When it comes to the Shentouling Ambush Battle in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it is familiar among military history enthusiasts, and it has even been performed many times in film and television dramas. For example, the TV series "Eighth Route Army," "Marshal Liu Bocheng," "General Chen Geng," and "Eastern Battlefield" all depicted the process of the shentouling ambush and praised Liu Bocheng, Chen Geng, and other generals of our army who had a strategic mind and commanded like a god.
The main reason why the ShentouLing Ambush is so famous is that it is indeed a legendary battle. In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army invaded North China on a large scale, and due to the huge gap in national strength between the two sides, the Japanese army had a great advantage in the battlefield. Although the Eighth Route Army was reorganized from the main force of the Red Army, which had experienced hundreds of battles, and the quality of the armed personnel was relatively high, after all, the weapons and equipment were inferior, and they lacked ammunition, and they could not fight with the powerful Japanese army, so they had to avoid the enemy's front and adopt the operational policy of mainly mobile guerrilla warfare. The ShentouLing ambush was taking place against such a historical background.
In February 1938, the Japanese North China Front Regiment dispatched more than 30,000 troops from 5 divisions and one regiment each to launch a sweeping attack along the road and railway lines to jinnan and western Jin. The Kuomintang army in the Second Theater could not defeat its front, so it could only fight and retreat, and move to the Yellow River. At the behest of the Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, Liu Bocheng commanded the troops of the 129th Division to carry out active mountain guerrilla warfare in southern Jinnan, attacking and depleting the Japanese army, destroying the enemy's rear supply line, and cooperating with the combat operations of the 115th Division of the brother force in western Jinxi.
According to the reconnaissance information obtained by the Japanese army on the handan-Chang Highway, Liu Bocheng was determined to seize the enemy of Lucheng and Licheng, who were stationed at about 4,000 troops, pretend to attack one place, encircle the points for assistance, actively seek fighters, and annihilate the enemy. Accordingly, he commanded Chen Xilian's 385th Brigade to launch a diversionary attack on Licheng, inducing the enemy of Lucheng to come to the rescue. At the same time, Chen Gengzhi's 386th Brigade set up an ambush in the Shentou Village area on the road between Licheng and Lucheng to intercept the enemy who came to reinforce and fight an ambush battle.
Many military history books describe that Brigadier Chen Geng was not at ease with the old maps provided by friendly troops, and personally went to Shentou Village to investigate the terrain on the spot, and found that the difference between the two was very large, and it was necessary to deploy troops according to the calibration on the map, and it had been discovered before the Japanese army was hit. Therefore, Chen Geng exerted his military wisdom of impermanence and change due to the enemy, and ordered the troops to still set up ambushes in the Shentou Village area, making full use of the abandoned fortifications to hide themselves, so that the area that appeared to be impossible to ambush became a trap for hiding elite soldiers.
However, looking at the biography of Marshal Liu Bocheng, it is recorded that Liu Shuai also went to Shentou Village to see the terrain, expressed similar views as above, and guided the combat deployment. So who actually surveyed and determined the deployment of the ShentouLing ambush? In fact, Liu Bocheng, Chen Geng, Li Da, and others went to Shentouling together, and they personally surveyed and conducted research before making the ambush deployment that everyone later knew about.
Now that the plan has been decided, the outcome of this battle can also be expected. On March 16, 1938, the 386th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army successfully ambushed and won a great victory at Shentouling in one fell swoop, annihilating each of the two divisions of the Japanese army that came to the aid of Lucheng, destroying more than 100 enemy trucks, annihilating more than 1,500 enemy personnel, capturing hundreds of weapons and hundreds of mules and horses, and dealing a heavy blow to the enemy.
Judging from the historical materials disclosed by the Japanese army after the war, the losses were not as large as those announced by the Eighth Route Army, but they could not be regarded as small. In total, 447 casualties were inflicted in the battle, equivalent to 2 infantry squadrons, of which 407 were killed or missing, and only 7 escaped uninjured (including a reporter accompanying the army). The Shentouling ambush shocked the Japanese army very much, and sighed: "The flexible tactics of the Eighth Route Army are really difficult to figure out! ”