Chapter 9 5. Fight hard in Nanling

It should be said that in the face of the Japanese attack, the Northeast Army's response was not slow, and they quickly gave the Japanese army a taste of bitter fighting. Although the Chinese defenders of the Beida Camp resisted at the last moment, this resistance was more of a symbolic meaning because the general situation was over at that time. In the "September 18th" Incident, the first battle that caused heavy losses to the Japanese army took place on September 19.When the Japanese army tried to capture the Nanling Barracks in Changchun, known as the "South Day Camp", the defenders fought bravely and fought hard with the Japanese army for ten hours, making the arrogant Kwantung Army pay the price of "the first drop of blood" on the black soil .

In this battle, the Japanese army not only suffered about 200 casualties, but also the captains of the two brigades participating in the battle were injured, and one assistant officer was killed. Nanling is located 1.5 kilometers south of Changchun. In 1907, the Qing government transferred the third town of the Beiyang Army to build a barracks here, collectively called the Nanling Camp.During the period of the Northeast Army, this large camp covered an area of ​​about 300,000 square meters, and its artillery could directly cover the railway controlled by the Kwantung Army, making it an important military site for the defense of the Northeast.Zhang Zuolin has sent people here many times to inspect. In 1923, Zhang Xueliang also inspected the Nanling Garrison here. On the eve of the "September 18th" Incident, the troops stationed here included Colonel Ren Yushan's 67th Infantry Regiment of Zhang Zuozhou's 25th Brigade and Colonel Mu Chunchang's Northeast Artillery Regiment 10th, with a total strength of nearly 4,000 people (Ren Yushan Regiment 2350 people, Mu Chunchang regiment 1370 people, and another supply battalion).Among them, the Artillery Regiment has 36 field artillery pieces, which are quite powerful and are quite taboo by the Japanese army.

Because this force was quite a threat to the railway traffic lines controlled by the Japanese army, Nanling was one of the first targets captured in the plan of the planners of the "September 18" Incident, Ishihara Wanji and Sakagaki Seishiro. In the early morning of September 19, the Japanese army used the First Battalion of the Fourth Regiment of the Second Division stationed in Changchun to attack Nanling. Qia (Zhang Zuo, who was in charge of Jilin, was not in the Northeast at the time), ordered him not to resist.However, after the Japanese invaded the Nanling Barracks, they immediately occupied the camp of the First Artillery Battalion and destroyed all 16 cannons belonging to it in just 15 minutes.Seeing this, the defenders were filled with righteous indignation, refused to accept the order not to resist, and robbed the arsenal to fight back against the Japanese army.Since the Japanese army had only a few hundred people in the battle, the Northeast Army troops, which had a superior force, immediately drove out the Japanese army that was about to enter the barracks, and the battle began.

According to Chinese records, in the First Battle of Nanling, "the grassroots officers of the infantry and artillery regiments, disregarding the order of the chief of staff of the Jilin Military Administration Xi Qia (who later defected to the enemy) not to resist, opened the munitions warehouse to take out ammunition, that is, they fought heroically in the camp position. In order to kill the enemy more, Major Zhang Ruifu, the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the Artillery Regiment, ordered the troops to point the mountain artillery at the dense formation of the Japanese army moving forward, and use shrapnel to shoot at close range."In the morning, the attacking Japanese army increased to two brigades, but they were still unable to take the Nanling barracks, and instead lost troops and generals.At noon, the Second Cavalry Battalion of the Japanese Army stationed in Gongzhuling came to reinforce again. At the same time, the commander of the Kwantung Army Shigeru Honjo ordered the 30th Infantry Regiment from Lushun, and the Second Battalion of the Field Artillery Regiment from Haicheng. , were sent directly to Changchun by train to join the attack on Nanling.At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the Nanling defenders saw that there was no hope of backup, so they broke out after burning the ammunition depot. The Japanese army began to capture the ruined Nanling barracks.

According to the "Tokyo Asahi Shimbun" report on September 20, 1931, the Japanese army suffered heavy casualties during the battle. The newspaper reported the resistance encountered by the Japanese army when they attacked Nanling and Kuanchengzi under the headline "Unexpectedly Many Casualties" , the article mentioned that, excluding the loss of the cavalry units that arrived later to participate in the battle, the Japanese army killed 63 people in this battle, injured 119 people, and two others were missing.In the newspaper’s report that day, it was also mentioned that 39 reserve officers and soldiers who rushed from Harbin to Changchun to participate in the battle were missing. Although it did not mention whether they were lost in the Nanling battle, it is quite possible.In this battle, the highest-ranking Japanese casualty was Uraharu Ogawara, the captain of the First Battalion of the Fourth Regiment. This infantry sergeant from Ibaraki Prefecture seemed to be careless because he mistakenly believed that the Chinese army would easily surrender in battle. Those who appeared on the front line were wounded.Another Japanese captain, the acting captain of the First Independent Garrison Infantry Battalion Major Shinichiro Shikano (the captain, Major Kuroishi, was not in the army at the time) was also seriously injured in the battle.The highest rank in the Japanese army was Shigeru Kuramoto, the commander of the third squadron of the First Independent Brigade (special promotion level after death).According to the military song "Ah, Nanling" produced by the Japanese military later, Kuramoto was injured by a grenade attack by the Chinese army during the offensive, and died when he was hit by a shell while staying in the line of fire between the two armies.

The Japanese report also mentioned that Shikano was born in Miyagi Prefecture, his uncle died in the Russo-Japanese War, and he participated in the battles against the Chinese army in Vladivostok in 1919 and Jinan in 1928; while Kuramoto’s father died in the Russo-Japanese War, I am a student of the 31st class of the Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy, weighing 200 pounds, and I am regarded as a typical warrior of taciturnity among the people around me, but I was shot dead by the Chinese army in front of the Nanling formation. Although Nanling's resistance failed in the end, the fact that the Japanese army suffered such losses in World War I shows that the Northeast Army is not vulnerable.After the "September 18th" Incident, the Northeast Army withdrew from outside the customs or defected to the enemy under the policy of non-resistance. People can't help but sigh if the three northeastern provinces are full of Nanling, how can the Japanese army wreak havoc on this land?