On the 27th, the Ming army's left and right sides had completely opposite results. On the left Shanxi battlefield, after the Ming army broke through Taiyuan, they encountered no resistance and marched straight in. By the time they set up camp at night, the northernmost vanguard had already passed by.
After arriving at Yuanping County, it is still more than ten kilometers away from Dai County and about twenty kilometers away from Yanmen Pass. Yanmen Pass is a pass on the Hengshan Mountains. From Yanmen Pass through the Hengshan Mountains, there is an area with more plains and less mountains to the north.
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The Ming Army Headquarters predicts that they will pass Yanmen Pass tomorrow morning and push dozens of kilometers northeast to reach Datong in the evening. They will capture Datong the day after tomorrow and spend another day consolidating it in the east, west and north directions.
Shanxi has been captured. The next target is Zhangjiakou.
However, the battle in the Eastern Central Plains was extremely difficult. By 7 pm on the 27th, the entire front had only advanced an average of about 7 kilometers.
The Ming army was not used to the huge change in the Qing army's fighting will. They interrogated many prisoners of war throughout the day. Whether they were prisoners of the Eight Banners Division or prisoners of the Han army, they all said that they had orders from above: If they were killed in battle, their families would receive a large pension.
If Jin surrendered, he would be punished as treason. The immediate family members, that is, the parents would be executed directly, and the rest of the family would be sent to hard labor for life. Therefore, they were unwilling to surrender unless they had to.
At first, the Ming army didn't quite believe it, because no army in ancient and modern times had ever issued such a cruel order. Being captured on the battlefield was inevitable. If the whole family had to be implicated just because of being captured, it would be too sensational.
But after a whole day of interrogation, thousands of prisoners were interrogated by various units on each battlefield, and the answers they got were mostly the same.
This piece of information was gradually taken seriously by the intelligence officers on all fronts, and they all collected it upwards. In the evening, it was sent back to the Nanjing headquarters.
The question that had depressed the headquarters for a whole day finally had an answer. It turned out that it was such a "cruel order" that quickly increased the Qing army's will to resist.
The entire headquarters was in an uproar.
The generals all lamented that they had never heard of any army in history doing this. Such an order could only be given by Qinglu. Only Xiang Xiaoqiang suspected that this was probably instigated by Molotov, right?
This kind of "surrender by one person affects the whole family"
"Wouldn't the policy of "become the Soviet army's trump card later on? If it hadn't been for this policy, what would Stalin have been able to do to withstand the German attack in 1941 and 1942? In this time and space, wouldn't the old man want to attack us Chinese first?
Try it on yourself.
However, the uproar returned and the indignation returned to indignation. Faced with this policy of the Qing army, the Ming army had no way to crack it for the time being. They could only cheer up and redouble their efforts to attack.
…
It was getting dark, and the Ming army's attacks gradually slowed down, and then they consolidated their positions and stopped attacking. Night was not conducive to the Ming army's advantages. First, there was no air cover, and secondly, the tanks were half-blind and basically useless.
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Throughout the night, the Qing army's hundreds of kilometers of positions were illuminated without interruption. One group after another, after taking off, they lined up and slowly fell down. The ground between the two armies was brightly illuminated.
The white, devastated land is full of craters, and the bright bulges are accompanied by dark craters, just like the surface of the moon. The endless stretches of broken barbed wire are swaying in the wind, reflecting the cold light of the metal, which is extremely weird.
Although the large-scale offensive was stopped, the Ming army still did not intend to let the Qing army sleep well. From time to time, they suddenly launched a burst of artillery bombardment somewhere on the Qing army's position, assuming a posture of attacking from there. Then, these more than ten kilometers of defense line
The Qing troops on board were all on tenterhooks and did not dare to sleep. They grabbed their guns and stared at the direction of the Ming army's positions, ready to attack at any time. However, they always waited for an hour or two, but there was no movement at all.
After doing this several times, the Qing army also confirmed that the Ming army was bluffing, and once again firmly believed that "the Ming army has no air superiority and tank advantage at night and will not attack". In the second half of the night, the Ming army engaged in this kind of "artillery teasing" again.
, the Qing army was not very nervous anymore. Except for necessary vigilance, others should still sleep.
At two or three o'clock in the middle of the night, the Ming army estimated that the Qing army was also numb to the "artillery provocation" and began to change its tactics. They no longer fired artillery shells, but fired signal flares and smoke screens.
For a moment, red, green, white...flares of various colors appeared over the Ming army's position one after another, as if each division and regiment suddenly stepped up their coded communication, as if another big move was about to happen. Next, the Ming army began to launch a large-scale attack.
Use smoke screen. Follow up
Rows of cannons rang out, and batches of smoke bombs fell in front of the Qing army's positions. Thick smoke was sprayed wildly, and the sight of the Qing army's observation post was immediately obscured. The night was already dark, and there were so many smoke screens.
, the sight of the Qing army observation post suddenly deteriorated to the extreme.
As a result, the Qing army became nervous again. In the Qing army's defense section where there was a smoke screen, the soldiers who had been arranged to go to bed were now woken up again, rubbing their eyes, grabbing their rifles, and lying on the edge of the trench in preparation for the attack.
possible attack.
But just like the previous night, the Qing army's position was noisy and tense for a long time, but nothing happened on the other side.
After the Ming army engaged in two separate attacks on different Qing defense sections, the Qing army got ready to retaliate and launched artillery bombardments on the Ming army's positions.
However, this is the benefit of the initiative. Now the initiative on the battlefield is in the hands of the Ming army. The Ming army is the attacker and the Qing army is the defender. When the Ming army shells the Qing army's position, the Qing army will be nervous, because the Ming army is really
It is possible to attack. But if the Qing army shells the Ming army's position, the Ming army will not be nervous, because the Qing army cannot take the initiative to attack.
In fact, the Ming army was expecting the Qing army to abandon their fixed positions and jump out of the trenches to charge at them. The Qing army was not that stupid. They would not be so stupid as to abandon the trenches they had been operating for more than a month and use flesh and blood to fight against them.
The body clashed with the Ming army's aircraft and tanks.
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Originally, in a normal confrontation between armies A and B, Party A has air superiority and armor superiority, while Party B only has superiority in troops, trenches, and artillery. During the day, Party A attacks and Party B defends, but at night, when Party A completely loses its air superiority,
Advantages, partial loss of armored advantages
When the situation is strong, Party B should seize the opportunity, use its own strength and artillery advantages, actively attack Party A, launch a night battle, and strive to reverse the defeat during the day. Because the night is always the ally of the weak, and the huge disparity between the two sides during the day,
At night, the disparity is often no longer so great.
But now, in addition to their own advantages and disadvantages, the Ming and Qing armies also have advantages in training, automatic weapons, and morale. The Ming army's individual soldier quality, training level, organizational ability, and the firepower of light weapons are not as good as those of the Qing army.
It can be compared. And these are the killer moves of night fighting. In addition to the training level, automatic weapons, and troop organizational capabilities of the Qing army, which are far inferior to the Ming army, they also have the most fatal weakness - morale.
Now the Qing army has their parents and family members kidnapped by the imperial court, and they have to resist seriously. For the sake of their families, they will not surrender in large numbers and resist seriously. But they will only resist seriously and will not attack seriously. They will jump out of the trenches and charge towards the Ming army's positions.
, the chance of being captured is definitely much higher than staying in the trenches.
This kind of night attack requires alertness, courage, and a high degree of subjective initiative. To put it bluntly, it requires high morale. The soldiers are eager to attack the enemy, rather than being forced with guns. Now even the Qing soldiers take care of themselves
The family had to be ordered to charge against the Ming army, so what every soldier was thinking about was how to save his life and then escape back if there was a chance.
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When the Qing army was bombarding, the Ming army still slept when it was time to sleep and observed when it was time to observe. Unlike the Qing army, which was always in suspense.
The Qing army shelled for a while, but I felt that it was meaningless. Let the soldiers attack, they would probably collapse at the first touch or never return, and they would die down.
The Qing army had ceased its activities and the Ming army had stopped fighting. How could the Qing army sleep well? Otherwise, the Qing army would be in such high spirits during the day tomorrow that there would be no way to fight. So according to the original plan, signal bombs and smoke bombs were fired again.
The Qing army had been fooled twice and was no longer nervous. Based on the repeated experiences of this night, the Qing army commanders were convinced that no matter what the Ming army did, it was just harassment. They could not survive without the air.
With cover and tank advantages, they attacked like this. Faced with layers of smoke screens, the Qing commanders only sent additional observation posts and doubled the number of patrol teams.
But this time at 3:30 in the middle of the night, the Ming army did not simply fire smoke bombs. The Ming army fired smoke bombs for a while, and after the smoke screen in front of the Qing army's position thickened to a certain extent, they began to dispatch some tank platoons.
and armored car company, ten
A group of several vehicles, with their engines roaring, headed towards the Qing army's position. Along the way, they encountered Qing army patrols. The machine guns on the tanks and the machine guns on the armored vehicles, and the submachine guns fired their tongues of fire. They almost instantly killed the few Qing army patrols.
Beat it into a sieve.
On the side of the Qing army's position, some defense sections heard the sound of machine guns, some defense sections heard the sound of tank cannons, and some defense sections heard the roar of engines... But the smoke in front of them was filled with smoke, and new smoke bombs kept coming and exploded.
Nothing can be observed.
The Qing army's defense line was completely hairy. It had already had a certain resistance to the Ming army's "Sparrow War", but now its psychological defense line was breached again - a large group of tanks were driving right before their eyes!
Under extreme fear, the commanders ordered artillery to attack. Suddenly, tens of thousands of artillery fired from the rear of the Qing army, and bursts of flashes of light erupted in the vast area between the two armies.
However, sight at night is inherently poor. Even with the help of flares, searching for targets, estimating distances, calculating angles, calculating movement speeds, etc., a series of shooting factors will be greatly reduced. In addition, the Ming army is now firing smoke bombs, and the Qing army is
The observers could not find the target at all, let alone calculate the numbers. Although the Qing army had many artillery, the anti-tank guns could not find the target at all, so they could only use howitzers to blast blindly, which could not even be considered as indirect aiming.
However, targets like tanks did not care about artillery fire as long as they did not hit directly. The tank squads of the Ming army did not turn on their headlights. They just wandered in front of the Qing army's formation and used the roar of their engines to scare the Qing army.
In this case, even though the Qing army knew that the Ming army might still be harassing them, they did not dare to sleep. After all, the tanks were wandering nearby and might actually come at any time.
The Ming army harassed them like this for an hour. After achieving their goal, the tank squads withdrew their troops one after another and drove back to rest. Smoke bombs were no longer fired.
Gradually, the smoke screen dissipated, and the vast area between the two armies became "clear" again. The Qing army's flares also became sparse.
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After almost a night of tossing, no troops on the more than 500-kilometer defense line of the Qing army had a good night's sleep. They were constantly harassed and intimidated by the Ming army in various ways, and they often fell asleep and fell asleep again.
I was gathered together, I was nervous for a while and then fell asleep, and not long after I fell asleep, I was gathered again... This
It was almost four-thirty in the morning, almost five o'clock, and all the front-line Qing troops on the entire defense line couldn't stand it anymore: they had fought a day of fighting during the day, and they still couldn't sleep well at night. Lack of sleep, coupled with the transition from tension to relaxation, and then to
The repeated tossing of tension and relaxation reached the point of collapse, and my mind was already like a ball of mush.
The front-line commanders of the Qing army sent reports to their superiors one after another, applying for defense changes with the second- and third-line troops in the rear.
In Beijing and Guangwu, they had not slept well all night, and had several false alarms throughout the night. However, he also strictly ordered his subordinates to report immediately if the Central Plains Corps was attacked again. When it was almost dawn in the early morning, he also
He yawned profusely and his eyes were red, but he had to cheer up.
He looked at the clock and saw that it was almost five o'clock. He immediately picked up the phone and went to the headquarters of the Xuzhou Central Plains Corps, strictly ordering them to be more vigilant and ready to repel the real attack of the Ming army at dawn at any time.
Attacking at dawn is a consistent method of the Ming army, and everyone is already experienced with it.
In fact, there was no need for Guangwu's strict orders. The entire command system of the Central Plains Corps also understood that the more dangerous it was at dawn, no matter whether the soldiers opened their eyes or not, they all went to the front line with guns in hand to supervise the battle.
For more than 500 kilometers, the entire Qing army's defense line felt like it was facing a formidable enemy. All artillery units were in position, the shells were loaded into the chambers, and the gun barrels were raised high. They just waited for the observers in front to report the coordinates and fired immediately.
In the intricate trenches, the Qing soldiers who were yawning all over the place cheered up and lay down in front of the trenches, holding rifles, machine guns, and anti-tank guns, staring into the distance with red eyes.
The broken earth.
…
Half an hour passed.
An hour passed.
An hour and a half passed.
The sun slowly came out and rose slowly, covering the whole earth with a layer of crimson sunrise.
In front of the position, a large group of sparrows were chirping, sometimes soaring into the sky, and sometimes falling down to look for food.
Occasionally, a large flowered magpie flew down and jumped on the ground, as if it wanted to look through the blasted soil to see if there were any delicious bugs.
It's already past eight o'clock.
The problem is that there is no movement from the Ming army's position.