Bright Sword: From Soldier to Brigade Commander

Over the past month, Su Fei not only strengthened the training of the cavalry battalion, which also greatly improved his physical fitness and riding and archery skills, but also asked the craftsmen in Baijia Town to forge the Xuefeng Sword.

All of them have been opened, the blades are extremely sharp, the back of the blade has been reduced in weight, the blade has been lengthened by five centimeters, and the guard has been further expanded. 100 Snow Maple Swords have been made, and the most elite First Company has all been using Snow Maple Swords. During the training, tactical movements have basically taken shape.

Four veteran soldiers under Sun Desheng, who also served as company commanders, suggested that the sabers should not be opened for the time being to avoid accidental injury to themselves and their horses during training.

Su Fei refused.

"The battle is about to begin. The Japanese army is about to launch a brutal sweep! Our cavalry battalion will soon face the enemy, sword to sword. Now is the time to train and equip for combat!"

He also ordered Baijia Town and surrounding villages to frantically dig underground tunnels.

This is completely different from the concept of tunnel warfare.

The underground tunnels are part of a larger systematic fortification fortress that focuses on frontal combat. They are mainly used for defense and are located on the interior line, cooperating with the mobile forces on the exterior line to attack and strike the enemy from both inside and outside.

Mobile corps in the field can also quickly disappear in tunnels, move underground to a certain area, or escape the enemy's pursuit and blockade, or suddenly appear from the enemy's side and rear.

In the traditional sense, tunnel warfare mainly involves attacking small-scale enemy forces in villages and other places, or simply escaping from enemy pursuit.

Su Fei strictly ordered that tunnels be dug in at least eighty villages from Baijia Town to the county seat so that all villages could be connected.

Shanxi has deep soil and water, and some of the loess on the Loess Plateau is sticky and has strong plasticity, making it very suitable for tunnel warfare.

With the county seat and Baijia Town as the center, a large underground tunnel system was built in more than a month!

From Baijia Town, you can go directly to the county town through an underground tunnel!

While practicing, Su Fei also repeatedly contacted the brigade and headquarters by telegram, proposing strategies and policies against the enemy's large-scale sweeps, and issued an early warning of the enemy's large-scale sweeps!

He sent someone to deliver a booklet to the Independent Group, which was written by Su Fei himself: "A Primary Study of Okamura Yasuji".

It mainly describes the situation of General Okamura Yasuji, such as his identity, experience, and strategic and tactical characteristics.

These things were the knowledge Su Fei had accumulated from browsing historical materials of interest on the Internet before he traveled to the world of Bright Sword. In a word, Okamura Yasuji was a Confucian general and a victorious general in the Japanese army. He was good at strategy, had a stable personality, quick thinking, and a strong sense of the overall situation. He was an extremely difficult enemy to deal with.

Okamura Yasuji's strategy was total war.

The previous Japanese commanders were Nishio Toshizo, Kazuki Seiji, Tada Shun and others. Their goal was to annihilate the Eighth Route Army's vitality. They adopted an attitude of contempt, hostility and suppression towards the National Army and the numerous local armed forces. Under their ideological guidance, the tactical thinking of Yoshio Kozuka, commander of the Shanxi First Army, was rather chaotic. Sometimes large troops gathered to sweep, sometimes special forces attacked, and sometimes a cage policy was used, with little effect.

Now, Okamura Yasuji has been the commander of the North China Front Army for at least half a year. He has conducted in-depth research and investigation. His strategic thinking and tactical plans have matured and may have been implemented in the First Army's Kozuka Yoshio unit.

Militarily, they concentrated superior forces, used powerful corps, relied on equipment advantages such as airplanes, artillery and machine guns, and transportation and marching advantages such as trucks and horses, and adopted large-scale raids and encirclement iron wall tactics to surround the main forces of the Eighth Route Army in some areas. In the encirclement, the Japanese army redistributed its forces to carry out net-like and comb-like sweeps, and gradually eliminated the Eighth Route Army in the encirclement.

In fact, it was Ningci Gangcun who was pragmatic and lowered the target. He changed the strategy of full-scale attack to hunt down and wipe out the Eighth Route Army into a focused attack and regional attack, concentrating superior forces to fight an annihilation war.

The Eighth Route Army was completely eliminated area by area.

It's also an overkill tactic.

The Eighth Route Army was almost unable to cope with this method!

The Eighth Route Army in the encirclement was confined to a small, narrow area and found it difficult to break out. The Eighth Route Army outside also found it difficult to provide support. With too few troops, they could not achieve the desired effect. With too many troops, they would be exposed and become targets of Japanese aircraft and artillery attacks.

During the process, the Japanese army will also establish a large number of network strongholds of the cage policy to block the Eighth Route Army's maneuvering space.

Politically, Okamura Yasuji would adopt new tactics, nearly reversing his predecessor's key policies. He would conduct a large-scale campaign of inducement and integration against the Chinese. For example, he would employ a policy of soliciting surrender from the Nationalist and local armed forces, offering special treatment to those who surrendered, including high positions, generous salaries, and beautiful women. He would send representatives to negotiate with Nationalist generals, ensuring that even if they refused to surrender, they could reach a non-aggression agreement and jointly combat the Eighth Route Army. He would abandon the brutal "Three Alls" policy in the base areas and instead employ deceptive propaganda such as "friendship" and "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," making friendly gestures toward ordinary people and prisoners in order to achieve the strategic goal of undermining their fighting spirit. He would also conduct psychological warfare against the Eighth Route Army, using family members and villagers as intermediaries, distributing leaflets and printed images with messages of persuasion, expressing family members' longing and concern, and printing large quantities of beautiful women to appeal to the Eighth Route Army's survival instincts.

Culturally, Japanese soldiers were sent to visit and establish contact with villages and towns, participate in education, teach Chinese children Japanese, and provide certain material incentives to win the hearts of the people by promoting the idea that China and Japan share the same language and ethnicity and are one family.

The enemy situation has changed, and the Eighth Route Army's tactics must change in the future.

Pure guerrilla warfare, large-scale raids, transfers, and retreats are meaningless! They will inevitably result in heavy losses. Therefore, we must play a holistic game. When the Japanese army encircles a certain place, the Eighth Route Army in other areas must launch a large-scale attack to attract the enemy and make them lose sight of one thing while focusing on another.

Tunnel warfare, sparrow warfare, and mine warfare must become regular auxiliary means. Ideally, these low-level tactics can be elevated to a new stage.

For example, upgrade the tunnel warfare to tunnel warfare, dare to confront the enemy head-on, have some parts hold their ground for a long time, and some parts flank and attack the enemy, turning the tunnel warfare into guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare, and even frontal positional warfare!

Turn the sparrow war into a special war. Some troops will be divided into small groups to attack the enemy. These small groups with extremely small forces will lurk everywhere and attack various enemy troops. They must be death squads and not be afraid of death. They should not fantasize about retreating immediately after the attack. If conditions do not permit, these groups can exchange casualties with the enemy on a one-to-one basis!

Special warfare strikes the enemy everywhere, and it can also make the enemy exhausted and unable to capture the main force of our army. Moreover, because of the constant attacks, the enemy has to be cautious everywhere, and their actions are greatly restricted, their morale is low, and their fighting spirit collapses. It is also a kind of spiritual tactic.

Mine warfare, making various mines and ambushing at key transportation points, had very limited results, but it dealt a huge blow to the Japanese army!

Politically, we must strengthen united front work, be good at propaganda, expose the deception and hypocrisy of the Japanese army, win over the national army and local armed forces, and consolidate the close relationship with the people.