In May 1938, during the Battle of Xuzhou, the Japanese interspersed with mobile convoys.
【Full text 8000 words, about 26 minutes to read】
Li Bifan, who is it? I don't know? Then you can take a moment to take a look.
Li Bifan was born in 1892 in Jiahe, Hunan Province, to a Confucian family with considerable family resources.
He entered the school at an early age, reading both the Four Books and Five Classics, as well as calligraphy, painting and geography, and when he was a teenager, he was successively admitted to the Changsha Army Primary School and the Wuchang Army Middle School.
Changsha Army Primary School is a new type of army basic school opened on the basis of the original military primary school in accordance with the regulations of the Japanese Army Primary School in Hunan, with a school system of 3 years, in addition to the three-inch golden lotus style loyal and patriotic political education, the school introduced a full set of Japanese basic military teaching materials, which was a relatively famous modern military school in China at that time.
When Li Bifan enrolled, he and Tang Shengzhi, He Yao group, Liu Xing, Tao Zhiyue, Liu Zhi, Li Yunjie, Liu Xing and others were classmates and brothers.
The Wuchang Army Middle School was first founded for Zhang Zhidong, which is also a full set of high-imitation Japanese military schools, offering courses such as history, grammar, foreign languages, arithmetic, surveying and mapping, geography, military science, military weapons, and exercises, as well as applied disciplines aimed at cultivating students' practical military abilities such as field tasks, technical attacks, water spraying, and fieldwork.
In the Xinhai Dingge, the Changsha Army Primary School was discontinued.
In this regard, Li Bifan and other Changsha Lu primary school students were transferred to the Wuchang Army Middle School, that is, they were in the same window as Tang Shengzhi, He Yingqin, Deng Yanda, Li Yunjie, and others, and they were also the brothers of Bai Chongxi, Zhang Fakui, He Jian, Ye Ting, Huang Qixiang, Xue Yue, and other famous generals.
The following year, Yuan Shikai became the president of the Republic of China, appointed Duan Qirui as the chief of the army, and carried out military education reform.
In this regard, Duan Qirui, with Zhao Litai, the superintendent of non-commissioned officers and students staying in Japan in the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the general office of the Beiyang Army Accelerated School, as the president, moved the Army Preparatory University Hall to Beijing, expanded and renamed it the Army University.
In October of the same year, the Army University moved to Baoding, the famous Baoding Military Academy in Chinese history.
According to Duan Qirui's Set of the War Department, the Baoding Military Academy faces the nationwide enrollment and selects the best students, opening the door for the armed forces in various places.
In November of the same year, the cadets of the Wuchang Army Middle School graduated and transferred to the "Enlisted Cadet Team" set up by the Baoding Military Academy, or were assigned to the Beijing and Baoding garrisons to enlist in the army for a period of six months of more rigorous military training and study.
At the expiration of the six-month period, unified assessment, qualified people are officially promoted to Baoding Officer School, and those who are unqualified are willing to do so, or are assigned to other military schools, or terminate military studies.
It is different from He Yingqin, Deng Yanda, and others who graduated from Wuchang LuZhong and then bravely went to different political hills to join the army and fight, changed to the rank of regiment commander and brigade commander, and then transferred to the Baoding Military Academy to study. Tang Shengzhi, Li Yunjie, Li Bifan, and others turned into the first batch of "enlisted students" of the Baoding Military Academy, and after strict examination, entered the Baoding Military Academy to study.
Li Bifan was even admitted to the first phase of the Baoding Military Academy, which had a high cultural and technical content at that time.
It is not difficult to see from Li Bifan's study process of successively studying Changsha Lu primary school, Wuchang Luzhong, and Baoding Lu university; among the Chinese armies of the old military system, old soldiers, and old thinking at that time, Li Bifan was one of the very few professional military talents in the Chinese army at that time who had systematically studied military science.
In November 1914, Li Bifan graduated and was assigned to Hengyang, Hunan Province.
At that time, Hunan was a place where warlords were fighting, and the Xiang governor Tan Yanmin reorganized the Xiang army into four divisions, namely Chen Fuchu's 1st Division, Zhao Hengti's 2nd Division, Tao Zhongxun's 3rd Division, and Cheng Qian's 4th Division. For a while, there were more vacant posts, such as Tang Shengzhi, Dai Douyuan, He Jian, Li Yunjie, and others who stayed in the army during this period and were enthusiastic and enterprising, so soon after graduating from the Baoding Military Academy, they were promoted to important posts of regiment commander and brigade commander.
Only Li Bifan resigned and traveled to Sichuan, Hunan and other places at the end of his internship.
After this delay, when Li Bifan passed through the Yuanjiang River and talked with Zhu Zehuang, commander of the 5th Brigade of the 3rd Division of the Xiang Army, and stayed in his post, he was only the company commander of the 5th Brigade and the captain and staff officer of the 1st Regiment.
In the past two or three years, the civil war in the two lakes has not been extinguished, and the Xiang army has frequently participated in the war, such as Tang Shengzhi, Dai Douyuan and other graduates of Changsha Luxiao, Wuhan Luzhong and Baoding Luzhong University. At that time, Li Bifan's classmate Dai Douyuan was promoted to brigade commander, that is, He invited Li Bifan to come to the brigade headquarters as the chief of staff.
Tang Shengzhi, he and General Li Bifan were both Baoding 1 classmates. Over time, General Li Bifan was difficult to find.
At this time, Li Bifan's immediate superior, Dai Douyuan, and He Jian, then commander of the 1st Division of the 8th Army, were Li Bifan's disciples of Baoding Lu University.
He Jian's immediate superior, Tang Shengzhi, commander of the 8th Army, was None other than Li Bifan's classmates at Changsha Luxiao, Wuchang Luzhong, and Baoding Luda.
With bad luck and bad luck for officials, Li Bifan was depressed about this, and at the invitation of his compatriot and classmate Li Yunjie, who had just been promoted to commander of the 16th Regiment of the 3rd Division of the 8th Army, he went to Chenzhou and took up the post of battalion commander.
Li Yunjie has received not only systematic military education, but also a soldier who has been climbing the reality for many years and is quite sensitive to politics.
After that, Li Yunjie's regiment participated in the Northern Expedition, cooperated with the Northern Expeditionary Army to enter Xiang'e, and then moved to Xiang'e and other places, cooperated with Chiang Kai-shek's Huangpu clan, fought bloody battles with Wu Peifu's troops at TingsiQiao, and fought with Sun Chuanfang's troops in Pushui and Guangji.
At that time, Li Yunjie's regiment was the elite of Tang Shengzhi's department, not only fighting bravely and tactically changeable, but also Li Yunjie's army in order to cooperate with the Whampoa Army, but also to supervise the front at the expense of bloody battles. As a result, Li Yunjie was greatly appreciated by Chiang Kai-shek.
After the Kuomintang was diverted, Li Yunjie was appointed by Chiang Kai-shek as the brigade commander of the Independent Brigade, the commander of the provisional 21st Division, and the 27th Army, which became the head of the army of the Nationalist Army at that time.
The 27th Army was formed by Chiang Kai-shek after the Kuomintang was diverted, in order to shuffle the local army in Hunan and absorb the powerful generals in Hunan. Yes, the 27th Army was divided into Hunan military generals Li Yunjie and Xu Kexiang as the chief and deputy commanders.
The 27th Army administered the 23rd Division, with Commander Li Yunjie as division commander, and the 24th Division under the command of Deputy Commander Xu Kexiang.
It is said that it is an army, and the two divisions are actually the relationship between the well water and the river.
In this way, Li Yunjie, as the commander of the 27th Army, actually controlled only one division of troops, and of course he had to recruit troops, cultivate cronies, and expand his power.
After that, Li Yunjie recruited Jiahe's sons into the army several times, and even appointed Li Bifan, Li Ziqing, and Li Yuelin from Jiahe as the three regimental commanders of the 23rd Division.
At the same time, at the recommendation of Li Bifan, Li Yunjie specially invited huang Qidong, a former colonel of the third branch of the Whampoa Military Academy and a brigade commander of the major general of the Nationalist Army, and Huang Qidong, an old classmate with Li Bifan's education and experience, to serve as the chief of staff of the 23rd Division.
The 23rd Division is indeed too Jiahe characteristics, so others have the nickname of "Li Jiajun, commander of the army, Li Division Commander Li Brigade Commander Li, Li Li Ju is Jiahe Tongzong".
In fact, the 23rd Division did have a very strong private army color.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the local armed forces of the Two Lakes were the units that completed the reorganization of the Nationalist army earlier.
However, in an era when most of the generals of the Nationalist army were self-contained, accelerated military academies, and political schools, the 23rd Division gathered Li Yunjie, Li Bifan, and Huang Qidong, all of whom belonged to the rare military talents who had undergone systematic military study and long-term battlefield tempering. Compared with the local national army at that time, the military quality of its military commanders at all levels, including division commanders, chiefs of staff and regimental commanders, was rare.
The war situation stabilized slightly, and they studied the situation between China and Japan at that time and decided that there must be a war between China and Japan.
Li Yunjie, Li Bifan, Huang Qidong, and others all studied Japanese military in the military academy system since childhood, and naturally knew the tactics of the Japanese army.
In this regard, Li Yunjie not only completed the treatise "Building a City Against Japan" with the assistance of Li Bifan, Huang Qidong, and others, but also repeatedly studied and formulated a battle plan for position warfare using former enemy fortifications and fortresses to block and counterattack the Japanese charge on the operational situation of the 23rd Division.
In January 1935, on the eve of the Anti-Japanese War, the commander of the army, Li Yunjie, fell ill and died.
Liu Xing, the successor commander of the 27th Army, and Dai Yue, the deputy commander of the Army, were both disciples of Li Bifan in the Baoding 1st period, so they not only respected their brothers, but also recognized Li Bifan's character and talents.
In January 1936, In preparation for the War of Resistance, China reorganized the national army.
At that time, the 23rd Division of the Xiang Army was transferred to Shaanxi and assigned to the 37th Army of the Nationalist Army stationed in Gannan and Shaanxi, and Li Bifan was recommended by Liu Xing and Dai Yue to serve as the commander of the 23rd Division.
In July 1937, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out.
The 23rd Division, which was preparing to accept the reorganization of the readjustment division, received an order from Nanjing to participate in the battle, so Li Bifan led his troops as the first batch of participating in the Warring States Army, swore an oath in Lintong, Shaanxi, marched thousands of miles, went north to Dezhou and Cangzhou, and the whole division was in the 67th Army of the Northeast Army wu Keren under the jurisdiction of the 1st Army of Song Zheyuan in the 1st Theater of Operations and threw itself into the War of Resistance.
Wu Keren, who graduated from the 5th term of Baoding Military Academy, is also Li Bifan's disciple.
Baoding Military Academy cadets attend gymnastics classes. Founded in 1912, Baoding Military Academy was the first regular army military academy in modern Chinese history and ceased operation in 1923.
The generals and officers of the Republic of China army are divided according to the period and military academy, which is roughly divided into three generations.
First, it comes from the Qing military sequence, as well as the Manchu Qing Dynasty armed school, studying in Japan, etc. Such as Jiang Baili, Zhao Litai, Xu Shuzheng, Cheng Qian and others.
Second, it comes from the domestic inland primary school, luzhong, daowutang and Baoding military academy. Such as Zhu De, Xue Yue, Chen Cheng, Tang Shengzhi, and Li Bifan and others.
Third, they are military cadres trained by the Whampoa Military Academy and the two parties after the Northern Expedition and the Separation of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
At that time, as the second generation of Chinese soldiers, in addition to being promoted to high-level military and political leaders of the Republic of China, more of them had already made a big wave and left the front-line troops.
Li Bifan was able to serve as a division commander during the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and lead his troops north to resist the War, which showed that he had the approval of Chiang Kai-shek and was qualified to have prestige in the Xiang Army; at the same time, Li Bifan's systematic military theory, years of military practice, and his familiarity with the Japanese army and tactics made people believe that he was indeed the most ideal division commander to command the 23rd Division in the war against Japan.
In early September, in order to open the northern section of Jinpu Road, the Japanese army mobilized the main forces of the 10th Division and the 16th Division to launch an offensive south along the Jinpu Line.
At that time, in order to save Shandong's decline and stimulate the anti-war sentiment of the former northwest warlords Song Zheyuan and Han Fuyu who were stationed in the northern section of Jinpu Road, Nanjing specially organized this theater into the 6th Theater, with Feng Yuxiang, the ancestor of the Northwest Army, as the boss of the 6th Theater.
In this regard, Li Bifan's 23rd Division, stationed on the Cangzhou front, was assigned to the 6th Theater of Operations, participated in the Battle of Cangzhou in Hebei Province, deployed along the Jinpu Line, blocked the Japanese army from moving south to East China, and guaranteed the Battle of Songhu.
At this time, although Li Bifan's 23rd Division was from the Xiang Army, it was deeply trusted by Chiang Kai-shek and used it in the Shandong battlefield, just like the Nanjing concubine.
On October 2, the Japanese army attacked Dexian County.
Dexian is the hub of the Japanese army's southward advance, and the relationship between gain and loss is extremely high.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek was well aware that Li Bifan's 23rd Division had limited equipment and combat strength, and that the garrison in Dexian Wasan was tight, so he sent several urgent telegrams a day asking Han Fuyu, chairman of Shandong Province and commander-in-chief of the 3rd Group Army, to quickly dispatch 2 divisions to deploy on both flanks of the 23rd Division to assist Li Bifan's 23rd Division in garrisoning Dexian County.
However, Chiang Kai-shek's order was prevaricated by Han Fuyu.
Japanese troops and Chinese civilians in the early days of the War of Resistance.
In the spring of 1938, the Japanese army in North China moved south along the Jinpu Line.
As soon as the battle began, the 23rd Division, which had lost the cover of its wings, was soon under the japanese pincer posture and was forced to be alone and extremely passive.
At that time, Li Bifan commanded the 23rd Division to deploy the front with its back to the city wall of Dexian County, and urgently ordered all units to immediately repair and build systematic fortifications and fortresses in accordance with the requirements of the previous combat training, and at the same time disperse the deployment of troops and expand the depth of defense.
In actual combat, Li Bifan's deployment did largely offset the artillery superiority of the Japanese army.
The Japanese army pursued the Northwest Army and the Northeast Army all the way, and was invincible, but it inadvertently crashed into the defensive positions of the 23rd Division, and several onslaughts were unsuccessful.
After that, the Japanese army mobilized heavy troops to besiege the city, repeatedly attacked with heavy artillery and fighters, and blew up the defensive positions on the northeast and northwest flanks of the City Wall of Decheng. Losing the protection of both wings, Li Bifan had to command his troops to shrink the defensive line and withdraw from the broken position.
In this regard, the Japanese army broke through the city and gradually formed a closed siege posture against the 23rd Division.
Li Bifan was well aware of the dangers of the war, but because he could not get the order to retreat at that time, he had no intention of leading his troops to break through, and personally supervised the officers and men defending the city to fight in the streets of the city and repeatedly fought with the Japanese army.
The Chinese and Japanese armies defended and captured Dexian County, fighting day and night for 3 days.
The battle was unprecedentedly bloody and tragic, suppressed by the Superior Heavy Artillery, Fighters and Tanks of the Japanese Army, and the 23rd Division, which was equipped with only 4 mountain guns, suffered more than half of the casualties under the reluctant resistance.
Therefore, in the afternoon of this day, after receiving the order to retreat, Li Bifan, Huang Qidong, and others discussed that they had organized several night raids, counterattacks that had failed to work, and that it was useless to fight again, and finally they had to bear with hatred and bear with anger and lead their troops to break through.
On October 5, Li Bifan led his troops to retreat southwest of Jinpu Road, and Dexian was lost.
Li Bifan led his troops to retreat to the Tangyin line in northern Henan, building and reinforcing fortifications day and night, resting the troops, and preparing for another battle.
Machine gun positions of the Anti-Japanese Nationalist Army.
A Japanese officer who directs artillery fire.
At that time, the 23rd Division, relying on the system of chemical affairs and fortresses personally designed, supervised, and commanded by Li Bifan, confronted the indiscriminate bombardment of Japanese aircraft artillery, repeatedly resisted the Japanese invasion, and held the Tangyin line in northern Henan for four months.
In the long and bloody battle, Li Bifan's 23rd Division suffered heavy casualties, especially the casualties of officers and veterans, and then, although after 5 replenishments, the 23rd Division was seriously injured, and its combat strength and morale were much worse than before.
However, Li Bifan's 23rd Division fought bloody battles on the Jinpu Line and northern Henan, in order to prepare for the peripheral operations of the Battle of Songhu, to cover the retreat of the main anti-war forces in the Songhu battlefield and the North China battlefield, and to protect the border of Henan, and indeed the outstanding achievements of the Nanjing troops.
Compared with the poor records of the Northwest Army and the Northeast Army of the 6th Theater, the 23rd Division went out to fight against the war, and its achievements can be described as remarkable.
To this end, the Nanjing side gave a special reward to the 23rd Division of the Nationalist Army.
In January 1938, the Battle of Nanjing ended, the Japanese army in east China occupied Nanjing, but could not seek a decisive battle with the main force of the Nationalist army, the Japanese top brass was eager to win a quick battle, so it decided to use the main force of the Japanese army in East China to carry out strategic maneuvers north of Nanjing, and the main force of the Japanese army in north China went south from Jinpu to the south, and the north and south attacked Xuzhou to encircle the main force of the national army.
The curtain was drawn on the Battle of Taierzhuang.
At that time, the Japanese army marched south in three ways, and the Japanese 10th Division regiment was even more in Jinan, Tai'an, Yanzhou, Jining and other places, and the japanese right wing troops were directly approaching the Shangqiu and Liuhe lines from Jining.
In February, in view of the rapid and sharp attack of the Japanese army in North China, in order to ensure that the 6th Theater and heze, the strategic material hub of the Shandong Theater, were not lost, the 23rd Division of Li Bifan, which was good at defensive operations, was transferred to southwest Lu to prepare to build fortifications around Yuncheng and Heze, and to fight the Japanese army south.
However, after many garrison operations that lasted for April, the 23rd Division suffered heavy casualties, the officers and men had changed stubble several times, coupled with continuous combat, the officers and men were tired, and the combat strength and morale of the whole division were not as good as when the Lintong Oath Division first entered the battlefield.
At the same time, the 23rd Division was transferred to Central China and accepted new recruits, when the regiment and battalion commanders below the deputy division commander were going to Wuhan and had not yet returned. Most of the divisions are regimental, battalion commanders are mostly agents, and their command capabilities have also been weakened.
Therefore, when the 23rd Division was ordered to move, officers at all levels, such as brigades, regiments, and battalions under Li Bifan,kept complaining.
At this time, Li Bifan was a real person, and he could only bear to run away, speak kindly, and turn off the fire on all sides.
Dingtao Old Town. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist army relied on such old cities to build city walls. However, such a seemingly tall and strong position could not resist the heavy artillery bombardment of the Japanese army.
In April 1938, as the Battle of Taierzhuang drew to an end, in order to cover the breakthrough of the main force of the Nationalist army xuzhou, Li Bifan's troops entered the line of Yuncheng and Heze through Dingtao in southwest Lu, and were responsible for the defense of more than 100 miles on both sides of the Yellow River.
Yuncheng and Heze controlled the Yellow River in the north, strangled the Longhai in the south, and were the gateway to the Central Plains of the southwest barrier of Luxi, and in the Song-Jin War, the Ming and Qing Wars to the warlords of the Republic of China, these were the main points for the northern armed forces to break through to the south and pass through the Central Plains.
However, the terrain of Yuncheng and Heze is flat, which is very convenient for the mechanization of the Japanese army corps and the long-range firepower of ground and air.
Once the mechanized units of the Japanese army broke through the line of Yuncheng and Heze prematurely, it was bound to pose a great threat to the main force of the Nationalist army that was retreating by separate routes at that time.
However, Li Bifan's troops were limited, and if he wanted to deploy such a long front, he had to divide his troops and fortify, with the 68th Brigade defending Yuncheng, the 67th Brigade defending Heze, and himself and Huang Qidong leading the division and direct subordinate units to garrison the Huanggu Nunnery between Yuncheng and Heze.
Therefore, although Li Bifan, Huang Qidong, and others urged day and night, and the command headquarters stepped up repairs and built systematic fortifications and fortresses, they deeply felt that their troops were weak and their tasks were important, so they telegraphed several times a day to ask for help.
On the night of May 10, 1938, there was no news of nationalist reinforcements, and a brigade of the 19th Brigade of the Japanese 16th Division, Sakai Naoji, had already approached Yuncheng.
As soon as the battle began, the Japanese army shelled the city wall several times with infantry artillery, and Li Yuelin, the commander of the 68th Brigade stationed in Yuncheng, was frightened and frightened, that is, he led his troops to collapse.
Inside Yuncheng, only regimental commander Liu Guanxiong led hundreds of officers and men to desperately resist in the city wall position.
In this battle until the next day, Liu Guanxiong's troops were weak, and finally they were repelled by the Japanese army, Liu Guanxiong's regimental commander was martyred, and Yuncheng fell.
When Li Bifan heard the report of Yuncheng's defeat, he was anxious.
He sent communications personnel to look for Brigadier Li Yuelin and the main force of the brigade on several occasions, strictly ordered the 68th Brigade to counterattack and retake Yuncheng, and led the division's direct subordinate units to rush to yuncheng and personally command and supervise the 68th Brigade.
However, after a night of fierce fighting, the positions painstakingly repaired and built before the war were either occupied by the Japanese army or destroyed in the war.
As a result, Li Bifan's 23rd Division, which was originally good at relying on fortifications and fortresses to fight a garrison battle, had to charge in a field and attack Yuncheng head-on.
The strong attack was not the commander of the 68th Brigade, not to mention that the brigade collapsed before the war, morale was low, and when it launched a strong attack, it was suppressed by the Japanese army with strong artillery fire, with heavy casualties, no progress, and the whole army was even more demoralized.
Li Bifan had no choice but to order the abandonment of the recapture of Yuncheng, the main forces of the 67th and 68th Brigades were placed on the left and right sides of the Heze Castle Wall, and they posed for the 19th Brigade of Sakai Naoji to repair fortifications and step up combat readiness...
However, Li Bifan did not think that the greatest danger came from the flanks.
At the same time that sakai Naoji's 19th Brigade captured Yuncheng and pressed forward, on May 11, the 14th Division of the Japanese Army's Kenji Toihara crossed the Yellow River from Puxian County, successively captured Dongkou north of Heze and Juancheng to the west, cutting off the 23rd Division's contact with the Nationalist Shangzhen Group Army.
Heze City was besieged and reinforcements were blocked.
Following the garrison battle in Dexian County, Shandong, the 23rd Division once again became a lone army.
Mechanized advance from Dongkou and Juancheng, a part of the 14th Division of Heze was attacked in a roundabout way.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a Japanese gendarme in Heze.
On the afternoon of the 13th, the 14th Division of the Japanese Army's Kenji Toihara attacked Heze from the direction of Juancheng.
The 14th Division was a permanent division of the Japanese Army, with strong combat strength and excellent equipment, and its combat strength was several times that of the remnants of Li Bifan's 23rd Division. Therefore, the 14th Division launched an offensive, that is, to form an encirclement posture against Heze, and suppressed the Nationalist army with heavy artillery and chemical shells, launching several offensives.
At dawn on the 14th, the Japanese heavy artillery crushed, the officers and men of the 23rd Division painstakingly repaired and built the city wall positions before the war, the Japanese army broke through on all sides, attacked the heart, and Heze was already in danger.
Since the beginning of the Northern Expedition and the Civil War, the 23rd Division of the Nationalist Army has attached great importance to military engineering training. Officers and men have long been trained and trained by professional military experts such as Li Yunjie, Li Bifan, and Huang Qidong, and are especially good at building and using former enemy fortifications and fortresses to counter the Japanese army.
However, Li Bifan and Huang Qidong did not expect that under the cover of the Japanese Army's 14th Division of the Japanese Army's Kenji Doihara with powerful firepower such as field artillery and mountain artillery, the system and fortress they had repaired overnight in Heze were just dead leaves under the storm...
On the morning of the 14th, the Japanese army launched a general attack on the positions of Heze City Wall.
At that time, the Japanese army advanced with an unprecedented heavy artillery barrage, supplemented by chariots to cover the infantry charge, and launched a fierce attack on the Nationalist army. In this regard, the 23rd Division of the Nationalist Army, which was crushed by the japanese army's excessive artillery fire, relied on fortifications and fortresses several times to resist the Japanese army and achieved excellent results, finally came to the most dangerous edge this time.
The platoon fell, and there was smoke on all sides.
At that time, the military quality of the nationalist army was extremely unsatisfactory, and the anti-artillery knowledge of low-level officers and soldiers was very lacking. Therefore, the Japanese artillery bombardment, according to the position, fortifications, running of the national army or for the shell to die, or by the bombing ruins, or crawling in the bunker by the shell shock wave to death ...
The Nationalist army was almost formed in squads, platoons, and companies, and fell under the heavy artillery bombardment of the Japanese army.
The almost uninterrupted artillery fire of the Japanese army completely defeated the fortifications and fortresses of the 23rd Division commanded by Li Bifan and Huang Qidong.
The 67th and 68th Brigades, which were deployed by Li Bifan on the left and right sides of the Heze City Wall, and strictly ordered the 67th and 68th Brigades to hold their positions, were pressed by the strong artillery fire of the Japanese army step by step, and the casualties were indeed too tragic, and the remnants were shaken from below the brigade commander and began to collapse.
In this regard, after several infantry charges by the Japanese army, the remnants of the 67th and 68th Brigades finally turned around and fled...
In this regard, the Japanese army marched in search of traces, and from the left and right sides of the Heze city wall, surrounded Li Bifan and Huang Qidong, who were stubbornly defending Heze City, as well as the division headquarters and direct subordinate units.
The tide is gone.
National hero General Huang Qidong.
It may be out of guilt about the deployment before the battle, it may also be out of anger at the 67th and 68th Brigades fleeing from the front, or it may be out of indignation that there were too many casualties among the officers and men in this tragic battle, and at the last moment, Li Bifan and Huang Qidong gave up the breakthrough and led the officers and men to rush back and forth to kill.
Huang Qidong was shot in the head between the round-trip charge, and summoned the guards to rush to the battlefield with their backs on their backs and continue to command the battle.
In the end, Huang Qidong was seriously injured and shouted indignantly:
"Why to the state? Why for the nation?
It is better to fight the dead ghost than to be a slave to the country! ”
Then, General Huang Qidong was martyred on the back of the guards.
As the commander of the 23rd Division, Li Bifan was well aware of the Japanese tradition of capturing the commanders of the opposing units to show off their battle merits and boost morale. Therefore, at the last moment, Li Bifan, who was already seriously injured and unable to walk, was carried by several adjutants and guards on a door panel under the cover of the bloody battle of the guard company, and rushed out of the siege all the way.
On the evening of May 14, 1938, Li Bifan and several aide-de-camps and guards arrived at Quxingji, southwest of Heze, and were basically out of danger.
However, Li Bifan was seriously injured and distraught at this time, and had no intention of continuing to run.
In such a battle, the 67th and 68th brigades fled in the near future, Yuncheng and Heze fell, and the 23rd Division was swept away, but Li Bifan was full of resentment and remorse, and of course there was no intention of surviving.
In this regard, Li Bifan lay on the door panel, and after taking out the military map, he dispersed the adjutant guards, and then wrote his last words in the blank corner of the map:
"The sin of misleading the country is especially light in death, may my compatriots strive to kill thieves."
However, Li Bifan lay flat on the door panel and martyred himself with his hands, at the age of 46.
The news of Li Bifan's martyrdom came and aroused a strong influence throughout the country, and newspapers around the country reported it one after another, and on May 18, 1938, the Ta Kung Pao highly commented on Li Bifan's martyrdom with a front-page headline:
"The commander of Li's former division will die in Heze, repeatedly fighting fierce battles, and annihilating many enemies.
When the enemy army rushed into the city, Commander Li led his troops to charge back and forth, and the strength was incomparable...
All of them are brave and good at war, and have made long-term military achievements, all of whom are the sons of Sanxiang. ”
In June 1938, the Nationalist government held solemn memorial services for Li Bifan and Huang Qidong in Kaifeng, Henan, Wuhan, Hubei, Yueyang, Changsha, Jiahe, Pingjiang and other places, and Chongqing posthumously awarded two martyred generals as lieutenant generals.
At the memorial service for General Li Bifan held in Wuhan, Chiang Kai-shek's elegance was hung in the venue:
"Turning to Xu Huai, early knowledge of the spirit of loyalty can serve the country; in the same boat, the wind and rain, the festival of sorrow is great."
At the same time, Guo Moruo, Wu Yuzhang, Luo Binghui, and other representatives of the headquarters of Yan'an and the Eighth Route Army also attended the memorial meeting and presented General Li Bifan with a large plaque with a golden character of "Light of the Nation" to express the sincere respect of General Li Bifan, who was martyred in the war between Yan'an and the Eighth Route Army.
Suddenly, it has been 83 years since the general was martyred.
For more than 80 years, many of the martyred heroes who yesterday moved and inspired China to go through the arduous and remarkable eight-year War of Resistance have always been forgotten by us for various reasons, or selectively forgotten.
However, the history that belongs to Chinese will always be remembered by someone.
Like you, like me...
Bless the kings and say hello to Li Qiu.