In the bloody battle of Luoyang, what is the command level of Military Commander Wu Tinglin? Japanese Army: The most capable person in the Battle of Henan
In May 1944, after the Japanese army invaded Zhengzhou, Xuchang and other places, they killed Luoyang, a major town in western Henan. At that time, Jiang Dingwen, commander of the First Theater, was stationed in Luoyang Xigong, and Wu Tinglin, commander of the 15th Army, was stationed in the area of Lüjiamiao in Northeast Township. The situation in Luoyang suddenly changed, Wu Tinglin was ordered to defend Luoyang, and the 15th Army immediately moved to the outskirts of Luoyang.
Luoyang City Drum Tower in the 1930s
With the great battle imminent, Wu Tinglin, commander of the 15th Army, set up a headquarters in the Qing Palace above the Northern Mountains of Luoyang, and Liu Xianjie, commander of the 64th Division, and Li Jiyun, commander of the 65th Division, were placed in xigong and the area of Zhuangwangshan and Qinglaizun in the area of Xigong and Zhuangzhuang and Qinglaizun. Zhang Shiguang,94th Division (Sichuan Army) of the 14th Army, which was temporarily transferred to the command of the 15th Army, was placed in the city, and each unit stepped up the construction of fortifications to prepare for the Japanese army.
On 5 May, the main Japanese army advanced to the outskirts and attacked the defenders around Guanlin, and the 15th Army launched a counterattack, and fierce fighting broke out between the two sides. In the position of the 15th Army, the various units fought with the Japanese army for days and days, but the equipment gap between the enemy and us was huge, and the defenders paid great casualties and gradually lost their strength. The Western Engineering Position held by the 64th Division was violently attacked by the Japanese army, and Wang Zhenyu, chief of staff of the division, personally went to the front line to command the operation and observed the enemy situation with a telescope, but was unexpectedly hit in the chest by a Japanese sniper, and the danger was immediate.
The Japanese army was menacing
After Chief of Staff Wang was hit, the division commander Liu Xianjie carried Chief of Staff Wang on a stretcher to the front of the commander Wu Tinglin, at this time Chief of Staff Wang was already dying, he told commander Wu that the Japanese army wanted to force the 64th Division into the city and then annihilate the whole division, so the 64th Division must not enter the city, Luoyang could not hold out, and the city would be completely destroyed. After speaking, Chief of Staff Wang died of exhaustion.
After several days of fierce fighting, the peripheral troops suffered heavy casualties, and the position could no longer be held. As a last resort, the troops had to retreat into the city, when the old city wall of Luoyang was demolished by Wei Lihuang at the beginning of the War of Resistance, so the defenders had to temporarily build a new city wall, build a pillbox on a fragile basis, and prepare to hold Luoyang. After the various units of the 15th Army entered Luoyang, the Japanese army did not attack, but sent troops to the west of Luoyang to suppress Chinese reinforcements, in an attempt to trap the 15th Army and other units in Luoyang.
On the morning of May 23, the Japanese army shouted loudly at the city of Luoyang with a loudspeaker: "General Wu Tinglin, since the imperial army entered China, it has been invincible, and no one has attacked the city for more than a week without falling." General Jin guarded Luoyang for more than ten days, fulfilled his duty of defending the territory, and also showed your military ability, General Wu was the most capable person in the Henan Campaign. But now on the outskirts of Luoyang, a hundred miles away, there are no Chinese troops, reinforcements are hopeless, and it is unwise to sit and wait. For the sake of the general, the armistice is the best policy. If they obey the order, all officials at all levels from the general level onwards will not move, and the salary will be paid accordingly, and the reply will be within twenty-four hours of this time. If they do not obey their orders, the imperial army is ready, and the siege can be broken overnight, and then the jade will be burned, and it will be too late to regret it. ”
The devils howled outside the city, and Commander Wu Tinglin ordered the devils outside the city to shout out their cannons, and the shells shot out towards the outside of the city, and the devils fled like wolves, and never came to shout again. Immediately afterward, the commander of the Japanese 12th Army, Hidetaro Uchiyama, on the pretext of protecting the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, forced the monks of the White Horse Temple to jointly send a letter of surrender to Wu Tinglin, who tore up the letter of surrender on the spot and beat the monk badly before putting it back.
White Horse Temple
Early the next morning, the angry devils began to attack the city. The trenches outside the small north gate were too deep to cross, so the Japanese army drove into the trenches first with one tank, and the second tank pressed on the first one, and the ghosts crossed the city trenches and entered the northeast sports field. Immediately afterwards, the northwest defensive line was also breached by the Japanese, and the two sides engaged in fierce street battles in the city. Dozens of Japanese artillery of various divisions launched artillery shelling on the city, and the shells fell into the city like raindrops.
In Luoyang, tens of thousands of Japanese shells fell into the city, blowing up houses and fires, and fierce street battles broke out throughout the city. Seeing that the situation was critical, the 15th Army urgently asked the commanders of the theater, Jiang Dingwen and Tang Enbo, for urgent assistance, and the telegrams were sent one after another, without stopping.
The Japanese bombed Luoyang
In the afternoon, a Japanese commando team invaded the Northwest Sports Field and engaged in a wall battle with the 64th Division's special agent company in a civilian house. The Japanese soldier raised his bayonet and poked at the side of the wall coldly, and a soldier of the 64th Division's special agent company grabbed the bayonet with his hand and pulled it down. The Japanese withdrew their bayonets, and the soldier was immediately cut off two fingers. The soldiers of the special service company fought with bayonets and bricks at the side of the broken wall, and all 30 or so ghosts were killed at the foot of the broken wall, and the bricks on the wall were so bad that the floor was covered with bloody bricks, bayonets and the corpses of soldiers on both sides.
Luoyang City was surrounded on all sides, and Wang's initial fears still appeared, and the Japanese army really wanted to trap the 15th Army in Luoyang City. The 15th Army was running out of ammunition and food, and the difficulties were increasing day by day. Under this dangerous situation, henan compatriots living in Xi'an and patriotic people in Xi'an contributed their strength to help the defenders and took the initiative to support the defense of Luoyang. Wang Xuanruo of Nandasu Village, Mengjin County, opened a Huafeng Flour Company in Xi'an, and he took the initiative to donate 300 bags of flour and 300 bags of bran. He packed flour in a bran bag and sent him to Luoyang after being searched by the Japanese army.
Japanese artillery
The streets in Luoyang are narrow and the houses are lined up one after another. The 15th Army built fortifications in the streets and houses of the city, blocking all the doors and windows of each household through the streets, digging guns in the walls and aiming them at the outside of the houses, and people hiding inside and shooting outwards. The walls of the courtyards were dug up and moved freely, and machine gun bunkers were set up on the roofs to shoot and drop bombs into the streets. The Japanese organized an attack, spearheaded by tanks, followed by infantry and advancing towards Cross Street. The officers and men of the 15th Army resisted, and after the bullets were finished, they removed the bricks and smashed them at the devils.
The fierce battle lasted for more than two weeks, and the western and northern gates of Luoyang City were broken by the Japanese army, and the northeast sports field and the northwest sports field were also rushed by the Japanese army. Ghost tanks destroyed the defenders' forts inside Cross Street, and the Japanese army poured into the city. At this time, Luoyang was unable to hold on, and the commander Wu Tinglin had to order a breakthrough, and on May 24, he climbed over the temporary city wall and came to the edge of the moat.
Chinese soldiers
At that time, the trench dug deep in Luoyang City was more than one inch, and the cliffs and cliffs formed an insurmountable chasm, and the side of the chasm was a wall that was more than a zhang high. The trenches and walls played a role in blocking the Japanese, which was why Luoyang was able to hold out for more than two weeks. But now that the defenders have broken through, the high wall of the chasm has become an obstacle. The soldiers hurriedly took a ladder, stacked arhats, untied leggings, and twisted ropes to send the general Wu Tinglin out of the trench. In this way, the crowd left the city and moved to the mountains behind the enemy in the northeast of Luoyang.
After the 15th Army broke through, the main force of the devils entered the city, and Luoyang fell. The Japanese drove the defenders who had time to break through to the Catholic Church at Luoyang East Railway Station. The devils imprisoned them in the church, where they were not fed or drunk for several days, and the hot weather made the people thirsty. The Japanese placed two large baskets in the courtyard and ordered the captured people to take out the watches, gold pens, gold rings and banknotes they were wearing and put them in the big baskets.
Captured
The next day, the Japanese tied the captives together with long ropes, and each string of fifty people was lined up in a large line. The Japanese took the captives into a large pit near Dongguan Railway Street, where the devils set up crane machine guns around the pit and aimed them at the unarmed captives. The devils prepared to slaughter all these captives, and more than 3,000 people were captured at that time. The captured personnel knew that the Japanese were about to go on a killing spree, so none of them spoke, but just stared at the sky in a daze, waiting for the machine guns to sound.
At noon, a Japanese officer with glasses came to the scene, and the ghost officer walked into the courtyard where the Japanese army was standing guard. Half an hour later, the Japanese officer came out of the courtyard, and he ordered that all the machine guns around him be removed, and the Japanese troops also withdraw at the same time, and all the captured personnel were returned to the catholic compound. After the captured men were returned to the Catholic Church, members of the 14th and 15th Armies were held separately and began to be distributed vegetables and fruits. This experience was recorded by Yang Youqing, a platoon commander of the cavalry company of the 64th Division, when he was captured during the breakout and finally escaped from the Catholic Church over the wall.
Why didn't the Japanese officers execute the captured officers at that time? Yang Youqing said that it is rumored that this Japanese officer had gone to Luoyang to study in his early years, and was rescued by the local people when he encountered a flash flood in Mount Yao, and that the Japanese officer was a senior staff officer of the Japanese army. In the end, except for those who escaped halfway, most of these personnel were escorted to Nanjing and handed over to the Wang puppet regime to take over.
Ghost soldiers who invaded the city
Soon after, Wu Tinglin broke through and led his troops to Lushi and met with Jiang Dingwen, commander of the First Theater. Jiang Dingwen gathered all the soldiers of the 15th Army to rest in Lushi, and then held a summary meeting of the Luoyang operation in Lushi. At the meeting, Jiang Dingwen said: The 15th Army has made great contributions to the defense of Luoyang and made contributions to the country and the nation, and all officers and men should be respected by all the people. I, Jiang Dingwen, am guilty, I am sorry to the state, I am sorry to Chairman Jiang, and I should be punished.
In the defense of Luoyang, Wu Tinglin led the 15th Army and the 94th Division of the 14th Army of the Sichuan Army, a total of more than 18,000 people, and fought a bloody battle against 50,000 Japanese troops without external reinforcements. The defensive battle of Luoyang lasted for 21 days from May 5 to 25, killing and wounding more than 20,000 Japanese troops. After Wu Tinglin broke through to the Lu clan, the entire army of more than 18,000 people was left with only 316 officers and 1,795 soldiers. The Defense of Luoyang became the longest-lasting battle in the entire Henan Campaign, killing and wounding the most Japanese troops.
Japanese melon grenades
Regardless of the success or failure of the hero, we do not care about the future situation of Wu Tinglin being captured and executed, his military command level is obvious to all in this battle alone, and even the Japanese army has to admit this.