In March 1942, the 200th Division of the 5th Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force launched the Battle of Tonggu, but the British army escaped from the battle, making the squadron fall into the encirclement of the Japanese army.
On the 23rd, army commander Du Yuming immediately ordered division commander Dai Anlan to lead his troops to break through to the east.
The 200 division began the retreat. Before retreating, at 200 hours, the infantry commander Zheng Tingjian commanded the troops in the city to carry out a feint attack on the besieging enemy. Then the large army withdrew from the city without a sound. However, the division commander Dai Anlan personally led a small number of troops to contain the Japanese army in the city.
At dawn the next day, after the large army crossed the Xitang River safely, the Japanese army believed that Dai Anlan's division was still trapped in the city, so they launched a fierce attack on the ancient city with a combination of infantry, artillery, and air, in a vain attempt to annihilate the 200th division in one fell swoop.
In the sky above the ancient city, the cannonballs kept whistling, and the rubble on the houses in the city was shaken. Division Commander Dai Anlan stepped on the rubble, withstood the rain of bullets, and led dozens of men and horses to walk between life and death. He walked out of the alley and jumped into a sandy trench that had collapsed in many places, where he found the body of one of his soldiers and said to the guards beside him, "Send two soldiers to carry this sacrificial soldier out of the city." He would never let even a single corpse of his soldiers fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Then, he led the others down a broken wall.
Just as Dai Anlan and the others walked around a wall and walked towards an open area, behind a broken wall in front of them, dozens of Japanese soldiers suddenly walked out, and the two sides confronted each other motionless for a few seconds. Just as the Japanese soldiers fell to the ground and were about to shoot, Dai Anlan shouted loudly and rushed towards him with a machine gun. When the Japanese soldiers hurriedly got up and fled, trying to use the broken wall as a cover to redeploy the battle, Dai Anlan's machine gun had already fired a string of bullets, and more than 10 corpses of the Japanese soldiers had fallen. The corpses of more than 10 Japanese soldiers immediately became the bunkers of dozens of Chinese people, and they engaged in fierce shooting with other Japanese soldiers for more than 20 minutes.
The Japanese found that the gunfire was fierce and rushed over like a tide, which soon increased to more than 100 people.
Dai Anlan led dozens of his soldiers to stubbornly resist. The soldiers beside him fell one after another, and on either side of him alone, more than 10 corpses were lying. A soldier ran over and turned over the corpse of his companion, preparing to use him to raise the bunker slightly higher to withstand the enemy's bullets and use it as cover.
You bastard! "Dai Anlan scolded the soldier, "You didn't see it, he has received enough bullets on his body, do you still have a little Chinese conscience?" You....You....Dai Anlan cursed, angrily kicking the soldier's ass.
At this critical moment, suddenly, more than 100 Japanese troops of the enemy in front of him, along with the broken wall, all fell.
Dai Anlan didn't know what miracle had happened! When you look closely, you can see that it was your own troops rushing up from behind enemy lines!
It turned out that Zheng Tingji, who had completed the task of containing the enemy and had withdrawn to the Xitang River to prepare to board the ship offshore, suddenly heard the increasingly fierce gunfire here and said, "Not good! Division Commander Dai was besieged by the Japanese army! "Immediately order the rearguard troops to return to the division and return to the city, and relieve the danger of the division commander.
He led the spy company to run at the front, and at this moment it happened to give the Japanese army a north-south attack!
Dai Anlan looked at Zheng Tingjian and his entourage, so excited that he couldn't speak. After pausing for a moment, he ordered: "Zheng Tingji, you lead the way before you go, and quickly get out of the city ......."”
Dai Anlan was the last to leave Tonggu. The 200th Division stubbornly held out in Tonggu for 12 days, killing more than 1,000 people.
Chen Guanren's "Ten Ace Armies of the Kuomintang" describes the before and after of this rare Tonggu battle. The book is a classic military bestseller loved by readers.