On June 2, Chen Cheng rushed to Yichang by ship and asked his staff officer Liu Yunhan to contact Guo Chen, only to discover that the war situation was worse than he expected. But there was no way, Chen Cheng, could only push forward with a hard scalp, and to be honest, there was no trace of certainty about the battle situation.
For Chen Cheng, he was not worried about which unit had dropped the chain, but was worried that the whole situation was already in an irreversible state. In other words, a bowl of water can't put out the fire.
After Chen Cheng arrived at Nanjin Pass, the Central Military Commission issued an urgent order: Peng Shuai, commander of the Eighteenth Army, took two divisions and set out from Chongqing to aid Yichang. Prior to this, another division of the Eighteenth Army, namely Fang Jing's 11th Division, had been rushed from Changsha to Dangyang under the command of Li Yannian's Second Army.
The 75th Army, which had returned from the west bank of the Han River, moved very quickly under the command of commander Zhou Yaodan, and the troops had come to the vicinity of Nanzhang, and caught up, attacking the Japanese heavy troops to Dangyang, and the two sides exchanged fire, killing more than 400 Japanese troops and seizing a large amount of ammunition.
Li Jilan's 94th Army, while marching toward Fangjiaji, encountered the Japanese 40th Division, which did not take long to come to the aid of the Japanese army from Jiangnan, and originally wanted to find Zhang Dahongshan, but when passing through Tongbai Mountain, it accidentally found the 94th Army passing through the mountain, and the two sides engaged in combat.
Li Zongren hurriedly relieved Mo Shujie of the task of the Eighty-fourth Army, and then asked Tang Enbo to go all the way south to rescue the Ninety-fourth Army. This Japanese division, although the damage was not small, indirectly delayed the time for the Chinese army to reinforce Yichang.
At this point in the war, Li Zongren's square inches had also begun to be chaotic. Now what he feared most was that the Japanese army, if it continued to advance westward, would definitely attack Yichang and then go upstream to capture Chongqing, if so, his mistake would be great.
Jingmen fell on June 6. Li Yannian's unit on the west bank of the Han River had been defeated by the Japanese army, and the main force was gradually approaching Dangyang. On the other flank of Dangyang was Xiao Zhichu's 26th Army, and the garrisoned shashi was also attacked by the Japanese army, and now it had abandoned the city and entered the second-line position.
Dangyang became the last gateway to Yichang, and the garrison was Fang Jing's 11th Division.
After the Japanese arrived at Dangyang, the 113th Division attacked due south, the 3rd Division and the 39th Division attacked the northeast, and the Ikeda detachment of the 6th Division attacked the southeast. Fang Jing's 3 regiments, respectively, guarded the east, south, north and northwest, and the field supplement regiment controlled the Changbai Slope in the west.
On June 9, the Japanese army launched a siege, and the war entered a white-hot stage, and at this time, Xiao Zhichu called and said that his troops could not resist, telling Fang Jing that there might be a gap in the right wing of Fang Jing, and let him watch and do it. When Fang Fangjing was speechless, Li Yannian called and asked him to quickly break through.
Li Yannian was also a little selfish in doing so, what the 11th Division meant to Chen Cheng, he was very clear in his heart, it was only temporarily allocated to him, if there was a good villain, he could not account to Chen Cheng.
Retreat is already a common thing for the Chinese army, nothing! But Xiao Zhichu's approach was very unauthentic. He did not retreat in the direction of Yichang with his troops, but fought and directly crossed the Yangtze River, which was equivalent to leaving the battlefield early, which was equivalent to saying that the eastern gateway of Yichang was wide open, resulting in the 18th Army in Chongqing rushing to the aid of the Japanese army in a hurry.
Moreover, on the Japanese side, according to the plan, it was the 3rd Division that was tasked with attacking Yichang, but the 3rd Division was blocked in the canyon by Li Yannian's 2nd Army, and could not rush out after a few days of fighting, and the final task could only fall on the 13th Division.
On 11 June, the 13th Division launched an attack on Yichang.
At noon, a small number of Japanese troops directly occupied the airfield on the western outskirts of the city, and the regiment guarding the city and the two regiments outside the city were directly separated. Wan Wan did not expect that the commander of the Pi Regiment who was guarding Yichang City actually sneaked away and fled, and for a time the Yichang City Defense Force was leaderless and directly collapsed, and a large number of soldiers fled out of the city to the east bank.
The 18th Division, which was also an old unit that participated in the War of Resistance, especially in the Battle of Songhu, performed very well. After the Battle of Wuhan, this unit was a bit out of the way, in the Battle of Fuchikou, Banbi Mountain, the division commander escaped from the front, and from that time on, the unit commander left a tradition of escape.
Commander Pi ran away, and the chief of staff pretended to be gassed, so a small squadron of the Japanese 13th Division occupied Yichang in just one day.