Author: Cowherds in Su District
On March 5, 1945, Su Yu led the 1st Division of the New Fourth Army to fight a major annihilation battle at Cheqiao and began to move from defense to attack. The Japanese army invading China was becoming thinner and thinner, and the arrogance of the past was no longer there, and at this time the chairman entrusted Su Yu with a new heavy responsibility. He decided to send Su Yu to cross the river south and go to the Japanese-occupied areas along the southeast coast to strive for control of several provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, and Gansu. He said in the telegram: "The Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region will be established, with Su Yu as the commander and Tan Zhenlin as the political commissar, and unified command of southern Jiangsu and all of Zhejiang." Tan Zhenlin did not arrive at his post, and Su Yu left it alone.
Su Yu
On December 27, 1944, he left Suzhong, where he had been fighting for many years, and took 3 regiments south across the Yangtze River, and joined wang Bicheng in Changxing, Zhejiang, where he had already moved to Jiangnan, and his troops were reorganized into 3 columns. The reason for using the column number is that he wants to make the opponent confused.
Su Yu first targeted the Tianmu Mountain in western Zhejiang, which was located on the northeast side of Gu Zhutong's Third Theater. The Third Theater, like the Japanese puppet army, was also a bitter enemy of the New Fourth Army, forcing Chen Yi and Su Yu's Jiangnan headquarters across the Yangtze River into northern Jiangsu, and also killing and killing in the "Southern Anhui Incident", seriously injuring more than 9,000 people in Ye and Xiang, and the New Fourth Army in northern Jiangsu was regarded by them as a fish that slipped through the net.
Su Yu analyzed that the Japanese puppet army in the Tianmu Mountain area is at the end of its rope, and there will not be too many actions to take the initiative to provoke the New Fourth Army, while the Third Theater will be constrained everywhere, and its number will far exceed that of the troops of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region, and the covetousness will inevitably rise.
He said: "When we went to the Japanese Kou to recover the lost land, the recalcitrant army of Chiang Kai-shek's army 'recovered the lost land' to us, which has always been the case. "He can't help but be prepared for battle." Lying on the side of the bed, how can others sleep soundly", after the Third War Zone learned that Su Yu had gone south, he was really jealous and stared at his every move.
In January 1945, Su Yu made a deployment behind enemy lines: first enter the Moganshan area of Tianmu Mountain' tributary, then go deep into Hangjia Lake, open up the connection with Pudong and Haibei, and then develop to eastern Zhejiang. On the night of February 10, on the eve of the traditional Lunar New Year, when the clouds were thick, the rain and snow were thick, and the Japanese puppet army and the Chiang kai-shek army were immersed in the jubilation of the festival, su Yu issued an order to attack. Wang Bicheng, the tiger general and commander of the 1st Column, immediately divided his troops into 3 routes, and under the cover of the 7 detachments belonging to Tao Yong's 3rd Column, he unexpectedly entered the MoganShan Mountains like lightning.
Wang Bicheng
Gu Zhutong's subordinate, Tao Guang, commander-in-chief of the Su-Zhejiang-Anhui Advancing Army, returned to his senses and could not help but be furious and ordered the 62nd Division under his command to quickly annihilate. The "Loyal National Salvation Army", which was commanded by dai Kasa, the head of the secret service, and other units cooperated to encircle it. Two days later, Tao Guang saw the opportunity and suddenly attacked the 3 columns and 7 detachments of the New Fourth Army cover unit located in Xiaofeng. The detachment is equivalent to the regiment, and the 7 detachments, that is, the 7 regiments that undertook the main attack in the Cheqiao Campaign, are the "guest troops" from the north of Jiangsu. Tao Guang concentrated 5 regiments at a time, and the ratio of strength was 5:1, so he was full of ambition, thinking that the battle could be easily resolved in two days.
Gu Zhutong
However, he preemptively attacked the New Fourth Army, politically making a chess loss, and the 7 detachments that encountered the attack rose up in self-defense with a straight name and a straight face, and soon defeated the well-armed "Loyal Salvation Army" known as the "Monkey Army". However, Tao Guang's troops are numerous, and the dangerous situation has not been lifted. Su Yu hurriedly returned to the north of Xiaofeng for reinforcements, and two days later, he ordered Tao Yong to take two detachments of 8 and 9 of the 3 columns into the battlefield.
Unexpectedly, Tao Guang's main force was also vulnerable. Wang Bicheng had not yet arrived, and his 62nd Division had also been defeated by Tao Yong's rapid counterattack, and fled in a panic. A group of defeated soldiers actually ran into wang Bicheng's 1st column, which came to reinforcements, and became a prisoner in a daze, and the regimental commander of the 185th regiment was also among them.
Tao Yong
On the morning of February 17, Wang Bicheng, who had rushed to the battlefield, began to show his might, like a fierce tiger pounced, and then destroyed the remnants of the 184th Regiment of the 62nd Division, and soon occupied Xiaofeng City. The next day, he and Tao Yongzhu joined forces, cooperated with each other, and also packed up a "Loyal National Salvation Army". When the good news came, Su Yu judged the hour and sized up the situation, ordered the pursuit to be stopped, and the first Battle of TianmuShan ended, which was the first victory since his southern expedition, and the self-defense counterattack won a victory with one move, annihilating a total of 1,700 enemy troops of Chiang Kai-shek's army, and capturing a considerable amount of guns and ammunition, especially many Tom-style guns, carbines and other new AMERICAN-made weapons that made the officers and men of the New Fourth Army open up foreign meat.
Heavy machine guns captured by the 3rd Column at the Battle of Tianmu Mountain
After the war, Su Yu exerted his literary brilliance and personally wrote a letter to Gu Zhutong, commander of the Third Theater, asking the released prisoners to be brought back, in which Su Yu said: "The lowly post led the division to the south to resist the Japanese, and there is a shortage of weapons and ammunition.
Nominally, Gu Zhutong is still Su Yu's "superior", and receiving letters is naturally mixed with mixed feelings and words of suffering. The results of the New Fourth Army could have been expanded, Gu Zhutong would have been more uncomfortable, and the reason why Su Yu stopped pursuing was out of three considerations. In his later years, he recalled: "One is to stop in accordance with the principle of reason, benefit and moderation; the other is to seize the time to go deep into rural work; Third, from a military point of view, Tianmu Mountain is easy to defend and difficult to attack, the recalcitrant army is equipped in depth, too deep into the recalcitrant area is not good for us, and the enemy army that is defended by danger will pay a large casualty. ”