Episode 6 The spring breeze does not pass through Yumen Pass
On April 21, the marching troops left Lanzhou. Tanks and armored vehicles broke down constantly along the way, and the repair company was overwhelmed. Everyone regretted that they should have brought a "repair team" if they had known this happened.
You can only march during the day every day, and you must be stationed at night. Because the road conditions are not good, some sections are asphalt roads, and most of the roads are dirt roads. And regardless of the asphalt roads or dirt roads, they are all full of potholes. Marching at night is prone to trouble. And with the current situation
Judging from the situation, there are already too many faults during daytime marches. If we march around the clock, the number of faults will be doubled or tripled.
The current model is that when marching during the day, the repair company tries to pick the most urgent repairs first, so that it can make it on the road without falling behind. At night, the repair company cannot be idle. While the army is stationed, it is repairing some problems that have been put aside during the day.
Repairing. Often I stay up all night and have to march and repair the next day.
On the more than 500 kilometers of sandy dirt road from Lanzhou to Zhangye, the failure rate of armored vehicles has reached 70%, and the failure rate of tanks has reached 85%. Almost every tank has been broken down. Some tanks have been broken down more than once. Xiang Xiaoqiang
According to the opinions of the repair company, all tanks and tracked vehicles were ordered not to drive continuously. Every four hours of driving, regardless of whether they are broken or not, they must stop for half an hour for maintenance. Otherwise, it will be more troublesome to repair them if they are broken.
In this way, the failure rate is greatly reduced, but starting and stopping like this does not increase the overall marching speed. The only advantage is that the life of the tank is increased.
The distance from Lanzhou to Zhangye is more than 500 kilometers. If you take a car, even if you don't speed, it will take you eight or nine hours. But such a huge armored division actually walked for six days. The average daily average for the entire division
The advance is less than 100 kilometers. The failure rate of wheeled vehicles is very low, but you can't get rid of all the tanks and move forward by yourself, right?
In the past six days, Xiang Xiaoqiang was furious, swearing, and constantly urging reinforcements to the rear - reinforcements for the repair team. And all the officers and soldiers were dejected. The continental climate has a large temperature difference between day and night, and during the day he was covered in sand and sweat.
, the wind blows hard
Bang bang. The temperature dropped sharply at night, and I was shivering from the cold. There was no place to take a bath along the way. There was always some dust and sand in the food we ate. There was nothing we could do about it. But there was even dust in the water we drank. No matter how careful we were, the sand and dust
I can always get into the kettle. I don’t know how I got in.
Speaking of water, not to mention bathing, even the basic water supply for the troops is almost not guaranteed. First of all, more than 10,000 people need to drink water, and they also need water for cooking three meals a day. And the water used by people is still small. The big part is vehicles.
Water. There are so many tanks, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery, cars, and motorcycles that consume not only fuel but also water every day. This place is no better than the eastern battlefield, where there is
Even in the North China battlefield, you will always encounter small rivers and ditches when driving for more than ten miles. And here, on the Gansu Silk Road, it is simply one of the most water-scarce places in China. For more than 500 kilometers, there is no water.
I have seen several rivers with water, and there are very few residential areas. It is normal to see no human habitation for dozens of kilometers. The absence of human habitation means that not even a well can be found.
In this way, every time they found a village, the troops would drive in all the fuel trucks and water trucks and pump water from the wells. Not only were the water trucks full, but Xiang Xiaoqiang also ordered the empty fuel tank trucks to be filled with empty oil.
The bucket is also filled with water. Although people cannot drink the mixed fuel, it can be used for vehicles.
The groundwater along the way is often bitter and unpleasant, incomparable to the sweetness of the groundwater in the east. Even if the water here is boiled, there is still a film-like substance floating on it, so you have to pour it out carefully before you can drink it.
All this combined brought the morale of the entire division to its lowest point.
Fortunately, we can eat tropical fruits every day, and cigarettes are also doubled, which boosts morale. Originally, Xiang Xiaoqiang wanted to give out more chocolates to boost morale, but after a day of testing, he found that it didn’t work: eating too much chocolate made him sick.
I felt tired and drank too much water. And water was stressful, so I had to give up.
…
From Zhangye to Jiuquan, tens of kilometers north of the highway is the Tengger Desert. Every spring, strong winds in Inner Mongolia pass through the Tengger Desert, forming sandstorms that block the sky and the sun.
This is a hardship for the 1st Armored Division of the People's Guard. The previous journey was just dust and ordinary wind, but now it is a real sandstorm. When the sandstorm comes together, you can hardly see the sun, the wind sounds like ghosts crying and wolves howling, and the world is a miserable scene.
.
The light suddenly changed from day to "dusk" and then to "night". All the vehicles turned on their lights, but they could barely shine on the butt of the car in front. They were driving slowly enough, and the speed was only
After more than ten kilometers, we were now caught in a sandstorm, and our speed slowed down again, to only a few kilometers per hour.
As a mechanized force, facing sandstorms at this time, both advantages and disadvantages are reflected. The disadvantage is naturally that the failure rate doubles and the failures caused by sand and dust increase sharply. But the advantage is that the soldiers can hide in the car and do not have to look like
Like ordinary infantry units, they are directly exposed to sandstorms.
The military trucks naturally covered the canvas tightly, and the tops of the armored vehicles were also covered with oilcloth. The soldiers hid under the oilcloth and listened to the "crackling" sound of the side armor plates being hit by flying sand and stones, as if they were being beaten.
It was like bullets were being fired. At this time, no one in the car could hear each other. They could only see the oilcloth above their heads slowly being pressed down because too much sand had accumulated in the concave area. At this time, the soldiers inside were about to beat the oilcloth.
Let the sand fly away.
The commander of the tank also retracted into the turret. However, the tank driver could not close the observation window, otherwise he would not be able to drive. At this time, the observation window of the driver's seat became a channel for sand to pour in. The machine next to it
At this time, the gunner has to be responsible for cleaning up the sand and covering important places with raincoats to prevent sand from entering the mechanical parts. Every once in a while, he has to hold the sand with his hands and throw it out of the car. But even so, there are still a large number of tanks due to sand and dust.
Entered too much and broke down to be repaired.
Whenever the sandstorm subsides, the repairmen wear raincoats and trot along with tool boxes, shuttling and clearing obstacles like worker bees.
Whether it's a car, an armored vehicle, or a tank, the appearance is terrible. The paint on the surface is scarred, as if it has been sandpapered, and the original color can hardly be seen clearly.
Fortunately, at this time, reinforcements from the rear repair troops arrived. This time, three repair companies came, and together with the original repair companies of the 1st Armored Division, they formed a strengthened "repair battalion." This was considered to ease the repair process.
Due to the tight manpower situation, the entire division moved faster.
…
The troops marched arduously for three days on a road ravaged by sandstorms. It was not until they arrived in Jiuquan on April 30 that they finally left the Tengger Desert behind. With the wind direction this spring, although there was still a lot of sand and dust in the wind, it was not
As for the sandstorm.
After escaping from the clutches of the sandstorm, and with a large increase in repair manpower, the number of kilometers traveled every day has exceeded 100. After Jiuquan, we will reach Jiayuguan. The 120 kilometers of highway from Jiayuguan to Yumen Pass can be covered in one day.
There are some oases between Jiuquan and Yumen, but after passing Yumen Pass, you will see a more desolate scene.
There is an old poem saying: The spring breeze does not pass through Yumen Pass.
Only now can Xiang Xiaoqiang finally understand the meaning of this poem.
The wheels of the car rolled on the road full of saline and hard soil, making a "knock, click, click" sound. Xiang Xiaoqiang put his hands on his hips, wearing goggles, a mask, and a scarf, holding on to the windshield of the officer's car,
Standing in the car with head held high, they drove along the long queue, raising their hands to greet the officers and soldiers on the car and boost their morale.
Only the right side is the motorcade, while the front, rear, and left side are all endless wilderness. The sunset in front is blood red, and it is so bleak that it seems to be bleeding. It is simply like "the solitary smoke is straight in the desert, and the sun is setting in the long river." Here.
Except there is no "long river", everything else is there.
Desolate, desolate, desolate.
How to describe it? Xiang Xiaoqiang only has one movie in his mind right now - "New Dragon Gate Inn". That's what it feels like right now.
As he rode the car on the sandy road, facing the wind and sand, he kept humming the desolate tune in "New Dragon Gate Inn" in his heart, the murderous spirit of the pipa and the kite popping up randomly, imagining the "Cao Cao" in the East Factory of the Ming Dynasty.
"The father-in-law's horse team" was wrapped in black cloaks and held high flags, galloping mercilessly in the wind and sand of the desert, slaughtering all the Longmen Inn and annihilating Zhou Huai'an...
However, no matter how he looked back, he felt that his embarrassed armored division could not compare with "Eunuch Cao's cavalry" in terms of momentum and marching speed.
Oh, damn... Xiang Xiaoqiang comforted himself mentally and said: A movie is a movie. If Eunuch Cao's horse team were to travel through time and let them run in a sandstorm for ten minutes, all those horses would vomit blood and die.
…
Leaving Yumen in the west, after marching for nearly four days, we have entered the Hami area. We have finally entered the boundary of "Huijiang". After passing Hami, we pass through Turpan, and cross the northern chain of the Tianshan Mountains from Changji and Urumuqi.
, and entered Northern Xinjiang.
Hami and Turpan are both south of the Tianshan Mountains and belong to southern Xinjiang. However, in the Ming-Soviet Agreement, these two areas with a large number of Han people and rich products were not ceded to the Soviet Union. Now the Soviet army has occupied other areas in southern Xinjiang.
But it has not entered these two places. So far, the Soviet Union has kept its word.
But Xiang Xiaoqiang did not dare to take it lightly. He knew that Stalin was like a bear, watching carefully from the side. If the Ming Dynasty could not fight this battle well, it could not show Stalin in this battle that the Ming army would even have to fight for an expedition.
If it can maintain a high combat effectiveness, then Stalin will think that the Ming Dynasty does not have the ability to defend the Western Region, and he will definitely further annex the northern Xinjiang.
On May 8, the troops entered the Turpan Basin. On May 9, the troops passed Urumqi and entered the Changji area.
Now, we have officially entered northern Xinjiang. Now we have entered the rebels' sphere of influence.
From the other side's point of view, now "the iron hooves of the Ming invading army have officially set foot on the land of the Ili Empire."