Chapter 43 2. Nansu County blocking battle

After the Taierzhuang victory, the Japanese base camp re-enacted the combat plan for encircling and suppressing the 600,000 Chinese troops in Xuzhou.The Japanese army transferred troops from Ning, Jiangsu, and Anhui, and adjusted their offensive strategy in late April.In order to eliminate the danger of being attacked by the Chinese army on the flank, they used their main force to cooperate with a large number of armored troops and aircraft to advance westward in lightning, and quickly captured Hefei. The Japanese army turned to attack the 7th Army and the 48th Army of Liao Lei's 21st Army, which were stationed in the middle reaches of the Huaihe River.The troops defending important strongholds such as Hetianjia Town, Shouxian County, and Zhengyang Pass on both sides of the Huaihe River, in order to avoid being surrounded and wiped out by the enemy, after a short resistance, they voluntarily gave up their defensive positions and implemented guerrilla tactics of breaking them up into parts. Entanglement, planning to drag down and drag down the Japanese army in this area, and then divide, encircle and annihilate.However, in order to realize the combat intention of the base camp, the Japanese army, instead of entangled with the Chinese army, marched towards Mengcheng along the Guohe area with the 3rd Division, 9th Division, 13th Division and Jingguan mechanized troops.At the same time, the Japanese troops near the south bank of Bengbu rushed across the Huaihe River and marched northward.

The 51st Army and the 77th Army defending the north bank of the Huaihe River were suddenly oppressed by the superior forces of the Japanese army and had to abandon their own line and retreat to the eastern border of Anhui and the Soviet Union overnight.Liu Ruming's 68th Army was ordered to go south for reinforcements. When they reached the Jiagou area, the defenders had already retreated and transferred, and the 68th Army was in a very dangerous position, so the whole army was ordered to break out of the encirclement towards Guoyang. After Liu Ruming's 68th Army broke through the encirclement, the Jinpu Road defense line south of Xuzhou was completely opened.Liao Lei, commander-in-chief of the 21st Army Group in northern Anhui, saw that the situation was serious, and quickly sent the Group Army General Reserve to guard Mengcheng and Su County.The 173rd Division Commander Yang Junchang and Deputy Division Commander Zhou Yuan each controlled a county seat. Deputy Division Commander Zhou Yuan led the 133rd regiment to guard Mengcheng, and Division Commander Yang Junchang led two regiments to guard Su County.

Mengcheng blocked the Japanese army for 4 days, Zhou Yuan, the deputy division commander, died heroically, and only a dozen officers and soldiers of the whole regiment escaped alive.The Japanese army occupying Mengcheng continued to march northward without rest, and pointed their finger at Suxian County, an important town in northern Anhui.After the Japanese army captured Mengcheng, they set up a rear base in Mengcheng, planning to use Mengcheng as a base to advance towards Xuzhou. The Japanese army concentrated a huge force in Mengcheng, and there were only three main divisions attacking Nansu County. Division Commander Yang Junchang stationed in Nansu County had only two infantry regiments. One can imagine the tragic situation of the battle.

The main force of the Japanese army did not use much strength. They bombarded with tens of thousands of artillery, leveled the city wall of the county, and then dispatched planes to bomb and straf, and then charged in groups.In front of the infantry are dozens of tanks, armored fighting vehicles. The Chinese defenders defended the city with their bodies and blood when they were completely at a disadvantage.The fierceness of the battle was no less than that of Deputy Commander Zhou Yuan and the others in Mengcheng.Regarding this battle, Li Zongren, commander of the fifth theater, recalled: Commander Yang Junchang led his troops to guard Nansu County. Because the city wall was destroyed by enemy artillery, he was forced to withdraw to the suburbs. Although the losses were heavy, not all of them were sacrificed.

When Li Zongren recalled Nansu County, he said that not all sacrifices had been made, and he said it in comparison with the battle of Mengcheng two days earlier.He recalled the Montreal siege and said: When the enemy attacked violently, Deputy Commander Zhou fought back several times, hoping to break through the encirclement, but the enemy's fire net was tight and failed.Except for 21 soldiers who escaped by snakes in the night and survived, the rest of the officers, soldiers, servants, and horses all sacrificed for the country. When later generations talked about the battle of Xuzhou, they didn't mention much about the bloody battle of Master Yang Junchang in Nansu County.

That is to say, but only a few words.This is because Commander Yang Junchang was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years. This incident happened during the retreat of the Fifth War Zone in Xuzhou. Li Zongren said in his memoirs: When the Commander's Department finally retreated from Xuzhou, Liao Lei, Commander-in-Chief of the 21st Group Army, strictly ordered Yang Junchang, the Division Commander, to stick to Suxian County.Reluctantly, the enemy army tried to cut off our retreat and stormed Su County with superior forces.When our defenders were exhausted, Commander Yang asked Commander-in-Chief Liao for instructions. Before the call was finished, the enemy had already entered the city, so Junchang put down the receiver, fought and left, and abandoned Su County.Liao Lei was furious and petitioned Yang Junchang to be severely punished.Yang Sui was escorted to Hankou, handed over to the military court for trial, and sentenced to ten years in prison.In fact, Master Yang's Shousu County has exhausted its last strength and is exhausted before retreating.So Mr. Yang's ten-year imprisonment is somewhat unfair.After that, he was in Zhijiang Prison in western Hunan, and he wrote to me from time to time, asking for relief.Because of my inconvenience, I always reply to the letter and tell him to wait patiently.Junchang sat in prison for ten years, and was freed only after the victory.

Perhaps it was for this reason that Yang Junchang's bloody battle in Nansu County was rarely mentioned or not mentioned.Countless heroes who have sacrificed their lives for China, their deeds cannot be buried.The spirit of the warriors who fought bravely to defend Nansu County and prevent the Japanese army from going northward to Xuzhou needs to be inherited and carried forward by future generations. Nansu County's blockade failed, and the 77th Army Military Training Corps in Xin'an County, Henan Province didn't know it. They only knew that Xuzhou was in a tight spot, and they were ordered to send a brigade to reinforce it.The 77th Army Military Training Corps decided to send the 4th Brigade to the expedition.The 4th Brigade was established on the basis of the 77th Army Student Brigade, and most of them were young students who had received military training.They sang "March of the Volunteers" and took the train from Xin'an County to Su County via Jiyang, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Shangqiu.

In Su County, Anhui, Japanese planes bombed the railway station in turn.They used terrain cover near the station to organize firepower to shoot into the air, so that the enemy planes did not dare to bomb at low altitudes wantonly.Then the 4th Brigade concentrated on Nanping. Along the way, they saw the Anhui people being brutally killed by the Japanese army, and they experienced the disaster of the war.The students of the 4th Brigade were excited and determined to hit the enemy severely and take national humiliation. When the 4th Brigade arrived at Nanping Town between Su County and Mengcheng, the situation in Xuzhou worsened. The Longhai Railway to the west of Xuzhou and the Jinpu traffic to the south of Xuzhou were all cut off by the Japanese army.The 4th Battalion deployed defenses on the bank of the Weihe River north of Nanping to prevent the Japanese from going south to the Weihe River.

The 4th Battalion, which had just finished its defense, received a report from scouts that 200 Japanese troops had moved from the direction of Shuangduiji along the south bank of the Hui River.This situation came very suddenly, beyond the expectations of the 4th Brigade.Captain Huang Xingzhou analyzed the situation. He thought that the enemy came in a whole team and didn't know we were here, so let him catch him by surprise!The brigade studied and decided to fight close combat with the Japanese army and destroy the enemy in a surprise attack. The Japanese brigade moved forward and walked into the ambush circle of the 4th Brigade. Machine guns and rifles suddenly rang out, catching the Japanese army by surprise.Two commanders riding swords on horseback were hit and fell off their horses. The Japanese army dragged the dead and wounded officers and soldiers out of the battlefield in a panic.

The 4th Battalion took the initiative to attack the south bank of the Hui River, which dealt a great blow to the Japanese army.That day they found two to three hundred Japanese soldiers in Zhangzhuang, which was connected to Zhaozhuang, where Japanese artillery and more than a dozen tanks were parked.The enemy was a little careless, they were cooking and resting, and there was not even a guard standing guard. The 4th Battalion decided to deal a blow to the enemy.Captain Huang selected 10 death-defying members from each squadron, a total of 60 or 70 people.Each of them took 6 grenades to attack Zhaozhuang, and the rest of the fighters attacked Zhangzhuang.

The attack actions of Zhangzhuang and Zhaozhuang should be unified, and the death squad of Zhaozhuang should set fire to Zhuangtou. At the west end of Zhaozhuang, the death squads lit the haystack, thick white smoke came out, and the battle between the two villages began.The artillerymen of the 4th Battalion cooperated to bombard the Japanese army in Shonai violently, and the two sides fought gun to gun and knife to knife.The battle lasted for more than an hour, with heavy casualties on both sides.The death squads blew up enemy tanks in Zhaozhuang, and thick smoke billowed from the burning tanks.The Japanese army in Zhangzhuang fell in large numbers. The 4th Battalion retreated while fighting. Only half of the members who retreated from Zhangzhuang returned to the position.Due to the heavy casualties, the Japanese army did not dare to go out of the village to pursue them, and only confronted the 4th Battalion on the edge of the village. The next day, the 4th Battalion was surrounded by the Japanese army.Under the leadership of Huang Shengzhou, they fought desperately against the Japanese army. After a fierce hand-to-hand battle, they finally opened the gap, and the remaining team members moved to the east of Su County.In the breakout battle, more than half of the 4th Battalion suffered casualties, with only more than 200 people left. Battalion Captain Huang Xingzhou and several squadron leaders were killed.The whole brigade was reorganized into two squadrons to carry out guerrilla warfare in the area of ​​Hongze Lake.It was not until more than a month later that they returned to the Shangcheng and Huangchuan areas, and returned to the organizational system on the border of Henan Province.