Before the outbreak of the Liberation War, the Kuomintang had absolute superiority in strength and equipment, and there was also the support of the Americans behind it. Therefore, old Chiang Kai-shek was full of confidence and boasted that he would end the war in just one year. However, the course of the War of Liberation surprised many people, and it took our army just over three years to wipe out Chiang Kai-shek's more than eight million troops. Affected by this, many people believe that the combat effectiveness of the national army is very poor, and it is simply to send people's heads. But in fact, this is a misunderstanding, the process of the liberation war is very difficult, some of the elite of the national army is also particularly difficult to fight, the most typical example is the Battle of Shaling.
In early February 1946, after occupying Panshan, Tai'an, and Liaozhong, the 22nd Division of the Kuomintang New 6th Army continued to attack the east in an attempt to capture Liaoyang, Anshan, Haicheng and other places. On 11 February, the 66th Regiment of the New 22nd Division (owed 1 battalion) and more than 2,000 men of the division's teaching battalion entered the area east of Panshan in the Shaling area. Shaling is a large village and town with more than 1,000 households in the Western Liaoning Plain, with two streets in the north and south, and the streets are lined with earthen walled grass houses. There are 3 small hills in the north of the village, the road to Yingkou, Haicheng and Panshan in the south of the village, and the iced Liao River in the east.
After the Kuomintang army entered and occupied Shaling, they immediately built fortifications, used traffic ditches to connect civil bunkers, and set up multi-layered deer blocks, barbed wire and other obstacles. The 66th Regiment was stationed in Shaling Village, grasped the commanding heights outside the village, and sent 1 company to Qitaizi, while the division teaching battalion was stationed at Majiadian near Shaling. The commander of the Southern Manchuria Military Region, seeing that the enemy army was alone and deep, decided to concentrate his superior forces to encircle and annihilate the enemy, and gave the task of annihilating the enemy to Wu Kehua's 4th Column. At this time, the 4th Column was less than 3 months old, and it had never fought with an ace unit like the New Sixth Army before.
In order to fight this battle, Wu Kehua mobilized 7 regiments to participate in the battle, of which 5 regiments were responsible for attacking and the other 2 regiments were responsible for reinforcements. At about 17:00 on 16 February, the attacking forces entered their intended positions. The artillery fire of the 4th Column began to bombard enemy targets, but due to the low accuracy of shooting, the damage to enemy positions was very limited. After the shelling, the 28th Regiment, which was the main attacker, launched a fierce attack in the south direction of Shaling Village in an attempt to open a breakthrough from here.
Unexpectedly, the enemy's resistance was very tenacious, and the firepower was particularly fierce, and the first and third battalions of the 28th Regiment took turns to attack, not only failed to break through the enemy's position, but also suffered a lot of casualties, so they had to withdraw. The New 6th Army was expanded from the 22nd Division of the New 1st Army, participated in the Indo-Burmese operations, accumulated rich experience in regular warfare and mountain warfare, and was one of the five main forces of the Nationalist Army. The 66th Regiment is also the main force of the 22nd Division, not only all the American weapons and equipment, but also the majority of veterans, so the combat effectiveness is particularly strong. In the next two days, Wu Kehua changed the deployment several times, and the attacking troops also once invaded the village and fought with the enemy house by house, but in the face of the enemy's huge firepower superiority, they could not hold the vested positions and were forced to withdraw.
In the early morning of the 19th, reinforcements from the enemy's 22nd Division rushed from Panshan to reinforce, and Wu Kehua saw the situation and led his troops to withdraw from the battle on their own initiative. In the three-day Battle of Shaling, the 4 columns killed and wounded a total of 674 enemy troops, but they also paid the price of 2157 casualties. The Battle of Sand Ridge was a defeat for the 4th Column, and it was also the beginning of the 4th Column's march to glory. Nine months later, the 4th Column completely annihilated the Nationalist American-equipped 25th Division (Qianliju Division) in Xinkailing, capturing division commander Li Zhengyi alive.