In the fierce anti-Japanese struggle behind enemy lines in South China, compared with the Japanese puppet army, the people's anti-Japanese guerrillas had a huge disparity in strength and firepower, and most of the combat opportunities were carefully chosen, mainly using tactics such as sneak attacks and surprise attacks, changing the situation of the two warring sides in a short period of time, changing from passive to active, from inferiority to superiority, and seizing the final victory in the battle.
However, there are also examples of guerrillas who were secretly attacked by the enemy, passively responded to the battle, but turned the crisis into an opportunity through a bloody battle, and finally aimed at the opportunity, decisively counterattacked and won the battle, and the Meitang Counterattack Battle, which occurred in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, on May 8, 1944, was such a battle.
Veteran Yin Zhusen recalls the combat experience of that year
01 On the occasion of the rectification training, it was suddenly attacked
On December 2, 1943, the Dongjiang Column of the Guangdong People's Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Force was officially established. The formation of the column greatly encouraged the people's anti-Japanese armed forces, and the morale of the fraternal units was high, and they often took the initiative to attack along the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, and successively won victories in battles such as Huangcun, Xiaobian, Shitan, Huanghukeng, Iron Field, and Mushroom House.
In early May 1944, the Japanese army detected the news that the main force of the Dongjiang Column was assembled in the Meitang area of Dongguan, and believed that the time had come to eliminate the column, and decided to adopt the long-distance attack method of warfare.
On the night of May 7, more than 500 people from three squadrons of the Japanese Kato Brigade, an artillery detachment, and a plainclothes short gun team set off from Camphor Wood, more than 20 kilometers away from Meitang, and secretly sneaked down a path to the village of Longmitian in Meitang.
Since Longmida Village is a relatively large village, there are open rice fields to the west and north, Pig Liver Mountain to the east, Elephant Mountain to the northeast, and Mashan Mountain to the south.
In order to enhance the military combat skills of the officers and men of the troops, the Dongjiang Column set up a temporary command center in the Meitang area, which was composed of Liang Hongjun, commander of the Guangdong People's Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Corps, Wang Zuoyao, deputy commander and chief of staff of the column, and Yang Kanghua, director of the Political Department.
The Temporary Headquarters and the 3rd Brigade were stationed in Longmitian Village, and the 5th Brigade and the Dongguan Brigade were stationed in nearby villages. There are more than 700 guerrillas and militias in the Meitang area.
At dawn on 8 May, the Japanese vanguard squadron secretly sneaked to the right wing of Ryūmi Tamura in an attempt to encircle Ryūmita in a roundabout motion to the left.
At this time, the 3rd Brigade was organizing morning exercises in the barn field. Wang Zuoyao and Wu Qiang, the leader of the 3rd Brigade, found in the morning fog the Japanese puppet army that was secretly sneaking, wearing steel helmets and yellow clothes, and the brigade's men and horses were groping in the direction of Mashan.
Wang Zuoyao and Wu Qiang judged that it might be a sneak attack by the Japanese army, and immediately ordered the troops who were out of the morning exercise to quickly enter the preparations for battle, and ordered the independent squadron of the 3rd Brigade to quickly seize the commanding heights of Mashan, hold the position and block the advance of the Japanese army, so as to buy time for the temporary headquarters and the mass transfer.
02 Carefully deployed Blood War Horse Mountain
Masan is the main commanding height of Ryumita and nearby villages, and the decisive factor in whether or not the battle can be won is to seize the commanding heights of Masan.
The 2nd Squad of the Independent Squadron, led by Captain Li Hanwei and Political Commissar Li Zhong, seized the main peak position of Mashanwei, while at the same time, the 1st Squad was ordered to seize the forward position of Mashantou.
The 32nd man of the 1st Squad, led by the squad leader, rushed from the left wing to the top of MaShantou, about 150 meters, and quickly built fortifications to prepare to meet the enemy.
At this time, the Japanese army also charged from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain, only 30 meters from the top of Mount Ma. The 1st Squad immediately opened fire on the enemy fiercely, and a string of light machine guns and rifle bullets pounced on the Japanese army like a fire snake, plus grenades also exploded above the Japanese troops' heads, and the Japanese soldiers were killed and wounded, and the living rolling belt climbed quickly back to the bottom of the hill.
Taking advantage of the gap between battles, the 1st Squad quickly adjusted its strength and firepower deployment, forming a "pin" glyph defense at the top of the mountain.
At this time, the Japanese troops launched a fierce attack on the top of the mountain from the southeast, northeast, and due north in three ways, during which the dense 92-step artillery and grenadier shells exploded on the top of the mountain, and heavy machine guns also fired non-stop at the top of the mountain; the gunfire on the position was deafening, the sand and rocks flew, the branches around the position were blown off, the thatch was ignited, and the rocks were blown over; the loess of the hilltop position was lifted up layer by layer by shell, leaving only a bare patch.
The 1st Squad faced 10 times as many Japanese troops, fearlessly and bravely returned fire: when the Japanese shelled, the guerrillas hid under the rocks to hide; when the Japanese attacked the position and the shelling stopped, the guerrillas jumped out of the rocks, concentrated their firepower, and repelled the Japanese attack again and again.
By noon, the 1st Squad had repelled six consecutive Japanese chargebacks of hundreds of men, and the hillside was littered with japanese corpses.
The dongjiang column guerrillas are test firing captured heavy machine guns
At the same time, the 2nd Squad rushed to the main peak of Mount Ma, echoing the 1st Squad and blocking the Japanese army. After that, due to the outnumbered and excessive casualties, the 1st Squad was forced to abandon the Mashantou position and withdraw to the main peak of Mashanwei and the 2nd Squad to join forces and continue to attack the Japanese army from a commanding position.
The independent squadron, in the case of absolute inferiority in strength and firepower, was heroic and tenacious, held the Mashan position for several hours, took advantage of the favorable areas, made it impossible for the Japanese army to deploy, successfully suppressed the enemy in the valley, covered the temporary command and the safe transfer of the masses, and won valuable time for the main force to assemble.
In the course of the battle, the independent squadron paid a huge price, the political commissar Li Zhong was martyred, the squadron leader was wounded, and the 1st squad except for 6 wounded, the rest of the rest were all heroically sacrificed. In order to commemorate this battle, the independent squadron was renamed "Pegasus Squadron".
When the battle for Masan was fierce, the 5th Brigade stationed in Nagayamaguchi Village heard fierce gunfire in the direction of Ryūmida Village, and the captain of the brigade, Peng Wo, judging from the gunfire that it was a Japanese sneak attack, immediately deployed without receiving orders from his superiors: the 3rd Squadron occupied Inohei Mountain, cut off the enemy's retreat, and the 2nd Squadron monitored the east. This deployment created the conditions for the subsequent counterattack of the Japanese army.
03 Decisive counterattack to win
After the Japanese occupied the forward position of Mashantou, the offensive gradually weakened. Since the vanguard troops were almost completely lost at Masan, the follow-up troops were suppressed in the valley and could not be deployed, so they had to slowly shrink their forces and prepare to retreat.
When the Temporary Command noticed this sign, it decisively adjusted its deployment to surround the enemy and launch an attack:
The Dongguan Brigade was placed in a frontal pursuit, and the 1st and 2nd Squadrons and the 5th Brigade of the 3rd Brigade were surrounded from the north and east of the village of Longmida, respectively, and the militia of the nearby villages also took the initiative to participate in the battle. They carried the earthen cannons to the positions so that the enemy could also taste the shells. The rumbling of artillery trumpeted the prestige of the guerrillas, and the nearby masses also spontaneously organized the transport of the wounded and brought water and food to the guerrillas, which greatly boosted morale!
In the afternoon, more than 700 guerrillas and militiamen formed a half-moon encirclement from the east, west and south sides, trapping the Japanese army in the open field north of Mount Ma.
The Japanese army organized many charges in an attempt to seize the new commanding heights nearby and cover the retreat, but the guerrillas suppressed the fire from above, and the Japanese army could not advance, retreat, and was overwhelmed.
In the evening, the Japanese twice released smoke bombs in an attempt to cover the retreat, but were surrounded and intercepted by the guerrillas. The battle lasted until dusk, before the Japanese army was led by the traitors and withdrew from the mountainside path, and the 5th Brigade bravely pursued, killing and wounding more than 40 Japanese troops along the way.
At the cost of more than 30 casualties of the Dongjiang Column, this battle killed and wounded nearly 100 Japanese troops, crushed the Japanese army's attempt to annihilate the Dongjiang Column, dealt a heavy blow to the arrogance of the Japanese army, and encouraged the fighting spirit of the vast number of anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians in the guerrilla area.
After the Japanese army withdrew to camphor wood, the morale of the army was seriously damaged, and the humiliation was extremely great, and the captain of the brigade, Kato, committed suicide by cutting his abdomen, and more than a dozen other soldiers committed suicide.
Write at the end:
The Battle of Meitang was a victory for the Guangdong People's Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Dongjiang Column to inflict heavy losses on the Japanese army, and during the entire Period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Dongjiang Column experienced more than 1,400 large and small battles and annihilated more than 9,000 Japanese puppet troops.
By the time of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the troops had grown from more than 700 to more than 11,000, and a large area of anti-Japanese base areas had been established. In 1945, Zhu De, in the "Seven Congresses" military report "On the Battlefield of the Liberated Areas", referred to the Dongjiang Column, the Qiongya Column, the Eighth Route Army, and the New Fourth Army as "the mainstay of China's War of Resistance."
Why is the battle flag so picturesque? It was the hero's blood that stained it red. We must not forget that the victories in successive battles have been bought by many soldiers of our army with their flesh and blood, and their strong, fearless, and sacrificial spirit have always supported them to sacrifice their lives and forget their deaths, to kill the enemy bravely, and finally ushered in the founding of New China and our happy life today.