Tong Linge was a famous anti-Japanese general and army general.
During the "July 7 Incident", Song Zheyuan, commander of the Twenty-ninth Army, visited relatives in his hometown, and deputy commander Tong Linge acted as military commander. In the face of the rampant attack of the Japanese Kou, His Excellency Tong Lin ordered the defenders of Lugou Bridge to resolutely resist the Japanese and not give way to any land. In the fierce battle, Tong Linge was seriously injured in the head and martyred due to excessive bleeding.
When General Tong was martyred, his parents were in the church, and there were six children under him.
General Tong's third daughter was named Tong Yifei. She was 15 years old when General Tong was martyred.
A few years later, Tong Yifei married Xiong Xianyu.
Xiong Xianyu was born in 1913 in Sanqiao Town, Daozhen Autonomous County.
Xiong Xianyu studied at the Luoyang Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy in his early years, and later entered the fifth phase of the Army University for further study.
In 1938, Xiong Xianyu served in the New Eighth Division of the Kuomintang.
During the period of the New Eighth Division, Xiong Xianyu did two earth-shattering events that affected the situation of the War of Resistance.
First thing. He commanded his troops to blow up the Great Iron Bridge of the Yellow River.
On February 12, 1938, the New Eighth Division, on the orders of Cheng Qian, commander of the First Theater, marched from Zhengzhou to the two banks of the Yellow River Totie Bridge to block the japanese invasion of Zhengzhou by the 14th Division of Kenji Toihara.
The Zhengzhou Yellow River Railway Bridge was completed in 1905 and is located on the Pinghan Railway at the head of the North Mountain in Zhengzhou.
The large iron bridge is about 3015 meters long and has a total of 102 holes. It was built by the Qing Dynasty Railway Corporation and contracted and designed by the Belgian company.
On February 14, the Japanese army Kenji Toihara took a large number of tanks as the forward and marched south from Jixian County to the north of the Yellow River Great Iron Bridge.
Jiang, commander of the New Eighth Division, reported to Cheng Qian immediately after Zhen received the report.
After receiving the report, in order to stop the Japanese army and prevent the enemy mechanized troops from driving straight into Zhengzhou, Cheng Qian ordered Jiang Zaizhen to blow up the Yellow River Iron Bridge.
Jiang Zaizhen entrusted the task of blowing up the bridge to operations staff officer Xiong Xianyu. Jiang Zaizhen said: "Staff Officer Xiong, the order to blow up the bridge on the peak has been issued, and the task of commanding the engineer company to carry out will be entrusted to you." You command and supervise the company of engineers on blasting missions. ”
The Yellow River Iron Bridge is one of the world's great projects and a huge project built with the strength of the state. However, now that the Wokou invaded, they had to blow it up under the scorched earth resistance.
Xiong Xianyu felt too sorry, his feelings were mixed, and his heart was very unhappy. But he was a soldier and had to carry out orders.
At 5:00 a.m. on the 17th, the bombing of the bridge began! In an instant, a hundred holes of fire under the iron bridge burst out in unison, and the smoke billowed out, shaking the earth!
When the explosion stopped, Xiong Xianyu immediately went to the bridge to check. Unexpectedly, only three holes of the 100-hole iron bridge were blown up. The remaining ninety-seven holes were only broken by the explosives to break off a layer of "skin and flesh".
The bridge is too strong to blow up. After Jiang Zaizhen learned of this, he urged Xiong Xianyu to continue to carry out the blasting and blow up the iron bridge as soon as possible.
The military order was like a mountain, and Xiong Xianyu tearfully said to the bridge bombers: "Brothers, the great iron bridge was built with the strength of the state. But today, this great iron bridge has been destroyed in the hands of those of us who are not good at home! Now, the Wokou invaded and had to be bombed, and continued to explode! ”
For the next three days and three nights, there were repeated explosions, fillings, and the rumble of cannons.
By the evening of the 19th, the Great Iron Bridge of the Yellow River had been severely damaged from the thirty-ninth hole to the eighty-second hole. The Yellow River Iron Bridge, built at the end of the Qing Dynasty, was destroyed. Therefore, the mechanized troops of the Japanese army could not launch a large-scale river crossing attack on Zhengzhou for the time being.
After blowing up the Yellow River Iron Bridge, in June of the same year, Xiong Xianyu did another big thing.
He directly directed the garden mouth embankment (excavation of the embankment) project, and opened the garden mouth embankment.
On June 3, 1938, the Japanese army took Lanfeng and pushed straight to Kaifeng, and Zhengzhou was in danger.
If Zhengzhou falls, then the Japanese army will march to Wuhan in the next step, and the consequences are very serious. At the critical moment, many senior generals and dignitaries suggested to Chiang Kai-shek: Break the Yellow River and use water to counterattack and defeat the enemy. If the embankment is not broken, Zhengzhou has no other way to defend, and it will soon fall into the hands of the enemy, and Wuhan is in danger.
Chiang Kai-shek ordered: Break (dig) the levee and release the river water to create a ground barrier to stop and delay the Japanese attack.
Chiang Kai-shek asked the Commander-in-Chief of the First Theater to organize and implement the project of breaking the embankment (digging the embankment). The First Theater Command entrusted the task of digging the embankment to the 20th Army under the command of Shang Zhen.
Shang Zhen ordered jiang of the New Eighth Division to carry out the task of breaking the embankment (digging the embankment) at Zhenbu. Jiang Zaizhen asked Xiong Xianyu, the operational staff officer of the New Eighth Division, to preside over and direct the embankment breaking project.
Xiong Xianyu led The engineer battalion commanders Huang Yingqing and Ma Yingyuan, as well as Su Guanjun and Zhang Guohong, who were specially in charge of repairing the river embankment of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Commission, were selected to execute the embankment (digging the embankment) at the garden mouth in the northern suburbs of Zhengzhou after on-the-spot investigation.
After inspecting the walnut orchard near the Guandi Temple in the garden mouth, Xiong Xianyu and others selected to execute the embankment about 300 meters west of the Guandi Temple.
Before breaking the embankment (digging the embankment), Xiong Xianyu, Huang Yingqing, Ma Yingyuan, Su Guanjun and others came to the Guandi Temple to prostrate themselves and pay homage to the incense.
Several people knelt down and reverently prostrated themselves to Guan Yunchang, who was the "flooded Seventh Army" at that time.
After Xiong Xianyu prostrated his head three times, he prayed with tears: "Old Master Guan, the Chinese nation is currently suffering great hardships and has been bullied and insulted miserably. We couldn't beat the Japanese, so we had no choice but to let the Yellow River flood them here. If you drown the people, you have to forgive us. ”
On June 7, Xiong Xianyu led more than 2,000 officers and soldiers to kneel on the embankment of the Yellow River and bow to the rough Yellow River. The levee breaker began. First, it was excavated manually, and then it was fired flat with cannons, firing 70 shells in a row.
After two days and nights of bitter fighting, at 8:00 a.m. on June 9, the garden mouth successfully broke the embankment to release water. At the moment of releasing the water, more than 2,000 officers and men who broke the embankment burst into tears.
A day after opening the Garden Mouth levee, suddenly heavy rain fell, and the water of the Yellow River at the mouth of the breach was like a roaring dragon, tumbling down from the breach, forming a huge gap of 1460 meters at its largest.
Later, Chiang Kai-shek said: The Japanese Kou used an airplane to throw a bomb to blow up the garden mouth embankment.
The Garden Mouth broke the embankment, the Yellow River flooded the Japanese Kou, and the number of Japanese officers and soldiers who died in the flood reached as many as 7,000.
While the Yellow River flooded The Flood of Rikou also caused dozens of counties in Henan, Anhui, and Suzhou provinces to suffer. Tens of thousands of square kilometers of land became zeal. According to the figures provided by the "Damage and Aftermath Relief in the Yellow Pan Area", after the huayuankou embankment broke, 12.5 million people were displaced and displaced in dozens of counties in several provinces, and about 890,000 innocent people were killed.
Xiong Xianyu was the direct executor and commander of the blowing up of the Yellow River Iron Bridge and the levee at the mouth of the Garden.
Many years later, when recalling the incident, Xiong Xianyu said: "As the specific commander of the Garden Mouth breach, I will look back on this major historical event today half a century later. I can't help but feel a lot of emotions. For the souls of hundreds of thousands of my compatriots engulfed by the flood, I will never find peace in my heart. ”
On November 28, 1949, Xiong Xianyu, Chen Tie and Chen Deming led the 275th Division of the Nationalist Army to revolt in Zunyi.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Xiong Xianyu served as a librarian of culture and history in Chongqing and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
On September 18, 1999, Xiong Xianyu died of illness at the age of 86.