles and I'm impressed by the way you fought with radio control to command troops, get firepower and supplies. I thought that the jungle was an isolated place, that the radio was the only link between the armies, and that supply was the basis for sustaining the war, so I brought the radio and mules; Hehe, I'm sure you haven't considered jungle warfare tactics from a theoretical level, have you? ”

"Then please protect your communication equipment." He found that the British colonel was eager to try, and apparently had received some wrong information, but now that there was no way to explain it, let him do what he wanted.

The conversation was brief and harmonious, and the two shook hands, and Wingate left in the rain to practice his theory of sabotage behind enemy lines. Chief Chu continued to prepare for defense, preparing to cover the arrival of the troops behind. He could not fully cooperate with the British attack as Stilwell intended. His men and horses were very tired, and Tao Mingzhang still stayed behind, waiting to take over Dai Anlan's guards. He expected that this group of British, with more than 200 mules, would fight behind enemy lines, and most of them would be beaten by the Japanese, but it was 1942, and defeat was inevitable. He will find the right way to fight in the run-in.

Tens of thousands of Japanese troops were coming from all directions, and the enemy's infiltration attack began in the second half of the night as Chu Tingchang expected, but what he did not expect was that the Japanese army quickly found a diversified way of attacking from the initial setback.

The Araki detachment, which had been broken into pieces, constantly harassed along the highway with small forces, focusing on trucks, knowing that if they broke a truck, the Chinese army would slow down the retreat, and they could create a bunch of barricades in the middle of the road. The Japanese troops who were lying in ambush on the side of the road, waiting for the Chinese troops to pass through, quietly ran up the road to set up*, sometimes not buried at all, because it was difficult to see clearly at night.

After the rain gradually stopped, the drone flew down into the clouds, and it could be seen that the small infiltration of the Japanese army had caused serious consequences, and the winding road was littered with burning wreckage. The two sides exchanged fire on various sections of the road, and the enemy's tactics of prioritizing the destruction of trucks achieved such success that the road was almost blocked.

If the trick of the Araki detachment that infiltrated succeeds and effectively delays the motorized retreat of the expeditionary force, then the last tens of thousands of people of the expeditionary force and the new 38th Division and the composite regiment troops may still be surrounded and eaten by the Japanese troops who rushed in. In particular, Dai Anlan's fate is unknown so far, and his guards were attacked at night and then dispersed with the communications force.

UAVs could not effectively detect the Japanese troops hiding in the primeval forest, and it is estimated that at least one or two thousand people of the Araki and Harada detachments have bypassed the original defenses and reached the vicinity of the road, and the enemy situation will become more serious every hour.

He called Zhou Youfu, who was squatting on the side and napping, Zhou Youfu hadn't slept for 2 days, but now it was not a coincidence, he ordered Zhou to command the last three Grants to go out immediately to clear the obstacles on the highway. It is not important to tell him to equip him, the important thing is to bring back Tao Mingzhang and Master Dai, regardless of whether Master Dai is dead or alive. Three tanks filled up the gasoline they could find and set out along the road. Another 4 Stuart are protected on both sides. There are only a few rounds left in each of these Grants*, but they are now tasked with clearing road obstacles. The convoy set off in a mighty way, and at dawn began to push the trucks across the road into the roadside ravines, and the Japanese soldiers were firing non-stop from a distance of several hundred meters. Chief Chu began to doubt the significance of this, because the Japanese army destroyed 50 trucks in one night, and at this rate, everyone soon left together.

At the same time, Wingate's troops suffered their first setback, believing that they had sneaked into the forest and could make a detour behind the enemy's back, and were immediately ambushed by the Japanese covered in leaves.

The Japanese hid in the trees and threw at them *, and after the heavy losses of the first few minutes, they did not know the number of enemy roads at all, thinking that they were under mortar fire. It wasn't until the Japanese jumped off the tree and fought with bayonets that the situation was clear.

Wingate's team marched through the dense forests of South Asia with visibility of no more than 50 meters, and formed a half-kilometer-long line of snakes, and the warlike Japanese quickly found the weak point and cut the team into several sections that could not be seen from end to end. The British army hurriedly counterattacked, and the troops lost unified contact, and each retreated in different directions, one group returned the same way and retreated across the bridge, and several others were unknown. The tactics of the British on paper relied heavily on radio communications, but Colonel Wingate immediately discovered that the radio station in the mountains was simply unreliable. Even controlling the nearby vantage points may not be effective in sending telegrams.

On 419, Cheng Dayang and the political commissar discussed whether to use drones to provide relay support for the allies, but this kind of technical means is always a problem, and finally decided to ignore it, and give priority to the five-person team close to Lin Xiuxuan to reserve communication capabilities for them to retreat. They are approaching the coast and need to be in contact with the submarine at all times.

Grant pushed all the way backwards, braving the cold gun to open the road section, so that the trucks behind could move forward. But the Japanese on both sides became more aggressive, and they used grenadiers to play tricks, hit straight ballistics, and directly attacked the side projection of the tank 150 meters away. Soon a Stuart tank was hit and the tracks were paralyzed, and Grant could only turn around and push the tank away. The latest situation observed by the UAVs, the rearguard units have been bitten, and many units have abandoned their vehicles on their own and walked the last tens of kilometers instead.

Tao Mingzhang finally waited for Dai Anlan's guard unit, which almost fell to the back of the entire expeditionary force by accident. However, Master Dai was still conscious, but he was pierced through the abdomen and had a serious fever, so he had to be operated on in time; Tao Mingzhang has transferred the division commander to an M3 half-track vehicle, but it is still not safe enough, and it seems that it needs to be covered by other troops. Zhou Youfu was forced to stop on the side of the road, waiting for Tao Mingzhang's infantry battalion to come and merge and rush back, he knew how dangerous it was for the troops to stay in the line of fire, especially the sound of artillery around showed that the heavy fire of the Japanese army was getting closer and closer.

He didn't quite understand Chu Tingchang's thoughts, the synthetic regiment was obviously the first to reach the bridge, and now it was pulled to the rear, watching the rest of the troops retreat north, he felt like a cat in his heart.

At noon that day, alternate cover no longer existed, and all the blocking troops began to retreat on their own, and it was difficult for the elite national army to watch its friendly neighbors retreat without being moved.

In the afternoon, the entire retreat was a mess, and Zhou Youfu's retrograde reconnaissance unit with tanks attracted the attention of the Japanese troops near the road. The Japanese army judged that the Chinese army had a counterattack, and the latest counterattack by the British troops, the headquarters of the 15th Army also had the illusion that the enemy might want to counterattack, and ordered a two-hour suspension of the offensive to observe the enemy situation. However, there were still a large number of Japanese troops who did not receive orders and continued to frantically go on the offensive.

In such a chaotic situation, Chief Chu Tingchang could not personally take risks, so he could only constantly adjust the deployment to delay as much as possible. On the bridge, there are very few trucks and horse teams passing through, and the 200th division company that passed on foot is still relatively complete in structure and weapons, but at the beginning there were some stragglers who helped each other in twos and threes, and most of them lost their weapons, and some even lost their shoes. Depending on the situation, in the end, the expeditionary force is still likely to be bitten off by the Japanese. Chu Tingchang's troops had not yet crossed the river, and they held on to the defensive line within a radius of several kilometers near the bridge. His troops became almost a reborn Chinese army.