"Garden Mouth Breach",
The Great Fire of Wenxi
and the "Great Tunnel Massacre", and called the three major tragedies of the War of Resistance. In addition to the "Great Tunnel Massacre", the other two incidents were caused by the Kuomintang
acts planned on the initiative for military purposes,
However, it has had tragic consequences.
Among them, the "Huayuankou Dike" incident caused the most serious disasters, due to the flooding of the Yellow River, the floods affected the three provinces of Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu, causing the displacement of nearly 900,000 Chinese people, and this tragic case has always been very high in the attention of the people.
Everyone knows that Chiang Kai-shek blew up the garden mouth, causing the displacement of the people. However, the losses of the Japanese side are rarely mentioned.
When it comes to this aspect, there is often a lot of controversy on the Internet.
Some say the action drowned 1,000 Japanese troops, while others drowned 10,000.
In addition, the "Wenxi Fire", which also occurred in 1938. Afterwards, Chiang Kai-shek's protégé was upset and was involved in the case. But
Xiong Xianyu, the executor of the order to break the embankment in the "Garden Mouth Breach" incident, had a surprising ending.
Next, we are divided into two parts to talk about the impact of the Japanese army in the breach of the dike, and the actual executioner of the breach, Xiong Xianyu.
I. How many Japanese troops drowned in the "Garden Mouth Breach"?
The "Garden Mouth Breach" incident caused a disaster with serious consequences, so it received a lot of negative evaluations. At the same time, this incident did not achieve the purpose of delaying the Japanese attack on Wuhan. A few months after the incident, the Battle of Wuhan broke out.
Whenever people mention the "Garden Mouth Breach", they will emphasize that the number of people affected at that time was close to 900,000 people, and the losses of the Japanese army were very small. Some say that only 1,000 Japanese troops died at the time of the flooding of the Yellow River.
However, consult
Japanese Defense Agency's own material - "Chinese Troops Dig Up River Embankments"
, which mentions:
The Death Toll of the Japanese Second Army reached 7,452 in this Yellow River breach.
On May 19, 1938, after the end of the Battle of Xuzhou, the 14th Division of the Japanese Second Army, Toihara, moved south from the Heze area. By June 6 and June 7, 1938, the area around Kaifeng and Zhongmu had been captured.
On June 9, 1938, the Kuomintang troops dug open the garden mouth, and after the Yellow River flooded, the area around Zhongmu, where the 14th Division of Tufeiyuan was located, was surrounded by the water of the Yellow River and became the hardest hit area.
In addition to the 14th Division of Tufeiyuan, some of the personnel of the 16th Division of the Japanese Second Army were also trapped in the waters of the Yellow River.
Associated Press reporters preemptively reported on the news that in the area west of White Sands, Toihara's troops lost 700 people.
Other than that
The Japanese also had a cavalry
At that time, it had ventured into the vicinity of the new town, and the result was flooding,
Annihilated.
Because of the flooding of the Yellow River, in the flooded weishi, Tongxu, Chenliu, Kaifeng and other areas, the local Japanese army and their armored equipment were flooded.
To the west of Zhongmu, a Japanese brigade was trapped by floodwaters, and a company was completely annihilated. A total of 2,000 Japanese troops near The Wei clan were wiped out.
To rescue the members of the Japanese 14th and 16th Divisions trapped by floods, the Japanese Second Army sent four squadrons of engineers, two independent engineering companies and three bridge squadrons.
At the same time, there was a river crossing team, 40 folding boats, and large transport aircraft and bombers to the Yellow Pan Area. Under the cover of bomber artillery fire, a total of 61.5 tons of relief supplies were dropped into the trapped areas of the Japanese army.
It was not until June 23, 1938, that the 14th Division of Toihara successfully retreated to the vicinity of Kaifeng. The 16th Division was completely out of danger around July 7, 1938. From this point of view, it cannot be said that this flooding operation has not had any effect at all.
In fact, it's still to some extent
Delayed the Japanese attack.
However, the results of this operation are completely incomparable to the disasters suffered by the people of Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces as a result of the flooding of the Yellow River.
Second, the executor of the "Garden Mouth Breach" - Xiong Xianyu
The "Garden Mouth Breach" incident occurred on June 9, 1938,
Xiong Xianyu, then chief of staff of the 275th Division of the Kuomintang 49th Army, was the actual executor of the excavation of the Yellow River.
However, he was not dealt with afterwards.
As we mentioned earlier, the "Wenxi Fire" also occurred in this year. On November 13, 1938, after the "Wenxi Fire" incident, Chiang Kai-shek, in order to calm the anger of the public, shot and killed his own cronies.
Then, the consequences of the "Garden Mouth Breach" incident are far more serious than the "Wenxi Fire", why is no one responsible for it?
First of all, the "Garden Mouth Breach" is made up of
Chiang Kai-shek personally ordered the execution, and Xiong Xuanyu was only the executor
。 Secondly, at the time of the incident, within the Kuomintang army, from top to bottom, it was believed that the opening of the garden mouth was to save the nation from danger, and it was a last resort.
"Water attack" was originally a common combat strategy in the Chinese art of war.
At that time, the vanguard of the Japanese army was close to Zhengzhou, and the military strength of China and Japan was very different.
In order to block the enemy's advance, Chiang Kai-shek decided to use "water attack." In addition to "substituting water for troops and preventing the enemy from advancing westward," it also tried to sabotage the economy of the Japanese-occupied areas and prevent the enemy from feeding the war with war.
The situation of the Wenxi fire was slightly different, it was mainly a fire when it was retreating. In the eyes of ordinary people, it seems to be purely for the purpose of "sabotage".
Finally, because of the lesson of "Garden Mouth Breach","
”
When Chiang Kai-shek learned to be "smart.". He did not directly order the fire,
Instead, he successfully found a "back pot man".
The actual executor of the "Garden Mouth Breach" was Xiong Xianyu of the 275th Division of the Kuomintang 49th Army. Originally, the Kuomintang sent the troops of the Thirty-ninth Army to dig the garden mouth, but the digging did not dig for two days, and finally let Xiong Xianyu's division carry out it.
After Xiong Xianyu went to the scene to investigate, he proposed to dig up the embankment around the Guandi Temple so that the yellow river would flow southeast along the Jiaxi River. The purpose was to flood the areas around Zhongmu, Weishi, and Fugou where the Japanese 14th Division was located, and finally flow into the Huai River.
Because it involves hydrological issues and the stakes are high, when Xiong Xianyu asked the attaché around him for their opinions, everyone said in unison:
"You're a senior command staff officer, and I'm just going to do what I want."
In the end, everyone still did it according to Xiong Xianyu's method.
finale
What is more interesting in the whole "Garden Mouth Breach" incident is that
As the actual executor of the "Garden Mouth Breach" incident, Xiong Xianyu was actually only 25 years old at the time
, not yet married.
The attaché around Xiong Xianyu did not know the age of the people, and they could not give advice when encountering major events, and only wanted to shirk their responsibilities. On the surface, the division commander "encouraged" Xiong Xianyu, saying that he could make plans for the common people before the embankment broke, that he had done a great thing, and that he would definitely marry a good daughter-in-law in the future.
afterward
Xiong Xianyu wrote in his diary
：
Sure enough, he later married the third daughter of General Tong Linge.
On October 28, 1949, Xiong Xianyu revolted in Jinsha County. After the founding of New China, he entered the Guizhou Military Region as a general counselor.
After changing careers, Xiong Xianyu entered the Chongqing CPPCC and wrote a large number of memoirs based on his own experience in his later years. The battlefield diary written by Xiong Xianyu in those years has also become a valuable material for us to study that era today.