Written by | Zhao Taiyi
In 1946, Chen Yi and Dai Zhiqi faced each other in the Battle of Subei, one was a Huangpu teacher who had experienced hundreds of battles, and the other was a communist vanguard general with excellent character and learning, this encounter undoubtedly had a certain tragic color, but this special path could not be returned in the end, and could only show their tactics and will on the map of the war, and finally when the students defeated the teacher, there was undoubtedly an inexplicable sadness.
In the winter of 1946, in the north of Jiangsu, the cold of midwinter filled the whole of Huaibei, and a war filled the land with infinite uneasiness.
Since this was the first battle between the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army, Chiang Kai-shek had high hopes for Dai Zhiqi. And Dai Zhiqi, who has always won more and lost less on the battlefield, also made a firm statement in front of president Jiang: "The students will certainly face Chen Yibu in Subei and do their modest work for the great cause of the party and the state." ”
For the commanders of this battle, Chen Yi and Su Yu were personally in command, and they carried out sand table deductions on the battle map all day long, and they were undoubtedly quite stressed about this hard battle, after all, they were facing the veteran elite troops of the Kuomintang, and the main player would be Dai Zhiqi.
After many plans, Chen Yi believed that there were only two best plans for this battle: one was to attack the enemy's left wing troops, annihilate the enemy attacking Towards Xin'an Town near Wuhuading, and then attack the army attacking Shuyang. The second option was to attack the enemy's right flank if the enemy's left flank was delayed, and then concentrate superior forces to eliminate the enemy in the area east of Suqian.
However, the Kuomintang right-wing troops were one of the "five main forces" of the Kuomintang army in the reorganized Eleventh Division; they were not only well-equipped but also had quite strong combat capabilities of the artillery regiment; the division commander Hu Lian was also a backbone of Huangpu, and he also made many meritorious achievements in the Northern Expedition, and also participated in the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Changde. Among the various Kuomintang armies and routes attacking the People's Liberation Army, his troops have always been in the vanguard.
In December 1946, Dai Zhiqi led his reorganized Eleventh Division and Sixty-ninth Division to advance one after another. According to the previous deployment, Chen Yi ordered the Ninth Column of Huaye to use a small number of troops to contain the Eleventh Division with strong firepower, and at the same time put the integrated Sixty-ninth Division into the intended battlefield. In the evening, the headquarters of the reorganized Sixty-ninth Division and the Twenty-sixth Seventh Regiment entered Renhewei, and the other brigades followed suit, and they had been successfully cut off between them and the reorganized Eleventh Division, which had been fiercely attacked. The next day, the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army began to encircle. On the same day, Hu Lian, commander of the reorganized Eleventh Division, convened a combat meeting in the name of the commander of the front line of the Suxin Regiment. At the meeting, Hu Lian proposed that the reorganized Sixty-ninth Division should take the plunge and enter the trap, while Dai Zhiqi accused the reorganized Eleventh Division of slowly advancing. Just as the two men were complaining to each other, they were shocked by the news that a People's Liberation Army had appeared near the headquarters of the Eleventh Division.
The Northern Battlefield was fiercely matched, and the two sides were glued to fight for positions.
After the charge of the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army began, the focus was on the encirclement of the sixty-ninth division, which was responsible for interspersing the division of the first column and Du Ze to capture the commanding height of the battlefield, Fengshan Mountain.
The so-called Fengshan mountain is actually a small mountain bag with an altitude of only eight hundred meters, but in the event of war, it is the support point for the defense of the reorganized Sixty-ninth Division of the Kuomintang, and once the Fengshan Mountain is lost, it means that the reorganized Sixty-ninth Division is fully under the artillery fire of our army, so Dai Zhiqi ordered the seventh regiment of the third brigade to hold the mountain, and the seventh regiment cut down all the trees on the mountain bag within one day, so as to clear the fire fire obstacles, randomly and urgently build trenches, and arrange dense vitality equipment.
After the Eighth Division arrived at the battlefield, it concentrated several times the strength of the enemy army to attack Fengshan from both sides. Under the leadership of Zhang Ming, the deputy instructor in the southwest direction, the charge was made three consecutive times, and the enemy's firepower led to casualties of our army, and it can be said that the two sides repeatedly tugged and fought for the top of the mountain and fell into a state of anxiety. According to Chen Yi's previous deployment, if fengshan could not be taken quickly, it would inevitably lead to the postponement or even failure of the entire campaign, and at this time, the original four hundred troops in a single battalion now had only forty people. Finally, deputy instructor Zhang Ming decided to charge again, and with the support of artillery and machine guns, more than forty PLA people poured barbed wire and, in the case of bullets, set up a ladder in the trench and rushed to the top of the mountain. Although Zhang Ming was wounded, he still charged forward, and finally, the twenty-fourth regiment and a battalion and a company attacking on the other side also rushed up, and the company commander Guo Jisheng and Zhang Ming achieved peace at the top of the peak.
In this way, the Sixty-ninth Division of the Nationalist integrated army fell into a heavy siege, and Dai Zhiqi ordered the recapture of Fengshan at all costs. The two regiments of the Third And Sixty Brigades, under the cover of aircraft and artillery fire, launched one counterattack after another on Fengshan, and the Eighth Division concentrated all its firepower to hold on, so that the two sides were completely stuck in a state of stalemate, but the situation was becoming more and more unfavorable to Dai Zhiqi.
On the evening of the 16th, Dai Zhiqi asked Hu Lian for rescue, and in the early morning of the next day, Hu Lian could only lament that "Mr. Dai was unimaginable" and did not send troops to rescue him. In desperation, Dai Zhiqi could only send a telegram to Nanjing asking for help: "I implore the principal to send troops or urge Hu Bu to help him, so as to save the crisis in a time of great difficulty."
At this time, Chiang Kai-shek issued a death order to Hu Lian, asking him to rescue him quickly, otherwise he would be dealt with according to military law. On the morning of the seventeenth day, Hu Lian did not dare to disobey Chiang Kai-shek's orders, and could only send the strength of two brigades with a stubborn head, and tried to get close to the reorganized Sixty-ninth Division, but was stubbornly blocked by the 7th Regiment of the 1st Column, 3rd Brigade, and 7th Regiment of the People's Liberation Army.
Dai Zhiqi committed suicide in defeat along with his pistol
The 18th Brigade of The Eleventh Division, which was reorganized by Hu Lian, retreated on its own in spite of Dai Zhiqi's coordinated operations, which was the main reason for the collapse of Dai Zhiqi's reorganized Sixty-ninth Division.
They were both from the Central Department of the Kuomintang Army and the same unit that had participated in the Indo-Burma War, and when the reorganized 69th Division fell under siege, Dai Zhiqi thought that the reorganized 11th Division would go all out to reinforce, and the deputy director of the Xuzhou Sui Bureau also ordered the reorganized 10th Division to go all out to break the siege. However, Hu Lian was not satisfied with the rescue, and when he was blocked, he retreated into Suqian City to protect himself. At that time, the Eighteenth Brigade of the Reorganized Eleventh Division was only a few miles away from the place where Dai Zhiqi committed suicide. Dai Zhiqi and Hu Lian were both generals of Chiang Kai-shek's lineage, and mutual support should be expected, and Chen Yi also specially concentrated heavy troops to deal with reinforcements, but Hu Lian increased and did not help. When dai zhiqi begged for reinforcements and had no hope of it, he had to issue a final order to the troops: "The hope of breaking the siege has been broken, Yu has been deceived by his friends and neighbors, and all the units have managed to break through with their cameras."
When Dai Zhiqi heard the gunfire gradually intensifying, he knew that his last moment had arrived. When officers and men of the Central China Field Army rushed to the door of Dai Zhiqi's command post, Dai Zhiqi fired a shot at himself in the head.
After his death, Chen Yi carefully examined the corpse and saw that Dai's face was white and plump, the bridge of his nose was high and straight, his hair was dark and shiny, his two thick eyebrows were locked, and his eyes were tightly closed. In his 40s, he was handsome and elegant. His military uniform was stained red with blood, and he clutched his pistol in his right hand. Chen Yi said, "Let's bury the pistol with Dai Zhiqi." Let Commander Dai continue to command his Sixty-ninth Division and the Plaknisman's bloody battle in the Underworld. He was anti-communist to the end, stubborn, and I fulfilled his wishes. ”
Behind this war, in addition to showing that the troops under the leadership of Chen Yi were properly strategically deployed and powerful, the main reason why the Kuomintang was alienated from Germany and could not be saved by defeat was the main reason for the rapid overthrow, and this situation was even a long-standing problem in the later period of the Kuomintang.
However, Hu Lian's fate was surprisingly good, and although he lost many battles after that, he was not handled by Chiang Kai-shek, and in October 1952, Hu Lian was awarded the rank of general of the army. At the same time, he was elected as a member of the "Seventh Central Committee" of the Chinese Kuomintang; since then, he has been re-elected as a member of the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Central Committees, and has been living in Taipei with great taste.