Qin Shi Mingyue Han Shi Guan, the Long March of Ten Thousand Miles has not been returned. But to make the Dragon City fly will be, not to teach Humadu Yin Mountain. —Tang Wang Changling, "Out of the Jam"
After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident in 1937, the Japanese army launched a full-scale war of aggression against China, because Japan is a country with scarce resources and cannot afford a war of attrition with China, so the Japanese at that time eagerly wanted to fight a decisive battle with the main force of the Chinese army in the North China Plain to give full play to its equipment superiority and mobility capabilities. At that time, the Upper Echelons of China also recognized this attempt of the Japanese, and Chiang Kai-shek, in order to guide the Japanese invasion from north to south to east to west, in order to facilitate a long-term battle, took the initiative to counterattack in Shanghai, which was the famous Battle of Songhu.
Beginning on August 13, 1937, General Zhang Zhizhong, commander-in-chief of the Ninth Army of the Kuomintang Army, commanded the 87th Division, the 88th Division and other elite units of the Nationalist Army began to launch a siege on the Hongkou Base of the Japanese Marine Corps in Shanghai, trying to drive these Japanese troops into the sea. However, because Chiang Kai-shek blindly pinned his hopes on the League of Nations, the troops on the front line were afraid to fight, giving the Japanese army the opportunity to continuously increase troops from their own countries and make a large-scale landing in Shanghai, and this battle became a large-scale decisive battle between China and Japan.
At the Battle of Songhu, Chiang Kai-shek could be said to have transferred all of China's elite troops to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions at that time, and the three model divisions of the 87th Division, the 88th Division, and the 36th Division took the lead in the battle, followed by the central military academy teaching corps of all German armaments, the tax police corps under the ministry of finance, and other elite units all went to the front. Chiang Kai-shek's central army units armed with the Huangpu system, such as Luo Zhuoying's 18th Army, Hu Zongnan's First Army, Yu Jishi's 74th Army, and other units successively went to the Songhu front and fought to the death with the Japanese army.
The Chinese army invested the most elite central teaching corps and the eighty-seventh division, the eighty-eighth division, 148 divisions and 62 brigades of more than 800,000 people, although China claimed to have two million soldiers, but removed some empty pay, and some miscellaneous troops that did not even have guns, and only more than 100 million people could fight. The Navy and Air Force were also very weak, and the threat to the Japanese army was very limited.
The first group of people in this battle to go up and fight with the Japanese army were Chiang Kai-shek's Central Army troops, and the 18th Army, which was ordered to garrison Baoshan, was ordered to hold Baoshan, and more than 500 people from the 3rd Battalion of the 583rd Regiment of the 98th Division were ordered to hold Baoshan, and under the leadership of the battalion commander Yao Ziqing (Huangpu Phase VI), they fought with the Japanese army for a week, and thousands of Japanese troops launched more than a dozen attacks on Baoshan under the cover of naval guns and aircraft tanks, all of which were repelled by the unit. Finally, due to the excessive casualties of the three battalions, the Japanese army rushed into the city, Yao Ziqing led the troops and the Japanese army to carry out a fierce street battle, and finally the battalion except for one person who was ordered to break through the previous night to report the military situation to the superiors, the rest of the heroic sacrifice.
Cai Bingyan,Brigade Commander of the 201st Brigade of the 67th Division of the 18th Army (Huangpu Phase I), led his troops into the battlefield after the Japanese army launched a fierce battle in Luodian, on the morning of August 27, 1937, General Cai Bingyan personally led two battalions of the 402nd Regiment to attack the Luodian Japanese army, unfortunately shot and killed, martyred, the 67th Division Commander Li Shusen (Huangpu I Phase) was also seriously wounded in the battle, and later the 67th Division under the leadership of Huang Wei fought less than one regiment of troops. Major General Huang Meixing (Huangpu I), commander of the 264th Brigade of the 88th Division of the 9th Army, led his troops to conquer more than a dozen Japanese positions in a row, and finally Lieutenant Colonel Deng Huan, chief of staff of the brigade headquarters, and more than 30 officers and men of the communications platoon were hit by Japanese shells, all of whom were killed. Sun Liren (Tsinghua University), commander of the second detachment of the Taxation Police Corps, was hit by Japanese shells and shot thirteen rounds of shrapnel during the battle to blow up the Japanese pontoon bridge.
In this battle, the Whampoa troops on which Chiang Kai-shek relied were very heavy, and all the officers of Hu Zongnan's First Army graduated from the Whampoa Officers' School from top to bottom, but after the war, almost all the middle and low-level officers of this unit were lost. Feng Yuxiang later commented on the Battle of Songhu: "The Songhu battlefield was a flesh and blood mill that consumed almost a division's strength in one day. ”
In addition to the Central Army, other local armies showed a very heroic performance, the main force of the Gui Army just arrived, Bai Chongxi threw the fresh force 21st Group Army, which had just arrived, into a counter-offensive, but unexpectedly coincided with the main direction of the Japanese army's attack, the two sides fought against each other in a big field, the artillery fire fully prepared by the Japanese army completely suppressed the cover fire of the Nationalist army, and the main force of more than 60,000 Gui army of the 21st Group Army was almost completely destroyed, and the large field was subsequently lost, and Bai Chongxi almost fainted after hearing the battle report. The 20th Army of Yang Sen of the Sichuan Army also suffered heavy losses in this battle, and a division entered the battlefield for three hours, and a major battalion commander could be promoted to major general division commander. The 67th Army of the Northeast Army put into the battlefield in the later stage to cover the retreat of the main force, and due to the huge gap in firepower with the Japanese army, the 67th Army's self-commander, Lieutenant General Wu Keren, almost all of them were martyred.
The Battle of Songhu lasted three months, the Chinese army suffered 300,000 casualties, the Japanese army suffered 40,000 casualties, although it ended in the defeat of the Chinese army, but 300,000 Chinese soldiers used their lives and blood to dye the Huangpu River red, telling the people of the world: The Chinese nation will face this historical challenge with comprehensive sacrifices, and the Chinese army will fight the invaders to the end even if it is fought to the end with one soldier and one shot.