Chapter 174 Confident Pinglu Yongfu "Yamamoto-kun, I wonder if I could know where your special forces' combat target is?" In a village near Tongshi Town. The Japanese finally paid a huge price and demolished half of the more than 30 houses in the entire village, and finally built a few safe houses to live in. These houses were directly used by the 4th Brigade as the brigade headquarters. In order to prevent all senior officers from being wiped out in one place by the Eighth Route Army, Pinglu Yongfu directly dispersed the officers at all levels under his command to various areas. By then, even if the Eighth Route Army left tunnels in the village, it would not be possible for all the senior officers to be killed by the Eighth Route Army, and then the troops would lose command and the camp would be blown up. After all, the lesson of Kimura's brigade is still there. Not only did he lose his life, but the academy also listed it as an example in a book to educate future officers. Pinglu Yongfu was not afraid of death.
Ever since he set foot on this land, he has been prepared to die in battle. But the fact that he is not afraid of death does not mean that he wants to wait until he dies to be written into the textbooks of various military academies and scolded as a negative example. Because most of the officers are scattered in their respective troops, there are not many senior officers in the 4th Brigade Command at the moment. There were only Major General Isamu Hiraru, Colonel Koizumi Kasahara, and Ikki Yamamoto who had just arrived. Unlike Heirloku Yufu and Kasahara Koizumi who were wearing officer uniforms, Yamamoto Ikki was not wearing his colonel officer uniform, but a gray combat uniform. If you don't look at it closely, Yamamoto Ikki's gray combat uniform looks somewhat like the uniform of the Eighth Route Army. Listening to Pinglu Yongfu's questions, Yamamoto Ikki had nothing to hide and was ready to tell Pinglu Yongfu his battle plan. After all, when the operation is successful, the Fourth Brigade will be needed to provide support. If he did not tell Pinglu Yongfu the detailed plan, then if there were problems with the support, Yamamoto Ikki would not be able to break out of the encirclement of several Eighth Route Army regiments in broad daylight. "Your Excellency, the brigade commander, our special forces' combat target is the Eighth Route Army's White Tiger Ridge, the 386th Brigade Headquarters!" After listening to what Yamamoto Ikki said, Hiraru Isamu looked at Kasahara Koizumi, and then asked with some disbelief. "Mr. Yamamoto, you said that the headquarters of the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army is at Baihu Ridge? In other words, the commander of the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army was in Baihuling, but we received a secret report from the Yamazaki Battalion saying that a senior officer of the Eighth Route Army was in Yuxi Town. Mr. Yamamoto, can you tell me why you think the headquarters of the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army is at Baihuling?" Yamamoto Ikki was stunned for a moment after listening to the information told by Pinglu Yongfu, and then he immediately spoke. “Your Excellency, the senior officers of the Eighth Route Army in Yuxi Town are fake. Their purpose is to attract the Fourth Brigade to Yuxi Town. When I came here, I sorted out all the known information. I was not sure at first, but now I hear what the brigade commander said. I think I can be sure that the Yamazaki Battalion is just a bait. The reason why the Eighth Route Army kept surrounding the Yamazaki Battalion was not because they were incapable of quickly destroying the Yamazaki Battalion.
At the beginning, the Yamazaki Battalion suddenly appeared, and the Eighth Route Army certainly did not react. The Yamazaki Battalion was actually a group of defeated soldiers in the Shangdang area. The Eighth Route Army must have mistakenly thought that the Yamazaki Battalion was a fully equipped field battalion. Therefore, the Eighth Route Army was somewhat panicked at the beginning and mobilized a large number of troops to Hegu Town. Even the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army, which was preparing to go to other areas, stayed behind temporarily, preparing to eliminate the Yamazaki Battalion. However, it was impossible for the Eighth Route Army to always think that the Yamazaki Battalion was a fully equipped field battalion and had received orders to directly attack their arsenal. I speculate that once the Yamazaki Battalion and the Eighth Route Army engaged in a firefight, the Yamazaki Battalion captured Wangjiapo, and then our three brigades moved towards the Shangdang area. The Eighth Route Army had already realized that the Yamazaki Battalion was actually a temporary team formed by the defeated soldiers in the Shangdang area. It only took the Independent Regiment of the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army one night to eliminate the Korean Regiment, a fully equipped and powerful field regiment. How could they possibly fight for so long against the Yamazaki Battalion, a temporary unit formed by defeated soldiers? And so many troops were mobilized. This is obviously problematic. Then the commander and I speculated whether the Eighth Route Army might have other purposes. But the commander and I were not sure whether the Yamazaki Battalion was destroyed so quickly or not because the Eighth Route Army wanted to use the Yamazaki Battalion to attract our reinforcements. A typical siege and attack. But our reinforcements consist of three brigades, and the strength of any one of them should not be underestimated. The Eighth Route Army does not have the ability nor the time to completely wipe out any of our support forces under the threat of two brigades." "But combined with the known intelligence, especially the news about the so-called senior officer of the Eighth Route Army in Yuxi Town. I am now certain that the real purpose of the Eighth Route Army is to lure the 4th Brigade into an ambush circle and then annihilate the 4th Brigade! The Yamazaki Battalion and the Eighth Route Army's headquarters arsenal were a bait, so that the 4th Brigade, which arrived first, would not have enough time to wait for the rest of the troops to arrive and could only launch an attack first. If the Eighth Route Army's goal was not to encircle and attack the reinforcements, then they should have fought desperately to block the 4th Brigade. Obviously, they didn't. Not only that, the 4th Brigade basically did not encounter any decent blocking battles along the way, which was completely unlike the style of the Eighth Route Army. If my guess is correct, the so-called senior officer of the Eighth Route Army in Yuxi Town is also fake. In all likelihood, it was false news released by the Eighth Route Army, which led the Yamazaki Battalion to mistakenly believe that a senior officer of the Eighth Route Army had gone to Yuxi Town. Then they wanted to use this false news from the senior officers to lure the 4th Brigade to Yuxi Town. The Eighth Route Army must have prepared an ambush circle in Yuxi Town. Once the Fourth Brigade enters the ambush circle, the Eighth Route Army troops will launch an attack on the Fourth Brigade. This is proven by the fact that the Yamazaki Battalion was immediately wiped out after the commander ordered the 4th Brigade to change the direction of attack. If the Eighth Route Army was not trying to attract the 4th Brigade to Yuxi Town. So why wasn't the Yamazaki Battalion eliminated earlier or later, but was eliminated after the 4th Brigade changed the direction of attack?
I also suspect that the Yamazaki Battalion may have been wiped out by the Eighth Route Army long ago, and the battle seen by the Army Aviation later was probably disguised by the Eighth Route Army. Even the so-called secret report sent by the Yamazaki Battalion to the 4th Brigade was also sent by the Eighth Route Army, in order to attract the 4th Brigade to Yuxi Town and then ambush it. But what I cannot understand is how the Eighth Route Army had the confidence to destroy the 4th Brigade in such a short period of time? Our other two brigades will arrive at the designated attack site in five hours at most. The 11th Brigade's attack location was only a hundred miles away from Yuxi Town. With such a short distance, even if the Eighth Route Army had sufficient troops to launch a blocking battle, they could only hold out for three days at most. In three days, with the equipment and strength of the Fourth Brigade, I really can't imagine how the Eighth Route Army could have been able to destroy the Fourth Brigade in three days. Moreover, even if the Eighth Route Army ignored the sacrifices and forcibly eliminated the Fourth Brigade, it would certainly greatly consume their manpower. Did they really intend to give up the Shangdang area? Or was the Shangdang area really taken over by the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army? But even if the Shangdang area was taken over by the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army, it would not be worth it for the Eighth Route Army to fight head-on and consume a large number of troops to destroy our Fourth Brigade. " Yamamoto Ikki told his analysis to Pinglu Yongfu. Hiraru Isamu and Kasahara Koizumi also took out various information and maps and began to compare them. Pinglu Yongfu knew a little about the Eighth Route Army's intention to destroy the Fourth Brigade. When they just arrived at Tongshi Town, Kasahara Koizumi told Pinglu Yongfu about this. But even though Pinglu Yongfu knew it, he still didn't quite believe it was true. The gap in combat power is simply too big. Pinglu Yongfu really couldn't understand why the Eighth Route Army had so few people and their equipment was not as good as that of the puppet army. Where does the strength come from to destroy the powerful Fourth Brigade? Even if we want to replicate the operations of the Kimura Brigade, it is unrealistic. The officers of the Eighth Route Army were not idiots. The reason why the Kimura Brigade blew up its camp and was eliminated was entirely because the Kimura Brigade was not aware of the situation. Then all the senior officers in the brigade were eliminated by the Eighth Route Army. It can be said that luck played a big role in the Eighth Route Army's elimination of the Kimura Brigade, not because of the Eighth Route Army's strong strength. That’s right, more than half a year ago, the Kimura Brigade was eliminated by the Eighth Route Army. After discussion at the Japanese headquarters, they all believed that the reason why the Kimura Brigade was eliminated by the Eighth Route Army was purely due to coincidence and that the Eighth Route Army was just too lucky. The commander of the Kimura Brigade was really stupid and also very unlucky. The command center actually chose to locate itself directly next to the exit of the Eighth Route Army's tunnel, and was then wiped out by the Eighth Route Army in the tunnel. In short, Pinglu Yongfu did not believe that the current Eighth Route Army had the strength to go head-on with their field troops. Not to mention that they could eliminate his 4th Brigade head-on without a surprise attack. Even if it was a surprise attack, Pinglu Yongfu was confident that he could repel the Eighth Route Army's attack. Even though the Eighth Route Army he faced was several times larger than the Fourth Brigade. After comparing the map and intelligence, Pinglu Yongfu somewhat believed what Yamamoto Ikki said. But I still find it unbelievable. "I really can't understand why the Eighth Route Army thought they could eliminate our Fourth Brigade in a short period of time. Even if the Eighth Route Army now received equipment support from the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army, at most everyone was equipped with a rifle... In terms of artillery, the Eighth Route Army did have artillery... but at most there were only about forty or fifty artillery pieces. It is impossible for the Eighth Route Army to gather all its artillery near our Fourth Brigade and use it against our Fourth Brigade.
But even if the Eighth Route Army gathered all its artillery, our Fourth Brigade had a total of forty or fifty artillery pieces, and our artillery technology was definitely far superior to that of the Eighth Route Army. The artillery that the Eighth Route Army obtained from the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army was nothing more than the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army's 75mm mountain cannon, which was produced based on the Type 41 mountain cannon of our Great Japanese Empire. Our 4th Brigade is equipped with Type 94 mountain cannon, which can crush their Jin-made mountain cannon in terms of both range and power. Not only that, even if the Eighth Route Army had so many artillery pieces, how many shells could they have? Can a gun be equipped with fifty shells? I heard that the Eighth Route Army needed the approval of the regiment commander even to fire a mortar. One can imagine how scarce their artillery shells were. This time, our 4th Brigade carried a large amount of ammunition. There were more than a dozen trucks carrying artillery shells alone. And our artillerymen are all well-trained advanced artillerymen. What can the artillery of the Eighth Route Army do? I'm afraid they are just a group of infantrymen who can only fire artillery. It is even possible that most people cannot even perform basic ballistic calculations. With this kind of strength, they can never be a match for the carefully trained artillery of the Empire of Japan. As for infantry, even if the Eighth Route Army around us has two or even four times the strength of our Fourth Brigade, what does it matter? The training conditions of the Eighth Route Army were far worse than those of the Central Army in the mountain city, and were actually even worse than those of the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army. When the warriors of my Fourth Brigade were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Central Army of Shancheng, one warrior could deal with three so-called elite Central Army soldiers from Shancheng. Our Fourth Brigade also fought against the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army. At that time, the Sakata Regiment accidentally ran into the 358th Regiment of the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army. The 358th Regiment of the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army is their so-called direct line of defense, and their equipment is not much worse than ours... The army commander is also their Whampoa graduate. The results of it? After fighting with the Sakata Corps for less than an hour, they fled, leaving behind hundreds of corpses. If the Sakata Regiment had not had other tasks, the 358th Regiment of the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army would have been completely wiped out by the Sakata Regiment. To me, such an army is no different from sand. It collapses at the first touch. Not to mention the Eighth Route Army, even though our Fourth Brigade lost a regiment at the hands of the Eighth Route Army in the last major mopping-up operation. However, the Sakata Regiment was completely destroyed by the Eighth Route Army because of the Kimura Brigade. When the Eighth Route Army encountered my troops, they only dared to use the terrain advantage to ambush us and did not dare to engage in a head-on confrontation with us at all. Therefore, even if all the soldiers of my Fourth Brigade engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Eighth Route Army without using any hot weapons, my Fourth Brigade has the confidence to wipe out those Eighth Route Army. Whether in terms of weapons and equipment, personnel quality, or individual combat effectiveness, our troops are superior to the Eighth Route Army. It can be said that our troops have a lot of advantages, and the advantages are mine! I really can't understand how the Eighth Route Army has the confidence to destroy our Fourth Brigade?" (End of this chapter)