My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

Chapter 351: The Battle of Xiushangle is in Progress

He wanted to lead his army directly to attack the border, but this was Chongqing, a city with more mountains than roads, and his army of more than 100,000 could not be deployed at all.

In the end, he had no choice but to acknowledge the existence of these people.

Fortunately, these bandits were sensible and did not wreak havoc in the area to undermine his rule. They only occasionally robbed wealthy families for their money and food.

But he never imagined that these bandits were so rampant that they dared to join forces to launch a surprise attack on his town garrison.

The key point is that they actually succeeded in the sneak attack, and this time there were hundreds of them.

Yang Shen was so angry that he didn't care whether it was a trick or not. He directly ordered the troops from various counties to join the garrisons in other towns to wipe out these bandits.

However, Yang Shen naturally knew that these bandits were extremely slippery and the county defenders would never be able to wipe them out.

So he assembled a large army, hoping to take advantage of the fact that the enemy was being held up by the county defenders and wipe them out in one fell swoop.

However, just when he had spent four days gathering his troops and preparing to go suppress the bandits, he suddenly heard news of the defeated soldiers.

It is said that Xiushan County, where his brother-in-law was stationed, was attacked unexpectedly and may have been captured by now.

My goodness, this news made him so angry that he half died. He could still tolerate a small group of bandits attacking the town, but there were only a hundred or so defenders, and two or three hundred bandits might be able to do it if they caught them by surprise.

But Xiushan County has a full 2,000 defenders. Even though his brother-in-law is a fool, as the gateway county between two provinces, how could he possibly hand over such an important position to him?

At the beginning, he just let his brother-in-law be listed as a figurehead, while his adjutant was selected by himself, who was considered a capable mid-level officer.

According to his estimation, with this adjutant leading the defense, the enemy, who had at least 4,000 to 5,000 men, would have to spend at least 3 to 5 days to even think about breaking through the county. However, what he didn't know was that this was the adjutant he had personally selected.

Not long after following Xie Tianci, he became addicted to opium and had long been disabled. When Liu Sheng called him, he was sleeping soundly after smoking a lot of opium!

The result is predictable. The adjutant was awakened in panic and wanted to take his men to defend the city wall, but he was shot to pieces by the machine guns that had been set up.

But Yang Shen certainly didn't know all this. He still thought that Xiushan County had not been lost, so he immediately divided his troops into two groups. He took half of the troops himself to clear out the bandits who had attacked the villages and towns.

In addition, he sent 30,000 people to Xiushan County for support. It was not because he really valued his brother-in-law, but because he was afraid that something might go wrong in Xiushan County, which is located at the border between the two provinces.

Seeing his beloved general leading 30,000 men to Xiushan County for support, Yang Shen immediately reorganized his troops and began the mopping-up plan.

However, his nightmare began from then on.

It turned out that these guerrillas were veterans who had been through many battles. In order to make them adapt to the terrain of Chongqing, Jiang Li made them receive intensive training in mountain warfare, so they are all true mountain warfare experts.

In the past two years, the guerrillas they recruited and trained have also achieved a high level of accomplishment in this regard.

Therefore, when Yang Sen Shen led a large force to encircle and suppress the guerrillas, they would occasionally be hit by a few hidden bullets, or step on landmines, or step on various booby traps.

Although these attacks did not cause much trouble to the army of tens of thousands of people, they dealt a heavy blow to morale.

So they were already in a panic before they even saw the enemy.

In fact, Yang Shen had already thought of a countermeasure for this, so he brought an army of nearly 80,000 people here just to kill these pests in one fell swoop.

After they arrived at a town that was attacked by guerrillas, Yang Shen summoned officers at all levels under his command and assigned them tasks.

"Brothers, these bandits are as slippery as loaches. If we use the previous pursuit tactics, we will definitely return empty-handed."

"So this time, we have to use our numerical advantage to encircle and suppress the enemy. The specific operation is to use our superior forces to search piece by piece and area by area, constantly compressing their activity space, forcing them to fight us head-on!"

After explaining the battle plan in detail to his officers, Yang Shen assigned specific tasks to each unit, dividing the troops into different areas and dispersing them to clear out the enemies mountain by mountain, ditch by ditch, and cave by cave.

After he gave the order, the officers began to act.

However, things did not develop as Yang Shen had planned. It turned out that many of his subordinates had surrendered less than a year ago and their loyalty was not high.

They were not interested in this kind of mission that involved risking their lives to search in the mountains. Plus, they were not elite soldiers, so there were many unexpected problems when they were carrying out orders.

Some of the more sophisticated ones would go into the mountains, pretend to search, and then find a place to hide.

When the time was almost right, they would start firing randomly, then quickly go back to report to their superiors, saying that they had engaged in a fierce firefight with the enemy.

The other part were careless and simply fired a few random shots before entering the mountain and then went back to report.

The end result of doing this was that the soldiers sent by Yang Shen to supervise the battle came back one after another to report that there was an exchange of fire with the enemy on this hill and gunfire was heard in that ravine.

In short, there were wars everywhere, a lot of bullets were consumed, but not a single enemy was killed.

As for the 30,000 people sent to reinforce Xiushan County, they marched in a mighty manner, but faced the same fate as Yang Shen.

Being shot at from time to time, or suddenly stepping on a landmine and killing many people, the morale dropped at a rate visible to the naked eye.

However, this was not the end. Just when they were in a state of panic, a roar suddenly sounded in the sky. After they looked up and searched for a while, they found a strange bird flying overhead.

So everyone showed great interest and pointed at this strange bird.

However, those soldiers and officers who had a little more knowledge, after seeing clearly what was in the sky, immediately screamed and asked the crowd to disperse.

Because they recognized the identity of this thing, it was the famous plane.

But these days, not many people have seen airplanes. Even those who have heard of airplanes are only scholars, wealthy children, businessmen, and some people in big coastal cities.

However, how could these people possibly serve as the main soldiers?

So most of these 30,000 people didn't understand what was going on. When they heard the sensible people around them calling out to them, they just stood there waiting stupidly and didn't dodge in time at all.

It was not until the twelve bombers in the sky adjusted their positions and dropped more than two hundred 50-kilogram high-explosive bombs that they began to flee in all directions, crying for their parents.