In the second half of 1943, while stepping up the abduction of the Kuomintang authorities, the Japanese Kou on the one hand drove the puppet army to carry out large-scale "sweeping" and "encroachment" on the other hand, in a vain attempt to change North China into a consolidated "military base."
On October 12, 15,000 Japanese Kou with tens of thousands of puppet troops, with the cooperation of aircraft and tanks, were fiercely attacking the Pu (County) Fan (County) Guan (Cheng) area in the center of Our Jiluyu, with great potential to flatten our base area.
At the beginning of the anti-"sweeping campaign," Yang Dezhi, commander of the Luyu Military Region, led the troops, avoided the enemy's sharp edge, and quickly jumped to the outside line.
The enemy pounced on the central area, and various puppet armies built a large stronghold under the cover of the Japanese Kou. Shou Zhang's puppet army occupied Houmiao and Lotus Pond in the eastern part of our central area; Liu Bengong's puppet army in Yuncheng occupied huanglou and chaocheng in the southeast; and the puppet army Wen Dakebu occupied Jiazhuang and Yupu to the north of china.
The most serious was that the two armies of the 2nd Front Army, to which the Kuomintang general Sun Liangcheng belonged, had a strength of about 20,000 troops, and controlled a vast area between the two Pu (Puxian, Puyang) on the southwest side of our central area. Sun Liangcheng personally led his headquarters to the Bagong Bridge southeast of Puyang City, supported the troops and respected themselves, and looked down on our Eighth Route Army.
Soon, Yang Dezhi led his troops back to the inner line from the Dongping area, but only controlled the hinterland between Fan County and Guancheng, which was no more than a hundred miles away, surrounded by enemies, and the situation was extremely dangerous.
In order to quickly open up the situation and restore and consolidate our Jiluyu base area, Commander Yang Dezhi ordered the 2nd Division to be the front echelon back to the central area, taking advantage of the enemy's unstable foothold and launching an attack on the strongholds of Shouzhang and Chaocheng puppet troops reaching into our base area. On November 6 and 7, liankehou temple, lotus pond, and Yupu were all annihilated by the enemy.
After study, Yang Dezhi and Huang Jing, secretary of the party committee of the military region, decided to adopt the tactic of drilling the heart (also known as the "ox knife tactic"), attacked the Bagong Bridge, where Sun Liangcheng's headquarters was stationed, and destroyed the enemy's head organ.
In order to confuse and mobilize the defenders of the Bagong Bridge, Yang Dezhi decided to first come to a "sound east attack west". Led by Zeng Siyu (later a founding lieutenant general) and political commissar Duan Junyi, the commander of the 2nd Military Sub-district, the 7th and 8th regiments, together with the sub-district organs, were transferred from Fan County to the northern area of Juan (Cheng), deliberately staying away from Sun Liangcheng's troops, and posing as a strong attack on Juancheng to defend the enemy Liu Bengong's troops.
The prelude to the Battle of Hachiko Bridge began.
Zeng Siyu had just been stationed in Juanbei, so he sent scouts and small units to make a big fuss around the enemy strongholds near Juancheng. Liu Bengong was disturbed day and night, and he was restless in sleep and food, so he hurriedly gathered his troops, increased his sentry and posts, and desperately called for help from Sun Liangcheng.
A few days later, our army learned that Sun Liangcheng had received information that our army was going to attack Liu Bengong, and he was very happy, thinking that the Eighth Route Army would not dare to engage him. The enemy of Bagongqiao, who had asked the township chief every day to rush the people to build fortifications, was now going to be tight; the enemy who was building the siege also stopped. Obviously, the enemy was stunned by our army.
Next, Yang Dezhi decided to direct another scene of the battle: "Flanking the Town of Two Gates".
Liangmen Town, on the west side of the Bagong Bridge, not far apart, called out the enemy in Liangmen Town, and our army could attack the Bagong Bridge without any scruples, and the protagonist of the attack on this town was Zhang Guohua, the political commissar of the 4th Sub-district. The next afternoon, shortly after the battle between Liangmen Town began, Zhang Guohua sent someone to report to Yang Dezhi that the battle was fought smoothly and that two enemy companies had been annihilated, and Sun Liangcheng had drawn 1 regiment from Xu Town, east of the Bagong Bridge, to reinforce Liangmen Town.
When Yang Dezhi heard this news, he said happily: "The enemy has indeed obeyed our command, and now it is time to fully open the curtain of the war!"
Chang Binggui, commander of the 5th Division, led the 7th and 8th regiments to the line from Puyang to Dongming to block the enemy's 4th Army; The commander of the 3rd Division, Ma Benzhai, and others commanded the 32nd Regiment, the Huimin detachment, and the county and district militia armed forces, and entered the Puyang area, preparing to contain and harass the enemy's 5th Army.
At this time, guerrilla brigades in Juanbei, Yunbei, Kunwu, Puyang, and other counties also took active action.
After all the arrangements were in place, Yang Dezhi and his chief of staff, Yan Yuyao (Huangpu I, later the founding lieutenant general), accompanied by the main attack troops of the 2nd Army Sub-district, after a night of rapid march, from the juanbei area to the temple not far from the Bagong Bridge. Pan Yan, chief of staff of the 2nd Division, came to report to them that the enemy was not aware of our army's intentions.
At midnight on the 16th, Zeng Siyu led the main attack troops of the 2nd Division to the Bagong Bridge, and the troops entered the predetermined position. The command post is located in the Shijia Building. As soon as the red light used as a command post was hung, the regimental signallers came to report: "The troops are close to the outer trenches, ready!" ”
At this time, Commander Zeng Siyu had gone to the assault unit early, and when there was a battle, he always directly commanded the troops in front. The mission of the 8th Regiment was to attack from the west. At this time, the night became even heavier, the enemy did not notice, and the 3rd and 5th companies that were on the parallel assault mission quickly and smoothly pushed off the deer, filled in the outer trenches, and immediately boarded the earth fence without firing a shot.
Only then did the enemy realize that something was wrong and hastily organize a counterattack.
The follow-up units of our army have already aggrievedly ascended the wall, and the vanguard units have developed in depth. The enemy was too late, and many enemies were taken prisoner in their sleep. The troops broke into the fence, the street battle began, the soldiers occupied the houses, and immediately opened up the rooms to consolidate the positions. The enemy's head organ was in the west, and our army controlled the eight major places and all the houses on both sides, and broke into Sun Liangcheng's old lair, and the enemy's chief of staff, Zhen Jiyin, was captured, and Sun Liangcheng left here on the first day and luckily slipped through the net.
Our army captured all the military supplies in the eight major places, not even the dress and leather boots of Chief of Staff Zhen Jiyin. There is also an arsenal in the old wall that can make earth machine guns, which has also been cleaned up by our army.
The street battle was fought until dawn, and the battle was basically over. After cleaning up the battlefield, the 8th Regiment handed over 2,000 or 3,000 prisoners of war and captured supplies, as well as a full set of equipment from the arsenal, to the military district.
On the morning of the 17th, Pan Yan,chief of staff of the Second Division (later a founding major general), ran to Yang Dezhi's headquarters to report that Zhen Jiyin, chief of staff of the Pseudo-2 Front, had been captured alive. After a while, Zhen Jiyin was escorted by the warriors, and his mouth was always nagging: "I really didn't expect it, I really didn't expect it." ”
The Battle of Bagong bridge is a typical offensive battle, a night attack battle, and a typical annihilation battle. In this battle, more than 1150 enemy people were destroyed, many officers were captured, 1531 guns (guns), 14 grenadiers, a number of war horses, radio stations and arsenals were captured, and 69 truckloads of food and military supplies were captured.
Interestingly, this afternoon, the postman from Puyang County came to deliver a letter to the enemy, and when he arrived at the city gate, he was stunned, and he did not expect that only overnight, the sentry at the city gate was replaced by a mighty and solemn Soldier of the Eighth Route Army.