At the beginning of my biography of Liu Bingyan, a Confucian general of the Generation, I recounted the story of Ren Zimu, chief of staff of the Pingnan detachment, who was injured on the battlefield and sacrificed in the middle of the night at the hands of Liu Bingyan and Kuang Fuzhao, thus triggering the story of the two military and political chiefs of the two sub-districts who generously made a "life and death pact", which is a true portrayal of the cruel war situation at that time.
The official Party history materials provide an overview of the situation faced by the Tenth Division at that time:
During this period, the tenth sub-district of Jizhong, located in the triangle of Beiping, Tianjin and Baoding, has undergone major changes in the situation of struggle. The main force of the Kuomintang army, together with the local reactionary forces, had a total strength of no less than 200,000 people. The main regiment of the Tenth Sub-district plus the armed forces and militias of the counties and districts, the entire army is not more than 10,000 people, the difference in weapons and equipment is even more huge, the equipment of the tenth sub-district unit is basically the Japanese puppet army weapons captured during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it is still "millet plus rifles", the personnel are mostly newly organized, the military quality is not high, the commanders and fighters of the troops after the signing of the armistice agreement between the Kuomintang and the Communists, there is a general illusion of peace, and there is a lack of ideological preparation for the harsh situation and strategic changes they are facing, resulting in under the enemy's multi-way attack. Effective counterattacks are not well organized, and battles are sometimes guerrilla and sometimes passive.
On August 6, 1946, most of the Kuomintang Sixteenth Army, the first part of the Ninety-fourth Army, and the security regiment of Wang Fenggang's department, totaling more than 30,000 people, immediately began to carry out a crazy "sweep" of the Hebei region of the Daqing Dynasty for more than a month, using means such as division, blockade, and garrison, from Shengfang in the east, to Rongcheng in the west, to Gu'an in the north, and to divide the Northern Region of the Great Qing Dynasty into several pieces by force. In two days, it occupied Yongqing, Baxian, Xiongxian, Xinzhen, Niutuo, Qugou, Zanggang, Banjiawo and other towns. At this time, the party, government, and army of the Tenth Sub-district of the Communist Party of China lost the Great Qing Hebei, and history called it "Eighty-Six Degeneration".
There is an old Chinese saying that "the road of the wrongdoer is narrow." The reason why Liu Bingyan returned to the Tenth Division is largely because in this triangle, there are two "own people" who used to be in the same trench as him, and now they have become enemies who are chasing and killing each other.
The first person to bear the brunt of this was wang Fenggang, a "freak" in the military struggle in the Pingjin-Bao Triangle.
This man's notoriety and cunning are so cunning that some media have summed up this man's life with a series of analogies: "A clumsy boy who is idle and idle; a clown who jumps on a beam when he sees the wind and makes a rudder; a murderous demon king with a scorpion heart; an eminent 'anti-communist hero'; and a prisoner who died in Taiwan." ”
Historical records record: Wang Fenggang, the head of Shuangbao in Xincheng County (now Gaobeidian) in Hebei Province, was originally a disciple of a local local tycoon, pulled up an armed force after the "July 7 Incident", and in 1938 he accepted the reorganization of the Eighth Route Army, because he felt that "Huai Cai did not meet" and lived a hard life, he defected to the Japanese army in 1940, and his troops were organized into the Imperial Allied Army, and since then he has become a "hardcore" traitor.
Wang Fenggang has been good at socializing since childhood. After graduating from the village teacher training school, he worked as a teacher in Qianqudi Village, played with guns and killed his husband, and was fired; after returning home, his father Wang Zigao asked him to take the hired workers to the ground, and he was afraid of hardship; let him manage the oil pressing workshop, and he was careless, so angry that Wang Zigao called him a "waste boy."
After the Japanese Emperor announced his unconditional surrender, Wang Fenggang changed his flag and claimed to be the "advance army" of the Kuomintang, and climbed to the throne of the Commissioner of the Ten Special Districts of Hebei Province and commander of security. He was once called to nanjing on a China flight. He first gave a report on the so-called experience of suppressing the Communist Party to a central cadre training group sponsored by the Kuomintang, and then met with Qin Dechun, Chen Lifu, Chen Guofu, Deng Wenyi, Gu Zhenggang, and other military and political dignitaries, and also promoted Chiang Kai-shek, and then went to Guangzhou to meet with Sun Ke, the chief executive of the executive yuan. Such a large number of military and political dignitaries were received, which made Wang Fenggang out of the limelight, and he arrogantly claimed that the CHINESE Communists' land reform was plagiarized, and that what he was engaged in was the truth. At that time, the press conference invited two anti-communist "Turkish army" cadres, one was Ding Shuheng, commander of the security of Deng County, Henan Province, and the other was Wang Fenggang in Hebei, and the "Wang Fenggang Fortification" and the "Chen Mingren Defense Line" also became the two magic weapons for the Nationalist army to fight defensive warfare.
Because Wang Fenggang was an "eight-way change," he was very familiar with the Communist Party's methods of mobilizing the masses and seeing stitches and needles. Wang is quite shrewd, and when he confronts the Eighth Route Army, are you not good at mass work? I can't beat your soldiers, so I will kill your "masses", aren't you good at fishing into the sea? I disguised myself as an eight-way and went to the "sea" to carry out assassinations. Aren't you good at internal united front? I engage in fake surrender, specifically to induce your internal line to expose the net. Wang Fenggang's troops, ostensibly military, but actually bandits, because they were accustomed to wearing a sweat towel around their necks, were called "white necks" by the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians at that time. They were very familiar with the local area and became the right-hand men of the Japanese Kou. The Anti-Japanese Government of Pingxi originally had a base area called "Li Thirteen Outer Thirteen" in the area of Tanzhu Temple, consisting of 26 villages, which had been inaccessible to the Japanese army due to its remote and dangerous geographical location. The "white-necked child" led the way for the Japanese army, and finally conquered the "Outer Thirteenth", and the anti-Japanese armed forces were forced to retreat to the "Inner Thirteenth", and the base area was reduced by half.
The so-called "Wang Fenggang Fortification" is a defensive position he built according to the characteristics of the Eighth Route Army, scientifically named "Triangular Dark Block", using three mutually supporting turrets, trenches around the turrets, and low bunkers under the turrets to form a defense system. At that time, when the Eighth Route Army was engaged in battle with Wang Fenggang's troops, it was subjected to a large number of casualties from this kind of "Wang Fenggang fortification". ▼⑹
In an interview in Baoding, I met a friend named Wang Jianlin, whose father Wang Kai was the secretary of the Baoding Municipal Party Committee in the 1960s and 1970s. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the old man Wang Kai served as a hoe captain in Laishui County, brave and fierce, highly courageous, killed devils and hoe traitors, iron-blooded and ruthless, killed many powerful generals under Wang Fenggang, and Wang Fenggang hated him so much that his teeth hurt. Once upon a time, this Wang Kai, who was not afraid of heaven, couldn't help but take a breath of cold air when he talked about Wang Fenggang.
Wang Jianlin told the author with a smile:
"When my father was working as a captain of the hoe, he was bent on getting rid of Wang Fenggang and making a great contribution. Once, my father did not get rid of him, but asked Wang Fenggang to lead more than fifty "white necks" to hunt down and kill for three days and three nights, running lifelessly, chasing from Gaobeidian to Yesanpo, into the vast mountains, so that he was not caught. cough! ——When the old man was alive, he did not give our brother a few more nagging about his experience of 'walking in Maicheng'..."
As a snake on the ground, Wang Fenggang's anti-communist experience and means were far more difficult to deal with than the seemingly mighty Kuomintang members. Therefore, in the early days of the civil war, the Pingjinbao Triangle region he occupied rarely had a situation in which the Communist Party could not survive. Of course, this is based on Wang Fenggang's disregard for the feelings of the township and the brutal killing of the local "Communists" people.
If Wang Fenggang and his "white-necked" soldiers were the "nemesis" of the Communist Party's base areas, then Liu Bing, who was ordered to return to the Tenth Sub-district at this time, became the "nemesis" of Wang Fenggang's bandit army.
As early as September 1945, when the Eighth Route Army conducted a major counteroffensive operation against the Japanese puppet army, Liu Bingyan took the initiative
Commanding the troops to surround the xincheng county where Wang Fenggang was defending, Wang Fenggang desperately resisted with a strong city wall and a deep and wide moat, Liu Bingyan led his troops to attack, and Wang's men and horses were seriously killed and wounded, and it seemed that the entire army was about to be destroyed. At this time, when Zhao Yukun and Luhua, the advance troops of the Kuomintang garrisoned in Dingxing and Yixian, rushed to reinforcements, Liu Bingyan had to decide to withdraw from the new city, concentrate his forces to meet the enemy reinforcements, and annihilate more than 400 enemy troops in the area of Tatou, and Wang Fenggang was lucky enough to escape with his life. From then on, Wang Fenggang hated Liu Bingyan to the bone, and Liu Bingyan also regretted that he could not eliminate Wang Fenggang in this battle. ▼⑺
Now, the smoke of civil war has re-emerged, and the men and horses led by this pair of enemies are once again fighting in the triangle.
It is quite interesting to say that before the current attack on Wang Fenggang, the troops under the tenth sub-district led by Liu Bingyan were not busy with how to train troops, but first started with an accusation meeting and engaged in ideological mobilization.
Mr. Xiao Yingming, an 81-year-old native of Xiongxian County, wrote a memoir titled "Talk to Me About Him." Mr. Xiao has a good memory and good writing, and he vividly writes such a story in the book:
In early September (1946), the Political Department of the Tenth Subdistrict held a political work meeting in a village at the junction of Wenxin and Renqiu counties. Cadres at or above the company level participated. Jiang Zhihong, instructor of the First Battalion of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, made a typical speech, and everyone expressed their position one after another, forming a meeting of the oath-taking divisions, which lasted for one week.
At this meeting, Wang Jimin of our village made a complaint statement. Coincidentally, Wang Jimin's mother (60 years old) and two sons, one nine years old and one seven years old, died of a violent illness in less than half a month. The carpenters Wang Mengchi and Song Baolin made two small wooden boxes under the jujube trees on the east side of the field, and I went home and asked my mother curiously, and my mother told me that it was a coffin for the two sons of the old man (Wang Jimin). At the complaint meeting, the relevant leaders seized on this typical case and helped Wang Jimin sort it out and let him go up and speak. In my village, Wang Jimin has the reputation of iron teeth and copper teeth, and his head is good, and he can play the role of Hua Dan in the stilt meeting. He went to the stage crying, choking and shouting, telling how his mother and two sons, who had abandoned their homes, were killed by Wang Fenggang's "white-necked" soldiers with bayonets, and how long their intestines were. His daughter-in-law went mad after being gang-raped.
Wang Jimin cried bitterly with a handful of snot and tears, and suddenly, he turned his back on him and fell on the stage. All the officers and men of the Seventy-fifth Regiment and the cadres who attended the meeting had long been unable to cry, because the families of these people were basically abandoned in the North of the Qing Dynasty. Someone took the lead in shouting slogans: "Fight back to your hometown and capture Wang Fenggang alive!" "Take revenge, hate the snow, kill the white neck!" ”
Xiao Chunlin, who was a soldier carrying a machine gun in the Seventy-fifth Regiment, was the original form of the protagonist "Xiao Big Man" in Xu Guangyao's "Fighting in the Great Qing Hebei". He and Wang Jimin grew up bare-buttocked together, and when they saw Wang Jimin faint, they rushed up to save him. Lao Wang looked at the hole and opened a little eye slit, and whispered, "Xiao Gen'er (Xiao's nickname), I'm fine, pretend." ”
After the meeting, the divisional troops crossed the Daqing River and immediately fought a beautiful annihilation battle in the village of Kaikou.
Historical records record: "At midnight on September 10, the 75th and 76th Regiments, under the command of liu bingyan, commander of the sub-district, and Kuang Fuzhao, political commissar, surrounded a reinforcement battalion of the 22nd Division of the Kuomintang stationed in Kaikou Village, as well as Wang Fenggang's security team and the homecoming regiment. On the morning of the twelfth day, it was conquered, killing and wounding a total of 110 enemy troops, taking 829 prisoners, capturing 25 light and heavy machine guns, 7 guns of various kinds, more than 740 long and short guns, more than 33,000 rounds of ammunition, and 73 mules and horses. Our army suffered one hundred and seventy casualties. ”
On the morning of September 7, the main force of the Ninety-fourth Division of the Kuomintang Sixteenth Army stationed in XiongXian Crossed the Daqing River in two ways from Mao'erwan and invaded the Liberated Area of Henan in Daqing. The Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Regiments of the Tenth Division carried out a blockade attack in the area of Wangcun and Koushang in Wen'an County, repelling the enemy and killing more than 300 enemies. The Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Regiments suffered more than thirty casualties. ”
Regarding this battle, Xiao Yingming also revealed a little-known detail in his "Memoirs":
My colleague Liu Qingyi at the Tianjin Regional Foreign Trade Office spoke about the battle. He was serving as a soldier in the Seventy-fifth Regiment of the Tenth Division, and that day they suddenly received a special order: all of them stripped their butts and hid in the crops on the south bank of the Daqing River. Not long after, the retreating enemy reached the north bank of the Daqing River, the regimental commander gave an order, the charge horn sounded, and thousands of bare-assed men suddenly turned into white stripes in the waves, and in the blink of an eye, they swam up to the north bank, and several rows of guns and bullets swept past, and the enemy fell to the ground like a wheat man. The enemy was surprised to see this formation, and only thought that he was not wearing rabbit shoes on his feet. It should be noted that this is a large daylight afternoon, in order to strive for a favorable opportunity for the operation, the commander must race against every second, the soldiers are fast, and order the soldiers to cross the river bare-butt, and they can carry out the combat formation at least ten minutes in advance.
This kind of tactical tactics I have not yet discovered when I study the history of war, and now that I have written this historical fact that I have heard about here, I can also fill a blank page in the history of war. (To be continued)
▼(5) :(note to the author of this book: The parentheses here are added by Mao Zedong's original telegram).
▼(6): See Sasu's "Records of the Bandits in Northern Jingbei".
▼(7): See page 40 of Yang Ruihua's article "Liu Bingyan" by Yang Ruihua of the Party History Research Office of the Langfang Municipal Party Committee.