In today's Xinghua City, Jiangsu Province, the Revolutionary Martyrs Memorial Hall has a group of large reliefs carved from granite "Blood Battle Xinghua City", which seems to bring people back to the battlefield filled with gun smoke in 76 years, like people telling the history of the struggle of the revolutionary martyrs who were not afraid of sacrifice and at the same time full of wit and courage.
Xinghua City is located in the hinterland of Central Jiangsu, the territory of the water network, since ancient times is the land of fish and rice, according to legend at the end of the Warring States Period of the Chu State Ling Yin Zhaoyang fief is here, so there is "Zhaoyang Guyi" is called.
The long history of the founding of the city naturally brings a collection of humanities, the Ming Dynasty Water Margin author Shi Nai'an, the Qing Dynasty "Yangzhou Eight Monsters" zheng Banqiao, literary and art theorist Liu Xizai all came out of Xinghua.
The long history is bound to be associated with the war, according to legend, in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, Yue Fei fought with the Jin Army, and in the battle, Yue Fei shot down the turban of the Jin army general with an arrow, and there is still a place name of "Wu Turban Dang" in the north of the city, which is to commemorate General Yue. Eight hundred years later, Xinghua once again came to the tide of the national liberation war.
After the outbreak of the Songhu War of Resistance on August 13, 1937, the Kuomintang's Jiangsu provincial government moved from Zhenjiang to Yangzhou Jiangdu and then to Huaiyin, and after the defeat of xuzhou and Wuhan, in the face of an increasingly severe situation, the Kuomintang once again moved the Jiangsu provincial government to Xinghua in the hope of holding on to the dense water network near Xinghua.
In 1940, after the completion of the occupation of Gaoyou, Xinghua, as the Kuomintang Jiangsu Provincial Government, bore the brunt of the attack, and in May 1940, the Japanese army launched the first attack on Xinghua Han Deloitte took the initiative to withdraw from the Japanese occupation of Xinghua City in order to preserve its strength.
However, this time the Japanese army carried fewer supplies, and at the same time the New Fourth Army also entered the Jiangnan area, and took the initiative to withdraw from Xinghua under the condition of overstretched troops, but the Nationalist army did not last long, and the "Battle of Huangqiao" broke out in October, the New Fourth Army gave Han Deloitte a devastating blow, and the Japanese army took advantage of the defeat of the New Fourth Army and the Nationalist 89th Army to occupy Xinghua City.
The Kuomintang troops who withdrew from Xinghua City quickly became bandits because they lost their ground, and made a living by robbing their homes in the countryside near Xinghua, and even a platoon of Nationalist soldiers committed collective violence against the relatives of Sun Xinfu, a Han officer, and for a time the people in the vicinity of Xinghua lived in fear.
The local people made up a folk song:
"There is a broom star in the sky, and there is a Han Deqin on the ground, leaving the devils and not going to fight, specializing in anti-communism and anti-people." There is a broom star in the sky and a Han Deloitte on the ground. The suffering people look forward to the dawn and miss the New Fourth Army day and night. The people of northern Jiangsu want peace, and the only way to do so is to eliminate Han Deqin, persist in resisting Japan and anti-friction, and fight away the devils to enjoy peace. ”
It is in this context that wu Guifang, the protagonist of our story, joined the ranks of the New Fourth Army's anti-Japanese revolution when he was less than fifteen years old.
Since 1941, the Japanese army has assigned the 22nd Division of the puppet army, which was reorganized from the former Northeast Army, to garrison Xinghua City, and during the period of garrisoning Xinghua, the unit used the river network to transform the xinghua county into a fortress.
At that time, the ancient city wall of Xinghua was 10 meters high and 3 meters thick, and there were xiali rivers and a number of tributaries surrounding the city wall, and Liu Xiangtu, commander of the 22nd Division of the Soviet And Central Puppet Army, not only had a defense system with a city wall and a water network, but also built more than 170 reinforced concrete bunkers in four years, either light or dark, to form a three-dimensional defense fortification.
From June 1945 onwards, the defeat of the Japanese invaders was becoming more and more obvious, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Japanese puppet armies everywhere not to surrender to the Eighth Road Bureau and the New Fourth Army, and Liu Xiangtu, commander of the 22nd Division of the Puppet Army, was awarded the rank of major general of the 6th Division of the Second Route Army. While shrinking his troops and abandoning strongholds such as Jimizhuang on the outskirts of the city, Liu Xiangtu concentrated more than 5,000 officers and men in Xinghua City and various pillboxes, while repeatedly attacking and killing the negotiators of the New Fourth Army, in a vain attempt to stick to the aid and fight the civil war.
In Liu Xiangtu shouted out
"Xinghua City is as solid as a golden soup, and the New Fourth Army cannot be breached."
After the frenzied remarks, the Soviet Central Military Region of the New Fourth Army decided to pull out the nail stuck in the chest of the Soviet Central Military Region as soon as possible, and Zhang Fan, deputy commander and chief of staff of the Soviet Central Military Region, mobilized more than 7,000 people from 7 regiments to prepare to launch a siege on Xinghua City in late August 1945.
On July 7, 1945, the Intelligence Department of the Second Sub-district of the Soviet Central Military Sub-district received instructions from its superiors to dispatch a group of reconnaissance personnel familiar with the local situation in Xinghua County to go to the enemy-occupied areas to find out the enemy's deployment and troop allocation.
Because Comrade Wu Guifang is young and his hometown is Xiadian Village on the outskirts of Xinghua City, the most important thing is that he has a cousin, Wu Zhengfang, who was arranged by the Xinghua County Party Committee to work in Xiadian Village. Taking into account these favorable factors, Liu Dapeng, deputy director of the Hostile Intelligence Department, decided to take Wu Guifang into Xiadian Village, which carried out intelligence work on Xinghua City as the center.
After preliminarily ascertaining the deployment of the enemy's and pseudo-22nd division's troops, Wu Guifang set up a small stall next to the pagoda compound near the enemy's headquarters to sell cigarettes and foreign fires.
Wu Guifang felt that there might be a situation, and after questioning the nearby residents, she got an intelligence that the officer was in love with the Wang family girl at No. 11 Tahou Street, and Wu Guifang passed this information on to Liu Dapeng in time, and years of experience in the struggle told Liu Dapeng that they might catch a big fish.
At 22:00 on the night of August 24, Liu Dapeng and Wu Guifang and others climbed over the wall to enter the Wang family, and after Liu Dapeng explained his intentions, Wang Girl expressed her willingness to actively cooperate with the New Fourth Army.
The next afternoon, the captain of the puppet army came to the Wang family as usual, and Wu Guifang, who had just entered the door, stretched out a shell gun against his waist and disarmed him. At this time, Liu Dapeng came out and called him into the room, and after half an hour of conversation, at the same time, Lady Wang was also nearby to persuade him, and the captain expressed his willingness to lead the whole company uprising.
It turned out that this captain was named Xu Dali, a machine gun company commander of the 22nd Division of the puppet army, and after the battlefield uprising, the troops were incorporated into the Xinghua Independent Regiment to participate in the battle against the north gate of Xinghua City.
Since midnight on August 28, our New Fourth Army and the enemy and the pseudo-22nd Division fought fiercely for three days and four nights, and in the early morning of September 1, the whole city of Xinghua liberated liu Xiangtu, commander of the pseudo-22nd Division, and more than 5,000 officers and men below the division's chief of staff Mi Zhiqi, killed and wounded more than 700 Japanese puppet troops, including 4 Japanese advisers, and captured a large number of military supplies, including 64 artillery of various types and more than 3,000 guns of various lengths and shorts.
The most important thing is to connect the revolutionary base areas from Taizhou in the east to Huainan in the west, creating extremely favorable conditions for the future seven battles and seven victories in the Soviet-Chinese Campaign commanded by Comrades Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin.
For the liberation of Xinghua City, the official editorial said:
Why is the battle flag so picturesque? It was the hero's blood that stained it red.
After the liberation of Xinghua City, Xinghua County held a public trial meeting, and Liu Xiangtu, commander of the pseudo-22nd Division, who committed many evil deeds, Mi Zhiqi, chief of staff of the division, and Li Gongjian, the pseudo-county magistrate, successively committed crimes. Wu Guifang, Liu Dapeng, and Xu Dali will plunge themselves into a new journey of national liberation.
76 years later, let us look back at the "Blood War Xinghua City" again, blood and fire suffering has been dispersed with the wheel of history, looking back at history has both deep admiration for the "Blood War Xinghua City", but also has a sacrifice that cannot be forgotten, it is with countless revolutionary predecessors like "Blood War Xinghua City" who dared to sacrifice, we have a good life today.