In mid-July 1943, the Seventh Regiment of the Three Detachments of the Huai Naval Sub-district of the New Fourth Army's Northern Jiangsu Military Region was ordered by its superiors to remove a cancerous tumor set up by the Japanese puppet army, the Sangxu stronghold.
The enemy stationed at the stronghold was the Third Brigade of the Puppet Army, who built extremely strong fortifications at Sang Ruins: the trench was more than four meters deep, the four castles were connected by hidden passages, and there were hidden walls and secret passages.
Inside and outside the stronghold, the enemy also arranged a lot of troops and light and heavy weapons, claiming to be "a fortress that the New Fourth Army cannot break."
In order to remove this stronghold, song Yaonan (also known as Song Guangbi), the commander of the Seventh Regiment, sent people to conduct in-depth reconnaissance of the enemy's strength and firepower distribution before the war, and formulated a careful battle plan.
Considering that many enemy strongholds in the surrounding area may be reinforcing Sangxu, Song Yaonan adopted the tactic of "encircling points to fight for reinforcements" that our army used most conveniently, with one force attacking the Sangxu stronghold and the other unit responsible for providing reinforcements on the periphery.
After the battle began, the Japanese puppet army in Mucheng, Haizhou and other places really heard the wind, but they were all heroically repelled by our reinforcements.
As a result, the Sangxu stronghold was heavily surrounded by our army and fell into a situation of isolation and helplessness.
However, it is also difficult for the New Fourth Army to conquer the enemy's stronghold in a short period of time, and the key lies in the fact that it does not have the offensive weapons to deal with the enemy's strong fortifications.
At that time, most of our army had earthen guns and artillery, and many soldiers, because of insufficient bullets, could only fold some branches and stuff them in bullet bags to confuse the enemy. It is conceivable that under such circumstances, it would be very difficult to deal with the stronghold of The Mulberry Ruins, which was touted by the enemy as "indestructible."
Since the strong attack cannot work, we can only take the path of wisdom. However, for how to outsmart, many people have repeatedly thought about it, but they have not been able to find a feasible solution. This made the regimental commander Song Yaonan and cadres at all levels anxious.
This afternoon, Wang Tongwu, chief of staff of the three detachments, went to the neighborhood to contact the brother troops, and when he returned, he found a stinking dead dog thrown on the side of the road, and there were many flies stinging on it, making a buzzing sound, and he couldn't help but feel nauseous.
As he walked, he found the second and third dead dogs one after another, and asked the people in the village to know that there were many such dead dogs in the surrounding villages.
Originally, in order to fight against the Japanese puppet army, the New Fourth Army had to often march at night to fight, but when they passed, the village dogs barked as soon as they heard the movement, often exposing the actions of the New Fourth Army, and sometimes even causing serious consequences.
The common people were all looking forward to the defeat of the Japanese Kou by the New Fourth Army, and their consciousness was very high, and in order to help the New Fourth Army, they took the initiative to beat the dogs in the village to death, and many of them were abandoned in the wilderness.
While wang Tongwu was deeply moved by the masses' support for the anti-Japanese movement, he couldn't help but think: Since the smell of dead dogs is so foul and unpleasant, why not use them to deal with the enemy?
Thinking of this, he trotted all the way back to the regimental command post and offered Song Yaonan a plan to break the enemy: mobilize the surrounding masses to fight dogs and sacrifice dogs, and put up a "stinky dog array" around the Sangxu stronghold, so that the enemy in the stronghold would fall without a fight!
"Great idea, great idea!" Song Yaonan heard the strike and immediately ordered someone to implement this method.
Giving full play to its superiority in doing ideological and political work, our army mobilized the masses in all the surrounding villages and towns, and in just 14 hours, it raised more than 1,000 dogs.
Wang Tongwu then commanded the warriors to dispose of the dogs into pieces of meat, and under the cover of fire, piled up in the trenches around the Sangxu stronghold in the dark of night.
Early the next morning, the enemy woke up and climbed up the bunker to take a look, and was stunned by the sight in front of him.
I saw that the ditches around the stronghold were piled up with tens of thousands of pieces of flesh cut off by thousands of dead dogs, and the flesh and blood were blurred everywhere.
At first, the enemy just felt funny in the face of this strange formation, and they all taunted: I knew that the New Fourth Army was so kind and sent such dog meat, and the first night there was no need to shoot, just let them in.
But as time went on, they felt more and more that something was wrong, and they covered their noses and complained loudly.
It turned out that it was the height of summer, and the pieces of dog meat gradually decayed after a long period of exposure to the scorching sun, and emitted a pungent and unpleasant foul odor, so that the puppet soldiers did not dare to open their mouths to breathe.
What makes the enemy even more collapsed is that the dog meat pieces pass through the "intimate contact" of a large number of flies, giving birth to dense and countless maggots. These maggots crawled out of the pile of dog meat and into enemy strongholds, almost everywhere in their houses, on their beds, in their yards.
How many maggots did they get to later? When the puppet army was cooking or eating in the kitchen, the maggots on the beams of the house fell into their pots and bowls from time to time.
The puppet army had no choice but to close the doors and windows tightly on a hot day, and at any time cover their noses with handkerchiefs and towels to prevent stench, and set up a fire to "fire" maggots and flies, but to no avail.
The puppet army was tortured by this peculiar "stinky dog array", listless and thin-skinned, and finally all of them could only escape from the stronghold and take the initiative to surrender their weapons to the New Fourth Army.
Sangxu, a stubborn stronghold painstakingly operated by the enemy for many years, was easily removed by the "stinky dog array" that Wang Tongwu had suddenly thought out, and became an extremely rare and atypical combat case in military history.
Reference historical materials: "Records of the Conquest of the New Fourth Army", "Memories of the New Fourth Army", "Battle on the Yangtze River: Records of the New Fourth Army's War of Resistance", etc