Start as a young leader, grow bigger and stronger, and create more glory

Commander Yan, the supreme commander of the Jin Army, was a graduate of the sixth Tang-sponsored Fuso Officer School and a successful candidate in the Infantry Division of the Tang Army.

In 911, he was appointed governor of Jin Province, and in 917, he was appointed governor of Jin Province. He successively established many financial institutions and military enterprises such as the Jin Provincial Bank and Taiyuan Arsenal, which were jointly run by the state and private sectors. In 927, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Northern National Guard Army, and the following year he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Third Army.

Commander Wei joined the army in 917 AD during the Tang Dynasty and served as regiment commander, division commander, deputy army commander, army commander, and theater commander-in-chief.

Both Commander Yan and Commander Wei were senior military generals. They received the report 666 minutes after the 10th Regiment broke through Hejin. Such speed was beyond their expectations, as the mobilization of the main force of the troops could not be completed so quickly.

But they were also decisive, knowing that the Japanese would surely flee southern Shanxi in large numbers, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strike at them.

So the two of them communicated on the phone for half an hour, and immediately decided to dispatch several regiments from their respective front-line positions to launch harassing attacks on the Japanese defense line. The main force was to be mobilized in an effort to complete a major counterattack against the Japanese before they all withdrew.

Commander Yan was concerned about Xu Le's arms. If he had not urgently replenished a batch of arms from Xu Le before the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, he would have lost at least 30% more of his men.

To this end, he ordered the 89th Brigade of the 190th Division stationed in Yongji to advance northward along a small road and attack Lin County occupied by the Japanese. The main forces of the remaining divisions would follow up along the original route after arriving and launch an attack on Ronghe County. In this way, they could cooperate with the 176th Division to completely open up the transportation lines between southwestern and southern Shanxi.

Although he didn't know how much the 176th Division paid for its journey from southwestern Shanxi to Hejin, he thought it must have been a considerable price, so he did this to save face for Xu Le.

Moreover, the division he sent out was the 89th Division, which was the first to conduct arms trade with Xu Le. Combining all these factors together, this consideration is really terrifying.

However, he was also clear about one thing: if Xu Le dared to sell semi-automatic weapons to others, then others must have better ones. This is the same principle all over the world. No one would sell their strongest and best weapons to others.

Therefore, he was so anxious to open up the road to Hejin, in fact, he also had the idea of ​​picking up bargains. Although no one knew why the 176th Division had become so rich, one thing was certain: the 176th Division would not take the Japanese's junk equipment.

If he didn't step forward first, and Commander Wei took the initiative, then this good thing would fall into the hands of someone else.

The Japanese weapons were what the Tang Dynasty's army had always dreamed of, especially the German-equipped divisions of the National Guard, which were beaten to pieces. In addition, with the outbreak of the European War, Germany cut off its military aid to the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty's army was stretched to the limit in terms of weapons.

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The Japanese were also very efficient. They attacked southern Shanxi quickly at the beginning, and are now withdrawing from southern Shanxi even faster. When the 89th Division of the Shanxi Army arrived at the outskirts of Lin County, the Japanese in Lin County had almost evacuated. God knows whether the Japanese had determined the retreat plan a few days ago.

It was also because of this that the 89th Division occupied Lin County after only a few rounds of symbolic exchanges of fire with the Japanese. The process was so smooth that it was unbelievable.

Sensing that something was wrong, the commander of the 89th Division called Commander Yan to explain the situation. Commander Yan immediately understood the Japanese's determination to retreat. Without time to adjust his troops or to compete with Commander Wei, he hurriedly ordered the three divisions that had already been prepared to launch a general attack on Yuxiang, Jiexian and other surrounding Japanese defensive towns.

Commander Wei also ordered his four urgently prepared divisions to march from Zhongtiao Mountain to attack Xia County and Anyi County occupied by the Japanese.

However, their speed was too slow after all, or the Japanese had already planned it out. The army divided into four routes only had a skirmish with sporadic small groups of Japanese that had not yet withdrawn, and other than that, they didn't even see a single Japanese.

After occupying several counties and conducting a thorough search of the Japanese headquarters, no important documents were found.

Unwilling to give up, Commander Yan and Commander Wei joined forces and continued northward along the Tongpu Line on October 10. They were not ambushed by the Japanese artillery fire until they arrived near Jiangxian County. After losing thousands of people, the two sides took up positions and confronted each other on the spot.

Gradually, as Xu Le had expected, the Japanese's defense line in southern Shanxi shrank to a defense line consisting of Jiangxian, Quwo and Xinjiang, with the Fen River leading to the Yellow River as the boundary. The Japanese were in the north, and the Shanxi Army and the National Defense Army were in the south.

Xinjiang, which had not been taken seriously by everyone before, was even lurked by Xu Le and killed a major general. Now it has a fully-strength division stationed there.

However, Xu Le didn't care about this anymore, because the transportation line from southwest Shanxi to southern Shanxi was opened, or in other words, the transportation to the interior of the Tang Dynasty was restored.

Xu Le didn't like to owe favors to others. Although this battle was for the Tang Dynasty, his starting point was to make things convenient for himself. He could make the distinction, so he expressed his gratitude to the Jin army that came with Fengchen Pupu, and distributed some of the captured Japanese weapons to the other side, especially the bullets, which were all given to the Jin army.

The 176th Division no longer needed to use the Japanese's 6.5mm bullets, which made the 89th Division very happy.

Although they had purchased semi-automatic rifles from Xu Le and even formed a reinforced regiment for this purpose.

But the ammunition consumption was so great that they simply couldn't afford it, so what was supposed to be the vanguard regiment of the 89th Division became a treasure regiment and would not be deployed until the critical moment.

Now, more than 3000 Type rifles and millions of rounds of bullets are enough to sustain their two infantry regiments for a while.

Upon learning of this, Commander Yan made a special phone call to the headquarters of the 176th Division, stating that if there were any such missions in the future, he must be contacted, and that the 20 soldiers of the Jin Army would not hesitate to go through fire and water.

But Xu Le is not stupid. He kept most of the heavy machine guns, mortars and all the artillery for himself. They are the source of exchanging military merit points.

In Pu County, the 21st Division had been waiting for Numata Tokushige's temporary guard team, but it was not so easy to set up a temporary organization. Just as Numata Tokushige ordered the surrounding troops to go to Luliang to meet up, he received the latest order from the Taiyuan military headquarters.

All combat orders were cancelled, and the temporary guard team was changed to the independent 9th guard team, whose mission was to resist the 176th Division and other Tang troops in Yan County.

Yan County is connected to Fenxi in the east and reaches Huo County directly. It is one of the important transportation lines connecting western Shanxi with the Tongpu Line.

On October 10, the Shanxi Army replaced the 15th Regiment stationed in Jishan with the strength of a reorganized division. The 667th Regiment returned to Hejin and, together with the 667th Regiment, returned to the headquarters with the captured Japanese tanks, cars, artillery and other scrap metal.

Since then, all forces of the 176th Division withdrew from the Yuncheng Basin in southern Shanxi.