Tonggu is 250 kilometers away from Yangon in the south and 320 kilometers away from Mandalay in the north, which is an important city and strategic point of the Yangman Railway, and there is also Keyonggang (Kaidao) Airport in the northwest, which is a place that the Japanese army "must occupy quickly".
It echoed with Prome on the Western Front and Moltke on the Eastern Front, and constituted a barrier to prevent the Japanese army from attacking north. Especially after the fall of Yangon, the battle for Tonggu became even more important.
At this time, the morale of the Anglo-Burmese 1st Division stationed in the Tonggu area was extremely low, and they did not understand the enemy's situation and did not prepare for battle, so they were only preparing to retreat safely and preserve their strength.
Du Yuming dictated:
On March 8, 1942, the 200th Division of our Expeditionary Force attached a cavalry regiment and an engineer regiment arrived in Tonggu, on the 9th, the British defense was completed, and on the 11th, the cavalry regiment attached an engineer and an infantry company advanced to the Pew River and its south 12 kilometers to serve as a guard, under the command of Huang Xingxian, deputy commander of the cavalry regiment.
Lin Chengxi, commander of the cavalry regiment, in view of the fact that the British army had been fighting with the enemy for more than a month and did not know the enemy situation in person, thought that the main task of the outpost unit was to search for the enemy's situation, and he should try to obtain the enemy's relevant documents.
Therefore, according to the tactics of the Japanese invaders boldly pursuing the British army after several days, he first built a false position 12 kilometers south of the Pew River, then built an ambush and sniper position on the south bank of the Pew River, and built a main warning position on the north bank of the Pew River, and prepared the blasting work under the bridge of the Pew River, waiting for the enemy to reach the northern end, that is, to use electric fire to explode.
All positions were cleverly camouflaged and not easily detected by the enemy.
An old photo of the Chinese Expeditionary Force digging into the trenches
On March 18, the Anglo-Burmese troops all retreated, and the Japanese followed and pursued them, reaching 12 kilometers south of the Pew River, where they engaged in a fierce outpost battle with us, thus covering the British army's safe retreat from the enemy.
At that time, from the symbols on the corpses of the enemy, it was found that the enemy in front of him was the 55th Division. After completing its mission that day, our outpost company retreated in the dark of night and laid an ambush on the south bank of the south bank of the Pew River, preparing to snipe at the advancing enemy.
On the morning of the 19th, the enemy did take the posture of pursuing the British troops, and rushed forward with a large group of light troops, unaware that they had stepped into the preset ambush position of the advancing troops of our expeditionary force on the banks of the Pew River.
When several enemy cars reached the north end of the bridge (the bridge is about 200 meters long), the whole bridge fell violently (the British army did not destroy the bridge south of the Pew River, so the enemy had this rash advance), and the enemy vehicles were completely overturned. However, the enemy soldiers still got out of the car and tried to struggle stubbornly, and the follow-up vehicles were suddenly congested on the South Bank road.
At this time, the guns of our army were everywhere, and the machine guns in ambush fired repeatedly from tail to end, causing the enemy to fall into the water and flee to both sides of the road, and most of the enemies who tried to resist were eliminated by the platoon commander Wang Ruokun of our army, who was both wise and brave.
The enemy's rear support was not strong, most of them were annihilated, and only a few fled into the forest. Our troops searched for the dead bodies of the enemy and found that among the dead enemies was a liaison officer, and many maps, diaries, binoculars, documents, weapons, and vehicles were captured.
Japanese documents prove that the enemy entering Burma from Thailand and Malaysia consisted of two divisions of the 15th Army, which invaded Burma from Thailand through Mawlamyine; the enemy 55th Division on the Yangman Highway in the middle; the enemy who entered Rangoon to attack the British army of Promes on the western route was the 33rd Division; the enemy on the eastern route was the 18th Division, which was still between Gyeongmai and Mawlamyine in Thailand; and the enemy originally attempted to attack Mandalay by three routes.
I also know that the enemy I destroyed on this day was a small squad of the 112th Wing. In the afternoon, the enemy increased its forces and attacked our Pew alert position with infantry artillery, at this time, our cavalry regiment moved to the established position in the rear with the completed task, and only a few snipers were left on the Pew River bank to delay the enemy's advance, and the battle was fought until late at night, and the existing position was withdrawn.
At that time, after understanding the situation of the enemy in front of me and the enemy's entire battle plan, I judged that the maximum number of divisions of the enemy in front of me would not exceed two divisions (although I thought that the main force of the enemy's 18th Division might increase the center, but I did not expect that the enemy would land in Rangoon with the 56th Division), so I made up my mind to concentrate the main force of our army according to Chiang Kai-shek's instructions, break the enemy in front of me, and then cooperate with the British army to recover Rangoon.
So, I personally went to Tonggu and instructed the 200th Division to stick to Tonggu and cover the concentration of the main force of our army, and Stilwell agreed with me. At the front, I was actively preparing for the battle with Cuba, and Stilwell was in charge of the rear to negotiate with the British side to arrange the concentration of troops, and it was scheduled to start attacking the enemy from the 5th to the 7th.
From March 20th, the battle with the ancient prelude began. Since the day before yesterday, the enemy had acted extremely cautiously, and the vanguard had about 5 or 600 men in the infantry and cavalry, and was heading forward to search and advance against our troops.
On the 21st, the enemy increased the number of artillery pieces by 2, a total of 6, and attacked us all day, and the enemy planes bombed Tonggu even more, and our troops bravely returned fire. The enemy suffered more than 300 casualties, the attack was frustrated, and we also suffered more than 140 casualties, and the position remained unmoved.
On the 22nd, the enemy again failed to attack our Ekechun position, and some attempts to make a detour were also repulsed. The artillery battle was fierce throughout the day, and the night was silent.
On the 23rd, the enemy increased to two wings (112 and 143 wings) with 12 artillery pieces, and attacked our Ekechun position under the cover of combat vehicles and armored vehicles, with heavy artillery fire, and more than 20 enemy planes dropped bombs six times that day.
We counterattacked the enemy flank with the cooperation of infantry and cavalry, and as a result, we destroyed 2 enemy vehicles, 2 armored vehicles, and 7 automobiles, and the enemy fled southward. At 8 or 9 o'clock in the afternoon, the enemy attacked us again, and the position was broken through, and the two sides fought all night.
On the 24th, the enemy's artillery and air forces attacked our position, and another enemy unit of 5 or 600 men with several small artillery pieces made a detour from the west of Tonggu to the airfield north of Tonggu.
In the northern part of the Tonggu airport, guarded by our engineer regiment, the railway was being sabotaged, and the regiment commander Li Shuzheng was in a panic and retreated; only a battalion of the 598th Regiment of the 200th Division fought fiercely with the enemy, and at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, they abandoned the airfield and retreated to Tonggu.
That night, Division Commander Dai adjusted the deployment, abandoned the advance positions of Ekechun and Tantabin, and gathered the main force of the division to defend Tonggu.
At dawn on the 25th, the enemy's infantry and artillery combined forces to besiege Tonggu on three sides, and our army held on calmly and blocked the enemy's advance by burning the forest. More than 30 enemy planes bombed Tonggu repeatedly, and most of the buildings were blown up.
However, our troops took advantage of the positions and suffered very few casualties. In the evening, our troops continued to attack the enemy in small units, and there were intermittent small battles.
On the 26th, after discovering that the enemy occupied Tonggu Airport, the enemy's 55th Division was garrisoned by engineers and cavalry, and the other part advanced to Nanyang Station to occupy the position.
On this day, the enemy besieged Tonggu with 3 wings (112, 143, 144), and the main force attacked the northwest corner of Tonggu. The position of the 600th Regiment of our 200th Division was broken through, and our army retreated to the east of the Tonggu Railway to continue to resist. On that day, the battle between the enemy and the enemy was fierce, and the casualties on both sides were relatively large.
On the 27th, the enemy's main force continued to attack Tonggu, but because the enemy and our troops were in close contact, the enemy's artillery fire failed, and our officers and men calmly held on, and the enemy suffered heavy casualties. And the 200th Regiment of our 599th Division also suffered heavy casualties.
In the afternoon, the enemy's first division advanced northward and engaged in an encounter with our new 22nd Division near Keyonggang, and the two sides confronted each other all night.
On the 28th, the enemy set up positions at key points in the northern part of Tonggu in an attempt to take a defensive position on the western side of the Yedai and block the attack of our new 22nd Division; and concentrated the main force to destroy our 200th Division first, and also radiated erosive poisonous gas.
The enemy disguised himself as the British and Burmese troops and Burmese natives, drove ox carts with weapons and ammunition, and tried to blend into the inside and outside of the ancient city, all of which were found and eliminated by our 200th division.
By the end of the evening, seven mortars, more than 100 rifles, six machine guns, and gas masks were seized.
At 11 o'clock that night, the headquarters of our division commander Dai in the east of the bridge was attacked by enemy troops who crossed the east bank of the Sedang River from the southeast of Tonggu, and there was a scuffle with the special service company of the 3rd Battalion of the 599th Regiment, and the fierce battle lasted until dawn on the 29th, when communication with the troops in the city was cut off.
In the same ancient city, Zheng Tingji, commander of the infantry of the 200th Division of our defending army, heard that the battle was fierce in the east of the bridge, and immediately sent a part of the 598th Regiment to attack the enemy from the east and west.
On the same day (28th), the main force of the new 22nd Division and one artillery chariot (only light chariots, artillery chariots are still waiting to be transported in Lashio) concentrated in the west of our Ye Daixi, in order to relieve the encirclement of the 200th Division, stormed southward, and by the afternoon, captured the area around Nanyang Station and some buildings; its chariots also destroyed the enemy's artillery position, and obtained a mountain artillery and a lot of ammunition documents. However, the enemy in the fortified buildings of Nanyang Station resisted stubbornly and has not yet been cleared.
On the 29th, our new 22nd Division continued its attack on Nanyang Station, and the enemy reinforced it with infantry and artillery to jointly counterattack.
On the same day, our guerrilla commander Huang Xiang ordered the 1st Regiment of the 2nd Regiment to make a detour from the forest of the Boyin Mountains west of Nanyang Station to the vicinity of Tonggu, and one company once entered the Yongkegang airfield.
On this day, the enemy units in the southwest, north and south of Tonggu were pinned down by the attack of our army, and the attack on Tonggu was reduced, and there was only an artillery battle. The enemy east of the bridge is still attacking Dai's division fiercely, and it seems that there is an attempt to cut off our back road from the ancient and encircle and annihilate our 200th division.
Wang Chuying dictated:
On March 15~16, after the British troops guarding Lianglibin and Peigang safely withdrew under the cover of the 200th Division, the Japanese 55th Division followed and pursued, and on the 18th~22nd, it fought fiercely with the 5th Cavalry Regiment of our 5th Army and the 598th Regiment of the 200th Division in Pew, Liangedaoke, Qiaobei, Kaiwei Buwei, Tandebin, Wudun and other places, killing more than 1,000 people under his Yokota Daisa, and more than 300 officers and soldiers such as Colonel Huang Xingxian, Cao Cheng and Lieutenant Colonel Huang Jingsheng were killed in our army.
The battle situation was urgent, but the reinforcements were hundreds of miles away, and Commander Dai was determined to live and die with Tonggu, and wrote a suicide note that night to show his decision. At the same time, cadres at all levels were ordered to designate their first and second agents after casualties in case of interruption of command.
After hearing the news, Stilwell was deeply moved, and on the 22nd, he handed over the new 22nd Division and the 96th Division to Du Yuming for personal command, and ordered the new 22nd Division to rush to the aid of the 200th Division, and ordered the 96th Division to advance to Pingmanna for defense.
Due to the heavy bombardment of Mandalay, Tonggu and their towns, bridges, and stations by enemy planes for several days, causing the train to stop, the new 22nd Division arrived at Pingmanna on the 24th by means of marching on foot and transporting by car, while the 96th Division was trudging forward from Lashio, so that the 200th Division was still fighting hard in Tonggu alone, and on the 24th, it was cut off by the enemy and fell into a heavy encirclement.
As the war situation became more and more urgent, the British army's selfishness, disregard for the overall situation, reneging on their promises, dragging the Chinese army back everywhere, and helping the Chinese army have been completely exposed, which further affected the relationship between Stilwell and Du Yuming, making him distrust each other and become more suspicious.
From the 24th to the 28th, the Japanese army besieged the 200th Division on three sides more fiercely, aircraft, artillery, and tanks were all thrown into battle, moreover, poison gas and the "fifth column" were used. The casualties of the 200th Division continued to increase, the position remained immovable, and the enemy suffered casualties and repeatedly advanced and retreated, forming an extremely tragic tug-of-war.
On the 28th, the advance corps of the enemy's 56th Division rushed to Tonggu and stormed the command post of the 200th Division in Hedong.
Du Yuming dictated:
During this period (18-30 March), the situation was as follows:
On 14 March, the enemy's follow-up force, which landed in Rangoon, was about 1st Division (later turned out to be the 56th 6th Division), the operation of which has not yet been determined. The 18th Division in Thailand did not attack the Jingdong side, or it was possible that it would enter Burma via Mawlamyine (as it later turned out that its main force would join the battle in the center).
East Road Jingdong and Moltke directions: Our 6th Army has no big or small battles in Jingdong and Moltke, and the enemy on the Jingmai side is rushing to Jingdong to repair the road.
West Road Prome Direction: There was only a small contact between the British front.
On 29 March, at Stilwell's request (which was reasonable), the British attacked a small number of Japanese in the south of Promen, and after the British armored forces entered Pound, they were cut off by the enemy at Svidan, and the British army hastily withdrew to Prome.
The British Air Force was completely destroyed by enemy planes on the 21st, and although the US Air Force volunteers agreed to cooperate with our 22nd Division to attack the enemy on the 27th, they never appeared until the 30th.
In addition to the above, it will take a week for the 96th Division, chariot artillery, and other units of our 5th Army to be concentrated (later, the actual concentration will not be completed until the 15th of the month), and it is difficult to predict when the 66th Army will be concentrated.
At this time, the 200th Division had been fighting in Tonggu for 12 consecutive days, the supply was interrupted, and the Japanese stubbornly held on to the established stronghold, and our army's attack could not be captured in one fell swoop (according to the experience of the Kunlun Pass operation).
Under such circumstances, our army could not quickly concentrate its main forces to fight a decisive battle with the enemy in order to relieve the siege of Tonggu, and for a protracted period of time, the enemy who landed in Rangoon was bound to participate in the battle of Tonggu and annihilated the 200th Division by the enemy. In this way, our expeditionary force will be crushed by the enemy individually, and there is a risk that the whole army will be annihilated.
Therefore, I am determined to order the 200th Division to break through on the night of the 29th, so as to preserve the combat strength of our army and prepare for a decisive battle with the enemy at another time and place.
At that time, Stilwell was resolutely opposed, and still insisted on attacking the enemy with insufficient troops, and the two sides had a fierce dispute until they fell out.
Stilwell, who did not give up his erroneous claims (in fact, wanted to be in a personal show), threatened me with obedience to orders, and sent his staff officer, Doelden, to supervise my execution of his attack orders.
On the basis of this issue, the survival of the expeditionary force was not threatened by him, and I also ordered the new 22nd Division to make a feint attack on the enemy at Nanyang Station on the 30th to contain the enemy, and ordered the 208th Division to break through the east of Tonggu on the night of the 29th, return the formation along the east bank of the Sedang River to the west of Yedai, return the vehicles through the Moltke Highway, and destroy the bridge after the main force withdrew from Tonggu.
The retreat of the 200th Division in Tonggu City can be said to be a planned and active retreat.
During the retreat, the troops in the ancient city received an order from Division Commander Dai, commanded by the infantry commander Zheng Tingji, to carry out a feint attack on the enemy before retreating, and after retreating, a small number of troops were still left to contain the enemy.
By dawn on the 30th, our brigade had safely crossed the Sedan River, and the enemy was still surrounding the empty city, and the infantry and artillery and air forces were attacking the city in a big way, and bullets rained down.
It was at this time that the small force that I had finally pinned down the enemy crossed the river safely, and the enemy advanced only to find that Tonggu was an empty city.
Our 200th Division did not even lose any wounded soldiers, and the whole division returned (at that time, a group of pickers once went the wrong way and lost contact, and later all returned to the team).
Since our expeditionary force cannot concentrate its main forces to fight a decisive battle with the enemy at the right time and place, it is in line with the strategic and tactical principles to abandon Tonggu after inflicting a certain blow on the enemy, maintain its combat strength, and choose another favorable time and place to concentrate the main force for a decisive battle with the enemy.
Regrettably, the battle of Tonggu was not successful, and the abandonment of the important town of control of the Moltke Highway could not actively achieve the goal of recovering Rangoon, but instead caused the enemy to drive straight into Lashio from the Moltke Highway to the rear of our army, which was wrong.
However, this mistake was caused by another conspiracy by the British side to deliberately delay the transportation, and our high command relied on the British side for everything, and the blame was taken on itself, and we should not entrust all the responsibility to the forward troops.
Wang Chuying dictated:
Seeing that the new 22nd Division's counteroffensive had not made much progress in successive days and that it was difficult to solve the danger of the 200th Division, Du Yuming reported to Chiang Kai-shek for approval, so on the night of the 29th, he ordered the 200th Division to break through and retreat to Ye Daxi to assemble and rectify.
However, on the 28th, Stilwell had strictly ordered the new 22nd Division to attack vigorously to relieve the danger of the 200th Division, but because the enemy's 56th Division had arrived in Tonggu on the 28th, the attack of the new 22nd Division made no progress, and the situation of the 200th Division was even more critical.
Stilwell's old photos on the Tonggu front line The picture comes from the Internet
On the evening of the 29th, he drove hundreds of kilometers from Mei Miao to the combat headquarters of the new 22nd Division of Ye Daxi, and as soon as he heard that Du Yuming had ordered the 200th Division to abandon Tonggu, he became angry and vigorously accused Du Yuming of disobeying his orders, abandoning the strategic town of Tonggu in Burma without authorization, and harming the overall situation of Burma's occupation.
Du Yuming was furious, and angrily counted all the ways in which Stilwell accommodated the British side everywhere, allowed the British side to break its promises, dragged China back, and caused the Tonggu offensive to be forced to give up.
After Liao Yaoxiang's multi-faceted circle, the new 22nd Division had begun to attack, and the rumbling artillery and dense gunfire immediately aroused Stilwell's interest, and he inquired very intently about the progress of the attacking troops.
Liao Yaoxiang took the opportunity to ask Stilwell and Du Yuming to rush back to drift back and urge the 96th Division to come for reinforcements. Seeing that the offensive had begun, Stilwell's antipathy towards Du had diluted, and Du Yuming also felt that it was not a way to continue the stalemate with Shi, so he took the opportunity to go down the steps, accepted Liao Yaoxiang's opinion, and returned to the Drifting Chief's Department with Stilwell overnight.
At the same time, Stilwell told me and Lieutenant Colonel Dorne and Major Merrill to stay with Liao Yaoxiang to supervise the battle. The first open clash between Shi and Du finally subsided temporarily, and the 200th Division withdrew from Tonggu completely and safely as planned.
At noon on the 30th, Brigadier General Grubber, chief of staff of Stilwell's headquarters, called Mei Miao to convey Stilwell's decision: to stay in Dorn to supervise the battle of the new 22nd Division, and asked Merrill and I to personally visit Dai Anlan to inspect the current situation of the 200th Division and understand the most urgent needs of the division at present.
Merrill and I immediately drove after Dai Anlan and his 200th Division, and at this time, he was advancing with more than 9,000 officers and men of the division through Tawadi (about 50 kilometers south of Pingmanna) to Pingmanna.
We also inquired about the 200th Division's combat experience over the past two weeks, his lessons learned and opinions, the current situation of the 200th Division (the actual number and condition of personnel, weapons, and equipment), the wounded situation, the morale of the troops, and the future plans and requirements (these questions were taken advantage of when the troops were resting during the march, and we interviewed and recorded them with Division Commander Dai).
After the talks, we accompanied Division Commander Dai from the rear of the line to the front of the line, carefully inspecting the image and dynamics of all the officers and men of the 200th Division marching along both sides of the road in two columns on the highway.
I saw that they had experienced two weeks of bloody battles in Tonggu, covered with dust, and most of their military uniforms were in tatters, but all of them were full of spirit, their faces were full of joy, some talked and laughed, and some of the squads and platoons even sang in unison during the march, and the songs such as "March of the Great Sword," "Eight Hundred Heroes," and "Defending the Yellow River" rose and fell one after another in the ranks, and only when the enemy planes attacked, did they hide in the roadside jungle and shoot at the enemy planes with light and heavy machine guns.
I was amazed by the high fighting mood and skillful combat movements, and I said to Division Commander Dai: Your 200th Division is really like General Stilwell said, "it is a good army in China" and "there are no weak soldiers under strong generals."
Division Commander Dai said modestly: "In the Tonggu battle, our division also exposed such important problems as the lack of solid individual combat skills, the low hit rate of night shooting, and the lack of flexibility in the command of cadres below the company level. This is our goal to seize the time and take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen our training. ”
An old photo of the Chinese Expeditionary Force on the march
When the 200th Division was about to arrive in Pingmanna, the two of us drove with Division Commander Dai to the Driftback Commander's Headquarters. That night, when the two of us returned to the Meimiao Red Mansion, Stilwell immediately summoned the two of us and gave him a detailed report on the situation of the 200th Division and the new 22nd Division.
When I saw that he was very concerned about Commander Dai and the 200th Division, and that he had good expectations, and that he was quite satisfied with the performance of the new 22nd Division, and that he was in a good mood, I boldly took the opportunity to explain to him the extremely dangerous situation that the 200th Division was facing in Tonggu on 29 March, and that Du Yuming had no choice but to give up the hardships of Tonggu.
And reported to him: "When Du Yuming gave up Tonggu, he had already decided to organize another battle in Pingmanna, and he had planned and prepared. ”
I said: "Du Yuming's withdrawal of the 200th Division on the evening of the 29th is a wise choice, which is both necessary and timely, otherwise, the 200th Division will inevitably be destroyed." I think that Du Yuming has mastered the essentials of Sun's Art of War's 'the whole army is the mainstay' and 'the strong and avoids', so I agree with Du Yuming's handling. ”
I went on to say that Du Yuming also had a misunderstanding of the "No. 1 Order" he issued late at night on the 21st, and after I explained it to Du, Du Fang was relieved. After hearing this, Shi smiled happily.
Later, when I said that I wanted to tell him a story about Chinese history, he burst out laughing and continued:
"My child, do you want to tell me a story that you Chinese women and children know about 'bringing peace together'?
However, you are familiar with my character and way of dealing with people, and I have great respect and tolerance for those who are determined to defeat the enemy and work hard to do it. You can rest assured!"