In 1940, while stepping up efforts to induce the Kuomintang government to surrender, the Japanese aggressors intensified their crusade against the Eighth Route Army's anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines.
After the commander of the Japanese North China Front, Tada Jun, took office, like a madman, built roads and ditches, built pillboxes, and implemented the so-called "cage policy".
The so-called "cage policy" is to establish a close-knit transportation network, so that villages and villages have roads, roads have artillery towers, and highways and railways are used as hubs to form a network to restrict the activities of the Anti-Japanese army and people of the Eighth Route Army.
At 22:00 on the evening of August 20, in order to smash the "cage policy" of the Japanese army, almost all the railway lines and main roads in North China sounded earth-shaking explosions. Yes, this is the large-scale offensive operation launched by the units of the Eighth Route Army in North China against the Japanese army, which is known in history as the "Hundred Regiments War".
Jingxin Coal Mine is the key garrison object of the Japanese army, the coal produced here is of excellent quality, in addition to supplying the Japanese army in North China, most of them have been transferred back to the Japanese mainland, is Japan's most important energy supply coal mine, but also an important source of resources for the Japanese army's strategy of "feeding the war with war".
Therefore, the Japanese army built a 4-meter-high wall on the outskirts of the mining area, surrounded by barbed wire and trenches, and built 22 pillboxes inside the walls, which were heavily guarded, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Yang Chengwu, then commander of the First Military Subdistrict of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, laid out his platoon as follows: "The 2nd Regiment broke the railway on the first line of The Lulu Line, the 16th Regiment attacked Beiyu, and the 3rd Regiment attacked the Jingxing Coal Mine." ”
Yang Chengwu
In the book "North China Security War" compiled by the Japanese army, it is recorded: "The main mine and the new mine were simultaneously attacked by the superior Eighth Route Army, and the new mine was besieged by about 1,000 superior Eighth Route Army, and in the case of being outnumbered, the entire mine was occupied by the enemy." ”
The reason why he was able to capture the Jingxing Coal Mine so smoothly was that on the one hand, Yang Chengwu personally disguised himself as a miner and sneaked into the mining area for on-the-spot reconnaissance. On the other hand, he mobilized miners in advance as an internal line, guided the Eighth Route Army to enter, and cut off the power grid and lighting power.
And on the night of the attack on the coal mine, in the smoke of war, there was also a story that has flowed through the ages.
The soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Regiment risked their lives to rescue two young Japanese girls from the raging fire. Yang Chengwu asked the military doctor to treat the baby girl's injuries, and also found a nurse to feed her, and then sent the two girls to Nie Rongzhen's headquarters.
Nie Rongzhen praised Yang Chengwu for doing a very humane thing, and sent someone to give the Japanese girl named Mihoko and her sister to the Japanese army. It wasn't until 40 years later that Mihoko brought her whole family to China to express her gratitude.
Nie Rongzhen and Mihoko
On 21 August, the day after the Battle of Jingxing, Japanese reinforcements rushed in, but the speed of advance was slow due to the destruction of railways and roads along the way. After this battle, the new mine of the Jingxin Coal Mine was damaged so much that it could not produce coal for at least half a year.
After a short rest, Yang Chengwu and political commissar Luo Yuanfa commanded the troops again and threw themselves into the second stage of the Hundred Regiments War.
At 20:00 on the evening of September 22, Yang Chengwu commanded the strength of 6 regiments to simultaneously attack laiyuan, Sanjia village, Baishikou, Dongtuanbao and other Japanese puppet military strongholds, but Dongtuanbao became a hard bone to gnaw.
The enemy who held fort east was the non-commissioned officer teaching brigade of the Japanese independent mixed 2nd Brigade Regiment, full of well-trained officers and non-commissioned officers. With their strong fortifications, they occasionally unleashed chemical gas, causing the eighth route army officers to die or be poisoned in entire rows.
The two sides fought fiercely for two days and two nights, and the Eighth Route Army achieved no results.
In the face of the recalcitrant Japanese army, Yang Chengwu ordered: "The 3rd Regiment launched another general offensive against the Japanese army on the night of September 24. ”
In the book "Memoirs of Yang Chengwu", the situation of the night is recorded:
"This night, the 3rd Battalion suffered great losses, the 1st And 2nd Battalion casualties were not small, the 3rd Battalion Commander Chen Zongkun was anxious to call me directly to ask for soldiers, talking, the voice changed tone, and started a temper tantrum. I understand Comrade Chen Zongkun's feelings at this time, he is sad about the loss of so many good comrades-in-arms, and he hates the enemy who uses poison gas to the bone. ”
At this time, Peng Dehuai, deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army who commanded the Hundred Regiments War, was very concerned about the situation in Dongtuanbao, and he called Yang Chengwu and said: "If you destroy 1 Japanese army in Dongtuanbao, it is equivalent to eliminating 10 or 100, and you must eliminate him all." ”
The reason why Peng Dehuai said this was because if he let go of 1 Japanese non-commissioned officer, they would bring out a group of Japanese devils who brutalized the people.
Yang Chengwu, who had experienced hundreds of battles, naturally understood the significance of completely eliminating the Japanese army in Dongtuanbao, and at this time, the Japanese army guarding Dongtuanbao began a tenacious breakthrough.
Therefore, Yang Chengwu ordered the clerks, haircuts, messengers, and cooks of the 3rd Regiment to all go into battle, and never let the Japanese army break through.
In the face of the heroic Eighth Route Army, the breakthrough of the Japanese army was repeatedly repelled. Desperate, the Japanese gathered the weapons and ammunition in the warehouse, poured gasoline on fire, and then the soldiers jumped into the fire one by one and set themselves on fire.
Regarding the Battle of Dongtuanbao, Nie Rongzhen, then commander of the Jincha Military Region, commented: "The Battle of Dongtuanbao was a typical example of a tenacious battle against tenacity, which fully demonstrated the combat effectiveness of our army and greatly shocked the enemy. ”
Okamura Ninji
The Battle of the Hundred Regiments, which lasted for 3 and a half months, completely smashed the "cage policy" of the Japanese army, and the commander of the Japanese North China Front, Tada Jun, stepped down and was replaced by Okamura Ninji, one of the "three masters of the Japanese army".
As soon as Okamura Ninji took office, he concentrated 70,000 troops to launch a large "sweep" of the iron wall and encirclement of the Jin-Cha-Ji base area.
The "Iron Wall Encirclement", also known as the "Iron Barrel Array", means that the Japanese army suddenly encircles the Base Area of the Eighth Route Army from multiple directions, forms an encirclement circle and continuously compresses to the center, compressing the troops in the encirclement circle to a narrow area and annihilating.
The harm of the iron wall encirclement is that once the enemy's encirclement circle is formed, the troops in the encirclement circle will either forcibly break through or fight a decisive battle with the enemy, making the guerrilla tactics of the Eighth Route Army impossible to perform.
Not only that, Okamura Ningji also personally went to Baoding to supervise the battle, and also took a plane to reconnoiter over Yang Chengwu's 1st Sub-district garrison, determined to destroy Yang Chengwu's command organs.
At dawn on August 23, 1941, the Japanese B Corps marched west in three columns from near Dingxing and Fangshun Bridges, and began a siege of the 1st Military Sub-district near Beilou Mountain, which was entrenched in the north of Mancheng.
However, just as the Japanese army was swarming, Yang Chengwu immediately ordered the main force to disperse the action and jump out of the Japanese encirclement in time.
Subsequently, Yang Chengwu personally led more than 30 elite organs and 3 companies to engage in a battle of wits and courage with the Japanese army by virtue of the continuous wolf-tooth mountain terrain. Regarding the situation at that time, the book "Memoirs of Yang Chengwu" records:
"Unexpectedly, half a month later, the Wolf's Tooth Mountain, on which we relied on maneuvering with the enemy, fell into a heavy encirclement of the enemy."
In the past, the Japanese army had few troops, so they did not dare to go deep into the depth to "sweep". But this time, the Japanese army not only gathered heavy troops, but also traitors who were familiar with the terrain of Wolf's Tooth Mountain to show them the way.
Japanese army
The Japanese army moved from yixian, Jinpo, Mancheng, Xushui, Dawangdian, Baoding and other strongholds, and soon formed a siege of Langya Mountain.
On September 23, the devastating Japanese army killed more than 500 people in two villages under the Wolf's Tooth Mountain.
At this time, in the encirclement circle of the Japanese army, there were nearly 40,000 local cadres and people in the area near Wolf's Tooth Mountain, in order to avoid another tragic incident, Yang Chengwu decided to organize a mass breakthrough.
However, there were only 1 regiment and 7 companies in the Wolf's Tooth Mountain Mask Circle. Faced with the situation in which the enemy was outnumbered and outnumbered, Yang Chengwu thought of a strategy of "encircling Wei and saving Zhao", and the specific combat deployment was: "Order the 3rd regiment and the 20th regiment that have jumped out of the encirclement to storm the Japanese troops around Guantou and Songshan, and force the Japanese troops surrounding Wolfa Mountain to withdraw reinforcements." ”
The Five Heroes of Wolf's Tooth Mountain
The Japanese did indeed succeed, and when they withdrew some of their troops to reinforcements, a gap of about 10 kilometers of length appeared in the encirclement, and tens of thousands of people urgently began to break through from here.
At the same time, the officers and men of the 7th Company on Wolf's Tooth Mountain took advantage of the complex terrain to fight a sparrow war with the Japanese army, which made the Japanese army mistakenly think that they had surrounded Yang Chengwu's main force.
After the transformation of Wolf's Tooth Mountain in 1940, a large number of defensive positions were built here, which were easy to defend and difficult to attack.
It is precisely because of these defensive positions that are easy to defend and difficult to attack and the battlefield construction that Yang Chengwu only used the strength of 1 company to drag down dozens of times the Japanese army, making the Japanese army tired of searching in the dangerous mountain road.
The reason why Yang Chengwu was able to command freely in the lofty mountains and mountains was mainly to rely on the "flying line".
The "flying line" was an invention of the Eighth Route Army in the War of Resistance Against Japan, that is, a telephone line erected between two high mountains, which was difficult for the Japanese army to destroy. Then the "flying line" is connected to the telephone line buried under the hidden ground, so that a communication network is formed in all directions in the Wolf's Tooth Mountain, and as long as it is carried by a telephone, it can transmit intelligence and issue combat orders at any time.
On the morning of September 25, Yang Chengwu commanded the soldiers of the 7th Company to successfully complete the breakthrough task of covering 40,000 people, and left 5 fighters of the 6th squad to confuse and contain the Japanese army and cover the withdrawal of large troops. The five of them were Ma Baoyu, the squad leader known as the "Five Heroes of Wolf Tooth Mountain", and the deputy squad leaders Ge Zhenlin, Hu Delin, Hu Fucai and Song Xueyi.
In order to drag the Japanese army and give the comrades more time to break through, they resolutely led the Japanese army to the peak of the chessboard top of Wolf's Tooth Mountain.
Nie Rongzhen expressed it in his memoirs: "The enemy first fired continuously with cannons, followed by several swoops, and 5 fighters shot out the last bullet, threw out the last grenade, and then broke the gun and jumped off the cliff. ”
Survived Song Xueyi and Ge Zhenlin
Ma Baoyu, Hu Fucai, and Hu Delin fell to the bottom of the cliff and sacrificed heroically. While Ge Zhenlin and Song Xueyi hung on the branches of the mountainside and retrieved their lives, Yang Chengwu personally wore the medal of "Model Youth" awarded by his superiors on the chests of both of them.
The five heroes of Wolf-Tooth Mountain have become the spiritual symbols of the Chinese nation's defiance of violence, sacrificing their lives for righteousness, and resisting aggression, and their heroic deeds have quickly spread throughout the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the anti-Japanese battlefield throughout the country.