During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the army that annihilated the largest number of enemies and dealt the heaviest blow to the Japanese army was the 74th Army, which was also known as the Tiger Army, the Third and Fifth Units, which was a unit that made the Japanese army feel frightened. However, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, there was another unit that could be compared with the 74th Army for a long time, and this unit was the Tenth Army, which was known as the Taishan Army.
The Tenth Army of the National Revolutionary Army was an ace unit directly under the Central Military Commission at the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the 74th Army led by him and Wang Yaowu were the two ace units of Xue Yue's Ninth Theater of Operations. In the three Battles of Changsha, especially during the Third Battle of Changsha, the reason why Xue Yue was able to command the Ninth Theater and almost annihilate the four divisions of the Japanese army under Changsha City was because the Tenth Army led by Li Yutang acted as the hearth in the Heavenly Furnace Tactics and stubbornly contained the main force of the Japanese army. After the Third Battle of Changsha, due to the brilliant results, Li Yutang, commander of the Tenth Army, was promoted to deputy commander of the 27th Group Army, and Fang Xianjue, commander of the Pre-Tenth Division, was promoted to commander of the Tenth Army.
Fang Xianjue graduated from the third phase of Huangpu and had outstanding military talent. After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Fang Xianjue successively participated in the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Xuzhou, the Battle of Wuhan, and the Three Battles of Changsha. During the Third Battle of Changsha, the Pre-Tenth Division led by Fang Xianjue annihilated the largest number of enemies, so Later Fang Xianjue was promoted to commander of the Tenth Army.
In 1944, the Japanese army launched a large-scale offensive against the Chinese army in Henan, Hunan, and Guangxi for the mainland communication line. After the rapid fall of Henan, Hunan became the focus of the Japanese army's attack, and Fang Xianjue was ordered to lead the Tenth Army to guard the strategic town of Hengyang. Before the Defense of Hengyang, the Tenth Army was not supplied due to continuous combat, and only 17,000 officers and men were 17,000 officers and men. However, the people of Hunan actively helped the army resist the Japanese army, and the people of Hunan spontaneously organized themselves to destroy roads, destroy bridges, slow down the speed of the Japanese army's attack, and cut off the japanese army's offensive route. More than 3,000 workers in Hengyang helped the troops get 1.2 million pieces of wood to cooperate with the troops in building fortifications such as trenches, scattered pits, bunkers and machine gun bunkers.
On June 28, 1944, the Japanese 68th Division and the 116th Division, under the cover of powerful artillery and aviation, launched a large-scale attack on Hengyang, and the Hengyang defenders bravely resisted, relying on fortifications and artillery fire to inflict heavy casualties on the Japanese army, killing more than 2,000 officers and men of the Japanese 68th Division Commander Nagasama and below. The Japanese army did not expect the Chinese army to resist so tenaciously, and in the case of a long period of invincibility, the commander of the 11th Army, Isamu Yokoyama, ordered the troops to suspend the attack.
On 11 July, after a break for several days, the Japanese began a second offensive against the positions of the Tenth Army. Japanese bombers threw a large number of bombs, incendiary bombs, and poison gas bombs into the city, causing a raging fire in Hengyang City, and in view of the accelerated pace of the Japanese attack, Fang Xianjue ordered the Pre-Tenth Division to abandon the first-line position and coordinate with the Third Division to defend the second-line position. After the frontal reduction of the tenth army's defense, the defensive intensity and fire density were strengthened, the Japanese attacking troops suffered great losses, and the squadron commanders of each squadron were almost changed, but they were still unable to break through the positions of the tenth army. On the 19th, because of the heavy casualties, Yokoyama issued a second order to stop the attack.
Hengyang could not be attacked for a long time, which seriously affected the process of the so-called "No. 1 Battle Plan" of the Japanese army, causing a sensation in Japan, the Japanese emperor reprimanded the generals in the front for failing to command, and Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo resigned. Angered and ashamed, Yokoyama mobilized four and a half divisions with a total of more than 100,000 troops, and on July 30, launched a third attack on Hengyang City, and the Japanese army also threw a large number of poison gas bombs into the city, causing a large number of officers and men of our army to lose the ability to resist and be captured.
In the defense of Hengyang, Fang Xianjue's initial order was to hold Hengyang for 10 days, but Fang Xianjue held it for 46 days and still did not see the shadow of reinforcements. At the end of the battle, the Tenth Army ran out of ammunition, the artillery was changed to infantry and the Japanese army fought fiercely, Fang Xianjue finally felt powerless to return to the sky, and wanted to shoot himself, but was stopped by the aide-de-camp. Finally, the Japanese army demanded that Fang Xianjue lead his troops to surrender, otherwise the safety of the people in the city and the wounded soldiers of the Tenth Army could not be guaranteed, and Fang Xianjue surrendered to the Japanese army in order to protect the entire city and thousands of officers and men of the Tenth Army from being slaughtered by the Japanese army. Before surrendering, Fang Xianjue also engaged in maneuver with the Japanese army, taking the opportunity to let some uninjured officers and civilians escape from the city. Not long after Fang Xianjue surrendered, he and the main generals of the Tenth Army were secretly taken back to Chongqing by the agents of the military command, and Chiang Kai-shek rewarded them, and was awarded the Order of the Qingtian White Sun by Fang Xianjue and many other generals, and Fang Xianjue was promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the 36th Group Army.
The defense of Hengyang lasted for 46 days, and 17,000 officers and men of the Tenth Army killed and wounded more than 20,000 Japanese troops at a tragic cost of 16,000 casualties. In the Battle of Hengyang, with the Defense of Hengyang as the core, the Chinese army killed more than 20,000 Japanese troops and wounded more than 60,000 enemies.