In September 1941, Liao Zhengguo's Second Regiment, while crossing the Gaogang Highway, came west to open a 'sympathy flow zone' to attack the Japanese in the form of enemy advances. Liao Zhengguo was a tiger general who was a member of the New Fourth Army, and he was bold and careful in doing things, especially good at opening up the situation in the face of adversity. At the same time, Liao Zhengguo is also one of the few one-armed generals in our army, and his arrival in the Gaoyou area will definitely set off a storm.
Liao Zhengguo
The so-called sympathy mobile zone is a new area that appears in gray, a guerrilla zone in the form of "sympathy" for the New Fourth Army's anti-Japanese resistance. The Central China Bureau has clear instructions for opening up the sympathy zone in Jiangsu (Du) Gao (Postal) and Bao (Ying), and opening up the sympathy zone is to expand the scope of mobility to deal with the enemy's blockade, not the new fourth army, and the mode of activity should be decided according to the local enemy and puppet situation, the social environment in which they live, and the mood and balance of forces of the masses, and should not be as publicized as in the old central area, so as not to make the enemy and the hypocrite stubbornly take advantage of the unstable foothold to destroy this area and cause losses to the common people.
The situation of struggle in the Jianggaobao area is extremely complicated. The Japanese puppet army is a strong force, with large strongholds in Yangzhou and Taizhou in the south, canals and Gaoyou Lake in the west, and Japanese puppet troops stationed along the line of Gaoyou City, Ma Shed Bay, Jieshou, and Baoying City. South of the Ziying River north of the Sanduo River belongs to the pseudo-zone. The diehard Han Deloitte department was in the areas north of Fengshui, Wangtonghe, Shibao, and the areas north of Them, and in the Qintong area to the east, with the troops of Chiang Kai-shek's local forces, Zhang Xingbing, Chen Taiyun, and Li Mingyang. Moreover, villages and villages have large knife associations and joint zhuang associations, which are nominally to resist the encroachment of the Japanese puppet army, prevent bandits from harassing, and protect the safety of people's lives and property, but most of the actual power is in the hands of landlords, squires, and gang leaders.
The gangs here are mainly green gangs. This gang was originally a private secret organization of the toiling people's guild, which originated in the Ming Dynasty, and the participants were all shipwrights and dock porters. In the early years of Qing Yongzheng, he became a gang on the canal to carry grain for the imperial court, named the An Qing Gang, referred to as the Qing Gang for short, and gradually evolved into a complex underworld evil force. The Qing court divided the canal from Hangzhou to Tongzhou into one hundred and twenty-eight and a half sections, with the figures of the Qing Gang as dock officials.
After the Republic of China, there were no water transport messengers, but the Green Gang still monopolized the waterways and continued until the period of the War of Resistance. The Gaobao area is a place where the evil forces of the Qing Gang have a greater influence, and people say that there are "one dragon, two tigers and three snakes, and eighteen geckos crawling all over the ground." When our army entered this area, we could only hear the sound of trumpets and whistles, and then the gongs sounded in unison, and Zhuang Ding took a gun and a knife to the polder wall, and occasionally put a demonstration to block our army outside. Outside the polder is a swagger, a vast ocean, can not retreat, can only crouch on the boat by mosquito bites:
In order to suppress the prestige of these people, Liao Zhengguo decided to call the second regiment the advance detachment, and he also changed his appearance into commander Hu Biao. Wang Xiang, a reconnaissance staff officer who can speak the dialects of Jiangdu and Gaoyou and is familiar with the customs and customs of the people in this area, is the chief of staff for external relations.
In order to carry out the situation smoothly. Liao Zhengguo sent Wang Xiang to the front station and led a plainclothes reconnaissance squad disguised as a businessman to carry out on-the-spot reconnaissance. Just as they were passing through the Gaogang Highway, they connected with a teacher Li who was sympathetic to the New Fourth Army, solved the bridgehead bunker, and Liao Zhengguo and his troops were able to smoothly enter the water network area. After entering the territory of Gaoyou County, Liao Guozheng was afraid that Teacher Li would be persecuted by the enemy and hypocrites after being exposed, and twice asked Wang Xiang to send scouts to inquire, and when he heard that there was nothing wrong, he put his mind at ease. Later, before the Battle of the River Crossing in March 1949, Liao Zhengguo had already served as the chief of military staff, and he could not get away from himself, and he also sent Wang Xiang, who was already the chief of staff of the division, to visit Teacher Li. Teacher Li was in tears, so excited that he couldn't say a word.
When Wang Xiang took the reconnaissance squad to advance, Liao Zhengguo told him: To learn a suitable form of struggle, even the merchants who entered this area must have a certain background in the jianghu, otherwise it would be difficult to move forward. Wang Xiang was a wise man, found some old and sophisticated figures, knew that the jianghu figures had the rule of "quasi-charge and not allow lai", and it was allowed to impersonate, so he learned a little of the jianghu doorway, practiced some jianghu incisions, wore a straight tribute robe, put on the British leather sole shallow cloth shoes, wore a top hat, had cigarettes in his ears, pretended to be a rogue merchant of the Shanghai sect, and pretended to be a gang figure. Followed by the housekeeper, the accounting room, and the second master of the class, carrying a few loads of gifts, seeing the mountain and worshipping the mountain, every church worships the church.
But before long, Wang Xiang's identity could not be hidden, he could not even smoke a cigarette, and when he smoked it, he choked to tears, and the gang leaders soon learned that there was such a "chief of staff of Wang". The feudal nature of the gangs allows them to have their own "mountains", "halls", and "old men", and the big knife club also has "mages", but the garden is full of "mountains", "halls", "mages", and "old men", each dominating and forming a unified mountain. These people estimated that the "Chief of Staff Wang" of the Advancing Detachment of the New Fourth Army must have great strength, and they rushed to send Jinlan posts to the "Chief of Staff of Wang" and boasted that they and "Chief of Staff Wang" were "brothers."
Liao Zhengguo made another preparation: the army was to build its prestige through victory, and he urgently needed to solve the problem of the troops' combat operations in the water network area. He specially convened a meeting of cadres at and above the company level. It was held that in order to solve the difficulties of water network operations, we must first solve the problem of water network operations. There must be a boat in the water network area, and it is difficult to walk without a boat. Some people also raised the question of how to deal with the enemy's motorboats, which are big and fast.
After discussion, Liao Zhengguo said: "Every family in this area has a small wooden boat, and everyone can hold a boat and row an oar. I thought of an idea, we will requisition a small wooden boat, one per shift, each person with a wooden plank to make an oar, increase the power of the paddling, the stern of the boat by a person at the helm, so that you can speed up the speed, the little man can also move freely. The Japanese devil's motorboats are very fast, but they are not as free as small boats, and our small wooden boats can fight their big motorboats. "When everyone thinks about it, it makes sense, and the courage is strong."
After the meeting, the companies immediately found boats and made oars. The next day, they entered Gaoyou Lake, and during the day the troops were exposed to the surface of the lake. Liao Zhengguo ordered: Hide the boat in the reeds where the motorboat cannot travel, put guns, backpacks, and equipment on the boat, and people stand in the water, only their heads exposed, eat a little dry food, and drink a few mouthfuls of lake water. Departing after dusk, although the enemy still shoots and cannons into the reeds from time to time, our "sailors" calmly steer the "warships" and advance rapidly northward...
After crossing Gaoyou Lake and entering the territory of Gaoyou County, the "advancing detachment" loaded light and heavy machine guns and mortars on boats and camouflaged them; one squad only took three or four miscellaneous rifles, and the dress was not uniform, and the soldiers' words were also "barbaric" and "barbaric." The captured intelligence of the enemy and puppet troops said: "This unit is called the 'advancing detachment', but it is only a few hundred people, the equipment is extremely poor, it seems that the remnants of the New Fourth Army that fled north after being crushed by the Jiangnan Nationalist Army, have little combat effectiveness, and are vulnerable to a single blow." Liao Zhengguo looked at it and raised an eyebrow.
The "advancing detachment" was not only looked down upon by the enemy and puppet troops, but also gradually despised by the heads of the Lianzhuang Association and the Great Knife Association. On the other hand, however, the broad masses of the people know our army in strict discipline, lean toward our army, and call our army the "New Fourth Army of Commander Hu with one arm." With such conditions in place, it is necessary to invigorate the anti-Japanese spirit of the masses with a victorious battle to annihilate the enemy. Liao Zhengguo was determined to attack the Japanese in the pseudo-zone north of the Sanduo River, where the political influence was great, and the terrain was favorable to me, especially in the Zhouzhuang area, which was dryland in the west and water in the east, and could attack and defend. So it was decided to lure the enemy here to attack and annihilate it.
The "Advance Detachment" deliberately exposed the operation in the Zhouzhuang area and did not move the garrison for several days. Sure enough, the enemy went out of the nest, and the Japanese troops of Gaoyoucheng, Mapeng bay, Jieshou and Baoyingcheng, together with the puppet army, totaled more than a thousand people, attacked Zhouzhuang in three ways. The Japanese puppet army entered the ambush circle of our army, and after the battle began, the "Imperial Japanese Army" found that it was greatly deceived, and this new Fourth Army did not have only three or four rotten guns per shift as the intelligence said, but the rifles were neat, there were shining bayonets, light machine guns were also there, there were roars everywhere, there were not many, heavy machine guns were also fired, and mortar shells also exploded in their formations.
However, there was no other way but to scold the leader of the puppet army as "Bage Yelu." As a result, the siege became encircled, the attack became defeated, more than two hundred were killed and wounded, and they fled away. The congregations of the United Zhuang Society and the Great Knife Society were also inspired by the victory and automatically joined the ranks of pursuing the enemy. More than thirty wounded members of the "Advancing Detachment" also "snatched" the villagers home and fed them egg flower soup.
Victory and morale are boosted. Liao Zhengguo decided to take the initiative to attack, further crack down on the enemy's arrogance and hypocrisy, eliminate the influence of hypocrisy, and build the sympathy area into a guerrilla base area. He personally assigned tasks to each company, and when the enemy was unexpected, he attacked separately, in order to remove six or seven small strongholds between Gaoyou, Fanchuan, and Sanduo overnight, and to take advantage of the victory to capture the town of Fanchuan. When assigning tasks, he deliberately called Hu Youzhang, commander of the Seventh Company, to his side and said to him: "Your Seventh Company is relatively strong in combat, good at fighting hard battles, and especially good at night touching." This time, let your company go on a mission alone: take the second ditch of the puppet army stronghold west of the three stacks. Ergou is twenty miles away from Gaoyou City, fifteen miles away from the three stacks, there are not many puppet troops, this time you come to a surprise attack and touch the enemy. ”
According to the instructions, Hu Youzhang learned that there was a squadron of less than a hundred puppet troops stationed at this stronghold, which belonged to a security brigade leader surnamed Zhang in Gaoyou. The next day, the second ditch coincided with the market. Therefore, a plan was formulated to focus on night touching, and if the sneak attack at night did not succeed, it would be turned into a strong attack. That night, as soon as the ships of the Seventh Company Assault Squad approached Ergou, they heard the puppet sentry shouting, "What's the matter?" The assault squad replied, "Captain Gaoyou Zhang's men have come to collect taxes for tomorrow's collection." "As he spoke, he grabbed the sentry, handed over his gun, asked for the password for that night, and pulled the puppet officers and men who slept like dead pigs out of the bed without a single shot. When Wang Xiang entered Fanchuan Town with his reconnaissance squad, a large number of enemies had already fled by boat, and only a few pairs of food picks had been caught. Taking this battle as an opportunity, the entire vicinity of Gaoyou became a 'sympathy flow area' of the New Fourth Army, and decades later there were still stories of Liao Zhengguo, the commander of the broken arm, beating the devils.