The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

No shots were fired in the three surrounding counties of Taiyuan on the same morning.

In mid-January 1945, a long table was set up in the coal station of the old railway bridge. There were two railway lines, one main highway, and seventeen telephone junctions between Yuci, Taigu, and Qingxu. Zhao Weiguo first circled the telephone stations, grain stations, and ferry crossings, leaving the three city gates for later.

Approximately 28,600 people were actually mobilized during this phase.

The Independent Regiment has approximately 10,800 official personnel.

Approximately 5,600 people passed the training and assessment.

Local transportation costs approximately 2,400.

The number of friendly neighbors is approximately 9,800.

The four-column accounting system, totaling 108,400, was still spread across Taihang Mountain, Chiyabao, industrial sites, military outposts, and supply lines, and was not entirely moved to the three county towns.

The enemy force numbered approximately 6,800. About 2,600 were in Yuci, 1,900 in Taigu, and 1,500 in Qingxu, with an additional mobile reinforcement force of about 800. These figures are based on prisoners captured at Jiuqiao, train schedules, supply wagons, and telephone interception; any changes along the route could alter the accounts.

Zhao Weiguo divided the tasks.

Yuci is the main force.

Taigu provided the assist.

Qingxu should first contain the enemy and guard the Fen River direction.

Old Zhou asked after reading it.

"With all three cities surrounded, why not attack them together?"

"There aren't enough artillery, engineers, and supply lines to operate simultaneously. If they all fire at once, only half of the targets on each of the three sides will be hit."

Duan Peng pointed to Taigu.

"Should I go get the grain station first, without even touching the city gates?"

"First, secure the grain depot and the telephone. Grain can't be delivered from Taigu to Yuci, and Yuci can't hear Qingxu either; only then will the city gates be easier to attack."

Li Dazhu was in charge of the Qingxu direction. His task was the most tedious: to keep an eye on the ferry crossings, highways, and convoys, and not to attack the walls until the Japanese troops left the city.

The first thing to do on the first day is to disconnect the phone.

Old Zhou led a battalion to the telephone exchange east of Yuci city. The two-story brick building was connected to a railway guard post and a machine gun emplacement. The artillery didn't fire on the building, only using two mortar rounds to target the outer edge of the emplacement. Engineers approached from the drainage ditch and dismantled two sections of the railway line into the city.

The people in the telephone exchange were still calling the switchboard, but there was only static in the receiver.

The communications team connected a listening box to record every call. The more urgent the call, the less clear the people inside the city were about how many were outside. Old Zhou didn't rush upstairs immediately; he waited until the duty officer changed the frequency for the third time before entering simultaneously through the back window and the stairwell.

The people captured inside the building, along with the codebook and wiring diagrams, were registered separately. Usable telephone lines were kept for monitoring, while unusable ones were reeled back in. No one reported the fall of Yuci City simply because they had captured one building.

First, occupy two grain depots in the Taigu direction.

The first warehouse was empty, and the ground showed signs of having been freshly swept. The second warehouse contained over seventy bags of sorghum. The transport team inspected each bag; eleven were found to be mixed with sand, six were damp and moldy, leaving fifty-seven usable bags.

Duan Peng ordered the warehouse to be sealed first, and there was no rush to transport the grain back. There was a hole in the roof of the grain station; if it snowed tonight, even the fifty-seven bags wouldn't be safe. The local team found wooden planks to patch the roof, and the neighboring liaison officer signed the seal.

In Qingxu, only light signals are used.

The Second Battalion and its neighboring units dispersed along the east bank of the Fen River, and lights were lit on three hilltops one after another during the night. The Qingxu garrison could not see the number of soldiers on the other side, so they sent two companies to guard the crossing and did not send reinforcements to Yuci.

On the third day, the outer perimeter of Yuci was finally attacked.

Three earthen walls and two small artillery positions, with scattered landmines outside the walls. Old Zhou divided the mountain guns into two groups: one group to fire at the positions, and the other to leave for the mobile reinforcements. The two armored vehicles did not go to ram the city gate side by side; one guarded the bridgehead, and the other transported ammunition and the wounded from the rear. The third vehicle remained at the repair shed.

The first round consisted of six mountain guns.

The first four shots were used to locate the position; the fifth shot hit the side wall of the gun emplacement; and the sixth shot broke the observation ladder. The engineers dug along the old ditch to the first barbed wire fence, and the infantry waited until the gap was inspected before crossing.

About four hundred Japanese soldiers charged back along the railway embankment, attempting to separate the telephone exchange from the bridgehead. Zhao Weiguo only deployed eight hundred men to guard the junction, allowing neighboring troops on the north side to approach via a branch line of the railway.

The counterattack lasted for an hour and a half. The bridgehead was not lost, and the telephone exchange remained operational. The pursuit only reached the bend in the roadbed before the remaining reinforcements retreated into the city.

On the fifth day, the eastern outer perimeter of Yuci was opened.

Before entering the city, a takeover team was set up. The granaries, telephone stations, hospitals, and houses were all marked. The infantry would advance along one street, and the takeover team would follow along the next. The people in the cellars would only come out after hearing the announcements; some carried their bedding, while others only carried their door keys.

There were bullet holes in the door of one house, and a wounded soldier was lying inside. The medic searched for weapons first, then treated the wounds. The homeowner waited at the alley entrance until the registration was completed before returning home.

The gunfire in Yuci didn't really stop until the seventh day. Scattered strongholds were still being cleared, and initial takeover had begun.

The takeover map has several more pages than the siege map.

The telephone exchange's main switchboard was still working, but half of the lines were broken outside the city. The communications team put up signs for each line, clearly indicating whether it could connect to Taiyuan, Taigu, or only within the city. Someone wanted to take the switchboard back, but Old Zhou stopped them.

"We're taking the city, not an empty one."

Besides sorghum, the granary also contained salt, coal, and several boxes of medicine. The medicine boxes were sealed with Japanese writing; the medic checked the names and dates first, and sealed any he didn't recognize separately. The salt bags had been soaked in water, and the bottom had hardened into clumps. The cook chopped them open with a knife and weighed them to determine their usable weight.

The Yuci Hospital was crammed with wounded enemy soldiers and civilians. After the wounded from the Independent Regiment arrived, there were immediately not enough beds. The takeover team vacated empty rooms in the county government office, laid out straw mats to accommodate the lightly wounded, and kept only those requiring surgery and ongoing observation at the hospital.

A local nurse refused to hand over the pharmacy keys, fearing someone would take all the medicine. Zhao Gang told her to open the door in person, and the independent regiment's medic and a local representative jointly inventoried the medications. The medicines remained at the hospital, and each bottle dispensed was recorded. Only after the nurse reviewed the handover form did she place the keys on the table.

Residents within the city could reclaim their houses only with their house number and proof of residence from their neighbors. Unclaimed houses were sealed off first, and troops were not allowed to move in on their own. Garrison personnel lived in schools and empty warehouses, and all their needs for boiling water, fetching coal, and repairing windows were handled through the garrison's register.

Taigu then launched its main attack.

Duan Peng didn't move all the artillery from Yuci; he only transferred the group that could move. When the mountain gun crossed a frozen gully, its right ram hit a stone embankment, cracking the rim. The gun crew temporarily secured it with iron hoops, fired a short burst that day, and then withdrew. The damage was recorded in the equipment inventory; it couldn't be considered fully operational.

There were two moats outside the south gate of Taigu. The engineers first built a narrow bridge, separating the stretcher path from the ammunition path. After a company advanced to the side wall of the city gate, they discovered that the Japanese had used grain sacks to build fortifications. The grain sacks were mixed with gravel and could not be seized as grain.

On the twelfth day, the Taigu telephone exchange lost contact. The garrison began to retreat westward, and Duan Peng only guarded the highway and grain depot, not pursuing them into the villages. Neighboring forces blocked the railway from the north, and the remaining personnel in the city surrendered their weapons in batches.

Taigu completed its initial takeover on the fourteenth day.

The railway freight yard in Taigu had a dozen or so wagons left. Three wagons were loaded with coal, two with damaged machinery, and the rest were empty. Zhao Tieshan led his men to check the axles and brakes first, deciding whether they could be towed away. Among the damaged machinery were lathe parts and completely scrapped gears. The materials clerk only recorded what was visible and didn't write down a pile of scrap metal as a factory.

Two unidentified bodies were found near the cargo yard. Identification documents had been taken, and clothing serial numbers were unreadable. The takeover team photographed and numbered them, waiting for the prisoners and local workers to identify them. No one counted them as enemy deaths in order to hasten the completion of the battle tally.

On the thirteenth day, the stretcher road outside Taigu City was damaged by artillery fire. A neighboring artillery unit mistakenly took a side road, and their wheels got stuck in a ditch. The Independent Regiment's military police did not detain anyone; they simply towed the vehicle out and then had the neighboring liaison officer sign an accident report. The names of the timber used for road repairs and whether the artillery was damaged were recorded in the accounts of both sides.

The real fighting began in Qingxu at this point.

The defending troops set up artillery at the Fen River ferry crossing, retreating back and forth between the city and its surroundings. The Second Battalion first seized key road sections, while the cavalry only checked tire tracks and ferries, not pursuing individual stragglers. One of the two armored vehicles was brought in, but its tires cracked on the frozen road surface, and its lining was worn through.

The driver wanted to change to the old tires and continue driving, but Zhao Tieshan inspected them and put up a scrap sign.

"This tire can't run anymore."

"The car can still move."

"We can move it halfway, then block the artillery vehicle."

Armored vehicles were withdrawn from the front lines and replaced by mule carts and infantry. The advance in the Qingxu direction immediately slowed down.

On the seventeenth day, the outer supply lines of Qingxu were blocked. The garrison did not remain entirely in the city to defend it; about nine hundred men, armed with light weapons, retreated towards the Fen River ferry. The Second Battalion guarded the roads outside the city and did not pursue the enemy across the ice at night.

"You can walk on the river," someone said.

Li Dazhu tapped the ice with the butt of his rifle.

"I don't know which way to go either. Let's check the ferry crossing at dawn."

On the twentieth day, the battle reports from the outskirts of the three cities came together.

Before the battle reports were finalized, Zhao Gang instructed each of the three locations to re-report the origin of the prisoners. Separate columns were created for the garrison in Yuci, the garrison in Taigu, the outer perimeter of Qingxu, and the mobile reinforcements. If a person was initially recorded as missing in Taigu but later found at the Qingxu prisoner-of-war camp, the original column was cancelled; they could not be counted in both instances.

The wounded were also checked by unit and location. The 96 dead soldiers of the Independent Regiment were each recorded with a name or pending identification number; the 271 wounded were categorized as seriously wounded, lightly wounded, and temporarily incapacitated. Copies of the 27 dead and 73 wounded from neighboring units were taken away by liaison officers; the headquarters ledger only retained the figures needed for coordination.

Local transport medical personnel also suffered from vehicle injuries and frostbite, which should be registered separately and not included in combat casualties. The three cities under our control need to continue supplying food, repairing roads, and guarding prisoners; these people cannot simply disappear from the mobilization list just because the fighting is over.

Initial takeover of Yuci and Taigu was completed. Key nodes within Qingxu City were under control, and approximately nine hundred remaining enemy troops retreated towards the Fen River.

The enemy forces were confirmed to have suffered approximately 1,260 deaths, 980 captured, and 540 scattered.

The Independent Regiment suffered 96 dead and 271 wounded.

Twenty-seven of our neighbors were killed in action, and seventy-three were wounded; these are recorded separately.

The tires of an armored vehicle were destroyed.

One of the mountain guns had a damaged wheel and needed to be replaced at the rear.

The area under its control still has missing persons, unconfirmed injuries, and uncleared warehouses; the figures are as of the current verification date.

Zhao Gang looked at the three takeover receipts.

"Has the area around Taiyuan been cleared?"

"Two and a half have been cleared," Zhao Weiguo said. "The tail end of Qingxu is still on the Fen River."

On the map, Yuci and Taigu are marked with blue circles. Qingxu remains half red, with the red line extending towards the Fenhe River ferry crossing.

The night shifts in the three locations were rescheduled that evening. Yuci was assigned to guard the telephone and hospital, Taigu to guard the grain depot and freight yard, and Qingxu to guard the west gate and ferry crossing. The personnel taking over had their own schedules, and the pursuing troops had their own routes; no one took advantage of the shift change to change someone else's assignments.

The next battle will begin with sealing off the river.

Zhao Weiguo traced the red line extending from Qingxu to the Fenhe River ferry crossing, then dotted the crossing point with the tip of his pencil. The nine hundred remaining enemy soldiers had retreated to the riverbank; whether they could walk on the ice would only be known after daybreak.

He looked up and said something to Li Dazhu.

"Seal off the ferry crossing; don't let a single person cross."