On July 7, 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the Japanese army launched a full-scale invasion of China. After occupying Pingjin, the Japanese army began to advance along the Jinpu Railway, the Pinghan Railway, and the Pingsui Railway along the Jinpu Railway, the Pinghan Railway, and the Pingsui Railway with the strategic principle of a quick battle. In the face of the Japanese attack, the Kuomintang army had no intention of fighting and had been fleeing southward, while the Eighth Route Army advanced northward with high morale in the face of the enemy army.
In September 1937, when the Japanese general Itagaki Seishiro learned that the Nationalist Second Theater of Operations was gathering troops in the area of Pingxingguan, he ordered the commander of the 21st Brigade of the Fifth Division, Toshishi Miura, to lead the second brigade of the 42nd Brigade, a brigade of field artillery, together with two brigades at Lingqiu, to the west to capture the town of Daying west of Pingshiguan, and to destroy the defenders there and control the main road to Taiyuan, while Itagaki Seishiro also ordered two infantry brigades in Hunyuan to take action against Miura Toshishi.
Pingxingguan is located on the ancient Great Wall in the northeast of Shanxi, and has been an important pass between The Jin and Hebei provinces since ancient times, but here are mountains and rugged terrain, and there is only one road leading to Pingxingguan in front of the pass, which is flanked by steep deep valleys. In particular, the section of more than ten miles from Guanqian to the two towns in the east and south of the river is narrow, and the channel at the bottom of the ditch can only pass by one car.
In 1936, a year before the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, Itagaki Seishiro, as the commander of the Second Theater of Operations, went to Taiyuan to "visit" Yan Xishan as the brother of the Japanese Artillery School, and he did not choose a plane or a railway through Datong when he came to Taiyuan, but walked thousands of miles along the Weidai Highway, choosing the line from Pingxingguan to Tuotuo River Valley to Xinkou, which took 1 month to reach his destination. “
In 1937, when it was itagaki Seishiro who led the Fifth Division to invade Shanxi, he chose an almost S-shaped route: he went west out of Beijing to Zhangjiakou, from Zhangjiakou south to Laiyuan, and suddenly circled to the left of Pingxingguan, taking the same route he had personally inspected a year earlier. Itagaki Seishiro also knew that this was the junction of Shanxi and Hebei, and it was also a relatively weak link, but what he did not expect was that the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army would cross the Yellow River in advance and ambush him here.
The 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army was reorganized from the Red First Army and the Red Fifteenth Army, the main force of the former Red First Army was reorganized into the 343rd Brigade of the 115th Division, of which the Red 2nd Division was reorganized into the 685th Regiment and the Red 4th Division into the 686th Regiment; the former Red 15th Army was mainly reorganized into the 344th Brigade of the 115th Division, of which the Red 73rd Division was reorganized into the 687th Regiment, the Red 75th Division was reorganized into the 688th Regiment, and the Red 78th Division was merged into two battalions to supplement the above two regiments. In addition, the Red 1st Division of the First Red Army was separately reorganized into the Independent Regiment of the 115th Division, and the former 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the Central Military Commission was reorganized into a cavalry battalion of the 115th Division. Among them, the cavalry battalion is the direct subordinate unit of the division, in addition, the 115th Division directly subordinate to the Red 74th Division under the jurisdiction of the former Red 15th Army reorganized heavy battalion, artillery battalion, division direct teaching team is formed by the remaining troops.
When the 115th Division was formed, there were 15,000 people, all of whom were veterans of the battlefront for a long time, whether it was strength, weapons and equipment, or combat effectiveness, they were the strongest of the three divisions, and were known as the first division of the Eighth Route Army. Later, the Japanese army also commented on this unit: "Almost all the enemies in front of them are young soldiers under the age of 20, brave in battle, far from being comparable to the enemies they have encountered before." ”
After the 115th Division crossed the Yellow River in the east, it always wanted to fight a battle, and finally Lin Biao chose the location of the ambush at Pingxingguan. Lin Biao attached great importance to this operation, and rushed to the Pingxingguan area three times before the war to check the terrain, and after watching the terrain return, the guards woke up in the middle of the night and found that the division commander was still staring at the map, and his brow was locked.
In the end, Lin Biao finally formulated a battle plan, Yang Dezhi's 686 regiment was ambushed in the area of Laoye Temple, guarding the bottom of the bag, Li Tianyou's 686 regiment was ambushed in the area of Baiyatai, preparing to divide the enemy, the 687 regiment was ambushed in the area of Xiaozhai Village, waiting for the enemy to enter the ambush circle to block the Japanese retreat, the 688 regiment as the division reserve, Yang Chengwu's independent regiment blocked Lingqiu and the Japanese troops who came to reinforcements.
On the night of September 24, 1937, tens of thousands of officers and men of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army advanced toward the ambush site, at this time the weather in the northern Jin region had turned cold, and it was raining heavily, but the vast number of commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army, except for a few division-level cadres, the majority of commanders and fighters did not have cold cotton clothes or rain gear, and could only brave the rain. The heavy rain and cold did not disturb the advance of the commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army, who overcame the severe cold and ran quickly to the position.
When the troops crossed a rugged mountain road, they turned into a deep ditch, when suddenly heavy rain poured down, flash floods broke out, blocking the way, the 686 Regiment that walked in the front was the luckiest, all passed, the 686 Regiment walked halfway, the other half was crowded with the division headquarters, there was a brief confusion, and many soldiers and equipment were washed away by the flash flood, but the regimental commander Li Tianyou and the deputy regimental commander Yang Yong quickly stabilized the troops.
In the end, the water became more and more fierce, only two regiments of the 343rd Brigade passed, only one regiment of the 344th Brigade passed, and the other regiment was blocked by the flash flood on the opposite side, Lin Biao had no choice but to use a regiment of the 344th Brigade as a reserve, waiting for the flash flood to recede. At dawn on 25 September, only three regiments of the 115th Division reached the battlefield.
Not long after, the 21st Wing of the 21st Brigade of the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army took more than a hundred cars from the Bus Team of the Sixth Army Station and took the lead in driving toward the ambush site, followed by the heavy troops of the 21st Brigade, more than 200 mules and horses full of winter suits, luggage and ammunition loaded into the narrow ditch, and at the end was a cavalry team of 50 people.
The Fifth Division led by Itagaki Seishiro claimed to be an elite division of the Japanese army, and in the two months of invading China, it had never encountered an opponent, and all the officers and men were blind to everything, did not pay attention to the Chinese army, and did not think that the Chinese army would take the initiative to attack and ambush them, so it was easy to enter the "cemetery" set up by Lin Biao for them. After the Japanese army entered the encirclement, Lin Biao immediately sent a staff officer to run to the nearby Nationalist position, and let them be responsible for blocking the Japanese army on the one hand, and send troops to reinforce them on the other.
After all the Japanese troops entered the ambush circle, Lin Biao decisively ordered fire. Three flares rose in the air, and under the loud sound of the charge horn, machine guns, grenades, and mortars opened fire together, and the Japanese were caught off guard without any defense, and many soldiers jumped out of the car and hid under the car.
After the commanders and fighters of the Eighth Route Army ran out of bullets and grenades in one breath, they immediately launched a charge, and Zeng Xiansheng, commander of the 5th Company of the 685 Regiment, led the troops and rushed to the front, he led the soldiers to blow up many cars in a row, Zeng Xiansheng was tall, and he had also practiced martial arts, so he quickly killed many enemies.
However, the combat effectiveness of the Japanese Fifth Division was also very strong, and in the fierce white-knife battle, the commander of the 5th Company, Zeng Xiansheng, fell in a pool of blood after being hit by several knives, and the 685th Regiment successfully blocked the retreat of the Japanese army. The Japanese army moved very quickly, they quickly set their sights on the commanding heights of the Laoye Temple, Lin Biao also took a fancy to this place, and immediately ordered the three battalions of the 686 regiment to seize the Laoye Temple, and the three battalions finally took down the Laoye Temple after paying a huge price, but Yang Yong, deputy commander of the 686 Regiment, was wounded by enemy stray bullets when he climbed up the Laoye Temple with the three battalions, and the commander of the three battalions was also wounded.
The Japanese military planes also rushed to bomb the Eighth Route Army of the Laoye Temple, and five or six hundred Japanese troops rushed to the Laoye Temple, rushing to the Laoye Temple, launching round after round of attacks on the Laoye Temple, the two sides repeatedly fought on the commanding heights, the bayonet was broken with the butt of the gun, stones, and branches, and finally Lin Biao threw the reserve team into it, only to completely block the mouth. The battle was fought until one o'clock in the afternoon, and the main Force of the Japanese Army was basically wiped out.
After the battle began, the 115th Division planned to take several Japanese prisoners for propaganda, but this decision caused the officers and men of the 115th Division to pay heavy casualties. While cleaning up the battlefield, a battalion commander picked up a wounded Japanese soldier on his back and prepared to take him to the aid station for treatment, but the Japanese soldier woke up halfway and bit off the battalion commander's ear. Another correspondent found the wounded Japanese soldier under the car when collecting the telephone line, and the correspondent took out gauze to bandage his wound, but the wounded soldier of the Japanese army stabbed him in the abdomen with a bayonet and died on the spot.
In the Battle of Pingxingguan, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army annihilated more than 1,000 enemy troops and suffered more than 800 casualties, but it did not capture a single Japanese prisoner, which has never happened in the history of the Red Army. The commanders and fighters of the 115th Division were also stunned by the arrogance of the Japanese army, and they were in charge at that time
Wang Zifeng, director of political education of the 115th Division's teaching team, wrote in his diary that day: "This spirit of the Japanese army rather than surrender is a spirit that our army has not seen in the ten-year civil war. ”
Yang Chengwu later recalled: "Most of the Japanese troops in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression underwent strict training. Their tactics were skilled, their marksmanship was accurate, their field suits were consistent with the color of the autumn crops, they were easy to conceal, and their attack power was strong, coupled with the non-resistance of the Kuomintang reactionaries, they invaded North China, attacked the city strategically, drove straight in, and enhanced their morale. The Japanese army's assassination technique is strong, and if we are wounded, we will not surrender, and the soldiers who hold us will pinch and bite, so that we have to eliminate them one by one, which increases the cost of our victory. ”
Although our army suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Pingxingguan, it played the prestige of the Eighth Route Army, the military prestige of the Chinese army, and the enthusiasm of the Chinese people for resisting the war, and at the same time, in order to contain the attack of the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army, and supported the Pinghan Railway and the Kuomintang army on the Tongpu Railway.