In fact, the battle in Luozhen was not completely over when Qi's 3rd Army assembled. When Liu Guozhu climbed back onto his tank, the Qi defenders had not completely given up resistance.
Fierce gunfire continued inside Luo Town, from the train station to the power plant in the east, where Qi Army soldiers continued to fight.
However, their resistance was eventually suppressed by the 1st Armored Division. Wherever the tanks reached, the Qi army was unable to fight back.
The No. 4 tank was still too powerful when it was used on the battlefield at the level of World War I. The Qi army basically had nothing to do with this weapon and could only rely on bravery to fight with flesh and blood.
Although at the train station, a Qi soldier holding explosives finally destroyed a No. 4 tank of the 1st Battalion, his efforts did not change the outcome of the Qi army's defeat and surrender.
3,000 Qi soldiers stationed in Luo Town were almost wiped out. The soldiers who barely survived chose to surrender honorably. They handed over their weapons and were escorted to the rear by the Tang army.
Immediately afterwards, the Tang army did not dare to neglect at all. Judging from the combat effectiveness of the soldiers of the Qi army guarding Luo Town, and from interrogating the Qi army commanders, they learned that the Qi State had begun to notice the importance of Luo Town.
In other words, the Qi army has realized that Luo Town is very dangerous and is trying its best to send more troops here.
There are various signs that the Qi army will definitely try to recapture Luozhen, so the Tang army must set up a strong defense line here to face the incoming enemy army.
"Quick! We don't have any time to waste!" A Tang Army commander reminded his men while shoveling the soil.
In the upcoming battle, complete and solid defenses are the only way they can maintain their combat effectiveness, or in other words, save their own lives.
Fortunately, every soldier of the Tang Army's grenadiers had a standard engineering shovel, and they were able to build a defense line very quickly.
Each soldier would dig a foxhole, and with construction, these foxholes would be quickly connected to form trenches.
The trenches in reality are different from those in the movies. In order to avoid being bombarded, the trenches are often twisted and rarely vertical.
Why don't real trenches be restored in depth in the movie? The reason is also very simple: the real trenches have a poor horizontal view, which affects the shooting, and the momentum is not as good as the straight trenches, so we can only compromise for art.
After connecting foxholes and forming trenches, the Tang Army began to build stronger machine gun flank positions on both sides of their trenches.
From the front, these flanking positions look like ordinary and inconspicuous individual positions, but there are hidden machine guns on standby diagonally opposite your own position.
Once the enemy approaches one's own main position, the machine guns here will fire from the flanks, suppressing the enemy's attacking forces and causing a large number of casualties.
The crossfire between the two wings is a classic configuration that has been tried and tested, so most of the lower-level commanders of the Tang Kingdom who graduated from academies will follow the script as much as possible.
Soon, behind the collapsed houses, the company-level mortar support firepower had also determined the firing angle and firing area.
Personnel who are temporarily without tasks are helping to unload the ammunition from the trucks, and then distribute the ammunition to the participating troops as much as possible.
In the train station, Tang Jun also made some discoveries: here they found a Qi Jun locomotive that had not had time to be destroyed, and there was a train on it, which was full of grain.
Obviously, this was a train that had not had time to be unloaded, and it was loaded with food supplies to be distributed to the front line.
Everyone also found gasoline and ammunition in the warehouse in Luo Town - unfortunately, the ammunition of the Qi army could not replenish the ammunition consumption of the Tang army.
Even the gasoline used by everyone is different: Tang Jun's gasoline is of significantly higher quality and purer, and it burns better naturally.
However, the low-quality gasoline captured by the Qi army was not useless. It could be mixed with the Tang army's own gasoline and continued to be used reluctantly.
It's a pity that this method will cause carbon deposition in the engine, which is a kind of poison to quench thirst. This will increase the failure rate of the Tang Army's engine in the future, and may increase the Tang Army's ability to continue fighting in a short period of time.
This is war, and everyone will do some shitty things that may seem unreasonable, but are very realistic.
During the defense, the tanks of the Tang Army could only be used as fire support points. The tank company, which had one of its tanks destroyed, was left in the town and was ordered to serve as a fort and machine gun bunker to support the entire position.
At the same time, the tanks of the other two companies of the 1st Battalion were ordered to drive out of the town. They waited quietly in a depression in the north of the town, preparing to attack the Qi army's defense line if necessary.
After setting up defensive positions, the Tang Army's reinforcements arrived in Luo Town first, which boosted the morale of the Tang Army in the town.
Although only a follow-up light infantry group came, their arrival still strengthened the Tang Army's defensive strength.
The originally two battalions of grenadiers that were stretched thin now suddenly became four battalions, which made the frontline commanders of the Tang Army guarding here feel confident.
The security forces had already dispersed, and they soon sent back news of the Qi army's counterattack. A large group of Qi troops was advancing along the road toward Luo Town, with an unknown number.
Then a battle broke out between the two sides. The Tang army in charge of guarding the outside caused some minor troubles for the Qi army before retreating. The Qi army lost seven or eight men and had to slow down its advance.
In the evening, the artillery of the Qi Army launched an attack on Luo Town. The opponent fired hundreds of artillery shells, destroying the train full of grain that had no time to deal with it.
The Tang Army's long-range artillery fire was too lazy to fight back. As night fell, the Qi Army also became quiet. With the cover of the night, Qi's 3rd Army gathered its forces and spent one night preparing for the attack in the early morning of the next day.
The Tang army rested all night, and the Qi army trekked all the way over and rested for most of the night. Both sides went into the next day's battle in a relatively full state.
Early on the third day, the two sides immediately became entangled. Forty Stuka dive bombers from the Tang Army arrived as scheduled and greeted the Qi artillery that was extremely arrogant yesterday.
The screaming sound like a ghost echoed in the sky, making the defending Tang Army soldiers tremble with fear.
Before the first batch of Stuka dive bombers left, the second batch of B-17 bombers arrived on the battlefield.
These planes of the Tang Army seemed to be endless, just hovering over the Qi Army, lingering like a nightmare.
They kept dropping bombs, blowing up the Qi army that was trying to gather for a ground attack, and delaying the opponent's attack.
Because of these aircraft, the Qi army's numerical advantage in artillery was not fully utilized. Half of the dozens of artillery they mobilized were either hiding or destroyed.
The remaining half did not get any advantage in the face of the artillery fire of the Tang army. The Qi commander did not expect that the artillery fire of one armored division of the Tang army could compete with the artillery of two or three of their infantry divisions.
For Qi, this was not the most troublesome thing. The most troublesome thing was that their first tentative attack was not launched until noon.
When the fifth batch of Tang Army Stuka dive bombers arrived on the battlefield, the Qi Army generals finally realized that the planes above them might really not leave.
After losing thousands of soldiers without launching a single attack, the commander of Qi's 3rd Army finally gritted his teeth and launched the first fierce attack.
Regardless of casualties, the Qi army's artillery launched another artillery bombardment. They fired dozens of shells, blowing up Luo Town and sending thick smoke everywhere.
Then the main force of the 3rd Division of the 3rd Army of Qi was thrown into an infantry regiment, and a sea of people rushed towards the Tang Army's position.
"Charge! Whoever breaks into Luo Town first! Reward 50 gold coins!" A Qi army commander waved the Mauser rifle in his hand to encourage the Qi soldiers around him who were advancing with bayonets in hand.
Qi soldiers without helmets are easy to distinguish from Tang Army soldiers wearing M35 helmets. Tang Army soldiers all wear tactical vests, while Qi Army soldiers only have the simplest armed belts.
On the front of the position, the frontal decoy machine gun position that lured Qi troops opened fire first. The sound of the MG42 machine gun tearing apart cloth strips was unique and full of threats.
Dense ammunition came towards them, and the soldiers of the Qi Army were caught off guard and fell down. The remaining Qi Army immediately spread out and bent forward little by little.
"Thud, tug, tug!" The Maxim machine gun covering the attack of the Qi soldiers also roared, and fired fiercely at the place where the tracer bullets had previously flown.
The 3rd Army is indeed the most elite combat force under the Third Prince. As soon as it got into position, its combat quality was much higher than that of other Qi Army units.
Their attack is more organized, with machine gun cover and artillery support. It can be seen that they are well trained, and the commander can fully understand the performance of the weapons and equipment in his hands, and use them together to achieve greater effectiveness.
power.
However, although they are very good, their performance is only very good at the level of World War I.
The Tang army's mortars quickly deployed in the town gave the attacking Qi army a hard time. They were blown to pieces by a round of artillery fire, and then they were defeated in the first attack test.
It was only at this time that the commander of the Qi army seemed to remember that the Tang army's breakthrough of the defense line was like chopping melons and vegetables. It did not mean that everyone could easily break through the carefully arranged defense line.
Without the cover of the air force and tanks, it seemed that...their Qi army was really unable to penetrate the opponent's defensive positions like the Tang army.
But they no longer have the option of retreating. After all, as the old saying goes: It's time to come...
