The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was the saddest period of China's modern history, and the Japanese and Kosovars, believing that their weapons and equipment were more advanced than China's and the quality of their soldiers were better than China's, they clamored for the destruction of China within three months.
However, the Japanese still underestimated the resilience of the Chinese, they did fight relatively smoothly in the early stages, but they could not move when they fought, and when the Japanese army lost its sharpness, it also began to lose battles.
Especially in the Third Battle of Changsha, the Casualties of the Japanese Army were particularly heavy, and even some Japanese soldiers cried and knelt down to the Chinese army to beg for forgiveness in order to survive.
In December 1941, the Japanese army, which was in the quagmire of war, was very busy, and in order to obtain more resources, it began to move south, first sneaking attacks on American troops at Pearl Harbor, and then launching attacks in Southeast Asia.
At the same time, in order to prepare for the operational operation of attacking Hong Kong and contain the troops of China's Ninth Theater, the Japanese army also mobilized more than 5 divisions and more than 100,000 troops to attack Changsha for the third time.
On December 24, the Japanese soldiers crossed the Xinqiang River in eight ways, looking imposing.
Xue Yue, commander of the Ninth Theater, immediately responded and arranged for the army to block the attack layer by layer, so that the Japanese attack did not achieve the desired effect.
On January 1, 1942, the Nationalist 140th Division, which had just finished a fierce battle with a large group of Japanese troops, was stationed at Mingyue Dashan in Changsha County to rest, and suddenly received chiang Kai-shek's order to capture Yueyang within three days. At this time, the 140th Division was nearly 300 miles away from Yueyang, and it was not easy to rush through for three days, and it was even more difficult to attack the city.
Division commander Li Tang did not hesitate in the face of difficulties, and immediately led his troops north in the starry night. Not long after they set out, they encountered a big problem: facing the Miluo River, which was more than two meters deep, they could not find a suitable means of crossing for a while, the situation was urgent, and there was no way to let them go to dispatch, so Li Tang led several regimental commanders to reconnoiter all the way along the river.
After learning that the water near Dongting Lake was relatively shallow, Li Tang took the lead in discipleship, followed by several regimental commanders, and then the entire division crossed the river from here. It was a very cold time, and everyone's clothes were soaked, and it was a very uncomfortable feeling. However, everyone didn't care, they just wanted to get to Yueyang as soon as possible.
In the early morning of January 3, the 140th Division arrived on the south bank of the New Wall River, and the division commander Li Tang, considering that the troops had traveled a long way, ordered the whole army to rest for three hours first, and at the same time sent scouts to spy on the situation of the nearby Japanese army.
A few hours later, the scouts returned that the Japanese had already reinforced Yueyang in advance, and were now building fortifications on the north bank of the New Wall River in an attempt to hold out as a stronghold.
Li Tang knew that it was unlikely that he would be able to capture Yueyang on his own, but the military order was difficult to violate, so he ordered the commander of the 420th Regiment, Mu Longguang, to lead his troops to cross the river as a commando, and the 419th Regiment followed with mortars.
The troops crossing the river quickly broke through the high ground at the north end of the New Wall, but they were blocked by two Japanese brigades halfway up the mountainside, and the two sides fought bloody battles for two days and two nights, and the river was stained red with blood. The Japanese army could not resist and eventually retreated towards Yueyang City.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, the 419th Regiment quickly rushed to the eastern outskirts of Yueyang and bombarded the railway station with ten mortars, killing dozens of Japanese Kou. The 418th Regiment built fortifications at Dongting Lake to prevent the Japanese from sneaking up on the lake.
At this time, Li Tang's heart was still very worried, because the three-day deadline was coming, and if he couldn't take Yue Yang, he would definitely be punished. Fortunately, a telegram from Xue Yue came, which made Li Tang feel relieved.
Xue Yue commanded nearby, of course, he knew the actual situation better than Chiang Kai-shek, and he gave Li Tang an order: The Japanese Kou had begun to retreat, and the 140th Division stopped its attack, turned to the north bank of the New Wall River and the north bank of the Wanluo River to destroy the enemy's traffic, and intercept the enemy's cars and wounded from going north.
So Li Tang asked his three regiments to retreat overnight to build fortifications near rowing boats, weishan chong, and huguo embankment, and by the way, all the roads along the way were destroyed.
On January 4, the Japanese army surged out of Yueyang, and in order to cover their retreat, the Japanese also transferred eight aircraft from Wuhan to help the battle. At that time, the 420th Regiment garrisoned the Most Japanese Positions, which had one wing, and the Japanese aircraft also focused on this place.
The regimental commander Mou Longguang led the troops to actively resist, and at the same time he also found a very strange place in the Japanese army, when some Japanese soldiers rushed into the position, they simply held a gun but did not shoot, basically became a living target. He couldn't understand this.
After a day of bloody fighting, the 420 regiment suffered heavy losses and could only choose to break through. To Mou Longguang's surprise, it did not take long for the troops to break through and encounter reinforcements from four divisions of the 78th Army. The chief of staff of the 78th Army and several division commanders were mou Longguang's classmates and friends, and after hearing the news that the 420 regiment was surrounded, they immediately led their troops to come, which was very timely.
With the addition of the 78th Army, the situation was reversed in an instant, the troops continued to pursue and intercept the Japanese army, and Mou Longguang also returned to the defending position to find the wounded on his side.
He saw dozens of bodies of Japanese Kou on the position that he would have time to take away in the future, and searched his whole body without finding a single bullet, at this time he suddenly realized that the Japanese Kou had been surrounded by Xue Yue's "Heavenly Furnace Tactics" for nearly a week, and it was almost to the point of running out of ammunition, so he would just hold the gun and not shoot.
When the troops cleaned the battlefield, they found 12 Japanese, their faces were withered, their clothes were ragged, and they were so hungry that they walked a little. When Mu Longguang thought that the troops had fought so hard, anger suddenly arose in his heart, and he took a machete and walked over.
The 12 Japanese Kou saw the look in his eyes and instantly knelt on the ground and pleaded, and a Chinese soldier who knew Japanese translated: This is the devil begging not to cut off their heads with a large knife.
A few Japanese people knew that their lives were in Mu Longguang's hands at the moment, so some people kowtowed to Mou Longguang, and some of them lay on the ground holding their necks, unable to pull up.
This made Mou Longguang feel complicated, he wanted to kill them, but seeing this scene, he thought that most of these people were also farmers, and killing them did not have any great significance, so he said: We only kill Japanese warlords, not Japanese civilians.
But when the Japanese heard the interpreter say this, they immediately kowtowed to the people nearby. In the end, the 12 men were taken to the rear prisoner of war camp, while Mou Longguang led the remaining troops to find the division headquarters and follow the other Japanese to the eight hundred cities of Yueyang.
In the 1980s, Mou Longguang wrote a memoir, "Fighting on the Outskirts of Yueyang City", which detailed this incident, because the Japanese always publicized that they were not afraid of death, but what they saw with their own eyes was this scene, which impressed him very much.
The Third Battle of Changsha caused 56,000 Japanese casualties, Andi 138 rifles, 115 light machine guns, 11 mountain guns, and 9 radio stations were captured in China's Ninth Theater, and the Casualties of Chinese soldiers were 29,000.
And through this incident recorded by Mou Longguang, we can also understand that in the face of life and death, what is the so-called bushido is not kneeling on the ground and wailing bitterly.