During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, during the white-knife war, the Japanese army invading China often had to withdraw the bullets first, and then began to fight the bayonet. Some may think that the Japanese spirit of Bushido is at work, but this is not the case.
This was done by the Japanese army at that time by combining its own physical, weapons and combat characteristics, and it was a helpless move under the limitations of its equipment and personnel conditions.
According to the Japanese's own statistics, after the white-knife war began, the losses caused by retaining rifle bullets were greater than the gains. The reasons for this are:
According to the characteristics of the Type 38 rifle issued by the Japanese army at that time, the projectile velocity was high, the aiming baseline was long, and the gun body was long. Such characteristics make the Type 38 rifle have a long range, accurate shooting, and are also suitable for white-knife warfare.
But it also has disadvantages, because the projectile initial speed is high, good quality, so after the hit is not very lethal, often a shot hits the body, only will cause penetrating wounds, smooth wounds, a dozen two eyes, less damage to the surrounding tissues, in terms of lethality is not as good as the Chinese army used in the formal rifle.
In white-knife warfare, this shortcoming is even more prominent, because in white-knife warfare, the personnel of both sides often overlap each other, using type 38 rifles, and often kill and injure their own people after penetration.
In addition, the three-eight-type rifle is too long, and the force distance between turning the muzzle to aim at the other party is also long, if the other party does not appear in front of the gun, the time to turn the muzzle is too long, it may be that the muzzle of the gun is not in place, and it has been stabbed down.
Because the Nationalist army did not study tactics, it always suffered losses when fighting bayonets with the Japanese army, of course, except for the Northwest Army, which was good at using large knives and was instructed by famous teachers.
The Eighth Route Army is different. Because of its poor equipment conditions, special attention is paid to tactical training.
In the later stages of the Battle of Pingxingguan, which began in 1937, there was a deadly bayonet battle between the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese army. Our 115th Division is the elite unit of the Eighth Route Army, and although the enemy's Fifth Division is said to be the elite of the Japanese army, this unit of the 21st Brigade of the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army is escorted and heavy, and it is far from being an elite division. As a result of the battle, casualties on both sides were roughly equal.
In this bayonet fighting battle, the Eighth Route Army relied on the advantage of a large number of people, often a few people to fight the devils alone, but later everyone admitted that they did not expect the devils to be so tenacious.
It should be said that the Eighth Route Army at this time inherited the glorious tradition of daring to fight close combat and night warfare in the era of the Red Army, and dared to fight bayonets, but the Kuomintang troops that fought against them in the past fled in the wilderness when they saw the blood on the bayonets, and the Japanese devils did not only have good assassination techniques, but also stubbornly resisted to the end and did not surrender.
In this white-knife battle, Yang Yong, deputy commander of the 686th Regiment of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, performed very prominently, and he rarely lost his hand, all of them were one knife at a time, clean and neat, did not drag mud and water, and stabbed a Japanese leader to death with a knife.
Of course, the level of bayonet fighting of many Eighth Route Army soldiers is still inferior to that of Yang Yong, who has learned martial arts since childhood.
Therefore, after the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Eighth Route Army paid more attention to assassination techniques.
Due to the shortage of ammunition, assassination became an important means of eliminating the enemy. Therefore, in the Eighth Route Army, assassination is the focus of training. In the seven years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression that followed, bayonet fighting became the strength of most eighth route army.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Eighth Route Army Headquarters awarded the "White Blade Fighting Hero Company" of the 1st Column, the 25th Regiment 8th Company
War is aimed at victory. Therefore, while strengthening the fighting ability, the Eighth Route Army also trained a set of quite targeted tactics on how to shoot in hand-to-hand combat. When the Japanese army and the Eighth Route Army were about to fight bayonets, the Eighth Route Army would carry out a salvo of bullets in the gun under a unified order, because the distance was close and the target was dense, it was more lethal, and the Japanese who rushed ahead were wounded or killed, which not only struck at the arrogance of the enemy, but also achieved the purpose of disrupting the enemy's formation.
Before the stab, the Eighth Route Army soldiers who still had bullets in the chamber of the gun would preemptively shoot at the legs of the Japanese soldiers, because the body had not yet been formally contacted, the Japanese soldiers could not take the opportunity to attack when shooting, and when shooting, they lowered the muzzle of the gun and shot downwards. More importantly, when the Japanese thigh was injured when fighting the bayonet, the pace would be chaotic, and the Eighth Route Army could calmly defeat Japan.
In addition, many grass-roots commanders of the Eighth Route Army would take advantage of the chaos to shoot at Japan with Mauser pistols (barge guns), and because the Eighth Route Army had a variety of tactics when fighting bayonets with Japan, it was often able to achieve considerable results.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, less than 4% of the casualties recorded by the Eighth Route Army were caused by cold weapons, and the rest were caused by guns. This shows that in the white-knife war with the Japanese army, the Eighth Route Army had the upper hand.
Here is an example of an ordinary soldier of the Eighth Route Army fighting bayonets. His name is Lü Junsheng, a native of Xingtai, Hebei Province, and he is 1.9 meters tall. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, the Eighth Route Army was stationed in the Taihang Mountains, and Lü Junsheng, who had passed the age of establishment, joined the Eighth Route Army at that time.
Lu Junsheng
Later, he followed the Eighth Route Army to Shandong. In 1938, Lü Junsheng followed the troops to participate in the battle in Xiajin, Shandong, and they repelled many enemy attacks in succession, and after running out of ammunition, Lü Junsheng shouted that everyone put on bayonets and fought with the little devils! Lü Junsheng wielded a bayonet and killed the enemy, and he single-handedly killed 27 little devils!
This shows how solid the assassination training of the Eighth Route Army was.
In 1950, Lu Junsheng attended the National Pods Meeting and was named a national combat hero. After being born, Lü Junsheng returned to his hometown from the army to recuperate, and also served as a member of the party branch of the rural brigade, and died of illness in his hometown on November 22, 1970. (Liu Jixing)