On August 4, 1949, Cheng Qian and Chen Mingren led the Changsha Appeasement Office, the First Corps Headquarters, 3 corps, and 3 security divisions, a total of 77,000 people in Changsha to revolt, and the whole country was shaken. However, after learning that the rebel troops had not issued an order, Xiao Zhuge Bai Chongxi immediately dispatched a plane to lay down leaflets, announcing that Cheng Qian and Chen Mingren had been detained. This move was indeed fierce enough, and the strength of the rebel troops in 3 military departments, 5 integrated divisions and 2 regiments was about 40,000 people who were afraid of being killed and collectively defected.
In view of this sudden situation, the Fourth Field Army of the People's Liberation Army decided to try to stabilize Chen Mingren's corps and cover the retreat of the rebel troops to the east. The 49th Army, the 46th Army, the 40th Army, and the 18th Army of the 5th Corps of the Erye Army all quickly marched south to pursue the rebels, eliminate the troops that had defected, and liberate the south. Mainly on the Yiyang and Taohua River Anhua lines, the 49th Army pursued the rebel 97th and 103rd Armies fleeing south along the Xiang (Township) Bao (Qing) Highway.
In order to block the pursuit of the People's Liberation Army, Bai Chongxi dispatched Wang Jingsong, deputy commander of the Third Corps, to command the 176th Division of the 48th Army and the 236th Division of the 46th Army to advance from Hengyang to the northeast of Shaoyang; the elite main force of the Three Corps, the Seventh Army, moved toward Yongfeng and Jieling, preparing to counterattack the PLA pursuit troops.
Bai Chongxi's strategy was to concentrate superior forces in the Qingshuping area of Hunan Province to counterattack and eat one or two divisions of the vanguard of the Four Wilds, so as to prevent Lin Shuai's army from marching to southern China and southwest China, in order to delay time, win US aid, and fantasize about the outbreak of World War III and a comeback.
Qingshuping is located in Shuangfeng County, Hunan, bordering Hengyang to the south and Shaoyang to the west, and is the only passage from Xiangzhong to Shonan. This place is the throat of the throat, and it is also a necessary place for the rebels to go south. In order to effectively counterattack the Four Wild Pursuit Troops, Bai Chongxi took out his trump card, the Seventh Army of the Gui Clan. The Seventh Army rushed ahead of schedule to set up an ambush in the Qingshuping area of the Shaodong Boundary Ridge and waited for the arrival of the Four Wild Pursuit Troops.
The Seventh Army of the Gui Clan was commanded by Zhang Gan, the commander of the Third Corps, who was a very characteristic commander, known as "Zhang Luopan". Zhang Gan is obsessed with compass feng shui, likes to ponder the Bagua array map, and every time there is a big battle, he must hold a compass to tour the battlefield and arrange troops with a compass to set up a position. In Qingshuping, Zhang Gan was standing on a high hill with a compass in his hand, and he looked around, his face full of pride, and calmly said to his subordinates: "I will use a cloth bag in this ravine to cover the People's Liberation Army!" ”
After Bai Chongxi's original strategy came out, it was quickly intercepted by the Siye Command in Wuhan, which knew Bai Chongxi's strategy very well. Therefore, Lin Zong urgently ordered the 46th Army to stop pursuing, and the 49th Army ascertained the situation and was not allowed to advance blindly. After the war broke out, the 146th Division of the 49th Army of Siye, under the leadership of division commander Wang Kuixian and political commissar Li Zaishan, set out from Tianjin Jinghai and fought all the way from north to south, invincible.
On August 8, after receiving orders to pursue the rebels, the 146th Division attacked the county seat of Ningxiang and annihilated 4,100 rebels. After capturing Ningxiang on the night of the 8th, the 146th Division continued to pursue and advance, capturing Yongfeng on the 13th, and then pursuing Yongfeng, Qingshuping, Jieling and the Baoqing area west of them. For some reason, the 146th Division did not receive orders from its superiors, so it launched a separate attack on Qingshuping. On the morning of August 9, Zhong Wei, commander of the 49th Army, saw that the 146th Division had not stopped advancing, and was anxious to turn around, and hurriedly transferred the 145th Division to quickly follow up and go to reinforcements.
At 16:00 on August 15, the vanguard of the 146th Division arrived at Shan Jia Jing in Qingshuping and engaged in an encounter with a part of the Nationalist Seventh Army ambushed there. The Nationalists were defeated and retreated, and the 146th Division continued to pursue. In fact, this encounter was deliberately created by Zhang Gan, who made the troops pretend to be invincible and retreat while fighting, so that the troops could attract the main force of the 146th Division into the main position of Qingshuping, and then concentrate their firepower to strike hard.
Since the Battle of crossing the river, the 146th Division has been fiercely pursued and fought fiercely, and the division commander Wang Kuixian is known as "Wang Mengzi". The unit had not fought a single hard battle since the Battle of the Crossing River, and the troops encountered were almost at the touch of collapse. The 146th Division pursued and fought hard until dawn in the main position of Qingshuping. Bai Chongxi saw the 146th Division enter the main position, so he ordered the three divisions that set up the ambush to attack immediately and eat the 146th Division.
Zhang Gan received Bai Chongxi's order and immediately ordered all the troops to attack, leaving no reserves to launch a siege, firing a salvo of artillery, and firing the reserved shells. At this time, wang Kuixian, commander of the 146th Division, was thinking about how to break through, and the Nationalist army had already launched a fierce attack, and his radio station had been unable to contact the headquarters for 2 days, so he had to order the troops to hold their positions and find an opportunity to break through.
When the fierce battle broke out, more than 30 planes of the Nationalist army flew into the air to strafe and drop bombs, armor-breaking shells, high-explosive bombs, and incendiary bombs fell from the air like raindrops, smoke billowed from all over qingshuping mountain, shells fell into the machine positions and command posts of the People's Liberation Army, and the war burned the entire mountain red. Due to the large number of shells, some bombs even fell on the Nationalists' own positions.
The hillside was blown up and the trees were blown up and burned like a torch. Wang Kuixian looked through the telescope and saw that a group of Guangxi soldiers was rushing towards the position of the 146th Division. The Seventh Army of the Gui Clan is worthy of being an ace army, these soldiers are all Equipped with American equipment, their firepower is mighty, and the soldiers are all thieves
They took advantage of the terrain to move quickly, striding and flying through the mountains and fields, moving quickly. They specialized in the machine gun positions of the 146th Division, and they did not easily launch a collective onslaught, but after a certain distance, they buried their heads in the shovel to dig trench fortifications, and attacked step by step in a digging manner, and they fought very cautiously and methodically.
Wang Kui, commander of the 146th Division, saw that the battle situation was urgent, so he summoned the regimental commanders to discuss how to break through. However, because this was a battle that caught off guard, the whole division was trapped in the ravine by an enemy 3 times larger than itself, and due to the excessive pursuit of these two days, most of the soldiers did not eat one day, did not sleep once, and most of the soldiers were northeasterners, and because of the water and soil, many people were infected, the situation was quite critical, helpless.
The narrow road meets the brave to win, and in such a passive situation, he has to order to die to the end. From division commanders to ordinary soldiers, everyone was organized into combat units, ready to fight the enemy to the end. Tazishan Heights was the only highland of the 146th Division, and when besieged on all sides, the entire army was destroyed once Tazishan was lost. The defensive battle of Tazishan was the most intense and difficult.
At first, when the Gui army had not yet been encircled, the political commissar Li Zaishan repeatedly reminded Wang Kuixian to order a breakthrough to the north, and Wang Kuixian wanted to use himself as bait to attract the Gui army and create an opportunity for the friendly neighboring troops to encircle. However, after two days and two nights of fighting, the casualties of the troops intensified, but there was no friendly troops to come to reinforcement and encirclement.
The encirclement of the Gui army was getting smaller and smaller, the fighting was becoming more and more fierce, and there had been many white-knife battles in the most advanced positions. These small soldiers of the Guangxi Army were not afraid of the much larger northeast soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, and these Guangxi soldiers were flexible and agile, and they made the People's Liberation Army suffer a lot of losses in the white-knife battle.
At dusk, when the position was about to be lost, the Gui army troops suddenly retreated backwards, and the gunfire behind them was loud. It turned out that the 145th Division sent by Commander Zhong Wei came in time for reinforcements, and the 145th Division tore a hole from the Taiping Temple in the north and quickly attacked into the encirclement. The two armies met, and the strength was quickly balanced, repelling the attack of the Gui army, and the sky was getting dark, and the offensive immediately weakened a lot.
Shen Qixian, commander of the 145th Division, led the whole division to block the attack of the Gui Army, covered the rapid retreat of the 146th Division, and threw off the pursuing troops. Under a blood-red sunset, the 146th Division quickly retreated to Yongfeng along the gap torn open by the 145th Division. Finally broke through the encirclement and withdrew from Qingshuping. Subsequently, the 145th Division retreated while fighting, and took advantage of the night to rush out of Qingshuping. The Battle of Qingshuping ended there.
In the Battle of Qingshuping, the Gui Army fought a bloody battle with the 146th and 145th Divisions of Siye for two days and nights, and the 146th Division killed and wounded 684 enemy troops, captured 69 enemy, and annihilated a total of 753 enemy troops; the reinforcements of the 145th Division killed hundreds of enemy soldiers. In this battle, the 146th Division suffered 877 casualties, disappearances and captured; the 145th Division suffered more than 470 casualties, disappearances and captured, and the two armies lost a total of 1347 people. In this battle, because the Gui army had long been prepared, the 146th Division and the 145th Division failed and returned.
At the Battle of Qingshuping, why did the 146th Division of the 49th Army of Shino lose? Judging from the course of this battle, there are three main reasons: First, the Gui Army had already made preparations and gathered the elite Seventh Army to ambush here and wait for work; second, the 146th Division pursued too fiercely and entered the enemy's encirclement circle in a hurry to cope with the battle, and it was too late to counterattack; third, due to the damage to the radio, the incompatibility of the water and soil, and the enemy's outnumbered enemies, the 146th Division was unable to defeat the Gui Seventh Army.
Of course, in the following Battle of Hengbao, Siye learned the lessons of this battle and defeated the elite Seventh Army of the Gui Clan, which humiliated the snow and laid a solid foundation for the liberation of the southwest.
[This article is collected by Barnyard Shi Hou said to collect materials, memoirs to sort out and write, errors and omissions, Jingxi readers correct]