In the spring of 1938, Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Jinan and other important towns in North China had fallen under the iron heel of the Japanese invaders, and the Kuomintang army retreated southward, and the vast rural areas of North China became a vacuum zone. Under the leadership of Commander Chen Zaidao, the eastward column of the Eighth Route Army skillfully passed through the Pinghan railway line blocked by the Japanese army and entered the southern Hebei region to develop guerrilla forces; Soon, Song Renqiang (deputy director of the Political Department of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army) also arrived with a cavalry unit. The guerrilla forces soon developed into northern Henan and southwestern Shandong, and the situation in the base areas of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan border region was initially opened. 
Since then, the Hebei-Shandong-Henan base area has been like a nail firmly wedged behind enemy lines and has developed and grown. This article tells the story of a small eight-way in the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Anti-Japanese War, which comes from the oral accounts of veterans of the Anti-Japanese War. At the beginning of 1944, the Dingtao County Party Committee in the southwestern base area of Shandong was still active in the area of Jianghai Village, Dongwangdian Township, and there was a Japanese stronghold in Gaozhuang, Heze, which hindered the eastward advance of the anti-Japanese forces. The county party committee decided to concentrate several armed forces to attack Gaozhuang and pull out this stinger. The task was arduous, and the county party committee wrote a letter to the traffic officers of the Eighth Route Army, asking them to memorize the contents of the letter, and then went to the west of the city to convey the combat deployment to Cheng Shuxun, the captain of the anti-Japanese guerrilla brigade in Dingtao County. Cheng Shuxun is a native of Dingtao, generous and righteous, and has been organizing teams to fight since 1938, and has rich combat experience. 
However, the task of delivering the letter was not easy, and from the east of Dingtao County to the west of the city, it was necessary to pass through the blockade ditch dug by the Japanese army. The ditch was wide and deep, and there were Japanese patrols, and if there were no helpers and tools, climbing up from the ditch would be a problem. As a result, three traffic officers failed to cross the blockade and one was killed. The county party committee was worried. At this time, Xiao Dong, a small traffic officer, volunteered and asked to deliver the letter. Xiao Dong was only 13 years old, and his superiors were not very comfortable with him, but he swore that he would complete the task. This little eight-way can be described as bitter and bitter, and witty and brave, and has completed some less dangerous mission to deliver letters alone. At Xiao Dong's insistence, the superiors agreed. 
On the afternoon of the same day, Xiao Dong put on a torn cotton jacket with exposed cotton wool that he often wore when performing tasks, tied a sweet potato seedling belt around his waist, and carried a dagger in his arms, and set off alone. All the way to the west, after walking thirty or forty miles, when it was almost time to block the ditch, Xiao Dong lay in a hidden place, quietly waiting for dark. On the other side of the ditch is the Japanese artillery tower. As the minutes ticked by, it was finally darker and colder. In the cold wind, Xiao Dong heard the whistle of the Japanese patrol, and when he looked closely, there were several gui soldiers in the ditch, one by one, with sleeves and guns on their backs, shrinking their heads, cursing the weather while wandering. It wasn't until the sky was completely dark that Xiao Dong found that the enemy soldiers with flashlights had finally stopped wandering around and returned to the stronghold with a curse. 
The dazzling searchlights on the Japanese artillery tower were sweeping back and forth, and Xiao Dong dodged the lights and slowly crawled towards the edge of the ditch. When he arrived, he lowered his legs down on the edge of the ditch, and his hands grabbed the wall of the ditch and went down, and he fell to the bottom of the ditch. There was a thick layer of loose soil at the bottom of the ditch, but it didn't hurt to fall. He listened intently, and when there was no movement nearby, he drew his dagger and dug a pit in the west wall of the ditch. The soil was very hard to freeze, and I only dug a dozen pits before I sweated. At this time, he heard the door of the Japanese stronghold "creak" open, followed by the sound of chaotic footsteps and talking. Xiao Dong stood close to the west wall, not daring to make a sound. 
The enemy soldiers soon reached the edge of the ditch. This time it was obviously a puppet army, and I only heard one person scolding and saying, "His grandmother's, it's a cold day, he is roasting a fire inside, call us out!" This frozen sky, where did the eight roads come from, patrol a fart! Then, a flashlight shone into the ditch, and Xiao Dong shrank back, hiding in the shadows, holding his breath. After a while, he heard the enemy's footsteps go away, and after waiting a little longer, there was a "squeak" of the door closing, and the enemy went back. In this way, Xiao Dong took advantage of the gap between the enemy's patrols to carefully dig the foot pit, and finally saw the opportunity and climbed over the big trench. After dodging the searchlights and entering a relatively safe area, the road made a rapid journey. At midnight, he found the guerrillas in Liuzhuang Village and conveyed the instructions of the county party committee to Cheng Shuxun. 
Not long after the Gaozhuang stronghold was destroyed, Cheng Shuxun led the guerrillas to unite with the brigade directly under Dingtao County, and after careful deployment, they raided Gaozhuang, knocking out the Japanese stronghold in one fell swoop, and the obstacles to the guerrillas' eastward advance were removed. Further east, at Huangdian, there was a larger Japanese stronghold. The anti-Japanese forces took advantage of the victory and attacked and took Huangdian again. Some small Japanese strongholds around Huangdian lost their backbone and fled one after another, and the area of the liberated area was expanded again. By the spring of 1945, the seven districts east of Dingtao were all opened up by the anti-Japanese forces, and the base area in the east of the city was officially established. Conclusion: By the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the Hebei-Shandong-Henan base area had grown to more than 70 counties with a population of about 20 million. According to statistics, excluding the number of people in the battle, no less than 160,000 people were killed in the base area, about 300,000 heads of livestock were robbed by the Japanese puppeteers, and the grain and property were robbed equivalent to more than 13 billion catties of grain.