During this period, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, no army, like our heroic Eighth Route Army, traveled thousands of miles and fought in various places, and its combat footprints spread all over the country, promoting the people of the whole country to unite as one, to hate the enemy, to rise up against Japan, and to make major sacrifices for the comprehensive victory of the War of Resistance.
In the summer of 1938, just one year after the sound of the cannons at the Lugou Bridge awakened the sons and daughters of China to build a new Great Wall of Flesh and Blood, beiping and east of Tianjin, which were closely connected to the northeast of the hands of the Japanese Kou, between the mountains and rivers west of Shanhaiguan and Qinhuangdao and the sea, and in the vast and fertile fields on both sides of the rolling Luan River, an anti-Japanese storm that swept through the eastern part of Hebei Province broke out -- an armed uprising of the anti-Japanese resistance in eastern Hebei that attracted worldwide attention and shocked China and foreign countries.
The northeast of Hebei is located on the Great Wall, the south is bordered by the Bohai Sea, and the west is controlled by the Beijing Law, which has always been a place of contention for soldiers and families, and is the throat of the northeast to north China. Not only is there a wealth of goods to finance military supplies, but it is also deep in the mountains and dense forests, which can be detoured. After the Japanese army invaded and occupied the three northeastern provinces, in order to annex all of China, Jidong became the target of further aggression by the Japanese Kou.
The first shot fired by the anti-Japanese armed uprising in eastern Hebei was led by Li Runmin, political commissar of the Red Army who had participated in the Long March of Ten Thousand Miles, Gao Peizhi, member of the Luanxian County CPC Committee, director of the political department, and Zhang Heming as deputy commander and chief of staff, and the Fifth General Corps of the Third Military Region of the North China Anti-Japanese Coalition Army (hereinafter referred to as the "Hebei Eastern Anti-Japanese Coalition Army"), which took the lead in establishing the area south of the Bac Ninh Railway, which immediately opened the curtain of the struggle for the great anti-Japanese uprising in eastern Hebei.
Immediately afterward, all parts of eastern Hebei responded quickly and became a burning trend. Li Yunchang, Hu Xikui, Hong Linge, and others successively formed anti-Japanese armed forces in Qian'an, Zunhua, Luanxian, Changli, Lulong, and other places, and within five days, the number of insurrection troops grew from more than 300 at the beginning to more than 5,000. Then the land of Jidong boiled up, and workers, peasants, and people from all walks of life went out of their homes, picked up hammers, axes, red guns, and all kinds of guns scattered among the people, and poured into the ranks of the anti-Japanese coalition army. For a time, the anti-Japanese armed insurrection in various parts of eastern Hebei surged and was in full swing. As many as 48 corps were established in the various departments of the Anti-Japanese Coalition Army (not including some sporadic formations), far exceeding the original establishment of 6 corps.
In less than two months, the workers, peasants, soldiers, parties, people from all walks of life, and other forces participating in the anti-Japanese uprising in eastern Hebei, as many as 100,000 people, formed an anti-Japanese iron current that shocked the world, wept ghosts, and shook the sun and the moon.
After the victory of the uprising, the Anti-Japanese Coalition Army in Eastern Hebei and the Fourth Column of the Eighth Route Army met in victory at the Iron Works, and planned to create an anti-Japanese base area in the Jire Border Region with the deep mountainous area as the main support, so that the anti-Coalition troops of the Jidong Rebellion could assemble, conceal, and rest, and persist in a protracted and protracted guerrilla war.
However, this anti-Japanese armed force that shocked the whole country, after all, was close to the "base camp" of Japan's invasion of China, the Jire Border Region in the northeast, and inserted a sharp knife into the so-called Manchukuo of the Japanese army, which caused great panic among the Japanese aggressors. He wanted to wipe out the Eighth Route Army and the anti-Japanese coalition troops fighting in the eastern Hebei region.
What was grim was that at this moment, the green yarn tents in the eastern Hebei region had been harvested, the troops had lost their hidden barriers, and the mountainous areas were sparsely populated and it was very difficult for the troops to feed, so in early October 1938, in a small village on the border of Fengrun County, JiujianFang Village, the four columns and the main leaders of the Anti-Japanese League gathered together to hold a key meeting to decide where the rebel troops in eastern Jidong would go, at which a decision was made to move to Pingxi.
The autumn wind is cold and the cold is compelling. On the mountain road from jidong to Pingxi, there was a team of anti-coalition troops that could not see their heads at a glance, at that time, the troops withdrawing from Pingxi in the west were 50,000 people, the team was a long snake array, the forwards all reached the Chaobai River, and the troops behind them were still in place. At this time, after the Japanese Kou learned that our army was retreating to the west, it immediately organized troops to pursue and intercept, and our army sacrificed and suffered huge losses, and the soldiers starved all the way and were passively beaten.
When the first echelon of the westward retreat reached the area around the town of Mashenqiao in Jixian County, it was blocked by fierce artillery fire of the Japanese army, and Chen Yuhuan, the deputy commander of the Third Road of the Anti-Japanese League, who led the fighters to kill the enemy bravely in Shantou Village, fell in a pool of blood and became the first general of the Jidong riot team to die heroically, and the three general teams he led collapsed and disintegrated. Later, this anti-coalition team and the four columns of troops killed a bloody road and rushed across the Chaobai River, but the team suffered serious casualties and was lost.
Five days after Chen Yuhuan's inauguration, Hong Linge, deputy commander of the Anti-Japanese Coalition Army in eastern Hebei and commander-in-chief of the First Route Army, was also intercepted by the enemy in the area of Mashenqiao Town in Jixian County, and engaged in a fierce war with the Japanese army. The remnants, led by Li Chuli and Yang Xiaozhao, continued to retreat westward. On the way to the west of the Jidong Anti-Lianchang Li Detachment, it went to camp in the area of Gongli Village in Zunhua County. A unit of infantry and cavalry of the Japanese puppet army secretly surrounded the village of Miyari and occupied the high ground to attack the anti-coalition command. The Anti-League retreated in a hasty battle in a compound. Ding Wanyou, commander of the Jidong Anti-Lianchangli Detachment, died heroically.
What was even more tragic was that the soldiers of the Second Route Army, the last echelon led by Li Yunchang, walked more difficult and arduously on the road to the west, and the enemy they encountered intercepted and annihilated more tragically and tragically. In particular, the Battle of The Crock Can was the most tragic, with enemy planes bombing and strafing on the upper side, and Japanese puppet troops attacking on both sides, the anti-Japanese coalition army was completely exposed to the enemy's firepower, the guerrillas' superiority was all lost, and they were completely in a passive situation of being beaten.
Subsequently, the Japanese sealed the Chaobai River tightly, and the troops fell or fled, suffering heavy losses, and in those days, the Chaobai River almost became an insurmountable barrier. The waters of the entire Chaobai River are red, and one by one the surface of the river is filled with the corpses of anti-coalition fighters...
In view of this situation, if we continue to advance westward, we will inevitably be attacked by the enemy before and after, and the whole army will be destroyed, so the leadership has decided to stop the westward advance, return to eastern Hebei, maintain strength, redevelop, and persist in guerrilla warfare. Li Yunchang led a force of 6,000 men through Sanhe and Baodi, and with the help of the Kuomintang Seventh and Ninth Route Army, crossed the Ji Canal, crossed Yutian, and went around Fengrun to reach the Yangliuzhuang area in the north of Luan County. On the way, he was constantly surrounded and blocked by the enemy, and after several days of bitter fighting, he was exhausted, and the casualties of the troops were reduced every day, and when he turned to Qian'an Liugouyu, there were only 130 people left around him.
The Fifth Anti-Japanese League Brigade was scattered by the enemy, and the commander-in-chief Li Runmin and political director Gao Peizhi were arrested in Beiping and brutally killed. After crossing the Chaobai River, Gao Zhiyuan was attacked by the enemy, and the troops scattered in groups, reaching more than 1,000 people in the Pingxi base area.
During this strategic shift of the Eighth Route Army, the army and the armed forces of the masses suffered considerable losses, and deputy commander Hong Linge and many others made heroic sacrifices, but at the same time, they also provided valuable lessons for the Eighth Route Army to carry out guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in the future. The creation of this base area has made immortal contributions to opening the gate of the northeast for our army after the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and then establishing the Northeast Liberated Area and liberating all of China.