The Naturalization County Chronicle records the oral account of one of the people concerned:

"Whether it is the central army or the local troops, in the end, it is our Chinese army that cares about and loves our people. When he was about to lose his resistance and retreat, he shouted to the villager and urged him to flee: 'Fellow countryman, you quickly find a place to take refuge, and when the devils come up, we will fight with them'' 'Fellow countryman!'' Don't move, don't panic and stand up, the devil's bullets are hit.'

Later, the weapons of our supplementary regiment were not good, and the tanks of the devils drove over, and the heavy machine guns fired vigorously one by one, and our supplementary regiment finally could not withstand it, so it had to retreat from the stone wall and ancient road intersection in Zou County, and then retreated to Chitouji through Hongshan Pass, and withdrew to Guihua County to defend the city.

On the afternoon of the 31st, the county seat of Guihua County.

The county seat of Guihua County is a nearly square city outline, slightly longer from east to west. The walls are about six meters high, made of bricks and stones, and are fairly strong, and are still intact despite hundreds of years of war.

In Xiguan, outside the West Gate City, there is a thermal power plant, and the regiment headquarters is located in the power plant.

Bu Zhenglong was in the command headquarters, and he hurriedly talked a few words with Chief of Staff He Xuanrong for a while, and then stared at the large-scale combat map hanging on the wall in a daze, and his eyes seemed to penetrate the red and green arrows on the map and directly reach the battlefield where the smoke of gunpowder was everywhere. The cigarette tray on the table had been cleaned several times by the guards, but cigarette butts continued to come in.

Staff officers kept coming and going, using red and blue pencils and small flags to mark the latest battlefield developments on the map. The red arrows and small flags indicating the position of the army continued to branch southward, and except for the branch on the left flank of Dashiqiang Village, which was blocked and stopped, in all other places, these red arrows had crossed the mountains in the northern part of Guihua County and reached into the plain dam. It is like a flash flood that crosses the levee that surrounds it and spreads along the ravines and canals. Although there are still some blue islands in the red encirclement, it is clear that these islands will soon be submerged as well. The speed of the attack was surprisingly fast.

At about 5 o'clock, the scouts reported that they had discovered the enemy's traces more than 10 miles northeast of the county seat, and that an enemy force of several hundred men had left the positions of Ruchuanhe and Beishahe, which were in fierce fighting, and opened the way by tanks, and outflanked the county town from the east side, apparently to insert themselves into the south of the city and cut off the defenders' retreat to the south! The intention is clear, the enemy not only wants to occupy the county seat, but also oppresses me into the county town to annihilate it.

Obviously, the center of gravity of the battlefield is about to shift to the county seat.

At 5:30, the scouts reported to Bu Zhenglong that the enemy troops in the northeast of the county were still gathering, and there seemed to be new movements.

The anxious Bu Zhenglong made up his mind, picked up the phone, and called Zhang Xuanwu, who was on the front line. asked Zhang Xuanwu to immediately run back to the county seat to set up defenses.

When Zhang Xuanwu was ordered to rush back to the county seat, it was nearly dusk, and Tong Chenglian, who had returned to the east to help, also came back with a platoon at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and there was only this one platoon, platoon commander Yan Yi, and now this battalion had been arranged in Dongguan outside the east gate.

It turned out that the Tong Platoon Brigade had just come out of the mountainous area, and at a place 30 miles away from the city, it encountered the devil's roundabout troops, and the marching team was stopped by the tank army of the Ziyue Army and rushed into two, and the two sides fought fiercely for one hour, and Yan Yi's platoon, which was at the head of the team, rushed through the fire net and arrived at the county seat at three o'clock in the afternoon. The rest of the troops were blocked and driven back to the mountains, and later made a detour to Guanqiao, and from Guanqiao to the north, in an attempt to reach Guihua County, but were eventually blocked by the enemy at the Nansha River.

At this time, an infantry company in Chitouji returned to the city to receive ammunition, and it also became a new force, and was ordered to join the garrison of the city, and was not allowed to go back.

In this way, the troops defending the city were increased by three companies and a platoon.

Zhang Xuanwu led the team to run forward in a sparse formation, and when he was about to reach the north gate of the county seat, he saw Bu Zhenglong's tall body standing at the gate of the city from a distance. As soon as Bu Zhenglong saw Zhang Xuanwu, he immediately grabbed him, hurriedly explained the current situation, and finally said very seriously:

"Liu Zhirong will arrive soon. After Liu Lian arrived, there were more than 350 officers and soldiers in the city, plus the security forces temporarily organized by the county, a total of 500 guns. Now, I appoint you as the commander of the former enemy, and all the troops in the city are under your command! ”

Hearing this, Zhang Xuanwu beat a drum in his heart: 500 guns, outside the city are nearly 1,000 enemies with aircraft, artillery and tanks!

On February 1, the county seat of Guihua County.

Despite a series of emergency measures, Bu Zhenglong was still uncertain about the battle to defend the city, after all, the difference in strength between the two sides was too great. Especially when reinforcements will be able to go into battle, there are too many variables!

The army's attack on Guihua County began at 6 a.m. on February 2, and the all-day battle was concentrated in Dongguan.

The walls of Guihua County are solid and thick, square in shape, and there are moats on all sides. Outside the east gate, there is a market town of 100 households, and there is a walled wall made of earth and stone mixed in the north, east and south of this market town, and the west side of the walled wall is close to the moat, and the outside of the walled wall is also surrounded by a ditch. There are three doors opened on the wall, the north side is called the North Pavilion Gate, the middle one is called the Huangshan Bridge Pavilion Gate, the door forehead is engraved with the four words of "Nine Provinces Thoroughfare", the south side is called the Good Country Gate. This market town enclosed by the walled wall is called Dongguan, and it is here that an important bloody battle site in the defense of Guihua County is located.

Dongguan was guarded by Yan Yi's platoon, which arrived at the county seat yesterday afternoon and was deployed here. Yan Yi arranged two squads behind the wall, and one squad as a reserve. After entering the position, the whole platoon stayed up all night and dug fortifications for the night. Zhang Xuanwu and Yan Yi both knew very well that the main force of the Yue army was in the east of the city, attacking the county seat, and Dongguan was the first to bear the brunt.

Yan Yi on the battlefield was staring at a pile of wriggling black shadows in the distance through the pre-dawn darkness. The sentry in the forward position outside the wall reported: The enemy has touched.

"To fight or not?" Zhu Hanxiang, the squad leader who was lying next to him, asked.

"Don't panic, have grenades ready and wait for the enemy to enter the trench." Yan Yi was not in a hurry, and said confidently.

The pile of shadows squirmed for a while, crawling down and not moving, beyond the grenade throw. Now it can be vaguely seen that these people don't look like ghosts, and they are not wearing yellow uniforms. After a while, there were bursts of shouting from the crowd, and it was a northeastern accent: "Brothers of the security regiment, lay down your arms, the imperial army will treat you preferentially!" ”

"Brothers of the security group, your weapons are too poor to defeat the imperial army, the imperial army has aircraft and artillery, surrender, surrender the imperial army and let you go home."

Hearing these foul words, Yan Yi could no longer hold back the anger in his chest, and shouted: "Call me!" ”

The soldiers were already furious, and the "ping-pong" at the pile of people was a random shot, which made the group of people rush away with their heads in their hands.

Seeing that shouting did not work, the "imperial army" began to go out in person. At around 8 o'clock, the devils began test firing at the Dongshahe artillery position, raised the balloon, and corrected the impact point in a hurry. After a few shells from the left and right, the salvo began, from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock, a full two hours, and more than 1,000 shells fell in Dongguan, the city and Xiguan stations. At the same time, several enemy planes flew over the air, dive-bombing and strafing, and the main point of impact was at Dongguan. It hit Dongguan and the whole city in smoke. At ten o'clock, the shelling suddenly stopped, and the plane flew away.

The land fell silent, and the army seemed to be waiting and observing the effects of the shelling. In the telescope of their commander Hashimoto Tadasa, in addition to some houses burning, gunpowder smoke rising upwards in the cold air, forming columns of smoke, there are also some old and weak people who have not fled are evacuating outside the city; On the city walls, the defenders were busy filling the fortifications damaged by the shelling with sandbags, and there was no movement to escape, and the whole city stood still!

A military correspondent for the Yomiuri Shimbun later reported that the commander of the Imperial [***] team was surprised by this: How could these poorly equipped Chinese soldiers treat death as if they were at home?

Not only did the officers and soldiers defending the city not move, but some people from Guihua County who took up arms were also defending their homes.

The political propaganda team of the 1st Regiment of the Supplementary Regiment came back late from Beishahe last night, and the gate of the village was closed, so they stayed in the village outside the gate. There are more than 20 people in this propaganda team, except for the captain Chen Mutang, who is a middle-aged man in his thirties, the others are all young people in their twenties.

The propaganda team not only gave propaganda to the common people, but also expressed condolences to the troops on the front line. There are two weapons in the team, team member Wang Shiyan has a big knife on his back, Liu Entan has a 38-type pistol hanging from his waist, and the rest are unarmed. When the devils began shelling, the propaganda team and some of the fleeing civilians moved south to the gate of Shanguo.

It was here that the propaganda team encountered the devil. Wang Shiyan raised the big knife, shouted and threw himself at the devil. The devil saw a common man raising a big knife and rushing towards him, maybe he didn't know what was going on, or he wanted to catch a live play, and he was there for a while. It's really too late, it was fast, I saw Wang Shiyan raise the knife and fall, a devil had been cut to the ground, Liu Entan pulled out a pistol and hit the devil.

At this time, the devil reacted and fired together, and the two strong men died bravely outside the gate of the good country!

The gang of devils killed two members of the propaganda team and were still angry, and they opened machine gun fire on the fleeing crowd, and many ordinary people were killed here.

Half an hour after the devil's shelling stopped, the shelling suddenly began violently again. In less than a quarter of an hour, a gap of 1 to 20 meters was blown open in this section of the wall, and as soon as the gap was opened, the army concentrated dozens of light and heavy machine guns to block the gap. Machine gun bullets swept back and forth through the gap like a wind, and the stones and dirt on the walls of the wall collapsed.

When the devils violently bombarded this section of the wall, our defenders were caught off guard, and the soldiers who were lying behind the wall suffered many casualties. But soon, the soldiers hid in the dead corners of the artillery fire. When the devils blocked the gap with machine guns, the soldiers knew that the devils were about to charge.

Zhu Hanxiang, the leader of the first squad, personally commanded and led the soldiers to carry grenades on both sides of the gap to hide, just waiting for the devils to come. As soon as the devil's machine guns stopped firing, the soldiers quickly plugged the gap. As soon as the smoke and dust cleared a little, I saw fifty or sixty devils jumping into the trench outside the wall one after another. The squad leader came to command, and the soldiers who were immediately concentrated, each carrying two grenades. When this group of devils had all entered the trench and were climbing up the edge of the ditch to prepare to charge, the squad leader gave an order, and more than a dozen grenades immediately poured out and continued to explode in the enemy group. The devils couldn't dodge, there was no way out, a grenade was full, and less than ten people climbed the trench and fled for their lives.

After the devil's first charge was repulsed, he immediately bombarded and strafed the gap with more intense artillery and machine-gun fire, and the gap was torn open even more by the exploding artillery fire. When the enemy's artillery bombarded the gap, the soldiers retreated to a hidden place, and as soon as the artillery fire stopped, they immediately came to wait on both sides of the gap. The frenzied attack of the devils was the same as the first time, and fifty or sixty devils jumped into the trench with bright bayonets, climbed up, and prepared to charge towards the gap. At the moment when the devil was about to charge, hundreds of grenades flew down from the sky like a flock of black crows, and the devil was suddenly shrouded in the fire and smoke raised by the grenade explosion. As soon as the smoke cleared, more than a dozen devils were lying in front of the gap, unable to move.

Two attacks were repulsed, followed by a third attack. Although the devil with the bayonet screamed "yah, yah", the commander's combat knife turned "whew, whew", and the frantically strafing machine guns scored countless points, the result of the devil's charge was still the same as the previous two times.

After three successive failed attacks, the head of the devil commander cleared up a little, and it seemed that the spirit of bushido, which had gone forward one after another, could not frighten the defense line formed by the hot-blooded men and grenades in China, and the attack stopped.

However, the enemy's ferocious firepower still caused great casualties to our troops, and after repelling three enemy charges, most of the officers and men of our squad suffered casualties, and there were not many people who could hold on to the line of fire. Taking advantage of the cessation of the enemy's attack, Yan Yi withdrew the first squad and replaced it with the second squad as a reserve.

Zhang Xuanwu, who was in charge of the city defense, saw Yan Yi's reserve team go up, and hurriedly pulled out the 12th platoon of the reserve from Dongcheng and sent it to Dongguan as a reserve to accept Yan Yi's command. He also went to Dongguan in person, summed up his experience with Yan Yi, and expressed his condolences to the officers and soldiers.

At about 2 p.m., the enemy offensive resumed. The devils could not defeat the southern section of Dongguan, so this time they focused their attacks on the northeast corner of the wall, trying to attack Dongguan from here. The attack was carried out in the same manner as in the morning, except that the concentrated artillery fire was more intense. First blasted a gap in the wall with artillery and flat-fire guns, and then covered the infantry with heavy machine-gun fire. Li Zhaolin, the commander of the 2nd Company defending this section, is Yan Yi's brother-in-law, and his style of play is the same as that of the 1st Company, the enemy attacks in the same way, and our army defends in the same way, smashing the enemy with a large number of grenades. By 5 p.m., three successive enemy attacks had been repulsed, each of which left dozens of corpses behind.

The enemy's attacks stopped again for the time being.

However, the casualties of the second company of our army were even greater, and at the height of the battle, Li Zhaolin was pierced through the abdomen by a shell, and his intestines were broken into several pieces and flowed to the outside of the uniform. Yan Yi saw that the company commander was seriously injured, so he only had time to shout: "Carry it down!" He personally went to the gap and commanded the battle in place of Li Zhaolin. When the devil's attack was fierce, the reserves sent by Zhang Xuanwu were all in the line of fire and put into battle.

Zhang Xuanwu saw that Yan Yi had no reserves, but he didn't have any reserves in his hands, which made him very anxious. In a hurry, a company that had just been expanded in Guihua County was dispatched, and the company commander Wu Zancheng immediately led the whole company to Dongguan to accept Yan Yi's command as a reserve.

At this time, the commander-in-chief Bu Zhenglong saw that Zhang Xuanwu had become the commander of the light pole, so he left his guard company in a platoon, and the rest was led by the company commander He Jingwei and handed over to Zhang Xuanwu as a reserve.

The attack of the army from both directions was ineffective, and the time had taken almost a day, and after a short rest, they launched the most ferocious and final attack on Dongguan on February 3.

The location of the enemy's attack was chosen to be Huangshan Qiaogeermen in the middle of Dongguan. A total of more than 30 artillery pieces were concentrated, of which more than half were more powerful field artillery, and the planes of the army flew in the sky, swooping up and down with a mournful roar. The targets of the devil's shelling and bombardment were not only concentrated in Dongzhaimen, but also carried out in-depth shooting at the entire Dongguan, the city and Xiguan.

Soon, the walled gate was destroyed, and it became a big gap, and the flat forehead of the "thoroughfare of the nine provinces" was blown to pieces, and the wall was blown up in many places. The whole of Dongguan was shrouded in smoke and fire.

Outside the walled gate is a bridge, called Huangshan Bridge, which spans the ditch outside the wall. Therefore, the charging devils no longer need to climb over the trench and charge directly from the bridge. The commander of the army was ruthless, and the devil's charge was no longer carried out again and again, but three waves at the same time, each wave was 100 meters apart, and each wave was about 50 people, overlapping back and forth, forming a back wave to push the front wave.

As soon as the shelling stopped, the first wave of devils had already rushed close to the wall under the cover of machine guns, and the defenders immediately rushed over to plug the gap, and continued to intercept the enemy with dense grenades. When the smoke of the grenade explosion had not yet dispersed, and almost all the enemies in the first wave were lying down, dozens of light and heavy machine guns and artillery fire that the devils had already prepared opened fire at the gap.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Yan Yi immediately ordered the reserve Wu Zancheng Company to quickly block it. Wu Zancheng pounced on the gap, but before he could stand still, the devils who charged in the second wave had already rushed to him with bright bayonets. The two sides immediately engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight on the gap, with shouts of killing and the clashing of iron tools resounding. Before the arrival of the third wave of the enemy, the company completely resolved the battle, and the dozens of devils who rushed to the gap were all hacked to death, the company commander Wu Chengcheng and the platoon commander Liu Wanshan were seriously injured, Wu Chengquan only had 14 people left in the company, and the rest of the company of more than 100 people all died heroically at the gate of the "thoroughfare of nine provinces".

There were almost no defenders on the gap, and seeing that the third wave of the enemy was about to rush again, Zhang Xuanwu, who was on the east city gate, immediately ordered He Jingwei, the reserve in his hand, to reinforce quickly. But He Jingweilian has just run out of the East City Gate now, and there are still more than 400 meters from the East City Gate to the Dongguan front line, where is the time!

The situation was extremely critical, and Yan Yi hurriedly dispatched the defenders at the north and south ends of the walled wall to block it, but the enemy attacked the gap first. Inside the wall, near the wall is a vegetable patch and a few scattered houses, where more than forty enemies occupy houses and bomb craters as positions!

Yan Yi immediately ordered to block the passage of the devil's reinforcements, so as not to expand the results of the devil's support. Then it was quickly surrounded, the two sides were dozens of paces apart, the troops under the command of Yan Yi were exhausted, and the grenades on the position had also been used up, and they were unable to finally settle the battle for a while. Fortunately, it was getting dark at this time, and the commander of the army in charge of the attack did not know the situation inside the wall, and did not organize another wave of continuous charge, and the more than 40 devils in the wall could only rely on their own strength to desperately support.

At this time, Company Commander He Jingwei arrived with his two platoons, and Yan Yi immediately ordered him to lead his headquarters into battle. On this local battlefield within the wall, the fighting situation of the enemy and us has been reversed, with the devils becoming the defenders and our army becoming the attackers. By this time it was already dark, the ground was riddled with craters and broken bricks, and there were no heavy weapons to destroy the positions occupied by the enemy, and the situation was extremely unfavorable to the attackers. He Jingwei didn't care much, and immediately led his troops to charge, but as a result, two-thirds of the casualties of the whole company were killed, and there were still more than 30 devils sticking to the position.

The situation cannot be delayed any longer, and if this enemy is not eliminated as soon as possible, once the devil's reinforcements come up, the consequences will be unimaginable. Zhang Xuanwu summoned the 11th platoon and said to the platoon commander Zhang Jinru: "The life and death of our army are here in one fell swoop!" No matter how nice the words are usually said, it doesn't work, if you can complete the task at full completion, the whole platoon commander and soldier will be rewarded by everyone; If you can't eliminate these dozens of devils, you won't come back to see me! ”

Zhang Jinru rushed to Dongguan by running, and under the command of Yan Yi, with a grenade explosion, the smoke had not yet dispersed, and the strafing of machine guns was a rush. As a result, two squads were sacrificed, more than 20 people in the company were killed or wounded, and the remaining devils all became ghosts under the knife. Dongguan finally turned the corner at the last moment.

Just when Yan Yi finally commanded the battle, a shuttle of machine gun bullets swept over, and he only felt like a red-hot iron hammer nailed into his thigh, his eyes were black, and he fell to the position.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the battle at Dongguan ended.

Although the battle has ended, and the naturalized county town is still firmly in the hands of the 1st Supplementary Regiment, in fact, every officer and soldier knows that the battle has reached the last moment.

The ammunition of the replenishment 1 regiment was almost exhausted, and all the reserves were pulled up. Bu Zhenglong was already empty-handed.

In some positions, there were no defenders in sight, and the bodies of the soldiers were lying on the positions, and the troops could swagger into the positions without even charging.

But in the same way, the Yue army was also frightened, and they did not believe that there were no more [***] people in these positions

In the county town of Guihua, these former "puppet soldiers", the brothers of the 1st Regiment of the Supplementary Regiment played their blood surnames and played the demeanor of the Chinese [***] people, no matter how the years passed, everything they had done here would never be forgotten.

There is only one reason why they are so brave and fearless:

Be a human, not a dog!

When the sun rose again, and the smoke had not yet cleared, every brother from top to bottom knew that the final hour had come!

(To be continued)