Quartermasters can also fight the devils

Therefore, after the Battle of Western Hubei, only 40% of the 73rd Army's troops remained. Although they tried their best to recruit new soldiers after the war, they still failed to restore the army's troop strength to 70%. Moreover, the number of new recruits in the entire 73rd Army actually accounted for half of the army's current strength. This is only a problem of quantity. The quality is even more terrible.

The new recruits for the Japanese army had to be young men who had undergone a year of hard training in their homeland or soldiers who had previously joined the army and returned home. Only these people could be reorganized by the Japanese military headquarters and sent to various battlefields of the Japanese army to fight.

The new recruits of the Chinese army had almost no military training before joining the army. They relied entirely on being sent to combat units and receiving some basic military training under the guidance of officers and veterans.

Once a combat unit has suffered too many casualties in previous battles, the number of experienced veterans in the unit will be greatly reduced, and it will be impossible for the new recruits to complete basic military training quickly. Moreover, there was only a four-month interval between the Japanese 11th Army's attack and the previous Battle of Western Hubei, and the Chinese army was unable to complete the training of the new recruits at all.

Many of the new recruits in the Chinese army had only been in the army for more than a month or two before they had to take part in the Battle of Changde. These new recruits had just barely learned how to raise their guns and shoot, and they couldn't even throw grenades, let alone engage in bayonet fighting with the Japanese army. More importantly, these new recruits had not even experienced a small-scale battle. It can be said that the combat effectiveness of these new recruits can be basically ignored.

In fact, all the troops of the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese Government have now become combat forces mainly composed of recruits. Not only are the troops understaffed, but their combat effectiveness has also declined significantly. What's more frightening is that on the battlefield, such troops mainly composed of recruits are very unreliable, because you cannot predict whether these new recruits will resolutely execute orders and resist stubbornly under the fierce attack of the Japanese 11th Army's offensive forces, or run away with their guns.

If the attack direction of the 11th Japanese Army was not Changde, but other areas, although the combat effectiveness of the Chinese Army would be much weaker, it would not be as important as it is now, because for the Chinese Army, there is actually no place that must be defended. The worst case scenario is that they can just give up their positions and retreat.

But this time the target chosen by the Japanese army is really different. Changde is a very important place for the Chinese government at present.

First of all, Changde is located in the northwest of Hunan Province, close to Dongting Lake. It is the so-called lakeside area and one of the most important grain producing areas in Hunan Province. Hunan Province is one of the only two major grain-producing provinces left in the area currently controlled by the Huaxia government, the other being Sichuan Province.

Hunan Province's rice production also ranks first in the Chinese government, accounting for about 13% of the country. Among the provinces that the Chinese government can still control, such as part of Hubei Province, Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province, including part of Henan Province which has just been hit by the disaster, and more than 10 million refugees who have fled to Sichuan Province, there is an extreme shortage of food.

For the Chinese government, food and bullets are now very important supplies.

Now, the Huaxia government has more than 900,000 dan of rice stored in warehouses near Changde, waiting to be shipped to the rear. This is almost 90 million kilograms of grain. Therefore, Changde is very important to the Huaxia government now. Once Changde is lost, it will be equivalent to losing half of the granary of Hunan Province. The local Huaxia army in Hubei and Hunan provinces will immediately face serious food problems, and the entire army may collapse.

Secondly, from a military point of view, Changde’s location is also very important. It is a transportation hub connecting the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese Government and the Ninth War Zone of the Chinese Government, and it is also the junction of the two war zones. If it is occupied by the Japanese army, the Japanese Eleventh Army will cut off the connection between the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese Government and the Ninth War Zone.

Most of the troops of the Sixth War Zone of the Huaxia Government were deployed near desolate mountainous areas. The troops could not obtain enough food locally and could only rely on the large amount of rice from Hunan Province to be sent through this route to the impoverished western Hubei and the mostly occupied northern Hubei.

At the same time, Changde is also the starting point for transportation between Hunan Province and Guizhou Province. The 450-kilometer Hunan-Guizhou Highway starts from Changde and ends in Guiyang, Guizhou Province. Once Changde is lost, even Guizhou Province, the most stable rear base, will be directly threatened by the Japanese 11th Army.

Finally, Changde is the largest city in western Hunan Province and the economic and cultural center of western Hunan Province. Once Changde falls, the northwestern region of Hunan Province will basically be controlled by the 11th Army of the Japanese Army. This will have a huge negative impact on the political influence of the already very bad Chinese government.

Therefore, judging from these key points alone, the Chinese government would not easily abandon the important city of Changde unless it was absolutely necessary.

However, judging from the terrain near Changde, it is indeed not suitable for the Chinese army to defend to the death, and it is even less suitable for the Chinese Army's Sixth War Zone to concentrate all its main forces here to fight a decisive battle with the Japanese Eleventh Army, because the situation here in Changde is really unfavorable for the Chinese army.

Starting from September 1943, the 11th Army of the Japanese Army frequently mobilized its troops in Huarong and Shishou. The strength of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army in the areas near the three towns was also increasing rapidly. The intelligence of the mobilization and assembly of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army was also continuously detected by the Chinese government intelligence agencies lurking in the three towns and the gradually growing joint air force of China and the United States.

Therefore, all the information about the large-scale mobilization and assembly of the Japanese 11th Army was summarized in the headquarters of the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese government. However, this massive amount of information made the acting commander of the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese government, General Sun, always in a dilemma.

At this time, although Commander Sun, the acting commander of the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese government, was nominally the so-called acting commander of the Sixth War Zone, not officially, long before the Battle of Western Hubei, Commander Chen, the commander of the Sixth War Zone of the Chinese government, had handed over all the command power of the war zone to Commander Sun, because Commander Chen had been appointed by the highest level of the conquered to serve as the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Expeditionary Force Command in western Yunnan.

In the later stage of the Battle of Western Hubei, although Commander Chen returned to the Sixth War Zone Command of the Huaxia Government and formulated the overall strategy for the decisive battle, it was still Commander Sun who specifically commanded the operations.