Battle of Changde

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Changde began on the 2nd of November 1943, when Japanese General Isamu Yokoyama sent roughly 60,000 troops marching on a Chinese city in Hunan province. Six Japanese divisions moved in from the north and the east. Defending them stood the soldiers of China's 6th War Zone, stretched across fourteen corps. What followed over the next weeks would produce some of the most desperate close-quarters fighting of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War.

  The city's innermost defense fell to a single division: the 57th, part of the 74th Corps, numbering around 8,000 men. They faced two full Japanese divisions. The questions this story raises are not only about who won or lost. They are about what those 8,000 men endured, what it cost the officers who sent them there, and what happened when the survivors finally walked out.

• 2. Why Changde

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  Japan's purpose in attacking Changde was not to hold the city permanently. The offensive was designed to grind down the Chinese National Revolutionary Army, draining its fighting strength and its capacity to send troops westward to support the Burma Campaign. Keeping the Chinese preoccupied in Hunan meant keeping them away from a theater that mattered to Allied strategy across the whole region.

  On the 14th of November, the Japanese 13th Division, aided by local collaborators, punched through the defensive lines held by the Chinese 10th and 29th Group Armies. Two days later, on the 16th of November, Japanese airborne forces landed in Taoyuan County to support the assault on Changde itself. The Japanese 3rd and 116th Divisions joined the combined push at the same time, closing the ring around the city from multiple directions.

• 3. Fifty Days Inside

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  Yu Chengwan commanded the 57th Division and led his 8,000 men into the defense of Changde knowing they were outnumbered by more than three to one. The Japanese brought aircraft, heavy artillery, poison gas, and incendiary attacks. Yet the 57th held on through eleven days and nights of fierce fighting before the city finally fell on the 6th of December.

  A statement issued after the battle described what the final hours looked like. On the 1st and the 2nd of December, with every fortification destroyed, the more than 100 remaining officers and soldiers used the corpses of their fallen comrades as barriers and fought hand-to-hand with knives, throwing rocks at the enemy. The artillery regiment of the 74th Corps, assigned to support the 57th, eventually ran out of shells. When that happened, the artillerymen left their guns and charged alongside the infantry, throwing grenades until the last man fell.

  When Chinese reinforcements finally broke through and reached the city, they found only 100 survivors from the 57th Division. Every one of them was wounded.

• 4. The Encirclement

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  While the 57th Division was absorbing the Japanese assault inside Changde, a much larger Chinese force was assembling outside. The rest of the 74th Corps, joined by the 18th, 73rd, 79th, and 100th Corps, along with several corps from the 9th War Zone including the 10th, 99th, and Jiangxi's 58th Corps, arrived at the battlefield and formed a counter-encirclement around the Japanese forces.

  Fang Xianjue's 10th Corps struck first. On the 29th of November, his men successfully retook the town of Deshan, then swung to attack the Japanese positions at Changde from the south. The Japanese, unable to hold against the Chinese assault, turned to chemical weapons. The fighting that followed lasted six days and nights. The Reserve 10th Division's commander, Lieutenant General Sun Mingjin, received five gunshot wounds during this phase and was killed in action.

  On the 11th of December, Chinese reinforcements broke through the Japanese lines and entered Changde, touching off intense house-to-house combat. Chinese units then cut the Japanese supply lines. Depleted of food and ammunition, the Japanese withdrew on the 13th of December. Chinese forces pursued them for more than twenty days. By the 5th of January 1944, Japanese forces had pulled back to the positions they had held before the offensive began.

• 5. The Cost in Commanders

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  Three Chinese division commanders died in the Changde campaign. Lieutenant General Sun Mingjin of the Reserve 10th Division was killed by his five wounds during the counteroffensive south of the city. Lieutenant General Xu Guozhang, commanding the 44th Corps' 150th Division, was killed at a place called Taifushan in the northwest of the Changde area; he was 37 years old. Lieutenant General Peng Shiliang, who led the 73rd Corps' 5th Division, fell along the Taoyuan-Shimen line at the age of 38.

  The Japanese 116th Division recorded a reduction of 7,547 personnel between the 10th of November 1943 and the 17th of January 1944. The 65th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese 13th Division required 1,047 supplementary soldiers after the battle to bring it back to strength. Sun Lianzhong, who oversaw the aftermath for the Chinese side, ordered the burial of 6,747 soldiers killed in action within Changde city.

• 6. Trials and Dismissals

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  Yu Chengwan, the divisional commander who led the 57th Division's defense and eventually broke out to counterattack, was arrested after the battle and put on trial for abandoning the city. His military court concluded that his circumstances were forgivable, given that he had held Changde for twelve days, and sentenced him to five years in prison. Chiang Kai-Shek initially rejected that sentence and sought to have Yu Chengwan executed. It was only through the intercession of Sun Lianzhong and others that Yu Chengwan's life was spared.

  Fang Xianjue, whose 10th Corps had been first to strike in the counteroffensive, and Zhu Yue, commander of the 190th Division, were both dismissed from their commands on charges of "preserving strength." The accusation arose because the 190th Division had delayed assisting another unit due to personal friction between Zhu Yue and Fang Xianjue. The parallel to the Second Battle of Changsha was not lost on observers at the time. The newly appointed replacement for Fang Xianjue never took up his post before the next major engagement, the Battle of Hengyang, which meant Fang Xianjue ended up commanding again regardless.

• 7. Witnesses and Recognition

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  Reporter Israel Epstein was present for the battle and reported on what he saw. Witold Urbanowicz, a Polish fighter ace who had been engaged in air combat over China in 1943, arrived in Changde just after the fighting ended. American government film crews captured footage of victorious Chinese troops displaying Japanese prisoners and captured Japanese flags and equipment. An American newsreel titled "Chinese troops drive Japs from Changteh" showed Chinese soldiers firing, with captured and dead Japanese soldiers on screen. A British newsreel, "Japs Loose Changteh," showed comparable footage. Some contemporary Western newspapers described the battle as a Chinese victory.

  The Changde campaign also marked the largest participation of the Chinese air force in any battle since the Battle of Wuhan. On the 3rd of August 1944, the Nationalist Government awarded the Flying Tiger Flag to three units that had distinguished themselves: the 57th Division, the 74th Corps' artillery regiment, and the Reserve 10th Division. The 2010 Chinese war film "Death and Glory in Changde" drew directly on the events of this battle.