In the autumn of 1946, the battlefield in East China was full of war clouds and the situation was tense.
Although our army has gone through "seven battles and seven victories," it has not been able to curb the offensive of the Kuomintang army. On August 7, two units of the 8th Division of the Shandong Field Army and the 9th Column of the Central China Field Army attacked the 172nd Division of the Nationalist Army, and although they annihilated 3,000 enemies, they failed to capture Si County; in September, They lost their defenses after 5 days of fierce fighting; in December, Lianshui was occupied by the enemy again. The arrogance of the enemy's attack was very arrogant, and our troops in East China were in a difficult situation.
Chen Shiyu, who later became the founding general, succeeded him as chief of staff of the East China Field Army shortly after serving as chief of staff of the Shandong Field Army.
Entrusted with the autumn of peril, he made a pertinent analysis and consideration of the difficult situation in East China. He pointed out: The failure to solve specific problems in the campaign is not the main factor, but the main factor is the issue of strategic guiding ideology.
In the early days of the War of Liberation, the enemy was strong and we were weak. Chiang Kai-shek tried to open up the Jinpu Road, and central Jiangsu, northern Jiangsu, Huaibei and other places must be the first areas he wanted to occupy with all his might. However, our army adopted the tactics of Spain defending Madrid and the Soviet Union defending Stalingrad, and it was inappropriate to cling to the chain of water.
Chen Shiyu believes that the reason for the loss of Lianshui and Lianghuai (Huaiyin and Huai'an) is that strategic thinking is not unified.
At that time, the leaders of the Central China Field Army and the Central China Military Region stressed the importance of the Central China region and demanded that General Manager Chen bring the main force of the Shandong Field Army to the central China region to fight; the leaders of the Shandong Field Army and the Shandong Military Region stressed the importance of the Shandong region and demanded that the Central China Field Army go north to meet and coordinate operations.
There is no unified understanding of which area is important and which area is more conducive to annihilating the enemy in large numbers. As a result, there is also a lack of unified command organizationally.
At that time, the commander of the Shandong Field Army and commander of the Shandong Military Region was General Manager Chen, the commander of the Central China Field Army was Su Yu, the political commissar was Tan Zhenlin, and the Central China Military Region was in charge of Deng Zihui and Zhang Dingcheng. Several units are not subordinate to each other, each has its own campaign deployment and combat plan, and can only advise each other or coordinate the combat operations of the two regions through the Party Central Committee, which is very inconvenient. Mr. Chen's work is also difficult.
But at this time, the nationalist offensive was more aggressive. The enemy concentrated one-third of the total strength of the troops attacking the liberated areas of the whole country, and a total of 62 divisions attacked the liberated areas of East China, including the reorganized 11th Division, the 74th Division, and the New 5th Army, and the three main forces of the "five main forces" of the Kuomintang army, with a total strength of 500,000 people, about 4 times that of us. Under the fierce offensive of the enemy, the vast area west of Jinpu Road was occupied, and our army could only confront the enemy in a small area of Lunan and northern Jiangsu. The enemy then advanced eastward from the xuzhou, lianghuai, zaozhuang, and Yixian areas, the purpose of which was to divide our east China troops into four or five pieces and break through each one.
In view of the grim situation in the East China Battlefield, General Manager Chen realized that if the troops in Shandong and Central China were still fighting separately, it would be difficult to concentrate their forces to crush the attack of the enemy's large corps. Therefore, on September 21, 1946, Mr. Chen sent a telegram to the Central Committee proposing that the Central China Field Army and the Shandong Field Army should be merged into one field army. The next day, the central government replied to the agreement. However, at that time, the title of "East China Field Army" was not clearly defined, and only Shuyang was determined to be the headquarters of the two field armies and the two military regions, and the command organs of the two fields and two regions were still retained, and there was no unified command structure.
Because the strategic thinking at that time was still unclear, there were great differences on the key issues concerning the operational policy of the East China Battlefield, and several leaders of the Central China Bureau blamed The responsibility for the defeat in the battle on General Manager Chen, and carried out criticism of him, and also dismissed Song Shilun, chief of staff of the Shandong Field Army.
At the critical moment, Chen Shiyu supported Mr. Chen with a clear attitude and actively assisted Mr. Chen in his work.
In order to unify the strategic thinking and understanding of the whole region, from September to December 1946, there were more than three months of consultations and discussions between the two regions and the Central Military Commission on the issue of operational policy in East China, and more than one percent of the telegrams were exchanged. The focus of the consultations was on two issues, that is, to concentrate forces to fight, or to divide the troops into separate battles. Concentrate your forces on northern Jiangsu, or Lunan, or cross the Xidu Canal across the Jinpu Road to attack the Huaibei region? The focus of the debate was on the question of where to concentrate forces to fight the enemy.
To put it bluntly, it is the comrades in Shandong who insisted on gathering troops in Lunan to annihilate the enemy, while the comrades in central China insisted on gathering troops to fight in central China, and during the period when the troops were transferred south to the north to fight several times, they did not achieve a large number of victories in annihilating the enemy.
Chen Shiyu always insisted on concentrating his forces to fight in the Shandong region.
When Chen Shiyu put forward this opinion, he made two statements: First, at that time, the enemy's operational policy was to open up the Jinpu Road and link east, north, and northeast China, while central Jiangsu and northern Jiangsu were close to Shanghai and Nanjing, threatening Nanjing, and he was bound to devote all his efforts to attack and occupy it. Second, the Shandong region has a good mass foundation and the terrain conditions are superior to those in the Suwan region, so we should take the Shandong region as the foothold of the East China Theater and develop toward Suwan and other provinces when conditions permit. It was the rainy season, and it was more advantageous to concentrate forces in Shandong.
Chen Shiyu's opinions were concise and to the point, and had an impact on the highest leadership group in the theater. On December 24, 1946, after repeated consultations, the Central Military Commission finally gave a clear instruction: "Concentrate your forces in Lunan Operations." ”
In December 1946 and January 1947, in less than a month, the East China Field Army held two major battles in Subei and Lunan, winning successive battles and annihilating more than 80,000 enemy troops. Since then, the commanders and fighters of the whole army have become more and more courageous in the Vietnam War, and a major change has taken place in the war situation in East China.