Rise From Eight Hundred

September 9th at 11am!

The 62nd Infantry Regiment finally arrived at the Niangziguan flank after an arduous trek of five and a half hours and at the cost of nearly 180 casualties of officers and soldiers!

Looking at the undulating mountains with dense vegetation, and clearly hearing the rumble of cannons from several kilometers away, Hengshan Ze wanted to lead the army all the way into this mountain forest. Maybe it wouldn't take until dusk to coordinate with the main force. The pincer attack destroyed the infantry regiment that was rumored to be magical within the front army.

But Hengshanze, who has a military career of more than 20 years, is not a reckless man. He knows that there must be Chinese soldiers hidden in the lush mountains in front of him.

A victory on the battlefield may be called a fluke, but the Four Lines Regiment's solid record has proven the ability of its commander. He will never abandon such an important area on the flanks and will only station troops on the front.

Therefore, Hengshanze, who was eager to win, even had the patience to order his three infantry brigades to send out nearly ten groups of reconnaissance troops, with a strength of more than 160 people, to conduct reconnaissance on the mountains in front of him!

The Chinese soldiers on the highlands will naturally not tolerate them, and will even shoot and kill the Japanese reconnaissance soldiers who dare to approach the highlands from a distance of 300 meters!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" sporadic gunshots continued from afternoon to nearly dusk!

This highland reconnaissance battle in which the Japanese reconnaissance elite sacrificed their lives was not over until the simple sand table in front of Yokoyama Sawa was filled with white flags representing the enemy!

At the cost of 42 deaths and 48 injuries, the Japanese reconnaissance leaders were able to ascertain the general situation of China's troop garrison for Yokoyama Sawa, who liked to use sandboxes instead of maps before the war.

Seeing the densely packed small white flags on the sand table, Hengshan Ze also had a headache. The Chinese side almost never spared any high ground in the mountains. Each high ground was like a nail. If they wanted to pass through, they had to pull them out one by one.

This is just what is in front of us. It is obvious that there must be garrisons on the hills deep inward. The 62nd Infantry Regiment has no shortcuts and can only attack and attack again.

Moreover, it is not possible to gather troops in one place and use a certain highland as a breakthrough point. Although it can form an absolute force to tear a hole, the mountains here cannot deploy troops. Once covered by heavy firepower, casualties will increase exponentially!

And what's even more terrible is that it will attract more and more Chinese reinforcements, and as the army kills people, it will form a terrible "hollow" concept, that is, the Chinese may be able to concentrate all their troops and firepower to fight decisively with them by taking advantage of their geographical advantages. The narrow bottom of the high ground where a large number of troops can enter will also become an obstacle to the army, which is perhaps what the Chinese want to see most.

Therefore, the infantry must spread out and use the three lines as a breakthrough. As long as there is a gap, they will divide and encircle each other, first annihilate the Chinese nails on the first line of continuous high ground with a width of 4,000 meters, and then advance deeper into it. .

Hengshan Ze knew very well that this battle could not be resolved in a day or two, and the best strategy was to take action slowly!

But he knew in his heart that it was the same thing, but in practice, this ferocious Japanese army left winger became a completely different person.

Just like the highland attack faced by the First Infantry Brigade under his personal supervision!

After exploratory shelling with the four mountain guns and two infantry guns he carried and half an hour of observation, Yokoyama Sawa personally formulated the tactics of the First Infantry Group.

Taking the lowest highland in the edge zone as the breakthrough point, although the Chinese on the highlands on both sides will definitely use heavy machine guns for fire support, it is obvious that there will not be many troops on that highland, and as long as that highland is occupied, the area The Chinese on the two highlands had to divide their forces to defend their flanks, which accordingly reduced the pressure on the front.

This move is called 'pulling teeth from the tiger's mouth', which directly confuses the Chinese commanders who must have more troops stationed on the two highlands!

And that so-called low highland is the 209.1 highland where Tu Yunsheng and Boss Cao are!

An infantry squad of 17 men faced a Japanese infantry squadron of 184 men, a strength comparison of 11 to 1.

At 5 p.m., near dusk, with the long blast of Japanese hand-cranked sirens, three Japanese infantry squads entered the battlefield one after another.

The most brutal battle in the Niangziguan defense war began here!

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Boss Cao, who had disguised himself as a stone on the battlefield, had been lying there for ten minutes, just to protect the two Japanese invaders he had targeted 200 meters away, even though the Japanese infantry artillery shells were just ten meters away from him. There was an explosion, and rocks and soil flew into the sky and hit him painfully. The choking smoke penetrated his nostrils and made his nose and mouth black.

A grenade from the grenade team hit the machine gun team of the 4th squad, killing one of the two machine gunners and wounding the other.

The machine gun shooter I had been with day and night for three months was a cheerful Sichuan man. The hearty man was blown up by a grenade and was two meters high. The blood of the cheerful man flew like this on the face of the lying boss Cao. Cao almost didn't have to look back. The boss knew that the cheerful Sichuan man could no longer tell him how smart his three-year-old son was and how virtuous his hard-working wife was. His 24-year-old young life ended abruptly on this autumn day.

Damn devil! The tears in his eyes did not catch the sight of Boss Hu Cao. The super grenadier, who could almost throw grenades 80 meters away, knew that if he wanted to avenge his comrades, grenades alone were not enough. This time he had to use his own gun.

The middle-aged man who had been in the army for less than 4 months had been staring at the Japanese grenade thrower who was completely unaware but was extremely cunning and almost completely concealed his body.

It was not until ten minutes later that the Japanese grenade thrower quietly poked his head out to observe the battlefield situation and find the Chinese firepower point. The middle-aged man who had maintained a posture for 10 minutes in the hail of bullets suddenly pulled the trigger.

One shot hit.

The 7.92 caliber bullet accurately hit the five-pointed star position on the Japanese helmet. The distance of 200 meters allowed the bullet with an initial velocity of 810 meters per second to arrive almost instantly.

In the sight of the Czech-made short-barreled rifle, Boss Cao could clearly see the head of the Japanese grenade thrower who was hit suddenly leaning back.

Boss Cao knew that the little devil was dead.

Hitting this position, the rolling bullet would open the human skull and stir the brain tissue into a ball of mud.

Boss Cao, who had no idea about military merit at this moment, finally understood the meaning of what Tang Tuanzuo said when he was giving a speech to the recruit company.

"There is no ultimate success, nor fatal failure. The most valuable thing is the courage to keep moving forward!"

Soldiers, as long as they are on the battlefield, success and failure are no longer something they can consider. What they have to do is to kill the enemy and continue to kill the enemy!

This is actually the fourth wave of the Japanese army's three infantry squads attacking Hill 209.1 in turn.

In the first two waves, the Japanese army had already found out that there were not enough troops on this small hill, and there were no heavy firepower points, but the light firepower was very fierce, especially on the high ground on both sides, which would provide mortar fire support from time to time.

Therefore, starting from the third wave, the Japanese army became much more determined, making full use of the complex terrain of the mountains, constantly alternating to cover the advance, and an infantry gun in the rear even approached the 800-meter area for artillery support.

Fortunately, although the altitude of 209.1 Highland is not high, the area is not very large, and the Japanese gave the Fourth Regiment nearly 3 days, which was enough for the 4th squad to cooperate with the brothers of the engineering company to build a relatively complete fortification with two trenches and several anti-artillery holes here.

The fierce fire of semi-automatic rifles and submachine guns plus a light machine gun suppressed the Japanese army outside the 120-meter cordon.

But the Japanese army refused to retreat, and they fired at the 4th squad on the top of the mountain in an area of ​​about 150 meters. The 6 grenade launchers also stayed more than 300 meters away and bombarded the position, forcing the infantry of the 4th squad to change their positions after firing a few shots, otherwise they might be targeted by the grenade launchers.

That undoubtedly greatly reduced the density of firepower!

In the end, it was the three 60-mm mortars placed on the high ground where the platoon was located that fired together to repel the third wave of the Japanese attack.

Putting small-caliber mortars in the platoon-level combat unit is definitely the wisest choice for Tang Tuanzuo, especially after the test of this highland attack and defense battle.

Although the caliber of the 60 mortar is small, it is not much larger than the 50mm caliber of the Japanese grenade launcher, but the charge of its shell is more than twice that of the Japanese grenade, and the fragments of the shell body are much more, and the damage caused is definitely not comparable to that of the grenade launcher.

Especially when the firing angle is fixed, a skilled gunner can completely achieve a density of one round every 3 seconds, which means that in one minute, 3 60 mortars firing at full speed can completely fire 60 rounds of shells.

The mortar squad, which was ordered by the second lieutenant platoon leader to concentrate fire for 3 minutes, actually used up 200 shells in one breath, accounting for a quarter of the ammunition stored in the entire artillery squad.

Even the second lieutenant platoon leader felt very painful when he heard this number.

The baggage battalion carried a lot of small-caliber mortar shells this time, but the number that could be distributed to each infantry battalion would never exceed 10,000.

Good guy, within less than an hour of the start of the war, his platoon had fired 300 shells, which would be nearly 1,000 shells for a company. If the battalion commander and company commander knew about it, they would definitely eat him alive.

But he had no choice. The Japanese actually played a trick. They only deployed one infantry squadron to attack two high grounds with three infantry squads and one mortar squad, but they deployed an entire infantry squadron to attack a small high ground where only one squad 4 was located.

How could he, as a platoon leader, not fully support? The Four-Line Regiment had no habit of abandoning his comrades!

Moreover, if the 209.1 high ground was lost, the high grounds on both sides would lose their flank protection, and the Japanese army could completely deploy heavy troops to launch an attack from the two ridges or even from behind.

In any case, support was required!

This small-caliber mortar produced in the French Empire made a terrifying sound like opening a beer bottle, which completely became a nightmare that the Japanese infantrymen who survived the offensive and defensive battle would wake up every night.

Because no one knew where the shells would fall. No matter where you hid, those terrible shells that rained down from the sky and turned the area within ten meters into hell might put you in the attack range of shrapnel.

In a sense, this small-caliber mortar specially used to kill infantry was even more painful for the Japanese soldiers hiding on the hillside than the larger-caliber mountain guns and howitzers.

However, a few hundred grams of charge was destined not to produce too strong a shock wave, but more irregular shell fragments made people want to dig a hole and hide in the cave to feel safe.

Even if you lie down, you may be shot into a sieve by the flying shell fragments.

When it comes to killing people, cannons are always better than guns.

Although the 16 soldiers on Hill 209.1 fired thousands of bullets in one hour, only a dozen Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded.

However, the efficiency of using more than 300 bullets to kill an enemy is much higher than that of the Western World War II.

But compared with the results of the 200 shells thrown by the 60 mortars on the Japanese infantry in three minutes, it is really weak.

The front width of Hill 209.1 is only 60 meters, and the vertical height is just over 200 meters, but the slope is a gentle slope of more than 40 degrees. In fact, the length of the slope from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain is about 500 meters. The Japanese troops are distributed in the area 330 to 120 meters from the top of the mountain, and the area is about two football fields.

This means that even if the Japanese infantry were hiding in the positions in the form of scattered lines, with an average of one Japanese soldier hiding every two or three meters, it would be a tragedy to face this terrible density of bombing with an average of one shell falling every ten meters.

If you are lucky, even if the shell explodes two meters away from him, hiding in the natural stone pit will only splash a sound of dust, and at most his ears will be deafened by the "big firecrackers" and lose hearing for a short time.

If you are lucky, you will stick to the ground desperately, but you will only be hit by the flying gravel or shell fragments. Whether it is the legs or arms, as long as it is not the vital parts such as the head and chest and abdomen, although you are injured and bleeding, you can still breathe.

Even if it is choking gunpowder.

If you are unlucky, that is, the unlucky ones, no matter you are hiding behind the rocks or in the shell pit, the shells that happen to fall on your forehead or near your forehead will blow you into pieces.

Of course, such unlucky people are still a minority after all, only about 20 or 30.

In fact, those who were directly killed by the explosion and returned to the arms of Amaterasu should be considered lucky. Those who were not so lucky but were injured but not dead were the real unlucky ones.

A simple first aid kit may stop the bleeding, but it can't stop the pain. What's more terrible is that you have lost the ability to move and can only lie down and watch the shells continue to fall. The feeling of being sentenced to death with a reprieve may be something no one wants to try.

After three minutes of mortar shells raining down, the Japanese infantry positions were full of ghosts and wolves howling.

Whether Chinese or Japanese, not every soldier is a hero. Many heroes are forced to do so. It has come to that point. What else can you do if you don't fight?

Kill one to get the cost, kill two to earn one! This is the psychological preparation that Chinese soldiers made for themselves when they fought hard.

Loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor and for the samurai spirit, this is the psychological comfort that the Japanese strong army gave themselves before they died!

Unfortunately, except for a quarter of the infantrymen of the newly formed 21st Division who were veterans, most of the other soldiers were either recruits with one year of military service or reserve soldiers. They did not reach the level of soldiers in the permanent division.

Moreover, no matter how tough the nerves are, no matter how strong the mental hypnosis is, when you see your blood flowing like tap water, your muscles cracking like the mouth of a baby, and the yellow subcutaneous fat can be clearly seen, it will be completely broken!

The crying child gets the milk, not only for the children, but also for the louder the medics will naturally crawl over faster.

As the alarm sounded, the Japanese army retreated, dragging the wounded and corpses.

A round of artillery rain smashed the third wave of attack launched by Yokoyama Ze himself.

All the officers and soldiers of the 4th squad breathed a sigh of relief and quickly notified the stretcher team 400 meters behind the mountain to carry down the two seriously injured soldiers hit by bullets, and the rest of the lightly injured were bandaged on the spot by the medics in the trenches.

All the members restocked their ammunition, entered the anti-gun cave to drink water and repair, and originally thought that the Japanese army would not launch another attack after the setback, and took turns to guard at night to prevent the Japanese army from attacking!

Who knew that the Japanese army launched the fourth wave less than 20 minutes later, when the sun was setting, as if they would not stop until the battle was over today, and they had to fight all night.

The fourth wave of the Japanese attack was once again in a stalemate, but this time, the Japanese army formed a death squad with white cloth tied across their chests, crawling to an area only 100 meters away from the trench!

Even the grenade launcher and light machine gun were only 200 meters away!

The two sides almost entered a face-to-face shooting! The Japanese army still had more than 140 troops, but there were only 14 infantrymen in the trench!

This was not within the range of Boss Cao throwing grenades, so Boss Cao turned into a cold shooter, but you have to say, his shooting skills were not bad. Relying on the unique calmness of middle-aged people and the hard training of recruits, he actually shot the Japanese grenade launcher in the head from 200 meters away.

And this was not just the first prey in his nearly 25-minute fierce battle. Before that, he also killed a guy who was in the front with a face full of flesh and a waist knife.

Boss Cao didn't know that the guy was the second lieutenant captain of the Japanese death squad. He was a veteran who had served in the army for more than 8 years. He had experienced the Battle of Rehe and the Battle of Lugou Bridge. Unexpectedly, he died on an unknown hillside in Taihang Mountain, and was killed by a Chinese recruit.

The two targets killed by Boss Cao were very valuable, but this still could not relieve the current pressure on Hill 209.1. The Japanese army was slowly approaching the top of the mountain relying on the fire cover from the rear and the advantage in manpower.

The platoon had previously sent a flag signal to tell the 4th squad that the mortar ammunition was consumed too much, and the next fire support would only be after the 4th squad fired a red signal flare.

Originally, seeing the Japanese army was strong, Tu Yunsheng was planning to request an infantry squad for support, but after hearing the fierce gunfire coming from afar, he knew that the high ground guarded by the entire company was facing the enemy. The company commander Li Jiujin only had three infantry squads and one guard squad as a reserve, but the entire company had up to 10 high grounds to guard, and he still had 14 infantrymen available, and ammunition was still sufficient. He planned to grit his teeth and hold on a little longer, because the Japanese army might stop attacking after dark.

Yes, until this time, all the officers and soldiers of the Four-Line Regiment, including the highest commander of this area, the company commander of the Seventh Company, Li Jiujin, had not realized how crazy the Japanese commander they were facing this time would be for his own dream.