In the War of Resistance Against Japan, some battles were originally just a simple ambush, but in the end there were unexpected gains. Our army's killing of Japanese lieutenant general Abe Norihide Abe at Loess Ridge was such a battle. According to Li Erxi, who killed Abe with a cannon, they just wanted to fight an ambush. It was only after 13 days that I learned from Japanese newspapers that it was such a big figure as the Japanese army that was killed. So what was the scene like?
On November 3, 1939, the troops of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region of the Eighth Route Army collected their weapons and quickly withdrew after eliminating 500 people in Yansuya, Hebei Province. Originally, ambushing the Japanese army was like going downstairs to get a courier, which was a daily routine. However, this time, a general of the Japanese army was very angry. This is the commander of Lieutenant General Norihide Abe, who is known in Japan as the "Flower of Famous Generals".
In order to retaliate against our Eighth Route Army, Abe Norihide led 1500 Japanese troops and began to trouble our army. In fact, at this time, our army did not know who was coming. Just seeing that the Japanese army was coming menacingly, Yang Chengwu of our army began to adopt the method of luring the enemy to go deeper. Sure enough, the Japanese army, eager to retaliate, was hooked. In the area around loess ridge, our army laid out an ambush.
On November 7, the Japanese army was stationed in loess ridge, an ambush circle of our army. At 4 p.m., Chen Zhengxiang, the leader of the 1st Regiment, and Wang Daobang, the political commissar, used binoculars to observe that a small courtyard in the village was a little unusual. In this courtyard, the Japanese army came in and out, and it seemed that this was the headquarters of the Japanese army. Therefore, Chen Zhengxiang found company commander Yang Jiuping and mortar gunner Li Erxi. According to Li Erxi's recollection, he fired two shells at the distance estimated by the company commander, blowing up the courtyard, and then shooting the only two remaining shells into the courtyard.
Later, according to the memoirs written by Yang Chengwu, the Japanese commander was blown down, and even the wolf dogs were killed, and not a single piece of shrapnel flew into the hut. None of the people locked up in the hut were injured, and the crowd was secretly amazed: the true god of the Eighth Route Army's artillery! Our army just thought that it had blown up the enemy headquarters, so we launched an attack on the Japanese army step by step. Since the Japanese army had no main general, the command post was also closed. The battle was fought due to the confusion of japanese command and the ambush, and soon our army settled the battle. In this battle, nine hundred Japanese troops were wiped out. Subsequently, Yang Chengwu led the Eighth Route Army out of the battle with a large amount of captured materials. The Japanese troops who came to the rescue also pounced.
How did Lieutenant General Norihide Abe discover the killing of the Japanese army? In fact, in the beginning, the Japanese military still wanted to keep this secret. But thirteen days later, on November 20, a Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, published an article titled "The Flowers of famous generals wither on mount Taihang." At this time, Marshal Nie Rongzhen of our army learned that he had killed a lieutenant general of the Japanese army.
For this reason, Marshal Nie Rongzhen personally rewarded the gunner Li Erxi with a pistol. He also happily said to Li Erxi: "Whoever moves you, you will hit him!" "Abe Norihide was the highest-ranking general killed in the entire War of Resistance Against Japan. And the process of killing this general was so dramatic. In 2010, Li Erxi said something even more thrilling during the interview: After Abe Washu was killed, the Japanese army instructed agents to infiltrate the vicinity of the troops in an attempt to retaliate against him, but without success.