On November 23, 1943, as dawn approached, a rush of assembly numbers woke all the officers and men from their dreams. All the officers and men heard the sound of the trumpet, got up from the rubble pile and took their weapons and quickly rushed to the tuqiao outside the north gate to assemble. The commander of the Seventh Company, Liu Shengsan, was already waiting by the bridge, and Liu told Li Chao to let the brothers of the third squad lead him to guard the passage of the Tuqiao Bridge and prevent the Japanese from entering the position. Li Chao took over the task and quickly led the Benban brothers to build a bunker position, preparing to block the incoming enemy.
Changde Old Town
More than ten minutes later, the Japanese aircraft group flew into the sky, and the bombs and burning bullets rained down into the changde city area, and the entire urban area was suddenly filled with gunfire and smoke. All the brothers of the class, except for the observers who remained in their positions to observe the enemy situation, entered the bunkers or shelters. After the enemy planes bombed, all the brethren quickly returned to their firing positions. At this moment, the reconnaissance units sent by the company in Nanping, Xinqiao, and other places exchanged fire with the vanguard of the Japanese army, and the sound of gunfire and grenade explosions was heard one after another.
After hearing the gunshots, Li Chao ordered everyone to push the bullets into the chamber, and the safety cover of the grenade was all unscrewed. After a while, the Japanese flat-firing guns, grenadiers, and light and heavy machine guns shot at the position of the Seventh Company, and the Japanese army was only more than two hundred meters away, and the ghosts were densely packed like locusts, with more than 200 people. The enemy was outnumbered, and the crowd suddenly tensed up, holding their breath and clutching the machine guns, their eyes fixed on the enemy who was rushing towards this side.
Changde under the iron hooves of the Japanese army
When the devils were only more than a hundred meters away from the Seventh Company, Liu Company Commander gave an order: "Fight! The whole company concentrated its firepower on the devil's vanguard troops, and the Japanese army was beaten so hard that they fell down row by row, and more than half of the devils who rushed in front were killed or wounded. The devils in the back saw that the situation was not good, and retreated while fighting. When Liu Company Saw the Ghosts retreating, he immediately ordered Li Chao's squad to hold the bunker, and the rest of the people took advantage of the victory to pursue. He chased the Japanese army to more than five hundred meters away, completely driving the devils off the position.
The first charge of the Japanese army was repulsed, and the seventh company suffered one or two casualties, although the casualties were not small, but it boosted morale. After repelling the first charge, the soldiers were full of morale, and the people took advantage of the battle gap to strengthen the fortifications, adjust the deployment, replenish the ammunition, and wait for the arrival of the second charge of the Japanese army.
On the twenty-eighth day, the sky was bright, and the Japanese army launched another attack. The cunning devils first shot at the defenders with machine guns for nearly half an hour. Then, under the cover of heavy fire, a large number of infantry swooped in and tried to enter the defenders' positions from the earth bridge. At this time, li chao's squad fortifications were greatly damaged, and 7 comrades-in-arms such as squad leader Wu Shixi had died one after another. Liu Company Commander appointed Li Chao to succeed him as squad leader. The sacrifice of comrades-in-arms further aroused the national hatred of comrades-in-arms, and some soldiers cried while fighting, shouting, "Avenge your compatriots!" "Fight with the devil!" The people fought bravely to kill the enemy, and in their hearts they only had the intention of dying in battle to serve the country, and had no other thoughts.
During the fierce battle, Li Chao's left eye was injured by the shell casing, and the blood flowed. Several other brothers were also wounded, but the Japanese army was still advancing step by step, and everyone could not care about bandaging, and shot fiercely one by one. The Japanese suffered more than a hundred casualties, and the remaining rolling belts crawled back to the ground, and the second attack of the Japanese army was repulsed.
The Japanese entered the city
The Japanese launched four consecutive attacks on Xiaoximen, but were never able to capture them. On the night of the 28th, the Japanese army shifted the focus of the attack to the north gate, and the regimental headquarters saw that the Japanese offensive was getting fiercer and fiercer, most of the defenders' positions were destroyed, and the casualties were getting bigger and bigger, so it was really difficult to hold on, so they took advantage of the fact that before dawn, they ordered all the troops to retreat to qingyang pavilion and jintai to build fortifications and prepare for street battles.
After dawn on the twenty-ninth day, Japanese planes came to bomb and strafe again, at this time the north gate had been lost, and the officers and men of the defenders held several strongholds near the First Middle School to fight fiercely with the enemy. Commander Yu Shi and Chief of Staff Chen Shuyun and others came to Dushi Lane to give a lecture to the officers and men who were rushing to repair the fortifications nearby. Master Yu was wearing white gloves, his whole body was covered with mud and ash, his eyes were red, and he looked like he had been sleepless for several days, but he looked energetic. He said passionately: "All the officers and men, although we have suffered heavy casualties now, the Casualties of the Japanese Devils are even greater, and I hope that all the officers and men will continue to fight and swear to fight the Japanese Devils to the end in order to defend Changde!" If you don't succeed, you will become a benevolent person, and you should not be a slave to the country! The short words aroused the morale of the defenders.
Hold one's ground
After the fortifications of the Qingyang Pavilion were repaired, the officers and men ran to the Golden Terrace to continue repairing the bunkers. Suddenly, Yang Dibin, the instructor of the company, came and ordered Li Chao's squad to open up the houses of Jinjintai, Baijiekou, xiaoximen, and all the way to the divisional command post of the Central Bank of Xingjiekou as soon as possible, and build a bunker at the mouth of each street. He also told Li Chao that the Japanese had entered from the north gate.
Li Chao immediately organized the whole class of soldiers to build bunkers and open roads, and they took all kinds of bags from the shops near the Golden Terrace to load them with soil and pile them into bunkers. While repairing the bunker in the loofah well, Li Chao and four warriors carried a large board from a nearby pastry factory and built a machine gun bunker. At this time, the division command post also sent a platoon of troops to repair the fortifications at Xingjiekou.
On the morning of the twenty-ninth day, Li Chao and others were ordered to open up all the houses in each street and build bunkers at each street entrance. In the afternoon, the Japanese army hit the Hundred Streets Pass. In Wuguan Street, Li Chao's class engaged in a white-knife battle with more than 20 ghosts. It started out on the street and went all the way into a nearby dyeing and weaving factory. Since Li Chao's left eye was injured and it was inconvenient to observe, a ghost from the left stabbed a bayonet into his left leg. At the moment of crisis, the warrior Sun Baoxiang was quick in his eyes and killed the ghost with one shot.
The rest of the devils fought back desperately, and the two sides fought fiercely on the street corner, and Li Chao and others picked up bricks, flat burdens, wooden sticks and fought with the devils, killing all the devils who had sneaked into the position under the corner. After eliminating these 20 Or so Japanese soldiers, Commander Yu Chengwan sent a messenger surnamed Tang to say: "The division commander ordered all officers and men not to escape from the battlefield, and swore to die not to be a slave to the country, and if they did not succeed, they would become ren!" After saying that, the soldier surnamed Tang ran again to convey the orders of the division commander to the various strongholds.
Li Chao was injured in the leg, bleeding too much to move, and the stretcher team carried him to a private house at the mouth of Baijie to bandage him. After dark, under the cover of six or seven soldiers, the stretcher team carried Li Chao and more than 30 wounded along the river embankment Danzhouping, and Li Chao's three squads suffered casualties in this battle, leaving only him alive. After Li Chao moved to the rear, he did not return to the army until the end of the defense of Hengyang and continued to participate in the battle against Japan.
In the Defense of Changde, the officers and men of the Chinese defenders fought the Japanese army for 47 days and nights, and held Hengyang until they ran out of ammunition. Li Chao's third squad suffered casualties, leaving him alone to survive. In the 1970s, Li Chao wrote down his experience of white-knife warfare during the Defense of Changde in his diary, recording the thrilling days. In his diary, Li Chao wrote: "In the defense of Changde, why can Chinese soldiers fight to the end? Because most of them are Hunan children, behind them are the fathers and elders of their hometowns, and there is no room for retreat. Only those who die in battle may have a glimmer of life. ”
[This article is collected by Barnyard Shi Hou to collect anti-war materials, memoirs to sort out and write, errors and omissions, Jingxi readers correct]