In June 1946, the War of Liberation was fought throughout the country, and on November 6, 1948, the Battle of Huaihai was officially launched, and Su Yu, as acting commander and acting political commissar of the Third Field Army, led 600,000 regular troops of the People's Liberation Army to confront the 800,000 soldiers of the Kuomintang army led by Liu Zhi, commander-in-chief of the Xuzhou Bandits.
In the end, China's People's Liberation Army annihilated the Kuomintang army at a cost of 134,000 people and won the victory in the Battle of Huaihai, and the biggest contributor to this battle was not only the commander Su Yu, but also thanks to the support of the broad masses of the people.
In addition, behind the victory in the Huaihai Campaign there is another hero, whose contribution is no less than that of Su Yu, who is the most cattle logistics commander-in-chief of our army - Liu Ruilong.
Born in October 1910, Liu Ruilong was a native of Nantong, Jiangsu Province, and was also an active revolutionary, politician, and military figure in Jiangsu in the early days, and his ability was also one of the best, in January 1929, Liu Ruilong founded the Red 14th Army and led the Red 14th Army to join the early wars, including the Red Army period and the War of Resistance Against Japan.
During the Liberation War, Liu Ruilong was appointed logistics commander and political commissar of the Third Field Army, and since then, he has begun to lead a huge logistics team to solve the worries of the People's Liberation Army of our country.
The ancients said: "The soldiers and horses have not moved, and the grain and grass have gone first." This means that when the two sides are at war, grain and grass are the key to the army's battle, and once the grain and grass are lost, even the strongest troops will face defeat.
More than fifty days before the start of the Huaihai Campaign, Liu Ruilong led the logistics troops to make logistical preparations, and according to statistics, the logisticians at that time were nine times the number of regular combatants, that is, 5.4 million people.
As the commander-in-chief of logistics, Liu Ruilong took the lead in analyzing the situation, the most important thing was the mobilization meeting, the dispatch of personnel to the rear of each combat zone, from the province to the town, Liu Ruilong assigned different logistics personnel to go, the task of these scattered logistics personnel, that is, to concentrate grain in the villages around Xuzhou, the center of the Huaihai Campaign, and finally sent to the front line.
The Huaihai Campaign was mainly centered on Xuzhou, these surrounding provinces and cities are Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, Henan, Xuzhou is like the heart of the human body, and the surrounding cities are burrs, from the surrounding to the center to transport materials to ensure that the PLA can have sufficient logistical supplies, for the victory of the war but worry about the future.
There is a core force in this 5.4 million logistics force, which Liu Ruilong calls the "old migrant worker team", which is a million migrant workers from different provinces, whose main task is to transport materials to the front.
In addition to these millions of migrant workers, the logistics force also joined the old, weak, sick and disabled, and they set up a quartermaster office in the rear, which was the first checkpoint for transporting supplies, and every day the women got up early, made rice into dry food, sewed threads into military shoes and hats, and sent these to the quartermaster office in the form of a cart, through the quartermaster office, and sent to the military station, and then sent to the front line by the civilian workers at the military station.
Liu Ruilong once said that these women put the dry food, clothing and other materials needed by the PLA and their children in the cart, and along the way, in addition to the figures of the women pushing the carts, there were also the children's babbling and talking, and the scene was both spectacular and touching.
In addition, there are logistics corps in this logistics unit, whose task is to be responsible for building roads, bridges and telephone lines, and in most cases, the Kuomintang army will destroy bridges or telephone lines, which requires them to urgently repair these infrastructures and solve the problem of "unable to pass and unable to get through" in the People's Liberation Army.
In October 1948, Liu Ruilong went to East China to participate in the meeting of the Huaye Former Committee and officially began the logistical support work, on November 6, 1948, the Huaihai Campaign was officially launched, and on January 10, 1949, the Huaihai Campaign was extended to Lianyungang in the east, Shangqiu in the west, Lincheng in the north, and Huaihe in the south.
On the Huaihai battlefield, in addition to 600,000 regular troops, there are also local troops, and together there are a million People's Liberation Army, which will consume a large amount of food supplies and ammunition supplies every day.
According to statistics, the Platon On the front line needed three million catties of grain per day, that is, more than a thousand tons of grain, and each delivery was a huge project, and in terms of the productivity at that time, it was difficult to achieve, so it required the mutual cooperation of the surrounding provinces and cities.
Not only that, the transportation is also a big project, the combat site is still safe, the transportation of grain and materials is not so much danger, but the soldiers on the front line are different, facing a rain of bullets and bullets every day, the personnel transporting materials and grain have to go through the artillery fire in the sky to send supplies to the hands of the front-line soldiers.
Liu Ruilong said that in the Huaihai Campaign, the source of grain was in many aspects, including the grain carried by the PLA officers, prepared in the surrounding areas, intercepted by the Kuomintang troops during the campaign, but most importantly, the grain transported by millions of migrant workers.
After the Battle of Huaihai was fought, the masses of the people themselves saved money and used their own grain to the quartermaster office, which was sorted out and handed over to millions of civilian workers, who gave them to the PLA soldiers who were fighting bloody battles on the front line.
They pushed small carts, not afraid of guns and bullets and the smoke of war, transporting materials to the front line, if a person pushing a cart seems extremely monotonous, then the million militia cart is spectacular and grand, which is why posterity said that the Battle of Huaihai was a victory launched by a small cart.
Because of the support of logistical migrant workers and the people, so that the supply is extremely sufficient, our People's Liberation Army has no worries, it fought with enthusiasm, from November 6, 1948 to November 11, 1948, only 5 days, China's People's Liberation Army soldiers will surround the village, in the mill village ready to meet the knife of our people's liberation army Huang Baitao team was also surrounded, becoming a caged bird.
After 21 days, china's People's Liberation Army completely annihilated Huang Baitao's corps, but this was only part of the victory in the battle, and then the Kuomintang army broke up and fled, and the plasters of our People's Liberation Army rose up in pursuit, which led to the expansion of logistics and transportation routes, and the problems also followed.
The PLA officers marched extremely fast, and the logistics and transportation relied on carts and mules and horses, and the speed could not keep up, so there was a huge gap between the front troops and the logistics troops, and a small number of troops no longer had enough food, and three meals became one meal.
Liu Ruilong realized that if he did not hurry to solve the problem, the officers and men of the People's Liberation Army in our country would be unable to attack the Kuomintang army because of the grain problem, so Liu Ruilong urgently added five grain stations, namely Zaozhuang, Hanzhuang, Taierzhuang, Tancheng, and Xin'an Town, and mobilized the surrounding areas to concentrate grain, and millions of militiamen, surrounding people, and medical soldiers on stretchers sent grain to the front.
Not only that, but the Kuomintang destroyed roads and railways before they withdrew, and Liu Ruilong immediately sent a logistics corps to rescue them and ordered the opening of waterways, while fishermen from Hongze Lake, Nanyang Lake, and Huishan Lake spontaneously drove boats to provide support.
With the expansion of the campaign, more and more people joined the millions of migrant workers, the number of millions of migrant workers increased from the initial one million to 1.4 million, and the logistics force also increased by 600,000 ordinary people.
In order to let the PLA soldiers eat well, Liu Ruilong personally went to the local trade department and urgently set up an oil and salt station, and just as Liu Ruilong was preparing for logistics work in an intensive manner, the frontline soldiers lived up to expectations and on November 23, the second phase of the Huaihai Campaign was launched.
On December 4, the PLA soldiers surrounded Qinglongji and Chen Guanzhuang, and on December 15, the Kuomintang Huang Wei troops were annihilated, and after the good news from the front came, Liu Ruilong urgently carried out rectification, after all, as soon as the second phase began, the scale of the campaign would also expand, so Liu Ruilong mobilized another 200,000 militiamen, and increased the number of grain stations, military stations and field hospitals.
Not only that, Liu Ruilong arranged for logistics personnel to repair the roads and railways destroyed by the Kuomintang, and as the campaign continued, the logistics staff could not keep up with the speed of the troops, and even if the materials were sufficient, there was no extra manpower to transport the materials.
Liu Ruilong is caught in a difficult problem, how to increase the manpower of the logistics force? It was then that he saw the Kuomintang prisoners of war, and Liu Ruilong realized that they could act as a logistic unit.
Liu Ruilong immediately educated the prisoners of war, and in order to avoid the prisoners of war being treated as soldiers of the Kuomintang army, Liu Ruilong notified the front line as quickly as possible, and at the same time urgently notified the rear troops, and sent military hats and military shoes as quickly as possible.
It's hard to solve a problem. Another problem also arose: the Kuomintang troops blew up more than 600 bridges while fleeing, and Liu Ruilong personally mobilized troops to repair these bridges regardless of whether his body could eat or not.
On December 1, Xuzhou was liberated, and 55,000 rounds of ammunition, more than 5.2 million bullets, and more than 100,000 kilograms of explosives were captured, which were simply a blessing for the logistics troops, in addition, Liu Ruilong led the logistics troops to use Xuzhou's railway transportation to solve the supply problem for the front line.
On December 16, the third phase of the Huaihai Campaign began, on January 6, 1949, the plasters of the People's Liberation Army won a victory against Du Yuming's troops, and on January 10, 1949, the Huaihai Campaign ended in victory.
According to statistics, during the Battle of Huaihai, the logistics force totaled 5.4 million people, a total of 206,000 stretchers, a total of 880,000 rickshaws, a total of 355,000 short-distance flat loads, a total of more than 13,600 boats, a total of 257 cars, a total of 14.6 million kilograms of ammunition and bullets sent to the front, a total of 900 million kilograms of grain, and a total of 90,000 wounded.
It was precisely this huge logistics force that won the Huaihai Campaign, and the reason why the logistics force was able to guarantee all kinds of materials on the front line was entirely because of the guidance of Liu Ruilong, the "Great General of Grain and Grass.".