Chapter 88: Rest And Expansion
In early March 1938, the early morning in Gaoyou, Jiangsu, was shrouded in damp and cold mist.
Thin frost condensed on the bluestone road, emitting a faint crisp sound when Su Yaoyang stepped on it. He stood by the stone bridge, watching a black-awning boat glide across the misty river surface, the boatwoman’s tune mixing with the water sounds drifting over, as if right by his ear, yet also seeming very far away, giving a sense of sudden closeness and distance.
After being appointed by Chongqing as the commander of the Nanjing Security Regiment, Su Yaoyang also received a codebook and a radio set. As Chen Shijie put it, these were the identity credentials of the Nanjing Security Regiment, used daily to contact superiors.
But another problem arose: just having the codebook and radio wasn’t enough; the most important telegrapher hadn’t been sent, which was the real trouble.
Looking at the thin codebook in his hand, Su Yaoyang was so angry he nearly fell out with Xu Shijie.
Still, Huang Guantao and Li Gaoyuan, these two seasoned veterans, quietly found Xu Shixiang, stuffed him with two packets of silver dollars, and finally this guy agreed to send them a telegrapher.
Indeed, human relations and worldly affairs are everywhere.
With the telegrapher in place, Su Yaoyang immediately sent a telegram to the Fifth War Zone Headquarters, requesting to lead his unit to Xuzhou for rest and reorganization.
The Fifth War Zone Headquarters replied quite quickly, agreeing to the Security Regiment’s request for rest, but placed the rest location in Gaoyou.
Gaoyou it is, then.
Su Yaoyang then led the three thousand officers and men of the Security Regiment, after more than a week of forced marches, to Gaoyou County.
Gaoyou is located in central JS Province（ now under the administration of YZ City）, situated along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, bordering Yangzhou to the south and Huai’an to the north, a key water and land transport hub in central Jiangsu.
Although the Xuzhou Campaign had already begun at this time, the Japanese had not yet launched a large-scale offensive in central Jiangsu, and Gaoyou was a rear defense node, not the core battlefield of the campaign.
In view of this, the vast Gaoyou County town had only one Security Regiment of over five hundred men, plus more than a hundred police responsible for public security.
After Su Yaoyang led the Security Regiment to Gaoyou, the county magistrate and the original Gaoyou Security Regiment commander personally came to visit right away, with very humble attitudes, and even immediately sent a batch of grain and ten large fat pigs to the Security Regiment.
This surprised Su Yaoyang, who had been prepared for cold shoulders; later, while drinking with the two, he asked and found out.
Although Gaoyou was not the core battlefield of the campaign, no one could guarantee when a Japanese force might suddenly appear.
Once Gaoyou turned into a battlefield, with their few men and guns, they wouldn’t even qualify as cannon fodder and would be wiped out in minutes.
So for this unit coming to Gaoyou to rest, the county magistrate naturally went all out to flatter them, hoping that if the situation became unavoidable one day, the other side would pull him along, at least taking him when escaping.
Since they were so frank, Su Yaoyang didn’t hesitate to show his goodwill and readily agreed to this small request.
Thus, in the following days, Su Yaoyang, Li Gaoyuan, and Huang Guantao took advantage of this rare leisure time to carry out a major adjustment of the Security Regiment.
In addition to minor adjustments in manpower and weaponry for the original six infantry battalions and artillery battalion, Su Yaoyang added a special agent company directly under the regiment headquarters, a transport battalion（ responsible for transporting ammunition and supplies, equipped with sixty Dodge ten-wheel trucks and over a hundred mules and horses）, a logistics office, a medical team（ newly recruited over ten doctors and nurses）, a communications company, and an anti-aircraft artillery battalion（ equipped with eighteen Bofors 40mm L/60 anti-aircraft guns）.
As the Security Regiment’s scale grew, the demand for personnel increased further; the original scale of just over three thousand was no longer sufficient.
To this end, Su Yaoyang not only recruited over two thousand new soldiers in Gaoyou County and surrounding areas, but also had Huang Guantao personally go to various hospitals in Xuzhou to throw money around, pulling in wounded officers and veterans. After more than a month’s effort, the Security Regiment’s numbers had expanded to over five thousand.
Strictly speaking, privately expanding the army was not allowed.
But with the current war chaos, fighting everywhere, and the Security Regiment now in the rear with blocked information,
the Gaoyou County magistrate and original Security Regiment commander were thrilled to see the expansion and had no reason to idly report it upwards, so for these past three months, Su Yaoyang and his group quietly developed in Gaoyou County.
However, things weren’t entirely uneventful; seeing batches of tanks, trucks, anti-aircraft guns, and other supplies continuously arriving quietly at the Security Regiment, it would be false to say Li Gaoyuan and Huang Guantao weren’t surprised and worried.
But then they thought, the deeds were done anyway, so what use was worrying now.
Besides, the unit’s strength was expanded and developed to fight the Japanese—any problem with that?
The commander was right… it’s rare to feign ignorance, why be too serious.
Additionally, besides the above units, Su Yaoyang fulfilled his promise to John, forming a tank company（ with nine Xiafei tanks, three M3 half-tracks（ for troop transport/supply）, and two maintenance jeeps）.
Seeing Su Yaoyang keep his promise thrilled the newly appointed tank company commander John, who had been immersed in the company for these two months, intensely drilling training to a degree that even Su Yaoyang admired.
Just as the Security Regiment’s training was in full swing, the scale of the Xuzhou Campaign was also growing larger.
In early February, the enemy on the northern front, due to SD Province Chairman Han Fuchu retreating with his one hundred thousand troops without a fight, allowed the Japanese to advance unhindered, seizing most of Shandong and occupying Jinan, Tai’an, Yanzhou, Zouxian, Jining, Qingdao, Mengcheng, and other places, pressing towards Tengxian and Linyi.
Tengxian and Linyi have been Xuzhou’s two northern gates since ancient times, especially Tengxian, about one hundred kilometers south of Xuzhou, guarding the throat of the Tianjin-Shanghai Railway, a place contested by military strategists since antiquity, now a key strategic point contested by both sides.
To capture Tengxian, the Japanese dispatched the 33rd Brigade of the 10th Division led by Isogaya Kenjirou, with a total force of about ten thousand men.
The Sichuan Army 122nd Division responsible for Tengxian’s defense had only a pitiful three thousand plus men, equipped with outdated Hanyang-made rifles and a few machine guns, without heavy artillery support.
Despite the vast disparity in strength, the 122nd Division, under Major General Wang Mingzhang, prepared to fight the Japanese to the death with a do-or-die spirit.
On March 14, 33rd Brigade commander Major General Seyaguchi Kei commanded his 10th and 63rd Infantry Regiments, covered by an artillery battalion（ about 12 75mm field guns）, an independent heavy artillery battalion（ 4 150mm howitzers）, and ten Type 95 tanks, to launch a formal attack on Tengxian.
To prevent other Nationalist forces from aiding Tengxian, the Japanese 5th Division also launched an offensive towards Linyi to pin down Pang Bingxun and Zhang Zizhong’s forces.
Suddenly, within a hundred li radius centered on Tengxian, war smoke rose everywhere, filled with gunfire.
On March 15, Li Zongren, stationed in Xuzhou, received the plea-for-aid telegram from the 122nd Division.
