After the Lugou Bridge Incident, Tong Linge served as the deputy commander of the 29th Army and the head of the Military Training Regiment, and led about 20,000 people, including the 29th Army Guard Brigade, the First Division of the Ninth Cavalry Division, the Military Training Regiment and the Pingjin University Student Military Training Class, to garrison Nanyuan. At that time, the general realized that the Sino-Japanese war was inevitable, so he ordered his subordinates to make preparations early, and said at the mobilization meeting: "When the Japanese invade, our army will bear the brunt of it." The dead of war are glorious, and those who steal the living are humiliated; honor and disgrace are lighter than those of one person, but those who are tied to the country and the nation are heavy. The country is in many difficulties, and soldiers should wrap their bodies in Ma Ge and repay the country with their deaths. ”
Subsequently, General Tong issued an order to all the officers and men of the army in the name of the military department: Wherever the Japanese army invades, resolutely resist, vow to coexist and die with the Lugou Bridge, and not to take a step back. At 4:00 a.m. on July 28, 1937, the Japanese army dispatched heavy troops to launch a fierce attack on Nanyuan with the cooperation of armored vehicles and aircraft, and Tong Linge led his troops to resist. Due to the betrayal of the traitors, the Japanese army learned of the deployment map of the Nationalist army in advance, so Tong Bu soon fell into passivity. At about 2 p.m., the Nationalists lost most of the battle, and Tong Linge was also wounded in the battle.
The aide-de-camp Gao Hongxi wanted to send him back to Beiping City for medical treatment, but Tong Linge refused. He said loudly: "So many students are still here, what should they do when I leave!" Personal safety is small, and the resistance to the enemy is big" Soon after, Tong Linge received a retreat order, and when passing through the area of Dahongmen, he encountered the Japanese army and unfortunately died in battle, at the age of 45. At that time, it was only known that the general was killed in the area of Dahongmen, but the specific location was not clear. It was not until 68 years later, when an old man named Qiao Delin was a guest on a CCTV interview program, that he revealed the location and details of the sacrifice of General Tong Linge.
Qiao Delin was living in Nanyuanshi Village, Fengtai District, when he was only 13 years old. According to his recollection, the Japanese had set up an ambush in the village, and two of the machine guns were mounted on the roof of his house. Therefore, when General Tong Linge led some of the retreating student soldiers through shicun, the Japanese who were ambushed here suddenly opened fire, and the Japanese machine guns first hit General Tong's jujube red horse, and Tong Linge ran on foot with the soldiers to the next crop field, hoping to break out of the siege with the cover of the green gauze tent.
But the Japanese machine guns were fiercely fired, and the shell shells kept rolling down the ridge, and the crops were quickly interrupted. The old man recalled the scene with a very vivid adjective, saying that the crops were beaten like "shaving their heads". General Tong Linge and his soldiers, who had lost the cover of the green yarn tent, were completely exposed to Japanese fire, and General Tong was shot in the head and killed on the spot. Aide-de-camp Ko Hong-seok risked his life to carry the general's body to the yam rack of Jodlin's house.
Qiao Delin said that at that time, everyone did not know that the general was Tong Linge. He only remembered that the general was wearing a bright dangling necklace around his neck, and there was a goon in the village named Li, known as "Ma Tou", who thought it was a gold necklace, so he ran to the yam rack and reached out and pulled this thing out of the general's arms, only to see that it was a pocket watch. This act of "Ma Tou" was strongly prevented by Gao Hongxi. It was this pocket watch that confirmed the identity of General Tong.
For safety reasons, Gao Hongxi hid the valuable things on Tong Linge's body--a camera, gold chain, and pocket watch--in his arms, and ran to Beiping City to find Zhang Zizhong and Feng An, who were acting as Song Zheyuan's military affairs at the time, saying that Commander Tong had died, and you must quickly find a way to get the body back no matter what. Zhang Zizhong sent a Japanese translator with a Red Cross car and went out of the city to pull back General Tong's body. When Gao Hongxi handed General Tong's relics to his wife, Lady Tong could not withstand this huge blow and fainted on the spot.
In order to avoid the general's body being found by the Japanese, the Tong family hid the coffin in the Berlin Temple near the Lama Temple, and later in order to better preserve the loyal bones, Mr. Wang Shenzhi, who had followed Tong Linge for ten years, obtained the consent of the Tong Mansion, rented a piece of land in the Berlin Temple, buried the coffin on the spot, did not raise a grave, but built a flower pond on it as a cover, in this way, Tong Linge's coffin was in berlin temple, and it was stopped for eight years. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist government held a grand state funeral for General Tong Linge, and tens of thousands of people spontaneously came to see him off, and the scene was very touching.