On September 25, 1937, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army ambushed the Japanese heavy troops at Qiaogou, east of Pingshiguan, annihilated more than 1,000 Japanese troops, and captured a large number of military supplies, which was the first victory of our army since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and it was also a very influential victory at that time. There is a voice on the Internet that the Eighth Route Army ambushed only the non-combat units of the Japanese army, lacked training, and had poor combat ability, hoping to demean the combat effectiveness of the Eighth Route Army. In fact, in the early days of the war of aggression against China, the Japanese army had a high quality of individual soldiers and a tenacious will to fight, and even if it was a non-combat unit, its combat capability exceeded that of any warlord unit in China, and there were also quite a few escorts in this unit.
According to the records of Japanese war history and the research of relevant scholars, two units entered the ambush circle of the 115th Division on the same day.
One was two squadrons of the Sixth Station Bus Brigade, led by Junsa Shinjo, and the cars were also carrying some soldiers who had recovered from their wounds and returned to the front line. At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there were not many mechanized transport units such as the Japanese Army, which were generally used in mobile operations. Rapid supply is likely to be the key to victory in a battle, the Japanese army naturally attaches great importance to it, the weapons and equipment attached, and the quality of soldiers are very strong, with a strong ability to defend themselves. Moreover, the wounded soldiers on the car were veterans with actual combat experience.
The other unit was the 21st Wing of the Itagaki Division, led by Hashimoto Shunsho Nakasa, with a convoy full of clothes, food, and ammunition to the front. Hashimoto Shun graduated from the Japanese Army University, and the enrollment conditions of this school are very harsh, requiring lieutenants and lieutenants under the age of 30, serving in grass-roots units for more than 2 years and being recommended by the commander, and the number of enrollments in each period is not more than 50 people, and the number of students is as low as 10. Army university graduates can be described as rising stars in the Japanese army, and from Hashimoto's resume, serving as a staff officer in the Fifth Division is also likely to be a springboard before promotion.
However, in this ambush of the 115th Division, both of the leaders of the squadron were killed.
In addition, it can also be seen from the performance of the battle that the combat quality of these two Japanese troops is very high. According to the recollection of Nie Rongzhen, the commander at the scene: When the battle began, the Eighth Route Army was condescending, and machine guns and grenades were intensively fired at the bottom of the valley. The Japanese were beaten to the point of being thrown over on their horses, and when they were ambushed, they did not mess around or run for their lives, but quickly hid behind the tires of the car or looked for a ditch to launch a counterattack. And they soon found that the bullets of the Eighth Route Army were from one direction, and there was no ambush on the other side of the road, so they quickly arranged troops to climb the hillside, and once seized the commanding heights of the Laoye Temple on one side. The 3rd Battalion and 9th Company of the 686th Regiment took several charges to retake the Laoye Temple position. After the war, only more than 10 people remained in the whole company of more than 140 people, and all the cadres of the company and platoon were sacrificed.
Japanese reports on the death of Shinjo
After the battle began, Li Tianyou's 686 regiment quickly rushed to the bottom of the valley, dividing the Japanese army into several sections and completely disrupting its command system. However, the Japanese army did not lose its confusion, but continued to resist in groups of three or five. The Japanese army's marksmanship is very accurate, the stabbing technique is also very good, in a one-on-one situation, it is difficult for our soldiers to take advantage. Many people equate the "lack of training" described in the history of the Japanese army with no training, and this judgment is obviously wrong. Judging from the performance of the Japanese army, its combat effectiveness is very strong, and it has also caused a lot of casualties to our army. In the Battle of Pingxingguan, Li Tianyou's 686 regiment suffered 286 casualties, the largest casualties among the three regiments involved in the battle.
Another manifestation is that the Japanese army vowed not to surrender and stubbornly resisted to the end. According to Nie Rongzhen's recollection, when he went down to inspect the results of the battle, there were still a few remnants of soldiers hiding in the cave to release cold guns at the soldiers. The soldiers of our army shouted to him: "Surrender your guns and don't kill!" Preferential treatment of prisoners" The warriors also thought that like the warlord troops in the civil war, they would obediently surrender when they shouted hard. But the Japanese army, after a long period of training and influenced by its Bushido spirit, resisted stubbornly even after fighting to the last man. Nie Rongzhen could only order, "Throw away the grenade and destroy him." ”
In order to capture japanese prisoners alive, our soldiers once gave preferential treatment to the Japanese wounded, but they caused casualties to themselves. According to Li Tianyou's recollection: a telephone soldier, seeing a half-dead Japanese soldier lying on the side of the road, ran up and said: "Pay your gun and don't kill, give preferential treatment to prisoners!" Instead, the guy raised his bayonet and stabbed it into the phone man's chest. Some comrades carried back their seriously wounded enemies and ended up having their ears bitten off. Some comrades went up and wounded the wounded enemy, but they were wounded by the enemy. All this shows that the Japanese army has been trained for a long time, both tactically and ideologically.
After the battle, Lin Biao, commander of the 115th Division, described the Japanese army in the article "The Experience of fighting at Pingxingguan": "The enemy is combat effective. It can also be said that we have never encountered such a strong enemy in the past from the Northern Expedition to the Soviet War. When I say strong, I mean that their infantry also has combat effectiveness and can fight for each other... The accuracy of shooting, the concealment of movement, and the mastery of troops are all quite good. ”
Wang Zifeng, who served as the director of political education of the 115th Division's teaching team, also wrote in his diary on the same day: "The Japanese Xzi was really tenacious, forcing some of his troops to the point of death, and if they did not surrender their guns, our troops had no choice but to throw grenades and blow them all to death." In another part, by the time of the flat pass, they were waiting for help. This spirit of the Japanese army rather than surrender is a spirit that our army has not seen in the ten years of civil war. "Because the Yan Xishan troops stationed at Pingxingguan did not attack at the scheduled time, a small part of the Japanese army mentioned by Wang Zifeng rushed out of our army's encirclement after the reinforcements arrived.
In the great victory of Pingxingguan, more than a thousand Japanese troops were annihilated. After more than 6 hours of fierce fighting, our army suffered eight or nine hundred casualties under the condition of occupying favorable terrain. The 115th Division was reorganized from the former elite First Army Corps of the Red Army and the 15th Army of Xu Haidong, known as "Xu Tiger", both of which were known for their bravery and good fighting, which was not comparable to ordinary warlord troops. Such a comparison of casualties also precisely shows that the Japanese army has a very strong combat ability, rather than a "non-combat unit" in the general sense.