Chapter 30 9. In the bloody battle on the city wall, the Chinese garrison was killed in battle

Sun Lianzhong, Chief of the Sixth War Zone, sent a telegram to Yu Chengwan: Yu Chengwan sent a telegram to Sun Lianzhong: According to the anti-Japanese historical records: (November 1943) on the 25th, although the division repeatedly defeated the enemy, the fortifications outside the city were completely destroyed and the sacrifices were heavy, so they all retreated and defended the city wall, and Changde was surrounded on all sides. The soldiers of the 57th Division came from all over the world. Before participating in the Changde Battle, most of them were soldiers from Henan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Hunan provinces, reflecting the shadow of the troops' combat areas.During the Anti-Japanese War, it was generally supplemented nearby, and the same province in the army was a fellow villager.There is a comparison between companies, battalions, and regiments in combat, and there is also a contest between soldiers from various provinces. There is a positive factor in the mutual dissatisfaction that wins glory for the hometown.Often after a battle, after units and individuals appraise and award awards, there will also be private discussions between "Southern Manzi" and "Northern Manzi", between "Old Cousin" and "Old Man", to see who is better than the other. hard.This phenomenon belongs to the category of specific military barracks culture, has universal significance, and has always been so.

But after the Battle of Changde, the Sergeant Niu Weibin of the 1st Battalion, 1st Company, 3rd Platoon, Class 8, Jiangxi native of the 169th Regiment no longer had the awareness of being a fellow in the region.The three people who had life and death acquaintances with him came from Hunan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces respectively. The four of them were all survivors of the 1st Battalion after that battle. On November 24, the Japanese army launched a fierce offensive to Shahe and Sipu Street outside the East Gate Tower.Before the war, this area was a bustling and lively commercial district in the east of the city. The defenders dug holes in the walls between the dense houses to facilitate maneuvering, and drilled small holes in the walls for shooting.From the early morning of the 24th, a battalion of the defenders overwhelmed the opponent's three brigades with more than a thousand people. Until the evening of the 25th, no Japanese army crossed the position.Hundreds of Japanese soldiers lay dead in front of the camp, and nearly half of the martyrs and seriously wounded of the 470-strong battalion lay behind the camp.

On the 26th, the Japanese army concentrated artillery fire and bombarded it violently, planes dropped incendiary bombs, and a huge fire ignited in the east of the city.That day, the Chinese Air Force dispatched more than 20 fighter jets, shot down two enemy planes, and blew up an enemy supply warehouse.But there was nothing to be done about the Japanese army that had already approached the city wall. Niu Weibin recalled: "Most of the fortifications were blown up, and the houses were on fire all around. The smoke made people breathless, and some people passed out. The company commander ordered the first platoon to put out the fire, and the second and third platoons to stand firm. In fact, one platoon at that time There are only a dozen people left.

"The enemy attacked forward in turn, and after being beaten back, they bombarded our position again, and then attacked again. Every round, our people suffered casualties. At that time, everyone thought, this time it is my turn. up. "There is a supervising team in the battalion, more than a dozen people, with red armbands on their left arms, led by the deputy battalion commander. Their duty is to monitor the soldiers in each position and not let them retreat. We are angry with them. These people always Eyebrows up and down, as if everyone wants to be a deserter, sometimes you will see you twice when you go to shit, and other troops have killed people without knowing the situation.

"On the 26th, the number of casualties in each position was almost the same. The deputy battalion commander divided the people of the supervisory team into each position, and supervised the battle while fighting. The one assigned to our platoon was a veteran, about 30 years old, who was killed by the enemy in less than 10 minutes. The shells blew up. "It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon that day. The house was burned down, and the position had no support. The battalion commander and deputy battalion commander died, and our 1st company commander also died. The whole battalion was replaced by 2nd company commander Sun (forgot his name). There are more and more enemies and they are getting closer, and the position is about to fall. At this time, Company Commander Sun shouted: "Organize death squads!"

"There are no more than a hundred people in the battalion who can fight, and many of them are lightly wounded. If people are in a hurry, they don't think about anything, and they gather forty or fifty people in a short time. Company Commander Sun picks out a dozen All of them are the strongest. Open a few boxes of grenades, hold a bundle for each person, and some put a few more in their belts. We salute them with guns, but they don’t return the salute, and they don’t look at us, according to the company commander I saw a few people with tears in their eyes, they didn’t wipe them away, and they walked forward without turning back while holding the grenade. Three or four of the death squads were supervisors wearing red armbands.

"At that time, there was no order to defend the positions and they couldn't retreat until they were all wiped out. If they retreated, they would be shot. However, the organization of death squads was voluntary. The death squads never returned. They gave their names, hometowns, fathers or mothers and other family members who got in touch. Clearly, the officer will write it down. The death squad's pension is twice as high as the general death. "The same death also has the distinction of wanting to die and not wanting to die (meaning active and passive). Some people will stay to the end no matter how hard they are, and will not give up the hope of living. Some people think that life is only a death, so it is better to die with honor But at that time we were all young, who didn't want to survive the war and see the good scene after victory.

"Company Commander Sun commanded the whole battalion to fight for another hour. When it was getting dark, the enemy organized a strong attack. Company Commander Sun ordered to hide and not fight back. Seeing that the enemy was approaching, he waved his hand, and the death squad yelled and rushed towards the enemy's dense place. go up... "All the enemies who rushed up were killed, and all the death squads were killed. The enemy also knew that this was the last attack, and soon attacked again. We fought desperately. After throwing the grenade, we used the machine gun. With a rifle, and finally with a bayonet...

"At the last moment, Company Commander Sun ordered me and 4 other people to cover the secretary of the battalion headquarters and hand over the documents and roster at the regiment headquarters. The secretary tied the documents to his belt, and tied two grenades outside his belt just in case. We took advantage of the darkness and ran all the way down the position. There was a burst of grenades and machine guns behind us. We could hear the sound from our main position. It was the enemy. "We walked through Datie Street and entered the east gate. Unexpectedly, within two miles of the journey, a soldier fell down on the road, hit his head on a stone point, hit a big bloody hole, and died. After entering the city, there were only four of us. , there should be another person who didn't follow up for some reason, but it couldn't be escaped, because the conditions didn't allow it, and escape would be more dangerous, so he just disappeared.

"When we arrived at the regiment headquarters, the four of us saw the deputy head of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Gao Ziyue, in a fortification. The secretary reported to him the battle situation of the 1st Battalion for a few days while crying. As we were talking, a staff officer reported that the Sipujie position of the 1st Battalion was lost and no one came back. "After hearing this, several of us burst into tears, Deputy Head Gao and the people in the fortification took off their hats and mourned in silence in the direction of our camp. "We were incorporated into the regiment's special agent company. All four of us survived that battle. Among them, Luo Yi was injured in his right leg, which was amputated after the battle. The rest suffered minor injuries. The agent company also suffered more than half of its casualties in the subsequent battle... ..."

The old man Niu Weibin went on to say: "It's not easy to survive from that time." The four survivors of the 1st Battalion of the 169th Regiment came from four provinces, and that battle made them comrades closer than brothers.It is a pity that Niu Weibin lost contact with them after he was discharged from the army due to illness and returned to his hometown in Yihuang, Jiangxi in the autumn of 1944.I heard that Yang Zibin from Zhejiang died in the Shandong battlefield in 1948, Luo Yi from Jiangsu died of illness in the early days of liberation, and Dang Chongde from Hunan, the secretary of the battalion department, did not know the news. If he was alive, he would be 90 years old this year. On the evening of November 26, in Jiajia Lane outside the North Gate, the 1st Battalion 3rd Company of the 171st Regiment was in the position. When lieutenant platoon leader Yin Huiren woke up from a coma, there was a buzzing in his ears, and his left leg was excruciatingly painful.He realized he wasn't killed by the shell, but was wounded.Opening his eyes vigorously, he felt that the world in front of him was blurred. At 4:00 pm on the 26th, Yin Huiren led the entire platoon and ran out of the north gate with the company to take over the positions of the two companies of the 3rd Battalion of the 169th Regiment near the north gate.The fortifications that were taken over were dilapidated, and the two companies that were withdrawn had only more than 40 slightly wounded.A premonition flashed in Yin Huiren's mind: success and success are here. Before the 169th regiment had finished withdrawing, the Japanese attack began. The 3rd company calmly faced the battle and repelled the enemy's two attacks.The Japanese army covered the position with fierce artillery fire, and the company commander, deputy company commander, and more than 30 soldiers were killed in the artillery fire.Yin Huiren is the 1st platoon leader and the most experienced platoon leader, and immediately declared himself acting company commander.Just after walking through the battlefield, another round of artillery fire fell, and he felt that his eyes went dark, and all the noise around his ears stopped abruptly... Yin Huiren gritted his teeth, got up from the ground and shook the rubble and dust all over his body, sat on the ground, threw down his smashed shoes, and saw that the shell had sliced ​​off his big toe, and the bones in the wound were covered with white stubble and blood. It was a blur with the opened flesh. Touching his body, he remembered that the first aid kit was used by a soldier just now. He found an unused first aid kit from a martyr beside him, opened it, bandaged the wound, grabbed a rifle and leaned on it. He stood up with difficulty. up. It was dusk, another enemy attack had just been repulsed, and there were only about 30 people left on the 300-meter-long position. The soldiers were still collecting bullets and grenades from the dead under the command of the third squad leader of Yin Huiren's platoon, preparing for the next attack. fighting. Seeing that the platoon leader woke up, the 3rd squad leader hurried over to help him sit on the ground, and told him that the 2nd and 3rd platoon leaders were also killed, and he himself announced the acting company commander. There are only 7 people left in the 1st row, and he is the only squad leader and deputy monitor in the platoon.He said and handed the kettle to Yin Huiren. Yin Huiren remembered that he had learned in the military school that he should not drink a lot of water after he was injured and lost blood.He raised his head and took a sip to moisten his throat. Squad 3 said: The telephone line is broken, I wonder if the regiment headquarters has any new plans to defend the Jiajiaxiang position.Yin Huiren glared at him, but didn't answer. When it got dark, the Japanese artillery shells exploded on the position again, and a new round of offensive began again.Enduring the pain, Yin Huiren ordered Quan Company to hold the position and resolutely repel the enemy's attack. After the shelling, Yin Huiren heard voices shouting from the direction of the Japanese army's attack. He thought it was something wrong with his ears, so he asked a soldier beside him what the sound was, and the soldier said, "The devil is howling." Just as he was talking, he saw huge fireballs rolling towards the position in the darkness, a dozen, dozens, or hundreds of them, Yin Huiren and the soldiers were stunned.Suddenly, someone yelled, "Damn it, this is a cow!" During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Tian Dan, the general of the State of Qi, defeated the Yan army with a formation of fire oxen, which became a special example in the history of ancient Chinese warfare.At this time, the Japanese army captured the farmer's cattle, tied them with bedding, poured gasoline on them, blindfolded them, and drove them to the front of the position. They lit the fire and drove them to the defender's position with gunshots and shouts. Yin Huiren gave the order to shoot, and the cows, who were in extreme pain from being burned by the fire, either ran amok in the rain of bullets, or fell to the ground after being shot, or rushed left and right even more frantically after being shot.A few of them rushed straight to the 3rd company's position, and a smell of burnt smell permeated the position. Yin Huiren called the 3rd squad leader and ordered him to return to the regiment headquarters immediately to report the situation and report to the regiment leader that all the 1st Battalion and 3rd Company were successful. Squad leader 3 knelt down on his knees, tears streaming down his face, choking with sobs: "Platoon Leader Yin, please remember my name, Sergeant Squad Geng Jialiang, Squad 3, 1st Battalion, 3rd Company, 171st Regiment, 57th Division, 74th Army." According to the history of war: The Jiajiaxiang position was destroyed by enemy artillery fire. The platoon leader, Lieutenant Yin Huiren, led the remaining 8 officers and soldiers, and continued to fight hard. His foot was wounded and wounded to command the battle. As the enemy approached, the platoon leader died with the enemy with the last grenade. Jiaxiang was lost. One spring after more than 40 years, Geng Jialiang, an elderly man from Qutang Township, Lianping County, Guangdong Province, went to Guangzhou to visit his daughter.Daughter Gengnan was admitted to Guangzhou Normal University when the college entrance examination resumed in the first year after the "Cultural Revolution", and stayed there to teach after graduation.During her stay in Guangzhou, Geng Nan wrote her father's anti-Japanese experience into a memoir. The article has been rejected by 6 newspapers and magazines.Geng Jialiang said: "Forget it, no one wants to hear about those things in the past." Geng Nan said, "No." According to war history records, the 171st regiment had 3 battalions and 9 companies, and its pre-war strength was 134 people. Dingxin Electric Lamp Company is a relatively large building located outside the west gate of Changde. The 9th Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 171st Regiment took over the defense of the two companies of the 170th Regiment at noon on the 25th. By 10 am on the 26th, the entire company had more than 70 casualties and was ordered to withdraw to Daximen to continue to resist.The company commander Song Weijun counted the personnel, took the wounded and weapons and was about to retreat when the Japanese army attacked. The 3rd platoon leader Li Shaoxing said to the company commander: "Go quickly, I will cover." Li Shaoxing, Whampoa Phase 16, 23 years old. The Japanese army was determined to win the Dingxin Company. They didn't know that the defenders retreated. They didn't know that only one platoon leader led six soldiers to repel the attack. They organized nearly a hundred artillery pieces and dozens of light and heavy machine guns nearby. First, there was a nearly 40-minute smash Sexual bombing, and then weaved a very dense cross-fire network.When Plato Leader Li struggled to climb out of the ruins, his ears were deafened, and there was silence around him.He rummaged through the collapsed fortifications for a long time, and only found one living soldier, whom he recognized as Yang Datian, a recruit from Hunan.Yang's left foot was broken by the blasted fortifications, and he limped back with the platoon leader.At this time, the Japanese army rushed up again, this time coming around from the direction of Yufu Middle School on the right side of the position.Li Shaoxing pushed Yang Datian, and turned back by himself. Yang Datian couldn't call Li platoon leader, remembering that when he was talking to him just now, he pointed at his ear and shook his head.Yang Datian couldn't stand still, he crawled back and retreated, after a while, he felt that the earth he was close to trembled, and when he looked back, he saw a puff of smoke and dust shooting straight into the sky. It occurred to him that there was still a large box of grenades on the position, the lid of which had just been opened, and the grenades were neatly arranged in 5 layers with 8 pieces in each layer. Yang Datian also remembered that the 3rd Battalion, 9th Company and 3rd Platoon of the 171st Regiment also had 40 people. After the 9th company withdrew to the west gate, the company commander Song Weijun led the remnants to join the 7th company's position and stand together.The deputy battalion commander Lei Zhengmin led the one and a half companies to fight fiercely with the Japanese army attacking from the direction of Dingxin Electric Lamp Company all day and night.Deputy battalion commander Lei was killed in battle, the company commander, deputy company commander, and platoon leaders of the 7th company, the deputy company commander and platoon leaders of the 9th company, and the soldiers of the 7th and 9th companies fell on their posts one after another.In the Ximen position, only Song Weijun, the commander of the 9th company, was left. Regarding the last story of the last man, Zhou Xun wrote the book "Battle of Changde during the War of Resistance Against Japan": ... Almost all the fortifications on the city were destroyed. Seeing that there was no movement on the city, the enemy thought that all the defenders were killed, and took the opportunity to move closer to the city gate.Unexpectedly, company commander Song suddenly crawled out of the mud. He held a grenade and threw it at the enemies approaching the city gate. With a loud noise, these enemies all made a silent triumph, while the surviving enemy soldiers continued to approach on the corpses of the enemies. city ​​gate.Company Commander Song was unarmed at this time, so he had to hide in the corner of the city wall. He snatched the enemy's gun by surprise and shot at the enemy. The enemy fell to the ground. However, our Company Commander Song also died a heroic sacrifice. The 800-kilometer Yuanjiang River originates from Yunwu Mountain in Duyun County, Guizhou Province. When it flows close to the south of Changde City, the water surface is about 400 meters wide and the water depth in the middle of the river is about 3 meters.The Yuanjiang River is not only a natural barrier for the defenders, but also cuts off the way for the defenders to retreat. When deploying the defense, Yu Chengwan once said to the regiment leaders: This battle is to defend against the water. In the early morning of November 24, the 6th Regiment of the 3rd Division of the Japanese Army occupied the South Railway Station on the south bank of the Yuan River, and then organized a forced crossing of the Yuan River, forming a fourth attack on Changde. The 75-year-old old man Jiang Xing recalled: "Our company retreated from the outskirts to the south of the city by the river, and blocked the enemy's invasion at the south gate. The Japanese artillery was very powerful, and the fortifications were severely damaged. The brothers defended tenaciously among the rubble and held it for two days. Overnight, there were less than 30 people in the whole company, and many of them were wounded and fighting. "It was cloudy that morning, with sporadic light rain. The enemy bombarded the position again. The third platoon leader, surnamed Shang, was a graduate of a military school. He was the first to discover that the enemy was using poison gas again. There were gas bombs in the mortar shells. He Shouting, 'Put on your mask!' while running on the field "I was poisoned once in the Battle of Shanggao in 1941 to restore Sixi. The poison gas burned my lungs, and it took more than a month to recover. At that time, more than 30 people in the whole company were poisoned, with varying degrees of severity. In the battle of Shanggao and the other few In the first battle, the enemy did not use poisonous gas unless it was absolutely necessary, but that was not the case in the Battle of Changde, as long as the wind was favorable, they would release poisonous gas! I really don’t know why they were so vicious this time. "Listening to the shout of the platoon leader, I quickly opened the gas mask on my back and put it on my head, but found that the mask was hit by a shrapnel at some point, and the air leaked. When I took off the gas mask and turned around, the dead brother When I took one from my body, I already had difficulty in breathing and a burning sensation in my lungs. I knew I had been poisoned. "If I panicked and ran around at that time, it would definitely be over. I held my breath, put the leaking mask on my head, covered the damaged place with my hands, sat on the spot, and tried slowly. At that time, I was so suffocated that I really thought that I would rather die than take a few breaths, and I hated the Japanese devils in my heart. "I heard the sound of guns and guns on the battlefield for a long time, and thought to myself: The battlefield is over. "I found out later that it was the rain that saved my life. The poison gas loses its effect quickly on rainy days. I curled up in a bunker for more than two hours, feeling dizzy. When I resumed breathing, I was nauseated and unable to vomit anything. Dare to take a deep breath, my headache felt like it was going to explode, my eyes were so blurred that I couldn't see clearly, and I didn't have any strength in my body. "I braced myself up and took a look at the position. I saw some devil soldiers entering the city gate and walking towards the city. I lay in the corpses until it was dark, crawled out of the city, walked eastward along the river, hid, and left. It took 4 days to get out of danger. "Does being poisoned count as a battlefield injury? My lungs have been bad since I was 40 years old, and I have been suffering from emphysema, bronchitis, and pneumonia since I was 60 years old. Back to life, people live more than 70 is not too little..." The old man Jiang Xing said that when he suffered from lung disease, he thought of the poisonous gas of the Japanese. He was poisoned twice, which made it difficult for him to turn hostility into friendship with the Japanese in this life.Hearing that some people in Beijing were engaged in non-governmental compensation activities, he asked around and wanted to sign his name in the "billion signatures" - in the name of veterans injured in the War of Resistance Against Japan. After liberation, the old man resolutely boycotted Japanese products and did not use anything made by the Japanese.Until 1989, when he learned that the famous domestic color TV movement at home that had been used for 8 years was made in Japan, he sighed helplessly: "It has been more than 40 years, maybe those things should really be over." On the north bank of the Yuanjiang River.Looking along the coast are the ruins of bunkers, trenches and pillboxes. Tian Jingxin, the top soldier of the pistol platoon of the 171st Regiment, accompanied the two squads of soldiers to protect the head of the regiment, Du Ding, to command the counterattack.Here he saw a scene that he will never forget. From the Jiang'an position to Zhongshan South Road and Xiananmen, the corpses of Chinese soldiers are lying everywhere, and there are stumps and broken arms everywhere near the bomb craters and bombing sites.The blood of those who died from the guns turned black and brown, while the faces of those who died from the poison gas were black and blue, and their lips were purple. Many people tore up the military uniforms on their chests and scratched the skin on their chests before dying, with extremely painful expressions. Tian Jingxin said: "There are many people who died with their eyes wide open and their mouths open. They are still watching and shouting!" They are shouting to people today! They are watching what we do today! "Battle Report on the Battle of Changde in the Sixth War Zone" contains: The enemy was brutal and inhumane, and the number of times poison gas was used was unprecedented since the Anti-Japanese War. According to statistics in this document, the Japanese army used poison gas 74 times in the Changde battle, and the main types of poisons were "suffocating", "erosive", and "sneezing".In the urban area of ​​Changde, the Japanese army used poison gas as the main means of capturing the defenders' positions six times, and our army suffered more than a thousand poisoned casualties. During the battle in Changde, the Japanese army not only used poisonous gas, which was "unprecedented since the War of Resistance Against Japan", but also dropped a large number of plague-infected fleas by plane on November 4, 1941, making Changde one of the very few towns attacked by bacterial weapons during the Japanese invasion of China. one.The witness and witness of this incident, the director of the Hunan Provincial Health Department at the time, Jizheng Deng Yiwei, led the epidemic prevention personnel to identify the epidemic and organize epidemic prevention as a special commissioner for epidemic prevention.After liberation, he wrote the article "The Process of Japanese Plague Bacterial Warfare in Changde", which described in detail the heinous crime of the Japanese invaders and the serious harm caused to the people of Changde that he had witnessed with his own eyes.The article was published in the 18th series of "Selected Collections of Hunan Literature and History".In the article, Mr. Deng Yiwei was deeply confused and angry that the Kuomintang government did not expose the crime of the Japanese invaders in the newspapers at that time and that it did not file a complaint with the Far East International Tribunal after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. On November 26, the flames of war in Changde burned from the city wall to the city.At 7:00 p.m., the headquarters of the 57th Division counted the combat strength of the regiments and divisions directly under the division.Statistics show that there were 8,315 officers and soldiers in the division before the war, but only 936 are still able to fight, including agencies and commanders at all levels. The division commander Yu Chengwan ordered: "From now on, all platoon, company, and battalion commanders are not allowed to change positions." The worst situation is no longer a prediction, but is becoming a reality. Yu Chengwan organized most of the personnel directly under the division into the regiments, and organized more than a hundred artillerymen from the artillery regiment who had fired all shells and damaged artillery into the infantry.He came to three first-aid stations in the city and mobilized more than 50 wounded who could still hold guns to return to the position, but few of the soldiers on the position were not injured. At this time, Changde City was hanging on a radio station antenna not much thicker than a hair.The invisible and intangible radio waves maintain this lonely city and support the heart of this lonely army. Sun Lianzhong, Chief of the Sixth War Zone: I was instructed by the Commissioner that the value of defending Changde this time is equal to that of the Stalingrad battle in the Soviet Union. It is indeed the glory of the country and the nation. Xue Yue, chief of the Ninth War Zone, telegraphed: If Yue helps his brother with a large army, the enemy will surely retreat. I hope the soldiers will succeed in their defense. The Japanese army approached inch by inch, and the defenders sacrificed in whole squads and platoons. From the commander to the soldiers of the 57th Division, everyone thought of the ending of the city being destroyed, but how to complete the task of defending the city and how to make the dead Comrade in peace? Reinforcements, reinforcements!Where are you at this time?