After the July 7 Incident in 1937, the Japanese army occupied most of North China, and the Eighth Route Army advanced into North China to resist the Japanese, establishing a number of bases there. In the mountains of the Taihang Mountains to the west of Beiping, the Eighth Route Army established the Pingxi Base Area in 1938.
Since the Pingxi base area directly threatened the Pingjin area, where the headquarters of the Japanese North China Dispatch Army was located, the Japanese army specially based on a part of the 114th Division of the First Division (withdrawn at the end of 1939) and expanded into an independent mixed 15th Brigade directly under the North China Dispatch Army Command of the Japanese Army (common title).PherdIt was specially stationed in the periphery of the western part of Beiping and was responsible for guarding and sweeping the Pingxi base area.
The Japanese army established a series of strongholds at the main entrances and exits on the edge of the mountainous area in the western part of Beiping, blocking the eastward advance of the Pingxi base area, so as to ensure that the Pingjin area was not threatened by the Eighth Route Army, and at the same time ensure the safety of the Mentougou coal mine, the main energy source in the Pingjin area. Therefore, in order to more effectively threaten the Japanese core area of Pingjin in the Pingxi base area, it is necessary to uproot these outposts and strongholds of the Japanese army on the edge of the mountainous area in the western part of Beiping.
First of all is the Nanjiao Village stronghold, which is located in the mountains of Fangshan County, southwest of Beijing, and is more than 100 kilometers away from the city in a straight line. Nanjiao Village is a rare big village in the mountains in the west of Beiping, it is located in the valley surrounded by three mountains, guarding the traffic artery of the mountainous area to the east of the North China Plain, so the location is very important and it is a place where soldiers must fight.
In the 1940 Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the Pingxi Base Area launched a large-scale attack on the stronghold of Nanjiao Village, but the introduction of this battle, the code word can not be seen in the domestic data, but the situation of this battle is recorded in the relevant materials in Japan.
At the end of the summer of 1941, Kunio Saito, a native of Arima Prefecture in Utsunomiya, Japan, was assigned to the Nanjiao Village base as a supplementary soldier, and in his war memoir "Army Infantry Manga Story" written after the war, he recorded some memories of the Japanese soldiers who participated in the war at that time. Since Kunio Saito destroyed his notes when he was in Siberia**, it is a pity that these events recorded according to his memories do not have a specific time.
According to Saito Kunio's account, the Japanese army occupied the largest landlord's courtyard in Nanjiao Village, which was built on the mountain and located at the northernmost part of the village. Because Nanjiao Village is a large village, this landlord's courtyard covers a wide area, and because there are many bandits in the mountainous area, this courtyard has been built very solidly when it was first built.
After occupying this compound, the Japanese army built a watchtower in the center and north of the courtyard, and built a watchtower control commanding height overlooking the whole village on the top of the mountain behind the courtyard. Thus the formation of the main watchtower in the center of the courtyard as the core, a zigzag bunker defense system. This compound was not only a stronghold of the Japanese army, but also the squadron headquarters of the Japanese garrison squadron. Therefore, the rooms in the courtyard were divided into the captain's room, the radio room, the guard room, the dormitory, the health room, the dormitory, etc., and the Japanese army strengthened the walls of the courtyard and the walls of the houses to make it difficult to chisel through.
In order to hold this stronghold, the Japanese army deployed a garrison of 40 people in the courtyard all the year round, and stationed a 10-man detachment in the watchtower on the top of the hill behind. The garrison in the watchtower rotates every other day, closely monitoring all roads in and out of Nanjiao Village.
Due to the relationship between the Japanese squadron headquarters, the two watchtowers in the courtyard also became the ammunition depot of the Japanese garrison squadron, in which enough ammunition for the 50-person Japanese squad to use normally for one year was stored all year round. As a result, the Japanese garrison was strengthened with a heavy machine gun and two light mortars (presumably grenadiers), which was much more powerful than a normal 50-man Japanese squad.
In view of the strong firepower of the Japanese army at the Nanjiao Village stronghold, the Pingxi base area made a lot of preparations before launching an offensive operation in the autumn of 1940. For example, troops from all over the country were mobilized to assemble on the periphery of Nanjiao Village, forming an absolute superiority over the Japanese army; Organize the common people to make stretchers and rope ladders to equip them for the attack.
What is particularly commendable is the secrecy of the Pingxi base area before the start of the battle. All the spies sent by the Japanese army in the Nanjiao village stronghold were successfully intercepted and captured by the soldiers and civilians in the Pingxi base area, which made the Japanese troops in the Nanjiao village stronghold ignorant of the preparations for the attack in the Pingxi base area.
Due to the pre-war secrecy preparations in place, the attack on Nanjiao Village from the Pingxi Base Area made the Japanese troops stationed in Nanjiao Village feel very sudden. When the Japanese army found out that the Eighth Route Army was attacking, they had become turtles in the urn and were surrounded by groups, so they retreated into the courtyard and blocked the gate to resist stubbornly.
According to Saito's account, the Eighth Route Army soon attacked the courtyard and climbed the wall under the wall of the courtyard. The Japanese also tried to prevent the Eighth Route Army from entering the courtyard at first, so they used mortars to bombard the Eighth Route Army outside the compound, and at the same time organized troops to throw grenades at the top of the watchtower; The Japanese army used the gap created by grenades and mortar shells to organize a small force to counterattack the wall where the Eighth Route Army had built a rope ladder, and the Japanese soldiers who rushed to the wall cut the rope ladder hung by the Eighth Route Army with bayonets, and also had a white-knives battle with the Eighth Route Army that had climbed the wall.
Due to the absolute disadvantage of the Japanese army, they were soon driven off the wall by the Eighth Route Army, and could only retreat into the watchtower and resist stubbornly. The battle continued until this point, and the progress of the Eighth Route Army was relatively smooth, but the next battle fell into a stalemate.
Due to the finished glyph layout of the three watchtowers of the Japanese army, this led to the Eighth Route Army no matter which direction it climbed over the wall and entered the courtyard, it would be blocked by the Japanese fire. Moreover, according to Saito Kunio's account, the number of rope ladders in the Eighth Route Army was also limited, only a few, so the Japanese could concentrate their firepower on defense. The soldiers of the Eighth Route Army had to brave the fire net of the Japanese army to climb over the wall into the courtyard, after the Japanese army once set fire, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army at the head of the wall fell one after another, and the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who climbed over the courtyard wall also fell one piece, and soon the wounded and victims of the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army under the courtyard wall were stacked layer upon layer.
And in this unfavorable situation for the Eighth Route Army, which attacked the courtyard, the Japanese soldiers guarding the watchtower felt frightened to see the scene, but it continued to happen. Whenever the charge horn outside the courtyard sounds, as long as the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army can still stand up in the courtyard, they will jump up without hesitation, take the rope ladder and brave the fire net of the Japanese army to attack the Japanese watchtower!
Now I have watched too many film and television works, giving us the impression that the firepower of the Japanese army is weak. In fact, the firepower of the Japanese army was sufficient in that era, a 38 rifle could fire every two seconds in the hands of a skilled soldier, and a Type 92 heavy machine gun could fire 150 rounds in one minute; The Japanese grenadier has a faster rate of fire than the Type 38, and the Type 91 grenade, which is used as a grenadier ammunition, can produce more than 400 fragments at a time!
In the courtyard, where there was no way to deploy troops and lack cover, Japanese rifles and machine guns, especially grenadiers, could be used to their full potential. In addition, as previously introduced, the watchtowers in the courtyard of the Japanese army served as ammunition depots, so every attack of the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army was finally defeated by the rain of bullets from the Japanese army.
Seeing that the ** was getting bigger and bigger, the Eighth Route Army had to give up the attack on the courtyard, and instead concentrated its forces to attack the watchtower located on the top of the mountain, hoping to break this commanding height in the Japanese defense system, and then attack the courtyard guarded by the Japanese army.
The Japanese watchtower is not just a watchtower, like the watchtower set up by the Japanese army on the top of the mountain, and the Japanese army erected two barbed wire fences around it. The attacking Eighth Route Army used a simple method to dissolve the Japanese barbed wire defense line, and the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army brought door panels to press out the passage on the barbed wire, and the Japanese barbed wire barrier immediately failed.
Due to the obstruction of the mountain, the Japanese watchtower located on the top of the hill did not have almost no dead spots like the other two watchtowers, so some soldiers of the Eighth Route Army successfully rushed to the bottom of the Japanese watchtower. However, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who rushed to the bottom of the watchtower found that they were helpless against the Japanese watchtower.
According to the memories of the Japanese soldiers who participated in the battle, these soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who rushed to the watchtower were in a hurry, and even directly reached out and dragged the hot barrel of the Japanese rifle that was sticking out of the hole and constantly spraying flames, and forcibly pulled the Japanese rifle outwards despite the severe pain that their hands were burned.
The heroic behavior of these soldiers of the Eighth Route Army to seize the guns, although it interfered with the shooting accuracy of the Japanese army, also revealed their own position, so they were killed one by one by the grenades thrown by the Japanese army.
However, this tactical change still brought hope for the Eighth Route Army to break the deadlock. The Japanese watchtower on the top of the hill was not used as an ammunition depot, so the ammunition stored was limited, so after half a day of fierce fighting, the ammunition was exhausted, so the Japanese army in the courtyard at the bottom of the mountain asked for support ammunition. The Japanese watchtower under the mountain successively sent several Japanese soldiers to deliver ammunition to the watchtower on the mountain, but they were all killed by snipers arranged by the Eighth Route Army. The Eighth Route Army saw that the firepower of the watchtower on the top of the hill had become sparse, so they gathered their forces and prepared to take it in one fell swoop.
Seeing that the Eighth Route Army was preparing to launch a general attack on the towers on the top of the mountain, the Japanese squadron commander, who knew that once the towers on the top of the mountain were lost, the Japanese squadron commander was in danger of annihilating the whole army, sent a telegram asking for help to the brigade headquarters in the rear. The Japanese brigade headquarters that received the telegram for help did not dare to slack off, and although the troops were overstretched, they gathered five truckloads of troops and urgently reinforced Nanjiao Village.
However, when the Japanese reinforcements followed the Liuli River and entered the Heilongguan Valley, less than 10 kilometers northeast of Nanjiao Village, they were directly dumpled by the blocking troops of the Xiping base area, which had already been ambushed there. None of the Japanese troops who were reinforcing ran away, and they became ghosts to be worshiped in the Yasukuni Shrine.
After the annihilation of this reinforcement force, the Japanese army was no longer able to send other ground reinforcements. It stands to reason that the Eighth Route Army, the stronghold of Nanjiao Village, should have been taken, but the record of the Battle of Nanjiao Village has become confusing.
According to the words of the Japanese soldiers quoted by Kunio Saito in "The War of Resistance in the Eyes of the Devil Soldiers - Chapter 21: Nine Tombstones (II)", the battle of Nanjiao Village lasted at least two days and two nights. On the third day, because the Japanese army sent a large number of planes to bomb Nanjiao Village indiscriminately, the Eighth Route Army had to give up the attack, lifted the siege of the Japanese stronghold in Nanjiao Village, withdrew its troops and retreated to the Pingxi base area.
Because the Japanese defenders in Nanjiao Village withstood the attack of the absolute superior forces of the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese defenders in Nanjiao Village were responsible for commanding the military Cao of the watchtower sub-post on the top of the mountain, and he was awarded the Golden Bird Medal alive (after 1939, the Japanese army stipulated that the medal was only awarded to the war dead).
Kunio Saito's account of the aftermath of the battle in Nanjiao Village is clearly contradictory to the previous account. The Japanese watchtower on the top of the hill had run out of ammunition in the first day of fighting, and the Japanese garrison was only nine killed in this battle, so the Japanese troops who sent ammunition to the towers on the top of the hill must have been killed by the Eighth Route Army on the way. Then how did the Japanese army's watchtower on the top of the mountain hold out for two days and two nights?
The codeword had this doubt when he saw Saito Kunio's account, but because he couldn't find any other records related to the battle, this doubt has not been solved.
Judging from the battle process, although there are objective reasons why the Japanese army is heavily equipped with a stronghold in Nanjiao Village and hoards a lot of ammunition, the failure of the Nanjiao Village offensive is more of a problem of the Eighth Route Army itself. The Japanese army believed that the Eighth Route Army participated in the battle of Nanjiao Village and believed that it was a regiment (3,000 people), but whether this is true cannot be confirmed. But in any case, this battle was a battle in which the Eighth Route Army had absolute superiority in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments but lost the battle.
The defeat in this battle exposed many problems of the troops of the Eighth Route Army in the Pingxi base area.
According to the Japanese troops participating in the war, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who participated in the battle were generally very young, which shows that the troops in the Pingxi base area were all newly formed and lacked veterans and actual combat experience. During the attack, the Eighth Route Army showed more than courage and a single strategy, blindly attacking the Japanese watchtowers, so that the Japanese army could give full play to its firepower superiority, which reflected the commander's lack of experience and lack of adaptability.
The attacking troops were poorly equipped, and the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army had no grenades or explosive packs, so they could only use their hands to drag the Japanese rifles after rushing to the bottom of the watchtower. Judging from Saito Kunio's account, the Eighth Route Army also did not have mortars, although the strength was superior, but it could not suppress the Japanese firepower, which made the attacking Eighth Route Army have to rely on human lives. Although the battle was not short, the Japanese garrison of Nanjiao Village only lost nine men in the defensive battle, which was obviously related to the inexperience and poor equipment of the attacking Eighth Route Army.
The Eighth Route Army was also poorly prepared for the offensive, and this was the most fatal mistake. First of all, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army did not have enough ropes and ladders when attacking the courtyard, which led to only a few places to climb the wall. As a result, the Japanese army reduced the pressure on its defense, not to mention that it was able to concentrate the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who had entered the courtyard, causing them huge casualties.
Another point is that the fire equipment prepared is insufficient, and grenades and explosives bags are specialized equipment, and there are no extenuating circumstances in the Pingxi base area, which is poorly equipped and backward in the military industry. But there were not even Molotov cocktails or anything like that, which was obviously because the attack organizers took the Japanese defense system lightly and only thought about laying down the watchtowers and capturing the ammunition and equipment of the Japanese army, so they deliberately did not prepare for the attacking troops. And it was this negligence that directly led to the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who rushed to the watchtower and had no way to take the Japanese watchtower.
At that time, the supply of the Eighth Route Army mainly relied on capture, so the Japanese watchtower would not be burned down unless it was absolutely necessary. However, as the commander of the battle, this possibility must be taken into account, and the commander of Nanjiao Village cannot escape the blame for the failure of the attack.
The various problems shown by the Eighth Route Army in the Pingxi Base Area in the defeated Battle of Nanjiao Village actually existed widely among the Eighth Route Army units participating in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments. It was only because of the emptiness of the Japanese army in North China that these problems were overshadowed by the successive victories of the Eighth Route Army.
At this time, the Eighth Route Army was like those soldiers who participated in the attack on the stronghold of Nanjiao Village - they were too young, but the Pingxi base area, which failed in the attack on Nanjiao Village, was not discouraged, but put forward the slogan of learning from the Japanese defenders in Nanjiao Village and seriously summed up the reasons for the defeat. The Japanese army also summed up the various elements that Nanjiao Village could hold in a timely manner, and asked all strongholds to learn from the garrison of Nanjiao Village.
An excellent army must be an army that is good at learning and an army that is constantly improving, and only such an army can become an elite division and win all battles.
The Battle of the Hundred Regiments gave the Japanese army a more comprehensive understanding of the anti-Japanese forces behind enemy lines, so the Japanese army changed the allocation of troops in China, and the Japanese army mobilized half of its troops into North China in an attempt to kill the Eighth Route Army.
The following three years of hard fighting from 41 to 43 years will be the trial period for the Eighth Route Army to become a butterfly!