On the afternoon of 9 March, the joint advance team of the Hattori and Suzuki brigades arrived at Xifengkou, more than 50 kilometers northeast of Zunhua, Hebei, and attacked the Wanfulin Division of the Northeast Army. In the evening, it occupied the Great Wall line on the north side and Dongjiakou to the east of Xifengkou. Song Zheyuan, commander of the 29th Army of the Chinese defenders, commanded the army to resist valiantly. Zhao Dengyu, the brigade commander of the Feng Public Security Department of the 37th Division, was ordered to send Wang Changhai's regiment as the vanguard to march urgently to reinforce Xifengkou.

Under the leadership of Wang Changhai, a 500-man broadsword team was formed, which infiltrated the enemy formation in two ways at night, and while the army was asleep, they slashed and killed with broadswords, and the 29 officers and men fought bloodily, killing and wounding more than 100 people and recapturing the Xifengkou position.

On both sides of the Xifeng mouth, the peaks stand, and the danger is natural. The Great Wall winds according to the trend, and North China relies on the barrier, and it is a place where soldiers must fight.

After learning that Xifengkou was blocked, the army was mixed into the 14th Brigade, and the brigade commander, Major General Hattori Hyojiro, ordered the 26th and 27th Infantry Wings to reinforce Xifengkou.

For two days from 10 to 11 March, the Chinese army concentrated its main forces and launched a general attack on our Xifengkou position. Zhao Dengyu, commander of the 109th Brigade of the 29th Army, ordered the troops to lie in a secluded place on the peaks and mountains, and waited for the enemy soldiers to rush out when they were dozens of meters away from the trenches, and met the enemy's white blades.

Looking at the approaching army, Brigade Commander Zhao Dengyu raised the big knife in his hand and shouted loudly in the officers and soldiers of the 109th Brigade, "The big knife and the big sword, the snow dances in the wind." Kill the enemy's head and strengthen my hero! Then he shouted and pounced on the crowd of the army, and where the knife fell, the corpses of the devils were all over the field, and he tasted the power of the big knife for the first time. In the heat of the battle, Xifengkou changed hands several times.

Although our army fought bravely, the army finally occupied the Xifengkou position again by virtue of its superior firepower.

In the headquarters of the 109th Brigade, under the dim light, Zhao Dengyu, commander of the 109th Brigade, and He Jifeng, deputy commander of the 109th Brigade, were smoking cigarettes while seriously analyzing the current situation between the enemy and us.

Zhao Dengyu sighed helplessly and said, "The army is well-equipped and the artillery is sharp, if we fight hard, our army will really not be able to take advantage." ”

He Jifeng also had a sad face, "Now that the enemy is strong and I am weak, I can only outwit, not attack, and we should counterattack the army by surprise in the form of a night attack." ”

Zhao Dengyu nodded in agreement, so on the night of March 11, a second night attack was organized, this time a total of 4 regiments of troops were dispatched, and the soldiers each carried a shiny broadsword.

Before leaving, Brigadier Commander Zhao Dengyu encouraged the officers and soldiers, "How difficult it is for the country and how difficult it is for the nation. Our generation is a soldier raised by the people, and we should repay the country with death! Glory to the war dead, shame to the stealing of the living! ”

So the broadsword team attacked the army on the left and right wings. The left-wing broadsword team passed through the horse sentry and went out of Panjiakou to the area of Lanqidi and Caiziyu, and attacked the infantry and cavalry camps north of Houzhu and Xifengkou; The right-wing broadsword team went out of the Tiemen Pass, passed through the Artillery Ridge, Chuang Wangtai to Baitaizi and Thorn Valley, and attacked the artillery positions of the Yue Army. The warriors with broadswords on their backs climbed over the wall and split into the enemy camps in each village.

At three o'clock in the morning, the battle began. The arrogant Yue Kou never dreamed that the 29th Army would come to sneak attack, and they were all asleep. The warriors of the broadsword team, with the national hatred of repaying the shame of the country, picked up the broadsword and slashed straight at it with lightning speed.

Brigade Commander Zhao Dengyu took the lead, and even though he was wounded, he still did not get out of the line of fire, holding high the snowy broadsword, and rushed to the artillery position of the army with the broadsword team. Unleash the power of the broadsword in close-quarters combat. Nearly 1,000 enemies woke up from their sleep, and many of them crashed into the swords of the warriors of the 29th Army. More than 1,000 enemies were killed and wounded, 11 tanks, 6 armored vehicles, 18 artillery pieces, and 36 machine guns were captured.

After the attack, the enemy camp was full of enemy corpses, and many people were awakened in the middle of the night, "The broadsword team is coming, run!" ”。 After that, many soldiers slept at night and wore a homemade iron ring around their necks to prevent their heads from being cut off.

Behind the image of such a heroic broadsword team is the tragedy of the bloody battle. The more heroic and fearless the hero, the more arduous the battle. In this battle, battalion commander Wang Baoliang and 8 platoon commanders were killed, 15 officers including brigade commander Zhao Dengyu were wounded, and more than 400 soldiers were killed or wounded.

In this battle, not only patriotic generals like Zhao Dengyu emerged, but also many combat heroes emerged, including a 19-year-old soldier named Chen Yong, who hacked 13 devils to death alone. After the night battle began, the enemy used the hole in the wall to block the road with crooked machine guns, and many of our attacking troops were killed and wounded. A soldier of the Ninth Company of my 217th Regiment, nicknamed Lao Maozi (real name cannot be examined), a native of Gansu, crawling close to the enemy, holding the enemy's machine gun and coming out. The wall hole is small, the gun body is thick, and it can't be out, but in front of the dead comrades, the anger is full, the national shame and the people's hatred are gathered together, try their best to pull, the wall falls down and the gun comes out, regardless of the hands being roasted by the barrel of the gun, the enemy is shot to death, the way forward is cleared, and the brilliant victory of our army in the total annihilation of the enemy is guaranteed.

By the end of the battle on March 14, the Kou suffered heavy casualties and suffered a serious setback in morale, so they temporarily retreated, and the first phase of the Battle of Xifengkou ended with the victory of our army.

At the same time, the situation in Chengde City took a sharp turn for the worse, and on March 12, under the repeated onslaught of the army, the defenders of the first line of our Shuangfeng Temple suffered heavy casualties. Li Long was forced to order Chen Zhenpeng to abandon his position and retreat to the second line of defense.

But at this time, Chen Zhenpeng was unable to organize the troops to retreat, and in the final battle, Chen Zhenpeng took the lead, wielding a broadsword and hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, slashing and killing more than 30 people in the army, being stabbed several times, seriously injured and unconscious, and was snatched off the line of fire by the soldiers and sent back to Chengde to move. In addition to Chen Zhenpeng, battalion commander Li Dexing was also seriously injured, and battalion commander Tian Lei was martyred. Of the 800 soldiers stationed in the first line of defense, less than 100 were evacuated alive, and most of them were seriously wounded.

It can be seen that the battle was fierce, but the little devil naturally did not pick up the cheap, plus the previous battle, more than 3,000 soldiers have been killed outside Chengde City. After receiving the casualty report of the troops, Lieutenant General Xi Yiyi, commander of the Eighth Division of the Chinese Army, was so distressed that he almost vomited blood.

Despite this, at the urging of the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Muto Nobuyoshi, Lieutenant General Nishiyoshi had to continue to advance towards Chengde Castle. At the repeated request of Nishiichi, the Kwantung Army sent a large number of planes to assist in the battle, and the wanton bombardment of the Japanese army brought great losses to our army.

On the night of March 14, Li Long was forced to order troops outside the city to withdraw to Chengde City at night, and use the strong walls of Chengde City to resist the attack of the Yue army. Early the next morning, the army came to the city of Chengde. (To be continued.) )