During the War of Resistance, Lü Zhengcao's troops were surrounded by Japanese regiments, and seeing that more and more Japanese troops were reinforcing, the crowd shouted urgently: "Commander, if you don't break through again, it will be too late!" Lu Zhengcao leisurely wiped his gun and calmly comforted the soldier: "It's not time yet, wait." ”
From 1 May 1942. In order to wipe out the organs and main forces of the Eighth Route Army's Jizhong Military Region, Okamura Ningji, commander of the Japanese army in North China, gathered 50,000 elite troops and combined heavy weapons such as aircraft, heavy artillery, and tanks to encircle and sweep the anti-Japanese base areas in Central Hebei. In order to preserve the effective anti-Japanese forces and the safety of the lives and property of the people in Jizhong Province, Lu Zhengcao, commander of the Jizhong Military Region, immediately made a decision and led more than 2,000 fighters in the headquarters to break through the multiple blockade lines of the Japanese army and approach the Ji'nan Military Region. With the help of the Ji'nan base area, the Jizhong Headquarters was stationed in Zhangshi Village in Wei County. The danger was not far away, and the base area in southern Hebei was also being swept up by the Japanese army, so the Jizhong troops seized the time to build fortifications, build fires and cooks, and greeted the coming battle. However, the changes in the battlefield were unpredictable, and first the soldiers under them rushed in and shot at the puppet army of the fish and meat people in the village of Zhangshi, causing the location of the troops to be exposed. Lü Zhengcao urgently held a combat meeting, asking the soldiers to lightly pack and simplify, quickly occupy positions, strengthen fortifications, and fight village defense battles with the Japanese and the Japanese. He also specifically instructed that the enemy was not allowed to shoot when he was not near, only rifles and grenades were allowed, light machine guns should be used in emergency hours and should not be fired in succession, and heavy weapons should be reported to the superiors. This is to deliberately show weakness, so that the enemy army cannot understand the details and dare not rush to attack. Because there had been no heavy weapons in the exchange of fire, the Japanese army arrogantly thought that only a small group of Eighth Route Army guerrillas were stationed in Zhangshi Village, so they gathered two or three hundred people and rushed to the position of the Eighth Route Army on their toes.
This is exactly what Lu Zhengcao's "trickery" is. Just as the Japanese army rushed to the position 20 meters away, the commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army attacked in groups, and a burst of rifles, grenades and light machine guns strafed, knocking down a piece at once.
The attacking Japanese army was momentarily panicked, because it was not clear how many Eighth Route Troops there were in The Village of Zhangshi, so they constantly drew troops from various strongholds to support. The Number of Japanese attacks became more and more frequent, and heavy firepower was used. Although the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army were very tenacious in their resistance, their flesh and blood could not withstand the heavy firepower of the Japanese army, and the troops suffered heavy losses. The battle continued until four o'clock in the afternoon, the number of Japanese reinforcements had reached 700, some enemies had begun to use the terrain to bite our army to death, the forward positions had been blasted open, and the Japanese and Eighth Route Army soldiers had begun to fight closely. The troops of the Eighth Route Army were instantly encircled. Seeing that their comrades-in-arms suffered heavy losses, some people could not sit still and asked Lü Zhengcao more than once to use heavy weapons, but they were all suppressed by Lü Zhengcao. The warriors did not understand, but they trusted the commander and believed that he would lead them out of their predicament. Lü Zhengcao was very distressed to see the sacrificed soldiers, but in order for the large troops to break through, he had to continue to endure. It turned out that through the exchange of fire on this day, Lü Zhengcao observed that although today's engagement was fierce, the Japanese army never sent out aircraft, and most of the Japanese troops supporting them came from the garrison units of the surrounding villages, and there was no unified senior commander to direct the battle, which showed that the Japanese army still did not know how many people there were in our army.
It was only three or four hours before dark, and the Japanese army had transferred all the surrounding troops, and it was no more than three thousand people. As soon as it gets dark, our army can take advantage of the night to break out under the cover of heavy weapons.
Sure enough, at ten o'clock in the evening, the troops were assembled, and it was planned that the troops would break through in three ways. The forward positions were deserted, with only the occasional sound of gunfire coming from the northwest. In order to cover the breakthrough of the large troops, Lü Zhengcao chose to engage the Japanese army head-on, and more than a dozen machine guns spat out tongues of fire, beating the arrogant Japanese army to the ground and holding their heads. With the help of flares released by the enemy in the panic, the troops of the Eighth Route Army successfully broke through the siege. In the battle of Zhangshi Village, our army suffered only 46 casualties, and the Japanese casualties were about 500, with a casualty ratio of 1:10. The battle was also called by the Central Military Commission as "the representative of the plains blockade war that insisted on village defense warfare." And it was Lu Zhengcao and other commanders and fighters who were calm and calm, attacked later, and used wisdom and courage to compose a heroic song of salvation and survival!