Hikiko
*This article is excerpted from the first volume of "Juxian Cultural and Historical Materials" (October 1983), written by Gu Fengming, and the original title is "Liying and Waihe Recovering Juxian (2)"
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In 1944, our army not only overcame many strongholds, but also recovered many county seats. In Shandong District, within half a year, eight county towns were recovered in a row; And the most beautiful fight is to recover Ju County.
Ju County is the first large county among the 108 old counties in Shandong, with an average length of more than 300 li from north to south, a width of more than 120 li, more than 3,600 villages and towns, and more than 900,000 residents; The land is fertile and the materials are abundant, and it is called Juzhou in history. Moreover, it is the liaison department of the three major base areas of our army in Shandong, such as central Lu, southern Lunan, and Binhai, and the situation is very important. Therefore, the recovery of this county has not only liberated 7,000 square miles of land, more than 700 villages, and more than 300,000 compatriots that were originally under the rule of the enemy, but has also made our two strategic areas of Luzhong and Binhai a single piece on the border of more than 200 miles, making the coastal plain and the Yimeng mountain area a fighting whole that relies on each other.
In June 1939, after the enemy occupied Bacheng without a single bomb from the hands of Xu Shusheng, the Kuomintang reactionary magistrate of Juxian County, over the past five years or so, they have built 16 strongholds and countless pillboxes around the county, built the Taiwei Highway (Weixian to Taierzhuang) and the Juri Highway (Juxian to Rizhao), and built barracks, airfields, and ammunition depots. As for the fortifications in Juxian, they were built by the enemy's ingenuity and by studying the lessons of many failures in the past.
If during the summer offensive in the coastal area, our army had already encountered Li Yongping's "fortification" type defense system (which was personally assisted in the construction of the enemy's 5th Mixed Brigade Engineering Team), then in the Battle of Bacheng, we encountered fortifications that went further than Li Yongping. It is a defense system that combines the two sets of experience of Li Yongping's fortifications and the battle of Yicheng (which was recently recovered by us), and is aimed at our army's weapons and firepower and offensive methods everywhere. Therefore, in the battle of Jucheng, our army was faced with three fortifications in the small polder of the city wall, artillery fire from the side of each turret, a "central pillbox" that towered over the whole city, a deep trench eight feet wide, and a strong wall that could not be destroyed by light artillery fire.
However, all these defensive fortifications that the enemy had carefully built, and Juxian County, which thought it was "impregnable", was not able to effectively stop the offensive of our army.
The enemy regarded Ba County as a strategic fulcrum for attacking the Luzhong and Binhai areas, especially after the outbreak of the Pacific War, fearing that the US troops would land, and the enemy relied on Bacheng to attack the Binhai area from the northwest. However, this did not stop our army.
Our Primorsky Naval District is determined to recover this county seat.
The offensive began on 14 November. The main force of our Coastal Military Region began at 7 p.m. on 14 April and launched an offensive along the 140-mile-long front along the Julin Highway. Our siege troops advanced in four directions at a rate of fifteen miles per hour. At 7:50 a.m., there were two loud noises in the city, our siege troops ran straight to the city wall, the sappers quickly built bridges and ladders, and the assault team flew over the outer trenches of Zhang Yukuan, and bravely climbed the city, our army first occupied the enemy's city fortifications, and continued to expand the breakthrough, and the follow-up troops penetrated into the city. The puppet army Mo Zhengmin took the opportunity to plant a white flag on the top of the watchtower.
The troops of our army who attacked the city immediately cooperated with the troops who were anyway, and they led them to quickly occupy the main roads and gradually approach the headquarters of the enemy squadron. The enemy counterattacked twice, but they were both routed, and by half past eleven o'clock in the evening, our army had completely compressed the enemy in a small enclosure in the city, and surrounded it heavily.
The battle for the assault on the enemy headquarters in the center of the city began.
A quarter of an hour after the attack began, one of our battle heroes, approaching the southwest turret in the center of the city, heard three violent explosions, the turret cracked, and the 9th Company of Zhang Tuan rushed through the gap, quickly extending the gains within the wall. At this time, the 8th Company also rushed in through the hole in the dug wall, and occupied the enemy's Cao Chang's room, warehouse, and office, and approached the enemy's last fortification. Our army's He Regiment and Wu Regiment attacked Xiaoweizi from all sides in the southeast and northeast together, and through the open area, blew up a section of the enemy's barbed wire and deer firewood. The Juzhong Independent Battalion attacked Xiaoweizi from the northwest and rushed to the artillery tower in the northwest corner with rapid movements. By half past one in the second half of the night, all our besieging units had entered the small enclosure.
Before dawn on the 15th, we brought out the grain from the enemy's storehouses in the city, destroyed the enemy's fortifications, and destroyed the enemy's wells. At 3 p.m. on 15 July, one enemy plane circled over the city to reconnoitre, and before noon on 16 July, four enemy planes came and dropped 13 bombs, but there were no casualties among our soldiers and civilians.
At dusk, our troops concentrated the artillery fire of each company and slammed the enemy's fortifications, and in the gap between the artillery fire, the enemy's shouts could be faintly heard. The enemy and burned the corpses in the bunkers, the stench was stinking.
The city working committee, which was established on the first day of the occupation of Jucheng, was engaged in restoring order in the city and trying to relieve the refugees; More than 10,000 militiamen were mobilized to demolish the city day and night, and the walls were all demolished, so that even if the enemy came again, he would have nothing to rely on.
In the rumbling of artillery, the people of Juxian County became active and served the front. On the way to transfer the wounded soldiers, each military station set up exquisite comfort shelters; When the wounded soldiers passed by, they were immediately greeted by primary school students or women's rescue members who brought water and food, cordially comforting them, and moved many wounded comrades to tears. On the road leading to the front line, donkeys, carts, burdens, etc., carrying a large number of consolation goods, are in an endless stream. In the line of fire, armed fighters patrol the streets; The warriors at the gates of the city, in the open gramophone seized from the enemy; In the sun, someone is writing a diary, reading a newspaper. The gunfire continued, the city burned, and the battle was nearing its end.
On the outskirts of Jucheng, more than a dozen strongholds have been recovered and the strongholds have been destroyed. On the highway from Bazhu (Juxian to Zhucheng), Zhaoxian and Guan Shuai were recovered, and the enemies of Zhucheng trembled with fear; The enemy in the three strongholds of Shiqiao, Taolin, and Shandong on the Zhuri (Zhucheng to Rizhao) highway saw that the situation was not good, and quickly fled into Zhucheng City in embarrassment. At this time, the entire territory of Ju County was recovered.
At noon on the 16th, more than 600 enemies in Zhucheng (more than 200 enemy troops in the interior) marched south through Zonggou (140 miles northeast of Ju County) in an attempt to reinforce them. The enemy was compressed by me on the side of a ditch, and the fierce battle lasted all night, and the enemy suffered heavy casualties, and could not save the city. At dawn the next day, the enemy used poison gas before fleeing eastward, leaving behind more than a dozen corpses, a lot of documents, and more military supplies.
This battle of Jucheng not only recovered the county seat, but also recovered all the large and small strongholds in the county; It not only disrupted the enemy's military organs, but also completely destroyed the enemy's political, police, spies, cultural and educational, economic, and financial institutions. This is the first time in Shandong that such a thorough blow to the enemy has been carried out, and it is also rare in the battlefield behind enemy lines in the whole country. Even if the enemy becomes angry and comes to a revenge "sweep" and desperately tries to save face, what will be left to him will be an empty city, all the ruling institutions are completely non-existent, and even the citizens have been evacuated.
But this is only one aspect, and there is another more important one: it is from this victory that we have learned an extremely important lesson: the question of combining the military offensive against the enemy with the political offensive, and the reconquest of the city from the inside and the outside. In this regard, the battle of Bacheng is an example that provides an aspect for our army's future combat methods.
Judging from the course of the campaign, on the night of 14 July, our army launched a fierce attack along the Zhuju Highway at the same time, recovering the county town and 16 enemy and puppet strongholds in one fell swoop. The fortifications which the enemy had painstakingly worked on for five years were reduced to ashes in one dark night, except for the four turrets that the enemy had defended. This also shows that although the enemy has fortifications, no one holds on to them, and this is an insurmountable contradiction of the enemy and also our advantageous condition.
Naturally, these conditions alone are not enough, and what is more decisive is our long-term and arduous work in the enemy and puppet army and urban work. Our enemy workers and military workers, not avoiding the danger of life and death, went deep into the hearts and ruling centers of the enemy, and concretely applied the principle of "attacking the heart first" to carry out daily and long-lasting and patient propaganda and organization work against the enemy and hypocrisy. Little by little, the hard work was carried out, and by November 14, the fruit was ripe and fell, and it was time to harvest. Mo Zhengmin was originally the commander of the independent brigade of the 69th Army of the Kuomintang, and under the instructions of the Kuomintang's "curve to save the country" policy, he defected to the enemy for many years and served as the deputy captain of the puppet army stationed in Bacheng. He made an agreement with our army in advance and decided to lead his troops that night when our army attacked the city.
Here's what happened when Mo Bu cooperated with our army to attack the city:
On November 14, Jucheng was very excited. Some residents are already quietly moving.
The puppet security brigade headquarters also seemed to be particularly busy this day, with officers and soldiers coming in and out, their faces showing nervousness and excitement. Everything was ready anyway, and the order of Commander Chen of the Binhai Naval District was to limit the action at 7 o'clock that night. At 12 o'clock in the afternoon, the Eighth Route Army took over the deployment of troops and was ready, blocking all possible roads for enemy reinforcements. As soon as twelve o'clock, Mo Zhengmin ordered people to pester the county magistrate and the police chief and bring them in, and then he devised a plan to capture the Japanese instructor.
Four of his orderlies accepted the task.
"Report to the captain, are you going to die or live?"
"Catch him alive."
Four people, four box guns, went straight to Instructor Kaneno's residence. "Report to the instructor!" As soon as they shouted, Kaneno stood up as he walked around the stone platform at the door. "What do you mean?" He asked. "What do you mean," replied one of the orderlies, "what's the work over there?" Another asked Kaneno. When Kaneno turned his head, he immediately jumped up and grabbed him, and the second knocked down his command knife. Kaneno's two Chinese orderlies ran out of the house with guns in their hands. "We are all Chinese!" The one who caught Kaneno shouted. The two orderlies obediently handed over the hand-held and the two box guns. Kaneno was tied up and gagged with a handkerchief.
As soon as it was dark, more than 30 people of the 12th Squadron, led by the squadron leader, were scattered at the entrance of the Japanese headquarters. After a while, in the dim light, more than a dozen devils came out of the headquarters with a crooked machine gun. The 12th Squadron opened fire on the enemy, killing seven or eight of the enemy's men and capturing machine guns. Then, the shells exploded in the city. The devils also fired flares and fired heavy machine-gun fire, knocking down the short wall opposite the alley. The twelfth squadron continued to block the enemy's doorway. After one o'clock, someone was shouting the leader of the 12th Squadron, and when the squadron leader asked, he knew that it was Comrade Yang of the Eighth Route Army, and knew that the Eighth Route Army had entered the city. He led Comrade Yang, told him about the terrain and the enemy, and then took the brothers out of Nanguan City.
The night in Bacheng is in extreme turmoil. The officers and men of the puppet security brigade and their dependents all walked towards Nanguan in groups. Ding Xiaofeng, the puppet county magistrate, Jin Ye, a Japanese instructor, and Yishui's enemy advisers were also caught in the flow of people and were escorted out of the city. At this time, there was a more nervous footstep sound from the city gate, and it was the majestic Eighth Route Army advancing into the city. There were brothers who were anyway leading them forward. Anyway, the troops of the brigade gathered a four-way column and went out of the city, and the people in front waved white flags. When he was out of the city, he easily caught Narita, the head of the Japanese police department, and the interpreter. Yu Jingwu, the leader of the Wanxian Society, the culprit who once killed many anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians, did not escape justice. The prison door opened. People who had seen the light of day ran out, some of the shackles and handcuffs still rattling. They are unyielding comrades who have been captured and "unstable elements" who have been arrested, and some are ordinary people who have been wronged. When they saw our fighters, they were very excited and took the hands of our comrades affectionately, just like relatives who have been reunited after a long absence.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of the 14th, the leader of the 10th Squadron escorted the Arai advisor and 500 small cars of peanuts to Zhaoxian, and brought more than 40 soldiers to sit in two cars. When he arrived, he said to Arai, "I'm in a car with the consultant, and I'm protecting the consultant." "Okay, okay." Arai seemed to understand the squadron leader's "loyalty" and agreed. The car drove to the earthen ditch, the squadron leader told the driver to stop, pretended to relieve his hands and got out of the car, and Arai also got out of the car, "What is the squadron leader doing?" Arai asked. The squadron leader turned around and took a step forward, hugged Arai, twisted the two of them, and rolled down the ditch from the car road. The soldiers who got off the bus didn't know what was going on, and the squadron leader shouted: "Brothers, we are going to join the Eighth Route Army on the orders of our superiors to catch devils!" The soldiers rushed up, carried the baria, and killed two more devil soldiers. Arai was tied up and refused to leave, and was carried by everyone through two flat poles and carried away like a dead pig. Everyone gathered the team and drove to Niujiazhuang, the predetermined meeting place.
On the evening of the 15th, at the same time as our army attacked Jucheng, the Mo Zhengmin Department of 13 strongholds, including Lingyang, Dianziji, Niujiazhuang, Twist, Caiyuan, Yangjiadianzi, Sunxian, Planpingxing, Liudianzi, Yanjiaxuanzhuangling, Yuanzhuang, Liugucun, and Hekou, all held a rebellion and smashed the strongholds. The two squadrons of recruiting talents and managing the commander on the highway are also anyway at the same time. During the siege of the city, ten enemy economic advisers, Arai, an adviser to the puppet county government, and Kanano, an instructor of the puppet county security brigade, were captured.
After the 3,000 people of Mobu were put to war, together with 31 complete machine guns, 35 hand cannons, and more than 3,000 long and short guns, they marched into the center of the liberated areas, the free land of the motherland. In the days after leaving the city, the crowd also welcomed and comforted them, and they were touched by this enthusiasm, and many of them discussed privately during their rest:
"You say, why did we come out to crusade earlier, but we couldn't see a single common man, and the militia was shooting everywhere, but now even the eldest daughter and little daughter-in-law have come to welcome us?"
"Earlier, we were traitors and ruined the people, so the people beat us as devils. Now it's anyway, and we have cooperated with the Eighth Route Army to fight devils, so the common people treat us as an anti-Japanese army. This is called 'reforming the evil and returning to the right.'" ”
A week later, all the officers and men of the Mobu accepted the name of the Second Independent Brigade of the Shandong Military Region. At the reorganization meeting, following the speech of the children's league members, Brigade Commander Mo said to everyone: "We are now lagging behind the children!" We have to study hard, change our face, catch up, and be a new person. …”
Excerpt from "Modern Chinese Historical Materials Series"
Sources:
Juxian Cultural and Historical Materials, Volume 1 (October 1983)