On August 17, 1945, Yao Zhe, commander of the Suimeng Military Region of the Eighth Route Army, was ordered to lead the main force of the 27th Regiment, the Ninth Infantry Regiment, the Suixi 3rd Regiment, and the Suimeng Cavalry Brigade to participate in the battle against Suiyuan, and decided that a part of the troops would stick to the town of Bikeqi to be responsible for blocking the enemy and ensuring the smooth progress of the main force's attack on Suiyuan.
Wang Xiancai, deputy commander of the Third Regiment, and Jiang Wenhua, political commissar, accepted this arduous task, leading an infantry company and a cavalry squad to block the enemy in Bikeqi, an ancient market town with a history of more than 400 years.
Before leaving, Yao Zhe solemnly instructed: "You must resolutely defend Bikqi, be prepared to make sacrifices, and buy time for the main attack troops." After the battle of Sui sui begins, you will hold out for at least three hours..."
But he also pointed out: "You have less than 300 people, and you will encounter an enemy ten times or a hundred times larger than you, so after you make contact with the enemy, you can quickly contact deputy commander He Jixiang stationed at Taige Mu Station and ask for his reinforcements." ”
At dawn the next day, a low cannon sound came from the direction of Suiyuan, which undoubtedly began the general offensive. At this time, the scouts came to report to Wang Xiancai that the vanguard of the enemy's Thirty-fifth Army had departed from Baotou, and its strength was unknown.
Wang Xiancai immediately ordered the troops to prepare for battle, but at this moment, an unexpected thing happened - the streets and alleys of the town suddenly sounded fierce gunfire.
It was not until later that it was learned that just as our army was entering Bikqi, the enemy's miscellaneous troops, deaf Zhengzi, Erdezi, and Eyou, who were active on the outskirts of the town, also infiltrated Bikqi in disguise.
These miscellaneous troops, knowing that Chiang Kai-shek's regular army was pressing the border, took the lead in launching an attack on our army.
Although these enemies divided and surrounded the positions of our army, after all, they were miscellaneous troops, and they did not cause too much trouble for our army at the beginning.
However, after dawn, Wang Xiancai climbed on the roof of the temporary command post to inspect the enemy's situation, but suddenly said: "You see, the situation is not right, it seems that the troops of the enemy's Thirty-fifth Army have come up!" ”
When the enemy enters the town, it means that they have broken through the front line of defense of our army, the west gate position. The crowd immediately looked in the direction of the West Gate, very worried.
Su Gaoyang, commander of the third company of the first battalion of the Twenty-seventh Regiment, who was holding the Ximen City Tower, led more than 30 soldiers to find that a large number of heavily armed troops were pouring into the fields west of the town shortly after the exchange of fire with the enemy's miscellaneous troops.
Then, the position was surrounded by the powerful fire of heavy machine guns, which was the seventeenth infantry division of the enemy's Thirty-fifth Army led by An Chunshan, which came from Baotou overnight, and they organized echelons to charge at the West City Gate Tower, and thousands of men and horses surrounded the position.
The warriors on the upper floor of the city faced the strong enemy and repelled the enemy's repeated attacks with one to ten, but due to the disparity between the enemy and our strength, the casualties were very serious. Su Gaoyang was unfortunately shot at the height of the battle and died heroically. Immediately after, the platoon leader Dong Ping was also injured.
The enemy bit the west gate position like a beast, and the other part of the enemy took the opportunity to enter the town and go straight to the headquarters of our army. Under the artillery fire, they took the battalion step by step and launched a charge, trying to climb the ladder up the wall and capture the headquarters of our army.
The soldiers hiding in the four corners of the headquarters gun tower returned fire on the enemy with all their might. At the same time, Wang Xiancai called a meeting of the backbone in the line of fire, encouraged everyone and ordered all non-combatants to be organized and participated in the battle.
Ammunition was gradually reduced and the number of wounded gradually increased.
It was nearly noon, and the warriors were exhausted and hungry. The command sent men to take advantage of the gap between battles to collect ammunition from the enemy who had been killed outside the fence, and at the same time divided the fighters into several groups, fighting on the one hand and taking turns to rest.
The soldiers united and built a strong fortress against the enemy with tenacious will, forming a steel barrier with fierce firepower.
When the battle was in full swing, there was a sudden burst of harsh horn sounds, followed by the sound of gongs and drums and the shouts of people, and there was a lot of noise.
Everyone was stunned, only to see that on the roof of a distant building, a group of gong and drummers and trumpeters appeared, and seven or eight people with shoulders and necks followed the drum music, shouting and dancing with their hands. Undoubtedly, this is a "cheerleaders" that the enemy has put together on an improvised basis.
The warriors who are struggling to fight the enemy in blood can never tolerate such wanton provocations from the enemy, and everyone unanimously demands that they be given a little bit of a strong look.
After consulting the command headquarters, Rui Jun, director of the Daqingshan guerrilla group Zhenghuangqi, ordered the soldiers to carry grenadiers and fired four cannons at the roof, and in an instant, the "cheerleaders" were blown up.
But the situation was getting worse and worse at this time, and the whole town of Bikzi was full of enemy troops, and our army was surrounded in several isolated strongholds.
Faced with this dilemma, Wang Xiancai commanded all the troops to fight bravely against the enemy, the soldiers' gray uniforms were beaten to pieces, their bodies and faces were full of blood and mud, their faces were indistinguishable, only their eyes were shining.
In the fierce battles, there were constant wounds and sacrifices of fighters, but they firmly remembered the task of holding on to the commander, no one groaned, no one flinched, and always stuck to their positions and fought the enemy to the death.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon, the enemy cavalry Liu Wanchun Division, which had just arrived from Baotou, rendezvoused with the AnChunshan Infantry Division and launched a fifth offensive against our army.
This time the enemy made a careful deployment and mobilized the most sophisticated troops and light and heavy weapons, so that from the beginning of the battle, almost all of our army's positions were blocked, and the firepower could not be used at all.
Worse still, the liaison cavalry sent to He Jixiang for help was intercepted by flash floods in the water mill ditch southeast of Bikqi, and it was impossible to send reinforcements from the direction of Guisui.
Faced with this urgent situation, Wang Xiancai called a meeting of cadres. After study, it was believed that if the fighting continued, the whole army would be destroyed, the battle had been fought for a full ten hours, and the task of blocking the attack had been successfully completed, so the first task at present was to organize the retreat, preserve the living forces, and meet the large troops.
In the end, only more than 70 fighters successfully broke through, and the rest of them died heroically on the position. However, the battle flag hanging on the command position, although it was bombarded and destroyed countless times by the enemy's light and heavy weapons, always stood in battle and guided the troops to break through the siege.
In the fierce Battle of Bikzi, our army, with less than three hundred troops, dragged down the strength of the enemy's regular army and miscellaneous troops totaling more than 60,000 troops.
Although this battle is little known today, the soldiers have completed the task of blocking the attack with an amazing success in the ratio of more than 200:1 between the enemy and our troops, which is of great significance in the history of our army.
[Note] This incident is by no means a fabrication, the relevant figures can be checked, and the memoir "The Battle of Bikzi" written by Rui Jun, the director of the Yellow Banner of the Daqingshan guerrillas, describes this battle in detail.