Chapter Thirty: Unexpected Joy
Although the current tactics of He Wei Dong, which was established around "attacking cities", seems to be effective, it also has a major flaw, that is, the consumption of ammunition is relatively large. Especially when intelligence is inaccurate and bites into hard bones or poor ghost troops with no oil and water, even if they win, they will be greatly injured, and may never recover (ammunition consumption is exhausted → forced to change tactics → troop combat effectiveness declines → it becomes more difficult to capture ammunition, then a vicious cycle). The Independent Regiment has its own arsenal, and its development speed is frighteningly fast. Its dependence on captured supplies is not as high as that of other Red Armies, coupled with the obvious intelligence advantage that has been maintained all along, which made this hard-to-replicate tactic achieve great success.
There's a saying that "pride comes before a fall." The old Red Army soldiers under Hu Weidong, seeing that Ruijin was already surrounded on three sides by the recovered Soviet areas, suggested advancing to Ruijin and recovering the sacred place in everyone's heart. Fortunately, Hu Weidong remained calm and learned from intelligence reports that there were at least a few divisions stationed in Ruijin at the time. Although the independent regiment was not weak, it would be difficult to eliminate them. Instead, he decided to head south and capture Xunwu County, which had relatively weaker defenses. This plan also had another advantage: it could cut off the telephone contact between the two routes of the Nationalist Army's "bandit-suppressing" troops in Jiangxi, forcing them to rely solely on telegrams for communication. Hu Weidong would then be able to obtain more intelligence through intercepted telegrams. However, no one expected that when attacking Xunwu County, Hu Weidong almost suffered a disastrous defeat...
In this county town, there was a brigade of more than 4,000 people under the command of "Zhongyuan Old Thief" Zhang Fenhao. Most of the government soldiers were recruited from the green forest bandits, and they were both brave and cunning, with each one having experienced hundreds of battles, making them very difficult to deal with. However, Hu Weidong was completely unaware of this, and he once again boldly led his motorized infantry to deceive the enemy, wanting to capture the enemy commander and force him to order the entire brigade to lay down their arms. But unexpectedly, the other side was extremely ferocious, and they fought to the death with the assault regiment...
Although they were all killed in a short time, Hu Weidong and more than 1,000 others were surrounded by the city's four thousand national army troops who vowed to take revenge for their travel. During this period, the other side even frequently used the crazy method of same return, causing huge losses to the assault camp. If the enemy's tactics were not backward, they would not know the horror of the crossfire network composed of thousands of automatic weapons. Most of the troops fell in pieces on the road of dense charge at the beginning of the battle, and Hu Weidong was afraid that he would be defeated here...
Although this battle was won, the shock troops with a strength of nearly 2,000 people lost more than 800 people, and almost 90% of the commanders were injured (but Hu Weidong himself provided firepower support throughout the battle and didn't even get a scratch...), these are all elite among elites. Hu Weidong couldn't help but feel heartbroken, and the captured prisoners, including the seriously wounded, totaled less than 500 people, which shows the enemy's tenacity...
Heavy casualties, yet unable to replenish from the prisoners of war, Hu Weidong couldn't help but feel a little downhearted, thinking that he had fought a losing battle. However, the communication officer's report soon changed his expression from gloomy to sunny...
"It seems my luck hasn't run out yet...", Hu Weidong looked at the rows of cannons, cars and other heavy artillery in the warehouse with some disbelief. He only found out after asking that since the main force of the Southern Red Army guerrilla troops had been basically defeated, the scattered breakout units were at most one or two thousand people, and they all fled into the deep mountains and old forests. The National Army pursuing them would have difficulty using these heavy equipment, not to mention it would greatly hinder their marching speed, and even make it impossible for them to enter the mountains. Therefore, three National Army corps did not bring these heavy equipment and corresponding ammunition with them when they left the transfer point of Xunwu County (Xunwu County is located at the intersection of Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangdong provinces, with very convenient transportation). The cars and fuel were also left behind for the same reason. This was a great bargain indeed. Of course, it was also fortunate that the garrison in Xunwu was Zhang Fen's Green Forest Army, whose cultural level was generally low, and basically no one knew how to use these things. Otherwise, if it were a unit like the Taxation Police Corps, Hu Weidong would probably not have been able to escape this time...
After the soldiers' inventory, the warehouse in Xunwu County stored nearly two artillery battalions of heavy weapons (compared to the equipment status of the National Army at that time), including 48 75mm field guns and 18 150mm heavy mortars. There were also more than 20,000 rounds of 75mm shells (this caliber of shell can be mass-produced by multiple ordnance factories in the country, so the supply is relatively sufficient) and more than 5,000 rounds of 150mm mortar shells. In addition, there were over a hundred vehicles, tens of thousands of barrels of gasoline, and Hu Weidong was overjoyed.
Apart from heavy equipment, there aren't many supplies left in this warehouse, especially guns and bullets are extremely scarce. It's clear that the National Army at the "bandit-suppressing" frontlines has a demand for guns and bullets far exceeding cannonballs, but the logistics department of the National Army is notorious for being unreliable, often leaving needed supplies to rust away in warehouses while sending useless ones by the truckload. Hu Weidong had only read about this in books before, never expecting to witness it with his own eyes...
Realizing this, Hu Weidong suddenly had an epiphany, "Could it be that the National Army's ammunition, especially bullets, are running low? Is it because I captured two of their logistics warehouses in Xingguo and Yongfeng? If so, then the army in Ruijin doesn't seem so formidable after all..."
Due to the successful disruption of telephone communications between the National Army's east and west routes by the county militia, Hu Weidong learned from increasingly frequent National Army telegrams that the National Army garrisoned in Ruijin was the 37th Army under Central Army commander Mao Bingwen, with two well-equipped Category A divisions under its command. If local militias were added to this force, their total strength would exceed 30,000 men, making them more powerful than any previous enemy of the Independent Division. However, the backbone of the Independent Division consisted mostly of old Red Army soldiers who yearned for the recovery of Ruijin, and had been pent up by Hu Weidong for several days. Moreover, the commander of the 24th Division within the 37th Army was Xu Kexiang, one of the instigators of the "Ma Dayi Incident", whose hands were stained with the blood of Chinese Communist Party members and revolutionary masses. As a result, morale throughout the army was higher than ever before. At this time, the Independent Division had over 60,000 troops, as well as powerful artillery and several thousand automatic weapons of various types. The military quality of the vast number of combatants had also been steadily improving, so morale throughout the army was higher than ever before. In addition, Hu Weidong learned from deciphered telegrams that Xu Kexiang's 24th Division had just left Ruijin for Fujian to participate in the encirclement and suppression of the Red Army guerrilla forces there. At present, only one division plus the army headquarters remained in Ruijin city, with a maximum strength of no more than 20,000 men. The Independent Division was now poised to seize the opportunity to take it down.
