Chapter 16 3. Generals in chaos

In the case of a hasty retreat and the situation was urgent, although Tang Shengzhi made specific arrangements for the retreat, due to various reasons, most of the generals did not implement his order to break out of the encirclement. Gui Yongqing, the commander of the teaching corps, the commander of Chiang Kai-shek's "Iron Guards" who graduated from Whampoa in the first phase, came out of the garrison headquarters and saw the chaos on the street, so he drove to the Hu Qiru brigade stationed in the city and his immediate subordinates. Regiment and battalion headquarters.According to the breakout order, the teaching corps should break out from the east side of the airport to Gaoqiaomen-Chunhua Town and Lishui at 11:00 pm on the 12th.However, after Gui Yongqing conveyed the retreat order, he ordered the troops to assemble at Xiaguan and Sanchahe respectively, and cross the Yangtze River by all possible means of crossing the river.Afterwards, he hurried back to the headquarters in the basement of Fugui Mountain, conveyed the retreat order to the chief of staff Wan Chengqu, deputy director Yu Yilin and other headquarters personnel, packed up and burned some documents, and hurriedly said to the chief of staff Qiu Qingquan: "We Let's go together immediately!"

At that time, most of the troops of the teaching corps were still fighting fiercely with the enemy in Zijin Mountain and Guanghuamen area. Qiu Qingquan felt that these troops should be notified in time, so he said calmly: "You go first! I will stay for a while, and then call the various troops. Let’s study how to retreat.” "That's good, that's good, after you've dealt with it, hurry up to Sanchahe!" After speaking, Gui Yongqing hurriedly left the basement with Yu Yilin, the deputy chief, and several guards, and ran to Sanchahe go. By the Sancha River, the engineering regiment headquarters of the teaching team.

Gui Yongqing hurried over with adjutants and guards, conveyed the order to retreat to the head of the regiment, and then ordered the engineering regiment to go all out to build rafts and rafts, so as to teach the officers and soldiers of the corps to cross the Yangtze River northward.After that, Gui Yongqing took his adjutants and guards to board a raft built by the engineering regiment, and rowed towards Pukou at night.The wind was cold, the night was dark, and there were many people. The raft bumped and rowed slowly to the north bank in the rapids.Sitting on the raft, Gui Yongqing rejoiced that he was out of danger. As for the troops, the chief of staff was there to arrange them, and they could come as much as they could. At this moment, it would be considered good to be able to take away the command staff.

Around zero o'clock, the raft finally approached the reed bank downstream of Pukou. Under the bleak moonlight, the reeds as tall as a person shrank in the cold wind, and the muddy river bank looked soft and generous.Seeing that he arrived at Pukou safely, Gui Yongqing let out a long sigh of relief, stood up and took the lead to jump ashore.Unexpectedly, this kind of silted soil contains a lot of water. As soon as the person landed, his feet sank immediately, and the sinking became deeper and deeper. The guards hurriedly untied the leggings before dragging Gui Yongqing onto the raft.The raft had to be rowed towards Pukou Town instead. After landing, there were no cars or horses, so Gui Yongqing, like the soldiers, walked towards Chuzhou on foot.

When Gui Yongqing got on a raft and retreated northward across the river, Zhou Zhenqiang, his deputy commander and commander of the first brigade, was commanding troops in Zijin Mountain to fight fiercely with the enemy.At this time, the enemy and the enemy have been engaged in repeated battles on the second peak of the main position of Zijin Mountain.At ten o'clock in the evening, Zhou Zhenqiang stood at the command post of Zijinshan Yifeng Brigade and saw several fires in the city. He hurriedly dialed his phone to the headquarter.Soon, Ma Liangui, the staff officer, reported that the Yuhuatai position of the 88th Division had been lost, a small group of Japanese troops had rushed into the Zhonghua Gate, and Deng Longguang's troops of the Cantonese Army were opening out of the Taiping Gate.

Zhou Zhenqiang immediately convened some officers to discuss urgently and decided to withdraw the troops from the position. The specific action plan was: Ma Weilong, the commander of the third brigade, led the brigade to break through with Deng Longguang's troops of the Cantonese Army; Between Yanziji, the equipment for crossing the river was quickly prepared; Wang Hanqing, head of the cavalry regiment, led his regiment to occupy the front line of the coal port as a cover; Qin Shiquan, head of the first regiment, led his regiment as a rear guard.From 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, they gradually retreated from their positions, and concentrated in the area of ​​Meimei Port and Yanziji to prepare for crossing the river.

Zhou Zhenqiang arrived at Meimei Port at about 1:00 that night. Seeing the chaotic and crowded riverside, he led a spy battalion of more than 100 people to sit on the riverside and direct the crossing.At this time, the Japanese warships had broken through the blockade of the Wulong Mountains and the Yangtze River, came to the river in Xiaguan, and fired wildly at the officers and soldiers crossing the river with machine guns. The situation was very tragic. Zhou Zhenqiang led the officers and soldiers of the first brigade of the teaching team, sitting on a hastily tied rough wooden raft, bumping on the stormy waves, passing through the frantic strafing of enemy planes and ships, and finally reached the north bank of the Yangtze River.

However, there were many other troops, ordered or not, who were in a much more dire situation when they retreated hastily.Li Kaixi, the head of the third regiment of the teaching corps, led the troops to the Yanziji Santaidong River during the retreat. After running chaotically and crowded all the way, the troops lost control early, and when they reached the river, there were only a few officers and soldiers left beside them.Li Kaixi saw that there were dark and crowded crowds everywhere on the riverside, and countless floating objects such as wooden pillars, doors, windows, wooden basins, etc. drifted down the river on the torrent.The waves are rolling, people's heads are floating, and the sound of help and howling is creepy!At the critical moment, Zou Weihua, the commander of the first battalion, reported that he had tied up two wooden rafts with telegraph poles, and asked the regimental commander to cross the river together, and Li Kaixi was able to escape the danger.His regiment deputy Peng Yuexiang relied on a bed frame given to him by soldiers, spread a reed mat, floated to Baguazhou in the middle of the river, and then crossed the Yangtze River by looking for a boat from Baguazhou.The most tragic one was Xie Chengrui, head of the Second Regiment of the First Brigade of the Teaching Corps.Commander Xie led the troops to guard Guanghua Gate. He was exhausted from days of hard work, and unfortunately fell down while passing through Yijiang Gate with the crowded crowd. He was trampled to death by the chaotic crowd at Yijiang Gate!Qiu Qingquan, chief of staff of the teaching corps, stayed at the headquarters to handle the retreat, but found that the situation was extremely critical, and it was difficult for him to retreat and leave Nanjing.So in a hurry, he disguised himself as a commoner, and hid among the refugees in the safe zone with Sui Youlan, the commander of the fourth regiment, and Liao Yaoxiang, the staff officer of the brigade lieutenant colonel.

Smarter than Gui Yongqing was Yu Jishi, commander of the 74th Army.Yu Jishi saw that the war was losing steadily, and Tang Shengzhi strictly prohibited any troops from privately leaving ships ready to cross the river. Just in case, he asked Yu Feipeng, the Minister of Communications, for a small steamer to stop secretly at Pukou for emergency use at any time. It attracts people's eyes and ears, and leaves a way out for myself. On the evening of the 12th, after he came out of a meeting at the Garrison Headquarters, he immediately rushed to the headquarters of the 58th Division and conveyed the retreat order.Then he took Feng Shengfa, the commander of the 58th Division, and a group of people straight to the bank of the Xiaguan River, boarded the small steamer he had prepared, and crossed the Yangtze River smoothly.Fortunately, he still had his subordinates in his heart. After crossing the river, he sent Adjutant Zhang of the military department to go back and forth with the boat to pick up and transport his own troops. The division commander Wang Yaowu and other large numbers of officers and soldiers retreated across the river on this small steamer.

After Wang Yaowu, the commander of the 51st Division, led his troops back into Nanjing, he took on the defensive task of the Shuiximen area. On the afternoon of the 12th, due to the fierce fighting, he did not attend the meeting of the Garrison Command.After receiving the retreat order, he immediately ordered Brigadier Zhou Zhidao to lead the 151st Brigade to cross the river at Zhamu Pai near Baguazhou, and Brigadier Li Tianlu led the 153rd Brigade to cross the river from Xiaguan with the division headquarters.On the north bank of the Yangtze River, when Wang Yaowu counted the number of people, he found that Qiu Weida, the head of the 306th regiment, had not yet crossed the river. The injured leader Qiu Weida rushes over.

At that time, the 306th Regiment was in charge of defending the city wall from Shuiximen to Zhonghuamen. On the morning of the 12th, when Qiu Weida was directing the fierce battle on the city wall, he suddenly received a report from Hu Hao, the commander of the third battalion. .Qiu Weida was extremely nervous, and immediately ordered the third battalion to form a death squad to attack with neighboring troops and destroy the intruding enemy within an hour.So Battalion Commander Hu personally led the death squads to rush towards the enemy, and the sound of killing shook the sky and the earth for a while.Qiu Weida also commanded the whole regiment's firepower to cover directly, and finally wiped out all the enemies who broke into the city.However, regiment deputy Liu Lizi, battalion commander Hu Hao and many other officers and soldiers died heroically in this battle. At 7 o'clock in the evening, the 306th regiment received a call from the division commander Wang Yaowu, ordering the troops to retreat in camera.After Qiu Weida received the order, he immediately summoned the battalion and company commanders to study the retreat plan on the city wall. Unfortunately, he was hit by the enemy's stray bullets and fell into a coma. When he woke up, he was carried to the Xiaguan Wharf on a stretcher.Qiu Weida saw that the situation in the Xiaguan area was very miserable. There were scattered soldiers, wounded and refugees everywhere, and the roads along the river were crowded with baggage, vehicles, luggage and countless people.For a while the enemy planes dropped a few flares overhead, and for a while the enemy ships swept over the river with a burst of machine guns, and the sounds of wailing, calling for help, cursing, and resentment mingled together.Seeing this scene, he couldn't help feeling sad and sad. The stretcher stopped by the river, and the adjutant and the guards split up to find the boat.It was cold and windy, and the night was deep. At the moment of emergency, a distant shout suddenly came from the river: "Where is the head of the 51st division Qiu?!" "Where is the head of the 51st division Qiu?!"... Everyone held their breath and listened carefully. It turned out that the shout came from the direction of Coal Harbor, so the stretcher rushed to Coal Harbor.When I came to Coal Harbor, I saw a small steamer parked in the middle of the river, and the shout came from this small steamer.Due to the chaotic and crowded crowds along the river, the ship did not dare to approach the shore, so it stopped 30 meters away from the shore, threw a rope over and tied it to Head Qiu, and dragged it through the water, only then was it possible to escape from the dangerous situation. Much more favorable than Yu Jishi's 74th Army was Song Xilian's 36th Division.Song Xilian was a native of Xiangxiang, Hunan, and a graduate of the first phase of the Whampoa Military Academy. At that time, he was the commander of the 78th Army and the commander of the 36th Division. In fact, he could only command the 36th Division.After participating in the Songhu Battle, the 36th Division withdrew to Nanjing on November 22 with more than 3,000 soldiers, and participated in the Nanjing Defense Battle after supplementing more than 4,000 people.The division headquarter was ordered to defend the Hongshan, Mufushan, Xiaguan, and Yijiangmen positions along the river, and was responsible for guarding all the ships on the south bank. After the emergency meeting of the garrison headquarters on the afternoon of the 12th, Song Xilian immediately returned to the division headquarters, convened a meeting of the commanders of the troops above the independent battalion commander, and made specific arrangements and deployments for the withdrawal across the river.However, when a large number of stragglers and refugees flocked to the river, and the order was extremely chaotic, the 36th Division could not cross the river smoothly. Not only were the ships looted by the troops who lost control one after another, but many soldiers were rushed away by the rebellious troops. San lost contact, and after a night of struggling to cross, only more than 3,000 people reached Pukou, less than half of the total number of the division. The worst thing was Wang Jingjiu, the commander of the 71st Army. After the meeting, he only notified a part of the 87th Division who was on standby in the Ming Palace, and did not return to the Fugui Mountain Basement Army Command, leaving behind the hard-working front. His subordinates boarded the ship and left.Then the division commander Shen Fazao also hurriedly boarded the ship and retreated north.By the time the troops fighting fiercely inside and outside the Zhongshan Gate realized that the situation was different and were about to retreat, they were already leaderless.The troops didn't know the direction and route of retreat at all, so they had to rush to the riverside one after another.Chen Yiding, deputy commander of the 87th Division and brigade commander of the 261st Brigade, led the troops to fight fiercely with the Japanese outside the Zhongshan Gate, and did not receive an order to retreat at all.It was not until the night of the 12th that the situation was found to be different, and the deputy brigade commander Sun Tianfang was sent to lead armed soldiers to the nearby field to find out the news of Nanjing's retreat. At 2 o'clock in the morning on the 13th, Chen Yiding led the troops to withdraw from the position and made a detour to Xiaguan. He saw a crowd of people on the riverside, and it was impossible to cross the river, so he led the troops to the coal port.The crowd was crowded along the way, and the troops had been dispersed long ago. When they arrived at Meimei Port, there were only ten or twenty people in the special agent platoon, and no boats crossing the river were found, so they continued to walk in the direction of Yanziji. Since Chen Yiding was riding on a horse and wearing a general-level officer's woolen military coat, more and more military police, policemen, and skirmishers followed him, and there were nearly 3,000 people.Chen Yiding stopped and reorganized these stragglers, telling them to obey the command.At this moment, gunshots rang out from the top of the hill, and the Japanese search troops fought with the soldiers of the special agent platoon who served as security. At this time, there is a big river blocking the way, and the Japanese invaders are chasing after them. The situation is extremely critical.Chen Yiding was about to draw his gun to commit suicide when the soldiers of the guards found a large plank that was more than two feet long and six feet wide, and pushed the brigade commander onto the plank without any explanation, and everyone sat on the plank and floated over.About 50 meters away from the river bank, the plank began to sink gradually, and all the people in the platoon fell into the river. At a critical moment, Ma Zhenhai, the head of the teaching team's nursing squad, drove the platoon past and rescued Brigadier Chen on the floating platoon. Relying on this floating platoon, Major General Chen Yiding rescued him, drifted to Baguazhou, and then took advantage of the early morning fog to pass through the blockade of enemy ships and cross the river to the north bank. Only then did he escape his life.