There is an army that makes people feel frightened, there is an army that holds the belief that death is a homecoming, and there is an army that resists aggression from other countries with flesh and blood. This is the Guangxi wolf soldier known as the "Gui Army".
So why can this place in Guangxi come out with so many elite soldiers? In the defense of Guilin, what kind of achievements did the Gui army make, and what kind of achievements could the Japanese army give such a high evaluation?
It turned out that the Guangxi wolf soldiers were all in the world's impression: wearing a hard British helmet on their heads, wearing a yellow military uniform, and wearing light straw shoes on their feet.
They actively fought when the war came, and the enthusiasm for signing up for the battlefield was also very surprising.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the population of the entire Province of Guangxi was only more than 12 million, there were more than 1 million soldiers alone, plus the other 3.5 million laborers, and the number of troops sent by the whole of Guangxi could rank second in the national ranking! Obviously, for the sake of the great righteousness of the motherland, everyone will choose to abandon the ego, charge into the front, and protect their own country.
In the War of Resistance Against Japan, they participated in many battles, such as the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Xuzhou, the Battle of Wuhan, and the Guiliu Counteroffensive. Their figures can be seen everywhere on the battlefield, so people have added the reputation of Xiao Yong and good war to the Soldiers of Guangxi.
Guangxi soldiers did make very important contributions and sacrifices to the War of Resistance Against Japan, and there was also a saying in the Japanese military camps at that time that if you want to conquer all of China, then you must first conquer Guangxi. When they encountered the Xiang Army, the Qian Army, and the Dian Army, they were actually not so afraid and panicked. But as long as you fight with the Guangxi wolf soldiers, you will feel a special headache.
At that time, the American general Stilwell also once commented on them: Guangxi wolf soldiers have never been afraid of bloodshed and sacrifice, they can dedicate everything for the dignity and security of their motherland, and the soldiers of Guangxi are the best soldiers in the world. The fact that guijun can get such a high evaluation from its opponent also shows from the side that Guijun itself also has strong strength.
Their strength is also inextricably linked to their living environment.
Because the latitude of Guangxi's geographical location is low, the rain and heat conditions will be better than other regions. They have dense jungles, rich species, and all kinds of poisonous snakes and beasts often haunt here, which also causes the people of Guangxi to be bold, brave to fight, and not afraid of difficulties.
The word "wolf soldier" appeared during the Ming Dynasty, because people used to call the Zhuang people as slang people, so over time, people also replaced "俍" with the word "wolf". And this word also coincides with the Guangxi army that is brave and good at war, because many armies that are good at conquest will be called the master of wolves, especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
The "Wolf Soldier" was an active local army in the southwestern region of our country, and he was also a very important local armed army at that time. They are an army formed by the Zhuang Tusi to protect the family home, but also have a unique organization system, they were the most powerful team in the Ming Dynasty, known as the world's first, no one can compare.
From the middle of the Ming Dynasty to the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the social contradictions in Guangxi and other places were extremely sharp, and the central imperial court was difficult to suppress, which provided a good opportunity for the rise of wolf soldiers, and it was at this time that wolf soldiers entered people's sights.
Subsequently, the wolf soldiers were ordered to suppress the uprisings or rebellions of various ethnic groups in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other places, and also participated in the war against the Wu in the southeast coastal areas, which played a great role in maintaining the status and rule of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
According to the "History of Ming", the Ming Dynasty began to call in wolf soldiers from the time of Emperor Yingzong's orthodoxy, and until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it also participated in many conquest activities, including the war against the Wokou.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Wokou plague was very serious, and they could only send wolf soldiers from Guangxi to fight against the Wokou and counter violence with violence. The wolf soldiers in battle erupted in a very astonishing combat power. In guangdong's war against the Wu dynasty and all the wars against the Yaomin uprising, the wolf soldiers won nine victories in ten battles, and the results were very impressive. They killed more than 2,000 Wokou and gained the reputation of "the first merit of the Southeast Resistance against the Wokou".
In the thirty-fourth year of Jiajing, with the continuous changes in the social environment, the wolf soldiers slowly changed from "wolf soldiers" to "wolf people", and were also assimilated by the local Zhuang, Yao, Han and other ethnic groups.
At that time, Zhejiang was attacked, and Lady Wa of Guangxi Tianzhou actively responded to the orders of the state, and set out from Tianzhou with a passion for defending the country and 6,800 Guangxi wolf soldiers. They trekked through mountains and rivers and traveled thousands of miles to Zhejiang to provide support.
Mrs. Watts
When the people of Zhejiang heard the news of the arrival of the wolf soldiers in Guangxi, they were very excited, they all felt that victory was coming soon, and even many people clapped their hands on the street.
Lady Washi and the Guangxi wolf soldiers who came to Zhejiang actively resisted the war, and naturally did not live up to the expectations of the people of Zhejiang, successfully rescued Yu Dayou, who had been besieged for a long time, and also successfully killed more than 4,000 Wukou people in Jinshanwei. After that, many ingenious strategies and tactics were also formulated, and the Guangxi wolf soldiers successfully repelled the Wokou many times with less to more.
There was even a historical record of fifty wolf soldiers fighting two hundred Wokou, so everyone began to use the wolf word to describe the Gui army, and it was also from this time in the land of Shenzhou that the Guangxi wolf soldiers were strong in the world.
The Guangxi wolf soldiers are brave and good at fighting. They are born with an indomitable spirit of resistance in their bones.
They not only showed heroic ability in the War of Resistance Against Japan, but also showed outstanding performance in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
After World War I, Japan's colonial expansion in China was contained by Britain and the United States, and China's Northern Expedition war also threatened Japan's interests in China, so the Japanese government accelerated the pace of annexing northeast China.
In the early 1930s, there was a world-type economic crisis, after which Japan's economy was also hit very hard and fell into an extreme predicament, in this case, the Japanese fascist forces decided to break through the shackles of the Washington system on Japan, and at the same time, when Britain and the United States were busy dealing with the economic crisis, Chiang Kai-shek began to "suppress the Communists" on a large scale, wanted to seize the northeast to get out of the predicament, and tried to dominate the world.
Japanese fascism
On August 13, 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out, which was the first relatively large battle between China and Japan in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and it was also the largest and most tragic battle in the entire Sino-Japanese War.
In this battle, the Chinese and Japanese put in about a million troops and fought fiercely in Shanghai.
Chiang Kai-shek, who was in Nanjing, saw that the flames of war were about to come, so he immediately mobilized local military departments throughout the country to participate in the war. At the same time, in order to allow the Gui army to fight on the front line, Chiang Kai-shek promised to expand the number of the Gui army to two army groups. Bai Chongxi then agreed to Chiang Kai-shek's request and served as deputy chief of staff of the Supreme High Command, and Li Zongren became commander-in-chief of the Fifth Theater.
At the same time, the Gui clan established the Eleventh Group Army and the Twenty-first Group Army, with Li Pinxian and Liao Lei as commanders-in-chief, and Zhou Zuhuang as the commander of the Seventh Army.
Before going to the front, the officers and men of the Gui Army said that they had done some stupid things in the past to fight the civil war, but now they could finally dedicate this enthusiasm to the country, so they were all highly morale and grateful along the way.
Among them, among the troops going to the front line, there was also the Gui ace unit with super combat effectiveness, the Seventh Army. On October 11, 1937, the vanguard of the Seventh Army arrived in Shanghai, and soon engaged the Japanese invaders on the outskirts of Shanghai, and began a fierce battle for positions, the Spirit of the Seventh Army not being afraid of death deterred the Japanese army, after several battles, the Japanese army soon felt inadequate, and the Seventh Army also took advantage of the good opportunity of the Japanese army's lack of strength to quickly recover some of the lost land.
Seventh Army
On the afternoon of October 12, part of the defense work of the Central Army was transferred to the Gui Army, and the commander of the Gui Army, in order to successfully complete the task, issued a special order: those who leave the position without authorization should come to see each other. At this time, Liao Lei, a colonel of the Kuomintang Army, disregarded his personal safety and personally went to the front line to direct and supervise the battle.
The weapons used by the Gui army were very backward, and they used rifles mainly made in Hanyang. At that time, the Japanese used the most advanced tanks, cannons and even warships. Therefore, the gap in hardware facilities between China and Japan is still very large. Therefore, at the beginning of the war, the Gui Army also
It is a lot of suffering.
On October 15, in order to be able to withstand the fierce attack of Japanese artillery fire, the soldiers who regarded death did not retreat one step, but used their bodies to block the bombardment of enemy aircraft. However, the positions of the second battalion were eventually captured. So under these circumstances, the Gui army sent another battalion to support, and this time the support was even more tragic and tragic! After several days of stubborn resistance, the soldiers of the whole battalion all died heroically.
Regiment Commander Shen Zhi was very angry after hearing that the position of the second battalion had been lost and the battalion commander had died in battle, so he ordered the 3rd battalion to take back the second battalion, and the regimental commander and other senior officers all went to the battlefield to supervise the battle.
The Gui army sacrificed a lot in the bloody battle with the Japanese army, and Bai Chongxi had already pressed the old ben, but he still could not resist the Japanese planes and tanks. Under the three-dimensional attack of land, sea and air, the Japanese army tore through the blocking line from Baoshan and landed ashore, Chiang Kai-shek saw that the situation was settled, and then ordered all the defenders to retreat backwards in an all-round way.
At the same time, after ordering the Gui clan palace, the weapons of this Guangxi army were very rudimentary, and the training of the soldiers was seriously insufficient, but they resolutely took on this arduous task, they fought with the pursuing Japanese army for several days, and finally all of them died heroically, but they successfully covered the retreat of the main force of the Nationalist army.
At the Battle of Songhu, the Gui clan suffered more than 60,000 casualties, accounting for more than half of the total troops of the Gui clan participating in the battle, and the Battle of Songhu also broke the Japanese army's wild words of wanting to "destroy China in three months"!
After the Battle of Wuhan, our side entered the stage of strategic stalemate, although the Japanese army could not organize a large-scale frontal battle, but in general, the Japanese army still occupied the main urban areas of China and was in an advantageous position.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, after the Battle of Midway, the main force of the Japanese Navy suffered a very large blow, until 1944, when the main force of the Japanese Navy was completely annihilated by the American Army, and the remaining little navy could only garrison the mainland.
It was under these circumstances that the Japanese army vainly tried to open up the land communication lines in Southeast Asia, and at the same time wanted to force the Chongqing government to surrender, so under the strategic planning of the Japanese "base camp" in Japan, the Japanese army headquarters invading China drew up a combat plan. Let the Japanese army gather more than 200,000 troops, hundreds of tanks and warplanes, and prepare to launch an attack on the southwest region of China, in order to open up the land communication lines between our country and Southeast Asia.
This led to the defense of Guilin, which made Japan very afraid.
In order to capture Guilin, Guangxi, the Japanese army gathered 150,000 troops, more than 30 tanks and more than 30 aircraft.
However, before the start of the great war, Chiang Kai-shek transferred most of his troops.
Chiang Kai-shek's practice allowed Guilin's defensive strength to be directly reduced from one army plus four divisions to only two divisions of the Gui clan to defend! In order to buy time for the japanese army to counterattack later, Bai Chongxi asked the defenders of Guilin to hold Guilin at all costs. In the face of the enemy's 150,000 troops, the morale of the Defenders of Guilin in China was very high, and they all held the determination to die and vowed to coexist and die with Guilin.
Although there are only two divisions here, a total of more than 20,000 people, and the weapons are backward and the firepower is insufficient, this is the real elite unit of the Gui clan - "wolf soldiers"!
On October 8, all the Japanese troops began to assemble, and at the same time sent the vanguard troops to explore the way, after the main force of the Japanese army was assembled, they went all the way south, broke through the multi-layered defense line of the Nationalist army, and a large number of Nationalist troops collapsed without a fight.
On the 17th, the Japanese army launched a general attack on Guilin, and from then on the defense of Guilin officially began, guarding Guilin by the 131st Division and the 170th Division of the Gui clan, who launched sniper attacks according to the favorable terrain around Guilin.
Because it was in the mountain area, the Japanese tanks could not move and could not exert their real strength, so they could only order the artillery units to bombard the defenders here, and at the same time order the fighters to interfere with the defenders here.
Under the bombardment of Japanese artillery, the garrison of the Katsura forces suffered heavy losses, and because there was no prevention and control facilities, all the actions of the defenders were clearly seen by the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft, which led to the failure of the defenders' repeated blockades.
After the defenders experienced half a month of defending the outside of the city, the Pingfeng Mountain and Mao'er Mountain outside the city were lost one after another, and the defenders were forced to enter the city, at this time the Japanese army cut off all the communication channels of the Guilin defenders to the outside world.
On November 5, the Japanese army, with the help of heavy artillery, began to attack the city of Guilin, and the defenders, who had long been exhausted, could only withdraw to the vicinity of Seven Star Rock again because they were unable to resist the Japanese artillery fire.
From this time on, the Battle of Guilin entered the most brutal stage of street fighting, but even when the defenders were more than 20,000 people, only more than 7,000 people were left. The garrison still did not give up, and no one said they were going to surrender.
Those ordinary people watched Guilin and were about to fall into the hands of the cruel and fierce Japanese, and the ordinary people who did not want to surrender spontaneously took the local guns and cannons and bundled themselves with grenades and explosives into the city. In this way, the guards of Guilin City increased to 20,000 people almost overnight. Although their weapons were not as powerful as those of the Japanese army, these people who wanted to defend their families and defend the country were the most precious, and they did their best to build a large number of fortifications and poisoned many wells.
At the same time, the defenders, who suffered heavy casualties, formed a defensive line at Seven Star Rock, at which time the Japanese used their tanks to continuously charge the defenders. Just then the defenders organized a group of death squads, and in order to blow up these tanks, each of them was tied with a large amount of explosives, ambushed on both sides of the road, and when the tanks came, they rushed up to detonate the explosives on their bodies, and died with the enemy tanks!
The remaining defenders concentrated all the remaining ammunition, used the terrain here to build some fire points, defeated the Japanese charge again and again, and the angry Japanese army could not see that it could not be attacked for a long time, so it decided to drop poison gas bombs on the defenders of Seven Star Rock! Under the attack of the Japanese gas bombs, most of the more than 7,000 defenders stationed at Qixingyan were poisoned, and the remaining troops were also slaughtered by the Japanese army, and the main army of the Gui clan was all sacrificed.
In this battle, the Gui clan used more than 20,000 troops to resist the 150,000 japanese army and held Guilin for more than a month. The casualties of the Japanese army were even close to 30,000, which completely shocked the Japanese army with the combat effectiveness of the Guangxi wolf soldiers, and even the surviving Japanese veterans said that this battle was the most tragic of all the battles they participated in!
It was a fierce life-and-death duel between 20,000 soldiers and 150,000 elite Soldiers of the Japanese Army. The Japanese army was prepared from the beginning, but because the Gui army had been dead guarding Guilin, the core city of the Japanese army could not be captured.
After the war, the Japanese also recorded their surprise and shock in their memoirs. At first, everyone thought that this was a duel without suspense, but in the process of the battle, the heroic battle of the Gui Army also impressed the Japanese army, and they were impressed by their heroic fighting and daring to sacrifice.
Although this battle was finally lost, we were still defeated. The Gui army showed a heroic and fearless spirit, severely cracked down on the arrogance of the Japanese army, and smashed the enemy's plots again and again. Therefore, people also called them "Guangxi Wolf Soldiers". Like the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression hundreds of years ago, the "wolf soldiers" were all heroic and invincible, and all the Japanese invaders were terrified!
The Guangxi Wolf Soldiers have become eternal divine soldiers, precisely because of the sacrifices of these revolutionary martyrs. As a descendant, we should always remember history and remember how our ancestors struggled, only in this way can we be worthy of their sacrifice!
To all the unknown and selfless martyrs of the ancestors, we would like to pay the highest respect, thank you for all your efforts, and we will strive to dedicate our strength to the construction of the country.