1. Rushing to the Songhu battlefield
At 2 a.m. on August 13, 1937, Japanese troops were dispatched from Zhabei, east of Yokohama Bridge and around Qingyun Bridge. At 9:50 a.m., the Japanese marines drove out from the Japanese elementary school on North Sichuan Road and fired at us with light and heavy machine guns. Thus began the August 13 Campaign. Our 87th Division (Division Commander Wang Jingjiu) and 88th Division (Division Commander Sun Yuanliang) were the first to enter the battle.
At that time, I was the commander of the 36th Division and was stationed in Xi'an. On the evening of the 13th, he received an order from the Supreme Command: "Hurry up to Shanghai to join the war!" At the same time, he ordered all vehicles along the route (including special express trains) to make way for our division.
After receiving the order, I immediately deployed the troops in order to ride in the car, prepared dry rations, drinking water, etc. Then it drove east along the Longhai Railway. (As a side note, there were quite a few troops stationed near Xuzhou, Bengbu, and Nanjing.) Why was our division ordered to be separated from Shaanxi to Shanghai? Because our division and the 87th and 88th divisions are sister divisions, which were reorganized from the former Nationalist Government Guard Army. After two days and two nights, he arrived in Shanghai on the 16th. Our division passed through Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, and other counties along the Beijing-Shanghai Road. The common people knew that we were going to participate in the battle to defend Songhu and fight against the Japanese invaders, and every station was crowded with people, applauding and cheering, and chanting slogans to strengthen our army. Biscuits, candies, canned food, cigarettes and other items were thrown into the train window one after another. The officers and men of our division were all inspired by the people's rising anti-Japanese enthusiasm, and their ambition to defend the motherland to the death was even firmer.
On the 17th, our division was put into battle. I personally led the Chen Ruihe Brigade as the forerunner, and the Hu Jiaji Regiment of the Peng Jiguang Brigade was behind.
The position of our division's attack was in the area of Tianbao Road between the 87th and 88th Divisions. Chen Ruihe's brigade first attacked the enemy troops stationed there, fighting street by street and house by house, suffering heavy casualties. Brigade Commander Chen Ruihe was seriously wounded, and I immediately ordered Li Zhipeng, commander of the 212th Regiment, to act as brigade commander and continue the attack. Most of the Japanese defensive bunkers were made of reinforced concrete and sandbags. Our troops lacked artillery fire and could only approach gradually, using grenades to blow up enemy strongholds. The Japanese army successively increased its troops, causing the two armies to face each other and carry out positional battles.
2. The well-known Huishan Wharf at home and abroad
The most wonderful, fierce, and meritorious battle fought by our division in Songhu was the battle of attacking Huishan Wharf. This battle was one of several famous battles in the entire battle of Songhu. It was fought with Yao Ziqing's battalion commander to defend Baoshan and the whole battalion died heroically; Xie Jinyuan's 800 brave soldiers defended the Sixing warehouse; and Luo Zhuoying's 18th Army went back and forth to fight for Luodian, which is also well-known at home and abroad.
After the 216th Regiment of our division arrived in Shanghai from Xi'an, it immediately entered the position of Yinxiang Township and was ordered to attack Huishan Wharf, an important stronghold of the enemy. Its mission was: in addition to preventing the landing of Japanese reinforcements at Hongkou, and preparing to drive the enemy army to the banks of the Huangpu River in one fell swoop, and then concentrate on annihilating it.
On the 20th, the first thing to do was to reconcon the terrain and prepare for the attack at night. The 216th Regiment had more than 2,000 officers and men at that time. In addition to the units directly under the regiment, there are three infantry battalions under its jurisdiction. With the officers and soldiers led by Xiong Xinmin, the commander of the first battalion, as the main force of 50, they attacked Zhaofeng Road, and the officers and soldiers led by Gu Xinheng, the commander of the third battalion, assisted the fair road, and the two roads went hand in hand. Wu Tao's second battalion was a reserve and served as a countermeasure.
At twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, the attack began. The 1st Battalion advanced from Zhaofeng Road to Huishan Wharf, and had to break through the Japanese fortifications at the intersection of Tangshan Road and Dongxihuade Road on the way. The enemy troops hid on the roofs of four or five storey buildings, condescending, and fired down on our troops to stop our troops' advance. After holding each other for more than an hour, Regiment Commander Hu Jiaji ordered: "Regardless of all sacrifices, brave the enemy's artillery fire to advance." "So our officers and men engaged in fierce street battles with the enemy, fighting house by house. Because our officers and men regarded death as home, and with their heroic and fearless spirit, they rushed across the Tangshan Road in one fell swoop, and Regiment Commander Hu took the lead, walked at the forefront of the ranks, and led the troops to continue the assault. Two of his guards, one named Hu Zhenglin died gloriously, and the other named Yu Shengdong was hit by two bullets in his body, and he himself was slightly wounded in five places, but he still insisted on getting out of the line of fire and continued to command the battle.
Therefore, it rushed through Dongxi Huade and Broadway Road in succession, and approached Huishan Wharf. The remnants of the Japanese army could not support it, and they rushed to the Baidu Bridge outside the Bund and surrendered to the British army south of the bridge. Our army took advantage of the victory and pursued. However, the troops who arrived at the Huishan pier were unable to destroy the strong iron gate, and the attack was blocked. Commander Hu climbed the iron gate first, and the soldiers followed one after another. However, due to the fierce shelling of the Japanese troops on the flank, many of our officers and soldiers died heroically. I then ordered the 216th Regiment to withdraw back to Yinxiang Township after completing the task of sweeping the Huishan Wharf, forming a situation of confrontation with the enemy. In the battle of Huishan Wharf alone, our division suffered more than 570 casualties. Except for a part of the enemy that surrendered to the British, there were no less than 400 casualties.
The equipment of our army is far inferior to that of the enemy. After the officers and men of our division arrived in Shanghai, they immediately joined the battle without resting. Relying on the patriotic spirit and the righteousness of the nation, such brilliant results were achieved within three days, which is the pride of the Chinese nation and also the pride of the Chinese soldiers who were slandered by the enemy as "vulnerable."
3. The enemy and our troops in Songhu have increased their troops, forming a decisive battle situation
Due to the stubborn resistance of the mainland army and the enthusiastic support of the workers, students, and citizens of Shanghai, the Japanese army suffered a major defeat and fell into a bitter battle in the early stage of the campaign.
On 23 August, a Japanese brigade landed for reinforcements. Between August and September, in the north of Shanghai, reinforcements landed one after another, with a total of more than a dozen divisions and regiments, totaling about 300,000 men. The Japanese side appointed Senior General Matsui Ishine as commander-in-chief of the Shanghai battlefield. After landing at Wusong and Liuhe, the troops that will be reinforced one after another will attack our left flank in a roundabout way, in an attempt to break our army in one fell swoop and destroy the main force of our army in the northwest area of Songhu. We are also reinforcing elite troops one after another. For example, the First Army and the Eighteenth Army were successively engaged in battle. In particular, the battle for Luodian was extremely heroic, with casualties on both sides.
At the beginning of the Shanghai War, Zhang Zhizhong was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ninth Army. In mid-September, Zhang Zhizhong was transferred to the post of director of the Sixth Department of the Military Commission, and Zhu Shaoliang was sent to take over, and he was renamed commander-in-chief of the Central Route Army. Chen Cheng was sent as the commander-in-chief of the Left Wing Army to command the two group armies of Xue Yue and Luo Zhuoying. Zhang Fakui was appointed commander-in-chief of the Right Wing Army. At the same time, it was announced that Wang Jingjiu was the commander of the 71st Army, Sun Yuanliang was the commander of the 72nd Army, and I was the commander of the 78th Army. But the troops under command were still only one division. In the Battle of Songhu, our army invested more than 70 divisions, accounting for almost half of the 180 divisions under the jurisdiction of the Central Military Commission in the early days of the war. The enemy army invested about 300,000 troops. At this stage, the enemy and the enemy engaged in a fierce battle.
Fourth, the blood and hot bodies of soldiers stain every inch of land red
During this phase, our 36th Division often fought in close proximity to the enemy. Sometimes both sides spoke very clearly, and Japanese machine guns could even hit my headquarters. In the early days, our division and the 87th Division attacked the areas around Hongkou and Yangshupu. Later, due to the continuous increase of Japanese troops, the main forces of the two divisions immediately moved to the Jiangwan area to fight.
Sometime in September, enemy shells hit my command post. I, the division's chief of staff, and several other staff officers were studying the battle plan in the house, when an artillery shell fell on the room on the partition wall, causing the house to collapse and four signal soldiers guarding the telephone switchboard to die.
The 36th Division I led was a reorganized division, well equipped, and had more than 9,000 men when it went into battle. Due to the intensity of the fighting, the casualties were high, and a total of four replenishments were made. Each replenishment is about 1,500 to 2,000 men, most of whom are veterans who have been trained.
The enemy has gained air supremacy and bombs us day and night. Even if one or two people were walking on the road during the day, the enemy planes would carry out low-flying strafing fire. The fierceness and severity of the battle can be seen. But our army has high morale, shares the same hatred of the enemy, and fights bravely to be the first, and no one is afraid of death and greedy for life. As a result of the hand-to-hand positional battle between our division and the enemy, brigade commander Chen Ruihe was wounded, and many cadres below the battalion level were killed or wounded. During the nearly three-month operation, the division suffered more than 12,000 casualties.
In order to avoid the wanton and indiscriminate bombing of enemy planes during the day, the personnel who were added to it all arrived at the front line at night and immediately went into battle. There were many officers and soldiers who died before they even had time to issue the symbols. They used their flesh and blood to protect every inch of the mainland, spilled their blood on the battlefield, and became martyrs who died for the country. After the war, their names were not even known, and their families were not even given bereavement pensions. They are the loyal souls of the Chinese nation and the unsung heroes among our warriors who resisted the enemy. It was because we were engaged in an anti-aggression war that we had such a large number of officers and men who bravely sacrificed their lives, and it was only in this war that we were able to hold each other for more than two months in a war in which there was a huge disparity in the quality of weapons.
All the officers and men of the 36th Division, like other fraternal units, suffered heavy sacrifices, but the Japanese invaders also paid the price of about 100,000 dead and wounded.
The Times of London, England, published an editorial on October 28 of that year, specifically mentioning the heroic resistance of the Chinese army. And said that the Japanese army had not yet obtained its main purpose of destroying the Chinese army. That is, in this battle between the two armies, the Chinese side suffered extremely heavy casualties, but the heroic resistance of 10 weeks was enough to make China an honor as a military state, which was unheard of. Although some of the equipment of the Chinese army is not sufficient, it is generally believed that they could not maintain a position for one day, and they held it for ten weeks, and this kind of miracle is really commendable. The resistance in a corner of Shanghai had a great impact on the whole of China.
This is probably a more objective evaluation.
5. Reasons for the failure of Songhu
(1) The objective situation in which the enemy is strong and we are weak
Japan is a conscription country, and there are many strong men who have received two or three years of formal military training (three years for special forces). Therefore, although it has only 20 divisions and some special forces units in peacetime. But once mobilized, millions of people can be enlisted at once. However, in 1936, the mainland began to set up divisional districts to handle conscription matters, and the strong men who were temporarily recruited had no training at all, and the troops who participated in the Songhu battlefield suffered heavy casualties. Except for some officers and men who were transferred by the security teams of the provinces and sent to the battlefield to replenish them, there were no reserves to be recruited. After nearly three months of fighting on the battlefield of Songhu, the casualties were heavy and the troops were incomplete. The number of people left in each division was no more than three or four thousand, and the few were only two or three thousand.
(2) Hesitation in the guidance of the authorities
At that time, the First Department of the Military Committee (later renamed the Military Command Department) in charge of operations, and the senior commanders of the front, in view of the fact that the Japanese army had captured Liuhe, Liuhang, Jiangwan, Zhenru and other places, there were no reinforcements that could be drawn from the rear. It was suggested that the main forces of the Shanghai battlefield should be quickly and gradually withdrawn to the line of Changshu, Suzhou, and Jiaxing (referred to as the Wufu line) and the line of Jiangyin, Wuxi, and Jiashan (referred to as the Xicheng line) for rectification and replenishment in a planned manner. These two lines were two national defense lines built in 1935 and 1936 with the strength of four divisions and several engineer regiments. Implement the policy of protracted war with the Japanese army. This policy is undoubtedly correct and has been approved by Chairman Chiang.
At the end of October, when the implementation of this plan was beginning, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly took a special car to a primary school near Nanxiang at about 10 p.m. on 1 November, accompanied by Bai Chongxi, Gu Zhu, and others. A meeting of generals above the division commander level was immediately convened to listen to reports on the battle situation of several senior commanders for about half an hour. Chiang Kai-shek's speech was then followed by a speech in which the main content was divided into two parts, with a particular focus on the latter. In the first part, he summed up the course of the battles between the enemy and us since 13 August, the general situation and the general international reactions, and praised and encouraged the officers and men on the front line for their heroic struggle. The latter part was the purpose of his trip, saying: "The meeting of the Nine-Power Pact will meet in the Belgian capital on November 3. This meeting has a great bearing on the destiny of the country. I ask you to make greater efforts to support the Shanghai battlefield for another period of at least 10 days to two weeks, so as to gain strong sympathy and support in the international community......" At the same time, he added: "Shanghai is a very important economic base of the government, and if it is abandoned prematurely, it will also have a great impact on the government's finances and materials." Jiang said these words in a very firm tone. With that, he left.
(3) The enemy increases his troops
On the morning of 5 November, the enemy shelled the Jinshanwei area of Pinghu County with a number of warships, covering the landing of its 6th and 18th divisions at Caojing Town, Quangongting, and Jinsiniang Bridge, and rendezvous at Huangdai and approaching Zhangyan Town. On the 6th, they arrived at Songyin Town, on the 7th they occupied Mishidu, and on the 8th, the enemy army fled to Shihudang and Zhangzhuang City, and entered Songjiang. The enemy, who had invaded Songjiang, advanced to Shanghai along the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway with a section of the main force, and rushed to Qingpu and Nanxiang with the main force, in an attempt to encircle and annihilate our army in the northwest of Shanghai.
(4) There was no plan to retreat, and the troops were extremely confused
Since the outbreak of the August 13 Songhu War, I led the 36th Division into battle, and fought the enemy forces in the Jiangwan and Tianbao Road areas for more than two months, without stopping fighting for a single day. On October 28, he was ordered to withdraw to the south bank of the Suzhou Creek. My command post was set up on the Luobegen Road in western Huxi, and the enemy troops made several forced crossings, but we repulsed them. By 6 November, the enemy had concentrated superior artillery fire on our positions to cover its engineers for bridge-building operations; with the success of the enemy's forced crossing, our troops were still holding on point by point on the riverbank to prevent them from expanding, but the battle situation had become more and more serious. At that time, all the troops who retreated to the south bank of Suzhou Creek suffered heavy casualties, and there were no reinforcements. I was originally under the command of Zhu Shaoliang, commander-in-chief of the Central Group Army, but after retreating to the south bank of Suzhou Creek, I was transferred to the command of Zhang Fakui, commander-in-chief of the right-wing group army. His headquarters was located near Qingpu.
At 6 p.m. on the afternoon of 9 July, Zhang Fakui had a telephone conversation with me and said: "The chairman of the CPPCC National Committee has ordered our army to support us in western Shanghai for a few more days. But at eight o'clock, Zhang suddenly called again, ordering his division to immediately retreat in the direction of Kunshan that night. The retreat on this night of the ninth day was simply disordered. Because from the west of Shanghai through Qingpu, Nanxiang to Kunshan area, all rivers are vertical and horizontal, there is no place to wade, only one road to go. All the troops went west along this road. Everyone scrambled to be the first, and it was crowded. Commanders at all levels have completely lost control of their troops. The Suzhou Creek Bridge, which runs from Qingpu to Nanxiang, was blown up by enemy planes. All vehicles have no way to go, and they are congested. In addition, when passing through Qingpu in the middle of the night, the machine guns in the southwest direction were very dense, indicating that the Japanese army was approaching Qingpu. In order to avoid encircling their troops by the enemy, they rushed forward desperately, creating extreme chaos. The enemy formed several small advance troops and advanced from the area west of Qingpu to the Nanxiang-Kunshan road on the north bank of the Suzhou Creek. The headquarters of Hu Zongnan's 17th Army Corps, on the bank of the Suzhou River in the southwest corner of Nanxiang, was attacked by enemy smuggling, and many of the personnel of the headquarters and the guard company were killed, and Hu Zongnan escaped alone. Xue Yue (then commander-in-chief of the 19th Army) was traveling from Nanxiang to Kunshan in a small car, but was strafed by enemy machine guns, the driver and one of his guards were killed, and Xue Yue jumped from the car into a ditch and survived.
The retreat was chaotic. Such a large corps could neither engage in organized and successive resistance in order to delay the enemy's movements, nor would it have a clear goal of retreat. As a result, the various units went their own way and desperately rushed westward. The battlefield command did not understand the location of many troops, so the enemy army was left in a no-man's land. The most important thing in this situation was Chiang Kai-shek's vain attempt to rely on the League of Nations and the signatories of the Nine-Power Pact to exert pressure on Japan and to enter into peace talks with Japan in order to seek an end to the war.
(5) The 36th Division's retreat to Songhu
On the 11th, near Nanxiang, after containing and controlling the troops, I crossed the area north of the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway and made a detour to Kunshan. By the time he arrived in Kunshan, Chen Cheng's general headquarters (Chen Cheng had served as the former enemy's commander-in-chief at that time) had withdrawn. There were only a few small units and scattered soldiers who could not find their own units. I received no instructions, so I retreated to Suzhou. It was about the evening of the 17th and arrived in Suzhou. The ancient city was as dead silent, and the streets were closed and deserted. I went to the telephone bureau and connected the phone with Gu Zhutong (Gu was then the deputy commander of the Third Theater and was responsible for the command of the Eastern Battlefield) in Wuxi, and he told me to drive to Wuxi immediately. That night, he continued to travel west, and arrived in Wuxi at noon on the 19th, where he went to see Gu Zhutong. He told me that the Military Commission ordered the 36th Division to open Nanking immediately. The troop transport vehicle has been notified to the railway bureau to prepare, and I am asked to get there as soon as possible.
The Battle of Songhu lasted nearly three months from 13 August to the retreat of the entire front on the night of 9 November. Both sides invested considerable forces, and the fighting was fierce and brutal. The officers and men of the Kuomintang who participated in this important battle understood that this was a great battle against aggression and a battle to defend the survival of the motherland. Although the equipment of our army is far inferior to that of the enemy, they are all desperate and regard death as home. For every inch of land, the enemy army has to pay a heavy price. Our army also suffered heavy sacrifices, which is really singable and weeping. In particular, the 36th, 87th, and 88th Divisions continued to fight from the day the battle began until the last day of the retreat of the entire front. The other divisions fought for half a month at most, and then they were rotated to make up for it. Therefore, the bravery of these three divisions in fighting in the areas of Zhabei, Hongkou, Yangshupu, Jiangwan, and Dachang was particularly prominent. It should become a glorious page in the annals of the Chinese nation.