In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there was a Sichuan army and tens of thousands of soldiers who went to other places to resist Japan and save the country, shedding blood and sweat, but they were not treated kindly, discriminated against and bullied, and even no war zone was willing to accept these Sichuan soldiers in rags.
This dilemma finally took a turn for the worse at the end of 1937, when General Li Zongren, commander of the Fifth Theater of operations of the Nationalist Army, accepted this Sichuan unit with open arms, and these soldiers finally had a foothold in Shandong. They belonged to the 41st Army and the 45th Army under the jurisdiction of the 22nd Group Army of the Nationalist Army, saying that they were group armies, but in fact, after experiencing the shanxi war against Japan, the troops were greatly reduced, and when they came to Shandong, there were only less than 20,000 Sichuan disciples left in the whole army.
In late December 1937, due to the retreat of Han Fuyu in Shandong without a fight, the 10th Division of the Japanese Army easily took Jinan, Tai'an, Yanzhou, and the northern section of Jinpu Road in Shandong.
At this time, the Nationalist 22nd Group Army received orders from General Li Zongren to complete the deployment in the area of Tengxian County, Shandong in early January 1938, with the task of preventing the main force of the Japanese army from going south. Among them, the 45th Army was the first line, deploying defenses on the east and west sides of the river north of Teng County, Shandong Province; the 41st Army was the second line, confronting the Vanguard of the Japanese Army that had reached Zou County.
In the first stage, the Japanese army launched a general attack on the outer positions of Tengxian County, Shandong, aircraft and artillery bombarded indiscriminately, organized a charge many times, encountered the stubborn resistance of the Nationalist 45th Army, the 45th Army also sent a small unit to take the initiative to attack and harass the Japanese army, and the brave Sichuan soldiers successfully killed more than 40 officers and men of the Japanese Major General Nakajima Rongji and below.
After being frustrated in the front, Isoya Immediately adjusted his offensive tactics, changed from the right wing to a detour, and suddenly cut off the rear of the Nationalist 45th Army, so that after a scuffle, the outer positions of Tengxian In Shandong were broken by the enemy one by one, and by the night of March 14, the county seat of Tengxian had been completely exposed to the enemy.
The arduous task of defending Teng County fell on the shoulders of General Wang Mingzhang. General Wang Mingzhang was then the commander of the 122nd Division of the Nationalist Army and the commander-in-chief of the front of the Nationalist 41st Army, and he had less than 2,000 soldiers with real combat ability.
On March 16, the Japanese army stormed the eastern part of our city, and intensive artillery fire blasted a gap in the city wall, and the Japanese rushed to the city from the gap. The Sichuan soldiers guarding the city were not afraid of danger, and repeatedly blocked the Japanese army out of the city with dense grenades, and the personnel of our army also suffered heavy casualties.
The commander of the enemy division, Rinsuke Isoya, saw that the Sichuan soldiers were desperately defending and defending tightly, so he dispatched troops to attack from the east, south, and north at the same time.
On March 17, 1938, after many years of fighting on horseback, Wang Mingzhang, an old senior soldier, naturally knew that with only 10 infantry companies in the city, even if the soldiers were good at fighting and brave, it was difficult to be sure of defending the city. To this end, he proposed a contingency plan to his immediate superior, General Sun Zhen, the commander of the 41st Army, one was to stick to the isolated city; the other was to go out of the city for mobile operations.
Although Wang Mingzhang and General Sun Zhen are superiors and subordinates, they have always been brothers and sisters, but this time Sun Zhen did not fight with his old friends, and there was no room for reply: do their duty as soldiers, wait for help, and defend the city for 3 days. He also clearly told Wang Mingzhang that Tang Enbo's reinforcements were already on the way.
"Soldiers take obedience to orders as their duty", Wang Mingzhang obeyed the orders without choice, knowing that this was a defensive battle in which eggs touched stones, knowing that he could not do anything, as a soldier, he still had to grit his teeth and guard it.
The city wall of Tengxian County was hit by Japanese shells to create several gaps, these gaps will become the breakthrough of the Japanese siege, General Wang Mingzhang ordered the troops to block all the city gates and city wall gaps, the use of more materials, initially with salt bags, military food, and later, with coffins filled with sand plugged.
The Japanese army did not expect the legendary vulnerable Sichuan army to be so tough, in the early morning of the 17th, the Japanese army urgently dispatched heavy artillery and more than 10 aircraft to bomb Tengxian again.
On the afternoon of the 17th, the Japanese army once again bombed Dongguan in Tengxian County, Shandong Province, and the bombardment and shelling lasted for an hour. Nanguan and the southern city wall were also fiercely attacked by the Japanese army.
Wang Mingzhang again sent a telegram to General Sun Zhen: "The enemy bombarded the city and the southeast city wall with artillery... After the onslaught of our army, it has been repelled. If there is no more news from the friendly forces, the isolated city is in danger. ”
At this time, General Wang Mingzhang still had illusions about Tang Enbo's reinforcements. In his military creed, the military order is like a mountain, and reinforcements should arrive. At the height of the battle on the southern city wall, General Wang Mingzhang personally came to the line of fire to supervise the battle.
The constant and unusually fierce attacks of the Japanese army made General Wang Mingzhang realize that the final moment was coming. At about 3 p.m., he sent one last telegram to the headquarters of the army group: "... Fight to the death to repay the country..."
After the message was sent, he ordered the Communications Staff To be ready to destroy the radio station and the code at all times.
Subsequently, he had the sick tax chief escorted out of the city, and also took away the medical officer next to him, his cousin Qiu Zixin: "The situation is urgent, go and rescue the wounded!" ”
After the fall of the southern city wall and the Eastern Pass, General Wang Mingzhang personally went to the crossroads in the center of the city to direct the battle. He ordered the guard company, which had only 1 platoon at his side, to pounce from the northwest corner of the city to the West Gate Tower and seize the West Gate Tower. Due to the fierce fire of the Japanese army, a platoon of Sichuan boys died heroically.
The Japanese forces at the West Gate Tower continued to press north. General Wang Mingzhang was forced to move to the Xiguan Railway Station, where a unit of the 372nd Brigade of the 124th Division continued to fight the Japanese.
When Wang Mingzhang walked near the electric light company, he was discovered by the Japanese troops in the West City Gate Tower. The machine guns fired intensively, and Chief of Staff Zhao Weibin was the first to be shot and fell, and all his intestines flowed out.
Another burst of Japanese fire struck, and General Wang Mingzhang was shot 7 times in the body and fell to the ground, shot in the abdomen, and vomited blood in his mouth. General Wang Mingzhang was finally martyred because of his wounds, at the age of 45. So far, Wang Mingzhang has used his blood and life to practice the heroic oath of not being afraid of danger and not being reckless in the face of difficulties.
Since the Japanese attack on March 14, the Nationalist 22nd Group Army has defended Tengxian County on the 4th, killing and wounding more than 2,000 Japanese troops, the 41st Army garrison has suffered more than 5,000 casualties from the division commander General Wang Mingzhang, and the Nationalist 45th Army fighting on the periphery has also suffered nearly 5,000 casualties, but their persistence has won precious time for the deployment of the Nationalist army in Taierzhuang and opened the prelude to the great victory of Taierzhuang.
After the Battle of Tengxian County, Shandong, the headquarters of the Nationalist 22nd Group Army sent people to venture into the battlefield, found the body of General Wang Mingzhang, and managed to smuggle it out of the city.
On May 2, the body of General Wang Mingzhang was transported to Xuzhou, and Li Zongren saw that General Wang Mingzhang's body was covered with blood, and his abdomen and intestines were mixed with mud, so he immediately took off his general's uniform and replaced it for General Wang Mingzhang, and personally selected a huge coffin for him.
All the soldiers of the Fifth Theater held a public sacrifice for Wang Mingzhang, and the coffin of General Wang Mingzhang was first delivered to Wuhan from Shandong and Xuzhou, and then transported by ship back to his hometown in Sichuan. Where General Wang Mingzhang's coffin passed, there were many organs and shops on both sides of the road, and the remains of General Wang Mingzhang were hanging high at the doorstep of the people's homes, firecrackers were constantly fired along the way, and the people spontaneously set up altars to pay tribute to the loyal martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the country with fruits and flowers.
The first batch of soldiers who went out of Sichuan to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance were almost all killed on the battlefield, and the surrender rate of Sichuan soldiers was extremely low, which was also rare among the local warlord troops with low quality, so there was such a sentence: The Sichuan army is not afraid of death, and the Xiang army does not want to die.
Because of this battle, this sichuan army and its Sichuan soldiers, which were not favored by others, were humiliated, changed their image in one fell swoop, and became a mighty division.
Li Zongren called the service "the most glorious page in the history of the Sichuan Army's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression", Wang Mingzhang was not afraid of a strong enemy, knew that he could not do it, and was praised as a model soldier in China, he was a representative figure of the Sichuan military, it was he and hundreds of thousands of Sichuan soldiers, with their lives to protect the land, they played the dignity of the soldiers, but also will inevitably win the respect and support of the people.