Shangni Battle Site
The Fanhu Working Committee of the CPC was established at the end of September 1939, and after more than two years of construction, a sound county, district, township, party, government, army, and mass organization was established, the masses were fully mobilized, and the anti-Japanese base area behind enemy lines in Fanhu lake was increasingly consolidated.
In August 1942, the main force of the Fourteenth Brigade of the Fifth Division of the New Fourth Army advanced into Jiangnan, and then the advancing detachment, headed by Lin Kui, director of the Political Department of the Forty Regiment of the Fourteenth Brigade, advanced into the Fanhu area, and the Fanhu Anti-Japanese Base Area entered a new stage of comprehensive development.
In order to expand the Fanhu Anti-Japanese Base Area and connect it with the Eda Anti-Japanese Base Area in the area along the river in the eastern part of Echeng, the Fanhu Working Committee of the CPC actively pushed the base area south of Changgang. However, the implementation of this strategic plan was obstructed by the local stubborn Lu Hongyan, and Wang Shouyu, secretary of the Fanhu Working Committee, led the armed workers' team to remove the "nail" of Lu Hongyan through armed struggle. The Fanhu Anti-Japanese Base Area was expanded, controlling the ninety-mile Long Port, communicating the links between the anti-Japanese base areas of Hubei, Da'e, and Xianwu, and basically connecting the four anti-Japanese base areas in the former Echeng.
The consolidation and development of this strategic base in the Fanhu Anti-Japanese Base Area directly threatened the logistics supply line of the Japanese army in Wuhan. In order to protect the anti-Japanese base areas, the Fanhu Advance Detachment of the New Fourth Army led by the Enan Work Committee of the CPC, together with the Fanhu Armed Workers' Brigade, waged many arduous battles against the Japanese, pseudo,and stubborn japanese, puppet, and stubborn troops in the surrounding areas who were desperately vying for the Fanhu base area.
In the spring of 1943, the Ma Qinwu Department of the Special Mobilization Army under the jurisdiction of Sheng Yu in the Ninth Theater of Operations of the Kuomintang launched an attack on the Fanhu Anti-Japanese Base Area from Gan, and successively occupied Yueshan and Lizhou. In the summer, Mabu continued to attack and encroached on the Hengshan area, but was confronted by the main force of our army, and its plot to seize Fanhu Lake failed. However, the recalcitrant Ma Qinwu thieves were not dead-hearted, and still repeatedly dispatched troops to harass everywhere and sabotage the anti-Japanese base areas.
In order to combat Ma Qinwu's arrogance, in October 1943, Liu Shaoqing, chief of staff of the Fifth Division of the New Fourth Army, led the 41st Regiment of the 14th Brigade and the 17th Regiment of the Advancing Army into Fanhu, waiting for an opportunity to attack Ma Qinwu's department. On November 19, the Forty-first Regiment and the Advancing Seventeenth Regiment intercepted the invading Mabu Meng Zhaohou Brigade in Donggang, and although there were more than 300 recalcitrant troops, as soon as they saw the main force of the New Fourth Army, they hurriedly fled north. The Forty-first Regiment immediately made a decision, and the soldiers split into two roads, forming a pincer-shaped posture and pursuing them closely. At that time, the Fanhu Lake General Brigade was operating in the area around Jijiafa, and the recalcitrant army, seeing that the enemy was being attacked before and after, fled to Shangni Village, which was surrounded by water on three sides, seized civilian houses, controlled the commanding heights, and tried to escape from the waterway after dark. The Forty-first Regiment also quickly occupied the villages of Wanjiadun, Hujiapu, Xiongjia dyeing shop, and Qiao Li around Shangni Village, and surrounded the recalcitrant army.
The Fanhu Wugong Team actively cooperated with the main force, first controlling the boats in the villages around Shangni Village, and at the same time organizing a large number of boats to gather in the Yuhudu area of Dawan and other townships, and more than 50 boats were dispatched each in the two villages of Siwu and Wucheng.
Shangni Village is located on the shore of Duck Lake, facing water on three sides. In front of the village, except for Wanjia Mountain, it is all an open area, easy to defend and difficult to attack. After the recalcitrant Meng Zhaohou Brigade forcibly occupied the village of Shangni, because the ship was controlled by the armed engineering team, its attempt to escape by water was shattered. Meng Zhaohou knew that there was no way to survive stubborn resistance, but he still insisted on going his own way, wanting to fight a battle against the water and looking forward to reinforcements. He ordered his subordinates to collect straw from the whole village, wet it with water, and build the first line of defense at the entrance of the village; forcibly demolished the houses, blocked the roadways with bricks and stones to form a second fortification; forcibly occupied the five green brick and tile houses in the village, set up 5 main fire points, and robbed the quilts door to door, and blocked the doors and windows after soaking with water to make the last corner of the land.
At noon, the battle began, and the Forty-first Regiment launched a frontal assault. Suddenly, the sound of gunfire was loud, the sound of killing was tremendous, and the entire Shangni village was shrouded in gun smoke. The recalcitrant army, based on favorable terrain, frantically blocked the attack, and the attack of the forty-first regiment was blocked. In order to put a quick end to the battle, in the afternoon, the Forty-first Regiment launched another onslaught, first concentrating fire on the fortifications built of straw by the recalcitrant army. In the dry winter of November, the grass was dry, although it was drenched in water, but it was not wet, some were fired after being shot, and some of the recalcitrant soldiers hiding behind the grass pile were burned, some were choked by smoke, and they retreated in a hurry, and the first line of defense was quickly opened. The Forty-first Regiment immediately launched a charge, at which point the cunning Meng Zhaohou ordered his men to fly a white flag, and the Forty-first Regiment immediately stopped attacking. In order to prevent fraud, the command sent a staff officer to take a squad of representatives into the village to negotiate with the recalcitrant troops. Sure enough, the recalcitrant army used the strategy of delaying the troops, using false surrender to delay time in order to adjust the deployment and fill the gap. As the negotiators approached the village, they were suddenly swept away by machine guns, and the staff officer and a squad of personnel were all killed. All the commanders and fighters, witnessing the despicable tactics of the recalcitrant army, were all enraged and launched another fierce attack. During the fierce battle, Zheng Duo, director of the regiment's political department, was wounded.
At dusk, fierce fighting is still going on. The recalcitrant army tried to break through, and sent a team to secretly squirm outward from the west of the village and look for a breakthrough along the lake shore in the direction of Qingfeng Temple. The Fanhu General Brigade had already waited in a strict position, and attacked it head-on, killing and wounding several people, and the stubborn army had to obediently retreat to Shangni Village.
As the night grew heavier, the Forty-first Regiment took advantage of being good at night combat, strengthened its offensive, and adopted the tactics of roundabout sneak attacks and abdominal and back attacks. At midnight, the Forty-first Regiment used part of its forces to cooperate with the Advancing Seventeenth Regiment to organize a feint attack on the front, bluffing and attracting the attention of the recalcitrant army. The main force took a boat around the back of the recalcitrant army, took advantage of the cover of night, and quietly landed. Before dawn the next day, the roundabout troops made a surprise attack, and the frontal troops launched a fierce attack at the same time, and the stubborn army could not take care of each other, and the position was chaotic. Forty-one regiments rushed into the village and divided and annihilated the recalcitrant army. At dawn, the battle ended, killing and wounding dozens of recalcitrant troops, capturing more than 300 weapons of various kinds, and all officers and men below Meng Zhaohou were captured, and none of them slipped through the net. The smoke of the battle of Shangni dissipated. On the same day, the Forty-first Regiment repelled reinforcements from two companies of Mabu at Yokoyama, killing and wounding many and taking several prisoners.
In order to take into account the overall situation of the War of Resistance, the Forty-first Regiment gave special preferential treatment to the prisoners, repeatedly propagated the Party's united front policy to them, and patiently persuaded and educated them, and then released them all. The Fanhu Working Committee promptly extended condolences to the people of Shangni Village and allocated special funds to repair the damaged houses.
The Battle of Shangni brought a brigade of more than 300 people from the recalcitrant Ma Qinwu's army to a pot, and then released all the prisoners after education, thus winning a double victory in the military and united front, which not only dealt a heavy blow to Ma Qinwu's arrogance, but also shocked the Japanese and other recalcitrant troops, further expanded the influence of the Communist Party and the New Fourth Army, and promoted the consolidation and development of the Wu'e base area.
Ezhou Rong Media Center reporter Xu Lin