< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the final onslaught of the Japanese heavy troops</h1>
After more than a month of fighting, the Tenth Army defended in iron blood, repeatedly defeated strong enemies, and the tojo Hideki cabinet was forced to fall. The new cabinet urgently needed the Japanese 11th Army to quickly capture Hengyang and restore morale. Before the war, the commander of the 11th Army, who estimated that hengyang would be taken for up to 3 days, could not sit still and came to the hengyang front to personally command. The Japanese took the measure of rejoining the attack on the northwest and north of Hengyang in addition to the original 68th and 116th Divisions, and ordered the first part of the 58th Division (equipped with cannons and 3 howitzers each) to rejoin the attack on the northwest and north of Hengyang. The 40th Division and the 13th Division also transferred some of their forces to the attack on Hengyang. In addition, the 34th, 27th, and 3rd Divisions were also ordered to go south to participate in the upcoming 3rd general attack on Hengyang. After the reinforcement of the Japanese troops from the periphery, the third general attack of the Japanese army reached 5 divisions and regiments, and was equipped with 100 cannons, with a total strength of about 100,000.
Japanese artillery positions
The Japanese army replenished its combat strength on a large scale, but the Tenth Army, which was in the encirclement circle, was almost exhausted, the shells were basically exhausted, the food and medicine were cut off, and all the miscellaneous services, medical soldiers, cooking soldiers, and guard troops were all thrown into the front line of battle.
The third time in total, there is actually no suspense, if the reinforcements do not arrive, the fall of Hengyang is in front of you!
On August 4, the Japanese army completed its efforts in a battle, launched an unprecedented scale of attack, heavy artillery tore the air and smashed into the defenders, infantry flooded, the tenth army officers relied on rifle grenades to defend desperately to kill the enemy.
During the attack, a wounded soldier station fell into the hands of the Japanese army, and nearly a thousand seriously injured people who were incapacitated were slaughtered!
As the fierce battle progressed, the entire casualties of the Pre-10th Division were soon exhausted, and the 1st Battalion of its 30th Regiment had reached more than 20 men; the division's position was replaced by the 3rd Division. The battles for the wuguiling, Tianma mountain, Yueping mountain and other highlands were unprecedentedly fierce, and the 7th and 9th regiments were wounded, and the casualties of officers and men were even heavier. The Japanese also suffered heavy casualties, with three captains of the 109th Regiment of the 116th Division killed by the Nationalists; on August 6, 1944, during the Battle of Yueping Mountain; Major General Shima Genji, commander of the 57th Brigade of the 68th Division, shot a bullet from a Nationalist sniper and killed him. The grenade honor bombardiers specially trained by the 58th Division regiment in Wuhan were all killed or wounded.
However, at this time, the "Taishan Army", which was seriously reduced, could not withstand the attack of Mount Tai in any case, and on August 6, the 58th Division broke through the city wall from the north of the city. In the past, once the Japanese army broke through one corner, the defenders often collapsed completely, but the tenth soldiers held the will to die and fought more fierce street battles. The Japanese army also described it as "fiercely resistant to the growing form.".
Peeping at the leopard in the tube, the scramble for the West Zen Temple can be seen in the resolute resistance of the low-level officers and soldiers in every corner. Xizenji Temple was an extremely important position, and the position changed hands many times during the Japanese counterattack. Yang Guangrong, then commander of the Fourth Company of the Vehicle Defense Artillery Battalion of the Fifth Army, took the initiative to ask Miao to counterattack the Xichan Temple, which had been captured by the Japanese army. He took more than 30 people from the sanitary soldiers, cooks, ordnance soldiers and more than 30 people who had withdrawn from a company before them to the outside of the Xizen Temple in the dark. Yang Company Commander divided more than 30 brothers into 3 groups, all of whom wore hats to avoid accidental injuries, and took two groups of themselves to the front, leaving one group as a reserve team behind. The first two men to climb over the wall alarmed the sentry, and after a gunshot, the two sides shot each other, and soon they fought hand-to-hand. Yang Company Commander and a Japanese army captain twisted together, a Japanese soldier held up a bayonet to stab him, a battalion ordnance soldier brought at the moment of life and death smashed a butt of the Japanese army, both guns were smashed and damaged, and then the ordnance soldier and the Japanese soldier smashed the Japanese head with a grenade in hand-to-hand combat, and then helped Yang Company Commander solve the Japanese captain. Immediately after the preparation to climb over the wall to come in, under the miserable moonlight a group of people shouted "kill", the Japanese army saw the reinforcements coming in, did not know how many counter-offensive defenders there were, instantly shaken back, the Chinese soldiers were more brave to rush to kill, and finally the Xichan Temple was retaken!
As members of the Fifth Army, they had died in the jungle savage mountain in northern Burma, and they came to Hengyang as a reinforcement a month ago, and now they have fought alone with the Tenth Army for more than 40 days, but they can't wait for a reinforcement!
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > reinforcements that can never wait</h1>
Chiang Kai-shek once agreed with Fang Xianjue that when Fang really couldn't hold on, he could send him a two-word secret telegram, and reinforcements would arrive within 48 hours. However, after Fang Xianjue sent out a secret telegram several times, he could not wait for reinforcements!
Due to Chiang Kai-shek's great concern about the hengyang war situation, other units of the nationalist army successively invested more than 8 armies on Xianggui Road and the outskirts of Hengyang City, with no less than 100,000 people.
The main rescue forces were divided into three directions, with the 20th and 58th Armies of the Ninth Theater of Operations commanded by Xue Yue in Changsha to the east, the 62nd and 79th Armies in the west, and the 73rd, 74th, 99th, and 100th Armies reinforced from the direction of Changde in the northwest. Chiang Kai-shek sent several telegrams ordering the nationalist troops' peripheral troops to go all out to break through the siege of Hengyang, and the various units of the Nationalist army participating in the war continued to exchange fire with the Japanese army, and the highlands such as Yumu Mountain, Jianfeng Mountain, and Jilong Mountain changed hands several times. On July 18, General Li Yutang, the former commander of the Tenth Army, in order to rescue his old troops, personally visited the headquarters of the 62nd Army to supervise the battle, commanded one of its troops to attack only 5 kilometers from the city, and conquered the highlands of Yumu Mountain. On the 20th, 3 battalions successfully re-established hengyang south railway station. However, the Japanese immediately launched a counterattack, and the 62nd Army ran out of ammunition and collapsed; thereafter it could no longer contact the defenders in the city. The 62nd Army suffered heavy casualties, with many officers above the rank of deputy regimental commander martyred, and 1 battalion that attacked the heights of Jianfeng Mountain was also martyred. The Japanese also suffered heavy losses, and under the continuous attack of the Nationalist army and the bombardment of the Chinese and American air forces, the entire squadron of the 234th Wing of the Japanese 40th Division regiment had at least 3 people left, and only 24 people at most. Nationalist reinforcements and the 40th Division of the Japanese resistance force formed a confrontation on the outskirts of Hengyang. But in the end, none of them succeeded in breaking the siege.
Judging from the combat process of various reinforcements, the remnants of the 9th Theater of Operations, which were defeated and retreated in Changsha in the east, were already more difficult to defend themselves in the face of the elite 13th and 3rd Divisions of the 11th Army on the left flank, and it was basically a fantasy to reinforce and break the siege of Hengyang. In the northwest, the 4 corps under Wang Yaowu of the 24th Group, especially the 74th Army, is the number one main force of the Nationalist army and has the strongest combat effectiveness, but one is the farthest distance from Hengyang, and the other is that the combat enthusiasm has a sense of not doing its best. Only the 62nd Army and the 79th Army of the West Road were closest to Hengyang, and under the strict orders of Chiang Kai-shek and Li Yutang personally supervised the battle, they did their best to achieve limited capabilities, and after a huge sacrifice, they were close to the Hengyang defenders, but in the end they could not break the siege!
The most powerful 74th Army
On August 2, Cao Huating, commander of the Special Service Battalion of the Tenth Army, was urgently summoned to the army headquarters, and this fierce general was ordered to lead a 150-man commando team to rush out of the siege to Wuli Pavilion outside the city to receive reinforcements. Commander Cao rushed out of the siege to reach Wuliting, but the reinforcements of the 62nd Army had already retreated, which was probably the most regrettable place in the defense of Hengyang! If the 62nd Army retreated a little later, it might be able to join the receiving troops of the Tenth Army, and as long as it could rush into the city of a regiment, it would have an immeasurable impact on strengthening the defensive strength of Hengyang, especially on the confidence of the firm defenders! As long as Hengyang can hold for 1 to 3 more days, the entire war situation is likely to undergo a major reversal. Not only could the Japanese army not be able to attack the fortified city for a long time, the periphery was heavily flanked, the air was bombed by the Sino-US joint air force, the material consumption and supply were difficult, and finally retreated to Changsha, and the Nationalist army blocked and tailed along the way, perhaps it would be another "great victory" similar to the Third Battle of Changsha. However, the close reception could not see the shadow of the reinforcements, and Cao Huating's troops had already highlighted the siege and could have taken the opportunity to leave the dangerous city of Hengyang, but he led the crowd back to the horse gun and killed it again. Rush back to Hengyang 150 people only 15 people left!
The day after the fall of Hengyang City, the 46th Army, a mechanized unit of the Nationalist Army, appeared in the northwest of Hengyang. The Japanese army fought bloody battles for several days, facing the 46th Army equipped with tanks, the Japanese army admitted that the siege force had been slightly shaken. However, Hengyang had fallen, and the Japanese army had no worries about the future, readjusted its deployment, and concentrated its forces to surround and annihilate the outlying nationalist forces. The peripheral units of the Nationalist army did not make timely adjustments and once fell into a passive situation of being beaten. Wang Jiaben's 79th Army did not withdraw from the battle until the surrender of the 10th Army on August 8. On September 7, 1944, his headquarters was attacked by a small unit of the elite Japanese 13th Division at Cold Water Beach. Wang Jia personally led the guard troops to counterattack, and after killing several Japanese Kou, he died under the bayonets of the Japanese army and was martyred.
General Wang Jiaben who has experienced a great war
At a time when the low-level officers and men of the Tenth Army were fighting bitterly in a dangerous situation, the hearts of the army division commanders and other high-level officers had been suffering in pain, the reinforcements who were looking forward to penetrating the eyes had never been seen, the wounded soldiers were full of camps and the city was destroyed, and the battle would rather die than surrender until one soldier and one soldier died. Or do you give up military honor and national integrity to try to save the remnants?
(To be continued)