On December 9, 1942, three brigades of the Japanese army and more than 1,500 puppet troops rushed to Zhujiagang in the north of Sihong County, Jiangsu Province, overnight, and surrounded the garrison of the 26th Regiment of the Ninth Brigade of the New Fourth Army under the cover of night and cold wind.
At that time, the Twenty-sixth Regiment had only more than 300 people, and undertook the arduous task of attracting the enemy's attention and covering the retreat of the Ninth Brigade, and circled with the enemy for more than 20 days to play them around.
I didn't expect that the mission was about to be completed, but I was suddenly attacked by the enemy.
Where can you break through the plains that you can't see your head at a glance? This means that this force has fallen into a desperate situation and has no way out!
Regiment commander Luo Yinghuai (who became the founding major general in 1955) really regretted it a little: Why didn't he pull the troops out of Zhujiagang in the middle of the night? But now it is difficult to fly with wings.
Yes, the unobstructed open ground, running through a rabbit is clear at a glance, not to mention hundreds of people, this is not equivalent to giving the enemy a live target in vain! The cadres who had originally proposed a breakthrough stopped squeaking and looked at the regimental commander with their eyes.
The situation was critical, the time was pressing, luo Yinghuai's brain was spinning rapidly, nervously thinking about ways to deal with the enemy.
Suddenly, a past event from ten years ago flashed in his mind, and his eyes lit up: Yes, just do it!
At that time, he was in the Thirty-fourth Regiment of the Twelfth Division of the Fourth Army of the Red Fourth Front, and the regimental commander was Xu Shiyou, who had led the whole regiment to fight a beautiful garrison battle in southern Shaanxi, and the situation was similar to now.
At that time, the Thirty-fourth Regiment was surrounded by Hu Zongnan's troops, which were five times larger than their own, and the two sides fought bloodily for three days and nights, Xu Shiyou finally led his troops to kill a bloody road from the enemy's combined unit, and some of the troops were able to break through.
This battle not only completed the task of covering the transfer of the main force, but also preserved its own strength.
In Luo Yinghuai's military career, this desperate experience has engraved the brand of an excellent commander who is not afraid of danger, and he knows that this battle is related to the survival of the commanders and fighters of the whole regiment, and it is also related to the success or failure of the counterattack of their main forces, and he must do his best to fight this battle!
"Pass on my orders — hold your ground, fight until dark, wait for reinforcements, and annihilate the enemy at random!"
Luo Yinghuai saw that several other commanders of the regiment headquarters had unified their opinions with him, and he resolutely issued an order for combat.
A regiment of 300 or so people retreated to the polders on all sides of Zhujiagang, and each position appeared to be weak in strength and lack of guns and ammunition, and almost all of them were more than twenty fighters resisting more than a hundred enemies.
Who has ever seen such a disparity in power? But decades ago, in central China, it abounded!
Fierce gunfire shattered and scorched the Zhujiagang earthquake. The dripping water in the ice outdoors was actually blown hot by tons of bombs poured by the enemy, and many soldiers who survived the indiscriminate bombardment had their cheeks and arms burned in bunches of blisters. Some were smashed to the head by the hard frozen soil that was lifted up and bled...
The Twenty-sixth Regiment fought too hard, the positions were lost again and again, and retaken again and again, and soldiers kept falling in the rain of bullets and bullets.
Regimental Commander Luo Yinghuai's shin was broken by enemy bullets, and he gritted his teeth and half knelt in the trench, soaking a large blood stain under his injured leg, sweating profusely in pain.
The guards found a stretcher, and Lian Pulled the Belt to persuade the regimental commander to lie down on the stretcher, and the blood in his legs gradually stopped, and he gritted his teeth and lay on the stretcher to continue directing the battle.
In the final stages of the battle, both sides suffered heavy losses. Seeing that it was impossible to make a gap in the polder, the enemy concentrated heavy artillery fire on the gate of the polder in an attempt to seize the garrison position here.
The villages around Hongze Lake are surrounded by earthen polders, which are not as tall and strong as the city walls, but in the summer they can effectively prevent floodwaters from flooding the villages. If you encounter bandits robbing, using this polder as a fortification can also resist for a while.
The village has only one way to the outside world, which is the gateway to the weizi and an important target for the enemy and us at present.
Luo Yinghuai heard the report that the ghosts were desperately trying to seize the position in front of the Weizi Gate, presumably trying to storm the village from here. He clenched his fists and ordered the last mobile force to be dispatched: four companies and nine squads.
This was a little ghost class composed of more than ten fourteen or fifteen-year-old dolls, and luo Yinghuai could not bear to let these dolls participate in the duel of life and death until the last resort!
As soon as the little devils entered the battlefield, the boundaries of age disappeared, and they resolutely took on the heavy responsibility of defending the position.
They decided to seize the enemy's military vehicles and blocked the gate of Zhujiagang Weizi.
The enemy was preparing to break through this polder gate and drive straight into and occupy the entire Zhujiagang.
The little devils were really clever, and under the cover of the fire of their comrades-in-arms, they soon touched the front of these two military vehicles, blew them up first, and then pushed them to the front of the polder gate, and immediately blocked the enemy's attacking feet. Relying on these two military vehicles, the little ghost squad and the enemy went in and out of ten and fought repeatedly.
Unfortunately, however, the brutal battle took the lives of six young warriors.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, there was still fierce fighting on the position, and suddenly someone shouted: "Brigadier Wei is coming with reinforcements of cavalry troops!" ”
Luo Yinghuai looked up and suddenly collapsed on the stretcher, his eyes moist: "11 hours... We were on guard for 11 hours! ”
At noon, Wei Guoqing received the news that the Twenty-sixth Regiment was besieged at Zhujiagang, and immediately led a cavalry battalion to rush in from the outside line a hundred miles away, and finally arrived before the position was lost, and promptly lifted the siege of the Twenty-sixth Regiment.
At 22:00 on the evening of December 10, the hard battle finally came to an end.
The Twenty-sixth Regiment sacrificed more than 70 cadres and soldiers, but the enemy paid the price of more than 200 deaths, and the smoke of burning corpses over the enemy's stronghold alone did not stop for several days and nights.
Because this battle fully embodied the characteristics of the New Fourth Army in winning more with less and defeating the strong with the weak, it was regarded as a classic example of warfare during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and recorded in military history.