Chapter 5 Chapter 5: Offensive and defensive must be contested

Hengyang is named because it is located in the south of Hengshan Mountain in Nanyue.In ancient times, the south of the mountain and the north of the water were yang, and the north of the mountain and the south of the water were yin.Hengyang is the second largest city in Hunan Province and the political, economic and cultural center of southern Hunan. It has been the seat of the state government since ancient times, and it has been a battleground for military strategists.Literati and poets of all dynasties have left many poems and songs here, which are widely circulated.Among them, Du Fu's two poems "Returning to the Wild Goose" say:

Thousands of miles of Hengyang geese have returned to the north this year.Both look at the guests, one by one fly with their backs. In the clouds, each other shouts at each other, and the sand is sparsely populated.There is no wave language in the book series, and Shanwei is sad and lonely. If you want snow to go against the ground, first spend farewell to Chu Yun.But passing through the shadow of Qing Wei, the Dongting Group rises high. Spring is cloudy in northern Saibei, and the sun is shining in the south of the Yangtze River.The bow is injured and the feathers are shed, and the behavior is unbearable.

Hengyang is a basin surrounded by mountains, the Xiangjiang River flows through it, and the steamed water from Leishui flows into the Xiangjiang River in the northeast and northwest of the city respectively.At the confluence of the three rivers, the river network is vertical and horizontal, the ponds and swamps are densely covered, the products are rich, and the people are hardworking. It is really a land of fish and rice. Hengyang is also the junction hub of the Guangdong-Han Railway and the Hunan-Guangxi Railway. In addition to the steaming and Xiang-Lei water transport, the transportation is convenient. It was originally a place where merchants gathered, and the industry and commerce were very developed.After the war between China and Japan, many factories in Shanghai’s Hankou and other large commercial ports moved to Hengyang to set up factories. Rich businessmen from Jiangsu and Zhejiang consortia came to set up shop and set up companies.

At this time, there are many factories on both sides of the Xiangjiang River tens of kilometers from Zhengshuikou to Huangchaling, which is an unprecedented grand occasion.There are two ferries running opposite each other on the Xiangjiang River. It can be seen that the river is wide and there are many business travelers.Both sides of the river are full of sailboats and huge wooden rafts. The biggest sailboats have three masts and can carry thousands of tons. They are connected back and forth, just like the warships connected by Cao Cao's water army during the Battle of Chibi. They are tens of meters long, like continents on the water.

Hengyang controls the southwestern provinces materially, militarily, and traffically. It is not only the key point for the land transportation from the north to the south of Guangdong Province, but also the gateway to the provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Sichuan.With the rise of the Anti-Japanese War Army, the Supreme Military Command of the National Government made a strategic decision: trade space for time, lure the enemy to go deep, use mountains and hills, and fight decisively with the enemy.The old country's army fought steadily and gradually retreated, and the people also poured into the southwestern provinces in large numbers.Northern Guangxi and the three provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan are all plateaus. Except for the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan, which is a large plain that produces rice, the rest are areas with many mountains and few fields, especially in Guizhou Province.There is an old saying: the sky is not sunny for three days, the land is not three miles flat, and people are not three cents of silver. It can be seen that the food in Guizhou Province is scarce and the people are poor.If Hengyang falls, the enemy's attack can open the gates of the southwestern provinces; the defense can block the foreign aid channels of the southwestern provinces.In addition, the enemy will advance to the cities of Guilin, Liuzhou, and Nanning in Guangxi, and will block the Guilin-Guizhou Railway and the Guizhou-Guizhou Highway, so that Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces will be sealed off.The war was protracted, and the consumption in the southwestern provinces was unbalanced, leaving hundreds of millions of people without food and clothing, and the military was like a bird in a cage, unable to fly without wings.The evil intentions of the enemy bandits to trap us to death are so poisonous! Therefore, in order to ensure the gates of our southwestern provinces and smash the enemy bandits' attempt to open up the mainland communication line, Hengyang must be defended strategically, both materially and spiritually. .

The importance of Hengyang’s strategic location, after the fall of Hengyang, Chairman Mao Zedong described Hengyang’s strategic location in an editorial in the “Liberation Daily” on August 12 in Yan’an: Hengyang is more important than Changsha. The junction of the Han and Hunan-Guangxi railways is also the center of the southwest road network. Its loss means that the southeast and southwest are cut off, and the rear of the southwest is directly threatened by the military.The Hengyang airfield is the intermediate liaison station between the southeast air force bases in our country. Its loss will make the hard-working southeast air base useless; the air raid on Moji in Japan from Jian'ou, Fujian, the air route is 1420 From Guilin to air strikes, the air route will be extended to 2,220 kilometers.Hengyang is located at the confluence of the Xiangjiang River and the Leishui River. Relying on these two rivers, Hunan Province can concentrate the output of 30 million shi of rice every year, as well as extremely rich minerals. Concentrating here, these are important for the military food, civilian food and military industry in the rear. Extremely important, its loss will deepen the economic crisis in the rear.in turn?It gave the enemy the possibility of "supporting war with war".Then Chairman Mao Zedong quoted reports from European and American news agencies: British and American people also have great ambitions for the Battle of Hengyang.They pointed out: Hengyang is more important than Changsha.They worry: if Hengyang falls, the war will be prolonged.They worry about the economic crisis in the rear.The American "Christian Monitor" warned: Japan is currently carrying out its symbol of "beating China first" (Central News Agency, New York, June 14th).The Times of London, UK, feared that my country would be defeated by the Japanese invaders before the Burma Road was opened in time, saying: "How pessimistic it is to draw the conclusion that it will be too late to open the Burma Road!" (According to Reuters, London 7 on the first day of the month).

June 1944 can be said to be the most important month of the Second World War. It is well known as the Normandy landing on June 6 on the European battlefield recorded in the movie "The Longest Day".There are two more battlefields in Asia this month, and the strength and ferocity of the battles dispatched by both sides are by no means inferior to the Normandy landings. One is the bloody battle on Saipan on the Pacific battlefield on June 15 that not many people know about. It is the "Battle of Changheng" that less people know about on the Chinese battlefield, from June 16 when the Japanese army began to attack Changsha.The troops dispatched by both sides of the three battlefields were more than 200,000, and the total number of troops was more than one million. All three were killed on the battlefield.

The Allied troops dispatched in the Saipan landing battle consisted of more than 400 warships, more than 4,000 fighter planes, and more than 128,000 landing soldiers.During the three-week bloody battle, more than 31,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and more than 10,000 Japanese residents on the island were killed. On July 6, Lieutenant General Nagumo, Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, and Lieutenant General Saito, Commander of the Corps, committed suicide.This battle exhausted Japan's combat power in the Pacific, Shanghai, land and air, and the Allied forces approached the Japanese mainland.After this war, the Japanese army lost all its naval and air superiority. In order to maintain the transportation link between the Japanese mainland and Southeast Asia, it was necessary to open up a mainland communication line from the Japanese mainland through the Korean Peninsula to the Puppet Manchukuo, then North China and central China to Guangxi and Vietnam.And Hengyang is the most critical junction on this line, so it is the place that the Japanese invaders must attack.

The "Battle of Changheng" on the Chinese battlefield was part of Japan's "Operation No. 1" plan on the Chinese battlefield.The Battle of Hengyang began on June 23 and ended on August 8. More than 17,000 soldiers from the Tenth Army of the National Army defended Hengyang alone. In seven days, on the battlefield of only two square kilometers, more than 7,000 people from the national army were killed, nearly 50,000 were killed by the Japanese army, and the total casualties exceeded 70,000.In this battle, Lieutenant General Sakuma, commander of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army, was killed.The Japanese army was unable to capture Hengyang and suffered heavy casualties, which led to the fall of Hideki Tojo on July 18.After the fall of Hengyang on August 8, the Japanese recruited 100,000 recruits, all of whom were children in their teens, to supplement the divisions participating in the war. The Japanese army suffered almost no casualties in this battle.