Chapter 39 5. The Yunnan Army fought against Yuwang Mountain

In 1937, Lu Han volunteered to fight against the Japanese in Yunnan.In October of the same year, the Dian Army, led by Lu Han, was organized into the 60th Army. Under the leadership of Lu Han, it went to China's anti-Japanese battlefield. The peasant soldiers recruited by the 60th Army in Yunnan, after four or five years of rectification and training, became an army with neat military appearance, excellent weapons, and good military discipline.Each division has two brigades, a total of 12 infantry regiments.There are also military headquarters, division headquarters, guard battalions, engineering battalions, communication battalions, supply battalions, health teams, anti-virus teams, etc. directly under the troops.There are more than 45,000 officers and soldiers in the army.

After the great victory in Taierzhuang, the Jigu Division, which suffered a tragic defeat, retreated to Yi County and Zaozhuang area, preemptively occupying favorable terrain, trying to wait for reinforcements, and then wait for an opportunity to counterattack Taierzhuang.Chief Li Zongren of the fifth war zone acted decisively and ordered the participating troops to take advantage of the victory to pursue, thereby consolidating or expanding the victory of Taierzhuang. Tang Enbo's 20th Army pursued and pursued, besieging the remnants of the Jigu Division in Yi County and Zaozhuang, and immediately built fortifications on the periphery. On April 11, the 52nd Army and the 85th Army of the 20th Army began to attack the Japanese army. This fierce battle lasted until April 21.As the 5th Division of the Japanese Army in the direction of Linyi was heading south, the 20th Army was in danger of being flanked by the enemy. Tang Enbo panicked and ordered the entire army to retreat, and as soon as they retreated, they went to Pixian County, Jiangsu Province.

The 20th Legion made way for Isoya.After being supplemented by reinforcements, the Isoya Division quickly advanced southward.This time, with the assistance of the Japanese 114th Division, the 10th Division of the Japanese Army and 8,000 puppet troops of Liu Guitang came to Taierzhuang in a murderous spirit to take revenge. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese and puppet troops launched a massive counterattack on Taierzhuang on April 17. Li Zongren asked for more troops to support Taierzhuang, and asked the Military Commission to quickly transfer the 60th Army to Xuzhou.After Li Zongren sent the telegram, he still felt uneasy, and ordered the staff of the headquarters to go to the east of Henan in person with a military order, and ordered the railway transportation commander to take the 60th Army directly to the Fifth Theater Command.In this way, the 60th Army, under the leadership of Commander Lu Han, took a bus from Minquan, Shangqiu and other stations, and got off at the Zhaodun to Chefushan station in the east of Xuzhou on the evening of April 21.

Lu Han was ordered by the fifth war zone to rush to Fenghuangji, Gengzhuang, Xingjialou, Wushengtang and other places in the east of Taierzhuang within two days to gather.Due to time constraints, the divisions were reorganized at the station, and the soldiers moved towards the front line amidst the rumble of cannons. When the divisions and brigades arrived at the designated locations, before they had time to build fortifications, they fought an encounter with the Japanese army.It was only later that the 60th Army learned that the Japanese army had just reached Pujiang, Gengzhuang, Xingjialou, and Wushengtang when they went south.It was the 1081st Regiment of the 183rd Division that the 60th Army first came into contact with the Japanese army.Meeting on a narrow road, both sides felt very sudden.Due to the haste of the incident, both sides did not start, and they all encountered each other in marching columns.So from the beginning of the battle, it was close combat.Walking at the forefront of the team was Battalion Commander Yin Guohua of the 1081st Regiment. He led his troops into the enemy group.Hugging, gunshots, killing sounds, and the explosion of grenades were mixed together so that people could not distinguish them. Battalion Commander Yin Guohua died heroically.When the follow-up troops followed up, they saw corpses all over the ground.

The 1081st regiment seized the favorable terrain in Gengzhuang, and the follow-up troops of the Japanese army also followed.They attacked Gengzhuang with tanks and artillery. The officers and soldiers of the 1081 regiment of the Chinese army suffered heavy casualties, and Gengzhuang fell into the enemy's hands.The nearby Xingjialou and Wushengtang villages were all destroyed by Japanese artillery fire. The 60th Army fought so fiercely with the Japanese Army for the first time. Fortunately, the whole army withstood the first round of the enemy's main attack on their respective positions, and rushed to repair fortifications between battles.After the Japanese army occupied Gengzhuang, they used it as a stronghold and went south with their main force to attack Puwang, which was defended by the 182nd Division.The 1079th Regiment of the 182nd Division built fortifications in Puwang for a day and a night. The fortifications were quite strong.Almost all the trenches dug by the soldiers were filled.But none of the surviving fighters in the regiment retreated.After the enemy tanks drove by, they got out of the trenches and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese infantry behind the tanks.

The twenty or so tanks that drove into Puwang posed a huge threat to the defensive positions of the 182nd Division.The mortar platoon leader immediately organized an anti-tank team. Under the cover of the mortar, they used cluster grenades to blow up two tanks.But they were besieged by five or six tanks, and more than 20 fighters from the anti-tank team died in the end. Puwang fought extremely fiercely, and some people commented that the intensity of this battle reached the peak of the Lunan Campaign.Commander An Enpu of the 182nd Division of the 60th Army recalled: From 14:00 in the afternoon, the enemy bombarded with more than a hundred guns of various types and more than ten bombers, and threw incendiary bombs and gas bombs, and the sound of explosions could no longer be distinguished.At this time, Commander Lu called me and asked me: "Your front looks like an earthquake and thunder. What's that sound?" I said:

"This is the explosion of bombs and shells that the Japanese army attacked on the Puwang position." Lu said: "After the bombardment by the planes, the infantry fighting vehicles came. Pay attention!" At 15:30, the artillery fire stopped.The enemy infantry and chariots besieged the northeast side of Puwang's position on three sides, rushed into the position several times, but were all repelled.At 17:30 for the last time, the first battalion commander Wang Chengxi led more than a hundred officers and soldiers to attack the enemy from the south around the southwest and then repelled the enemy. More than forty officers and soldiers were killed in battle, more than thirty were injured, and only a dozen survived.

After the 1079th Regiment, which was sticking to Puwang, was wiped out, the Japanese army became even more rampant. They charged in a large-scale group and attacked Xingjialou and Fenghuang Bridge frantically.It was the 1082 regiment of the 183rd division who stood firm at Xingjialou and Fenghuang Bridge. After a fierce battle with a powerful enemy for a day, they suffered huge casualties and were outnumbered. They retreated to Xinzhuang, which was defended by the 1080 regiment.Due to the excessive speed of the Japanese attack, the officers and soldiers of the 1082nd Regiment entered Xinzhuang almost wrapped up with the attacking Japanese army.The 1080th Regiment, which stood firm in Xinzhuang, could only fight hand-to-hand with the Japanese army in the village.

The two sides fought in the dark, and there were corpses everywhere in the village.When An Enpu recalled the Xinzhuang battle, he said: On the night of the 24th, after the head of the regiment Long Yunjie reported the enemy's intrusion into Xinzhuang, I immediately led a platoon of the special agent company to inspect Lijiaxu from Hushanwo via Qiujialin, and arrived at Lijiaxu at about 5 o'clock on the 25th. The soldiers who escaped from Xinzhuang told me that the commanders of the regiment and battalion were all killed and that Xinzhuang had fallen. The battle between the 60th Army and the Japanese army surprised General Lu Han. The combat capability of our Yunnan army is not weak, the weapons and equipment are not bad, and the ammunition is sufficient.Not to mention the soldiers, none of them were afraid of death, and dared to fight with any invading Japanese army.What's wrong this time?Lu Han didn't understand. In just two days and two nights, the position held by the whole army fell.Places such as Gengzhuang, Puwang, Xingjialou, and Fenghuangqiao were not only lost one after another, but also suffered heavy losses, consuming the strength of 3 regiments of the entire army.What kind of demons are the enemies in front of them?Could it be that they have three heads and six arms?Lu Han wants to go to the front line to observe and understand, to see if he can find out the crux of the matter.

When General Luhan went to the front line, it was the time when the 182nd Division fought the most brutally in Houbao.He observed the front from the artillery observation mirror. In a position called Huoshibu, a battalion of the 60th Army was bombarded by enemy artillery for a day, and the Japanese army also used incendiary bombs, which set the entire rear fort on fire all night.It is reported that there are only a hundred men left in the position, and the ammunition has also been exhausted.The division headquarters immediately sent a special agent company up, and delivered the guns and ammunition up overnight.

The weapons of the 60th Army came from Vietnam, all of which are the latest French weapons.When they came to the front line of the Anti-Japanese War, they opened the box, and there was no problem with brand new guns and ammunition.Lu Han asked the division command post, what is the problem?The junior officer said that the troops lacked anti-tank weapons, and the Japanese army had many tanks and armored combat vehicles. The frontline troops had to sacrifice seven or eight lives, or even more, to blow up a single tank. Lu Han suddenly understood that the current Japanese army is a mechanical force, not only has aircraft and artillery, but also has groups of tanks and armored combat vehicles on the ground, while our army has mortars, anti-aircraft machine guns, light machine guns, Except for heavy machine guns, there is nothing else. These weapons are difficult to deal with armored vehicles such as tanks. After the fall of the Houbao position, Lu Han convened an emergency meeting of front-line commanders, summarized the current series of battles, and researched and formulated a new combat plan, which laid the foundation for victory in subsequent battles.