"The key to using military force is to no longer be restored" is a recognized combat principle, but there are exceptions. From October 26 to 28, 1937, the 772nd Regiment of the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army ambushed the Japanese baggage troops twice in Qigan Village, Pingding County, Shanxi, and annihilated more than 400 Japanese troops at the cost of more than 30 casualties. Liu Bocheng called the Qigan Village serial ambush tactics "overlapping ambush".
correctly selects the ambush region. In order to prevent the Japanese army from entering Taiyuan, Shanxi, and at the same time support and cooperate with the Kuomintang army in fighting at Niangziguan, Shanxi, on October 19, 1937, Liu Bocheng, commander of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, led his troops to Mashan Village, Pingding County, Shanxi Province under the order of the Eighth Route Army headquarters, to lead his troops to Mashan Village, Pingding County, Shanxi Province, preparing to attack the enemy advancing westward. On the 23rd, the 771st Regiment of the 386th Brigade was attacked by Japanese troops in Qigan Village, Pingding County, with more than 30 casualties and losing contact with the division headquarters. On the 25th, Liu Bocheng and his group of more than 30 people rushed to the Sanlang Temple area in Qigan Village to find the missing troops. Qigan Village is located at the junction of three counties: Pingding , Xiyang , and Jingxing. It is surrounded by mountains, ravines, steep canyons, and the road is strangely dangerous. Liu Bocheng found that the path next to the village is less than 2 meters wide, with a ridge about 10 meters high in the south, and a ravine that is dozens of meters deep in the north. At the same time, Liu Bocheng learned that the detour troops of the 20th Division of the Japanese army had invaded the Pingding County, and more than 1,000 of its baggage troops were camping in Caiyu Town, 10 kilometers away from Qigan Village (at the time of Pingding, Shanxi, and now in Jingxing, Hebei). Liu Bocheng immediately judged that the Japanese baggage troops would pass through Qigan Village to transport weapons, ammunition and food to Pingding County the next day. The canyon area near Qigan Village was narrow and deep, with nowhere to hide on the left and right, and it was difficult to take care of each other from the beginning and end. It was an ideal ambush place. So he decided to ambush the Japanese baggage troops in Qigan Village and handed over this task to the 386th Brigade.
suddenly attacked and won the battle. Before dawn on October 26, 1937, Chen Geng, commander of the 386th Brigade, ordered Wang Jinshan, deputy commander of the 772nd Regiment, to lead the 3rd Battalion and a platoon of the spy company, to enter the area near Qigan Village to set up an ambush. At around 9 o'clock, the 3rd Battalion of the 772nd Regiment specially released more than 200 infantry soldiers from the Japanese vanguard. When their baggage troops entered the east ambush circle of Qigan Village, they seized favorable fighter jets and launched a sudden attack on the Japanese army with machine guns and grenades . The intercepted Japanese baggage troops were in chaos for a while and fled in a panic. Afterwards, the main force of the 772nd Regiment entered the battle and started fighting with the Japanese army. Because the 772nd Regiment cut off the front and rear contact between the Japanese cover troops and the baggage troops, and the incident was sudden and unclear, the Japanese troops could not be deployed under narrow terrain and roads were blocked, and the firepower advantage was not effectively exerted, and there were heavy casualties. While the remaining Japanese troops fled toward Dongshimen, they were hit by the spy company that I am ambushed in advance. At 11 o'clock, the Japanese army left behind more than 300 corpses, more than 300 mules and horses and a large number of military supplies, and fled back to the fish town in a hurry.
bold decisions have set up an ambush again. After the ambush in Qigan Village, the Japanese army invaded the enemy's materials in pacifying the county town, which made the enemy in Caiyu Town anxious. Based on the principle of "not following the norm" in military use, the Japanese army believed that the Eighth Route Army would immediately move after the ambush in Qigan Village, so they sent troops to Qigan Village to clean up the battlefield, while adjusting their forces to prepare to transport military supplies to the pacification direction through Qigan Village again. On the 26th, Liu Bocheng received two information: one was that the Kuomintang army decided to give up Niangziguan ; the other was that the Japanese army in the western section of Zhengtai Road was moving eastward, and the Japanese army on the right-wing of Niangziguan was preparing to attack the old gate. After analyzing the battlefield situation and the Japanese army's attempts, Liu Bocheng believed that "the Japanese army's military dogma was very arrogant after winning many times. He would not care about the failure of Qigan Village. Moreover, the Japanese army was in a hurry to get ammunition and food in front of him. There was no other way to detour from Caiyu Town to Pingding. The Japanese army would transport supplies through Qigan Village again." After careful consideration, Liu Bocheng decided to set up an ambush in Qigan Village again.
is formed in endless repeated use of troops. In order to confuse the Japanese army, when the enemy in Jianyu Town sent troops to Qigan Village to clear the battlefield on the 27th, Liu Bocheng commanded the main force of the 772nd Regiment to pretend to retreat, and then secretly returned to Qigan Village west of ambush waiting for the enemy at night. On the morning of the 28th, the Japanese army sent more than 100 cavalry to conduct a reconnaissance and more than 300 infantry to cover the palace to protect the baggage troops.When the Japanese vanguard approached Qigan Village, its reconnaissance team used "strict search, fire reconnaissance, artillery inspection" and other methods to explore the way. The officers and soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 386th Brigade were calm, scattered, hidden, and strictly disguised, making the Japanese army convinced that there were no ambushes and were at ease to let their vanguards pass through the ambush area. At around 11 o'clock, after the Japanese baggage force entered the ambush circle, the commander of the 3rd battalion issued an order, and the ambush officers and soldiers used various firearms to launch firepower attacks on the enemy. Then all the officers and soldiers rushed into the Japanese army, cut their baggage force into two sections, and fought with the Japanese army. After fierce battles until dusk, our army killed more than 100 Japanese troops and seized dozens of mules and horses. A few Japanese troops fled west to pacifying , and most of them retreated eastward to Caiyu Town.
unexpectedly implemented continuous ambushing, creating a miracle in the history of war where inferior wins the best and few wins the more, making Qigan Village's "overlapping ambushing" a classic example in the history of Sino-foreign wars. The "overlapping ambush" operation in Qigan Village was not large in scale and failed to wipe out the enemy's troops, but it played an active role in hindering, causing more than 1,000 people from the Kuomintang Zeng Wanzhong troops trapped south of the old pass to break through the enemy's encirclement, strongly supporting the Kuomintang army's frontal battlefield operations, hitting the Japanese army's arrogance, and enhancing the confidence of the military and civilians to win the War of Resistance.
