In the volunteer army, the strong are like a forest. The Thirty-eighth Army of the "Banzai Army", the Thirty-ninth Army that won the Great Victory at Yunshan Mountain, the Sixty-third Army that guarded Tieyuan, and the indomitable Fifteenth and Twelfth Armies in Shangganling were all units familiar to military fans. The army I want to talk about today is also familiar to military fans, but although people know that this is an ace force of our army, they still underestimate it. In terms of attack power, this army ranked first among the volunteers. That's the Fortieth Army.
On November 4, 1950, after the defeat of the 1st Cavalry Division at Unsan to the Volunteer Thirty-ninth Army, the commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, Walker, ordered a full retreat. After receiving the order, the U.S. 24th Division turned around and ran away from the Sixty-sixth Army of the Volunteer Army in front of it, and soon threw away the Sixty-sixth Army at a distance. The Sixty-sixth Army was very remorseful about this, and this time they did not fight well, and the rookie's First Division and the U.S. 24th Division easily escaped from them. This also made the Sixty-sixth Army criticized by Peng Dehuai in its summary.
However, although the Sixty-sixth Army did not fight well, someone took the breath for them. Just as the U.S. 24th Division was rejoicing, a volunteer force suddenly emerged from behind its 19th Regiment.
This is the 359th Regiment of the 120th Division of the Fortieth Army.
When Peng Dehuai ordered a full-scale pursuit, the Forty Army and one horse were the fastest to pursue. It is no wonder that most of the beautiful battles in the first battle were fought by the Forty Army, and the morale was really high. In particular, the 120th Division, after being ordered by the army to pursue, ran forward more than 20 kilometers in an hour and a half, and crossed the Kowloon River in broad daylight, regardless of the strafing of US air force fighters. The 358th Regiment of the 120th Division opened the way in front and charged and punched all the way, continuously breaking through many of the blocking positions of the US 24th Division.
How ferocious was the 358th Regiment at that time?
Its 5-in-3 platoons rushed to the front. Later, the whole platoon was left with only three people, the platoon leader Chechen Cai, the squad leader Lin Xiuzhou, and the soldier Pu Jinshun. Then the three men automatically formed a combat group and continued to charge forward. Despite all three wounded, they continued to fight and refused to retreat. In order to stop the momentum of the volunteer attack, the U.S. military launched a counterattack on the three men. Chechnya saw that the other two comrades had been seriously wounded, and the single jumped out to engage the American army, and finally took the grenade and pounced on the American army, and died with the enemy. Chechen had intended to cover the two comrades-in-arms, but he did not expect that the two men were as hard as their bones. Seeing that Chechnya was sacrificed, Lin Xiuzhou and Pu jinshun ignored their injuries, lay on the ground and struggled to throw 4 grenades at the US troops in a row, directly blowing up 4 US troops and repelling the counterattack of the US troops. Their efforts enabled the follow-up forces to follow up and successfully capture the northeast hill of Pyeongdong, the rearguard stronghold of the US 24th Division. Later, Chechnya posthumously honored the first class merit and awarded the title of second-class combat hero.
The 358th Regiment fought well, but more crucially, it cleared the way for the 359th Regiment.
Therefore, the 359th Regiment was able to suddenly appear behind the position of the US 19th Regiment and raided the 1st Battalion of the US 19th Regiment, and after a scuffle, the US C Company was completely annihilated. Li Ping, platoon commander of the 8th Company of the 359th Regiment, and Liu Yunsheng, a soldier, captured the intelligence section chief of the US 24th Division and 7 people below. The BATTALION of the US army directly discarded all its heavy equipment and fled all the way to Anju, not caring about the friendly and neighboring troops at all. The escape of the 1st Battalion of the US 19th Regiment led to the infiltration of the US 19th Regiment position by the 359th Regiment, and its 2nd Battalion was in danger.
Seeing that the 1st Battalion ran away first, Colonel Mua, the commander of the 19th Regiment of the US Army, was almost mad. But now there was no time to curse these bastards and plug the gap. Moa hastily dispatched 3 Battalions on the north side of Anju to rescue them. However, after Li Linyi, commander of the 359th Regiment, and Ma Shuntian, political commissar, broke through the defense of the 1st Battalion of the US 19th Regiment, they immediately found that the US military defense was empty, and they would definitely dispatch troops to counterattack, and they had already taken precautions against this. So they arranged for the 7th and 9th companies to ambush in advance.
Sure enough, as they expected, a battalion of the 3rd Battalion of the US 19th Regiment was beaten by two companies of ambush troops of the 359th Regiment. This battle created an example of fighting more with less, and more importantly, capturing 4 howitzers for American rescuers. The Yankees were so interesting that the 3rd Battalion, which had lost the battle, reported that they had been ambushed by extremely powerful Chinese troops. After listening to the report, Major General Church, commander of the US 24th Division, was furious, and what an extremely powerful Chinese army came from. Enraged, Church ordered Brigadier General Davis, the deputy commander of the division, to go to Cheongcheon Jiangbei to unify the command of the US 24th Division in Jiangbei, and to form the Davis Detachment with the 3rd Battalion of the US 19th Regiment as the editor-in-chief, directly under the command of Brigadier General Davis.
However, as soon as The Daviste detachment began its offensive, it was hit hard by American-made 105 mm howitzers. Davester's detachment was a little confused for a moment, thinking that it had been mistakenly attacked by its own artillery. Soon they discovered that the guns they had lost had been used by the volunteers, which in turn struck them. This scene made the US military very depressed.
Despite the deputy division commander's personal command, The Davester detachment was never able to rescue the 2nd Battalion of the 19th Regiment. Church was forced to use the division reserve and ordered Colonel Steffans, the commander of the American 21st Regiment, to lead the team forward, and in order to punish the 1st Battalion of the 19th Regiment, Church ordered them to be taken with them. Colonel Steffans was a good hand, who broke with the american convention, crossed the Cheongcheon River in the middle of the night, and counterattacked in the early morning of November 5, also intending to catch the volunteers by surprise. Unfortunately, night combat is the best job of the volunteer army. By the evening of the 5th, the 359th Regiment once again raided the American troops, this time it was the Davester detachment that began to panic, and even the 3rd Engineer Battalion of the US 24th Division was also in a bitter battle, while the 2nd Battalion of the US 19th Regiment was beaten back one after another. According to the Americans themselves: "If any more pressure is put, the whole battalion, and then the whole regiment, will surely fall into a rout." ”
But to the good fortune of the Americans, the Forty Corps suddenly stopped attacking and turned to eliminate without a trace. It turned out that the Thirty-eighth Army of the Volunteer Army had not been able to penetrate as planned, and the opportunity to annihilate the enemy had been lost, so Peng Dehuai ordered the entire line to stop the attack. As a result, the Forty Corps withdrew from the battle and returned to the camp, and the officers and men of the 19th Regiment of the US Army were able to save their lives.
This battle was the second direct contest between the Chinese and American armies, and it was also a typical example of a rare volunteer army fighting one regiment after another in the history of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The 359th Regiment forcibly inserted itself into the strong positions of the American troops, and forcefully divided the American troops into two sections and won the battle. But this is really nothing to the forty army units. What is the Fortieth Army? The whirlwind troops are also, when it is really as fast as the wind, plundering like fire. It should be known that the 359th Regiment is not the main regiment of the Forty Army at all, and the combat effectiveness of other units can be seen.
In the future battles, many Ace Units of the U.S. Army will suffer at the hands of the Forty Army, such as the two strongest Ace Divisions of the U.S. Army, the 2nd Division and the 1st Marine Division. In the second battle that followed, the Forty Army singled out the U.S. First Ace 2nd Division in the Korean Battlefield, causing the U.S. 2nd Division to retreat one after another, and the U.S. Army could not even win a small battle. In the third campaign, the Forty Army encountered the US 24th Division, and as a result, the US army fled in the wind, resulting in the ROK Sixth Division being almost completely annihilated. In the fourth battle of the Hengcheng counterattack, the Forty Army shined again. But it was Koreans, and I didn't even bother to say. Later, the 360th Regiment, the weakest regiment of the Forty Army, singled out a regiment of the US ace Marine 1st Division in Matar, causing the 1st Marine Division to suffer the worst defeat.
Therefore, in terms of offensive power, from the perspective of fighting offensive warfare, the Forty Army is the first place in the volunteer army.