In mid-October 1945, although the Japanese army had surrendered for more than 2 months, the Japanese troops in the occupied areas refused to surrender their guns to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army under the pretext of the Kuomintang government's order to "maintain law and order on the spot.", while the puppet armies in various places accepted the Kuomintang's reorganization one after another, and they became "underground troops", "advancing troops" and "advance teams" of various routes. In order to eliminate the Japanese puppet army that continued to resist at an early date and liberate the occupied areas. The 5th Division of the Luyu Military Region was determined to take Heze, Shandong, and annihilate the 5th Pseudo-Security Division.
Heze is an important city on the southwestern Lu Plain, and during the Japanese and puppet periods, it was painstakingly operated by the devils and called a heavily fortified fortress. After the surrender of the Japanese army, in order to prevent our army from attacking, the puppet army continued to strengthen the fortifications, its city wall was 10 meters high, more than 3 meters wide, there were a large number of bunkers and fortifications on the city wall, and artillery towers were set up on both sides of the city tower, forming a cross fire control city gate, and there was a wide moat outside the city, which was easy to defend and difficult to attack. Especially for our army, which lacks heavy weapons, it is even more difficult to fight.
On October 21, the main force of our 5th Division directly attacked Heze, and after a short battle, successively annihilated the puppet army in various strongholds outside the city, and soon surrounded Heze City and the 5th Security Division. Our army was determined to use the method of tunnel blasting to break through its strong defense system, so on the night of the siege, the troops began to operate in the tunnel from all directions.
However, in the process of excavation, the tunnels of Dongguan and Ximen had to be abandoned successively due to water leakage and damage by the enemy, and the enemy army was alert to our army's tunnel operations and strengthened surveillance. In order to ensure the safety of this remaining tunnel in Nanguan, our army began to adopt various methods to sabotage the enemy's monitoring of the tunnel excavations, using gongs, drums, firecrackers, and other objects to constantly make noise, and also fired several shots from time to time. In this way, our army distracted the enemy, completely failed the surveillance, and ensured that the tunnel was completed on October 28.
In the absence of heavy weapons, the ladder is still the main siege equipment of our army
At 4:00 a.m. on October 29, our army first began to blast the obstacles on the outskirts of Nanguan, and successively blew up the wooden fences, barbed wire, iron tribulus and deer stones set up by the enemy. At 5:00 a.m., our army carried out a large-scale explosion of the Nanguan City Tower, and the violent explosion blew up the entire city tower and the artillery towers on both sides, and the enemy troops defending it suffered heavy casualties.
Our attacking troops then burst into the city and engaged in street battles with the enemy, and the enemy troops who had lost the fortifications of the fortified city were vulnerable, either surrendering on their knees or fleeing haphazardly; when our army attacked the gate of the enemy division headquarters, a large knife team that the enemy division commander Wang Wenxian usually raised suddenly rushed out, in a vain attempt to counterattack our army, but in the face of the fierce fire of our army, the big knife team quickly collapsed, but its surprise attack bought time for Wang Wenxian to flee north.
At this time, it was already dawn, and our army, which was monitoring the enemy's situation outside the north gate, suddenly saw that the enemy on the city wall had dropped many ropes, and then a large number of enemy officers and men in yellow uniforms began to fall down the rope along the wall in a disorderly manner, and finally even jumped directly from the city wall. The number of enemy troops under the city walls was increasing, and they were fiercely fired by the fire of our army, and many people panicked and jumped into the moat in an attempt to swim over, but under the fire of our army, a large number of enemy troops were killed and wounded, or drowned in the moat, and the river water was blocked by the corpses of the enemy troops, including Cui Lisan, the kuomintang Heze commissioner who had just arrived.
The fleeing enemy scattered and fled under the siege and interception of our army, most of them were annihilated by our army, and finally only 2 were left to flee in the east and west directions, and the enemy to the west was annihilated by our local troops after running out of 20, and the enemy troops fleeing to Jining to the east were also annihilated by the 5th Regiment of our 2nd Division on the highway, at this time it has to be said that the enemy division commander Wang Wenxian was superb in acting, he changed his officer uniforms long before fleeing, put on the soldier's uniform, and immediately threw away all the objects that would expose his identity after being injured by our army. Then he smeared blood and dirt on his face so that no one else could see his identity, and then he wailed among a pile of enemy wounded, and while our soldiers were busy pursuing the fleeing enemy and had no time to monitor the wounded of these enemy troops, he crawled forward in pain and successfully escaped into a field of crops that had not yet been harvested.
Although the enemy division commander escaped, 450 officers and men below the enemy commissioner and the enemy brigade commander of our army wounded 390 officers and men below the enemy battalion commander, more than 3,500 enemy officers and men were captured, and a large number of weapons and equipment were captured.
Resources
"Heze City Chronicle" pp450-452
Editor/Zhou Hongxin
For more facts related to contemporary history, as well as opinion comments, please pay attention to the Northern Dynasty, or leave a message in the comment area to discuss it