At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in 1955, when the whole army conferred the rank of the whole army, according to the "Instructions on the Work of Assessing Military Ranks" issued by the Central Military Commission, when awarding officers' ranks, they generally should not be higher than the establishment ranks, but they could be lower than the establishment ranks of one to two levels, and stipulated that the level of the main division, most of them were rated as colonels. Therefore, among the division commanders and division political commissars who were in service at that time, only a few single digits were awarded the rank of major general. One of them was Cai Changyuan, a division commander who had made a name for himself in the War of Liberation and the Two Battles of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
Cai Changyuan, a native of Cai Village, Liuchiping (present-day Liuchi Township), Xuanhan County, Sichuan, whose father died early. When he was 11 years old, he had to carry firewood to the city to sell to support his mother and 7-year-old nephew. No one in the village could read, and the clan chose Cai Changyuan to read for a few years so that he could write the ancestor worship texts.
In 1933, the Eastern Sichuan Guerrilla Army (later the 33rd Army of the Red 4th Front) opened Xuanhan City, he was very afraid, he took his old mother and nephew to the mountains to hide, and later found that the Red Army was a team to help the poor, so he took the initiative to join the Red Army's transport team, helped the Red Army to carry rice, salt and cloth and other items to the front line, and joined the Red Army team.
Subsequently, he became a correspondent of the 79th Regiment of the 27th Division of the 9th Army of the 4th Red Front, a communication squad leader, a propaganda captain, a company instructor, a youth officer of the Regiment's Political Department and the secretary of the General Branch of the Communist Youth League. Under difficult conditions, he was not afraid of hardships and sacrifices, and successively participated in the anti-"Six-Way Siege" and the attacks on PingliangCheng, Luowen Town, Baocheng, Jiangyou, Lianghekou, Jiajinshan, Daofu, Gulang, and Meijiayingzi. He was determined, heroic and tenacious, and successfully completed the tasks entrusted by the organization.
In October 1936, Cai Changyuan, the company instructor, crossed the Yellow River with the Red 9th Army and moved to the Hexi Corridor, where the 27th Division was defeated in the Battle of Gulang, and then besieged by the Majia Army at Nijiayingzi, thousands of people were left with only a few hundred people to break out, followed by a heavy setback at Liyuankou, the troops began to disperse the breakthrough, Cai Changyuan was then the guard of Wu Xianen, the head of the Army Supply Department (later awarded the rank of lieutenant general), he and Wu Xian'en broke through, hid in Qilian Mountain for three months, living a savage life. Later, the two men went out of the mountain, walked day and night, begged along the way, and were scattered by the enemy in Liangzhou.
Subsequently, Cai Changyuan hid in Qilian Mountain for three months, living the life of a savage, walking day and night, begging along the way, asking for more than six months of food, and finally defecting to Deng Baoshan's department, after hearing the news of our army, the next morning under the pretext of carrying a gun for several veterans, he deliberately fell behind, and finally found the 358th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army with a gun, ending a long year of pain. Soon, he was sent to Yan'an To resist the University of Resistance. After graduating in 1938, he was assigned to the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region as the chief of the Youth Section of the Organization Department.
In the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cai Changyuan led this youth commando team to gallop across the anti-Japanese battlefield, because of his bravery and good fighting, he made battle merits, and in the later stages of the Liberation War, he was promoted to the commander of the 189th Division of the 63rd Army of the First Field Army.
Immediately after, the Lanzhou Campaign was fought, and the enemy entrenched in the city was the main force of the Majia Army that besieged the Western Route Army 13 years ago, Cai Changyuan took the initiative to ask for battle, and led two regiments to run 320 kilometers in two days and one night, successfully occupying the enemy position. At this time, the Majia Army threw in three times the strength of our side, plus two cavalry regiments, and launched a wave impact on our army's positions, and the famous Battle of Doujiashan was launched.
The night before entering the fierce battle, Cai Changyuan said with tears at the mobilization meeting attended by all officers and men: "I have to avenge the brothers who died in the Western Route Army." Saying that he bit his finger and wrote five big characters on his white northern heart, "Blood Debt must be repaid in blood", the morale of the troops was greatly boosted and they were invincible.
More than a year later, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea began, cai Changyuan led the 189th division into the Korean war, at that time, the fifth battle of our army was fought very fiercely, Cai Changyuan's combat task was to cover the transfer of the main volunteer army troops, block the attack of the US army, this war history is called "Tieyuan Blockade Battle".
At that time, the division led by Choa Chang-won had a total of more than 14,000 troops, while the United Nations Army was composed of the US 1st Cavalry Division, the 3rd Division, the 24th Division, the 25th Division, the Canadian Brigade, and the South Korean 1st Division, the 9th Division, and the First Marine Regiment, totaling more than 90,000 people. The total number of people is not comparable just by comparison.
In addition, the United Nations army has aircraft bombardment indiscriminately, there are more than 1300 guns of various types, more than 180 tanks. Cai Changyuan's 189th Division, on the other hand, was mostly light infantry, heavily equipped with only divisional artillery regiments, and most of the guns were destroyed by the U.S. army, leaving only a few dozen guns that could be used. Compared with the comprehensive strength, the 189th Division and the United Nations Army are simply not comparable.
Nevertheless, in the face of a strong enemy, Cai Changyuan procured the "nail tactic" of reducing the whole division into more than 200 units, scattered to various places on the battlefield, so that the enemy's artillery could not find the key direction to bomb. He sent deputy regimental-level cadres to battalions, and so on, ensuring that the scattered units could also implement the tactics from top to bottom. In this way, the US military has no focus of attack, cannot eliminate the opponent with one blow, and can only fall into a time-consuming and labor-intensive "nail-pulling" battle. After 3 days and 3 nights of bitter fighting, the SUPERIOR number of AMERICAN troops plus crushing equipment could only look at Tieyuan City in a hurry.
This battle was fought very fiercely, and when some positions were lost, there were constantly soldiers jumping off cliffs or pulling glorious bullets on their bodies to die with the enemy troops, and even the chief officer of the level of Cai Changyuan's division commander had raised his gun to the front line more than a dozen times. During the battle, Cai Changyuan was injured in the foot, and shrapnel was embedded in the body without this post-war. But the Iron Plains Blockade Battle is called a classic.
The number one ace of the Majia Army, which completely annihilated the city, numbered thousands, and the Tieyuan Blockade Battle, although Cai Changyuan, who had always been the commander of the division, made great military achievements and was awarded the rank of major general in 1955.