Chapter 457 Battle of Great Unity

Xushuai, this is the latest name of Shiyanglin. According to the unwritten tradition in the Beiyang system in recent years, once a senior general becomes a division commander, his officers and friendly colleagues often honor the word 'handi', and Shiyanglin's word is Fan Xu, so now his officers begin to honor him as Xu Shuai or division commander.

However, only his subordinates call this name in private now. Generally, no one will call him that in formal occasions. In formal occasions, he is relatively close and generally calls his word 'Fan Xu'. If he is not familiar with it, he will directly call him 'Master Shi' or 'Brother Shi', and generally those with higher qualifications and official titles than him will shout directly. His name is 'Yanglin', and in the official article, he is generally called Shiyanglin's division commander, and sometimes he also wears a number, such as Shiyang, the 20th division commander. These days, his personal name is relatively complicated and cannot be called randomly.

And one thing has to say that no generals these days are called so-and-so. The names of military seats and division seats have not been called out in the Beiyang era. This is not until Jiang Guangtou in later generations became the chairman of the Military Commission and is respected as the throne by his subordinates, various military seats, division seats, brigade seats, Names such as group seats have become popular.

Now, there are more people calling someone handsome, but this 'handsome' is usually a name or word with a handsome word, but few people dare to call themselves Marshal or Marshal.

In contemporary China, only a few warlords are qualified to be called Marshal, such as Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen, Wu Fengling and others in the past. At present, the title of Grand Marshal is only enjoyed by Zhao Dongyun. Because the rank of marshal has not been promulgated, and at the same time, in order to avoid Zhao Dongyun's suspicion, there is no Some people call themselves marshal. In addition, after Duan Qirui became the deputy marshal of the command, he was also called 'deputy marshal' or 'deputy marshal'.

Hearing his subordinate's words, Shi Yanglin nodded and said, "Since it's ready, then send an order to go!"

Shiyanglin's 20th Division will enter Shanxi by train. Of course, in order to avoid being bombed by the railway on the road, the 20th Cavalry Regiment of the 20th Division has set out along the railway line in advance to serve as the pioneer of the whole army to ensure that the railway march of the army will not be disturbed.

is different from other units of the 20th Division, but the 20th Cavalry Regiment of the Division is adapted from the Patrol Cavalry Battalion.

The predecessor of the 20th Cavalry Regiment is the Third Patrol Cavalry Battalion. The battalion commander is Wu Junsheng, who is very familiar to future generations. This person led the Cavalry Battalion across Heilongjiang and Mongolia, and then moved south to Shandong, Henan and Jiangbei to fight more than half of China. Its Third Patrol Cavalry Battalion also has made outstanding achievements.

Because the Feng army has long used the patrol cavalry battalion as a field cavalry, and the Feng army has been expanding on a large scale. When expanding the army, infantry and even artillery are easy to solve, but the cavalry is not easy to solve, and the cavalry composed of pure recruits can't form any combat effectiveness at all, so Zhao Dongyunkai Several patrol cavalry battalions were expanded, but they were assigned to infantry divisions as cavalry regiments.

The Third Patrol Cavalry Battalion was also expanded to the 20th Cavalry Regiment under such circumstances, but the regimental commander is no longer Wu Junsheng.

Wu Junsheng has been promoted to colonel and transferred to the 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade because of his outstanding combat achievements. Last year, he was promoted to major general and took over as the commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. Now he is leading the 2nd Cavalry Brigade to fight in Hubei.

As the train swayed all the way, Shiyanglin also left Shijiazhuang with his 20th division, and then went all the way west to Niangziguan.

Niangzi Pass is the most important pass at the junction of Shanxi and Zhili. Its terrain is very conducive to defense. At the same time, it also guards the Zhengtai Railway, which is a must-have place for soldiers.

Wu Fengling, who controls the place, has been deploying heavy defense here since he entered Shanxi. With the Feng army going south to the south of the Yangtze River and defeating the Anhui army, it has increased its defense force here. It is not so easy to take this place and open the channel to enter too far.

However, no matter how difficult it is, Shiyanglin must take this place, because he needs to move west quickly to cooperate with other Feng army offensives from the north of Jin.

In order to attack Shanxi, although the main force of the Feng army was the Sixth Army, which relied on the Zhengtai Railway, it also sent troops south from the northeast of Shanxi. From there, the first cavalry brigade and the 12th division adapted from the fifth mixed brigade.

Since the 12th Division was originally stationed in Tangshan, an extremely important strategic place for the Feng army, after the 12th Division was transferred, in order to fill the gap in Tangshan's defense, Zhao Dongyun moved the 9th Mixed Brigade stationed in Tianjin to Tangshan. At the same time, in order to supplement the vacancy in the Beijing Division, he ordered the reconstruction of the Fifth Division.

The Fifth Division of the Central Army used to be Zhang Huaizhi's unit of the Lu Army. Since the Jiangbei Campaign, Zhang Huaizhi has completely withdrawn from the historical stage, leaving only a few thousand people to survive. After the Jiangnan Campaign, the only few thousand people were also defeated. Zhang Huaizhi himself fled to Shanghai as an apartment, because he was not captured. There are too many remnants of the Fifth Division, so Zhao Dongyun did not reorganize and rebuild the Fifth Division, resulting in the number of the Fifth Division being vacant.

Now that the division number of the Central Army has been ranked as many as 24. Naturally, it is impossible for Zhao Dongyun to keep the 5th Division vacant, so when he began to form a new force, he used the number of the 5th Division.

Although the Feng army has expanded its troops on a large scale in recent years, in fact, there are not many newly formed division-level troops. From 1906 to 1907, before the Feng army entered the customs, the Feng army did not form any new troops. They were all adapted from the old troops. The third town was adapted into the third division, and the first town of Fengtian Standing Army It was adapted into the 9th Division and the second town of the Fengtian Standing Army was reorganized into the 10th Division. These three units are the ace units of the Feng army.

It was not until the second half of 1907 that Zhao Dongyun formed a new 14th Division, and then formed the 15th Division.

Then it was not until the second half of 1908 that Zhao Dongyun formed the 20th Division.

A few years ago, only three new main divisions have been formed. There are many mixed brigades, including the fourth mixed brigade, the fifth mixed brigade, the seventh mixed brigade, the ninth mixed brigade, the tenth mixed brigade and the eleventh mixed brigade. Later, these mixed brigades were successively expanded into infantry divisions, and now there is only the fifth mixed brigade. The three mixed brigades, the ninth mixed brigade and the eleventh mixed brigade have not been adapted.

The other troops are all surrendered troops!

The reconstructed 5th Division was used to supplement Tangshan defense after the 12th Division was transferred, while the 12th Division launched an attack from the north of Shanxi.

The Feng army's attack on Shanxi is all-round, in the direction of the Zhengtai Railway and the north of Jin. At the same time, the 11th mixed brigade under the command of the Third Army of the Feng army is also marching in the southwest of Shanxi.

The troops participating in the Shanxi Campaign included three divisions, one mixed brigade and one cavalry brigade, with a total strength of nearly 60,000.

Compared with the 60,000 troops attacking Shanxi, in fact, the Feng army has invested more troops in the Hubei direction, including Lu Yongxiang's First Army, Meng Enyuan's Fourth Army, Chen Guangyuan's Third Army, and Zhang Guotai's Fifth Army.

In addition to Chen Guangyuan's Third Army, it has maintained its previous establishment and only sent the 11th Division and 13th Divisions to participate in the war. In addition to the original troops, the other three armies also have a varying number of former Southern Federal surrenders.

When the Feng army attacked Hubei and Hunan, it defeated more than 300,000 Southern Federal troops, and this defeat was not completely annihilated, that is to say, the number of casualties of the Southern Federal troops was actually not large, at most 20,000 to 30,000, and more of them were captured or deserted.

In the above two provinces, the Feng army captured at least 100,000 southern federal prisoners. The combat effectiveness of these prisoners is relatively weak, and they are not taking the initiative to surrender like Zhang Guotai at the beginning, so Zhao Dongyun has no intention to spend too much effort to reorganize them and connect these captured troops with the central land. The military number has not been given.

Those old and weak were directly abolished, and some strong and heavy weapons were selected to form four infantry divisions. Because they did not give the number of the Central Army, and now there are no provincial army numbers in the Feng army, so they can only use the numbers of the patrol force to grant the 1st Division, 2nd Division and 3rd Division respectively. The number of the Fourth Division.

There are no capable officers sent in the Feng army. What it used to be like now, and the combat effectiveness is also at the level of the ordinary provincial army.

These four patrol divisions were assigned to the First Army and the Fourth Army respectively, and one army and two divisions were fairly distributed.

Due to the extremely poor fighting, neither Lu Yongxiang nor Meng Enyuan intends to send them to the front line, but to be used as a rear auxiliary force, mainly undertaking secondary tasks such as local public security maintenance and logistics line maintenance.

But anyway, they need to be included in the army.

In this way, the Feng army that participated in the attack on Hubei has actually reached 200,000, far more than the more than 60,000 troops marching into Shanxi.

What caused this situation is not that Hubei is more important than Shanxi, but because the main force of the Feng army is now in the south, and there are only a few divisions in the northern region. The gathering 60,000 people to participate in the attack in Shanxi has greatly affected the defense of the Zhili area. According to the strategy of the combat office, the main force in the south went north to Hubei, captured Hubei with an absolute military advantage, and then reinforced troops into the southwest of Shanxi, eastern Shaanxi and Sichuan, and launched an attack on Wu Fengling and Zhao Erxun's troops at the same time.

Due to the large number of troops attacking Hubei from the south, in order to unify and integrate the troops, Zhao Dongyun once again set up the Hubei Front Headquarters, with Meng Enyuan as the commander and Lu Yongxiang and Zhang Guotai as the deputy commanders respectively.