One day in July 1943, in the Shuyang Sangxu stronghold in northern Jiangsu Province, a group of soldiers of the New Fourth Army quietly approached the stronghold under the cover of night, but they did not shoot or throw grenades, but threw one dead dog after another into the ditch outside the Sangxu stronghold. What are they doing? It turned out that this was the earliest indigenous "biological weapon" used by the New Fourth Army, and these dead dogs made a great contribution to the capture of the Sang Ruins stronghold.
【Mulberry Market Stronghold】
Sangxu is the only way for Sulu to pass through, and it is also a high-yield wheat area on both sides of Qingyi Lake and The Rose River, and taking the Sangxu stronghold can make the contact between the New Fourth Army in northern Jiangsu and the Eighth Route Army in Shandong no longer hindered. The devils naturally knew the importance of the Mulberry Ruins, and built a large-scale stronghold here, consisting of artillery towers, trenches, barbed wire, and moats, and garrisoned by the third brigade of the puppet army led by the three brothers of the Han traitor Zhang Clan (Zhang Xingzhong, Zhang Shengzhong, and Zhang Xinzhong). The "Three Zhangs" often arrested and killed cadres and masses on the communication line according to the Sangxu stronghold, which brought great harm to both the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army, and the Huai Naval Sub-district of the New Fourth Army decided to pull out this stronghold.
But it is not easy to pull out this stronghold, the firepower of the stronghold is dense, easy to defend and difficult to attack. The soldiers of the New Fourth Army only have 3 bullets and 4 grenades, a company only has a light machine gun, and there are only dozens of bullets. The 7th Regiment of the Huai Naval Sub-district, which was responsible for the main offensive task, wanted to lead the "three zhangs" out of the stronghold and annihilate them outside the stronghold.
But the "three sheets" are very cunning, that is, they are improper. No matter how they were lured, they did not come out, as soon as our people approached, they used machine guns to strafe, and the 7 regiments attacked several times, sacrificing many cadres and soldiers, but they could not even break the ditch. Even the method of digging tunnels was cracked by the "three sheets" with trenches, and the 7 regiments were helpless for a while, and the morale was somewhat low for a while.
On this day, Chief of Staff Wang Tongwu led people to a meeting at the home of a fellow villager, but he smelled a foul odor, and the Chinese people wanted to vomit. Wang Tongwu had to suspend the meeting and lead everyone to find the source of the taste. After rummaging through boxes and cabinets, everyone finally found the culprit in the crack in the wall: a rotten rat. One of the soldiers quipped, "I didn't expect a dead rat to be more powerful than a devil, and the devils couldn't stop us from meeting." The speaker had no intention, the listener was intentional, and after Wang Tongwu heard it, a brilliant plan popped up in his head.
【The New Fourth Army explains how to hit the artillery tower on the sand table】
Just two days ago, song Yaonan, the commander of the 7th Regiment, led the people to reconnoiter at night, but they were exposed because of the barking of dogs in the village, and they were strafed by enemy machine guns and killed by bullets in the abdomen. Afterwards, the military sub-district wanted to mobilize the compatriots to beat all the dogs in the family to death, so as to avoid the consequences. Wang Tongwu thought to himself, a dead rat has such great power, if all the dogs in several nearby villages are killed and thrown to the Sangxu stronghold together, will the puppet army still be able to stay?
The superiors quickly agreed to the plan and began to send people door-to-door to do the work of the villagers. As soon as they heard that the purpose of beating dogs was to fight devils, the villagers handed over the dogs without saying a word. Soon thousands of dogs in several nearby villages were disposed of in a centralized manner, and the bodies were all thrown into the ditches outside the Sangxu stronghold. Forty or fifty miles away, the villagers also heard the news, and they also beat their dogs to death and sent them over.
The warriors started by throwing them at night, but later they had to throw them during the day because there were too many dead dogs. The ditch was quickly filled and a few meters above the ground, and the puppet army in the stronghold did not know what the New Fourth Army was doing, and was still laughing at them, but within two days they realized that something was wrong.
It was the height of summer, the heat was unbearable, and some dogs were highly decayed when they arrived, and the fur fell off as soon as they touched it, and now they were piled together to accelerate their decay. A thick layer of white maggots soon appeared in the whole ditch, and flies and mosquitoes breeded, and as soon as they flew up, they were a piece of black pressure. Even more uncomfortable was the foul smell, which could be smelled two miles away, and it made people dizzy.
The puppet army had to close the doors and windows, but the doors and windows could not be separated from the smell at all. As soon as they opened the lid of the pot when they cooked, there would be sheets of flies falling, and within a few days the puppet army in the stronghold began to pull diarrhea. However, the sharpshooters of the New Fourth Army had long been ambushed outside, and as long as the puppet army emerged, it would be directly overthrown. The puppet army did not even dare to come out of the, and could only solve it in the turret, so that the smell inside was even stronger.
After staying up for more than twenty days, the "three sheets" finally couldn't survive, almost everyone in the stronghold was thin, and some people had been pulled to the point where they couldn't stand up. Living in a foul-smelling environment all day, people's brains have become dull, and it has been more than half a month before they remember to ask the devil for help, but then they find that the telephone line has been cut. If you want to send someone out for help, you will already be surrounded and killed by the New Fourth Army outside. There is a shortage of food and medicine in the stronghold, and every day when thousands of mosquito bites are bitten, they will lose blood and die, what battle will be fought? On August 19, the "Three Zhangs" brothers surrendered to the New Fourth Army.
This was the first time in the history of the New Fourth Army that it used "biological and chemical weapons", and it almost did not take a single shot to capture the impregnable Sangxu stronghold. Although the stinky dog array is smelly, it is wonderful and fully demonstrates the wisdom of the people, and later, the stinky dog array appears many times in the new Fourth Army's point pulling operation.