The cultural relics to be told today are dead tree trunks brought back from the Shangganling position, which are stored in the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution. If you look closely, these trunks are full of bullet marks and embedded with shrapnel. These dead tree trunks from the 38th parallel north seem to be silently telling how fierce the battle of 69 years ago was.
△ In 2017, the theme exhibition of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the army held by the Military Expo exhibited the dead tree trunks brought back from Shangganling
At 3:30 a.m. on October 14, 1952, the most fierce battle to resist the United States and aid Korea, the Battle of Shangganling, was launched. The campaign was instigated by James VanVleet, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army. Here I'm going to tell you a proper noun in the military world: Van Vliet Ammunition Quantity. What does it mean? VanVleet explained: I want to leave countless artillery craters so that people can jump from one crater to another.
△ The Battle of Shangganling simulates the terrain
As a result, an originally small-scale offensive and defensive battle evolved into a famous battle in which the density of artillery firepower exceeded the highest level of World War II. In just one day, the so-called "United Nations Army" led by the United States fired more than 300,000 shells and 500 bombs at the two highlands in Shangganling. Imagine that two small hills of only 3.7 square kilometers were completely flattened and soaked in blood.
Xia Yidong: During the first day of the attack, because of the continuous shelling, the smoke from the entire highland could not be dissipated, so many survivors recalled that the day should be a cloudy day. In fact, there is a sun on the day, because the smoke obscures the sun. This shows how strong the density of this artillery was at that time.
△ Shell casings left by the "United Nations Army" after the Battle of Shangganling
In the entire Battle of Shangganling, not a single of our planes appeared in the sky; our tanks had no record of participating in the battle; when our artillery was at its highest, it was only a quarter of the enemy's; the so-called "United Nations Army" led by the United States fired more than 1.9 million shells and more than 5,000 aerial bombs... Day after day, day after day, over and over again, endless shells slammed into positions, all the land was turned over, all the trees were stripped away, and all the surface fortifications were wiped out.
△ Volunteer soldiers receive water to drink in the tunnel
The Americans still can't figure out why Shangganling just can't be defeated? They did not know that the two small hills were protected by the volunteer soldiers with their own bodies and lives. Guo Pingyou, a veteran soldier of the Chinese Volunteer Army to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea:
Guo Pingyou: Fight with bayonets without bullets, and fight with the enemy with your life. Some stabbed into the chest, some stabbed into the leg, some stabbed into the arm, and I didn't know the pain. Seriously injured can not reach the line of fire, without the determination to win the battle?
△ Guo Pingyou, born in July 1926, entered the Korean battlefield in 1950 as a telephone soldier and won the third class merit in the Battle of Shangganling
On the brutal battlefield, the stories of the heroic struggle of volunteer soldiers are shocking. Niu Baocai, a 24-year-old deputy squad leader of the battalion's telephone squad, was facing artillery fire to answer the telephone line when he was unfortunately broken by shrapnel. The stretcher bearer saw him dragging his broken leg and disappearing into the gunfire. The phone rang! But it only took 3 minutes!
The command post seized the precious 3 minutes and issued an emergency combat order. But when his comrades-in-arms found the sacrificed Niu Baocai, he still held the rubber-stripped copper wire in his right hand and bit another thread in his mouth. It turned out that he was letting the current pass through his body and connecting with his life for these 3 minutes of the phone.
Xia Yidong: In the Battle of Shangganling, a large number of combat heroes represented by Huang Jiguang emerged. There are 12,000 people in the Light Fifteenth Army who have become combat heroes with various military achievements, and more than 200 heroes have emerged.
△ In the Battle of Shangganling, 38 heroes who fired explosive canisters, grenades, and grenades and died with the enemy left their names, and the picture shows Huang Jiguang sacrificing himself to blow up the bunker
A few years later, when the film crew that filmed the movie "Shangganling" came to Shangganling, they saw that there was not a single tree on the bare mountain, and they grabbed a handful of soil from the ground and counted 32 shrapnel pieces, and more than 100 warheads and shrapnel were embedded in a tree pole less than one meter. The few trunks that are 1.93 meters long, 1.42 meters and 0.7 meters long, which are treasured in the Military Museum of the Chinese Revolution, are the few remaining trunks. Liu Zhonggang, deputy director of the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, knows their origins:
Liu Zhonggang: They were all moved down by volunteer soldiers during the evacuation of the positions or later when they returned to visit, as a souvenir.
△ Stills from the movie "Shangganling"
After the film "Shangganling" was filmed, it had not yet been screened nationwide, and the film interlude "My Motherland" was transmitted to the whole country through the radio waves of the Central People's Radio on the second day after it was recorded. "A big river has wide waves, the wind blows rice and flowers on both sides", the tune of this song is not so tough and powerful, it does not directly describe the cruelty of war, but praises the magnificent motherland of mountains and rivers and the industrious and simple people, and sings the infinite love of volunteer soldiers for the motherland and their hometown, which is the meaning of their desperate efforts to defend their homeland.
In 1986, North Korea published a map of the country with a scale of one in five million, and the Five Holy Mountains, which were 1,061.7 meters above sea level, were not found, but shangganling was marked. Maybe because this is the lofty mountain of history!
△ The volunteer soldiers celebrated the victory
Pei Yanan: I am Pei Yanan, a docent at the Memorial Hall of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, born in 1992. The Memorial Hall for Resisting US Aggression and Aiding Korea is located on Yinghua Mountain on the banks of the Yalu River in Dandong, Liaoning Province, across the river from Sinuiju City in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. What is the great Shangganling spirit, that is, the spirit of dedication for the sake of the motherland, for the sake of the people, and for the sake of victory; the fighting spirit of indomitable, united fighting, and overcoming difficulties; and the spirit of victory in being brave and tenacious, resolutely fighting, and fighting to the end in blood. As post-90s explainers, we should inherit the red spirit and continue the spiritual bloodline of communists!