"If you can't take down Guan Jia'an, revoke the number of your 129th Division, and kill the head no matter how big or small"
At the end of August 1940, in order to break the "cage policy" adopted by the Japanese army in the anti-Japanese base areas in North China, "with the railway as the pillar, the highway as the chain, and the bunker as the lock," the Eighth Route Army, under the leadership of deputy commander-in-chief Peng Dehuai, successively invested more than 100 regiments of troops, mainly on the entire line of the Zhengtai Railway controlled by the Japanese puppet army, and launched a large-scale traffic sabotage war, which is the famous "Hundred Regiments War."
The Battle of the Hundred Regiments was dominated by sabotage
More than a month after the "Hundred Regiments War" began, under the continuous large-scale attacks and attacks of the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese army in North China suffered heavy losses, which made the commander of the Japanese North China Front, Tada Jun, angry and ashamed, and specially mobilized tens of thousands of troops to carry out retaliatory "sweeps" in various anti-Japanese base areas in North China.
The brutal "scorched earth policy" implemented by the Japanese army in the process of "sweeping" made Peng Dehuai and other leaders of the Eighth Route Army extremely angry, and they were ready to look for opportunities to eliminate the enemy who attacked one or two ways and strike at their arrogance.
In late October, the Okazaki Brigade of the Thirty-sixth Division of the Japanese Army, in the course of the "sweeping," unexpectedly rampaged through our base area with more than 500 troops, and inadvertently broke into the vicinity of the Huangyadong Arsenal headquartered in Licheng County, Shanxi Province.
Huangyadong Arsenal
Peng Dehuai, who had always wanted to find an opportunity to completely annihilate the enemy one or two ways, felt that the opportunity was rare, so he ordered the 772nd Regiment and the 16th Regiment of the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army to rush to Huangyadong and must destroy this enemy.
On October 28, okazaki's brigade, under the attack of the 386th Brigade with its absolute superiority, was unable to resist at all, and prepared to take Wuxiang County and then withdraw to Qin County, and stationed near Guanjia'an in The town of Panlong. At this time, a unit of the 129th Division led by Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping was stationed in Panlong Town for repairs. That is to say, the troops of nearly five or six regiments of the Eighth Route Army had been gathered around the Okazaki Brigade at this time. In the case of absolute superiority in numbers, Peng Dehuai rushed to Shimen Village in Panlong Town on the afternoon of October 29 and personally commanded the annihilation war.
That evening, Peng Dehuai formally issued operational orders: Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping commanded the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division and one unit each of the newly formed 10th Brigade; Chen Geng commanded one unit of the 385th Brigade and one each of the 25th and 38th Regiments of the 1st Column; peng Dehuai personally commanded the Mountain Artillery Company of the Headquarters Artillery Regiment and launched an attack on the Okazaki Brigade at 4 a.m. on October 30.
Peng Dehuai was on the front line of the Battle of Guanjia'an
Before the Eighth Route Army launched a general offensive, okazaki brigade had already discovered our army's attempt to encircle, so the cunning Japanese army quickly built a strong defensive line overnight on the two high grounds of Guanjia'an and the willow trees to the south.
After the battle began, due to the fierce firepower of the enemy's individual troops and the favorable terrain, although the troops assembled by the Eighth Route Army were numerous, they could not be fully deployed, and could only take turns to attack. In this way, under the premise that the weapons and equipment were obviously inferior and the enemy positions were easy to defend and difficult to attack, after two days and two nights of bloody fighting, the attacking troops suffered heavy casualties, and although most of the Japanese troops were annihilated, the main position of Guanjia'an was still not captured.
During this period, Liu Bocheng and Chen Geng contacted Peng Dehuai by telephone twice, asking for the evacuation of the siege and the search for another fighter, but both were rejected by Peng Dehuai, and Peng Dehuai even released: If he could not take guan jia'an, he would revoke the number of the 129th Division. Unfortunately, until November 1, the first reinforcements of the Japanese army approached, the main position of Guanjia'an was still in the hands of the Japanese army, Peng Dehuai had to order the withdrawal of the retreat, most of the remnants of the Okazaki brigade that had been eliminated were taken away by reinforcements, and the annihilation battle of Guanjia'an ended in failure.
In this battle, the Eighth Route Army fought fiercely for two days and nights with absolute superiority, but it still failed to completely annihilate the enemy army. According to the recollection of General Chen Geng who participated in commanding the battle, our army suffered more than 2,000 casualties in the Battle of Guanjia'an, and about 400 casualties of the Japanese Okazaki Brigade, most of whom were killed.
Compared with the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese firepower was absolutely superior
For the Battle of Guanjia'an, due to the unsatisfactory outcome of the battle, there is still a great controversy both then and now. In any case, that battle has passed for many years, and it has already happened, whether it is against or for approval, and it seems that there is not much point in discussing whether this battle should be fought or not. Although the Eighth Route Army suffered heavy casualties in that battle and did not complete the goal of eventually annihilating the enemy, this did not completely negate the Battle of Guanjia'an. In fact, the Battle of Guanjia'an had at least two major gains for the later development of the people's army.
First, in the era of rapid development of the number of people's troops, the Battle of Guanjia'an tempered the troops participating in the war and forged a group of troops who dared to fight tenaciously and gnaw hard bones.
Around 1941, the armed forces of the Eighth Route Army were rapidly expanded, from tens of thousands of people at the beginning to nearly 500,000 people, many of whom were recruits who had not yet joined the army and had no combat experience.
Many of the recruits of the Eighth Route Army lacked combat experience
For example, the 38th regiment and the 25th regiment of the first column of the decisive death, which participated in the battle, only joined the new army after 1938, and lacked combat experience. In this battle of Guanjia'an, there was a major mistake due to lack of experience and paralysis, which led to the sudden counterattack of the Japanese army to take away the willow tree that had already been captured.
The recruits need to be trained, which is also one of peng Dehuai's intentions in insisting on fighting the family.
Bo Yibo, who was then the political commissar of the First Death Squad, later recalled: "Although the losses in the battle were great, these two regiments also fought out and became the two main regiments with the strongest combat effectiveness of the Death Squad. This can show that after the tempering of the Guanjia'an battle, the combat effectiveness of the new army participating in the war has been effectively improved.
Second, the Battle of Guanjia'an enabled our army to gain valuable experience in trench warfare, especially in the area of tunnel tactics.
The Okazaki Brigade, which had previously been chased and fought by Chen Geng's two regiments, was able to withstand the siege of five or six regiments in Guanjia'an, and some people believe that it was mainly due to the geographical advantages of Guanjia'an's easy defense and difficult to attack, but more importantly, the Japanese army had rich experience in position warfare and was good at using terrain to build a tunnel defense front.
Guanjia'an is a high hill surrounded by mountains, and the top of the hill is a flat land with a radius of several hundred square meters. Its north side is a cliff steep wall, the east and west sides of the slope is steeper, only the south slope is gentler, can be described as easy to defend and difficult to attack.
The Japanese army connected all the Caves of Guanjia'an to form a tunnel system
After okazaki's brigade occupied Sekigaku, it did not intend to rely solely on favorable terrain to hold on. They also actively built fortifications, penetrating the entire row of caves where the people originally lived in Guanjia'an, and each cave was built with a machine gun position, which could not only fight independently, but also cover and support each other with other caves, forming a crossfire network. Bulletproof trenches were also dug in front of the machine gun positions, and if the grenades were not thrown in place, they would roll into the bulletproof trenches and would be difficult to pose a threat. Fortifications were also dug outside the caves, forming a circular combat system connected inside and out and connected to the kilns. This is the tunnel tactic that the Japanese army is very good at. In the Pacific Theater, the Japanese army's tunnel warfare left a special impression on the American army.
A few days after the battle of Guanjia'an ended, Peng Dehuai, Zuo Quan, Liu Bocheng, Chen Geng and others climbed to Guanjia'an together to inspect it. The tunnel fortifications, bunker bunkers, and firepower configurations constructed by the Japanese army inspired these eighth route army generals who had experienced hundreds of battles, and specially asked the accompanying staff officers to draw the enemy's positions one by one for our army to study and reference.
More than ten years later, the tunnels built by the volunteers in the Campaign to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in the Shangganling Campaign were similar to the tunnel system connected by the kilns of the Japanese army in Guanjia'an, and this should largely benefit from the profound lessons that the Battle of Guanjia'an brought to our army in that year.
In the Battle of Shangganling, the volunteers used tunnels to fight the enemy
Generally speaking, with regard to the Battle of Guanjia'an, the Eighth Route Army, with its inferior equipment and undertrained troops, dared to take the initiative to attack the superiorly equipped and well-trained Japanese field troops, although it suffered heavy losses, but at that time it not only completely shook the Japanese army's determination to continue to go deep into the anti-Japanese base areas to "sweep up," greatly reduced the pressure of the people's army to "counter-sweep" behind enemy lines, created a good environment for the further development of the people's army, and also played a positive role in improving the combat effectiveness of the people's army in the later period and the accumulation of experience in offensive tactics in the battlefield.
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