The fierce company commander of the Kuomintang army lamented the Battle of Huaihai: Heavenly Fall of the Nationalist Army, Heavenly Fall of the Nationalist Army!

The Battle of Huaihai began on November 6, 1948, and ended on January 10, 1949, with a force of 600,000 troops, defeated 800,000 strong enemies of the Nationalist army, which can be called a major miracle in the history of human warfare.

It is said that in the Huaihai Campaign, the PLA could not compete with the Nationalist army in terms of the number of soldiers, weapons and equipment, logistics support, army combat skills and other war elements, and was the inferior side in the operation. However, in the battle, the People's Liberation Army was able to turn the inferior into the superior and win a complete victory. In addition to being amazed, he suddenly explored the idea of the root.

So, with puzzlement, I asked my father.

His father was a witness to the Battle of Huaihai.

When the Battle of Huaihai began, my father was studying at the National Xuzhou Normal School. On November 30, 1948, Du Yuming, deputy commander of Xuzhou's "Suppression General", abandoned Xuzhou and led 300,000 defenders to retreat west, and my father was coerced into the Qiu Qingquan Corps as a porter. His father fled west with the Qiu Corps along the Xiao (County) Yong (Cheng) route, and when he reached the area around Zhangzhuangzhai, Qinglongji, Li Shilin, and Chen Guanzhuang on the xiaoyong border, he was surrounded by the People's Liberation Army and reached the Jedi where there was nowhere to escape. My father lived in the Nationalist army for more than 40 days, and did not return home until January 11, 1949.

According to his father, the fundamental reason for the failure of the Nationalist army in the Battle of Huaihai was the loss of "people" and people.

My father said that as a scholar, he used to be suspicious of the various evil deeds of the national army in the society. Only when he was on the way west with the Nationalist army as a porter did he truly understand the appropriateness of the common people calling the Kuomintang a "scraping party" and the Central Army a "devastated army."

The Nationalist army that coerced his father as a porter was the Fifth Army, the ace army of the Kuomintang. Father said that the fifth army's actions on the way to the west were worse than the bandits, and the villages they passed through were all looted, looted grain, pulled livestock, and forced the common people to take out the hidden money with guns, and shot them if they did not take it or did not have it; what is more, some junior officers and soldiers also took advantage of their short rest time to rape women.

At first, my father did not understand the behavior of the generals of the nationalist army not to stop the soldiers from harming the people, thinking that it was too stupid for them to indulge their men to rob and slaughter the people, and that they were digging their own graves. When the nationalist and communist armies fought, my father understood that the reason why the generals of the nationalist army indulged the soldiers to harm the people was to let the soldiers taste the sweetness of war and obtain the material benefits that could be seen, touched, and enjoyed, so that they would die for their lives and serve as cannon fodder. The practice of exchanging the hearts and minds of the generals of the Nationalist army for the hearts of the army is undoubtedly drinking and quenching thirst, which is extremely stupid and the root of failure.

The nationalist army robbed along the way, and the burden of the porter became heavier and heavier, and of course the walk was much slower. But as long as the porter is slightly slow, the nationalist army will smoke with a tree strip and hit the butt of the gun. The porter carried the weight forward, was beaten and scolded, and ate badly, and wanted to escape when he saw the opportunity. In fact, there is no escape, as long as the porter runs, the nationalist army will shoot and kill. His father was less than 16 years old at the time, slightly fat, and rarely participated in production and labor, and his physical strength and endurance were not suitable for being a porter. Therefore, my father was beaten and scolded the most on the westbound road. By the time he reached the territory of Xiao County, his father was exhausted, and even the nationalist troops who were guarding him could not walk away from the gunshots and strips. Just as the rushing Nationalist army was cursing and beating my father, a military jeep carrying officers and family members stopped, and a school-like officer stepped out of the car, stopped the soldiers from scolding his father, and took him to the car.

After getting on the bus, his father learned that he was asked to get on the bus by an officer from the Operations Department of the Forty-fifth Division of the Fifth Army of the Nationalist Army, and that his wife had just given birth and was weak, and that she could not take care of the servants, and that the newborn baby boy was in urgent need of support. However, when they evacuated Xuzhou, they were worried that it would be a burden to take the servants to the west, so they sent the servants away. The officer's wife, seeing my father Mei Qingmeixiu and a student, asked her husband to come to my father, take care of her with the car, and hold the child for her.

On the night of December 1, when the 45th Division withdrew west to the area of Xiangshan Temple in Zulaolou District, southwest of Xiao County, it was picked up by the main force of Huaye, which was pursuing, and the two sides exchanged fire. The fighting was fierce and the PLA's shells and bullets took care of the officers' families around the thatched huts where their families lived. The battle entered a state of stalemate, and the officer of the operations department saw that there was no hope of retreating west, so he withdrew to the lady's side and discussed with the lady that he wanted to send the child to escape. At first, the lady disagreed until her death, and cried and begged the officer, saying, "Even if the whole family dies, they will die together, and if they can escape, they will flee to one place." But the officer disagreed, choking and persuading his wife that the child with him might be killed by a stray bullet, and the other was a burden and inconvenient to escape; if he gave it away, he might be able to save his life. The lady also saw the danger of the situation and acquiesced to her husband's decision. She learned that my father was a native of Xiao County on the way to the west, and after more than a day of getting along, she felt that he was loyal and honest, and he had a sense of justice, so she took my father's hand and knelt down and begged: "Little brother, I know that you are a good person, please send your child to a good family and let him live; if the child can live, I will definitely repay you as a cow and a horse in the next life." After saying that, she wrapped the child well, put a gold longevity lock on the child, and then took off her hand ornaments, pendants, etc. and put them in the quilt of the child, kissed the child's face, covered her face and waved my hand to let my father take the child away.

The officer called for two personal guards, disguised themselves as farmers, and accompanied the father to give the child away.

Held hostage by two guards, my father walked toward the southeast of the Xiangshan Temple, where the sound of gunfire was sparse. The fighting was fierce that night, and the people of the villages around the battlefield either fled to avoid the battle or closed the door. The father and his party carried their children to three or four villages, knocked on the doors of more than 30 peasant households, and found no people who were willing to open the door to accept them. At dawn, when they came to the mouth of a village about 10 miles from the battlefield, the two guards refused to enter the village. They forcibly abandoned the child on the side of the road at the entrance of the village, and removed the golden lock from the child's neck, and took away the gold and silver hand ornaments, pendants and other valuable items on the child's body.

When the father persuaded them to flee, they did not listen; the father wanted to go home, and they did not allow it, and escorted the father back the same way. However, when the father and they arrived at the Nationalist position, the two guards prevented the father from meeting the officer couple who had given the child away, but instead sent the father to the company headquarters of a combat company and handed it over to the company commander for use.

Later, my father speculated about the reason why the two guards would not let him return home, one may be afraid that his father would betray them and lead the People's Liberation Army or local militia to arrest them; the other was that they were outsiders, afraid of encountering the People's Liberation Army or local militia on the way back, and the local people who had the appearance of their father as a student were together, and they could see the People's Liberation Army or the militia together. The reason for not allowing the father to see the officer couple was the fear that the father would tell the truth.

After a night and a half of fierce fighting between the Nationalist Army and the People's Liberation Army in the area of Xiangshan Temple, the Nationalist Forty-fifth Division gradually felt overwhelmed and fell into a situation where the whole army was destroyed, so it asked the Corps Headquarters for help. On the night of December 2, reinforcements rushed to the position of the Forty-fifth Division, and after a night-long battle with the People's Liberation Army, the Forty-fifth Division was able to flee west.

Father said that after he was sent by two guards to a combat company in the Forty-fifth Division, the company commander arranged for him to deliver bullets to the forward positions. Because my father had walked all night, he was physically and mentally exhausted, and his father's own strength was weak, and he could not carry the heavy bullet box at all. Several times in a row, my father did not carry the ammunition box on his shoulder, so he carried the bullet box with both hands to the position. Helplessly, my father's strength was too weak, so he staggered forward a few steps and fell to the ground. The company commander saw that his father really could not carry the bullet box, nor was he the material for heavy work and rough work, nor did he embarrass his father, and after scolding a foul word to vent his dissatisfaction, he arranged for his father to do chores in the company department.

After escaping from the Xiangshan Temple battlefield, the 45th Division of the Nationalist Army withdrew westward while fighting, and only retreated west to the area of Chen Guanzhuang in Yongcheng County on about December 4 to join the main force of the corps. However, at this time, the Forty-fifth Division, together with the main force of the Corps, was again surrounded by the Platon Regiment.

My father later recalled that he was killed by stray bullets from the People's Liberation Army on the way to the west, and the company commander arranged for my father to take over the clerical work and receive copied documents and orders in the company headquarters.

The Forty-fifth Division was besieged by the People's Liberation Army for nearly 40 days in the area of Chen Guanzhuang, but when they abandoned Xuzhou, in order to quickly escape, each person was limited to 7 days of dry food, although they retreated to the west, grabbed grain along the way, and forcibly pulled livestock, but it was not enough to eat for nearly 40 days. So, when they were besieged for a few days, they ran out of food and cooking.

After the nationalist army ran out of grain, in order to fill its stomach, it had to compete with the ordinary people in the occupied areas for grain and food. The various units of the Nationalist Army sent elite soldiers to wander the villages and towns around Chen Guanzhuang to grab grain, grab food, and search for all the food that could be imported. When the people's food was looted, they slaughtered the mules and horses in the ranks who pulled cannons, the war horses of officers and cavalry, and the cattle and donkeys that snatched military supplies from the villages along the way to feed them. When the cattle are slaughtered, they eat elm bark, thatch roots, and even the dried radish and sweet potato stalks that the people's homes have stored for feeding cattle and sheep. In short, the nationalist army was really hungry to the point of starvation, and everything that could fill the hunger, whether it could be imported or could not be imported, was scrambling to eat. In order to alleviate the crisis of the Nationalist army's food shortage, the Nationalist government in Nanjing sent planes to airdrop food in the Chenguanzhuang area every day. However, due to the narrow position of the Nationalist army, most of the food projected by the air fell on the positions of the People's Liberation Army, and only a small part of the food fell on the positions of the Nationalist army. Due to the scarcity of food, the Nationalist army often fought for food, and even gun battles.

In the Battle of Huaihai, in addition to not occupying "people", the Nationalist army did not occupy "heaven and time" and "geographical advantages". As if the sky were about to wipe out the nationalist army, the winter of 1948 was particularly cold and severe. As soon as the season entered December, the cold wave struck, the temperature plummeted, the north wind blew all day long, and the snow began to rise. Under such bad weather, the soldiers of the Nationalist army who held their positions were hungry and cold, lying on the ice and covering the snow, and freezing to death and starving to death. The positions of the nationalist army were all in the plain area, there was no danger to defend, and even the trenches dug in a hurry could not cover the body, which was not conducive to the soldiers' combat.

The People's Liberation Army and the Nationalist army attacked and defended the two sides of the Xiaoyong border for nearly 40 days, the PLA surrounded but did not attack, the Nationalist army defended but did not flee, blindly holding on to help. At this time, if the battlefield scene of "Chu Han descended the battlefield" reappeared, the nationalist army fell into the "ten-sided ambush" like the Chu army of that year, and "Chu Ge" was "Chu Song" on all sides day and night.

This "Chu Ge" is the psychological warfare launched by the People's Liberation Army. When the Nationalist army was in the midst of hunger and cold, there was no hope of breaking through, and there was no shadow for reinforcements, the People's Liberation Army took the form of distributing leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts to carry out the attack on the heart in an orderly and hierarchical manner. First, he shouted to the top brass of the Nationalist army, and through the large horn and hand-rolled tin horn driven by the hand-cranked generator, he took turns to read to the nationalist positions day and night the "Letter of Urging Du Yuming and Others to Surrender", and advised Du Yuming, Qiu Qingquan, and others to "cherish the mood of their subordinates and their families, cherish their lives, and stop calling them to make senseless sacrifices." The content of the propaganda was mainly to analyze the battlefield situation in which the Nationalist army could not escape with its wings, the injustice of the civil war, the treatment of uprising and surrender, the preferential treatment of prisoners, and the festive incident in which the poor people in the Liberated Areas turned over and divided their houses and land. The People's Liberation Army also often asked the officers and men of the uprising to surrender in front of the battle, and the captured nationalist troops appeared to speak, turning over the peasants to publicize the light of the liberated areas, so as to disintegrate the will to fight of the nationalist army.

According to my father's recollection, under the powerful political offensive of the People's Liberation Army, the company commander who asked him to do the clerical work for the company had long since lost the courage, fierceness, and fierceness he had when he first saw himself on the battlefield of Xiangshan Temple, and instead of that, he was full of frustration and helplessness, and often said to himself: "Heavenly Death National Army, Heavenly Death National Army!" One night, he said to his father with a heavy heart: "It seems that the national army is doomed this time, and I really don't know if I can escape this disaster!" There are still high-ranking parents, wives and children in the family who want me to support them! His father took the opportunity to persuade him to lead his troops to revolt and run to the light. He shook his head repeatedly; "This can never be done, first, because the chief is in danger, and now betraying the chief is unkind and unjust; second, since the beginning of the civil war, I have fought with the PLA on the battlefield many times, my hands are stained with the blood of the PLA, and the Communist Party propaganda does not remember revenge. Then he added: "I hated myself for not dying on the battlefield of the War of Resistance Against Japan, when I was still a national hero; second, I hated myself for not being able to see through the situation, and at the end of the War of Resistance, I did not disarm and return to the field." I am ashamed of my parents, ashamed of my wife and children! ”

My father recalled: "The company commander of the Nationalist army was surnamed Wang, a Cantonese, and his name I forgot. All I know is that he told me that he was also from a poor peasant background, with 6 brothers and sisters, two old people alive, and a wife and two sons in the rural hometown of Guangdong. In 1938, he joined the Nationalist Army, fought with the Japanese with real swords and guns on the anti-Japanese battlefield, died nine times, and was promoted step by step to the company commander of the Nationalist Reinforcement Company by virtue of his military achievements. ”

On January 5, 1949, as if he had a premonition that the People's Liberation Army was about to launch an attack, the commander of the Nationalist Army Wang Company called my father to him and said, "Little brother, the great war is imminent, the guns are blind, you run home." With that, he assigned two soldiers to send my father to the position of the Foreign Army.

My father lived in fear in the ranks of the nationalist army for nearly 40 days, starving, not to mention, not to mention, he had not yet taken a bath, changed his clothes, slept with his clothes every day, and his whole body was full of lice.

On the way to the PLA position, my father was hit by stray bullets several times, but fortunately the bullet point was on the edge of the cotton robe that my father was wearing. Due to my father's malnutrition and lack of walking, although he left the nationalist position in the morning, he did not walk more than 40 miles until dark, stumbled to Renzhuang near Zhangzhuangzhai on the boundary of Xiao County, found the home of a classmate surnamed Ren who was studying with Xuzhou Normal School, rested for 4 days, recovered some strength, asked for some walking coils and food from his classmates' homes, and it took nearly 2 days to walk back to his home in Xiao County, nearly 100 miles away from Renzhuang.

After the victory in the Battle of Huaihai, my father analyzed the reasons why the Forty-fifth Division of the Nationalist Army was besieged by the People's Liberation Army in the Chenguanzhuang area for nearly 40 days, and most of the officers and men, in the absence of ammunition and food, still clinging to the aid, fighting with trapped beasts, and achieving the reasons for starving to death and not fleeing and not surrendering in battle: First, the nationalist soldiers believed that reinforcements would inevitably come to break the siege soon; second, they had illusions about the Nationalist government in Nanjing and felt that they would not perish; third, they felt that they had fought too many battles with the PLA, shot and killed so many PLA officers and men on the battlefield, and surrendered to the ranks of the PLA. It is also a different kind, and there is no future to speak of; the fourth is to cherish love and righteousness, and not to bear to abandon comrades who have fought side by side for many years and betray their commanders in danger. In addition to this idea, the junior officers of the Nationalist Army also believed that their superiors had discovered their Bole and had the grace of cultivating and promoting themselves, and that if they betrayed the commanders when they were in adversity, it would be unkind and unjust. Senior generals have faith on the one hand, and they think it is a shame to be a second subject.