How ruthless and affectionate history is, it does not forget every contribution to history, nor does it tolerate every obstacle to history. ——Fan Wenlan
"No guns, no cannons, the enemy made us!" Guns, guns and even ammunition can be captured from the battlefield, in fact, many people may not know that there is another piece of war on the battlefield that is far more valuable than guns and ammunition, and it is difficult to capture.
This valuable trophy is the military map, during the Red Army period, As the commander of the Red 3rd Army, Mr. He once said: "Finding a map is more important than capturing 10 machine guns!" On more than one occasion, Mr. He repeatedly stressed to the officers and men the importance of captured maps.
Liu Shuai once said that a good military map is the eyes of the commander, the commander does not have to go to the place in person to know the underground, in the platoon deployment of the handy, this is the role of the map, without the map, or the map is not accurate, there is no way to fight.
The Eighth Route Army almost suffered a big loss because of the map error, that is, in 1938, the Japanese 108th Division from Handan, Hebei Province, south, to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, this 108th Division regiment was so arrogant that the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army decided to teach this Japanese army a lesson.
Compared with the Japanese army, the Eighth Route Army was backward in weapons, and it was certainly not possible to fight hard, and it was best to fight an ambush battle, but which part of the 108th Division was better to ambush? The division commander Liu Bocheng thought about it and decided to attack more than 1,000 Japanese troops stationed in Lucheng.
At that time, the Eighth Route Army also lacked the weapons to attack the stronghold, so Liu Shi commander took the encirclement point to fight for reinforcements, and then ambushed the Japanese reinforcements halfway, that is, first sent a force to pretend to attack the neighboring Licheng, and set up an ambush halfway to attack the reinforcements from Lucheng.
When choosing the location of the ambush, Liu Shi commander checked according to the map and found that ShentouLing was a good place to fight an ambush, its location was 10 kilometers outside Lucheng, and the kilometer was just below the mountain, which could be condescending to attack the enemy, and the plan was temporarily formulated and handed over to Chen Geng's 386 Brigade for implementation.
After receiving the task, Chen Geng held a meeting to discuss the specific deployment plan, in order to ensure that nothing was lost, Chen Geng also personally went to Shentou Ridge to check the terrain, and only after taking a look did he know that the actual terrain was not the same thing as the map, and the envisaged condescending terrain did not exist.
Later, the reason why it was decided to ambush the Japanese army at ShentouLing was because there was a wooden bridge not far in front of it, and once the bridge was blown up, the road for reinforcements was cut off, and finally the Shentouling ambush was victorious, annihilating more than 1,500 Japanese troops and capturing a large number of materials.
Despite the victory, it is still inevitable to make people afraid, if Chen Geng did not conduct on-site investigation, what would be the consequences? This shows that the accuracy of a map is very important, but at that time the Eighth Route Army lacked the equipment and personnel to draw maps, and the source of maps has always been very limited.
The maps captured on the battlefield were very limited, more from the Kuomintang side, but the Kuomintang had always been wary of the Eighth Route Army, and the accuracy of the maps provided was very low, and there were even many errors, so an underground agent broke into the interior of the Kuomintang army.
This person is Yao Zijian, unlike spying intelligence, Yao Zijian's main task is to provide military maps for the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, he is a native of Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, who participated in the student movement in Shanghai and was later admitted to the Nanjing Army Survey School.
In 1934, Yao Zijian graduated from the surveying and cartography class, was assigned to work in the printing and map printing department of the Nanjing Land Survey General Bureau, was developed by his fellow villagers and friends into members of our party, began to provide maps and intelligence for our army for a long time, and sent maps with extremely high machine density to the base areas.
Yao Zijian worked on the hidden front for 4 years, until 1938 to end the stealth mission, and later went to Yan'an, because of the secrecy of his work, his deeds have been little known, until recent years, Yao Zijian's legendary deeds have been exposed, Yao Zijian did not die until 2018, at the age of 103.