After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, all provinces across the country, under the call of the National Government, sent troops to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance.
At that time, the Qian army went out of the province to participate in the War of Resistance with a regular division system, and there were about 11 divisions in total!
However, most of these 11 divisions only meet the requirements of the regular division in terms of the number of soldiers, and there is still a certain gap between the actual weapons and equipment and military training compared with the real regular divisions.
When many Qianjun troops went out to fight the war, they did not even have basic military shoes, and all they wore were straw shoes, so many people also called the Qianjun "grass shoe soldiers".
However, these so-called "straw shoe soldiers" were very brave and tenacious in battle, dared to fight and dare to fight, regarded death as a homecoming, and made countless outstanding achievements on the anti-Japanese battlefield.
In particular, the "Second Preparatory Division of the Qian Army", although its structure is complex and its weapons and equipment are poor, on the anti-Japanese battlefield in western Yunnan, it is a "strong brigade" that rushes to the front, and its name makes the Japanese army talk about tigers.
In this article, let's talk about this "miscellaneous" strong brigade in the Qian army - the reserve second division!
The Second Preparatory Division, referred to as the "Pre-Second Division", was one of the 11 divisions of the Qian Army that went out of the province to resist the war!
Compared with several other divisions of the Qian Army, the pre-second division was formed relatively late, and was not formed until early 1938.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the whole province of Guizhou actively responded to the call of the National Government and sent troops to participate in the War of Resistance.
However, due to the small population of Guizhou, at the end of 1937, Guizhou was already facing the situation of no teachers.
In order to support the front, Wu Zhongxin, then chairman of Guizhou Province and commander-in-chief of security, personally assigned by Feng Jianfei, then director of the Guizhou Provincial Security Department, to form a "reserve second division" in Qian.
Feng Jianfei, a native of Panxian County, Guizhou, and a graduate of Huangpu Phase I, participated in the First and Second Eastern Expeditions and the Northern Expedition, and made many military achievements.
In 1933, Feng Jianfei became the secretary of the Henan Branch of the Guangfu Society, and the deputy director and director of the Major General of the Security Department of the Henan Provincial Government. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as a lieutenant general in the Security Department of the Guizhou Provincial Government.
After Feng Jianfei was ordered, he immediately established the basic framework of the pre-second division on the basis of the first and second regiments of the provincial security regiment, and then recruited new soldiers from all counties in the province.
In less than three months, Feng Jianfei formed a full-strength division with more than 10,000 soldiers, with Feng Jianfei as the division commander, Guizhou Guiding "Chen Taiyuan" as the deputy division commander, and Hunan "Duan Huatang" as the chief of staff.
The Pre-2nd Division has 3 regiments under its command! Among them, the leader of the Fifth Regiment, "Wang Boxun", was a native of Anlong, Guizhou, who graduated from the Guizhou Daowu Hall in his early years and later went to Japan to study.
In December 1949, Wang Boxun, then deputy commander of the 19th Corps of the Kuomintang Army, revolted in Xingren, and all of his more than 20,000 people were reorganized by our People's Liberation Army.
The leader of the Sixth Regiment, "Zhang Xuesheng", was also from Guizhou, and the leader of the Seventh Regiment, Wang Chongjian, was a native of Xinhua, Hunan.
The lower-level officers of the whole division are basically a group of students trained by the officer training team of the Provincial Security Command, as well as the military training class of the Security Department, and the military backbone of the former Provincial Security Regiment I and II Regiments.
As for the vast number of soldiers in the whole division, most of them came from poor peasants in the mountains or from school students.
Due to the tense battle situation, this newly formed unit had not yet undergone basic military training, and even had not replenished its weapons and equipment, so it hurried to the battlefield. Such a spirit is truly admirable!
In early 1942, the Pre-Second Division was ordered to be incorporated into the "Chinese Expeditionary Force" sequence, which was subordinate to the Sixth Army (Commander Huang Jie) under Song Xilian's Eleventh Army, and was mainly responsible for garrisoning the Anning area near Kunming.
At the end of April of the same year, after the Japanese army successively captured Tonggu, Mandalay, Lashio and other places, the 56th Division of the Japanese army's vanguard drove straight along the Burma Road with a force and attacked western Yunnan in China.
Because the newly formed 28th Division and the newly organized 29th Division of the 66th Army stationed along the Burma Highway failed to effectively stop the Japanese attack, the Japanese army was able to occupy the areas of Hatsumachi, Mangshi, and Longling one after another, and pushed the front line to the west side of the Huitong Bridge on the Nu River.
In order to resist the Japanese attack, the bridge-keeping troops decisively blew up the bridge, so that the main Japanese army could not cross the bridge!
However, the crazy Japanese army did not give up on this, and immediately crossed the Nu River with a force of troops, and then occupied Hai Po Mountain, and covered the follow-up troops to continue to cross the Nu River.
At this critical moment, Song Xilian, then commander-in-chief of the Eleventh Army, immediately ordered troops to be mobilized from western Yunnan and Kunming to the nu river front to block the Japanese army.
After three days of bloody fighting, hundreds of Japanese troops who crossed the Nu River were completely annihilated by our army;
Figure | General Song Xilian, then commander-in-chief of the Eleventh Army
Subsequently, the 87th Division, the 88th Division, and the 2nd Division of the 71st Army arrived one after another, blocking the Japanese army on the west bank of the Nu River in one fell swoop, and quickly established a defensive line along the river from Lichaiba in the north to the mouth of the Sanjiang River in the south.
The Japanese army's plan to force the capital Chongqing from the southwest was finally foiled. At this time, the enemy and us relied on the Nu River, and gradually formed a confrontation between the north and the south.
In early May 1942, Chiang Kai-shek personally ordered the Pre-Second Division to cross the Nu River and go deep into the enemy-occupied areas to carry out guerrilla warfare.
Thus, until the 36th Division of the Seventy-first Army took over the defense in May 1943, the Pre-Second Division, which was mostly composed of Qianzhong disciples, became the only formed Chinese army at that time to penetrate deep into the enemy-occupied areas.
And it is also from this time that the Pre-Second Division will usher in their most arduous and at the same time the most glorious combat career!
Together with the local anti-Japanese armed forces in Tengchong, Yunnan, the officers and men of the Pre-Second Division, with the support and cooperation of the broad masses of the people, launched a widespread guerrilla war behind enemy lines.
In the case of the huge disparity in strength between the enemy and us, they adopt flexible and mobile tactics, constantly ambush and harass the enemy, and consume a large amount of the enemy's living strength.
In addition, they also mobilized and organized the masses to kill and eliminate evil, severely cracked down on those traitors who openly opposed the people, and vigorously propagated and encouraged the anti-Japanese resistance.
Thanks to the efforts of all the officers and men of the Pre-Second Division and the local anti-Japanese armed forces, the local people's anti-Japanese enthusiasm was high, and they joined the "anti-Japanese army" one after another.
During this period, the Japanese army also sent troops to clear and sweep up many times, but most of them were fruitless. On the contrary, the Japanese army's grain supply and transportation will be destroyed by our army from time to time, and it will be difficult to disturb the Japanese army occupying the land of western Yunnan, and there will be no peace in the end.
During the battle behind enemy lines, many anti-Japanese heroes also emerged from the Pre-Second Division, such as the deputy commander of the Pre-Second Division, known as the "Chinese God of War", "Hongxing", who was one of the typical representatives.
Figure | General Hong Xing, then deputy commander of the Pre-Second Division
Hong Xing, born in a poor peasant family in Ningxiang County, Hunan Province, in order to get rid of the oppression of the landlord, he joined the army as a teenager, and then he followed the troops all the way to the south to fight in the northern war, and made great achievements, known as "Hong Da Beard" and "Big Knife Division Commander".
Xiao Yong's legendary experience of good war, as well as his excellent qualities of growing up in a harsh environment and bearing hardships and standing hard work, made him quickly grow into an excellent guerrilla warfare expert.
For the people in the enemy-occupied areas, Hongxing was a heroic anti-Japanese hero who fought bravely and sympathized with the people; for the Japanese Kou, Hongxing was an extremely dangerous figure, and it was even more a big problem for their confidants.
In order to deplete the enemy's living forces, Hong Xing personally organized and led the "black killing team", often secretly sneaking into the enemy's bunker late at night to carry out assassination activities, disturbing the Japanese army all day long. Local people also call it "touching the night screw".
The members of the "Killing Black Team" are like ghosts one by one, coming and going without a shadow and without a trace, so that the enemy is invincible.
Gradually, a series of rumors about the "black squad" began to spread in the enemy-occupied areas, such as what "killing the black squad specializes in cutting the brain shell of the devils and traitors", which caused great psychological shock to the enemy.
Encouraged by the heroic deeds of the "black-killing squad," many people in the enemy-occupied areas, especially those enthusiastic young people, followed suit and adopted various flexible forms and means to constantly harass and consume the enemy.
While causing mental oppression and deterrence to the enemy, it also gives the enemy greater damage.
After more than a year of arduous struggle, the Pre-Second Division scored many outstanding achievements in the enemy-occupied areas, which greatly encouraged the people in the enemy-occupied areas in their enthusiasm for resisting the war and enhanced their confidence and courage in resisting Japanese aggression.
Because of this, the Pre-Second Division was also regarded by the people in the enemy-occupied areas as the "savior" and hope for resisting Japan and saving the country, and became the backbone of the military and people in western Yunnan who insisted on the enemy's rear station.
In May 1943, after the 36th Division of the Seventy-first Army came to take over the defense, the Pre-2nd Division was ordered to retreat to the rear for rest.
The following year, after the "Great Counteroffensive in Western Yunnan" began, after nearly a year of rest, the Pre-Second Division was ordered to return to Tengchong, assigned to the 50th Army of the 20th Group Army, and participated in the "Battle of Tengchong" on May 11 of the same year.
Tengchong, known as Tengyue in ancient times, is located in the southwest foothills of Gaoligong Mountain, is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese, a state of literature and a jadeite distribution center, and is also a famous cultural city with a long history.
Tengchong City was founded during the orthodox years of the Ming Dynasty. Because of its important geographical location, successive dynasties have sent heavy troops to garrison, and in the Ming Dynasty, there was also a stone city, which has always been known as the "first city on the edge of the pole".
The overall layout and structure of Tengchong City are all standard ancient cities in China!
Laifeng Mountain, located on the southern outskirts of Tengchong City, is a natural barrier of Tengchong City, and it is also the commanding height of the entire Tengchong City, occupying Laifeng Mountain can overlook the entire Tengchong City.
On May 10, 1942, 292 Japanese troops occupied Tengchong City without a single shot.
After the Japanese army occupied Tengchong, in order to strengthen the defensive strength of Tengchong City, on the basis of the original strong city pool, a strong and dense fortress group was added to form a crisscrossing fortification. In particular, the fortifications in Laifengshan were the most fortified.
The Japanese fortifications at Laifengshan were mainly based on Fengsi Temple, which was a defensive position composed of five bunker groups.
Inside the Japanese positions, its trenches were connected vertically and horizontally, with groups of dark forts, and tunnels on the mountainside leading directly to Tengchong City.
The fortification and complexity of the Japanese Tengchong fortifications, as well as the strength of the firepower configuration, are second only to Matsuyama on the west bank of the Huitong Bridge on the Nu River.
As for the "Battle of Songshan", we will mention it again when we talk about the 102nd and 103rd Divisions of the Qian Army!
On June 5, 1942, Hong Xing, deputy commander of the Pre-Second Division, gathered patriots from all walks of life in QushiJiang Tho and established the Tengchong Provisional County Affairs Committee to act as the county affairs.
In order to resist the Japanese invaders who invaded Tengchong, the Tengchong military and civilians, under the leadership of the Qianjun Pre-Second Division and the Tengchong Anti-Japanese County Government, gradually launched a series of anti-Japanese activities to save the country, such as rushing to transport materials, rescuing refugees, and establishing anti-Japanese cadre training classes.
After the Qianjun Pre-Second Division entered the territory of Tengchong County on May 15 of the same year, it successively launched many battles such as the "Battle of Olive Village", "The Ambush Battle of Menglian", "The Ambush Battle of Yinjiawan", and the "Guerrilla War of Tengnan Mandong", which dealt a heavy blow to the enemy.
On May 11, 1944, the 20th Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force launched a large-scale counterattack against the enemy in Tengchong.
At the end of June of the same year, the Pre-Second Division was ordered to cross the Nu River again and participate in the battle to retake Tengchong!
After several days of bloody fighting, the officers and men of the Pre-Second Division, after completing the combat tasks of capturing the various peripheral strongholds around Tengchong, were ordered to take on the task of attacking Laifengshan!
As we said above, Laifengshan is an important stronghold for the Japanese army to defend Tengchong, its fortifications are strong, its firepower is fierce, and the difficulty of the Pre-Second Division wanting to conquer it is self-evident.
After the battle began, "Gu Baoyu", then the commander of the Pre-Second Division, ordered that the Japanese defensive positions in Laifengshan be covered with artillery first, and then the entire regiment would be dispatched to launch a fierce attack.
However, due to the unusually strong Fortifications of the Japanese Army, the effect of artillery bombardment was not great.
Our army's attack did not go well, but the Japanese army fought very happily! Relying on their dense firepower, the Japanese army suppressed our attacking troops to the forefront of the position, and used the trenches connected vertically and horizontally to continuously carry out short surprise attacks on our army, resulting in heavy casualties in our army.
Coupled with the heavy rain and torrential rain for several consecutive days, our attacking troops were hindered and we had to stop the attack.
On July 26th, After continuous heavy rain, Tengchong finally cleared!
At noon that day, dozens of light and heavy bombers of our army carried out carpet bombing and strafing from the five fortress groups in Fengshan.
Immediately afterward, the officers and men of the Pre-Second Division, with the cooperation of the friendly 36th Division and the 198th Division, once again launched a fierce attack on the Japanese positions in Fengshan.
However, although our army had already carried out repeated bombardments against the enemy in Laifengshan before the attack, the entire Japanese position fortifications in Laifengshan were very strong, and they were connected in all directions.
In particular, the fortifications built by the Japanese army in several places, such as Laifeng Temple and Lao Wenbi, were extremely deep in their bunkers and tunnels, so most of our air and ground attacks had little effect.
Therefore, in actual offensive operations, it is up to the officers and men of our division to fight with their lives. Many times, the warriors had to go deep into the Japanese fortifications and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.
And each bunker trench needs to be repeatedly fought with the enemy many times. Therefore, the whole attack operation is actually a typical hand-to-hand combat.
On the Laifengshan position, charred corpses and hot scorched earth could be seen everywhere, and the dead of the enemy and us in hand-to-hand combat abounded.
After a fierce battle, Laifeng Mountain has become a sea of fire, and the sounds of fighting, screaming, and groaning have converged into one, and the scene is incomparably tragic.
Finally, after three days of bloody fighting, our army annihilated more than 600 Japanese troops and completely occupied Laifengshan. However, in this battle, our army also paid a huge casualty price.
After occupying Laifengshan, the Japanese army entrenched in Tengchong City lost an excellent natural barrier, which was of great significance to the entire Tengchong counterattack and attack.
To this end, Roosevelt, who was then THE PRESIDENT of the United States, also sent a special telegram to congratulate him, and awarded Gu Baoyu and Peng Jie, the chief and deputy commanders of the pre-second division, the medals of military merit.
After occupying Laifengshan, the Pre-Second Division kept sweeping away the enemy outside the south of Tengchong City, and together with the main army, gradually formed a four-sided encirclement of Tengchong City.
At this time, although Tengchong has become an isolated city, its city walls are all made of huge strips of stone, high and thick, coupled with the city wall fortress ring, the four corners of the city wall and a large fortress side defense, our army wants to capture it, its difficulty is self-evident.
On August 2, the 346th Regiment of the 116th Division of the Fifty-third Army began to launch an attack on the Assistant Yamen and the Oriental Hospital outside the East Gate, and after a bitter battle, our army successively captured four Japanese fortresses and successfully occupied the Deputy Yamen.
Then, the 348th Regiment attacked the city from a gap of more than 10 meters wide blown up by the air force in the southeast corner of the city, during which although it was counterattacked by the Japanese army many times, it was repelled by our army and defended in the city.
On the 13th, in accordance with the deployment of the superiors, the Pre-Second Division, together with the 198th Division, the 36th Division, and the 116th Division, forcibly attacked the city from the south of the city, and the battle was extremely fierce.
On the 20th, the Pre-Second Division, with the assistance of the Air Force, took the lead in attacking the city and engaged in fierce street battles with the enemy.
Because the streets and alleys in Tengchong City are dense and the houses are closely connected, the stubborn enemies entrenched in the city use the houses and homes to fortify and build forts, so the battle is very fierce.
Every step our army takes, it has to pay a heavy price! As stated in the summary of the battle of the 20th Army:
"Siege battles, size must be contested, fierce battles everywhere, our enemies fighting hand-to-hand combat, mountains and rivers are dizzying, the sound of rivers and rivers, the momentum is like thunder and lightning, corpses fill the streets and alleys, blood is full of city walls."
Therefore, it can be seen that the arduousness of this battle is and the degree of fierceness!
Finally, due to heavy casualties, the headquarters of the Twentieth Army had to put the 130th Division, which was used for enemy reinforcements, into siege operations.
Finally, after 42 days of arduous struggle, our army finally completely annihilated the enemy in Tengchong and revived Tengchong on September 14, 1944.
Since then, the ancient city of Tengchong, which has fallen for two years, four months and four days, has returned to the hands of the Tengchong people.
However, this battle is still too cruel!
After the battle, Tengchong City was already full of rubble and devastation, and this historic city was completely engulfed by artillery fire!
In addition, in order to recover Tengchong, our army also paid a heavy price of 18,309 casualties. Among them, the Qianjun Pre-Second Division also had 2198 officers and men who sacrificed their lives for the country!
However, the results achieved by our army are still very impressive!
From the intensity of our expeditionary force to the conquest of Tengchong, it has fought more than 40 large and small battles, captured more than 60 enemy officers and men, killed more than 100 officers and men below the commander of major general and the commander of the Tibetan Heavy Kangmei Dazuo, more than 6,000 soldiers, captured 23 artillery pieces of various kinds, more than 60 light and heavy machine guns, and more than 1,000 rifles.
Like the famous "Battle of Matsuyama", the "Battle of Tengchong" is also one of the few famous battles in the history of China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and this battle was also called by the Japanese Emperor as the "Battle of Jade Fragments".
The Pre-Second Division, this "miscellaneous" unit that came out of the mountainous areas of Guizhou, because of its poor equipment and complex members, was "looked down upon" by many people at the beginning of the operation and doubted their combat effectiveness.
However, in the actual battle, their outstanding performance has impressed every countryman!
They have proved with their own practical actions that they can defeat the enemy with their tenacious fighting spirit and the spirit of seeing death as a homecoming in the case of backward weapons and equipment.
Throughout the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Western Yunnan, the Pre-Second Division successively participated in guerrilla warfare in the enemy-occupied areas, the main attack on Laifengshan, and the Tengchong Offensive, and so on, and made immortal meritorious achievements.
In the arduous battle of two and a half years, whether it was guerrilla resistance to the enemy or the face of danger, this unit was not afraid of hardships and dangers from beginning to end, and was not afraid of sacrifice, and went forward to fight the Japanese and Kou to the end.
Although the combat conditions were very difficult and harsh, the officers and men of the Pre-Second Division always maintained strict discipline and steely fighting spirit, and the more courageous and stronger they fought in battle.
While making heavy sacrifices, they also achieved many brilliant achievements, and they jumped from the original "straw shoe soldiers" to become a well-known heroic unit in the expeditionary force, and at the same time became an anti-Japanese brigade with outstanding achievements in the entire "Western Yunnan War of Resistance"!
Where there are good years, it is just someone who carries the weight for us! At the end of the article, let us pay the highest respect to all the officers and men of this heroic anti-Japanese unit, the Second Reserve Division of the Qian Army!
They will be immortalized in history!