Chapter 58: Fierce Debate

  Enraged Yan Laowai was about to have smoke coming out of his nostrils, but the many years of warlord career had allowed him to suppress the anger in his mind. He smiled and said: "Officer Zhu, it seems that there are indeed many loyal and outspoken gentlemen in your Eighth Route Army! It's really rare in this era, it seems that young people still have momentum! We're old!" The mouthful of Wu dialect made Gao Duquan listen with great difficulty.

  "But I don't know what the name of this young general is, at such a young age, he can already become a lieutenant general, he must be a famous general with great military achievements!"

  Yan Laoxi's sarcastic tone, in the eyes of the Eighth Route Army, was a mockery, a naked mockery, as if it were mocking the fact that there was no talent within the Eighth Route Army, and even a young child who hadn't even grown out his whiskers could become a general! Does the Communist Party have no tigers in the mountains, so they need a little monkey to play the king?

  However, they did not expect that Gao Quan was indeed a lieutenant general who was personally appointed by Chiang Kai-shek not long ago, and he was also a talented general who was appreciated by Chiang Kai-shek after withstanding the two main forces of the Nationalist Party. Even in the Communist Party where generals are as numerous as clouds, Gao Quan is still one of the top-notch ones!

  Gaoduan, who was furious, coldly sneered and said: "Director Yan, it's not that we have outstanding military achievements, but in the more than two years since we've been stationed in southern Shaanxi, we've annihilated 17 or 18 Nationalist Army regiments. During the Xi'an Incident this February, Chiang Kai-shek's ace troops, the 25th Division led by Wang Zhenqi and Song Xilian's 36th Division, were unable to advance an inch in two months under our resistance. Now it's just a question of whether your army can withstand the Japanese army's Mongolian Army and Lieutenant General Itagaki Seishiro's 5th Division without losing a single inch of land!"

  It's not an exaggeration to call Gao Daquan's words arrogant! However, the Jin army generals were not as foolish as Gao Daquan. Even if they were furious and their faces turned green with rage, no one dared to provoke Gao Daquan because in their eyes, he was a mad dog who didn't understand human emotions, biting whoever he caught without any consideration. Although Gao Daquan's combat command ability was fierce, the Jin army generals thought that the fiercer someone was, the faster they would die! Whether it was an ancient vanguard general or those fierce generals from the Republic of China era, generals couldn't avoid dying on the battlefield, so what was the point of arguing with a dead man?

  The time it took to eat a meal had seen so many things happen, and Lao Xi deeply felt that the Eighth Route Army was not something that could be manipulated at will, especially Gao Quan, who looked like a tough cookie, clearly a wild man from years of guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Looking at the few remaining dishes on the table, Yan Lao Xi made a rare enthusiastic request for the servant to bring up some more dishes, after all, no Chinese person could let their guests go hungry when hosting them.

  When the steaming dishes were served, Yan Laoxi warmly invited everyone to eat, especially those Jin army generals who still had a stiff face and hesitated to pick up their chopsticks. Old Xi even smiled and said: "Everyone, hurry up and eat, or else our little general will finish eating again!"

  With a full stomach and a satisfied smile, he muttered to himself: "Yes! You Jin army has so many weapons and ammunition that you can't eat or use, so before the Japanese army occupies Taiyuan, I'll take over your Shanxi Military Enterprise Arsenal. I think in the future when we establish Huangya Cave Arsenal and other places, we will need these things very much. Since you didn't actively resist Japan during the war of resistance, then let us, who are actively resisting Japan, do it for you. The more labor, the more gain!"

  Gao Quan's sinister smile on his face became more and more arrogant. To the point where Zhao Chengyu secretly cursed Gao Quan as "a useless waste of space, who would be blown to death by Japanese planes on the battlefield, with no remains left! He shouldn't have been shot in the belly by a bullet that had been scraped on the ground, letting the powerful explosive rip his belly open and spill his intestines all over the place! And then slowly dying in agony!"

  Actually, the Central Army was quite arrogant and had a strong morale during the war of resistance against Japan. Many soldiers were not afraid to die. However, they liked to engage in fierce battles with the well-equipped Japanese army, mainly because the Whampoa Military Academy was originally established for the warlords and internal conflicts, rather than understanding external enemies like the Baoding Military Academy under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership. Of course, during the later stages of the war, after the Central Army improved its equipment and with wise command, they fought well in battles such as Burma and Wanjialing, but suffered heavy casualties.

  The Jin army was a very strange branch of the military, although most officers were very conservative, which led to their superstitious attitude towards weapons. With the mountainous terrain of Shanxi and the special equipment "Rolling Mountain Thunder" - a type of explosive device similar to a naval mine, containing tens of kilograms of explosives, its power was no less than that of our infamous cannons in the Huaihai Campaign. There were instances where one such device destroyed an entire Japanese military truck. Additionally, the Jin army was heavily equipped with submachine guns, mortars, and mountain artillery suitable for mountain warfare. Therefore, the conservative officers became even more fond of defense (later, when Xu's forces liberated Shanxi, they faced Yan Xishan's "Tortoise Shell" defenses, which were very frustrating - in mobile warfare, our 40,000 troops could defeat an enemy force of 100,000, but once the enemy took defensive positions, even our 60,000 troops found it difficult to defeat a mere 20,000 enemies, as exemplified by the three battles of Linfen).

  So when a single unit faced the superior Japanese army, it was only willing to defend itself. Even if the soldiers were very brave in fighting back, it was difficult to win. It is hard to defend against the Japanese army's concentrated forces, and the consequences of being defeated one by one are predictable. The fall of Datong was inevitable. Moreover, due to Yan Xishan's indecisiveness and Li Fuyuan's miscellaneous troops (only seven regiments of the 1st Division and an independent brigade) withdrawing from Datong after six days of bloody battles with the Japanese army, fearing further losses would lead to losing power in the future (this was also a common phenomenon among miscellaneous troops during the war), the Japanese army occupied Datong without firing a single shot. This incident had a very bad impact domestically, and it was inevitable that Gao Zhenhai would have some ideas about it.

  Facing so many historical celebrities, Gao Quan was extremely interested in sizing up the crowd, comparing them with the blurry black and white photos in his mind. However, only someone like Gao Quan, who would whistle at beauties in the 21st century and be jealous of others' success, could do something as extremely boring and impolite as this. Whether it was Fu Zuoyi, Fu Yisheng, Dong Qiwu, Chen Changjie and other members of the Fu faction's Thirty-fifth Army, or Gao Guijun, Zhao Chengyu, Sun Chu (a famous general during the War of Resistance against Japan and a renowned leader of the Shanxi army) and others from Yan Xishan's faction, they all looked at him without any restraint.

  When they met the Eighth Route Army who were friendly, others just nodded their heads. If they met those who were unfriendly, it was like a golden eye staring at each other's eyes. A good meal was intentionally made into an extremely embarrassing scene by Gaoquan. This made Yan Laowei very angry.

  So when the 18th Group Army (reorganized on September 11 with a unified national numbering system, but the Eighth Route Army was used to it and didn't change) Director Peng Xuefeng of the Taiyuan Office and Yan Xishan discussed cooperation in the War of Resistance and ammunition supplies, etc., Old Yan was very generous and gave the 115th Division 7 million rounds of Type 79 rifle bullets, 100 light machine guns and submachine guns each, and 100 boxes of hand grenades. As for the 116th Brigade, which was supposed to be fully equipped, not a single item was received.

  Gao Dawei stubbornly refused to allocate a batch of ammunition to the 116th Division, despite being scolded by Vice Chairman Zhou and Peng Dehuai for being reckless and disregarding the bigger picture. However, once Gao Dawei got stubborn, even Peng Dehuai couldn't do anything about it. But Vice Chairman Zhou also knew about the small treasury within Gao's troops, as well as how his subordinates had been selling ammunition to local Nationalist forces in Shanxi, using real gold and silver, so the 116th Division was not lacking at all.

  The Pingxingguan campaign is really hard to write, I have found many materials and am sorting them out, there is still one or two chapters left tonight.