In the autumn of 1944, in order to open up a strategic counter-offensive base for the War of Resistance Against Japan, Yang Chengwu was ordered to go to the Jizhong base area to carry out work and serve as the commander of the Jizhong Military Region, and his main task was to develop and restore the anti-Japanese base area in the Jizhong Plain.
The Jizhong Anti-Japanese Base Area is located between Beiping, Tianjin, Baoding, Shijiazhuang and Cangzhou, surrounded by four railway and highway trunk lines such as Pinghan, Jinpu and Shide.
The Anti-Japanese Base Area in Central Hebei is like a nail nailed by the Eighth Route Army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China in the middle of the Japanese occupation zone in North China, and its strategic position is very important. Therefore, Jizhong has always been the target of the key "sweeping" of the Japanese army in North China.
Yang Chengwu
Before Yang Chengwu arrived in Jizhong, most of the base areas fell into enemy-occupied areas and guerrilla areas.
Tunnel warfare is a great pioneering deed of the people of Jizhong in upholding the War of Resistance in the plains and an effective form of combat in upholding guerrilla struggle in the plains.
After in-depth and meticulous investigation and research, Yang Chengwu picked a lamp and fought at night, and soon wrote an article entitled "Tunnel Struggle on the Jizhong Plain".
This article concentrates the wisdom of the military and the people in the central Hebei region and the experience of the struggle against the enemy, and has become a guiding document for the extensive struggle in the plains and tunnels. In January 1945, it was reported to the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the Central Military Commission as a secret document.
Japanese army
With the joint efforts of the military and the people of Jizhong Province, the Jizhong Plain soon formed a network of tunnels connecting households and connecting villages and villages, which could not only be concealed and transferred, but also convenient for relying on combat. These underground fortresses of the Anti-Japanese Resistance in the Jizhong Plain immediately put the Japanese army in a situation where it was beaten and struggled everywhere.
From the teaching materials drawn by the Japanese army to guide soldiers on how to find the entrance to the tunnel, it is not difficult to see from it that the Japanese army tried to find a way to crack the tunnel warfare of the Eighth Route Army after repeated blows.
However, the devil was one foot high and the road was one foot high, and Yang Chengwu led the jizhong army and people to perfect the tunnel warfare day by day in the battle of wits and courage with the Japanese army, creating one wonder after another in the history of world war.
Tunnel warfare
The power of tunnel warfare also deeply attracted Captain Durham of the US Military Observation Group in Yan'an. The book "Memoirs of Yang Chengwu" records: "Durham drilled a few tunnels and talked about his feelings after looking at the aftermath, on the one hand, praising the clever construction of such tunnels, but on the other hand, he was skeptical about whether such a land road could withstand the attack of heavy firearms of the Japanese army. ”
However, the military and civilians in Hebei soon let Captain Durham, who was deaf and false, have an experience of seeing and believing, and when Durham visited the headquarters of the 9th Military Sub-district of the Jizhong Military Region in Pili Village, Renqiu County, Hebei Province, due to secret agents, more than 2,000 Japanese puppet troops suddenly surrounded and attacked Pili Village, and Durham was forced to drill into the tunnel.
In order to capture the American Durham, the Japanese army can be said to have exhausted its efforts. After finding 4 tunnel openings, the enemy used methods such as excavation, water irrigation, smoke, and release of poisonous gas, but all this was not only wasted, but also fell into the blow of the Eighth Route Army's tunnel warfare.
Yang Chengwu learned that the Japanese army had suddenly attacked the village of Piri, and immediately mobilized the guerrillas and militia of the Eighth Route Army in several counties to rush to the aid from all sides.
The book "Memoirs of Yang Chengwu" recounts the scene at that time: "The victory in the tunnels of Pili Village is over, the enemy has suffered hundreds of casualties, and we have only suffered casualties of one old and one small. Durham drilled out of the tunnel and was amazed to see the corpses of the enemy in the village. ”
Later, when Durham was in the Jizhong Plain, whenever he went to a village, he first asked whether there were tunnels in the village and whether there were tunnels in the house where he lived. Only after receiving an affirmative answer did he live with confidence.
The magical tunnel warfare enabled the soldiers and civilians in Jizhong to resist the harsh winter of the Brutal "Sweeping" of the Japanese Army.
In the spring of 1945, Yang Chengwu, commander of the Jizhong Military Region, Lin Tie, political commissar, and Li Zhimin, deputy political commissar, received instructions from the CPC Central Committee to "weaken the Japanese and the puppets, develop our army, shrink the enemy-occupied areas, and greatly liberate the areas." They led the officers and men of the Jizhong Military Region out of the tunnels.
On this vast plain, in this vast green yarn tent, and in this vast white ocean, Yang Chengwu, in accordance with the topographical characteristics of the Jizhong Plain, led the military and people of Jizhong to use tactics such as guerrilla warfare on the water, mine warfare, village warfare, green yarn tent warfare, and air-to-air breakout warfare to trap Japan in the vast ocean of people's war.
The Japanese army recorded in the book "North China Public Security War": "The Eighth Route Army, which used the Jizhong region as its base, changed its previous tactics of using tunnels and launched a joint offensive on June 10, causing serious losses to the front-line garrisons of the independent mixed 9th Brigade Regiment guarding Jinpu and Shide Road. ”
Under the command of Yang Chengwu, the troops of the Jizhong Military Region carried out successive spring and summer offensive operations, and successively launched the campaigns of Anrao, Renhe, Wenxin, Ziya Hedong, and Daqing Hebei.
After a series of battles, the base areas and guerrilla areas in Central Hebei were rapidly expanded to the outskirts of Pingjin in the north, the Cangshi Highway in South Vietnam, the Bohai Bay in the east, and the Pinghan Line in the west, forming a strategic base for the Eighth Route Army to carry out a major counteroffensive, and composing a heart-warming and colorful movement for the final victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan.