In the history of world wars, the history of cavalry is very old. It has been used until modern times. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, both the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army formed cavalry units to fight against the Japanese.
In August 1941, Peng Xuefeng, a famous general who was then the commander of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army, established a cavalry unit in Hongze County, Jiangsu Province.
In peng Xuefeng's words, it is also necessary to form a cavalry regiment to save money and use it. A few months ago, the battle of the Fourth Division in the west of Jinpu Road was so tragic that 5,000 soldiers of the New Fourth Army died under the sabers of the Majia Army in Qinghai. Not only must this vendetta be repaid, but the devils must also be dealt with with by cavalry.
Cavalry must be equipped with sabers and muskets, as well as saddles, stirrups, horse bridles, and other items. At the beginning of the fourth division's cavalry regiment, it appeared to be "earthy" and shabby, and all kinds of equipment were extremely scarce. For example, the saddles that were captured or collected were varied, including wood, leather, iron, and even broken sacks as saddles.
Not to mention the precious sabre, most cavalry warriors did not have a saber available. The standard of a small number of sabers is also very mixed, such as the Caucasus and Northeast military styles of the Soviet Army, as well as the captured Majia military style and the Japanese sabre. It is almost possible to form an "eight-power alliance".
How to equip a unified number of sabers was the primary problem of the cavalry regiment. This caused a headache for the division commander Peng Xuefeng and the cavalry regiment commanders Li Tongxin and Zhou Chunlin. The task of building the saber has been given to the regimental supply department, and the supply department has also made difficulties, where to find so much steel? Due to the tight sealing of the Japanese army, there were no batches of steel available in the anti-Japanese base areas.
In the winter of 1941, when the head of the Huaibei Administrative Office mobilized the masses to think of a way, he got good news: when the national government office in Jiangba Town, Wuwei County, withdrew, it sank a batch of steel products used to control the Huai River in the river.
This serendipity made Peng Xuefeng and the soldiers of the cavalry regiment very happy, and Zhou Chunlin and Li Zuozhou, the chief of the supply department, immediately took a company of soldiers and rushed to the section of Jiangba Town in the face of the wind and snow. Zhou Chunlin said that don't say the river, even the sword mountain and the sea of fire must also break through, and the steel must be fished out.
When we went to the scene, we found that the salvage work was more difficult than expected. The river is cold and deep. Fortunately, Wuwei County sent a group of militiamen with sampans to help. They are very watery and take the lead in the water. Take a sip of the spirit, take off your cotton coat, and then swoop down. The soldiers of the New Fourth Army also went down into the river in the same way.
The people who launched the water tied a rope around their waists, and once they touched the steel, they tied it with a rope and let the people on the boat carry it up.
When fishing for steel here, Peng Xuefeng was studying the style of the new sabre at the division headquarters and among the connoisseurs in the army, and drew several patterns. After careful consideration, they drew a unique style, slightly longer than the Japanese sabre, with a thinner back and a hand guard. This is the "snow maple knife" that later became famous on the battlefield.
There were more than a hundred people salvaging steel, and they couldn't see anything in the water, so they all relied on a pair of hands to touch the bottom of the water, and it took two days to salvage the steel that could be touched in the nearby riverbed. Transported to the division headquarters for weighing, everyone frowned and smiled, a total of more than 6,000 pounds.
Peng Xuefeng was overjoyed and quickly sent someone to look for a blacksmith within a radius of more than a dozen miles, which was not the work of one or two people. I heard that the saber was made to fight the devil, and soon twelve skilled craftsmen came to the night of the stars.
Peng Xuefeng told the blacksmiths that the division headquarters did not have cash to reward everyone, so they gave everyone a horse as a reward. When the craftsmen heard this, they all shook their heads in refusal, saying that we did not want to be paid. Peng Xuefeng firmly said: If you don't want horses, we will ask Gao Ming. The craftsmen had no choice but to accept it.
Then Peng Xuefeng personally explained the drawings to the craftsmen, requiring that the saber must be sharp, and one knife can cut two copper plates into four pieces, and the blade is intact to be qualified. The craftsmen patted their chests to ensure that there was no problem.
More than twenty days later, on the day of the Lantern Festival in 1942, 800 shiny sabers were all built, and each cavalry warrior was equipped with a "snow maple knife".
After the rehearsal, the cavalry regiment was satisfied with this new saber, which was both light and dexterous and sharp. A few months later, the heavily trained Cavalry Regiment of the New Fourth Army ushered in the first real battle in northern Jiangsu.
One day in the middle of summer, a cavalry regiment of the New Fourth Army was ordered to assemble near Shajiaji on the shore of Hongze Lake. Not long after, a unit of Japanese troops and puppet armies went to Shajia as usual to collect grain. At the beginning of the operation, with the sound of a military trumpet, hundreds of cavalry regiment soldiers galloped out on horseback to encircle the enemy army.
The Japanese puppet army was caught off guard, and the battle took only 9 minutes, and 300 enemy heads were moved. The dozens of enemies remaining were all so frightened that they fell to their knees and surrendered. After the war, more than 200 ghost soldiers were killed in this battle. Basically completely annihilated the grain snatching team.
The cavalry regiment of the Fourth Division was distinguished in the anti-Japanese battlefield. Later, in October 1944, the cavalry regiment encountered the old enemy Qinghai Majia Army, and fought 2,000 Qinghai horse bandits with 600 people, and won a complete victory. Finally revenge.
Reference: Biography of Peng Xuefeng