Intelligence is the key to defeating the enemy. To conduct a successful military operation, accurate and timely intelligence support is indispensable.
In ancient times, there was a saying that "know yourself and the enemy, and you will never be in danger in a hundred battles." Later, there was also a saying that "commanders use all possible and necessary reconnaissance methods to select the rough and the essential, discard the false and retain the true... thus forming judgments, making decisions, and making plans." ideological guidance.
Before engaging in pursuit and suppression operations, Yiluan Division still needs to ascertain the enemy's situation and formulate a specific strategy.
At the same time, because the security area that the 7th Division is responsible for is too vast, there will be almost no available mobile forces after being spread out. Therefore, Zhou Changfeng took the initiative to volunteer and requested that the First Marine Regiment cooperate with Yiluan Division to pursue and suppress the remaining resistance forces.
This application was quickly approved by Nie Quan.
However, for almost the entire April, after arriving in Tokyo, the more than 200 officers and soldiers of Yiluan Division were conducting adaptive training while summarizing known intelligence, and had not yet dispatched.
It was during these twenty days that the situation on Honshu Island deteriorated. In March, the Ming army quickly landed and crushed the resistance. The central government of Japan and the local vassal towns all expressed their compliance. There was not much resistance in various places, which can be called " Calm and calm”.
However, as time came to April, perhaps with sufficient buffer and reaction time, resistance movements broke out in full swing across Honshu Island, and resistance forces, large and small, sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.
Three units today, five units tomorrow, more and more new enemy situations overwhelmed the Third Army and the Second Army's general headquarters, so the dispatch of Yiluan Division was delayed again and again.
From Yamaguchi Prefecture in the southwest to Iwate Prefecture in the northeast, Honshu Island, which is more than 2,000 miles long, can be described as a constant war.
With a small number of soldiers and poor equipment, they would ambush the Ming army's baggage team or sneak attack lone soldiers.
If you have a large number of people and good equipment, then try to besiege the town and defeat the larger number. It is not without the possibility of success.
For a time, there were reports of battles or calls for help everywhere.
It is clear that the central government and local vassal towns of the Japanese Kingdom have bowed their heads submissively, so why are there so many rebellions?
The soldiers were very depressed because in this case, the troops would not be able to return home in early May as planned.
The generals were also extremely angry, anxious and irritable.
"...The 19th Regiment reported three battles yesterday, with 18 casualties; the 20th Regiment reported four battles, with 26 casualties; the 39th Regiment of the 13th Division once, with three casualties..."
"These ungrateful and rebellious people deserve to be killed!"
"Yes, since ancient times, barbarians have been afraid of power and not moral. I think if they don't kill everyone, they will never have a long memory."
Among the generals who participated in the regular meeting, there were many with bad tempers. This kind of annoying local rebellion was really outrageous.
The originally considered policy of both deterrence and gentleness was abandoned. It can be said that during this period, the two armies of the Ming Dynasty, which numbered 100,000 and were distributed on Honshu Island, were mostly fighting violence with violence and targeting local civilians. The collateral damage is very large.
Obviously, such behavior will aggravate the hostility of those who originally held a wait-and-see attitude or were indifferent, making the situation even worse.
Such a vicious cycle is naturally something Zhou Changfeng does not want to see. There are also some calm and wise officers who believe that they should be suppressed in parallel to avoid collateral damage as much as possible.
However, the suggestions of a small number of people naturally could not extinguish the anger of the Ming army soldiers. The casualties of their subordinates and comrades caused many people's revenge mood to rise.
The Ming army, where nationalism was prevalent, was extremely sensitive to this - how could the despicable Japanese pirates dare to commit such a crime? This requires a bloody lesson.
The brutal struggle continued until late April. The General Military Office seemed to have forgotten that there was an elite team on standby?
It was not until the morning of the 27th that Yiluansi finally received the order he had been waiting for - your troops were ordered to set off for Shizuoka immediately to intercept an enemy advancing westward.
Due to the tight transportation capacity, in addition to the three transport planes, some people from Yiluansi had to squeeze into the bomb bay of the bomber to board.
As soon as the plane landed, they rushed to the dock without stopping.
The friendly force stationed in Shizuoka was the 38th Regiment of the 13th Division. While the main force of Yiluan Division was setting up camp, Cai Zhichen, who paid special attention to the first mission, personally led the reconnaissance team to set off.
The Oigawa River originates in the northern mountains and flows through Shizuoka before entering the sea. More than 30 of them took four small motorboats and headed north via the river to check the terrain and track down clues.
"His grandma is stupid! Tell me the truth, if you dare to fool people, I will kill you guys!"
On the dirt road in front of a village, a dozen farmers wearing turbans and bamboo hats gathered together. The people's clothes were all in tatters, except for the village chief (village chief), who was a little better, at least without any patches.
More than a dozen soldiers from the 38th Regiment and dozens of Shizuoka Prefectural police officers were questioning the movements of the resistance forces because they had previously received reports that several armed men had passed through this place.
A short middle-aged man said with a flattering smile: "Sir, they said they didn't know that the troops in the sky have been in chaos recently, and there are often broken troops and bandits running around."
"Really?" The sergeant leading the team sneered and waved his hand: "Go in and search, be careful."
The military police swarmed into the village, drove out all the villagers in the houses, and then began to search house to house.
Because the government blatantly obeyed the Ming Dynasty, it was natural for the original public officials to cooperate with the actions of the suzerain state. Whether it was the army or the police, they had to do whatever the Ming Dynasty king ordered.
Without the cooperation of the Shizuoka Prefectural Police, the 38th Regiment, which is stretched thin, would not be able to smoothly carry out the task of maintaining public security and stability.
As the wolf-like military police began to search, everything was going crazy for a while!
The villagers looked at them uneasily and nervously, because there were actually several injured resistance soldiers being taken in here.
Although the soldiers' movements were made with big swords, they were rough and subtle, and they did not miss any corner where it was convenient for someone to hide.
"Grass! There is..."
"boom!"
"Bang bang jump!"
Shouts and gunfire suddenly rang out, shocking the surrounding military police and villagers.
After a chaotic incident, two of the four resistance soldiers hiding in the village were killed and the other two were captured. A soldier here was also injured by a bullet in the thigh, but unfortunately, the bullet broke his leg. Arteries are hard to save.
The bright red blood spurted out like a faucet, and others hurriedly opened the first aid kit and pressed hard with bandages.
The white bandage was dyed blood red in an instant, but the blood still flowed out uncontrollably.
The medical soldiers who rushed over pushed the others away, and the blood really spurted out like shaking the soda bottle and unscrewing the cap!
"Hold here! Groin! Hold, hold, hold!"
He asked another person to help press the upper end, then took out the hemostatic forceps in the aluminum first aid kit and tried to find the broken artery.
However, the wound was completely soaked in blood, and blood continued to flow out. The eager medical soldiers could not catch the bleeding point. He guessed that the broken artery might have retracted a little, so he could only try to open the opening bit by bit.
The wounded soldier was young, only about eighteen or nineteen years old. How could he bear the severe pain caused by such a scratch on his wound?
But now it was really a race against time and death. He was losing blood at a rate of nearly ten milliliters per second, and he didn't have any time to get an analgesic injection.
As he screamed in pain, his pants were soaked with blood, and the red water accumulated under his body slowly spread around, getting bigger and bigger...
As the blood loss exceeded 1,000 milliliters, hemorrhagic shock inevitably arrived - his face was pale, his eyes were blurred, and his screams gradually disappeared.
The surrounding soldiers stared blankly at this scene. Only the medical soldiers were still concentrating and trying their best to search for the broken artery.
Finally, when he successfully clamped it with the hemostatic forceps and then fastened the small steel clamp to stop the bleeding, there was already a large pool of blood on the ground.
The warm blood soaked into the foreign soil, and the young soldier's breathing and heartbeat stopped.
"Xiao Leizi..."
"The breath is gone."
"Arterial bleeding, eight out of ten cases cannot be saved."
Some of the extremely sad soldiers sighed, some stamped their feet, and some glared at the nearby villagers.
The sergeant who led the team was a big man with a Chinese character. At this moment, he couldn't help but became furious. He turned around and kicked the forty-year-old farmer down, and then kicked him violently.
"You bastards are complicit in bandits, harboring rebellion, and will be beheaded!" He cursed as he snatched a rifle with a bayonet from the hands of the soldiers beside him, and suddenly stabbed him straight.
The white blade came in and the red blade came out. Zhuangwu, who was lying on the ground, struggled for a few times holding the wound on his chest before dying.
The bayonet was still dripping with blood, and the sergeant returned the rifle to the soldier beside him.
More than a dozen villagers, men and women, knelt down in horror and begged for mercy. The wife of the manor cried and threw herself at the corpse, sobbing miserably.
The sergeant was still angry. He was breathing heavily, his chest was heaving, and he shouted hysterically: "Didn't you ask for this?! Why did you deceive us?! What's the benefit?! You guys say it! Say it! Two people are killed like this! Is your life good?! I don’t know what is good or bad!”
The interpreter is the incompetent third son of a local small businessman. He has been a naughty person since he was a child and has not been doing his job properly. However, because his father often does business with foreigners, he has learned Chinese and English. Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty King arrived, he I happily became a guide and translator for the army.
He cautiously translated this string of words into Japanese, but the surrounding villagers did not respond and just knelt down in silence.
At this time, someone came running quickly and reported that teammates were approaching from outside the village. The soldiers calmed down.
The Yiluan Division reconnaissance team was riding a motorboat up the river, but after hearing the sound of gunfire, they quickly docked.
When Cai Zhichen, who was holding the rank of major, appeared, the soldiers of the 38th Regiment here thought they had made a mistake - what was going on? How could a major come to such a place in person?
The Yiluan Division is an honor guard unit in name, but in actual operations, the rank plates they wear have a dark brown background color - this is the color of the scouts.
The sergeant leaned forward slightly, clasped his fists and said: "Report, the 1st Battalion and 2nd Team of the 38th Regiment of the 12th Division under my humble post were ordered to pursue the rebellious stragglers here. The people here deceived us, which resulted in one of my soldiers dying of serious injuries during the search. .”
"Did you catch those two?"
"Exactly."
"Thank you for your hard work, please rest for now."
Cai Zhichen waved his hand, and immediately soldiers came forward and roughly pulled the two wounded resistance soldiers over and forced them to kneel.
The inquiry process is very simple, what is the position, how many troops there are, what is the whereabouts and so on.
The two of them either remained silent or replied stiffly that they didn’t know.
Cai Zhichen, who considered himself relatively civilized, took a deep breath and asked patiently: "You don't want to answer? That's fine. Then let me ask, why are you two against our country?"
One of them remained silent, while the other hesitated and said bitterly: "You raped my sister! She... is crazy. I want revenge, that's it!"
The interpreter carefully translated this answer, fearing that the "high official" would be angry.
Cai Zhichen was silent for a few seconds after hearing this, and said calmly: "This is indeed an irreconcilable conflict, I understand. But... what about the others? Are they all vowing revenge for similar reasons?"
"No, the ones like me are just part of it."
"Why do those people insist on resisting? What are their original intentions and demands?"
"Most of them... just don't want to be enslaved by you Mingren."
"Slavery? How ridiculous." Cai Zhichen frowned and said, "Weren't you enslaved before the Westerners were driven away? Now that our country is the sovereign state, the worst it can do is the same as before."
At this moment, the silent wounded man finally spoke. The young man wearing round glasses said coldly: "Europeans are the leaders of the world. They are very good. We have been working hard to learn from them for decades. As for You Ming people are nothing but a bunch of conservative, ignorant, arrogant people with no good qualities. You managed to win by chance just because you were big enough forty years ago..."
When speaking this passage, the little translator was extremely nervous and almost spoke a few words.
A squad leader couldn't hold it back and slapped the bespectacled young man who was kneeling on the ground with his backhand, "Fuck you, you're full of farts!"
Cai Zhichen stared at him expressionlessly and suddenly said, "You should have read a lot of books."
"I used to be a teacher at Shizuoka Prefectural Junior High School."
"Oh, it seems that you have read too few books, or... you have read them in vain. You can only see the present, not the past. In the course of thousands of years of history, the glorious outbreak of Western civilization only lasted two hundred years. This is nothing, before that, the total period of prosperity of all dynasties was far greater than this mere two hundred years." Cai Zhichen said.
After saying that, he smiled contemptuously and said lightly: "You are ridiculing us? Your ancestors are much more pragmatic than you. Does the envoy to the Tang Dynasty know?"
"No matter what, at least you are far inferior to Europeans now." The young man wearing round glasses replied persistently.
"There's nothing to argue about. Let me spare your life." Cai Zhichen waved his hand and said calmly: "There will definitely be a war in the next few years. We will wait and see when the time comes. I want to see if you will still be so tough then."
The two wounded resistance soldiers had their wounds re-bandaged and then tied up by the soldiers.
After some exchanges and comparisons, Cai Zhichen determined that part of the defeated resistance army would pass through this area, so he ordered the rest of the army to come and join them.
Damn it, there is something wrong with the computer hard drive. I have been struggling all afternoon to no avail. I was planning to start drawing a map...
(End of chapter)
