Author: Unsentimental
In April 1939, Chen Guang, acting commander of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, and Luo Ronghuan, political commissar of the division, led the division's eastward detachment into Shandong. Soon, the commander of the Japanese 12th Army, Otaka Guizang, mobilized more than 8,000 troops to besiege our Taixi anti-Japanese base area. On May 11, Chen Guang led the division headquarters, the 686 regiment, the Jinpu detachment, the Luxi District Committee, and the Taixi Prefectural Committee to about 3,000 people who were surrounded by the enemy in Lufang. Although the breakthrough was successful in the end, Chen Guang's performance in this battle was quite sick, so that his prestige in the army plummeted.
Chen Guang started from a soldier, step by step, and trained himself as a general and a fierce general in actual combat. Suffering from this setback, there is a fire in my heart, and I always want to find an opportunity to find this "field". The arrogant Japanese did not let him wait long. On August 1, 1939, the Japanese brigade commander Nagata Minjiang led more than 600 Japanese puppet troops, carrying 2 field guns and 1 92 infantry gun from Wenshang County, to carry out a "sweep" of the anti-Japanese base area in Liangshan.
Chen Guang (1905-1954), a native of Yizhang, Hunan, was the acting commander of the Red First Army and the acting commander of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army
When this news reached the headquarters of the 115th Division, Chen Guang and Luo Ronghuan did not make a decision at the first time. Because of the troops that can be mobilized around the division headquarters at this time,
There were only two battalions of divisional special agents and 686 regiments, adding up to less than 600 men, slightly less than the number of incoming enemies, and the supply of weapons and equipment, especially ammunition, was far from the other side.
However, after a detailed analysis of the movements of the surrounding enemy and puppet armies, Chen Guang and Luo Ronghuan believed that the Nagata Toshigawa Brigade was actually a lone force. After surveying the terrain on the southern slope of Liangshan, they believed that the dense sorghum and other high-pole plants in qianji and Dushan could conceal the whereabouts of our army and facilitate our approach to the enemy army, so as to weaken the opponent's superiority in equipping ammunition. In addition, the 5 companies that could be mobilized around the division headquarters at this time were all elite soldiers with strong combat effectiveness, so Chen Guang and Luo Ronghuan finally made up their minds to resolutely eliminate the Changtian Toshie Brigade without superiority in troop strength and firepower.
This determination was not easy. Because the Japanese army in 1939 was still very strong,
When the Japanese side made campaign planning, it was calculated according to 1 brigade against 1 division of chiang kai-shek's central army and 1 corps of miscellaneous troops.
In the Pingxingguan Ambush in September 1937, the main force of the 115th Division had not yet been diluted by the expansion of the army, and the troops were full of veterans who had experienced the 25,000-mile long march. In the case of taking advantage of the time, location, people and number of troops, the ambush Japanese logistics units were still very difficult and paid a greater price.
Having made up his mind, Luo Ronghuan, as the political commissar of the division, no longer interfered in specific combat matters and let Chen Guang take command.
In the early morning of August 2, as soon as Nagata Toshie and his troops entered Qianji Village, they were attacked and harassed by the 1st Company and the 2nd Company of the 115th Division's Special Service Battalion from the south and north of the village, respectively. Nagata Toshie immediately gave up his plan to rest in the village and urgently ordered his troops to chase them out of the village. When they pursued to the foot of the mountain southwest of Liangshan, the 1st Company and 2nd Company of the Special Service Battalion of the 115th Division launched another round of firepower against the enemy under the cover of the green yarn tent, and they did not covet merit or love war, and disappeared without a trace before the Japanese army opened its position.
Annoyed and enraged, Nagata Toshie ordered the field artillery to be discharged, bombarded Liangshan, and commanded the Japanese army to occupy Dushan Village and the chaotic stone hills outside the village. His original intention was to gain these two footholds, form a mutually coordinating angle, and attract our army to attack, so that the Japanese army could give play to its superiority in firepower and kill and injure a large number of anti-Japanese forces in the wild.
Where can Chen Guang turn with his baton? He allowed the Japanese army to shoot and fire cannons from Dushan Village, that is, to keep the troops still. When the night fell on August 2, the Japanese army, which had spent a whole day dry but had not seen the shadow of our army, thought that the anti-Japanese armed forces had "been frightened far away," so they confidently and boldly withdrew the Japanese troops deployed in the chaotic stone gang outside the village from Dushan Village to rest, and let dozens of puppet troops take over the defense of Chaoshigang.
At midnight on August 2, the 10th Company of the 686th Regiment quietly climbed up the rocky hill and, without spending a single shot, solved dozens of puppet soldiers lying on the ground and in clothes with guns in their hands. The company set up machine guns and formed a condescending suppression posture against the enemy in Dushan Village.
Next, the Special Service Battalion of the 115th Division and the 12th Company of the 686th Regiment launched a surprise attack on Dushan Village from all sides. The cavalry company of the special service battalion took the lead in solving the guard detachment deployed by the Japanese army in the northwest corner of Dushan Village, and our army in the other three directions also entered the village. The 10th Company of the 686th Regiment, which occupied Chaoshigang, suppressed the depth of the Japanese defense with firepower and covered the breakthrough of the brother company.
However, the military quality of the Japanese army in 1939 remained at a high level. At the beginning of the attack, the Japanese army in the village was indeed in a chaotic mess, but under the supervision of officers and non-commissioned officers, they quickly stabilized their positions and reorganized their defenses. Nagata Toshie, deeply aware of the loss of the commanding heights outside the village, was quite passive, so he gathered 2 squadrons of troops to counterattack the chaoshigang in a vain attempt to regain the initiative on the battlefield.
The 10th Company of the 686th Regiment, which was firmly on the rocky hill, repelled six consecutive counterattacks of the Japanese army and firmly held the position, but also paid a considerable price, and the number of commanders and fighters who could continue to fight was reduced to more than 30 people. When the Japanese launched the 7th counterattack, they saw that they were close to the top of the mountain, and they did not expect that a fresh force of the Eighth Route Army suddenly came out of the rear of the flank. It turned out that this was the 11th Company of the 686th Regiment on its way back from the mission, and wenxun took the initiative to join the battle.
It was time to come. They and the 10 companies attacked back and forth, and together they crushed the 7th counterattack of the Japanese army, not only preserving the commanding heights of the battlefield of Chaoshigang, but also chasing into the village with the retreating enemy, capturing 1 92 infantry gun, 2 field guns and supporting ammunition, horses and harnesses.
According to the regulations of the Japanese army, the loss of artillery on the battlefield is a major crime that cannot be forgiven.
Nagata Toshie, who was red-eyed, ordered the officers of his unit to take the lead in the charge, and when our army launched a counterattack, even if it could not regain the artillery, it would be better to take the road and break through. The troops we participated in the battle, on the other hand, tried to divide the large group of Japanese troops into small pieces, concentrated their forces to approach the enemy, and used firepower assault combined with white-knife fighting to annihilate them one by one.
Until dawn on August 3, Dushan Village can be described as a blood river of corpses. In addition to the dozens of puppet soldiers previously captured on the rocky hill, our army successively captured 24 Japanese prisoners in the course of the battle. Other Japanese officers and men, including Nagata Toshie Shōsa, were killed. In addition to 2 field guns and 1 92 infantry gun, our army also captured more than 20 light and heavy machine guns and more than 400 38 large covers.
The Japanese 32nd Division to which Nagata Brigade belonged was a security division, and the infantry brigade was smaller than the field brigade. The large number of years of fighting with our Shandong anti-Japanese armed forces, casualties are continuous, coupled with the fact that the replenishment of Japanese soldiers has begun to have a sense of overstretch, before the Nagata brigade set out to sweep, there were still wounded and sick and necessary left-behind personnel, so in addition to dozens of accompanying puppet troops, the brigade's more than 500 people who went out to sweep this time have been regarded as all combat forces.
From this point of view, in less than 24 hours, the Nagata Brigade was completely annihilated by Chen Guang with almost the same strength, which was the first time in the history of the War of Resistance.
In this battle, Chen Guang can be said to have courage, strategy, courage and insight. The reason why he was evaluated as a "military expert with a number" was by no means a waste of time.