Preamble:
On the evening of May 16, 1940, the Japanese army's Hankou radio station suddenly broadcast a shocking news.
They said that the Japanese 39th Division launched a decisive blow to the Chinese side in the Battle of Zaoyi, and after the war, they found Commander-in-Chief Zhang Zizhong and his subordinate staff, regiment commanders and many others among the corpses. After the news broke, there was an uproar in the country.
On May 23, his coffin was escorted by 100,000 people, and Japanese warplanes stopped dropping bombs. Even Chairman Mao, who was far away in Yan'an, also wrote an elegy for him and served the country loyally!
So, what kind of person was General Zhang Zizhong, and why did he make the people, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the Japanese army pay so much attention to him?
The Great War is coming
In May 1940, the Japanese army gathered 300,000 troops and launched the Battle of Zaoyi. This was the largest offensive operation launched by the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield after the Battle of Wuhan.
Zhang Zizhong seemed to feel something, and before the troops left, he specially wrote a letter to his old comrade-in-arms, Feng Zhi'an, deputy commander-in-chief of the 33rd Group Army and commander of the 77th Army, to explain the aftermath, and this letter did become his suicide note.
After coming to the front line, Li Zongren ordered the armies on the right side of the Xianghe River to be organized into right-wing corps, and appointed Zhang Zizhong as the commander to take charge of the command.
At that time, the Japanese army attacking the right flank corps was Zhang Zizhong's old opponent - the 13th Division of the Japanese Army, and the division commander was Lieutenant General Shizuichi Tanaka, who graduated from the 20th session of the Japanese Army Non-commissioned Officer School.
Not long ago, they had just won the Battle of Wuhan, and the soldiers under Zhang Zizhong were exhausted from the long run.
However, even though he was a little uncertain, he still put his 59th Army on the front line, ready to fight the Japanese army to the end.
On the afternoon of the 1st, under the cover of more than 20 tanks and more than 40 aircraft, the Japanese army launched a fierce attack on Zhang Zizhong's position, and the Nationalist army in the northern position was quickly routed shortly after the battle began.
Immediately, the 59th Army was ordered to support, but due to the strong firepower of the Japanese army, the 59th Army suffered heavy losses and the progress was extremely slow.
At that time, everyone dissuaded him, but Zhang Zizhong had already made up his mind, and he wrote several suicide notes that night to show his determination to repay the country with death. At dawn, he led the special battalion and two regiments directly under the headquarters to cross the Xiang River from Yicheng Guanzhuang and rushed to the front line battlefield.
Shortly after he arrived at the front line, on the morning of 8 May, the Japanese 13th Division and the 30th Regiment combined and began to march towards our positions.
At dawn the next day, the troops led by General Zhang Zizhong met with a small group of Japanese troops, and under his command the Japanese troops were quickly repulsed, and soon after, the commander of Huang Weigang led the 38th Division to rendezvous.
With the efforts of the two, Zhang Zizhong successively made contact with the various units on the position, and commanded them to deal a severe blow to the arrogance of the Japanese army.
And his actions quickly attracted the attention of the Japanese army.
Soon after, the Japanese 13th Division and the 30th Regiment began to attack Zhang Zhizhong's position, but at first they did not know that General Zhang Zhizhong was stationed here, so they did not take it to heart.
But after the attack was frustrated for several days in a row, they no longer dared to underestimate it, and directly pressed half of the troops up, trying to finish the battle.
It stands to reason that at this time, General Zhang Zhizhong should lead his troops to retreat to avoid its edge, but unfortunately Chiang Kai-shek was confused by the false information of the Japanese army, not only did not order a retreat, but instead ordered the front line to attack and try to encircle and annihilate the Japanese army.
At that time, although Zhang Zizhong had 5 divisions, most of them suffered serious losses, with a total strength of only 20,000 troops, which was about equivalent to a division of the Japanese army, and the equipment was still dilapidated, while the number of Japanese troops in front of him was twice as many as them, and the equipment far exceeded them.
It can be said that this battle was doomed to a losing ending from the beginning, but Zhang Zizhong did not hesitate at all and immediately led his troops to turn around and intercept this group of Japanese troops.
Bloody battle
On the evening of the 13th, Zhang Zizhong's troops formally met the Japanese army, and he immediately ordered his subordinates to prepare to divide the troops into two ways to encircle the other party, but unfortunately because the radio code used by the headquarters had been deciphered by the Japanese army's 11th Army communication unit, his plan was completely understood by the Japanese army.
Immediately, the Japanese army urgently increased its troops to support and prepared to jointly flank Zhang Zizhong's troops. In the early morning of the 14th, Zhang Zizhong led his troops to Fangjiaji, and the 39th Division of the Japanese Army had been waiting here for a long time.
The two sides then engaged in an encounter, during which Zhang Zizhong personally climbed the high ground to observe the enemy's situation, commanded the troops to charge, and the battle lasted until dusk, when both sides suffered 1,000 casualties before the Japanese army was defeated.
On the afternoon of the 15th, Zhang Zizhong led his troops to Xiaoshan Village, at this time the Japanese army had discovered his traces and surrounded him, and there were only more than 1,500 soldiers left in his hands, and the Japanese army on the opposite side had five or six thousand.
In the early morning of the 16th, the Japanese army launched an attack, Zhang Zizhong was awakened by the sound of artillery just after sleeping, and he immediately led several adjutants to the high ground to observe.
At this time, the Japanese army only knew that they had surrounded a senior official on the Kuomintang side, and it was not until noon on the 3rd that they judged from the radio signal that this person might be General Zhang Zizhong, and then the commander of the 39th Division of the Japanese Army, Murakami Keisaku, once again increased his troops by 5,000 or 6,000 people to support, and also called in a large number of artillery and aircraft to coordinate the attack.
Under the bombardment of the enemy's firepower, the troops suffered heavy losses, and there was little ammunition left, at this time, someone asked Zhang Zizhong if he could retreat, but Zhang Zizhong still fought to the death, and even told the soldiers that if the bullet was gone, they would stab them with bayonets, and if the bayonets were gone, they would hit with their fists, fists, and teeth, in short, they would fight with the Japanese army until the last moment.
Unfortunately, due to the disparity between the enemy and our forces, the position of the guard regiment was the first to be broken through by the Japanese army soon after, and Zhang Zizhong himself was also shot in the right arm.
By the afternoon of the battle, the Japanese army had formed a three-sided encirclement of Zhang Zizhong, and there were only a dozen guards left under him.
Heroic Sorrow
At three o'clock in the afternoon, a light rain fell in the sky, and Zhang Zizhong led the dozen or so guards to retreat to the nearby almond mountain for a final battle.
These dozen or so people held back the Japanese army at the foot of the mountain for two full hours, and in the end, there were few guards left, and the company commander Wang Jinbiao also fell on the position.
Seeing this, Zhang Zizhong picked up a submachine gun and fired at the Japanese troops down the mountain, and at this moment, the Japanese machine guns also fired at him, Zhang Zizhong was shot several times, and blood gushed like a spring.
Seeing this, the Japanese army rushed up in a swarm, Zhang Zizhong knew that he was no longer able to return to the sky, so he asked his subordinates to abandon himself and retreat, but no one was willing to agree.
Seeing this, General Zhang Zizhong did not say more, and directly launched a white-knuckle battle with the Japanese army that rushed up, and at 4 o'clock in the afternoon of May 16, General Zhang Zizhong died heroically at the age of 49.
After the sacrifice of General Zhang Zizhong, a gold pen on his body was found by the Japanese army, and the Japanese army determined his identity from the three characters Zhang Zizhong engraved on it.
The news was immediately reported to the chief of staff of the division, who was close to Zhang Zizhong, and he rushed to the scene soon after to verify it himself.
According to the records of the Japanese army, after the identity of General Zhang Zizhong was confirmed, the Japanese troops on the position first cheered, and then there was a long silence.
In the end, the division commander Keisaku Murakami ordered the military doctor to carefully scrub the body with alcohol, wrap it in bandages, and ordered someone to make a coffin from the nearby Weihuashan carpenter shop, and solemnly put the body into the coffin.
Then the Japanese army erected a tombstone for General Zhang Zizhong, which read: "The Tomb of General Zhang Zizhong of China".
However, such a great man has also been scolded as a traitor, after the Lugou Bridge Incident, Zhang Zizhong's department, was ordered to do a long-term deal with the Japanese army in North China, because of the close to the Japanese, so he later became a traitor and traitor in the eyes of people.
And it is precisely because of this that at the end of 1937, after Zhang Zizhong returned to the old department, he took the lead every time, and every time he was ready to die. He also often mentioned to his subordinates that he was willing to "fight to the death for the country".
In his opinion, as long as he can wash away the humiliating experience of the year, he will not hesitate to pay his life. And he did.
The whole country mourns
After the news of General Zhang Zizhong's death reached the rear, Chiang Kai-shek immediately ordered that General Zhang Zizhong's body should be recovered at all costs.
Immediately, Huang Weigang led his troops to the pumpkin shop, and transported the body back to the headquarters of Jingmen Kuaihuo on the morning of the 18th.
After seeing General Zhang Zizhong's coffin, the officers and men of the 33rd Group Army wept bitterly to greet him, and when General Feng Zhi'an inspected General Zhang Zizhong's body, he found that he had a total of 8 wounds all over his body, and his skull had also collapsed and deformed.
If it weren't for the black mole on his cheek that was still clearly visible, I'm afraid no one would believe that this was the corpse of a General Zhang Zizhong.
On the morning of May 21, the soldiers escorted Zhang Zizhong's coffin to Chongqing. They originally planned to transport the general's coffin to the Yangtze River wharf by car, and then travel back the river by boat to Chongqing, the capital of China, for burial.
However, the soldiers and civilians of Yichang always had to send General Zhang Zizhong on his last journey, so in the end, the people of Yichang sent the general on the last journey of the anti-Japanese battlefield by sending each other off the ten-mile long street and carrying the coffin.
During this period, Japanese planes arrived over Yichang three times, but in the end they did not bomb the funeral procession for General Zhang Zizhong.
On May 28, 1940, Zhang Zizhong's coffin was transported to the Chaotianmen Wharf in Chongqing, and a group of officials led by Chiang Kai-shek wore black gauze wharves to welcome the coffin.
On the day of the funeral, Rong Kai-shek wrote an inscription for Zhang Zizhong: "The first battle was in Huishui, then in Linyi, three in Xuzhou, and four in Suizaoyi, and finally in exchange for the horse leather shroud!"
After Chairman Mao learned the news, he wrote an inscription for Zhang Zizhong: "Serve the country with loyalty."
Zhou Enlai called it "his loyalty and heroic spirit can be the soul of the Chinese Anti-Japanese War soldiers".
The Nationalist Government also posthumously awarded Zhang Zizhong the rank of army general.
After hearing the bad news, Zhang Minhui, the wife of General Zhang Zizhong, went on a hunger strike for 7 days and left with her husband. In the end, the husband and wife were buried together in Yutai Mountain, Chongqing.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the people's government posthumously recognized General Zhang Zizhong as a revolutionary martyr, and restored the name of "Zhang Zizhong Road" in major cities to show the eternal commemoration of this anti-Japanese martyr.
Reference: The Death of a Famous General - Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of General Zhang Zizhong (Part I)