boyutpedia Chapter 748 Both Sides Are Holding On
Chapter 748 Both Sides Are Holding On
The fierce battle between the attacking forces of the Japanese 11th Army and the 10th Army of the Chinese government lasted until August 6. The attacking forces of the Japanese 11th Army finally broke through the city wall of Hengyang and entered the city. The second line of defense built by the 10th Army of the Chinese government in the southwest of Hengyang City was also broken through by the attacking forces of the Japanese 11th Army.
The two previous general attacks on Hengyang City by the Japanese 11th Army's offensive forces had both ended in failure, and the Japanese 11th Army's offensive forces had also suffered heavy losses. The offensive infantry of the Japanese 68th Division and the 116th Division, which were responsible for the main attack on Hengyang, was reduced by about half.
The Tenth Army of the Chinese government, which was responsible for the defense of Hengyang, also suffered heavy losses. Originally, the Military Commission of the Chinese government and the Ninth War Zone of the Chinese government ordered the Tenth Army to guard Hengyang for about a week to ten days. As a result, the Tenth Army of the Chinese government had been fighting the offensive forces of the Eleventh Army of the Japanese Army in Hengyang for four weeks and was still holding on. Moreover, the Tenth Army of the Chinese government now relies entirely on airdrops from aircraft of the Joint Air Force of China and the United States for supplies.
At this time, Hengyang City had become a living hell. The entire battlefield was littered with corpses of soldiers from the Chinese Army and the Japanese 11th Army's offensive forces that had no time to be cleaned up. As time went by, the bodies of the fallen officers and soldiers on both sides piled up higher and higher, and quickly rotted in the hot summer, emitting a pungent odor. Flies, mosquitoes, and maggots were everywhere. After a short summer rainstorm, the water in the defensive trenches reached waist-deep, and many bodies of fallen officers and soldiers were still soaking in the trenches.
Before the battle of Hengyang began, each Japanese soldier of the 11th Japanese Army, which was responsible for the central offensive force, only carried one week to ten days' rations on his back, and had no other food supplies.
However, the Japanese 11th Army's central offensive force had been attacking Hengyang for so many days but still failed to capture the city. The officers and soldiers of the Japanese 11th Army's central offensive force had long been starving and had no food to eat. The lotus roots and fish in the pond outside Hengyang City, the sweet potatoes and half-ripe rice in the fields were all eaten by the officers and soldiers of the Japanese 11th Army's central offensive force. As a result, this caused widespread typhoid, malaria and cholera in the offensive forces of the Japanese 11th Army.
Even the field hospital set up by the Japanese 11th Army's attacking force in Yangjiaao outside Hengyang City was fearfully called the "Hell Hospital" by the soldiers in the attacking force.
Because the Japanese 11th Army's troops responsible for the central attack failed to capture Hengyang City for a long time, various diseases began to spread widely among the attacking troops of the Japanese 11th Army. Four to five thousand people died from the wounded alone. Moreover, as there were not enough medical staff in the Japanese field hospitals, they had no time to confirm the names of the dead officers and soldiers, and the bodies could only be left outside the hospital to rot.
The attacking forces of the Japanese 11th Army suffered heavy casualties, and the casualties of the Chinese government's 10th Army defending Hengyang City were even more serious. Due to insufficient manpower, the 10th Army had already retreated to the second line of defense.
Among them, the three regiments of the 10th Reserve Division and the troops directly under the division headquarters suffered casualties of over 90%, the three regiments of the 3rd Division also suffered casualties of over 70%, only 400 people were left in the 190th Division, and only 500 people were left in the troops directly under the 10th Army headquarters. The 10th Army's search battalion, artillery battalion, engineering battalion, and special service battalion all had less than one-third of their strength left.
During this period, the 62nd and 79th Armies of the Chinese Army, the reinforcements outside Hengyang, successfully stormed into the city of Hengyang twice, and once even attacked the headquarters of the 116th Division of the Japanese Army. However, due to the lack of coordination between the 62nd and 79th Armies of the Chinese government, they failed to form a linkage in the attack and missed the best opportunity to annihilate the commander of the 116th Division of the Japanese Army, Lieutenant General Wang Iwanaga, and rescue the 10th Army of the Chinese government.
After completing the second replenishment, the attacking force of the Japanese 11th Army quickly launched the third general offensive. The commander of the Japanese 11th Army, Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama, even dispatched the 58th Division of the Japanese Army to replace the 57th Brigade of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army to intensify the attack on Hengyang City.
As the Japanese 11th Army's offensive forces began their third general offensive against Hengyang City, they were suddenly surprised to find that the Chinese government's 10th Army, which had been defending Hengyang City, had run out of ammunition and food, and that the mortars that had played an important role in the 10th Army could no longer fire many shells.
At this time, the Chinese army responsible for the outer reinforcements also knew that the 10th Army could not hold on for much longer, so the reinforcements could only begin to use human wave tactics to launch continuous attacks on the 24-kilometer defense front defended by the 40th Division of the Japanese Army.
However, the 40th Division of the Japanese Army had already gone mad with rage and began to use mustard gas on a large scale against the Chinese army that launched the human wave charge tactic. This caused widespread poisoning of officers and soldiers of the 79th Army of the Chinese government that was launching the large-scale charge.
But even so, the blocking battle between the outer Chinese reinforcements and the 40th Division of the Japanese Army was still fierce, and a large-scale melee centered on Hengyang had already formed between the offensive forces of the Japanese 11th Army and the Chinese government's army.
At three o'clock in the morning of August 6, the attacking force of the 58th Division of the Japanese Army finally broke through the defensive position of Yanwuping after all the officers and soldiers of the 10th Army of the Chinese government were killed in Yanwuping.
At noon, the attacking force of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army entered the city of Hengyang. The last remaining company commander of the 10th Army of the Chinese government fought with his last breath and fired all the remaining eight mortar shells in succession, and actually succeeded in killing Major General Shima Genkichi, the commander of the 57th Brigade of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army who had just entered the city of Hengyang.
After the attacking force of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army broke into the city of Hengyang, it was stubbornly blocked by the remaining officers and soldiers of the 10th Army of the Chinese government. In order to speed up the advance, the attacking force of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army once again released a large number of poison gas bombs.
On August 7, Hengyang City had become a scorched earth, and the Tenth Army of the Chinese government, which was responsible for the defense of Hengyang City, was left with only 7,000 wounded soldiers.
By the evening of that day, the attacking forces of the 58th Division of the Japanese Army had cut the city of Hengyang in half. The remaining officers and soldiers of the 10th Army of the Chinese government were already trapped in the siege and attacked from both sides. At this time, the reinforcements of the Chinese government on the periphery were still unable to break through the resistance of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army. The city of Hengyang had reached the point where it could no longer hold out.