UGB #177 - Hiding troops among the people
#177 - Hiding troops among the people
As time entered New Year's Day of 1942, the common people of China discovered that not only were there no surprises, but the external situation was getting worse and worse. The Japanese devils, after taking Hong Kong Island, continued their southward advance with unstoppable force.
Not two days after the sound of Japanese bombs echoed at Pearl Harbor, the long-planned southward Japanese forces landed on Luzon Island. Even though General MacArthur had been warned that the Japanese were coming, the colonial army under his command was still the same useless bunch as in history, completely unable to fight against the ferocious Japanese devils of the moment. One colony after another fell. By New Year's Day, Manila had been captured.
Malaya, Dutch Borneo, Portuguese Timor, Sumatra... Several Japanese armies advanced all the way, tearing down the last bit of face John Bull had in Asia.
The General Staff of the Border Region had originally been somewhat hesitant about the Great Sweep in Central Hebei, but now, seeing that Ren Zhong's prediction of the Japanese southward advance was almost identical to reality, the atmosphere suddenly became very serious.
According to Ren Zhong's suggestion, the headquarters issued secret combat orders to temporarily abandon the Central Hebei Plain base area, preserving the main force. The main regiments of the military region jumped out of the base area and moved west and north, entering the mountains to carry out mobile warfare with other fraternal units.
In Central Hebei, only a communication company disguised as headquarters was left behind, replacing the military region's organization to confuse the Japanese devils by maintaining the daily telegraph frequency.
The core regiments and guerrilla brigades were dispersed into squads and platoons, following the development model of the enemy-occupied area's armed work teams, hiding soldiers among the people, and starting to dig tunnels and prepare landmines in large quantities.
In Anping City, Li Yunlong ultimately failed to persuade Chu Yunfei to bombard the county seat. After being forced to fight desperately in the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, Yan Xishan suffered heavy losses, losing another thirty to forty thousand of his hundred thousand troops. He was heartbroken and became increasingly concerned about the 358th Regiment, which still maintained its complete organization and had a strength of over 4,000 men, sending telegrams every day to inquire about the situation. Under such circumstances, Chu Yunfei had almost no chance to deploy troops without authorization.
Even a dragon like Chu Yunfei was tightly bound, only able to guard his mountain stronghold and watch the clouds rise and fall.
Old Li was actually in a similar situation. Without the brigade commander's order, the Independent Regiment could only passively counterattack, and the main force could not move rashly.
However, Li Yunlong was not as honest as Chu Yunfei. Although the main force of the Independent Regiment did not move, squad and platoon-level training was not prohibited. Therefore, Li Yunlong, Kong Jie, Wang Huaibao, and others would occasionally take small groups of men and fly-thunder cannons and RPGs out for training, and conveniently take down several strongholds around the county seat. Wang Huaibao would then lead people to infiltrate the villages and towns near the strongholds to carry out armed work. In a few months, the villages and towns around Anping were transformed into new base areas. The Japanese devils now only held an empty county seat, but they did not dare to act rashly. Now, the Japanese devils' army could not stay in the mountains for long. The mountains were barren, and local supplies were extremely scarce. The logistics for thousands of people simply could not be sustained for more than a month.
Li Yunlong knew the enemy's weaknesses well, so when the main force of the Japanese devils came before, he led the main force of the Independent Regiment to wander around in the mountains to exhaust them, while small guerrilla teams carried out small-scale raids and ambushes on the Japanese devils' logistics supplies. From July to September 1941, they stubbornly exhausted a Japanese brigade, and then became active, training and attacking strongholds around Anping.
Perfectly playing a time difference with the Japanese devils.
After regaining control of the area around Yang Village, Li Yunlong began to gather manpower and vigorously restore some processing capacity in Yang Village and the headquarters' arsenal.
However, this time, without the headquarters by their side, only the Independent Regiment was supporting such a large area. This had already become an open secret. The Japanese devils were very clear about the terrain and landforms. Li Yunlong knew that he could not stop the Japanese devils' army from sweeping, so he controlled the overall production scale a bit to make it easier to run away when he couldn't hold on.
Machine guns and Type 56 rifles required large machine tools, which were not easy to move, so Li Yunlong did not consider them anymore. He only used the resources here to carry out mass production of ammunition, propellants, explosives, as well as bullets, grenades, and landmines, which were relatively low in technical difficulty.
Therefore, the production in Yang Village was far less than its peak period, not even recovering to a third of it. After all, in terms of personnel, most of the skilled workers had secretly dispersed and entered Heyuan to develop.
Over there, it was farther away from the Japanese devils' transportation lines, the mountains were more rugged and difficult to travel, and there was not much exposed now, so the Japanese devils had not paid attention to Heyuan.
They basically stopped at Anping and did not move forward.
In addition, Ren Zhong's main factories were hidden deep in the mountain caves, with several kilometers of river channels for entry and exit to cover people's eyes and ears. The surrounding villages had also been developed into strong fortress villages, so the secret of the Heyuan arsenal was tightly protected.
If it weren't for the fact that Yang Village had mountains, water, and mines, Li Yunlong would have really been reluctant to give it up. Otherwise, Old Li wouldn't have eaten his words and insisted on fighting back.
In the original timeline, after experiencing the Japanese devils' sweep, Li Yunlong moved the Independent Regiment to Zhao Jia Yu to rebuild. However, after being disrupted by Ren Zhong in this timeline, the Japanese devils won the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, but they did not win completely. Tens of thousands of Nationalist troops in uniform entered the Lüliang Mountains, Taiyue Mountains, and Taihang Mountains. Although the situation was extremely difficult, they had not dispersed after all, and the Japanese devils had to divide 2 divisions and 3 brigades to watch over them in the surrounding area.
The 6 divisions and 3 brigades that entered Jin Province were now in a difficult situation, except for the flying group, which could come and go freely.
If they withdrew part of their main force, no one would be able to stop them, but in doing so, they would inevitably leave a large gap, and these tens of thousands of Nationalist soldiers might rush out and return to the Zhongtiao Mountain area, so that they could more easily obtain supplies from the Nationalist army on the other side of the river.
Now, being blocked in the three major mountains, at least large-scale supplies from the Nationalist army could not be carried out.
This made Yoshio Shinozuka, commander of the North China Command and the First Army Command of Jin Province, very upset.
After all, the southward battle had already begun, and the vast newly occupied territories to the south urgently needed reinforcements, but if the rear was unstable, if two divisions were transferred south, the situation in North China would not be stable.
Therefore, the high-level Japanese devils in North China carefully considered it again and again, and had to prepare to endure for another half a year, and after carrying out the planned Operation No. 3, they would sweep Central Hebei and then transfer troops south.
It's just that in this world of "Bright Sword", after all, the traces of Ren Zhong's passing have been left behind.
After the Border Region re-researched the propellant technology secret recipe of the rocket, and formed a stable mass production, it began to spread the technology to several stable large-scale military industrial bases. The Heyuan base was Ren Zhong's direct line, so naturally it was the first to get the top-secret formula and production technology data passed down from the Border Region.
Using the data from the Heyuan military industrial base, they immediately put into the replication work of the 107 rocket. By New Year's Day of 1942, Li Yunlong had already obtained a complete 107 rocket launcher and 24 rockets!
Second update