Chapter 986, Wind Sound

Although the Market Garden Operation was highly expected by the Command and Wu Shaoting, before the operation was put into practice, various combat troops were still continuing to maintain a tenacious battle. The Fourth and 36th Divisions of the National Defense Forces had already received orders and were gathering in Yanbian and arriving at Baiyan and Sanchiyuan through the transportation lines opened by the 38th Division.

The Army Command has notified the strategic adjustments of the command to various units in advance. In the future, the focus of the combat will shift to the northeast, that is, the battlefield of the 38th Division, the 36th Division and the 4th Division of the National Defense Forces in Huishan. This news may be good news for the 34th Division and the 37th Division who fought in the Xinyizhou battlefield for three months. The soldiers can finally take a breath and have a good rest, but in fact, for the officers of the 34th Division and the 37th Division, they put in the most effort, but eventually made wedding dresses for others.

In early August, in order to regain the morale of the Xinyizhou battlefield, the Group Army Command carried out some rectification of the combat units of the 37th and 34th Divisions, promoted a group of outstanding commanders, awarded a batch of medals and medals, and also delivered some beer, juice and other food to the front line to improve food. Of course, these are just superficial skills, and there is also an offensive order after this series of measures, requiring the Xinyizhou front to advance to the urban area within a week.

The equipment regiment with the most serious casualties of the 37th Division was merged with two reinforcement battalions and several ** battalions of the 34th Division after completion of the reorganization. These battalion-level units were all troops with serious vacancies. The equipment regiment after the combined organization was upgraded to the ** Equipment Brigade, and Sun Lianzhong jumped to two levels and was promoted to brigade commander. As for the stormtroopers, which were famous for carrying out crossing the river and mountain wolf operations, they were officially appointed to be a "Special Boat Operation Team". The total organization is expected to be positioned at 1,000 people, and currently the organization is 500.

Although Hu Zongnan was injured, fortunately, his life was not in danger, and his cultivation had improved greatly after a month. The 37th Division Division headquarters gave Hu Zongnan a first-class Silver Eagle Medal, promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and appointed him as the commander-in-chief of the Special Boat Team. The Special Boat Team belongs to the ** Equipment Brigade and Brigade Department directly under the jurisdiction of the ** Equipment Brigade.

Since the war in the previous three months had expanded the front to the entire mountainous area, after completing the emergency repair of the fortifications of the Ancient City of Xinyizhou, *** decisively ordered the abandonment of the mountainous positions and the transfer to the Ancient City positions to defend. For the defenders, although the mountainous positions have many geographical advantages, and forests and hills can form natural cover points, this does not mean that there are no shortcomings at all. For example, because of the dense forests, the Chinese team is prone to infiltrate the rear, launching sneak attacks and raids on the flanks, and for example, once some positions are lost, they will lose their favorable fire sight.

Furthermore, in terms of heavy firepower support, the 16th Division had almost no advantage, so it simply gave up its mountainous positions and moved into a wider urban position, which exposes Chinese offensive troops to open areas on the front battlefield, thereby creating more effectively lethality. At the same time, it can also use the abandoned mountains to block most of the shells fired from the north bank, which is undoubtedly an opportunistic turnaround.

After three days of rest and reorganization, the 37th and 34th Divisions launched a joint attack on September 15.

The **Equipment Brigade and the 15th ** Brigade invested nearly 3,000 troops at one time and entered the battle from the northeast of the mountainous area. Although it avoided many heavy firepower on the front of the Japanese army, it was still blocked by the Japanese strong positions. The various types of cannons on the north bank could hardly play a role, and it would take some time for the two divisions to urgently transfer artillery. The heavy firepower on the south bank was only some small-caliber artillery and mortars, which were significantly reduced compared to the previous firepower.

After two days of fierce battle, the Chinese team barely pushed the front line of the Japanese position, but the excessive casualties caused the subsequent troops to be unable to sustain. At the same time, the division headquarters realized that continuing to attack the frontline positions would only cause more casualties, and finally ordered the termination of the operation and the ** Equipment Brigade and the 15th ** Brigade were withdrawn to the mountains for rest.

Also in mid-September, the 33rd and 35th Divisions adopted new tactics and sent troops to detour behind the enemy's camp in Pingcheng and launched a front-and-back attack. Although this battle allowed the Japanese army to see through the plan to detour behind the enemy, the detour troops successfully distracted the enemy's attention, resulting in the enemy's troops being cut in half. After five or six days of war, the Zhongzhang team successfully broke through the Pingcheng defense line and won a great victory in Pingcheng.

The Pingcheng Victory not only pulled out an important outer position on the Jiangjie defense line, but also severely damaged the 17th Division's new force. Under the front and back siege, a Japanese brigade stationed in Pingcheng had almost no way to escape. The command system, including the brigade headquarters and the command headquarters of each regiment, was captured. Only a small number of cavalry broke through the east and fled back to the Jiangjie in a circle.

After losing Pingcheng, only one periphery position on the Jiangjie defense line was left, and the entire situation suddenly shrank greatly, and the morale of the 17th Division fell sharply. The division headquarters once decided to implement the blasting plan, blow up all railway lines in the Jiangjie, and prevent the Chinese team from quickly moving south through railway traffic after taking the Jiangjie. Later, with the news of the General Staff Headquarters mobilizing reinforcements, the morale of the army was finally stabilized and decided to stick to it.

Although there was no large-scale battle on the Huishan battlefield, as the 38th Division received a telegram from the commander and learned that reinforcements were about to enter North Korea, the morale of the entire army was high. Even though a batch of military rations were lost due to previous logistical management mistakes, the Chinese soldiers still stood on the position with their tenacious perseverance.

The 7th Japanese Division launched several tentative attacks near the base camps of Sanchiyuan and the 38th Division, but the 7th Division has been battling step by step, cautiously. After all, the 38th Division has completed a semi-encirclement formation. The Japanese army was afraid of mobilizing large troops to attack any side, and the other side would attack Huanglong and sneak attack Huishan. So they simply strengthened the walls and cleared the fields and defended the advantageous geographical fortress of Huishan.

Regarding the logistics issues of the 38th Division, the commander-in-chief dispatched several airships to the suburbs of Baiyan and airdropped several batches of military supplies in succession. This is the first time that the Chinese team has adopted air supplies, which can be regarded as a warm-up for the Market Garden Operation in advance.

One day in late September, Wu Shaoting opened the clippings of the news sent by the servants. He has been busy with military and government affairs since he came to Fengtian, but his knowledge of the news has never stopped. He specifically instructed the servants to collect important news from major newspapers and regularly show the clippings of binding costs to himself. Just when he saw an authoritative newspaper in Tianjin, he saw a news about Beijing, which was the riot in the Beidamen Gate, Beijing base camp and Zhang Hanju's son was sentenced to prison for the second time.

After reading this report, he immediately turned to the time and date handwritten at the bottom of the page, which turned out to be the September 4th report.

"Where is Zhang Yunnong now?" Wu Shaoting was full of anger and threw the newspaper clippings on the table and shouted loudly.

"First of the People's Republic of China, Lord Zhang is still in Beijing and has not come back!" a staff member said quickly.

"Call me immediately and ask Zhang Yunnong to come back to see me immediately." Wu Shaotinghao yelled in anger without hiding his emotions.

The staff member didn't know why Wu Shaoting suddenly lost his temper and didn't dare to say a word, so he quickly arranged for the correspondent to call.

At this moment, Cai E brought the officers of the Commander's headquarters to the head of state, intending to hand over the "Market Garden Action" plan to Wu Shaoting for half a month and give a detailed introduction. This plan is currently the latest revision, referring to the latest battlefield data. As long as Wu Shaoting nods, the final implementation plan will be the plan. When he just walked to the second floor stairs, everyone in the Commander's headquarters met a attendant in the head of state's office, and the attendant immediately told Cai E about the head of state's temper.

"Zhang Yunnong? How could the Head of State get angry?" Cai E's face became a little confused after hearing this.

"This... I don't know about the humble position. The head of state was reading the newspaper clippings, and I don't know which news I saw, but suddenly I got angry." The attendant sighed.

"Okay, you go first." Cai E gave up.

After the attendant hurried downstairs and left, a staff officer following Cai E stepped forward and whispered: "Master Marshal, have you not heard any rumors recently?"

Cai E looked back at his staff officer and asked, "What's the news? Is it related to Zhang Yunnong?"

The staff officer nodded quickly and said, "That's right. I heard that Zhang Yunnong was secretly making small moves in the Beijing base camp. He was the secretary-general of the Beijing base camp. He formed cliques to eliminate dissidents and even threatened all Beijing officials. Not only that, it is said that he also disliked our Ministry of National Defense very much. He always thought that he was directly responsible to the head of state, so he was superior to others."

Cai E frowned. Before he could speak, adjutant Chen Fang also interrupted and said, "I have heard of these news. There are people talking about it at the Army Headquarters and the Ministry of National Defense Representative Office, as if Secretary-General Zhang arrested Minister Ni's nephew."

The staff officer said earlier: "It's not just that he was arrested, but he beat the man half to death, so his parents were not allowed to visit prison."

Cai E scolded coldly: "What are you talking nonsense? I am a classmate with Zhang Yunnong. I know a lot about his character. Where do you hear rumors? What credentials can you tell me?"

Chen Fang said: "It's just that everyone is talking about this privately, it's hard to say whether it's true. But I think it won't be groundless, and Secretary-General Zhang must have done some bad things to the point."

Another person also said, "Yes, otherwise why would the head of state lose his temper?"

Even though Cai E trusted Zhang Xiaozhun, the three of them were so awesome that he could not tell what Zhang Xiaozhun had done now. During this period, all his energy was focused on the 38th Division and the "Market Garden Action Plan". Moreover, the Beijing Base Camp had nothing to do with the Ministry of National Defense, and he had no time to take care of so much.

"Anyway," he said seriously after taking a deep breath, "we are all soldiers, and we don't have to like to talk about others behind the scenes like housewives. Since things are not made without a certificate, you should not believe them easily. Besides, we still have more important work to do now, and who has the time to deal with these rumors."
Chapter completed!