The victory of the Pingguan In September 1937 greatly boosted the prestige of the Eighth Route Army. While celebrating the victory, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army faced three major problems.
The first problem is casualties.
In the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Eighth Route Army annihilated more than 1,000 enemy troops, but it also paid the price of more than 400 casualties, including some regimental and battalion cadres. It should be known that many of these cadres and fighters are the backbone of the anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations and the long march, and 1 cadre can lead 1 unit and 1 soldier can top 10 new soldiers, which is very precious. At the same time, the Eighth Route Army had just been reorganized by the Red Army in northern Shaanxi and was in great need of combat backbones, and the casualties of 400 people were very heavy.
The second problem: the Japanese prisoners were not captured.
In a battle, how many enemy prisoners can be captured is an important indicator of the results of the battle. As early as the red army period, the officers and men of the Red Army fought against Chiang Kai-shek's army, and each battle was able to capture the enemy in groups. After the Battle of Pingxingguan began, out of hatred for the Japanese army invading China, everyone from Lin Biao to grass-roots officers and men wanted to capture a few more Japanese prisoners and parade them in the streets to show the public. Many commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army held such a mentality of light enemy and paid the price of blood.
During the battle, some Japanese soldiers were forced by the commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army to burrow under the car. Because it was the first time to meet the enemy, the soldiers did not know how to burn the car and make the Japanese soldiers lose their barriers; they did not know the ferocity of the Japanese soldiers, thinking that there was not much difference between the Japanese soldiers and the Chiang Kai-shek army, and as long as they fought fiercely, they would obediently surrender. Several fighters shouted at the enemy hiding under the car, "Shoot and don't kill." The Japanese soldiers could not understand The Chinese language, and at the same time, they were considered to be the great shame of being captured as "samurai", and they ignored the shouts of the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army, and still shot wildly, resulting in the shouting soldiers being shot and killed.
While cleaning up the battlefield, some soldiers of the Eighth Route Army saw a seriously wounded Japanese soldier and wanted to carry him back to the ambulance station. Unexpectedly, the Japanese soldier was lying on the shoulder of the soldier and actually bit off one of the ears of the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army. When a Japanese soldier was bandaged, he was shot down by the other side.
The chief of the grain and straw section of the 686 regiment was ordered by the regimental commander Li Tianyou to take people back to the battlefield at night to clean up. One soldier did not take a few steps on the position when he stepped on a half-dead Japanese soldier. As soon as the enemy turned over, he found that it was the Eighth Route Army, and immediately took out his bayonet and stabbed at the soldier, fortunately the soldier hid quickly, raised his hand and fired several shots in a row, killing the Japanese soldier.
Even Nie Rongzhen, deputy commander of the 115th Division (who did not have a political commissar at the beginning of the reorganization and was soon appointed as the political commissar of the 115th Division), was in danger of being killed. At noon on September 25, seeing that the gunfire at the bottom of the ditch was gradually thinning, Nie Rongzhen led the soldiers onto the road. As far as the eye can see, the entire road is full of discarded weights and corpses. Excited, Nie Rongzhen immediately picked up a "three-eight big cover" and carefully examined it.
【Nie Rongzhen during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression】
[Part of the loot captured by the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army in the Battle of Pingxingguan]
Suddenly, Nie Rongzhen heard a gunshot, and a hot wind crossed his ears. He immediately realized that there was still a remnant of the enemy nearby, and beckoned his subordinates to lie down on the ground. After a while, Nie Rongzhen slowly raised his head and found that not far away, a Japanese soldier was holding a gun, hiding in a cave and setting up a cold gun. He waved his hand, and the warriors surrounded him, shouting at the cave, "Surrender your guns and don't kill", trying to force the Japanese soldiers to come out and surrender.
But the enemy in the cave still refused to come out, and was still shooting and resisting. Seeing that he could not catch it alive, Nie Rongzhen had no choice but to order a grenade to be thrown into the hole to eliminate this stubborn enemy.
At the summary meeting of the whole division, Nie Rongzhen said that the Japanese army, unlike the previous Chiang Kai-shek army, would not easily surrender because it was influenced by the military state. The Japanese troops in the Battle of Pingxingguan were notoriously "die-hards" in the Sakagaki Division, and they must not let down their vigilance, otherwise they would suffer heavy losses.
As the war continued, the Eighth Route Army captured more and more Japanese prisoners. After being reformed, many people changed their past mistakes and fought side by side with the Eighth Route Army. After the experience of the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Eighth Route Army also began to attach importance to the Japanese army and no longer took the enemy lightly.
The third question: whether the 115th Division is suspected of "pinching soft persimmons".
After the great victory at Pingxingguan, Jiang Jun, who had always despised the Eighth Route Army, believed that the 115th Division was ambushing the heavy troops of the 21st Brigade and Regiment, which belonged to the "logistics unit" and was not as strong as the front-line combat troops.
In fact, the 115th Division's first battle was a hasty response, and there was not much preparation, allowing Lin Biao to choose the enemy. On the whole, the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army in the early stage of the invasion of China was very strong as a whole, and the Sakagaki Division, as the vanguard soldier, was one of them. However, no matter how strong the troops are, there will also be weak brigades, and the chairman also pointed out that "the anti-Japanese battlefield is the objective situation in which the enemy is strong and we are weak." If we want to defeat the strong with the weak, we must pick the "weak of the strong" to fight. Only by being good at grasping weak enemies and first being weak and then strong can we win the initiative on the battlefield.
[Lin Biao is studying combat]
[Officers and men of the Eighth Route Army go to the anti-Japanese front]
To those who questioned the 115th Division's "picking soft persimmons and pinching them," Lin Biao also asked a question: Why did Jiang's army, which had been stationed in Northern China for a long time, had hundreds of thousands of troops, and was better equipped than the Eighth Route Army, not fought a real victory? And the Eighth Route Army, which rushed into battle, won the first battle?
Facts have also proved that on the pingxingguan battlefield, the Eighth Route Army fought the weak enemy as a strong enemy, which was not only strategically correct, but also laid the foundation for the gradual growth of the troops in the future. The victory in the Battle of Pingxingguan was also a concentrated reflection of the Eighth Route Army's superb command skills, and at this point, Chiang Kai-shek could not understand it under any circumstances.