I fought guerrilla warfare in the Yimeng Mountains during the Anti-Japanese War

On May 15, 1938, the Japanese army launched another attack. It was similar to what Chen Feng had guessed. The troops in other positions did not change. Two detachments were deployed on the Western Front, and they were mainly mechanized. Although the mechanization at this time was still mainly trucks, the devils deployed a large number of cavalry and tanks.

The battle became a life-and-death situation from the very beginning. With planes, artillery, and tanks, the Kuomintang positions around Xuzhou were instantly filled with smoke. The Japanese army had no intention of probing with a skirmish line. Regardless of the Kuomintang artillery positions, they launched a group charge across the board with the help of poison gas bombs.

Within a day, the positions on the eastern front facing the Washizu Division were breached first, and other fronts were also in danger.

I thought about the madness of the Japanese army, but I didn't expect them to be so inhumane.

The 31st Division of the Second Army suffered the greatest losses. Although they were prepared for poison gas attacks, their equipment was poor and they could only use wet towels to defend themselves against poison gas. When the Japanese rushed up with gas masks, they had no time to cover their mouths or faces.

All the frontline officers and soldiers threw away their towels, raised their swords and started a brutal hand-to-hand combat with the Japs. A division was not fully staffed to begin with, and even if some troops were added during the ceasefire, there were only more than 8,000 men at most.

After the first line was finished fighting, they moved on to the second line, and after the second line was finished fighting on the third line, in one day, the casualties reached a terrifying 3,000 people. The positions were also lost due to the spread of poison gas, and most of the battalion and regiment commanders were killed in battle. They could only retreat to the newly established third line of defense to heal their wounds.

The 20th Army was not much better off. Guan Linzheng's army had only 15,000 people left. The enemy knew that this was a tough nut to crack. More than 100 poison gas bombs hit the position. Although Guan Linzheng ordered the troops to quickly retreat to the third line of defense, there were still more than 2,000 troops who had not withdrawn. Most of them were soldiers defending the first trench and had no time to withdraw from their positions.

At the Xuzhou headquarters, Li Zongren listened to reports from various fronts with a gloomy face and the atmosphere in the whole room was depressing. It was too tragic. At the end of the day, various fronts had lost at least 20,000 troops. They could not afford the losses by fighting like this!

Li Yunyan no longer needed to monitor Chen Feng's radio station. He became a communications soldier, shuttling back and forth between the headquarters and Chen Feng's residence throughout the day, and would be the first to report any news.

Chen Feng's face was as gloomy as water. He didn't expect that the Japanese would still not change their bad habits and would continue to use poison gas bombs in defiance of the world. It seemed that they really didn't take his threat seriously. However, Chen Feng was a little helpless now. He really didn't have the opportunity to go to the Japanese island for a while, and there was not much point in sniping a commander.

If the fighting goes on like this, the National Army's position will not be able to hold out for long and it is very likely that they will have to engage in street fighting in Taierzhuang within three to five days. The war has just begun and Li Zongren will certainly not retreat. He must find a way to slow down and deplete the Japanese army. If the fighting goes on like this, the National Army's elite will be gone.

The equipment is not good, the artillery is not enough, and the shooting is not satisfactory. What good solution is there? He thought of everything he could think of, but they were all rejected one by one by Chen Feng. Following the memory of later generations, starting from the Anti-Japanese War, involving the war experience of all over the world, Germany, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Japan, all tactics were considered, but none of them were suitable for the current national army.

Thinking of the overseas battles 50 years ago, Chen Feng slapped his head and wondered why he was so stupid. Is there a better tactic than the strategy? Especially for the current national army, it is perfect!

It was getting dark, and Li Yunyan came to deliver the message. Chen Feng told Li Yunyan to ask Li Zongren to come here if he had time.

Li Yunyan was feeling sad about today's loss. Hearing this, her eyes lit up. Captain Leng Qiang must have come up with a great idea:

"Don't worry, Captain. I'll go and ask the commander right away."

Li Zongren came in a hurry. The loss of the day made this senior general who remained calm even when faced with a mountain collapse have blisters on his mouth. He did not say much when they met:

"Captain Leng Qiang, do you have any good plan? If we continue fighting like this, the entire front will collapse within three days."

"Commander Li, the Japanese army has gone crazy. I don't know if they will use poison gas bombs tomorrow. If they continue to use them, the third line will be lost. We don't have a fourth line. I wonder what Commander Li will consider next?"

"There is no good way. We can only rely on the terrain and block the enemy step by step. However, this will cause a problem for the command system. With the Japanese army's combat style, once they break through a point, they will definitely make a detour and cut off the communication between the various units."

Li Zongren was in a low mood:

"This is the most terrifying thing. Once the division commander cannot find the regiment commander, and the regiment commander cannot contact the company commander, the commanders below will be without orders and will be completely disorganized, and a rout is inevitable."

Chen Feng understood the horror of the Nationalist army's retreat, and if things went well, he could run from Xuzhou to Wuhan in one breath:

"Commander Li, evacuate the people of Taierzhuang and prepare for street fighting! Disperse all the troops, use squads as combat units, and make layouts and orders in advance. Only in this way can we achieve the strategic goal of slowing down the Japanese offensive and consuming their forces."

Li Zongren considered this plan carefully, and always felt that it was too simple. If the troops dispersed and fought in the streets, it would indeed resolve some of the problems of poison gas attacks, but would it really work? The National Army knew its combat effectiveness well. As a squad, it might not be able to withstand a mortar shell from the Japanese army:

"Captain Leng Qiang, is there any other way? If we gather the soldiers in squads together, we can completely solve the problem with the Japanese mortars!"

Chen Feng smiled and replied:

"Commander Li, the forces of a squad must not be concentrated together. That would be purely courting death. I have a tactical system here. A squad of ten people can be divided into three groups. The squad leader will be in the middle to coordinate and command. The three groups can be arranged in a right triangle or an inverted triangle, with distance between the groups. With this arrangement, there should be no problem in defending a residential area or half a street."

Li Zongren's eyes lit up:

"That sounds good, tell me more about it."

Turning to Li Yunyan, he said:

"Prepare some food and eat here later."

Chen Feng spread out a piece of paper and used pictures to make it easier to explain.

The three-three combat team can be traced back to the Anti-Japanese War, mainly to make up for the disadvantage of the Eighth Route Army's insufficient firepower. Usually, our army is divided into three combat teams based on a squad, with three people in each combat team, and they are arranged in three echelons for mutual support.

The three-man combat team was in a triangular attack formation, and each member had his own fixed task, either to conduct fire reconnaissance, to deliver fire, or to cover his comrades... This was a formation that could attack and defend, similar to the Mandarin Duck Formation invented by the famous anti-Japanese general Qi Jiguang: a dispersed combat formation. Therefore, a combat group of 27 people was fully capable of covering a battle line several hundred meters wide.

In this way, even if the Japanese army used poison gas bombs, they would not cause large numbers of casualties. The key point was that each class had a defense node. As long as they defended the node, even if they were breached and retreated, the National Army at the nodes behind had their own tasks and would not follow suit.