Another scorched earth.
1944, the Japanese army launched the largest "Battle No.1" in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. The purpose of this movement is to open up the transportation lines of the mainland, so that the goods plundered in Southeast Asia can pass through Chinese mainland to the northeast, then to the Korean Peninsula, and finally to Japan. Because China's main battlefields are in Henan, Hunan and Guangxi, it is called the "Battle of Henan, Hunan and Guangxi". The battles in Guangxi are mainly around Guilin and Liuzhou, two important towns on the Hunan-Guangxi Railway. Therefore, the Japanese army attacked Guilin, of course, not to enjoy the magnificent Lijiang River landscape, but to get through the Xiang-Gui Railway and destroy the Sino-US Air Force Airport near Guilin.
1944+00, the Japanese army began to prepare to attack Guilin. Through aerial reconnaissance, the Japanese army found that the China army had built a large number of fortifications outside Guilin. At the same time, I also learned that the Indian army is forming a powerful corps composed of strategic reserves and elite troops in various theaters, ready to be deployed to the border of Guizhou and Guangxi to cope with the Japanese attack. There are even rumors that American-equipped troops in China who are fighting in India and Myanmar will rush to help the country. Coupled with the previous setbacks in Hengyang, the Japanese army did not dare to neglect. It concentrated three divisions, 1 squadron of infantry, and then attached to four squadrons and four battalions of artillery, 1 tank, fighting in Guilin.
Guilin belongs to the jurisdiction of the fourth war zone. The High Command asked the Fourth Theater to defend Guilin and Liuzhou for three months each, and specially sent Bai Chongxi, deputy chief of staff of the Military Commission, to Guilin to guide the fighting. At that time, the troops defending Guilin in the fourth theater were the 3 1 Army and the 46 Army, with two armies and four divisions, artillery regiment (with 22 large-caliber cannons, howitzers and mountain guns), engineering barracks, communication barracks and field hospitals, with a total strength of about 40,000 people. Seeing that war was imminent, the Guilin Defence Command was established, with Yunsong Wei, deputy commander of the 16 regiment, as the commander.
After Bai Chongxi arrived in Guilin, he had no confidence to stick to it. Instead, the 3 1 Army 188 Division and the 46 th Army 175 Division with the strongest fighting capacity were transferred from Guilin, because 188 Division Chang Hai was actually Bai Chongxi's nephew, and 175 Division commander Gan Chengcheng was another great man's nephew in Guangxi. At the same time, these two divisions are also the elite of Guangxi, so we can't say that Bai Chongxi's transfer from Guilin has the self-interest of preserving his strength. The remaining two divisions, 3 1 military 13 1 division, have weak combat effectiveness, and the 170 division of the 46th Army is a newly recruited and adjusted supplementary division, with lower combat effectiveness. Such an arrangement will naturally shake the morale of senior generals.
As early as June, when the Japanese army attacked Changsha, Guilin had already organized the first large-scale evacuation, including * * * departments, government agencies, news media (such as Guangxi Daily) and a large number of progressive cultural figures, all of which had been evacuated to the rear area. By the beginning of August, after the fall of Hengyang, Guilin people were even more worried and people fled. Railway stations, bus stations and docks are crowded with refugees everywhere. After the Japanese army occupied Quanzhou in September, Guilin Defense Command issued an emergency evacuation order. Guilin originally planned to leave the necessary city * * * and police station personnel to maintain order in the city and assist the troops in fighting, and each household left a able-bodied man at home. But when it came to emergency evacuation, Guilin Mayor Su Xinmin and police chief Xie Fengnian asked Bai Chongxi to evacuate the city together. Both of them are from Guangxi, so they are recognized by Bai Chongxi. Therefore, the city, the police station and the residents who have the ability to work all ran away when they were evacuated. The defenders in Guilin city are lax in discipline and go door-to-door to search for property everywhere. Moreover, in order to clear the "shooting boundary" in front of the position, a large number of houses were demolished and burned. Finally, except for more than ten complete houses near Lizemen, all other buildings in Guilin were destroyed, and a large area of Guilin City was in ruins. Before the Japanese army arrived at the gate, Guilin had become a scorched earth.
Tragedy and cowardice.
10 year 10 on October 28th, the Japanese army approached the periphery of Guilin, and the troops that directly attacked Guilin had 7 wings and about 29 infantry brigades, with a total strength of 53,000. At this time, there were only two divisions of China defenders in Guilin. Even with the local vigilante groups who spontaneously rushed to Guilin from all over Guangxi to participate in the war, the total strength was less than 20,000.
The defending battle of Guilin started from the peripheral battles, and the battles and counter-battles in all positions were fierce, especially the forward positions such as Maoershan, Pingfengshan and the hills near Guilin North Station of 13 1 division. 13 1 division, led by its division commander Kan Wei Yong, fought bloody battles knowing that foreign aid was hopeless and suffered heavy casualties in several days of fierce fighting. 13 1 Wu Zhan, head of the 392nd regiment, and Chen You, head of the 393rd regiment, died heroically in battle.
1October 7, 1 1 Shi 39 1 Tuanmaoer Mountain and Pingfeng Mountain were successively lost. The head of the team, Qin, led more than 800 people, including wounded soldiers and handymen, to evacuate to the Qixingyan Cave in Putuo Mountain and continue to hold on. On the 8th, the Japanese army launched a fierce attack on the last position on the east bank of the Lijiang River-Qixingyan in Putuo Mountain, throwing incendiary bombs into the cave, and also releasing a lot of pungent poisonous gas and Chili powder. In the battle at the entrance of Qixingyan Cave, some defenders stubbornly climbed forward and hugged the Japanese army to roll down the mountain. In the end, 800 soldiers were burned to death or smoked to death in Qixingyan, except for the head Qin who led several people to break through the narrow mountain behind Qixingyan.
The Japanese army originally planned to launch a general attack on the 8th, but under the suppression of bombing by the Chinese and American air forces, the actions of artillery units were greatly restricted, and the general attack had to be postponed until dawn on the 9th. Considering the weak combat effectiveness of the 58th Division, it suffered a lot in the Hengyang Battle and the previous Guilin peripheral war. The Japanese army pretended to attack the northern line with the 58th Division to attract the attention of the defenders, and then concentrated its superior artillery and air power, with the 40th Division clearing the position along the river from Elephant Trunk Mountain on the west bank of the Lijiang River to Fu Bo as the main direction.
When the Japanese army crossed the river and seized the bridgehead of Zhongzheng Bridge, Yunsong Wei offered a reward of100000 yuan and ordered 13 1 division to recapture the bridgehead. 13 1 division made a final effort, assembled the squad leader and other veteran backbones to form a commando team, and made many counterattacks on Zhongzheng Bridge, but all failed. Later, when the Japanese army invaded the city, the defenders still tried their best to organize street fighting, especially in the area from Laoyan Street to Wangcheng, where fierce hand-to-hand combat broke out many times.
On the afternoon of 9th, Yunsong Wei, commander of Guilin garrison, knew that guarding city was hopeless, and held an emergency military meeting at the garrison headquarters of Tiefo Temple, and began to arrange the evacuation. 13 1 Kan Weiyong, the division commander, persisted in the end and Guilin survived. Yunsong Wei, however, was unmoved and ordered Xu Gaoyang, the division commander of 170, to build a temporary bridge on Yangjiang (now taohuajiang) in the western suburbs, ready to retreat overnight. That night, the 170 division defending the south of Guilin wavered, gave up its position and retreated to the southwest. As a result, it was only after leaving the city that I met the 37 th Division of the Japanese Army in the periphery. 170 division basically had no fierce fighting in the previous peripheral battles, and its troops were basically complete. But because they are all recruits, they have no actual combat experience. In addition, they were suddenly defeated and thousands of people were captured. Only a few people returned to the city to continue fighting.
The battle in Guilincheng was also seriously weakened because 170 division fled without fighting, and the situation was not optimistic. By the afternoon of 10, the whole Guilin city was basically occupied by the Japanese army. Kan Wei Yong, the teacher of 13 1, witnessed that some of them saved their strength from extinction, while others retreated without authorization and suffered losses. Seeing that the fall of Guilin was imminent, he drew a gun and committed suicide in a rage, and before he died, he practiced the oath of "living with Guilin". Finally, except Wei He and He Weizhen, commander of the 3 1 Army, who fled with a few followers, about 5,600 people were killed and about 3,000 people were captured, including the chief of staff of Guilin Defense Command, Lv Zhanmeng, chief of staff of the 3 1 Army, and Hu Yuanji, deputy commander of the 3 170 Division.
Far less than Hengyang.
According to some data, the defenders in Guilin dealt a heavy blow to the attacking Japanese army, killing a total of 33,000 Japanese troops, killing 9 lieutenant generals and 3 1 captain. Some people even said that the Japanese army called Guilin Defence War and Kunlunguan Battle the two most heroic battles of China's army in the war of aggression against China.
Careful analysis shows that the total number of Japanese troops attacking Guilin is only 53,000. If there are 33,000 casualties, the casualty rate has exceeded 60%. In addition, the captain-level officers suffered great losses, so the troops with such heavy casualties must be replenished and rested before they can continue to fight. In fact, after the Japanese army captured Guilin, it almost didn't stop, and continued to advance southward, and the March was in full swing. In just 20 days, it occupied strategic places such as Nanning and Yishan, and occupied Dushan in Guizhou on February 2, 65438. In contrast, the Japanese army fought fiercely with the defenders 10 army at the gate of Hengyang for 47 days, which was a heavy casualty. It took two months to rest before launching a new offensive. It can be seen that the statement that the Japanese army suffered heavy casualties in Guilin campaign is very unreliable.
In addition, according to the data in "Guilin Garrison Combat Report" written by Yunsong Wei, the commander of Guilin city defense after the war, there were only more than 6,000 Japanese casualties. Moreover, the general battle report will exaggerate the casualties of the other side, and the data after water injection is only 6000. It can be seen that the real casualties of the Japanese army will definitely not be 6,000, and 3,000 casualties will be good.
The strength of the offensive and defensive sides in Guilin was 20,000 to 53,000, and the Hengyang War started from 65,438+0.7 million to 40,000, and finally reached 65,438+0.7 million to 90,000. Judging from the strength comparison, the strength disadvantage of Hengyang War is even more disparity. The duration of Guilin's defense war, calculated from the peripheral war, is 12 days. If we only calculate from the total siege time of the Japanese army, it is only 2 days, while the battle of Hengyang is 47 days. The gap is not a star and a half.
In terms of equipment, there are 1 artillery regiments, including 2 heavy artillery companies, 4 150 mm howitzers, 4 105 mm cannons, and 14 Shan Ye cannons, with a caliber of more than 75 mm and sufficient shells (30,000 shells were seized after the Japanese occupied Guilin), while Hengyang was on the defensive. On the whole, there is a big gap between Guilin defender and Hengyang defender.
However, no matter what the fighting situation is, the heroic deeds of the officers and men represented by 13 1 division commander Kan Weiyong and the defenders of Qixingyan cannot be denied. After liberation, the people of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region recognized Kan as a revolutionary martyr, and built a tomb for three generals Kan, Lu Zhanmeng and eight hundred heroes in Bawangping, Qixingyan, Putuo Mountain as a permanent memorial.
In the defending battle of Guilin, although some middle-and lower-level officers and men fought bloody battles, especially the Guangxi vigilante group, which spontaneously participated in the war, held crude and backward weapons and fought hand-to-hand with the Japanese army, it eventually fell quickly, mainly because of its high level. First, Bai Chongxi, who was in the high position of Deputy Chief of Staff of the Military Commission, was selfish before the war. In order to preserve our strength in Guangxi, we transferred from the two main divisions with the strongest fighting capacity, which greatly weakened the strength of the defenders and caused the morale of the army to waver. Yunsong Wei, the commander of Guilin at that time, lacked the determination and belief to stick to Guilin. As soon as he saw that the situation was unfavorable, he hurriedly arranged to retreat. As a result, a division that did not suffer too much loss in the previous battle was defeated in the chaotic retreat and did not play its due role. In addition, the peripheral forces were slow to move and failed to form a favorable situation in time to cooperate with the defenders in the city, which was also one of the reasons for the final failure.
With the rapid fall of Guilin, the Japanese army rushed in and quickly opened the Xianggui Railway, all the way to Dushan, Guizhou. This is also the deepest point that the Japanese army went deep into the interior of China during the Anti-Japanese War, and Chongqing was shaken as a result, which had a great adverse impact on the overall situation of the Anti-Japanese War.