Ouyang Yun's worry was not unreasonable. Although he judged from deciphering telegrams and the mobilization of Japanese troops, the main direction of the Japanese attack was on the northern half of the fortress, which is Mianchuan Island. However, because the communication of the Japanese ground troops in Jiangbei mainly relied on wired telephones. He had manpower, so he didn’t know the specific distribution of the Japanese troops.
The total strength of the Japanese army is now around two divisions and two brigades. The two divisions are the 112th Division and the 11th Division, and the two brigades are the remaining troops of the 106th Division and the 11th Army. The situation directly under the control of the Xuebing Army is that the remaining troops of the 106th Division will launch a fierce attack on Hukou, and the main force of the 112th Division has moved eastward to the Wangjiang County area to join up with the 11th Division. Ouyang Yun According to the mobilization of the Japanese army, a regiment of the 9th Xuexue Brigade was transferred to the southern half of the fortress, while the 8th Xuexue Brigade was transferred to Mianchuan Island to strengthen defense.
According to the arrangement of the Japanese army, there should be no obstacles to learning from the 36th Brigade in crossing the river. However, why did Ye Zhao not reply for so long? Could it be that the radio stations they carried fell into the water when they were crossing the river? It was a reason with a high element of luck, so the possibility of it being established was almost zero. The more it was like this, the more uneasy Ouyang Yun felt. Moments before the Japanese army's general attack started, he was restless, his heart was beating wildly, and he lost his previous calmness.
What happened to Ye Zhao and the others?
ambush,
Whether Ouyang Yun or Ye Zhao, they all ignored another group of Japanese troops.
The 10th Division of the Japanese 2nd Army. When the Japanese 2nd Army was first formed, it had three divisions, namely the 10th Division, the 16th Division and the 108th Division. When Shunroku Hata took charge of China After the commander of the dispatched army, the 5th Division was once added. As the 5th Division was dispatched to cooperate with the 5th Army, in fact, the 2nd Army now still has three divisions. In the 108th Division, Hata After Junroku ordered the rescue of the Japanese troops in Anqing, the Second Army actually only had the 10th Division and the 16th Division left in the Greater Wuhan Circle area.
The commander of the 2nd Army is still Nishio Hisao. When Nishio served as the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, he had a lot of dealings with the Xuebing Army. It can be said that Nishio witnessed the rise of the Xuebing Army in North China, and It is for this reason that he has a deeper understanding of the Japanese army than the senior Japanese military officials in the country. As far as the military is concerned, he is also one of the few people who are closer to Shunroku Hata and Yoshijiro Umezu. Junliu changed the original intention of the Wuhan campaign and decided to take the annihilation of the Northbound Army of the Xuebing Army as the priority goal. He was deeply convinced of this. At this time, it happened that Li Zongren, Yang Sen, Lu Hanzheng were leading the Sichuan Army and the Yunnan Army to use troops in the northwest of Wuhan. Seeing that the force was strong, Nishio also wanted to shrink the defense line, so he decided to respond to Hata Shunroku's call and use troops against the Xuebing Army. This led to the scene tonight.
Nishio's goal is to penetrate deep into the south of the Yangtze River through Jiujiang, thereby cutting off the retreat route of the Northward Army Corps. The Japanese army has serious factional concepts from the cabinet to the military, because it belongs to a different faction from the commander of the 11th Army, Okamura Neiji. , Therefore, Nishio Shouzou did not inform him, but just prepared to say hello to Nakajima Qingcun. In Nishio's view, Nakajima, as a division commander, would not do anything like this even if he was not subordinate to him. However, after he sent a messenger across the river, he learned that Nakajima had led the 106th Division to Hukou. Nakajima actually abandoned the Jiujiang stronghold that he had finally established without authorization. This made Nishio very angry.
Nishio thought this was Gangcun's idea. The latter had always been determined to win Ma Dang. For this reason, he did not hesitate to hit all the troops of the legion and wanted to defeat him in one go. However, Nishio disagreed with this. There was the Second Battle of the Great Wall and the Xuebing Army. Nishio was deeply impressed by the defensive capabilities of the Xuebing Army based on the experience of fighting. In his opinion, if he wanted to capture Madang, even if he could win through a head-on attack, the losses would be unbearable. Instead of doing so, it would be better to adopt a cannibalization policy. Little by little, the outer living space of the Xuebing Army was weakened, forcing the Xuebing Army to give up Madang and take the initiative to fight.
At that time, he said to Chief of Staff Yumachi Kulangji: "What Gangcun did was to attack the enemy's strengths at a short distance. He will regret it. Jiujiang must not be lost. Only with Jiujiang in hand can we compete with the Chinese in Jiangnan." Qualifications, huh, it seems we have to speed up the advance and enter Jiujiang before the China Army accepts Jiujiang."
"Sir, do you want to march overnight?"
"certainly."
When Xiwei decided to march to Jiujiang, the 10th Division was located in Luotian County. Luotian was only about a hundred kilometers away from Jiujiang. The 10th Division marched from Luotian around eight o'clock and arrived in Huangmei County after the main force While in Huaqiao Town, its pioneer reconnaissance force reported that the Xuebing Army was discovered in Xiaochi Town, and that the Xuebing Army was continuing to cross the river.
As early as when Zhongdao Qingcun attacked Hukou, the 106th Division raided all the fishing boats around Jiujiang. Many of these fishing boats were sunk by the 34th Xuexue Brigade, and the rest were taken away by Zhongdao After arriving at Hukou, Ye Zhao was originally ordered to regain Jiujiang, but he did not realize that he had to cross the river to Jiangbei, so they did not continue to borrow the fishing boats of the Gao family and the Dong family in Wuxingli. Ouyang Yun gave him the order around eight o'clock in the evening. The order to cross the river and go north made it more difficult to collect fishing boats at night, and time did not allow for the mobilization of fishing boats from Wuxingli. Therefore, although the 36th School Brigade and the 12th School Division Headquarters only had a total of about 4,500 people, Crossing the river has become a problem,
In Ouyang Yun's order to Ye Zhao, he did not explain what to do after crossing the river. However, just because there was still a regiment of cadet soldiers on Xiaogushan, Ye Zhao felt that there was a lot to be done for the Northern Admiral this time. , Moreover, Ouyang Yun's order required him to complete the crossing as quickly as possible, which also forced him to finally make up his mind to use an engineering battalion at hand to collect a number of wood such as door panels and tie them into a raft. , adopting this primitive means to cross the river,
The first group of students from the 36th Brigade to cross the river was a reconnaissance platoon. After these students swam to the other side, they immediately conducted reconnaissance on the surrounding area. The Japanese 11th Army originally had only two brigades stationed in Huangmei County, and these students Two brigades belonging to the 112th Division have now followed the main force to Wangjiang. Naturally, the scouts found nothing. Ye Zhao had already learned about the movements of the Japanese troops in the unit in the previous battle report, and now the scouts learned about them. After they confirmed it, they boldly organized their troops to cross the river.
The engineering battalion spent about an hour at the beginning building twelve rafts. Each of these rafts can carry about fifty people at a time. In other words, it can carry nearly six hundred people across the river at one time. In this way, as long as After about seven round trips, all the troops were able to complete the crossing. At about 9:20, the first batch of troops crossed the river. It took nearly an hour and ten minutes for one round trip. Considering that these rafts were not powered, they needed to be trained. They used wooden planks to paddle the water. This speed was actually fast enough, but it was still a bit far away from Ouyang Yun's requirements. Ouyang Yun ordered them to complete the crossing before 12 o'clock. According to this progress, all troops would have to cross the river. It was already five o'clock the next day. On the battlefield, speed sometimes symbolizes victory. As a chief officer from the old Cantonese clan, Ye Zhao knew this very well. The military situation was like a fire. He made a decision in desperation. Select the soldiers who were in the water and prepare them to swim across the raft in batches.
The equipment of the Xuebing Army did not include life jackets or other swimming protection tools. Crossing the river at night was a hastily built raft, which was inherently very dangerous. The water conditions in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were much more complicated than those in the lower reaches. There are endless whirlpools, so swimming across the river is very dangerous even in the daytime. Fortunately for the scouts, they have undergone professional swimming training. For them, swimming across the river, which is about three miles wide, is not easy. It is not a difficult problem, but for those soldiers who can only swim, this is a basically impossible task. There have been several cases of soldiers falling into the water on the first ferry across the river. In the end, there were two more As a result, a soldier disappeared, leaving nearly 4,000 people. After selection, a total of about 1,500 people were able to swim. These 1,500 people had to be hung on rafts to complete the crossing. The probability of their being wrecked and missing doubled. How many of these thousand people will be able to successfully reach the other side? Even Ye Zhao, who made this decision, was not sure about this.
"I don't agree with this decision. This is simply making fun of the lives of the soldiers." As soon as Ye Zhao made this difficult decision, he was opposed by the political director Jiang Hongming. He kindly reminded: "Old Ye ,The Commander-in-Chief did not give us a specific combat mission. I think we should not take this risk. Lao Ye, think about how you came to learn from the Twelfth Division. After all, it is about the lives and safety of our brothers. It is not a trivial matter. ah."
After the Battle of Nanjing, the Xue Bing Army was expanded. At that time, Ye Zhao was promoted to deputy commander of the Fourth Xue Bing Army because of his performance in the battle. However, during a drill not long after, a relatively major safety accident occurred, resulting in A soldier was accidentally injured and died. Ye Zhao was sued by the Soldiers Committee in a military court and lost his position as deputy commander.
This was Ye Zhao's heartache. His expression immediately changed when he heard this. Under the weak light of the campfire, his brows were furrowed deeply. He looked at the dark distance and lost his voice for a moment. Suddenly, he showed his face and said: "Yes." , use a rope to connect the brothers in the water to the raft, that’s all.”
This is a good idea. This time when crossing the river, there is no need to remain silent. In this way, with the protection of the rope, if the soldiers in the water encounter danger, they only need to shout and they will be rescued immediately.
Jiang Hongming thought for a while and felt that this might not be a good idea, so he immediately agreed.
The second ferry crossing began. This time, in addition to the fifty or so soldiers on each raft, there were also about thirty soldiers dragged by ropes on the side of the raft. In order to ensure the safety of the soldiers in the water to the greatest extent, Each of them also had a wooden board or bamboo or something tied to their body.
What originally required eight round trips can now be completed in four times. The speed of crossing the river has undoubtedly been greatly improved. However, what Ye Zhao and Jiang Hongming did not expect was that precisely because of this measure, the crossing speed was greatly improved. The noise Jiang made increased greatly, which directly led to the troop's whereabouts being detected by the Japanese scouts of the 10th Division.
The 36th Xuexue Brigade also fell into a bitter battle.