The phrase "Narrow roads meet the brave to win" is a battle slogan of Commander Liu of the Second (Jinji-Hebei Luyu, Central Plains) Field Army, which first occurred in August of the 36th year of the Republic of China (1947) during the battle of Liu Deng's army's thousand-mile leap forward. Although it was no more than 60 meters wide, it could not be waded due to the complexity of the river, and it was on the road to Dabie Mountain, and when the 18th Brigade of Xiao Yongyin (the founding major general), the vanguard of the field army, rushed to the north bank on August 22 to prepare to cross the river, it suddenly heard a strange sound from the other side.
What Xiao Yongyin saw from the telescope were the enemy's black-pressed cars, carriages, and infantry columns, which were the reorganized 85th Division of Wu Shaozhou, a unit of the Central Army, which was ordered to intercept. At this time, the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Field Army had a strong enemy in front of it to block the attack by water, and then there were hundreds of thousands of pursuing troops, of which the three integrated divisions, such as the 48th Division and the 58th Division, which were advancing faster, were only 25 kilometers away from ruhe, and the main force of the field army had indeed reached a dangerous situation.
At the critical moment, Chief Liu Deng personally came to the line of fire, and while ordering the engineers to build a pontoon bridge in the face of enemy artillery fire and aircraft bombardment, he organized the 18th Brigade of the vanguard force to cross the Ru River with a raft to occupy the commanding heights on the opposite bank, and at the same time followed up with the 16th Brigade to block the pursuit of the enemy from the south. Commander Liu, who had finished arranging the offensive task, suddenly raised his voice: "Remember, it is now a narrow road to meet the brave to win!" Be fast, be fierce, understand? The commanders and fighters of the 18th Brigade then shouted slogans, crushed the enemy in front of them and killed a bloody road, covered the main force of the field army to break through the encirclement, chase and interception, and continued to advance in a big stride.
Wu Shaozhou
Wu Shaozhou was later promoted to lieutenant general deputy commander of Huang Wei's Twelfth Corps, and two years later he was defeated and captured in the Battle of Huaihai, and when he was received by Commander Liu, he recalled the Battle of Ruhe: "At that time, the disparity in strength between the two sides was huge, and there was a ruhe blockade, and there were aircraft reconnaissance and strafing in the air, and I wanted to prevent you from crossing Ru, which seemed to be very certain." However, Wu Shaozhou's army (integrated division) numbered tens of thousands of horses, and Len was rushed to the front by a main brigade of the People's Liberation Army.
After Liu Deng's army fought bloodily to break through the ruhe defense line, it rushed straight into the last natural water barrier of Dabie Mountain: the Huai River. In the early morning of August 26, 1947, the 36th year of the Republic of China (1947), the 18th Brigade of the Field Army's forward army arrived at the north bank of the Huai River, which is a famous river in China, with an average water depth of 19 meters during the high water level period from July to October every year. Li Zhen, political commissar of the 18th Brigade, only collected a few medium-sized boats, and the troops crossed the river very slowly.
Commander Liu personally boarded a small boat to measure the depth of the water, studied the possibility of building bridges and wading in vain, and finally found a warrior leading a horse across the river in a piece of water upstream, and immediately ordered the large army to divert the upstream to wade. The hundreds of thousands of troops crowded on the shore were divided into multiple columns, and they successfully crossed the HuaiShui River south along the river, saving time in bridge building and crossing the last difficulty on the southern expedition. When the rearguard troops left the south bank less than five miles away, the first Nationalist motorized pursuit force drove to the north bank.
Chief Nakano group photo
Among the hundreds of thousands of Kuomintang troops who were in hot pursuit, the most bizarre scene on the battlefield occurred: The water surface of the Huai River suddenly soared, and the vanguard of the entire 85Th Division's river crossing was immediately swept away by the rushing water The casualties were so severe that the Kuomintang army could only abandon the construction of another bridge in vain, but it was repeatedly swept away by rapids. The whole thing is not a myth but it is better than a myth, it turned out that the upper reaches of the Huai River suddenly rained heavily, and the big water went down the river, but it blocked the pursuit of more than 30 brigades on the north bank of the Huai River, and Wu Shaozhou and others could only look at the water and sigh.
Even Gu Zhutong, the "commander-in-chief of the army, who had full authority to command the pursuit operation," was half-convinced after receiving the report, he did not believe that there was such a clever thing in the world, and he did not know how to explain it to Chiang Kai-shek sitting in Nanjing. Since then, the people on both sides of the Huai River have had a rumor that Liu Deng's army will eliminate harm for the people and cross the Huai River three feet shallow; Jiang Jun's army will bring calamity to the country and the people, even if they catch up and catch up, they will only end up in the depth of the Huai River.
At that time, the entire 85th Division was only 15 miles away from the Huai River, and if it could quickly cross the river in vain, it would certainly be able to bite our army tightly, and it would still have to endure another bitter battle before entering the Dabie Mountains, which would be very unfavorable to Nakano, who had thrown away his heavy weapons.
Liu Deng's army of six columns of 120,000 men and horses crossed the Huangpan Area, the Vortex River, the Ru River, and the Huai River in succession over a period of 20 days, leapt thousands of miles into the Dabie Mountains to complete the deployment of troops, shocked Nanjing to the east, alarmed Wuhan to the west, forced the enemy to draw troops for the "key offensive" in northern Shaanxi and Shandong to return to reinforcements, and opened the prelude to the strategic counteroffensive of the People's Liberation Army.