Devil's Army

The three Type 105 106mm cannons set up behind the reserve position of the regiment suddenly opened fire. Under the guidance of the golden eagle, the artillery directly bombarded the headquarters of the Japanese th Division in the rear.

The Japanese army had been on guard against a regiment of 150mm howitzers and deliberately set up its headquarters outside the range of the 150mm howitzers.

Unexpectedly, this time the regiment directly used the Type 105 mm cannon with a longer range.

The commander and guards of the Japanese 106th Division suffered heavy casualties and lost their ability to command operations for a time.

At one o'clock in the morning, soldiers from the 76st Regiment and the th Brigade suddenly launched an attack on the Japanese troops opposite them.

Under the cover of gunfire and grenade explosions, a regiment of artillery began to retreat towards Jiujiang.

The two sides fought fiercely for more than half an hour, with casualties on both sides. Suddenly, the regiment stopped firing.

At this time, a regiment of artillery had already moved away from the pass position and retreated to Jiujiang.

At five o'clock in the morning, before daybreak, soldiers from the First Regiment were in charge of the front, and soldiers from the 76th Brigade were in charge of the two wings, and they launched another fierce attack on the Japanese troops in the pass position.

The Japanese army encountered two attacks in a row in one morning. Although they responded hastily, they obviously did not take it seriously. They thought that the Chinese soldiers were making harassing attacks again.

The Japanese army did not expect that the Chinese soldiers would use mortars this time. The dense mortar shells plowed through the Japanese troops in the pass positions.

As soon as the mortars stopped firing, the Chinese soldiers began firing intensively from all directions, followed by the sound of hand grenades exploding one after another in the positions.

The soldiers of the 76st Regiment and the th Brigade successfully recaptured the pass position.

During the more than one month of the Hukou Campaign, the soldiers of the 76st Regiment and the th Brigade repeatedly fought with the Japanese army for the main passage to attack Hukou: the Yinjiashan Pass position. The pass position has been lost and regained more than ten times.

The regiment commander could no longer remember how many bodies of his soldiers they had carried back from the front of the battlefield, but the one he remembered most was his messenger, Xiao Wang.

Xiao Wang lied about his age and joined the army at the age of 16. He just turned 18 this year. He was hit by a Japanese artillery shell while conveying an order from a regiment commander, and fell forever on this land of China.

Every time the Japanese occupied a pass position, they also carried the bodies of their soldiers to their rear.

After the regiment commander recaptured the pass position, he left behind an observation post while other troops stood by the rear ready to take orders.

What surprised the regiment commander was that the Japanese army did not launch any more attacks on the pass positions after dawn until noon.

After lunch, the Japanese 106th Division replaced the Japanese th Division whose command system had been destroyed and launched an attack on the Yinjiashan Pass position.

The Japanese army still used the same old routine, artillery bombing, plane bombing, and then infantry charging.

At that time, although the government troops outside Hukou had more people than the Japanese army, their weapons and equipment were much worse, and the number of artillery was not even comparable to that of a Japanese division. Moreover, the Japanese army had the support of the navy and air force.

Therefore, the Japanese 27th Division, the Japanese Hata Detachment and the Marine Corps, which broke through the Pengze defense line and the Longtanshan defense line outside Hukou, quickly approached Hukou, and Hukou was in danger.

In order to preserve its strength and prevent the government troops around Hukou from being surrounded and annihilated by the Japanese army, the government army headquarters decided to withdraw its troops to Nanchang, Jiujiang and the area west of Poyang Lake to set up defenses.

After receiving the order, Brigade Commander Fu of the 76th Brigade reluctantly bid farewell to the commander of the first regiment and withdrew with the main force of the 26th Division to Nanchang, Jiangxi for rest and replenishment.

That evening, Zhu, the commander of the 76st Regiment of the 151th Brigade, who was responsible for the rear, urged the commander of the first regiment to evacuate with them. He said:

"Both sides of Hukou have been breached by the Japanese army. The Japanese army will attack us from both sides at any time. If we don't retreat now, we may not be able to leave. Why don't you retreat with our main force to Nanchang, Jiangxi? We can still fight the Japanese together there."

"You go first. I will give the devils a gift and then retreat. But our artillery unit has already retreated to Jiujiang. We can't abandon them and retreat to Nanchang, so I decided to take the remaining troops and retreat to Jiujiang. If we are lucky, we can still fight the devils together on the battlefield."

Shortly after Captain Zhu and his men retreated, a regimental commander smashed the Japanese soldiers' heads with a mortar shell in his hand, and then retreated to Jiujiang with more than 1000 soldiers.

The Japanese army had become accustomed to being bombarded by a regiment at night and was prepared for it, so the casualties caused by this bombardment were not too great.

The next morning, the Japanese 9th Division, with the support of artillery and aircraft, launched another attack on the Yinjiashan Pass position.

When the Japanese army occupied the Yinjiashan Pass, they found that the Chinese defenders had all retreated. They then advanced towards Hukou County.

When the 106th Division of the 27th Division of the Japanese Army and part of the Hata Detachment entered Hukou County, the 101st Division of the th Division of the Japanese Army and the Imperial Guards Division had already occupied Hukou County.

The Hukou Defense War, which lasted for one month and eighteen days, came to an end and Hukou County fell.