Chapter 23 2. Traitors are worse than devils

On the evening of November 2, 1943, the commander of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army, Isamu Yokoyama, was located in the 3rd, 13th, 39th, 68th, and 116th Divisions and their attached artillery, aircraft, tanks, poisonous gas, and engineering units located in the starting areas of their respective attacks. Issue combat orders. In the land of northwestern Hunan, which has just begun to winter, there is a layer of mist in the afterglow of the setting sun.With the first shock wave bombing of the forward positions of the Chinese defenders by the Japanese aircraft, the fragile fog disappeared, replaced by the long-lasting gunpowder smoke.

Yokoyama was flown in from Tokyo after his former commander, Tsukada Makoto, died in a plane crash.In the battle of western Hubei he commanded for the first time, he boldly set up the command post in Shashi, which was only 4 kilometers away from the front and within the range of the artillery of the Chinese army.The offensive went smoothly at the beginning of the battle, and the Chinese army was divided and defeated one after another. The Chongqing Military Commission urgently recalled Chen Cheng, the former commander of the Sixth War Zone who was preparing to build an expeditionary force in Yunnan, to assist Sun Lianzhong, who had just taken over as the commander of the war zone, to adjust the lineup.A few days later, the Chinese army attacked and besieged the Japanese army in different ways, and the situation on the battlefield changed drastically. Yokoyama ordered a retreat in desperation.This campaign was exhausting and futile, and the prestige of the new army commander was greatly reduced.

This time Heng Shanyong used his troops cautiously. He first created a false posture of attacking western Hubei, attracting the main force of the Chinese army to leave the vicinity of Changde and mobilize to the southwest. . Yong Shanyong's combat intentions were not seen through by Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing and Sun Lianzhong, the chief of the Sixth War Zone at the beginning of the battle, and the Chinese army paid a heavy price for this. However, Hengshan bravely swung his troops to fight in the complex terrain of the lakeside water network, thanks to the help of a Chinese, it can be said that he gained the "geographical advantage" by one person.This person is the Xiangxi habitual bandit known as Peng Mingdonkey.

The banditry in western Hunan is well-known throughout the country. The bandits gathered in Lin Mang and took over the mountains as kings. They oppressed the people, raped, plundered and plundered every day.During the Anti-Japanese War, Peng, the bandit leader who often appeared in western Hunan, wanted to take advantage of the chaos in the world to gain a name for himself. First, he sent someone to the Hunan provincial government to write a letter saying that he would participate in the Anti-Japanese War, and demanded that he be given the title of army commander and a member of the national army. The strength of an army distributes weapons and supplies food and salaries.At that time, Zhang Zhizhong was the provincial chairman. When I asked about this person, they all said that the people were too angry and had a lot of blood and debts, and they must not be with him. Besides, Peng had only seven or eight hundred people. .So the provincial government wrote back and ordered Peng's armed forces to be disbanded, and if he wished to fight against Japan, he could be conscripted into the army.Peng Mou naturally refused, and defected to Wang Jingwei's puppet Nanjing Central Government in 1941.At a time when the Wang puppet regime is losing its mind and is being criticized by thousands of people, it is good to have a dog, not to mention hundreds of guns.The big traitor Zhou Fohai personally wrote back to Peng, dispatched guns and paid money, and entrusted him with the title of "Commander of the Sanxiang Task Force of the Peaceful National Salvation Army".From then on, this group of gangsters became even more accomplices, doing all sorts of bad things.

There is no historical record of the name of the bandit leader Peng, and the old people who survived at that time did not know, but it is said that he was tall and thin, with a white skin, a long face, and a loud voice, so he was called "Peng called the donkey". This name is engraved by Changde people precisely because of the Battle of Changde.As if without him leading the way, there would not be that war. "A thousand knives and a thousand cuts will make Peng call a donkey" became a well-known saying among women and children in Changde. Peng Mingluzi received the order and came to the headquarters of the 11th Army, pointing out on the combat map which river can be waded in vain, which mountain has a secret path, which place has already set up a mechanism that must not be passed, and which place is on the map. There are no swamps marked.

Not only that, when the Japanese army launched an attack, Peng Bandit also led several cronies and gangsters to personally lead the way for several Japanese troops.In this battle, the Chinese army lost many advantages of using natural obstacles and familiarity with the terrain. From the evening of the 2nd to the dark of the 3rd, the Japanese army waded through the mud of the lakes and water networks with 12 troops, and violently attacked the vast area between Yidu and Ronghua. This was the first line of defense jointly built by the sixth theater and the ninth theater. . The Chinese troops deployed here are Wang Jiaben's 79th Army, Wang Zejun's 44th Army, and Liang Minghan's 99th Army.

Eight infantry divisions stubbornly resisted the Japanese attack on the 180-kilometer defensive front. At noon on the 3rd, the main force of the 116th Division of the Japanese Army, with the cooperation of more than 20 aircraft, first broke through the line of defense in the area of ​​the Biandan River defended by the 92nd Division of the 99th Army. In the middle of the night on the 4th, the Japanese army captured the position of the 98th Division on the right wing of the 79th Army in Jiehe City, and Gong'an County fell.The Japanese army penetrated directly into the back of the first-line defenders, and Sun Lianzhong ordered the first-line troops to retreat to the second line.

From the early morning of the 5th, the defenders met the Japanese troops chasing them and retreated while fighting.By the evening of the 6th, all the front-line positions had fallen into the hands of the enemy. Recalling the battle in the lakeside area at the initial stage of the Battle of Changde, several old people mentioned the puppet army.Speaking of these scum among the Chinese, they are still so angry that their teeth itch. "These people are not merciless in beating the Chinese." "Sometimes they were driven to the front by Japanese soldiers, and these people died first when they encountered an ambush."

"The military quality of these people is relatively poor, and they will not be allowed to fight in important battles. Naturally, it is not their credit." "These people are also angry with Japan. Food, clothing, and weapons are not as good as Japanese soldiers." "Speaking of which, these people are miserable enough. Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese treat them as human beings. Their families are the most discriminated against in the village." Perhaps because the war was so miserable at the beginning of the war, some people were really moved by Wang Jingwei's statement of "anti-communism and peaceful nation building".By 1943, as many as 80 senior KMT military and political officials had defected to the enemy, including 58 military generals and 22 KMT Central Executive Committee members. In the army, no matter the Central Army or the miscellaneous army, there were collective defectors who turned to the enemy as puppet soldiers.Looking up the sequence of the Japanese army in the battle of Changde in the history of the war, the puppet army actually had 11, 12, 13 divisions and 4 divisions of the newly reorganized 5th division participated in the battle.

An old man who was a puppet soldier said: "Who told you to listen to Mr. Wang (Jingwei)'s words, you deserve to suffer, you deserve to die, no one can tell you!" Unable to tell others about their pain, this is undoubtedly the most painful person in the world. There are different opinions about Peng Mingdonkey's funeral. Among them, "changed his name, changed his surname, disfigured him and hid in Tianjin. He was captured by the military and police in 1948 and executed as a traitor." The good wishes of "reporting"; and "fleeing abroad with a huge sum of money and seventeen aunts on the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War" makes people angry, so it is considered to be rumors-although neither of these two claims has been officially recorded.