The Nanchang Uprising, which broke out on August 1, 1927, opened the way for our Party to create its own armed forces. After the uprising broke out, a large number of counter-revolutionary forces marched into Nanchang in a vain attempt to strangle the newborn revolutionary forces in the cradle. From August 3, the rebel forces withdrew from Nanchang according to the predetermined plan, passing through Fuzhou, Ruijin, Huichang, Changting, Shanghang, and then marching towards the Chaoshan area of Guangdong.
From September 19, the rebel army successively entered Sanheba in Dapu County, Guangdong Province. Sanhe Dam is located in the northwest of Tai Po County, and is named after the Confluence of the Meijiang, Tingjiang, and Meitan Rivers to the Han River. Here on all sides of the lofty mountains, three rivers rushing and turbulent, on the other side of a more than 80 meters high pen branch tail mountain, shaped like a fish tail, the mountain is dangerous, there is a mountain town three rivers, the strategic position is very important.
After the rebel troops reached Sanheba, the main force was led by Zhou, He, Ye, and Liu to Chaozhou. About 3,000 men of the 25th Division and the Ninth Army Education Regiment (numbers disputed) remained at Sanheba to guard against the enemy in the direction of Mei county. It is for the division of troops for the Three Rivers Dam.
After the enemy's commander-in-chief on the southern front, Qian Dajun, after losing the battle in Huichang, gathered 10 regiments of nearly 20,000 men and horses, and rushed towards Sanheba with great momentum, threatening to fight the rebel army to the death.
At half o'clock on the night of October 1, Qian Dajun's troops smuggled across the Han River and were defeated by the rebel army that had been prepared earlier. The next day, the enemy launched several more consecutive attacks, but all of them retreated in vain.
At dawn on the 3rd, the fog on the surface of the Han River was thick and heavy. Qian Dajun seized the opportunity to mobilize a large number of ferries to cover the troops with powerful firepower to cross in multiple ways. The rebels were close to the shore when they noticed that the enemy's fleet had emerged from the fog. The enemy on the ship probably also saw the movement of the beachhead, desperately speeding up the ship, and the machine guns on the bow of the ship spewed out crazy tongues of fire.
The rebels immediately returned fire. After being shot in the front of the enemy boats, they shook violently in the river, and some of them overturned and turned to the sky; the enemy who fell into the water shouted, howled, and pounced desperately, and the river was in chaos. Nevertheless, more and more enemy ships docked, and the enemy jumped from the ships into the water, rushed to the beach with great firepower, and shot at the rebel positions with powerful firepower.
The beachhead was breached by enemy forces.
The 75th Regiment retreated to the mountains and continuously repelled the enemy's repeated wave charge, and The commander of the Lu battalion and the platoon commander Xu Guangda were wounded successively. Soldiers suffered more casualties. The battle formed a glue state. You Buyen, the chief of staff of the division, personally led his troops to launch a counterattack against the enemy, but without success, a string of bullets came at him, and his tall body shook, shaking out a blood hole, falling like a red pine and crossing the beach.
The war situation deteriorated dramatically. More and more enemies were crossing the river, the fire was getting fiercer and fiercer, and the shells were blowing up and the earth was trembling. The trenches and fortifications were destroyed, and the soldiers lying on the ground shook their teeth and felt the impact of the fierce air waves, and some were even overturned. The rebels were forced to abandon their forward positions and retreat to their hilltop positions.
As the sun set, the rebel army was already surrounded by Qian Dajun's heavy troops. In order to preserve their strength, the rebel army decided that the 75th Regiment would leave cover, and the rest of the troops and the wounded and sick would withdraw from the battle and quickly move. These troops who were transferred out endured hardships and dangers, and finally went up to Jinggangshan and became the seeds of revolution.
At dawn on the 4th, the enemy, like a red-eyed gambler, pounced on the rebel positions in a desperate bet. The battle began fiercely, and in the morning light, the bullets flashed and crisscrossed the air to form a network of fire, and the enemy rushed to the position like ants. The officers and men of the rebel army fought tenaciously until the last bullet was fired and the last rifle was broken. During the battle, Cai Qingchuan, acting commander of the 73rd Regiment of the 25th Division, was martyred.
Finally, Qian Dajun used the corpses of the native soldiers to pave a road leading to the rebel positions. The enemy pounced on the trenches, and countless tongues of fire frantically sprayed the bodies of the dead and alive officers and soldiers of the rebel army...
The battle between blood and fire was extremely tragic and tragic. In the Battle of Sanheba, the rebel army suffered more than 800 casualties and annihilated more than 1,300 enemy troops, and the corpses of each shape on the position were densely packed and piled up. On October 18, 1927, the Guangdong "News" reported on this campaign, which made people cry after reading:
This vicious battle between the Kuomintang and the Communists was never seen before. 24 military tent boats in Guangzhou planted troops to charge the Three Rivers, and the He army waited for the ship to dock and began to shoot, and all the sergeants and boatmen of the ship were killed. Now on both sides of the Han River, dead bodies are everywhere, and wild dogs cannibalize human flesh all night long, like ghosts crying. The natives threw the corpses into the river. On the seventh day, 600 floating corpses were recovered from the Chaozhou Xiangzi Bridge deck in one day, and the Jiaoshan Hall was buried. There are people with red belts wrapped around the body, there are people with white belts, most of them are bayonets that stab the dead, or severed heads, or split abdomen, there are those with incomplete facial features, there are those who have broken limbs, and less than one-third of the whole corpse. At present, the reeds along the Han River have not yet reached the harvest. The residents of Chaozhou City have always come to the outside of Hanjiang City to collect water from the Han River, and they have seen that there are many floating corpses, and they are afraid of severe disease, so they have recently changed to the water of the well, and it is also conceivable that the fierce fighting at that time was spotted.
(References: "Revolution Advances Armed from Nanchang", "Red Exclamation Point")