No one knows about the Lugou Bridge, but during the "July 7 Incident", Ji Xingwen, who fired the first shot of the national war of resistance on the Lugou Bridge, was rarely mentioned.
Ji Xingwen graduated from the Central Military Academy, a lieutenant general in the Kuomintang Army, and he had a well-known uncle, General Ji Hongchang, nicknamed "Ji Bold". General Ji Hongchang was the idol of the young Ji Xingwen, in order to be a majestic patriotic soldier like his uncle, in 1926, Ji Xingwen, who was less than 20 years old, joined the army under the introduction of General Ji Hongchang and became a cavalryman in the Song Zheyuan Brigade.
In March 1933, Ji Xingwen participated in the Japanese operation at the Xifengkou of the Great Wall fortress of the Nationalist Army. On March 11, Ji Xingwen, then commander of the 219th Regiment of the 109th Brigade of the 37th Division of the Nationalist Army, was ordered to lead troops to attack the enemy's rear. He led all the officers and men of the battalion, taking advantage of the hazy night, carrying a large knife, and quietly went around the right flank of the Japanese army and launched a surprise attack on the Japanese army.
After several hours of desperate fighting, in the early morning of the next day, Ji Xingwen and his soldiers, covered in blood, carried a large knife with a knife cut and a knife, won a triumphant victory, and they captured the Wang family, Wafang and other villages in one fell swoop, and all the Japanese troops in the village were annihilated.
Shortly after this battle, Ji Xingwen was promoted to the commander of the 219th Regiment of the Nationalist Army. He also received a nickname that accompanied him throughout his life: "Ji Bold", and the nickname "Given" To Ji Xingwen was General Zhao Dengyu, a famous anti-Japanese general of the Nationalist Army.
Interestingly, General Zhao Dengyu knew that Ji Xingwen's uncle Ji Hongchang's nickname was also called "Ji Bold", and the general saw Ji Hongchang's shadow in Ji Xingwen's body.
In June 1937, Ji Xingwen and his 219th Regiment of the Nationalist Army were ordered to garrison Wanping City, southwest of Beiping, and garrisoned at Lugou Bridge. Lugou Bridge is The gateway of Peiping to the mainland, and its strategic location is very important.
On the night of July 7, the Japanese falsely claimed that a soldier was "missing" during a exercise near the Lugou Bridge, and asked to enter Wanping City to search, but Ji Xingwen sternly refused. The Japanese army opened fire and artillery on the position of the 219th Regiment of the Nationalist Army, and then shelled Wanping City, triggering the "July 7 Incident" that shocked China and foreign countries.
Ji Xingwen forcefully suppressed the anger in his heart and immediately asked General Feng Zhi'an, commander of the 37th Division of the Nationalist Army, for instructions: "The Japanese have deceived people too much, do we still need to endure?" ”
General Feng Zhi'an immediately said: "If you can't bear it, you can't bear it." In order to safeguard national sovereignty, we must not give up any land! ”
Ji Xingwen expressed his determination to General Feng Zhi'an: "Swear to die to defend the Lugou Bridge, and there is only Ji Xingwen who died in battle on the Lugou Bridge!" Putting down the phone, Ji Xingwen immediately issued an order to the officers and men guarding the bridge: "Hold your position, resolutely fight back, and persist in resisting the war to the end!" Ji Xingwen and his 219th regiment fired the first shot of the War of Resistance.
The next afternoon, the arrogant Japanese army sent an ultimatum, restricting the surrender of the Nationalist army before 7 o'clock that night, and they hated Ji Xingwen, who had a tough attitude, dared to fight back, and shot fiercely, and one of the so-called truce negotiations they proposed was to demand that the Nationalist army withdraw the defenders of Lugou Bridge, and named them to "take over the defense of the Ji regiment." Naturally, such unreasonable conditions of the Japanese army could not be accepted by the Chinese side.
In the face of counterattacks by the Chinese army and the failure to persuade them to surrender, the Japanese army resorted to shameless and indiscriminate means, and they actually sent troops to sneak attack the officers and men on duty of the 219th Regiment of the Nationalist Army, and occupied the post of the 219th Regiment of the Nationalist Army at the bridgehead of the Lugou Bridge.
The Japanese army's inexhaustible and endless harassment made Ji Xingwen furious, and he vowed that even if he fought a decisive battle with the Japanese army, he would definitely retake the bridgehead position. He knew very well in his heart that the Lugou Bridge could not be lost, and once it was lost, the situation in Pingjin would be even more turbulent.
On the evening of July 8, Ji Xingwen handed over some trivial matters at hand to his subordinate officers to take care of, and quietly left the city by himself and went straight to the 3rd Battalion garrison, this "Ji Bold" was going to organize a death squad to retake the Lugou Bridgehead in the 3rd Battalion.
The soldiers of the Nationalist Army, who had been oppressed by the Japanese and had been holding their breath in their hearts, were inspired by Ji Xingwen to resist The anti-Japanese sentiment was unprecedentedly high. Ji Xingwen said to everyone: "For the sake of the country, in order not to be bullied by the Japanese, we can fight hard Chinese!" ”
The next agenda is to form a death squad. "Ji Bold" originally planned to organize a 100-person death squad, but there were 300 officers and men of the Nationalist Army who volunteered to sign up, and Ji Xingwen finally selected 150 capable and strong officers and men with combat experience among them, and organized them into 5 groups, each of whom carried 1 rifle, 2 grenades, and a large knife in each hand, ready to listen to orders and prepare to attack at any time. The officers and men of the Nationalist Army who were not elected wept bitterly over the inability to go to the battlefield to kill the Japanese.
Years later, once Ji Xingwen remembered that scene, his heart still couldn't be calm.
Taking advantage of the familiar terrain, the "ji bold" national army daredevils unknowingly appeared in the bridgehead occupied by the Japanese army, and it took a total of 20 minutes before and after, dozens of Japanese soldiers were all wiped out, and the 219th regiment of the national army recaptured the bridgehead in one fell swoop.
Where did the arrogant Japanese army suffer this loss, and they unscrupulously launched a crazy shelling attack on the Chinese positions in an attempt to seize the opportunity to retake the bridgehead again. However, due to the stubborn resistance of the 216th Regiment of the Nationalist Army, the Japanese plot failed to succeed.
On July 8, the Chinese Communists issued an anti-Japanese telegram demanding that the Nationalist government fulfill its commitments at the time of the Xi'an incident as soon as possible; on July 19, Chiang Kai-shek, chairman of the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government, delivered a speech in Lushan, officially announcing the start of an all-out war of resistance. Since then, the prelude to the national War of Resistance has officially begun.
From July 11, the Japanese began to shell Wanping City and the vicinity, Ji Xingwen was wounded in the head during the battle, but he did not withdraw from the line of fire, still insisted on directing the battle in the front line position, and organized the evacuation of the residents of the city. "Ji Bold" is fulfilling his original promise with actions: "Swear to die to defend the Lugou Bridge, and there is only Ji Xingwen who died in battle on the Lugou Bridge!" ”
Due to the compromise of the Nanjing government, on the afternoon of July 26, Ji Xingwen was ordered to hand over the defense of Lugou Bridge to the local security forces, and the officers and men of the Jixing Cultural Regiment bid farewell to Wanping's father and elders in tears and retreated to Changxindian. Just a few hours after Ji Xingwen's Nationalist 219th Regiment withdrew from Wanping, the Lugou Bridge fell.
In early May 1938, General Ji Xingwen, who had been promoted to brigade commander of the 109th Brigade of the Nationalist Army, was ordered to sail to Suxian County, Anhui Province, rush into the Vortex River, occupy Zhao Jiaji and Lugou Ji, and face the Japanese Ninth Mechanized Division attacking north of Mengcheng to cover the transfer of the large army. After arriving in Suxian County, although the National Army Jixing Cultural Brigade marched rapidly overnight, it still could not catch up with the progress of the enemy's mechanized troops, and the Japanese army occupied the two market towns.
In order to complete the task of blocking the Japanese army, General Ji Xingwen divided the whole brigade and a regiment under his command into two ways into battle, and once again showed his "Ji Bold" brave and fearless demeanor, personally led a group of Nationalist troops to attack Zhao Jiaji, using the terrain to quickly approach the enemy and entangle the enemy to death. This battle prevented the Japanese from advancing, and bought time for the safe transfer of hundreds of thousands of nationalist troops in Xuzhou. Soon, General Ji Xingwen was promoted to the commander of the 37th Division of the Nationalist Army for his merits, and later promoted to the commander of the 33rd Army of the Nationalist Army.
The "Lugou Bridge Incident" was the beginning of the all-out war of aggression against China by Japanese imperialism and the starting point of the Chinese nation's nationwide war of resistance. Ji Xingwen, a Chinese soldier and anti-Japanese hero who fired the first shot of the nation's War of Resistance, has also been famous and widely praised since then. Drama master Tian Han once created the drama "Defending the Lugou Bridge", which was staged in various places, including the role of a national army leader, named Ji Xingwen, and Ji Xingwen appeared on the stage with his real name and real surname.
General Ji Xingwen kept a photograph for life, regarded it as a treasure, and cherished it very much. That photo is a piece of ruins after the "Lugou Bridge Incident", General Ji Xingwen wrote a line behind the photo: "Seven Seven" Anti-Japanese War at Lugou Bridge, the first fight with the Japanese army to the death, Yu was injured here ...
In 1949, General Ji Xingwen retired to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's defeat, and in 1955, Chiang Kai-shek appointed him deputy commander of the Penghu Defense of the Nationalist Army, and in 1958 he was promoted to lieutenant general and deputy commander of the Kinmen Defense of the Nationalist Army.
On August 22, the day before the People's Liberation Army shelled the Golden Gate, Chiang Kai-shek's "Defense Minister" Yu Dawei flew to Kinmen to inspect defenses. At about 5 p.m. the next day, Hu Lian, commander of the Kinmen Defense of the Nationalist Army, hosted a banquet at a floating restaurant in Cuigu, at the foot of the Northern Taiwu Mountains.
Two days earlier, Chiang Kai-shek had also dined at this floating restaurant during his secret tour of Kinmen. After the meal, he summoned officers above the Level of the Golden Gate Garrison of the Nationalist Army to give a lecture, pointed out the terrain and features with his cane, and warned the people to pay special attention to the safety of command posts at all levels.
With regard to Hu Lian and several deputy commanders present, Chiang Kai-shek's exhortation was even more severe: "The offices and dormitories of your headquarters are mostly built along the narrow north Taiwu Valley, the space is too small, and it is too dense, completely exposed to enemy fire. ”
Chiang Kai-shek, who was rarely correct in commanding operations, was indeed "wise" this time, and the Battle of Kinmen on August 23 confirmed his "wisdom."
On that day, Yu Dawei was sitting and talking with General Hu Lian on a flat land near the guest house, and thousands of shells from the People's Liberation Army were coming from different firing positions toward the Northern Taiwu Mountains, and Yu Dawei instinctively curled up on the ground, grabbed General Hu Lian's arm tightly, and said: "It is not safe here, you follow me!" ”
General Hu Lian saw that Yu Dawei had been injured in many places by shrapnel and was bleeding profusely. Ten minutes later, when the artillery fire was a little thinner, Yu Dawei was helped into the tunnel by two gendarmes and bandaged the wound by a faint candlelight. That night, the "defense minister" was bandaged around his head and carried on a plane back to Taipei.
The three lieutenant generals and deputy commanders in the floating restaurant were not so lucky. After the huge cannon sounded, the deputy commander, General Zhao Jiajun, pulled his leg and rushed to the small bridge connecting the water restaurant and the land, and his waist was hit by flying shrapnel and died; the death of the deputy commander, General Zhang Jie, was confirmed at dawn the next day. After the shelling, when General Hu Lian counted the officers, he did not see General Zhang Jie. In the early morning of the next day, some people found some fragmentary relics of General Zhang Jie near the floating restaurant, and through his orders, they confirmed that General Zhang Jie was indeed dead.
General Ji Xingwen, deputy commander of the Kinmen Defense of the Nationalist Army, was walking towards the water restaurant when he was hit by dense shrapnel, and after being sent to the hospital for surgery, the shrapnel was removed one by one, and due to excessive bleeding, a full platoon of soldiers was transferred to donate blood for him. The injury stabilized slightly, and the hospital believed that there was no major problem. Unexpectedly, There was still a tiny piece of shrapnel left in General Ji Xingwen's abdomen that was not found in time, and 3 days later, General Ji Xingwen died of peritonitis.
The Taiwan authorities later posthumously posthumously promoted General Ji Xingwen to the rank of army general of the second rank.
In order to commemorate the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the state built a memorial hall for the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression by the Lugou Bridge, and the anti-Japanese deeds of General Ji Xingwen were also displayed.