The general surnamed Xue ran to Leiyang, but was worried that the 4th Army would not be able to support its independence. Originally, Chief of Staff Zhao Zili was the best candidate and could stay and be the highest commander of the city, but he was sent to Hengyang by himself. After thinking about it, he kept the trusted Operations Director Xu Benchang in Tanzhou.

The military order said that the unified and coordinated command of the defense war in Tanzhou was a major general, but the key point was that Xu Benchang himself was just an army major general, while the 4th Army was an army-level unit. From the commander to the three division commanders, they were all lieutenant generals. The major general commanded lieutenant generals. That wasn’t that funny!

To put it bluntly, even at this time, the general surnamed Xue was still extremely conceited, thinking that as long as he issued a military order, the generals of the 4th Army would have to implement it unconditionally as Feng Lunyin.

But following him with Commander Xue does not mean that he can command the 4th Army's powerful generals by just sending someone.

Xu Benchang is actually a cautious person. He has been a military chief for more than 20 years in the army and has been a brigade commander at most, let alone the experience of commanding large corps forces to combat.

But this person is also an extremely smart person. Seeing that he was left behind as a "burner for firefighting", he also knew that he lacked this ability, so he could only ask for help from Lieutenant General Zhao Zili, who had already gone to Hengyang.

Zhao Zili called him back: The main force of the entire army should be deployed on Yuelu Mountain, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack, rather than in Tanzhou City!

On May 19, the Japanese army officially began to attack Tanzhou.

The Japanese army learned from the first three direct attacks on Tanzhou. Instead of directly attacking Tanzhou, they adopted a large-scale detour tactic and attacked Tanzhou City and Yuelu Mountain from both east and west.

That night, the 58th Division attacked Changsha City. The 34th Division and part of the 68th Division, which had received mountain combat training, detoured the back of Yuelu Mountain to attack. They used ground, artillery and air coordination tactics to attempt to destroy the artillery positions on Yuelu Mountain first.

The 3rd Brigade and the Artillery Battalion of the 4th Army, the more than 50 fixed artillery positions deployed in Yuelu Mountain and the 90th Division's defensive positions were aimed at supporting the security of the Tanzhou flanks in the east. Unexpectedly, the Japanese army launched an attack from the back this time, and for a moment they could only turn the guns to meet the enemy.

Xu Benchang, who received the news, immediately called Zhang Deneng, the commander of the 4th Army, and told him that if Yuelu Mountain is lost, Tanzhou will definitely not be able to defend. If Yuelu Mountain is not lost, the entire Tanzhou urban area can be controlled by the artillery fire of Yuelu Mountain, and Tanzhou will not be lost. Therefore, the most urgent task is to ensure Yuelu Mountain first and ask the 4th Army to immediately go to Yuelu Mountain to transfer another division's troops.

There is no problem with this tactic, but the key point is that when Lieutenant General Zhang Deneng heard it, he thought that the combat chief was giving orders to himself. Isn’t this using the commander’s military order to swear to himself?

He directly used the excuse to say that this was the military deployment of Chief Xue before leaving, and he, the commander, could not change it, and he had to ask Chief Xue for instructions.

In desperation, Xu Benchang had to call the general surnamed Xue who was already far away in Leiyang, but was criticized by the general surnamed Xue.

At this time, who admitted that Zhao Zili was right at the beginning was a complete denial of all his previous words, and how could the conceited general Xue endorsed?

So, this chaotic night was when the Japanese army attacked hard, and the Chinese officers and soldiers fought desperately, while the generals of Tanzhou City were still worried about how to deploy defense.

This is a fatal mistake!

On the morning of the 20th, the Lieutenant General of the 4th Army, who had been thinking hard for a night, finally decided to adjust and deploy according to what Xu Benchang said, and ordered the 59th Division and the 102nd Division to each stayed a regiment to defend Tanzhou, and all the rest crossed the Xiangjiang River and moved closer to Yuelu Mountain.

But at this time, he once again committed a military taboo. The 4th Army had no plans to cross the river, and the military headquarters did not have enough ships. Whether to cross the river or how to cross the river was lacking arrangements from beginning to end. During the process of crossing the river, the general surnamed Xue called to ask about the deployment under his direct subordinates, and he was quite dissatisfied in his words, which led to Zhang Deneng hesitation again, and the two ends of the rat made the crossing of the river on the 20th fall into extreme chaos from the beginning.

The Xiangjiang River is more than 1,000 meters wide. From Tanzhou City, crossing the Xiangjiang River to Yuelu Mountain, the water and land continents in the middle of the Xiangjiang River are completed in two sections. Each section crossing the river requires about half an hour to make a small steamer, and one hour to take a wooden boat.

However, at this time, the 4th Army had only one small steamer from Tanzhou to the Shui and Land Continent, and only more than a dozen wooden ships from the Shui and Land Continent to the west coast. The troops ordered to prepare for crossing the river were as high as 17,000.

Due to insufficient preparation and poor coordination, the 4th Army began to cross the river from the evening of the 20th, and had not yet completely crossed until the morning of the 21st. Tens of thousands of people lined up in a long queue by the river. After dawn, the crossing troops were constantly bombarded by the Japanese army on the other side with machine guns, rebuilding the Japanese artillery in the Yuelu Mountain area. The troops gradually began to shake, and soon the escape of individual soldiers gradually developed to the collapse of the entire army.

But these are not the most deadly. The most deadly thing is that the officers and soldiers of the 4th Army Crossing the River suddenly could not find their own commander.

It turned out that after the commander of the 4th Army crossed the river with his guard that night, the lieutenant general, who was extremely mentally and physically exhausted, fell to bed and ordered people not to disturb him before going to bed. He had no idea that such a serious situation happened outside that night.

When this person woke up, it was already bright and the situation on the Xiang River was no longer controllable. The army of tens of thousands of people collapsed on its entire line. Many officers and soldiers no longer crossed the river and fled south in panic.

The so-called defeat is like a mountain. Not to mention the lieutenant general commander, even the general surnamed Xue cannot stop this avalanche of defeat. The lieutenant general commander could only follow the defeated soldiers and flee towards Xiangtan.

Before the Japanese army could fight much, there was only one division and two regiments left in an elite main infantry army to defend in Tanzhou, and the other six infantry regiments disappeared like this.

Did you say that Yokoyama Yuki was shocked by China's extremely stupid operation?

In the end, the artillery positions on Yuelu Mountain were bombarded by Japanese planes and artillery. Although the four most fierce firepower 150 howitzers were not directly exposed, other artillery positions were seriously damaged, and the artillery's combat power was severely damaged. The 90th Division, which had been unable to obtain support, had a sluggish morale. Its position was lost until the 2nd day. The division commander led the division headquarters and the guard battalion to escape from the battlefield.

The Yuelu Mountain position was declared lost on the 23rd. In addition to a few troops still continuing to defend the two infantry regiments in Tanzhou City, the remaining troops also began to break out of the city.

On May 24, the remaining troops of the 4th Army were all injured and killed, and Tanzhou City fell!

The fourth battle of Tanzhou, from the Japanese army's attack mode on May 8 to the fall of the entire city of Tanzhou, it was only half a month, and its collapse speed was comparable to that of the first war zone in Henan Province.

After receiving the telegram of the complete fall of Tanzhou City, General Xue stood blankly in the temporary headquarters in Leiyang for an hour.

The once conceited and arrogant person was replaced by a bitter face!

What he predicted by the young chief of staff who was sent to Hengyang was completely true!

Tanzhou was lost at such a fast speed, and the whole country was in an uproar! That person was also extremely embarrassed!

This pressure is not only from domestic military and civilian public opinion, but also from the Allied forces to make frequent reports on the European battlefield and the Pacific battlefield. However, in the Chinese theater in the East Asian continent, it faces unprecedented severe tests since the full war of resistance.

Tanzhou is a major area in Hunan Province. Once Tanzhou is lost, northern Hunan will be lost. If Hunan Province is fully occupied by the Japanese army, it will mean that southern China and the Central China Plain will be cut open, which will be a great disadvantage in the national war situation.

On the day when Yuelu Mountain fell on the 23rd, the man held an emergency military meeting in the mountain city to re-select the decisive battle site. The senior generals participating in the meeting unanimously agreed that with the force invested by the Japanese army at this time, they would not only occupy Tanzhou, but they would definitely attack Hengyang, the most important city in southern Hunan.

The deputy chief of staff who commanded the battle outside was called Xiao Zhuge and the general surnamed Bai, who was called the Ministry of Military Affairs: "In order to have enough time to organize the Battle of Liugui, I hope that a defender can hold the Japanese army in Hengyang!"

The military meeting that day finally determined the tactical plan of "blocking the middle and sandwiching the two sides", and the center of this plan was Hengyang!

Hengyang, a city that Tang Dao and Fang Xianjue kept mentioning a month ago, appeared in the eyes of senior officials from both China and Japan.

Hengyang, what kind of magic does this city built from the Western Han Dynasty have? The senior executives of China and Japan regard it as a must-fight place, even more important than the provincial capital of Tanzhou.

All of this is determined by Hengyang’s current geographical location and the current situation in China!

In the early years of the Republic of China, Hengyang had a population of less than 60,000. The roads were so narrow that cars were not accessible. There were no lights in the city. It was black at night, and it was just a small county town with stagnation.

But in the 1930s, the booming railway and highway transportation construction boom in China completely changed the fate of this small town in southern Hunan.

By 1939, after the Hengbao Highway from Hengyang to Baoqing was opened, it could directly lead to Guizhou Province! At this point, Hengyang became an important hub for the highway networks of Hunan, Jiangxi, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.

After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, major coastal ports in China fell one after another. A large number of materials could only be imported from Hong Kong, loaded in Yangcheng, transported to Hengyang, and then transported from Hengyang by railway and highway to the whole country.

In 1938, Yangcheng fell, and materials could only start from small wharfs in Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, and gather along the thin line of transportation as thin as a spider web to Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, Qianshan, Ganzhou Province and other distribution centers. Finally, all major roads connected to Hengyang and were transported to the whole country through Hengyang.

There is also a developed water system in Hunan Province. As long as you pass through the Xiangjiang River from Hengyang, pass through Xiangtan and enter Dongting, then enter western Hubei, and finally transfer the materials to the southwest rear.

Because of the war, most of the people who fled from Jiangnan, North China and Central China arrived in Hengyang from Tanzhou and chose to go to Guizhou or Yunnan Province. Many people simply stopped in the small town of Hengyang and retreated south.

In just four years, Hengyang's population soared from 60,000 to 300,000. By 1942, the government simply set Hengyang as a provincial HY city, with Zhao Junmai, a Hengyang native who had studied in the United States, serving as the mayor of HY.

Zhao Junmai is indeed a good at administration. In two years, he developed Hengyang into an extremely important financial and manufacturing center in China with 6,000 businesses and more than 130 factories. In the first quarter of 1944, Hengyang ranked second in the country in terms of industrial and commercial tax payment, second only to Paidu Shancheng.

Yokoyama Yuki and Kazushima Kazushima regarded the city of Hengyang as an extremely important node on the important channel when the Japanese army marched into the southwest and eventually connected the Chinese battlefield and Southeast Asian battlefield as one. They hoped to fight the main force of China at this node to bring news of victory to the Japanese military and civilians with low morale, and lay the foundation for the subsequent strategy of southwest China.

In the eyes of Chinese generals, Hengyang is the waist of South China, the gateway to the southwest. Advance can control Guizhou Province, suppress Yunnan and Burma, and spy on mountain cities; retreat can restrain central China and guard South China, and its position is extremely important.

At the same time, China's fourth, sixth, seventh and ninth fourth major war zones have the advantage of quickly concentrating the forces of various war zones in Jiangnan in one place.

On the 26th, Lieutenant General Hengshan Yong, the commander of the 11th Japanese Army who entered Tanzhou City in a tank car, was in the yard of the chief general Xue from Yuelu Mountain and said to the reporter who accompanied the army with great enthusiasm: "Although Hengyang is important, it is not difficult to conquer Hengyang!"

"His Excellency Yokoyama, I don't know if I can conquer Hengyang for a long time?" The Japanese military reporter should have been accurate. Yokoyama was happy and took the initiative to help him increase the topic.

"Give me the warriors of the 11th Army Empire on the 10th, one week to march. If you defeat the enemy, 3 days will be enough!" Yokoyama Yong thought for a moment and stretched out three fingers!

The photo of Lieutenant General Yokoyama making an "OK" gesture at the commander-in-chief of the 9th China War Zone was on the front page of Japan's "Asakhi Shimbun" a week later.

The entire Japanese people were excited!

Since the defeat of the Midway Navy, the Imperial Navy has been retreating steadily on the Pacific battlefield. American bombers have even threatened the island. A sad feeling of impending defeat has begun to spread among the Japanese people.

The Imperial Army's victory on the Chinese battlefield this time was like a heart-warming agent, allowing the Japanese people to see that although the Navy did not seek action, they still had a powerful army.

The Japanese Army Province seized the opportunity to request additional funds at the military meeting organized by the headquarters to purchase more equipment, which completely surpassed the Japanese Navy, which had lost troops and lost generals. The army generals were so energetic!

However, if you pretend to be a slut, you will eventually have to depend on the outcome of the Hengyang battle, otherwise you will become a slut that you will be fucked if you don’t.

Under Hengshan Yong's strict order, the 11th Army did not do more rest in Tanzhou City and immediately rushed to Hengyang.

And China is also making final preparations for the battle in Hengyang.

The other party called the general named Xue: "The purpose of blocking the enemy from entering deeper and ensuring Hengyang!", hoping that the 9th War Zone would gather troops to prevent the Japanese army from going south to Hengyang and gain enough time for the Hengyang defenders.

At the same time, Fang Xianjue, who was unemployed in the mountain city, also waited for the call from that person!

May 24 at 3 a.m.!

Fang Xianjue was woken up by his military secretary and said that someone would call him to find Commander Fang.

Fang Xianjue is still in his dream. He has been watching various telegrams sent from Hunan Province with unfavorable war situations in the Ministry of Military Affairs these days. This is simply a torment for a general who is determined to serve the country.

Perhaps since he couldn't sleep on May 9, Fang Xianjue finally understood what he really wanted in his heart.

He was heartbroken by the sacrifice of his close friend, and was also indignant of the general Xue's exclusion of dissidents, so he became discouraged and became determined to retreat. After the Ministry of Military Affairs arrived, he felt even more depressed. It was only after talking to Tang Dao that he regained his fighting spirit.

However, he still did not dare to return to the 10th Army. He knew too well the weight of the general surnamed Xue in his heart. Not to mention his confidant, but it was much more important than him, a general who did not belong to the Central Army faction.

It has been half a month since Fang Xianjue can only sleep for three hours a day. He is extremely worried about his 15,000 brothers who are still in Hengyang.

He knew very well that if the situation of the war was as if Tang Dao and he had used war chess, Hengyang would have become a place where the Chinese and Japanese armies would have to fight, and his 10th Army would have to stay there, either guarding the city or turning into ashes with the entire city.

The 10th Army will not retreat without fighting, because they are the "Taishan Army"!

"What kind of army commander Fang, I'm no longer the army commander." Fang Xianjue said impatiently.

"It's that!" The military secretary could only tell him in a low voice.

Fang Xianjue suddenly woke up and quickly walked to the living room to answer the phone.

There was a strong Zhejiang accent on the other end of the phone: "Is it the 10th Army's Fangxiu?"

Fang Xianjue stood at attention and replied loudly: "Sir, I am Fang Xianjue!"

The voice on the other end of the phone was slow and quick: "Fang Xianjue Fang Zishan, because of her personal grudges with the superiors, she ignored the national justice. Are you still my student?"

This sounded like Fang Xianjue, but it seemed that the two were close, and tears flowed out on the spot.

After calming down and being excited, Fang Xianjue replied loudly: "The students knew that they were wrong. As long as the country and nation needed me, I would definitely go through fire and water and never shirk responsibility! The students were determined to lead their old subordinates to fight against the Japanese invaders in Hengyang, thinking that the main force gathered to gain time."

"Okay! It seems that you have not been out of the Ministry of Military Affairs these days, it's great! This battle is related to the overall situation of my war of resistance and the survival of the country and nation. I hope that all the officers and soldiers of your 10th Army will work hard and encourage themselves in the face of the national crisis. Everyone dares to take important tasks and live up to my expectations for the 10th Army.
To be continued...