In 1944, after the Japanese Kou launched two general attacks on Hengyang City, the casualties were huge and could not be broken.
On 1 August, the enemy moved the main force up and launched a third general offensive. By this time, the Tenth Army defending the city had run out of ammunition.
On August 6, the Japanese Kou tore open the defensive line and invaded the north of Hengyang City, and fang Xianjue, commander of the Tenth Army, sent a final telegram to Chiang Kai-shek: See you in the next life!
The Tenth Army was running out of ammunition
Use me a Xiangzhuang River Mountain · Fourteenth Article: Hanging Zhangjia Mountain
The remnants of the army's tenth army hengyang defense battle fallen soldiers
It's this picture, a mountain of human bones.
In the middle of the photo, there are more than fifty layers of layers, which are human skulls, which are nearly a foot high. On both sides were bundles of limb bones, erected like firewood.
The hill is more than 20 meters long and about a foot high.
These bones, belonging to the fallen soldiers of the Tenth Army, are said to have collected only half.
It was a young face that had once been alive.
Soldiers of the Tenth Army Taishan Army
The place where the bones were concentrated was a wilderness called Zhangjiashan in the south of Hengyang City, where the Tenth Army had defended the most vigorous position that year.
Zhangjia Mountain is a small mountain in the south of the old Hengyang City, and today the altitude is 104.8 meters. On military maps from 76 years ago, its elevation was 114 meters. In the defense of Hengyang, Zhangjiashan was cut by shengsheng by ten meters.
The Hengyang Meteorological Station was built at the top of the hill, and the traces of that year can no longer be seen.
Most of the people who come after this do not know the history that once happened here, and do not know how many Chinese soldiers in this neighborhood once had martyrdom with such a full of sorrow and grandeur.
Anti-Japanese War martyrs, are you okay in Zhangjiashan?
In February 1946, the year after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Ge Xiancai, commander of the Pre-Tenth Division of the Tenth Army, returned to Hengyang City.
Two years after the war, Hengyang City is still barren and overgrown, in ruins, and full of bones.
Ge Xiancai led people to collect these bones, because some of them were not completely decomposed and the smell was so bad that they sprayed perfume on the bones.
This stay is more than four months.
Ge Xiancai, commander of the Pre-Tenth Division of the Tenth Army
Upon hearing the news, more than 60 officers and men of the Tenth Army near Hengyang rushed to help, and Lu Qingyi was one of the people present.
Lu Qingyi, a former correspondent of the Headquarters of the Tenth Army, looked at the corpses of former comrades-in-arms piled up and burst into tears.
In the past four months, they have collected more than 3,000 loyal skeletons, especially near Zhangjiashan Mountain.
Back in the old land, looking at these comrades-in-arms, Lu Qingyi, a former military correspondent, burst into tears countless times.
Lu Qingyi, correspondent of the Tenth Army
At 5:00 a.m. on July 1, 1944, Zhangjiashan, which was originally silent, suddenly fired in unison, and the devil's field artillery, infantry artillery, and rapid-fire guns opened fire on the mountain at the same time, and dozens of enemy planes also dropped bombs. Zhangjiashan was instantly dusty and smoke billowed out.
This Hengyang "highest mountain on the front line", there is also a highland on the left and right sides, forming a glyph-shaped crossfire, which is a horn for each other, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
In the first round of the general offensive, Zhangjiashan was guarded by the first battalion of the Chen Dequan Regiment of the Pre-Tenth Division. The attacking side is the two squadrons of the devils. After the fierce battle until noon, most of the ghosts of the two squadrons were killed and wounded, and they fled back to their positions.
Tarzan Army Grenade Battle
After several attacks, one night, the devils concentrated their forces and launched a surprise attack on the high ground on the right side of Zhangjia Mountain.
In Lu Qingyi's memory, that night, Zhangjiashan was pitch black, and he couldn't see people clearly.
"What is the only way to recognize the enemy, recognize clothes, the Japanese are khaki, Chinese are coarse cloth uniforms, and those who recognize khaki will be killed."
Due to the disparity in troops, at one o'clock in the morning, the devils occupied the high ground on the right side of Zhangjia Mountain.
The next morning, the devils, under the cover of artillery, captured the high ground on the left side of Zhangjia Mountain.
Almost all the officers and men of the first battalion of the 30th Regiment of the Pre-Tenth Division were martyred.
The Japanese 116th Division entered the Zhangjiashan position from the west bank of the Xiang River
The situation was critical, and Ge Xiancai went into battle shirtless, leading the engineer company to launch a counterattack, launching a white-knife battle with the devils and retaking the position.
The division searched for the company commander, fought to the end, and pulled the grenade and died with the ghost.
The commander of the sapper company was seriously wounded and killed in a battle with the devils.
The following month, similar battles were repeated in the Zhangjiashan position. The Pre-Tenth Division severely damaged two Japanese companies here.
Post-war war reports show that only the 133rd Wing, which had more than 3,000 ghosts participating in the battle, only survived more than 200 people.
The five entire companies of the defenders' pre-tenth division also fell on this high ground.
The Japanese 133rd Wing attacked Zhangjiashan
Ge Xiancai later recalled that by July 23, 1944, during the fierce artillery bombardment of the devils, the Fortifications of Zhangjiashan were destroyed, and not a single thatch could be found on the entire mountain, let alone a foot flat.
After nearly a month of bloody battles in the isolated city, the combatants of the Tenth Army defending Hengyang had already suffered casualties. The medics, the messengers, and the men were all on the front lines.
When the front line called for help, the military commander Fang Xianjue could only repeat a sentence continuously, there was no one to send, no ammunition, and it had to be defended.
In the end, the military headquarters could no longer receive a call for help, because the communications on the front line had been destroyed by the gunfire of the devils.
At this time, the last glimmer of hope for the officers and men of the Tenth Army fell on the reinforcements that Chiang Kai-shek had promised.
The soldiers of the Tenth Army suffered casualties
"The flag of national righteousness flutters in Hengyang, the heroes rise up to steam, the lone army struggles to show its skills, and the enemy is like a dog and a sheep." Sincerely form a group, praise all the peoples, return my pastoral flesh and bones, and join hands on the battlefield..."
This song was written by Fang Xianjue at the end of 1944, composed by his friend Wang Shisheng's wife, and almost everyone in the Hengyang area at that time could sing it.
Zeng Qi, a native of Hengyang, wanted to apply for the Whampoa Military Academy and join the army to save the country.
In 1942, Zeng Qi was admitted to the 18th infantry department of the Wugang Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy.
After graduating in 1943, Zeng Qi was assigned to the 74th Army as a lieutenant trainee officer, and the first battle of the army was to rescue his hometown of Hengyang.
"My family is in Hengyang, the houses have been blown up, and the family has gone into hiding in the countryside. Here in my eyes and eyebrows are the scars left by the shells dropped by the enemy planes..."
The Seventy-fourth Army, which had frightened the Japanese army
After the defense of Hengyang began, Zeng Qi's 74th Army had tried to move closer to Hengyang, the closest to Hengyang City, only 23 kilometers away.
"They are all dead, and now I am afraid that I am the only one who is still alive." Failed to enter Hengyang City, recently hit Maweiling there, the reinforcements are not strong, can not enter. ”
The 96-year-old Peng Zihui, who was a captain and military doctor in the 79th Army at the time, also participated in the Siege of Hengyang. Because there were too many wounded people brought down from the front line, Peng Zihui couldn't get busy at all.
"Forty days in a row of artillery fire has not stopped, and half of my hair has been lost in those forty days..."
Lu Qingyi, a veteran of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression
On July 23, a full month after the battle for hengyang began. On this day, the officers and men of the Tenth Army finally waited for hope. Lu Qingyi, a correspondent of the military department, suddenly heard a clear electric current sound coming from the radio.
After contacting the other side's radio, Lu Qingyi learned that the reinforcements were the vanguard of the 62nd Army, which was close to the Huangchaling area outside Hengyang City, and was less than a kilometer away from the Tenth Army. From the telescope, the reinforcements could even be clearly seen.
At this time, the 62nd Army sent another telegram, hoping that troops would be sent from the city to meet them in order to pinch the enemy. Fang Xianjue assembled seven pieces of hard work, gathered more than 130 death squads, and went to the direction of reinforcements to kill.
Seeing the arrival of reinforcements, the rescue of Hengyang, the Jubilee of the Tenth Army, everyone began to discuss how to answer the reporter's interview after the siege was lifted, and the general staff even began to draft a telegram of credit after the victory, including a letter of condolence thanking the reinforcements for lifting the siege.
The commander of the Taishan Army, Fang Xianjue
However, when the receiving troops broke through the devil's blockade and rushed to Huangchaling, the reinforcements disappeared. At this time, the city again received a telegram from the 62nd Army: "The enemy's firepower is too strong to attack."
After learning that the reinforcements had retreated, the receiving force of more than a hundred people miraculously broke into the city again from the rain of guns and bullets from the Japanese Kou. Only the members of the death squad who came back, there were less than 30 left.
This was the closest reinforcements had been to the city, and after that, Lu Qingyi never heard the reinforcements' radio signal again.
On August 6, five days after the Devils launched the third round of general offensive, the positions of Wuguiling and Yueping Mountain finally could not be supported, and they fell one after another, and the defenders of Waixin Street and Xichan Temple were all killed, and the positions fell into the hands of the enemy.
The defense of Hengyang entered the stage of urban street warfare.
The city of Hengyang was broken, and the Chinese and Japanese soldiers entered a fierce street battle
In the afternoon, Fang Xianjue urgently summoned four division commanders to hold a meeting at the central bank treasury in Hengyang.
"When the commander and the three division commanders were meeting, I was outside and could hear the whole process of the meeting. The commander of the Third Division proposed to break through and take the remaining brothers out, and the commander said that these brothers were wounded and crippled, and there were three or four thousand seriously wounded, and I could not leave these people behind. We went out, what did they do? ”
The quarrel grew more and more intense. Suddenly, Lu Qingyi heard a gunshot, followed by a burst of crying, which was Fang Xianjue's voice.
"The lieutenant of the commander's entourage told me that the commander was crying. He wanted to break out, but he couldn't stand the three or four thousand seriously wounded people in the city. He said that if he wanted to die, he would die in Hengyang. He pulled out his pistol and prepared to commit suicide, but the division commanders stopped him. ”
The chain of command had collapsed, and there was a cry throughout the command.
The Japanese army captured Hengyang and engaged in street battles with Chinese soldiers
Lu Qingyi clearly remembers that it was five o'clock in the afternoon of August 6, 1944. It was at this time, in the midst of a cry, that Lu Qingyi sent the last telegram from the Hengyang defenders.
"Our army has now run out of ammunition, and the enemy has broken through the north gate this morning, and I have no troops to block. ...... This electricity is probably the last one, and I hope to see you in the next life! ”
Fang Xianjue ordered an armistice and surrender, but still did not lose the hero of the War of Resistance and the backbone of the nation
On the morning of the 8th, Fang Xianjue ordered an armistice, and he proposed several conditions to the devils: to ensure the safety of the lives of officers and men; to shelter and treat wounded soldiers; and to retain the structure of the Tenth Army, not to leave Hengyang, and to garrison on the spot.
The equally exhausted devil, agreed.
The gunfire stopped, and it became two worlds.
Inside and outside Hengyang City, the silence is like a dead city. No, there was a sound, it was a burst of crying, far or near, or howling or low, and it was heard from time to time.
I went to the position to comfort the officers and men who had stopped fighting, and I saw them in the distance with tears on their faces, some sitting and crying with guns in their arms; some with tears in their eyes, burying their comrades who had died in battle; some were wrapping the wounded; some were throwing their guns the rocks.
——Ge Xiancai, commander of the Pre-Tenth Division
Memoirs of Ge Xiancai
At 11:00 a.m. on August 8, Hengyang City, which had been noisy for more than 40 days under the sound of artillery fire, finally fell silent.
After the destruction of Hengyang City, the senior officers of the Tenth Army were imprisoned in the Catholic Church, and the soldiers were imprisoned on Dongzhou Island.
Three weeks later, Zhou Qingxiang, commander of the Third Division, and Sun Mingyu, chief of staff of the army, fled.
Three months later, the secret service successfully rescued Fang Xianjue.
Four months later, agents successfully rescued Ge Xiancai.
The surviving officers and men of the Tenth Army have fled one after another, scattered in all directions ...
The officers of the Tenth Army gave their last cries from the ruins of the city
Eighteen months later, in February 1946, Ge Xiancai, commander of the Pre-Tenth Division, returned to the battlefield where the smoke had dissipated.
Here the grass has no neck, the white skeleton is piled east and west, horizontal and vertical, and the place where the grass grows the highest and most lush is often the place with the most bones.
For the first few days, everyone picked up the exposed loyal bones in groups, and then began to dig with memory and judgment.
Some were buried deeply, the bodies were still intact, the uniforms and bullet belts were intact, and many letters of appointment, photographs and family letters were even exhumed.
Many comrades-in-arms who could not be identified could no longer bury their bones and return to their hometowns. Ge Xiancai decided to bury them in this battlefield where they had fought bloodily. He chose Zhangjiashan, the fiercest battlefield in the defense of Hengyang.
The young soldiers of the Tenth Army were still childish
On the day of the camp burial, Ge Xiancai burst into tears:
Swearing to annihilate the Wokou in spite of himself, the Wansi warriors lost hengcheng.
Poor Xiangjiang riverside bones, like people in deep dreams.
Buried bones why mulberry land, life is everywhere green mountains
"Weep blood, and mourn for a long time; then, in front of the joint burial mound of more than three thousand loyal remains, we jointly erected a huge stone stele, 'The Tomb of the Fallen Soldiers of the Tenth Army hengyang defense war.'"
Heroes of the War of Resistance, are you okay in Zhangjiashan?
Today, the monument is nowhere to be found, and the loyal remains of the soldiers do not know whether they are safe or not.
Plain flower baskets, white knots, fluttering in the rain, hanging Zhangjia Mountain.
Heroes of the War of Resistance, are you okay in Zhangjiashan?
Forty years after the end of the War of Resistance, the opponent of the Tenth Army, the Japanese Eleventh Army, still respected this unit. In the history of the war, the Japanese army wrote: "In the fierce battle of more than forty days, the enemy has not yet surrendered to me, which is indeed a rare news since the Sino-Japanese War. ”
In 1983, Fang Xianjue died in Taipei, learned of the death of Commander Fang, the veterans of the Japanese army who attacked Hengyang in that year personally went to Taipei to pay homage, and painted a large oil painting "The Battle of Hengyang" and gave it to the Tenth Army.
Oil painting "The Battle of Hengyang"
"Use me a Xiangzhuang River and Mountain" Next story, "Long Sky Flying Tiger" please pay attention.