On December 12, 1937, the Nationalist defense system in Nanjing was completely shaken under the full-scale onslaught of the Japanese army. Sun Yuanliang's 88th Division took the lead in wavering, and at two o'clock in the afternoon, Sun Yuanliang led more than 2,000 remnants to the area of Rujiangmen and asked to cross the river from Xiaguan to Pukou. Song Xilian of the Thirty-sixth Division, which was originally stationed here, was ordered by the commander of the Nanjing garrison to dissuade Sun Yuanliang and ask him to return to the Zhonghua Gate position and continue to resist. Sun Yuanliang was helpless and returned to the Zhonghua Gate. However, at this time, the Japanese army had broken through the defense of Nanjing, the nationalist army was shaken in its entirety, and Rujiangmen became the main escape direction of the troops participating in the battle.
Before the war, in order to show his determination to resist the war and coexist with Nanjing, Tang Shengzhi, commander of the Nanjing Garrison Command, ordered that all the ferries in the Shimonoseki area be controlled on the north bank of the river, even civilian boats, and demanded that the Thirty-sixth Division, which was stationed on the front line of Rujiangmen, had less enemy situation to strictly control Rujiangmen and forbid all troops to retreat from Xiaguan. By the 12th, after the whole line was shaken, Tang Shengzhi even gave Song Xilian an order that the Thirty-sixth Division should be on the front line of Rujiangmen, prohibiting all troops from retreating from Rujiangmen without authorization, and if there were any violators, the Thirty-sixth Division could shoot. Therefore, the Thirty-sixth Division was ordered to lay a cordon around The River Gate.
By four o'clock in the afternoon, the garrison commander's headquarters received news that the Japanese army had conquered Xuancheng and Wuhu and was attacking northward, possibly cutting off the retreat route of the Nationalist army. If the Japanese army successfully went north, cut off the retreat route, and at the same time, the Japanese army cleared the mines on the river surface around the Jiangning Fortress and blocked the Yangtze River with ships, then it would mean that the retreat route of the 110,000 nationalist troops participating in the defense war in Nanjing would be completely blocked, and there was a possibility of being surrounded and annihilated by the Japanese army. Therefore, the Commander's Department considered the situation to be very serious, so at five o'clock in the afternoon it called a meeting of the commanders and division commanders and issued an order to withdraw. The meeting lasted only twenty minutes, and Tang Shengzhi ordered the chief of staff to issue a mimeographed retreat order, which stipulated that the troops should break through in separate ways.
It should be said that Tang Shengzhi's orders are more reasonable, and if there is no breakthrough at this time, the participating troops in Nanjing will be completely annihilated by the Japanese army, so it is time to break through. Moreover, at that time, there were only two ferries in Shimonoseki, even if they rushed to cross with all their might, they could only rush 30,000 people a day and a night, and if the remnants of all the troops poured into Shimonoseki, they would naturally be completely crowded here, causing chaos, and in the end no one could leave. Therefore, Tang Shengzhi demanded that except for the commander's headquarters and the Thirty-sixth Division retreating from the Xiaguan Ferry, the rest of the troops should break through in the direction of Guangde, Xuancheng, and Wuhu instead of crowding into the direction of Xiaguan.
However, after the commanders of the various units accepted the orders in the commander's headquarters, the famous anti-Japanese generals played a very normal role, and they did not return to the units to organize their own troops to break through, but called a meeting of their subordinate unit commanders to convey the news, and then they went directly. For example, Gui Yongqing, the commander of the teaching corps with the strongest strength in the entire Nanjing defense war, returned to the headquarters headquarters, told the chief of staff Qiu Qingquan, and left directly. Gui Yongqing also asked Qiu Qingquan to go with him, Qiu Qingquan said that he would stay and continue to contact the subordinate brigades and regiments by telephone, and try to control the troops.
For the army, it is not uncommon for the army to break through by separate routes after being surrounded. Moreover, most of the breakthroughs are not like Li Yunlong in "Bright Sword", who does not abandon any one person, and to break through head-on, in most cases, he can only find the gaps in the enemy's encirclement line and intersperse them. But the concept of a breakout has a different meaning in the Nationalist forces. In the concept of officers at all levels of the national army, the split breakthrough means that the superior must go first, give up command, and whether or not the next can survive depends on the situation of each unit. Therefore, once the two words of the breakthrough of the national army troops appear, they will basically become scattered, running around, completely losing command, and the structure is disrupted, and no one can grasp the troops and cannot effectively command.
Therefore, Tang Shengzhi's breakthrough order reached the officers at all levels below, and it became an order for their own direct escape, and most people chose to directly abandon the troops and escape on their own. When the officers ran, of course, the troops below were all in disarray, and they did not care about the direction of the breakthrough prescribed by the superiors, but they followed, and where the flow of people ran, they followed. Under the situation in Nanjing at that time, the routs of the various units that had lost their command directly poured into the Rujiang Gate like a tide. However, at this time, there was still a regiment of the Thirty-sixth Division that was ordered to guard the area around The Jiangmen, and had not yet withdrawn, and when it saw the tide of rout troops coming in general, it first fired a warning shot, and then simply shot and strafed later.
However, more and more troops poured into the Rujiang Gate, and by this time the commander's headquarters had already crossed the river, and the troops of the Thirty-sixth Division were gradually scattered by the defeated troops, and they all crowded together to escape. At this time, the area around Rujiangmen had completely lost order, and the crowds were surging and shoulder to shoulder, whether it was generals, school officers, lieutenants, or ordinary soldiers, they were all completely confused, huddled together to escape. When passing through the Rujiang Gate, due to the lack of order, there was a serious stampede, and Xie Chengrui, a regimental commander of the Teaching Corps, who had been very brave in the previous battle against the Japanese army, also trampled to death after being squeezed by the ruptured soldiers at the Rujiang Gate.
After crossing the Rujiang Gate and reaching the riverside, the defeated soldiers of various units could not find the ferry, and at this time, after the ferry went to Jiangbei, no one took care of it, and only a few ferry boats returned to the south bank of the river in an organized manner to pick up the commanders of their own troops and others to cross the river, not the commanders of their own troops, and they were often not allowed to board the boats. The rebels had to cut down trees along the river, or dismantle the door panels and tie bamboo rafts themselves across the river. Most bamboo rafts cannot be paddled to the other side of the river after reaching the river, so they can only drift down the river, some drift to the Sancha River, some drift to Baguazhou, and then find a way to cross the river to Pukou, and then hike to Chuzhou to find their own troops. Those who rushed to the river in the back could no longer find the trees and door panels, and even some people could only use the dung bucket as a floating bag, bundle the branches together, and drift across the river as a bamboo raft.
In contrast, the two Cantonese troops that participated in the battle at that time, Ye Zhao's Sixty-sixth Army and Deng Longguang's Eighty-third Army, did not, like the other Central Army units participating in the battle, did not directly flee for their lives and abandon the troops, but in accordance with the breakthrough orders and routes issued by the Commander's Department, they organized themselves through the gaps in the Japanese army, broke through to the area of Guangde and Xuancheng, and then retreated to the Jiangxi area and fought under the command of Xue Yue. The scattered units of the Central Army, when they were sheltered and concentrated in Jiangbei, suffered very serious losses, and the Thirty-sixth Division, which had basically not fought against the Japanese army in Nanjing before, originally had 7,000 people, of which 3,000 were retired from the Songhu battlefield, and 4,000 new recruits had just been gathered again, and when they were concentrated again, there were only 3,000 people.
In this process, Tang Shengzhi was not prepared to retreat in advance, and directly issued a breakthrough order when the situation was urgent, and after issuing the order, he crossed the river to Jiangbei first, and the rest of the army commanders and division commanders also went up and down, resulting in the complete loss of the unit and the collapse. Especially during the retreat, after Tang Shengzhi arrived in Jiangbei, he did not grasp and control the troops in time, and organized the ferries that had already arrived in Jiangbei and upstream to meet other troops on the Yangtze River, resulting in the entire breakthrough completely turning into an unorganized rout and chaotic running. In fact, at that time, the Japanese army's participation in the battle was limited, and it was a big detour and a big encirclement, so there were still many gaps in the middle of the encirclement line, and if the commanders of the various units could effectively grasp the troops, like Ye Zhao and Deng Longguang, it was entirely possible to find a gap to break through in an organized way.