Source: Jun Zhengping Studio, PLA News and Communication Center Rong Media
Author: Let it go
On April 21, 1949, facing the enemy troops huddled on Crouching Tiger Mountain, Li Shuiqing, commander of the 199th Division, fell into hesitation - whether to launch a general attack in advance?
His hesitation was not unreasonable. The "King of Shanxi" Yan Xishan painstakingly built the WohuShan Fortress with dangerous terrain, bunkers and complete fortifications, and was boasted by him as "the head of the fortress" and "the position that could not be breached". Considering that a forced attack on Crouching Tiger Mountain would inevitably cause huge casualties, the Committee of Former Enemies of our army formulated a battle plan for encircling but not fighting and attacking Taiyuan first. The task of the 199th Division led by Li Shuiqing was to compress and encircle Crouching Tiger Mountain.
Crouching Tiger Hill 2 commanding pillar
After the 199th Division besieged Crouching Tiger Mountain, in order to gain the initiative in the war, the division commander Li Shuiqing tentatively sent a platoon. Unexpectedly, this platoon actually occupied a hill without bloodshed, destroyed a division headquarters of the enemy, and captured a division commander and a deputy division commander. The enemy had no idea that our army would move so quickly and was still sleeping with its head covered. After carefully analyzing and weighing the situation on the battlefield, Li Shuiqing and others believed that the Crouching Tiger Mountain Fortress was by no means impregnable, but a "paper tiger" with strong foreign forces.
The fighter planes are fleeting. Is it a momentary decision and a rapid in-depth attack? Or is it to encircle and not fight, and to follow the previous battle plan of the Former Enemy Committee?
There are no small things on the battlefield. The programme set by the Committee of Former Enemies cannot be changed without special circumstances. Of course, Li Shuiqing also knew that if he violated the plan and did not play well, he was bound to be responsible for his own decision-making. He reported to the commander of the corps, Yang Chengwu, that he had made the worst plan, even if he could not take Crouching Tiger Mountain, but at least he was sure to occupy the western district and win the initiative for the subsequent capture of the entire fortress.
Facts have proved that Li Shuiqing's immediate decision was correct. Just a dozen hours later, Yan Xishan shouted that "the fortress that the three armies could not capture for a month" was "pulled out of the tiger's mouth" by the PLA. After the war, the Committee of Former Enemies commended the 199th Division in this general order: "Tactical command can be said to be active, active, mobile, flexible, and an example of grasping the fighter without losing the opportunity." ”
Yang Chengwulian praised: "This battle is well fought! This fighter is well caught! Years later, he still remembers the battle in his memoirs: "Acting with a positive camera is not a simple matter, it requires courage, courage, and courage to dare to take responsibility", "In the rapidly changing battlefield, the favorable fighter is fleeting, and no hesitation or delay is allowed." Letting go of such an opportunity will not bring any harm to the individual, but it will bring great loss to the revolution."
The initiative in war is won because of the courage to take responsibility, and the initiative in history will also be lost because of no responsibility and prevarication.
Guo Rugui, an agent of our party, recalled the stiffness and lack of responsibility of the senior Kuomintang generals and shook his head repeatedly: Due to the underdeveloped communications at that time and the ever-changing situation on the battlefield, although Chiang Kai-shek gave instructions and issued orders based on the reports from the front, the situation had changed, and the commanders of the military divisions, fearing a military judicial trial, sometimes knew that Chiang Kai-shek's instructions were wrong and carried them out. On the contrary, when our army general Chen Geng received the order to "lead the fourth column and the fourth division back to northern Shaanxi," he did not carry it out in an unprincipled manner, but focused on the overall situation, bluntly said to the central authorities that "it is not wise enough to transfer me to cross the Yellow River in the west," and offered "the suggestion of crossing the Yellow River in the south and then inserting a knife in the enemy's chest." The advantages and disadvantages of the two styles have been verified by history.
When carrying out tasks, they are passive and do not take responsibility for inaction, but when the crisis is reached, the generals of the national army will become extremely "flexible and flexible", and in order to retain their strength, they will choose to see the friendly forces and not save them, or even abandon their troops and flee from the battlefield. Qiu Qingquan, commander of the Kuomintang Fifth Army, could sit back and watch the Seventy-fifth Division being besieged and wiped out; when it came to the Battle of Huaihai, when Huang Baitao's troops were about to be crushed by our army and asked for help, he continued to repeat the same trick and did not move, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to shout out "the dismal and bleak military future." During the Liaoshen Campaign, Wei Lihuang, commander-in-chief of the Northeast Suppression Campaign, shouldered defensive duties but fled one after another, "always retreating first, ignoring the life and death of his subordinates," causing the soldiers to complain and the troops to collapse on their own.
Battle of Liaoshen
Chiang Kai-shek once summed up the inaction and inaction of the group of generals of the Nationalist army into eight points: "The first is localism. I know only myself, but I don't know anyone. In peacetime, they rub against each other and attack each other, but on the battlefield, they cannot coordinate and cooperate with each other. The second is the facilitation doctrine. Everything, whether or not they are competent, is first taken care of, and no one is allowed to ask questions, and the result is that they compete for power and profit, and the business is wasted. The third is passivity and shirking responsibility. Everything must be promoted by the superior, and it is impossible to recognize the responsibility and be autonomous. Fourth, when doing things, we cannot prioritize them separately, do not consider them through research, are large and inappropriate, and are shoddy. The fifth is vagueness and generality, not seeking correctness, especially for time, place and numbers, and there is always no correct concept. The sixth is to follow the rules and get by. The seventh is hesitation, wandering but caring. The eighth is subjective arrogance and self-imposed. ”
The movie "After the Decisive Battle" artistically recreates the satirical scene of senior Kuomintang generals discussing the lessons of defeat, which was jokingly called "hanging scientific slag to the answer scene" by netizens. But even so, they are still shirking their responsibilities, and some people "confidently" said: "The Seven Corps was annihilated, what do I have to do with it?" History is also just as a Kuomintang general lamented after reviewing the review: "The party-state does not die, there is no heavenly reason!" ”
Always think long-term and think of danger in times of peace. Inaction and non-responsibility may seem to be a matter of attitude, but in fact it is a political issue and a question of party spirit, and it is a concrete embodiment of formalism and bureaucracy. As early as the Yan'an period, Comrade Mao Zedong painted a splendid portrait of the bureaucrats in the Party, describing them as "silent, blind, three meals, weak limbs, improper facial features, six relatives without dependence, seven tricks, eight sides of the mighty wind, sedentary, very useless," and called on the whole party to get rid of this bad problem.
Today we are in a period of peaceful construction and development, and although we have less blood and fire from the revolutionary struggle, we have more swords and swords on the ideological front. Practice has shown that if party members and cadres do not act or take responsibility, it is easy to expand the non-public risks existing in some events into public risks, and non-political risks to spread into political risks. The eight shortcomings summed up by Chiang Kai-shek should be a lesson for every political party and must not be overlooked.
The most important thing is to be responsible for seeing the wind and bones, and the most important thing is to be able to grasp the historical initiative. At present, the world's unprecedented major changes in a century and the global pandemic of the new crown pneumonia epidemic are intertwined, the external environment is becoming more complex and severe, and the tasks of domestic economic and social development are still arduous and arduous. This requires party members and cadres to dare to take responsibility, take the initiative, not evade difficulties, and do not prevaricate in the face of responsibility, instead of being "mud bodhisattvas" who stick to the rules, are rigid in their thinking, and prevaricate and blame.
President Xi Jinping once stressed: "Officers are responsible for things, which is the responsibility of cadres and the value. The party puts cadres in various posts to make everyone serve as officials, not to be officials and enjoy happiness. There are so many tasks in reform, development, and stability, and we must take responsibility for doing a good job. Responsibility and action are one, inaction is not responsibility, and there must be responsibility. Doing things is always risky. It is precisely because there is a risk that it needs to be taken responsibility. In everything that is beneficial to the party and the people, we must not take refuge in anything, not shirk our responsibilities in righteousness, and do it boldly and resolutely. "How to properly answer the questions of China, the world, the people, and the times, win the initiative in history, and entrust the cause of the party and the people to continue to advance in the right direction?" I believe that every party member and cadre has an answer in his heart.
(Produced by Jun Zhengping Studio and PLA News and Communication Center)