Zhao Dengyu, the first division commander of the Anti-Japanese War, was ambushed by the traitors in the betrayal

Portrait of General Zhao Dengyu

"Before my father returned to Hebei Province, he saw my grandmother for the last time. Before leaving, he knelt on the ground and prostrated his grandmother, and then told his pregnant mother to pay attention to her body, and then hugged my brother Zhao Xuewu, who was only 2 years old, and my 4-year-old brother, and then left home without hesitation. "This time, the general's bloody battle will not be returned.

When I walked into the living room of General Zhao Dengyu's daughter Zhao Xuefen's house, I even felt the trance of history for a while -- we were greeted by a capable and energetic man, a Chinese character face, a straight nose bridge, a sword eyebrow, and a tight lip, just like the shadow of General Zhao Dengyu in the photo.

After being introduced, it was learned that this was the grandson of General Zhao Dengyu, but General Zhao Dengyu's appearance was more abundant, with a height of 1 meter and 90 meters, and among the people at that time, this height alone was like a god.

General Zhao Dengyu was killed in battle at Nanyuan, Beiping on July 28, 1937. In honor of him, Beijing has since had a Zhao Dengyu Road.

On the same day, Tong Linge, the deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army, who was the same brother as Zhao Dengyu, was also killed in Nanyuan, so there was another Tong Linge Road.

Three years later, Zhang Zizhong, the former commander of the 38th Division of the 29th Army and had been promoted to lieutenant general of the 33rd Army, was killed in battle at Xianghe, so that Beijing had a third road named after a person, Zhang ZizhongLu. So far, there are only three streets in Beijing named after people.

Zhao Dengyu's sacrifice is "very sad"

The reason I hastily visited was to bring some of the materials found in Japan to the general's family, including the Japanese archives that recorded the martyrdom of General Zhao Dengyu, the battle situation map before and after the death, and the photos of the general riding in a car when he was killed.

The photograph of General Zhao Dengyu riding in a car when he was killed can be seen in the accumulated bullet marks and the Japanese characters of "The bullet marks of the car at the time when Zhao Shichang died in battle (Nanyuan Street)".

Another public photo of General Zhao Dengyu's dead car shows a guard or adjutant who turned from the driver's vice seat to rescue the rear seat but was shot and killed.

Some people have suspected that the car in this photo is the car of the British minister Xu Gesen, who was attacked by the Japanese army, which is a misinformation. Today, at ms. Zhao Xuefen's home, I saw another photo sent by the descendants of General Song Zheyuan, whose camouflage and appearance can indicate that it is the same vehicle. However, the photo provided by the descendants of General Song Zheyuan shows that there is still the body of a Chinese soldier on the right side of the car, or the guard who originally stood on the right side of the door pedal. In the newly discovered Japanese archives, the Japanese side also described the camouflage net on General Zhao Dengyu's car, and the vehicle rolled over and stopped on a dead horse, which is consistent with the content on the picture.

The newly discovered photograph, published in the 39th issue of the Japanese magazine Manchuria Club, is preceded by a red cross grave emblem where the anti-Japanese martyrs of the Twenty-ninth Army were buried and a Japanese record of the Battle of Nanyuan, which mentions the sacrifice of General Zhao Dengyu but uses a special description of "very sad".

Why is it that a Chinese general was killed, but the Japanese army said "very sad"? In the 1939 Japanese publication of the "History of Continental Warfare", it may be possible to glimpse the clues.

The "History of Continental Warfare" was originally edited by the former Japanese Army Reporting Department, and was originally composed to record the "glorious achievements" of the Japanese army, but involuntarily showed the loyalty and courage of General Zhao Dengyu in the bloody battle of Nanyuan between the lines.

In the text describing the Battle of Nanyuan, the opening part can easily be seen "The enemy general Zhao Dengyu ... guard...... Even friends who do not know Japanese can easily guess the meaning of the kanji.

The Japanese record describes the scene in which General Zhao Dengyu commanded his troops to rely on the outer trenches to bravely meet the Japanese army, and also describes the scene where the Chinese soldiers engaged in a white-knife battle with the Japanese army after the Nanyuan fortifications were destroyed by the Japanese army and prevented them from capturing their own positions -- this just proves the historical fact that the new recruits of the 29th Army Cadet Corps in our materials had a hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese army.

Try translating the description of several of these paragraphs as follows:

"The Japanese army, under the cover of the air force, attacked Nanyuan and Xiyuan, which is an important stronghold of the enemy army, about 8 kilometers south of Beiping, is the outer edge of the old city, and is now the barracks and flying field of the Chinese army, where the general Zhao Dengyu of China is guarded... The battle broke out in a thunderstorm, and although the Japanese attack was fierce, the enemy general Zhao Dengyu's defense was very strong, and it was impossible to easily take it down after several obstructions. ”

"The bombardment and shelling of our army's formations are constantly attacking ... However, the enemy still shot at our army with fierce fire with determination to die, and the firepower never decreased... The battle was extremely fierce, white soldiers were fighting everywhere, and the number of casualties on our side was increasing. ”

"The battle in Nanyuan finally ushered in the final moment, and the bitter struggle of our army was unimaginable, but the solid formation like iron and stone was finally completely captured by us at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, at this time, the wind had stopped, there were a few residual clouds in the sky, the sun appeared on the heads of the soldiers, and the ground was full of corpses killed in battle, which was a nightmare under the day."

Obviously, the night attack of the Xifengkou Big Knife Team and the face-to-face fighting in Nanyuan made the Japanese officers and soldiers who admired the strong and the samurai have an inexplicable respect for General Zhao Dengyu, so when they learned of his death, they used the phrase "very sad".

The Japanese army ambushed in advance

In the Japanese army records the martyrdom of General Zhao Dengyu, the ambushed Japanese army found the general's car at about 12:40 noon on the same day, and inadvertently told the truth - around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, the Nanyuan captured by the Japanese army was already an empty camp, and before that, the Chinese side had taken the initiative to abandon the camp.

During the battle, due to the frenzied bombardment of Japanese aircraft, the fortifications of the Nanyuan garrison were almost razed. The headquarters of the Twenty-ninth Army was expected to be unable to hold Nanyuan for a long time, and considering that there were almost no defenders in Beiping City, at noon, General Zhao Dengyu, the former enemy commander-in-chief of Nanyuan, and Tong Linge, who was supervising the battle, were ordered by commander Song Zheyuan of Beiping to abandon Nanyuan and lead their troops to retreat in the direction of Beiping. Judging from the situation since then, although the Nanyuan troops included the 38th Division, the 132nd Division, the 3rd Cavalry Division, and the various units of the Cadet Corps, and did not belong to each other, the withdrawal commanded by Generals Tong Zhao and The two generals was efficient and swift, which fully demonstrated their rich battlefield experience, and was not taken advantage of by the Japanese troops besieging Nanyuan.

What the two generals did not expect, however, was that the Japanese army had laid an ambush in Tianluozhuang (presumably the area around the current Dahongmen), the only way for the Nanyuan defenders to retreat, and waited for the arrival of the officers and men of the Twenty-ninth Army.

The main force of the Japanese ambush was the "main force of the First Wing of the Garrison Army", which was also the vanguard of the Japanese attack on Nanyuan, and their attack was defeated by the troops of General Zhao Dengyu, and they had to give the dominance of the attack to the Twentieth Division under the command of Lieutenant General Fumisaburo Kawagishi. When the Nanyuan troops received the order to retreat, this Japanese army had already rushed north from the huaizhuang line on the west side of the nanyuan, strangling the throat of the big red gate between the nanyuan and the Yongding Gate, and it can be seen from the formation map that General Zhao Dengyu commanded the troops to retreat along the road from south to north, and the section of the road in front of Tianluozhuang was rice paddies on the left and right, and there was no hiding, and there was a hill in front of and in front of the left - the Japanese machine gun troops were ambushed there. The Second Wing of the North China Garrison Army, which had rushed to participate in the battle of Nanyuan, came from the right flank and was rushing to the flank of the retreating troops in Nanyuan.

How did the Japanese capture the movements of the Twenty-ninth Army so accurately? Earlier, I had examined the traitor Pan Yugui and others who betrayed the battle plan of the Twenty-ninth Army to the Japanese army, resulting in great losses to our army in the Pingjin War. This time, I saw another historical material at Ms. Zhao Xuefen's house, which confirmed that there was indeed an internal treachery at that time, and even Zhou Sijing, a staff officer next to General Song Zheyuan, was bribed to provide a large amount of confidential information to the Japanese army. Even when the Nanyuan defenders began to retreat, the man made a phone call to the Japanese side, saying that "[Zhao Dengyu] has boarded the car and set off." Zhou Sijing's name was also confirmed by the Japanese archives ("The Last Period of Zhao Dengyu Division") (Note: "The Most Period" translates as "last moment"), and it was on the basis of the information provided by these traitors that the Japanese army set up an ambush in Tianluozhuang, which directly led to the death of General Tong Linge and General Zhao Dengyu. It is a pity that the famous generals of the hundred battles actually died at the hands of their own robes.

Zhao Dengyu "died in battle honorably"

In the wartime archives preserved by the Japanese side, "Detailed Report of the Battle Near Nanyuan of the Third Brigade of the First Wing of the Indochina Garrison Army" and "Detailed Report of the Battle of Tianluozhuang", the history of General Zhao Dengyu's last battle was described.

At about 12:40 p.m., the Japanese ambush troops found that the retreating infantry and cavalry units of the Twenty-ninth Army had entered the ambush circle, and they could not help but "be happy." The Japanese noted that there were three cars in the Twenty-ninth Army unit, including two trucks and a car between the trucks, the top of which was also covered with camouflage. According to this, the Japanese army judged that this was the command organ of the Twenty-ninth Army.

At a distance of three hundred meters, the Japanese machine guns opened fire together, and the officers and men of the Twenty-ninth Army, especially the cavalry in the front, were shot one after another, suffering heavy losses and falling into confusion.

However, the three Chinese military vehicles reacted quickly, and instead of retreating, they drove at full horsepower, shooting and charging forward, trying to break into the Japanese position.

Judging from the later situation, this should be General Zhao Dengyu personally commanding the guards to counterattack. At this point, the enemy controlled the favorable terrain, and we had no cover. In April 1937, when Premier Zhou Enlai's car was attacked by bandits in Laoshan, the situation was similar, and the guards at that time also adopted a similar approach to compete with the enemy for the commanding heights, and it should be said that the general's disposition was reasonable.

Although the general's command was tactically correct, the Japanese firepower was far from comparable to that of bandits. Three unarmored Chinese military vehicles were heavily fired by the Japanese Seventh and Third Machine Gun Squadrons, or because the driver was shot, or because the tires were broken, or because they were blocked by dead horses, and they were unable to break into the Japanese line under the rain of bullets. The nearest one was only sixty meters from the Japanese front. General Tong Linge was also killed in battle around this time, and the officers and men of the twenty-ninth army who were ambushed lost control and were attacked in a massacre, and the Japanese army counted more than a thousand casualties.

Afterwards, the Japanese found that each destroyed truck had about twenty martyred Chinese soldiers, and if they entered the Japanese position and caused a scuffle, other units might take the opportunity to join the breakthrough and change the situation.

Japanese archives record that there were still small groups of Chinese troops who tried to rush into the battlefield. The author speculates that this should be the remnants of the Twenty-ninth Army trying to retake the body of General Zhao Dengyu, but without success.

As the Japanese approached the destroyed sedan, they found a soldier of the Twenty-ninth Army (later speculated to be a guard or aide-de-camp of General Zhao Dengyu) lying on the slope of the rice field next to the car. Then the Japanese army found a Chinese soldier in military civilian clothes sitting "calmly" in the back seat of the car, with bullet holes in his forehead and chest, and he had died. In the pocket on his chest, he found General Zhao Dengyu's business card, and the leather bag next to him contained a letter written by General Zhao to Commander Song, a performance report for officers of the 132nd Division, and other documents. Lieutenant Sasaki, the leader of the Japanese squad who found the body, did not dare to be idle, and immediately reported it to the squadron leader and the brigade leader one by one.

The Japanese who rushed to investigate quickly found the driver next to the car who was wounded by a bullet in the leg, and it was said that he was lying on the side pretending to be dead. According to the interrogation, it was learned that the driver was not a soldier, but an employee of the American Chamber of Commerce, and that the car also belonged to the American Chamber of Commerce, and that the driver had lent it to General Zhao Dengyu as a seat before the war. The driver also confirmed that the body of General Zhao Dengyu was in the back seat.

The Japanese side then concluded that General Zhao Dengyu had been "honorably killed" (i.e., "honorable sacrifice") in this battle. Since several relevant reports say that General Zhao Dengyu was killed by artillery while fighting the Japanese army with a large knife, which is different from the conclusion here, it is doubtful whether the Japanese army's record is correct for the time being. However, as a battlefield report within the Japanese army, this historical material may have certain reference value.

After the general's death, it is believed that his body was first buried by the Red Cross, then buried by the monks of Longquan Temple, and buried in 1946 after a public ceremony held in Zhongshan Park. His cemetery was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and the general's body was desecrated by the Red Guards who did not know the truth, but it was restored in 1980 and is still worshipped endlessly.

After seeing these pictures and archives, Ms. Zhao Xuefen took out a number of general relics and ink to visit with everyone. To my surprise, the general, who was good at making a large knife, wrote well.

It turned out that although he was in the old army, born poor, and had dropped out of school since childhood, General Zhao Dengyu was not satisfied with being a warrior, but was diligent and studious all his life, and he practiced penmanship in his spare time, which was quite valued by General Feng Yuxiang, who encouraged his subordinates to study. In 1934, seeing that his subordinates had captured two small fiery red foxes, General Zhao Dengyu, who had just served as the commander of the 132nd Division, personally wrote a letter to the Beijing Zoo, which was still called "Ten Thousand Animals Garden" at that time, saying:

"Our division is stationed in the north of Saibei, there is a famous temple cloth Qingshan, a few days ago on the mountain to get two fire foxes, because our division is inconvenient to raise, afraid of long-term injury to his life, it is a pity, Su Yu Guiyuan ten thousand animals listed, for tourists to see, Z specially sent the deputy Shan Yong'an, to send to send, that is, please check for the lotus, this is to the Garden of Ten Thousand Animals.

The phrase "it is a pity to be afraid of hurting his life for a long time" is lamentable.

According to Ms. Zhao Xuefen, "Before my father returned to Hebei Province, he saw my grandmother for the last time. Before leaving, he knelt on the ground and prostrated his grandmother, and then told his pregnant mother to pay attention to her body, and then hugged my brother Zhao Xuewu, who was only 2 years old, and my 4-year-old brother, and then left home without hesitation. ”

This time, the general's bloody battle will not be returned. Source: Xinhua Net