My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

They constantly harassed the Japanese pirates' logistics supply routes, either destroying the roads or attacking the transport teams. There were even a few times when they took advantage of their numbers and launched surprise attacks.

They wiped out several transport teams and replenished a large number of supplies. However, it was their harassment that caused huge problems for the Japanese pirates' logistics and transportation.

When the Japanese pirates discovered this problem, they immediately began to look for ways to solve it. The simplest way, of course, was to contact the navy and have them transport supplies to the front line by land and water.

However, the navy is at war after all, so how much transportation capacity can it have? Some light weapons and equipment are still possible, but heavy machinery and huge quantities of consumables such as ammunition and food are not so easy to transport.

Firstly, the battle was fierce and the consumption was huge. Secondly, warships are used in combat, and their transportation capacity is slightly weaker. The logistical supplies needed for hundreds of thousands of troops cannot be carried by half a naval fleet.

Finally, the Japanese pirates had no choice but to decide to transport by land, but now they could no longer spare manpower from the other two armies, and it was definitely too late to recruit soldiers from the mainland.

Therefore, they could only turn their attention to the surrendered warlords' private soldiers, but they were worried that these people could not be trusted.

Therefore, Mutō Yoshinobu had no choice but to draw out 40,000 men from the reinforcements to cooperate with the 20,000 puppet troops to whom he had just made a promise, to jointly ensure the safety of logistical supplies.

But can these 160,000 people really protect the logistical supplies of more than two thousand miles?

The answer is naturally no. As time went by, the team of Liu Huaqiang and three others grew stronger and stronger, although they were unable to confront the Japanese pirates head-on.

However, with their familiarity with the terrain, Liu Huaqiang and his two guerrillas constantly harassed the Japanese pirates' logistical supplies, greatly reducing their transportation efficiency.

But even so, with those tens of thousands of elite troops and those 120,000 second- and third-rate soldiers, they were still able to transport half of the guns and ammunition to the front line to support the battlefield.

But in this case, the Japanese pirates had no way to attack with all their strength due to poor logistics, so the Japanese pirates in the city were in trouble.

They were already a defeated army, and they were short of ammunition and suffered heavy casualties. The reinforcements were clearly close at hand, but were slow to arrive. All these factors combined caused many Japanese pirates to collapse directly, and they had no intention of fighting the Anmin Army anymore.

But the old Japanese pirate, Songjin Iwane, was a fanatical warmongerer and had been poisoned by the spirit of Bushido for many years. At this moment, he had fallen into madness.

He directly ordered that all the soldiers who advocated surrender be killed, which barely stabilized the people's hearts.

However, although this temporarily stabilized the morale of the army, it once again weakened their own strength and further weakened their resistance.

As the Anmin Army continued its fierce attack, the Japanese pirates in Shanghai City never received any reinforcements. After holding out for another half a month, they were finally wiped out.

During this period, they did think about breaking out by force, but Shanghai had already been surrounded by a million-strong army, and there was no chance of breaking out at all.

Jiang Li and the Japanese pirate reinforcements had different thoughts after receiving this news.

Jiang Li was naturally extremely happy. There were as many as 150,000 or 160,000 Japanese pirates who retreated into the city. Now they were all annihilated in one fell swoop, in addition to the more than 40,000 people who had been killed before.

So far in this battle, at least 200,000 enemies have been killed, not counting the number of enemies killed by the guerrillas in various places and behind enemy lines.

This record is enough to account for the civilians who died and the soldiers who sacrificed in this battle.

In addition, Jiang Li also learned that the Japanese leader, Song Jin Shigen, was also killed, so he immediately ordered someone to chop off his dog head and bring it to the front of the two armies for public display.

As for the Japanese pirates' reinforcements, since their rescue mission had failed, they immediately sent a telegram to Muto Yoshinobu asking what to do next.

Mutō Yoshinobu learned that all the Japanese pirates in Shanghai were killed in the battle, and even the army general Matsumoto Iwane had his head cut off and displayed to the public.

He immediately became so angry that the Three Corpse Gods jumped up and down, smashing and cursing at the thing.

The first person he cursed was none other than Jiang Li, the Chinese warlord.

Not satisfied after scolding Jiang Li, he scolded Songjin Shigen again, calling him incompetent for being able to annihilate an army of 200,000.

Finally, he scolded the army support forces and the navy as well, but he did not look for his own faults.

This went on for half an hour before he calmed down a little. He remembered that the support troops on the front line were still waiting for his next instructions. He immediately suppressed his anger and carefully analyzed the current situation.

As a result of this analysis, we discovered the current problem. This three-pronged attack plan was based on the idea of ​​sweeping across China with unstoppable force.

With the force of a crushing victory, they wanted to defeat those scattered warlords one by one, but now their plan has been ruined.

Those who surrendered, after seeing that they still had the strength to fight, would inevitably have some reservations and would not dare to completely turn to Japan.

As a result, his strategy of sweeping across China in three months would be shattered, so the plan of advancing on three fronts would be meaningless.

So he immediately ordered the other two armies to stop advancing southward and immediately withdraw their troops to attack Shanghai.

He had already thought it through. This battle could only be won and not lost. If they retreated, what awaited Japan would be being stuck in the quagmire of the huge country of China.

They will be exhausted to death here, but once we win this battle, we can directly wipe out most of China's regular troops, and then we can turn defeat into victory in one fell swoop.

But before that, they need to step on these rats to death first, otherwise they will run to the rear and destroy the logistical supplies, making it impossible for them to go all out.

After thinking it over carefully, he immediately issued the following orders. The first was to order the other two armies to recruit the surrendered warlords' private soldiers.

Then leave a small number of the empire's elite troops and these private soldiers to defend the current territories and actively fight against local resistance forces.

Secondly, the two armies were to immediately rush to Jiangsu to find and kill all the rats on the logistics supply line from Beijing to Nanjing.

This is to prevent them from destroying their own logistical supplies again when the two armies fight.

The third is to let the 200,000 troops coming to reinforce build defensive fortifications on the spot and engage in a long-term war of attrition with the enemy.

I think that relying on our industrial foundation, we will be able to completely consume the war potential of an agricultural country like China.

Once the logistics are smooth, we will gather our forces together and make a concerted effort to crush these second-rate Chinese troops with our absolute strength.

Finally, he even made a direct call to the country, asking them to immediately arm the reserve soldiers and then send them to China to help in the war.