At the beginning of 1937, Xu Shiyou was implicated in the Zhang Guotao incident, could not bear it, and wanted to take the troops out to fight guerrillas, and was sentenced to one and a half years in prison, so after the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, Xu Shiyou had no position in the Eighth Route Army.
Until 1938, under the vigorous struggle of Xu Shiyou and through the arrangement of Mr. Zhu, Xu Shiyou went to the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army as a deputy brigade commander.
At first, Xu Shiyou was still reluctant to go, saying that I wanted to be a brigade commander, what does it mean to be a deputy brigade commander? However, when he learned that the brigade commander of the 386 Brigade was Chen Geng, Xu Shiyou accepted it calmly.
Chen Geng has always paid attention to surprises in fighting and is good at fighting ambush battles, so Xu Shiyou also participated in several famous ambush battles, such as the Xiangchenggu Ambush Battle, which was personally commanded by Xu Shiyou.
In this battle, Xu Shiyou led a team to annihilate more than 200 Japanese Kou, capture 8 people, capture a lot of guns and ammunition, and win a complete victory!
Moreover, Xu Shiyou heard that the leader of the Japanese Kou Brigade, Onoji, was a Japanese samurai with high sword skills, and Xu Shiyou, for a moment, personally took the big sword and competed with Onoji, and finally the sword split Onoji and captured his family's heirloom samurai sword.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Shandong's strategic significance was very great, so our party formulated a strategic plan for establishing a base area in Shandong very early on, and Luo Ronghuan and Chen Guang led the main force of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army to Shandong as early as 1938 to create a base area.
In September 1940, Xu Shiyou was also sent to Shandong, and began his revolutionary career in Shandong.
In October 1942, Xu Shiyou was appointed commander of the Jiaodong Military Region, and his first words after taking office were: "Taiping I will not come, I will not come to Taiping!" "Reveal his arrogant domineering spirit!"
The greatest force of the Kuomintang army in Jiaodong is the provisional 12th Division, the division commander is Zhao Baoyuan, this guy was originally a big traitor, and the 12th Division was also the notorious "Imperial Allied Army", but Zhao Baoyuan was well versed in the way of the left and right, and secretly accepted Chiang Kai-shek's benefits, so that he did not fight the Japanese army nor the Nationalist army, and he concentrated on opposing the Eighth Route Army.
Zhao Baoyuan also shamelessly gave his troops a nickname, called "Anti-Eighth Coalition Army", and his arrogance was very arrogant, so Xu Shiyou decided to teach this guy who did not know the height of the sky and the thickness of the earth!
Zhao Baoyuan had also heard of Xu Shiyou's name long ago, and although he was very scared in his heart, his mouth was still very hard, and he cheered his subordinates up: "He Xu Shiyou is not afraid of having three heads and six arms, there is no cannon on Tuba Road, we have a solid turret!" What else can he do? They are coming, as long as we stick to the turret, the imperial army comes down to support, they have to run! ”
This does speak of the weakness of the Eighth Route Army, Xu Shiyou's troops not only have no cannons, but even very little explosives, and they really need some "special tactics" to deal with the strong turrets of the Japanese puppet army.
Xu Shiyou is not a brave and unscrupulous person, he is actually very good at planning, as early as the Red Army's anti-encirclement and suppression battles, he accumulated a lot of tactics to deal with the enemy's strong fortifications, so Xu Shiyou held a meeting of cadres and announced that he would "deal with the bunkers" with Zhao Baoyuan.
Everyone doesn't understand what's going on, the enemy has bunkers, where do we come from? Xu Shiyou explained: "Zhao Baoyuan will repair the bunker, we can also repair it, and repair outside his bunker, repair more than them, surround them, trap them!" ”
So how do you fix it? Xu Shiyou instructed the warriors to prepare a large number of empty wooden boxes and willow baskets, and to push these empty boxes around the enemy's bunker while it was dark.
After the enemy found out, he would shoot, but Xu Shiyou had already made preparations, and selected many sharpshooters and machine gunners, and as long as the enemy fired, these sharpshooters would specifically aim at the enemy's firing holes, suppress the enemy's firepower, and cover the comrades-in-arms to dig outside the enemy's turret.
What is digging for? It turned out that the excavated soil was piled up in empty boxes, and the soil had to be photographed solidly, and these boxes filled with soil were enough to resist the bullets fired by the enemy, and a few boxes could be arranged into a simple small fortress, no longer afraid of the enemy's firepower.
In this way, outside the enemy's turret, this kind of simple and easy-to-build Eighth Route Army "pocket earth bunkers" were densely packed, and one big pillbox and cannon tower after another were surrounded! The enemy could not come out, nor could the grain be transported in, and the enemy was in a hurry.
So, didn't the Japanese come to the rescue? It turned out that Xu Shiyou's flexible and mobile guerrilla warfare had already exhausted the Japanese Kou and was not willing to waste the "precious" imperial army's lives for these puppet soldiers, so Zhao Baoyuan's strongholds were all destroyed by the Eighth Route Army!
Xu Shiyou's move was very effective, Zhao Baoyuan's subordinates were very afraid, more and more puppet troops deserted and fled, Zhao Baoyuan was ashamed and angry, let the blacksmith build many iron chains, a long iron chain locked a squad of puppet troops together, thinking that no one dared to run.
As a result, these puppet armies originally fled one by one, but this was a good thing, simply one class after another, and Zhao Baoyuan's mouth was crooked!
In this way, Xu Shiyou and Zhao Baoyuan fought with wits and courage, conquered a large number of strongholds, and made Zhao Baoyuan's troops feel confused, and Xu Shiyou saw that the time was ripe and decided to launch a general attack on Zhao Baoyuan's old lair.
Xu Shiyou summoned the Shandong column and the militia guerrillas in the base areas to launch a fierce attack on Zhao Baoyuan's puppet army, and as a result, the most comical scene in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression appeared: On the battlefield, there were strings of puppet army deserters locked in chains, fleeing everywhere, and when they encountered the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army, they collectively raised their hands and surrendered, and the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army were like catching crabs in autumn.
In this battle, Xu Shiyou destroyed more than 20,000 puppet troops of Zhao Baoyuan in one fell swoop, captured more than 8,000 people just as prisoners, and the captured guns were piled up!
Chairman Mao, who was far away in Yan'an, also heard about Xu Shiyou's achievements, and could not help but praise: "Good Xu Shiyou, open a fiery world in Jiaodong, it is remarkable!" ”
Finally, there is another small tidbit worth mentioning, that is, at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in July 1945, the Jiaodong Military Region received a small soldier, who was only 16 years old at the time, but Xu Shiyou certainly did not expect that this small soldier would later be higher than his status, serving as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, minister of national defense, chief of the general staff, and other positions.
This small soldier is General Chi Haotian, a distant man from Yantai, Shandong.
(References: "A Generation of Famous Generals Xu Shiyou", "The Legend of Xu Shiyou", "Jiaodong Anti-Japanese Base Area Archives Compilation", "Eighth Route Army")