"They're all young lads, they don't come down when they go up." A veteran who participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea said this sentence to the camera with tears in his eyes.
Exactly thirteen days!
The Tieyuan Blockade Battle successfully prevented the indiscriminate bombardment of more than 50,000 US troops.
The Sixty-third Army of the Nineteenth Corps successfully completed the task entrusted to them by General Peng at the cost of losing two-thirds of its strength.
When the Sixty-third Army was torn from its position
Some soldiers are already full of clothes
Instead, it became a strip of cloth. There was even a soldier left with only a pair of pants stained with blood and smoke.
The picture reflects the painting of the Tieyuan Blockade Battle
General Manager Peng came to visit Fu Chongbi, commander of the Sixty-third Army, who had suffered heavy casualties, and General Manager Peng grabbed his hand with tears in his eyes and asked him what he wanted, and Fu Chongbi, who had just woken up from a seriously injured coma, raised his head and said:
"I want soldiers."
Mr. Peng immediately promised:
"I'll make up twenty thousand people for you."
Iron Plains was a vital core stronghold for both the Volunteer Army and the U.S. Army. In the later stage of the fifth campaign launched by General Peng, due to the tight logistical supply of the volunteer army going deep behind the enemy lines, the US army had already thoroughly explored the advantages and disadvantages of the volunteer army, and magnetic tactics played a role.
Volunteers retreating from the front
It was necessary to regroup in the area north of the Iron Plains
Only in this way can we form a confrontation with the US military again.
And
On the back of the Iron Plains-Lianchuan line is the Volunteer Army
Material storage base
。
The 444th Regiment of the 148th Division of the 50th Army of the Volunteer Army was ordered to block the enemy, and after the bullets ran out, the soldiers could only hit the enemy with stones, how tragic
Once the Iron Plains were lost, not only did the poor volunteer army regain its combat effectiveness in a short period of time because it could not be rested.
Moreover, because of the difficulties of logistical support, if the supply of the volunteer army could not keep up with the hundreds of thousands of troops, it would all collapse. On the back of the Iron Plains there is also the command system of the party, government, and military leaders of the Volunteer Army.
It was there that Boss Peng commanded the battle
The U.S. army's mechanized division only needs the most
One to two days
You can kill In front of Mr. Peng,
The premise is to break through the Iron Plains position.
Because the back of the Iron Plains was a large plain, it would be difficult for the U.S. army to drive them away if they broke into it. The advantage of tanks is that they can be quickly interspersed, and the travel speed of a tank regiment can be more than fifty kilometers a day.
Pictured: Mechanized units of the U.S. Military in the Korean War
General Manager Peng personally sent a telegram to Fu Chongbi, commander of the Sixty-third Army, and repeatedly called directly with the Sixty-third Army to understand the situation on the front line.
General Peng gave them a death order to defend the tieyuan line at any cost, even if all the troops were defeated.
Although the commander of the Sixty-third Army expressed all kinds of difficulties, he still firmly expressed his mission
The Sixty-third Army had the 189th Division, the 188th Division and the 187th Division. The 189th Division was deployed on the southwest side of Tieyuan, the 187th Division was deployed on the southeast side of Tieyuan, and the 188th Division was defended on the north side of Tieyuan, forming a glyph to respond to each other.
A total of 25 km of defensive front, 20 km of defense depth. The rapid maneuverability of the US military was fully demonstrated when the battle began,
It was completely unexpected by the Volunteers
Pictured the volunteer army's blocking position in Cheyuan
The Americans had already reached the front of their positions before the Sixty-third Army was fully deployed.
It was not that the Sixty-third Army was slow to move, but that the entire Volunteer Army thought it had returned from victory at the end of the Fifth Campaign.
The mood of victory led them to mistakenly believe that the enemy would not organize an effective counterattack.
So the troops that blocked the enemy paid a huge price. Originally, it was thought that the US army, which was gradually defeated in the attack, was afraid of the attack of the volunteer army, but it did not expect that the US army deliberately let the volunteer army cut off their food and ammunition after going deep into the depths.
This trick was learned from the volunteer army to "avoid its sharp edge",
Let the U.S. military retreat to safety without paying too much.
After waiting for the trend of the volunteer army's "seven-day offensive" to gradually weaken, it then went all out to insert itself into the rear of the volunteer army to block the retreat route and the supply line, so that the volunteer army that ran out of ammunition and food suffered a lot of losses.
The Volunteer Army launched a strenuous defensive operation in Tieyuan
The Sixty-third Army also hastily retreated from the battlefield to the Tieyuan front before the attack had stopped
。 The Americans, combined with powerful firepower, frantically launched an attack on the 189th Division.
How fierce is the U.S. offensive?
Van Vleet, which consumes more than 4,500 tons of ammunition per hour, appears frequently in American newspapers.
The U.S. Congress also has doubts, is it really needed so much ammunition?
The hill occupied by the 189th Division, "Seed Mountain", became a place where the two armies repeatedly clashed. In an instant, it became a hellish battlefield.
A division was beaten and the strength of a regiment was also beaten, and due to serious attrition, only the division commander could be changed to regimental commander, regimental commander to battalion commander, and battalion commander to company commander.
Only one warrior left to fight was left with the seeds
The angry commander Fu Chongbi ordered the reorganization of forces to take back the position of Seed Mountain.
Pictured: Cai Changyuan, commander of the 189th Division, an iron-blooded general who looked slightly weak
At that time, the strongest firepower of a division of the Volunteer Army, which lacked heavy weapons, was dozens of mountain guns and mortars. But the U.S. army's smallest caliber howitzer is also 105 calibers.
A mountain head was knocked to the top of the mountain in a few days. The front-line reporter who had taken a picture of the Sixty-third Army pointed to the young volunteer soldiers in the photo and said tearfully:
"Not one came back, not one came back."
The 189th Division, which had fewer troops, struggled to hold out its position for two days, and finally the commander decided to abandon Seed Mountain and re-deploy at two strategic points near the 188th Division's positions to the north, Gaotai Mountain and Jinhe Mountain.
According to Ma Zhaomin, commander of the 563rd Regiment of the 188th Division, he recalled:
On the battlefield, a very cruel strategy and tactics had to be used - to save the majority and sacrifice the minority.
This was the cruelest life-and-death decision of his life, and everyone was a comrade-in-arms who worked together day and night. It can be said that they are brothers and sisters, born into death in the same way, who should be allowed to "lead the death" first?
The scene of the explosion of American artillery shells on the Tieyuan position was recorded by the photographer
The 30-year-old Ma Zhaomin has always been a good leader on the battlefield, although he has a big temper but his flexible brain often has unexpected thoughts.
The 563rd Regiment entered the Gaotaishan position ahead of schedule, which was the suggestion of Cai Changyuan, commander of the 189th Division. The 189th Division, which had been beaten and suffered heavy losses, predicted that it would not be able to withstand much time.
So the 63rd Army asked the army to block the second line of defense behind it.
Commander Cai's judgment was correct, and in the face of indiscriminate bombardment by the American army, the volunteer positions were quickly razed to the ground. It was difficult for the undefended volunteers to hold out their positions without heavy weapons support.
Even supporting them will not help.
The 189th Division had only one regiment of troops left, and many of the battalions had been depleted. The U.S. Eighth Army pressed forward under the urging of VanVleet, but it did not meet expectations.
The F-84 jet fighter of the U.S. Air Force's 474th Fighter-Bomber Wing, loaded with bombs, is heading for Iron Plains
Annoyed, VanVleet called the front line over and over again to ask them to speed up their offensive and not to give the volunteers a chance to breathe.
But no matter how ferocious the U.S. military is in nearly 250 rounds of attacks per day,
They couldn't beat just the sporadic volunteer soldiers who seemed to be hidden by magic.
Once the indiscriminate bombardment was over, the UN troops rushing to the positions would always encounter fierce resistance, and the UN troops would also suffer heavy losses in the attack.
Increasingly impatient, the UN forces increased the intensity of their attack with great ferocity, and the seven-day bloody battle almost completely swallowed up the 189th Division.
Figure丨 Volunteer Army position
Fu Chongbi could only order the 563rd Regiment to take over the defense in advance. The 563rd Regiment was a unit that was very good at fighting guerrillas. But when the 563rd Regiment took up the defense,
The soldiers of the whole regiment had not received a single grain or ammunition for seven days and seven nights
South Korean general Baek Sun-yeol once recorded in his memoirs the logistical supply capabilities of the two armies:
The supply of the US military is divided into three levels of ABC
Class A refers to Western food, including steak, that provides an adequate supplement of protein and energy.
Class B is hot sausages and other hot foods that digest well in the body without causing problems such as inflammation of the digestive tract.
Class C is canned and other convenient field foods, such as compressed biscuits, which, although not good-tasting, are sufficient to provide a considerable supply of calories and protein, and are easy to carry.
The Rok army can also eat enough rice
, you can also eat
Seafood such as seaweed squid and kimchi from Japan are also flown in
Pictured: U.S. soldiers eat chicken legs between battles
Chinese the military food of the People's Volunteer Army is fried sorghum rice, millet, soybeans and so on. Although it is easy to store, it contains much less of the various nutrients that the body needs, such as calories and protein.
But even this basic ration is not guaranteed on the front line of the Iron Plains.
Logistics often need to take great risks in order to resupply food to the position, and the enemy's reconnaissance aircraft and long-range artillery will mercilessly fire deadly ammunition at them once they find the supporting supply squads.
So most of the time the troops on the position can only starve and wait. Coupled with wave after wave of enemy attacks, they could not sleep all night. It was in this environment that the sleepy and hungry volunteer soldiers fought the enemy.
In the Battle of Shangganling, volunteer soldiers braved the rain of bullets and bullets to crawl to deliver ammunition
The 563rd Regiment faced the Gaotaishan position with a large number of open areas in front of it, which facilitated the large-scale firepower of the American army. Tanks, self-propelled guns can be freely interspersed in this open field.
On Gaotai Mountain, there are wide blocking positions, which are easy to attack and difficult to defend. To the south there are two highlands, one of which is 233 Heights, which is guarded by a squad of 8 companies of the 563rd Regiment.
The enemy used more than a dozen tanks and four aircraft to attack the three sides of the position in turn. The enemy's ground forces increased to a battalion and launched an assault on this high ground, and in the face of a powerful offensive our volunteers organized six counterattacks in a few hours.
An entire company ended up hitting only 12 people
。 The 82 mortars of the 563rd Regiment of the Volunteer Army were all damaged in the end and had no ammunition, but they also remained on the position of artillery as infantry to resolutely block the enemy, and all of them died heroically on the position.
Picture 丨 Our army's air defense run is firing
It was difficult for the lack of medical care and medicine to withdraw from the battlefield in the absence of cover, and many soldiers shed blood and died before they could retreat after being wounded.
In order to prevent the BOMBing of the US air force, small air raid shelters were set up on the positions. But the enemy's firepower is too dense and powerful,
Many of the bomb shelters were blurred with flesh and blood
The position was also blown up.
Napalm burned the positions to a scorched earth
The powerful bombardment of the heavy artillery rolled up two meters above the ground.
The 563rd Regiment was seriously short of ammunition, and the soldiers on the front line could only give all the bayonets to the steel guns. Engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, bringing the enemy closer and fighting again.
Because the UN army is not good at fighting close combat. Only under the protection of the aircraft cannons did they dare to move forward.
Once the two soldiers were connected, the combat effectiveness of the US army without the cover of aircraft artillery was not too effective
Pictured: Mu Xinhe, a soldier of a certain unit of the Volunteer Army, was wounded twice and could not get out of the line of fire
MacArthur's SS, the most elite of the American Cavalry Division, also personally engaged in front of the 563rd Regiment, but still could not move.
Ma Zhaomin, the regimental commander, saw that his soldiers were about to run out, and even wanted to organize the last few people of the regimental organs into a platoon to go to the front.
But as soon as the phone call reached the division headquarters, the division commander and the political commissar resolutely disagreed with this decision.
Ma Zhaomin, who personally led the regiment, shed tears of pain at the thought of the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old young people who were born and died with him on the battlefield one by one.
Ma Zhaomin was a veteran of the eight-year war with Japanese devils at home, and he would never be merciful in the face of the enemy, and he could no longer calm down at the thought of these relatives disappearing under the strangulation of the United Nations army.
The volunteers took a short break between battles, and the water source at this time was a problem
Mr. Peng is also having trouble sleeping and eating in these days, and he will always look in the direction of Tieyuan. And keep a phone call with the front line while keeping abreast of the situation.
Seeing half of the sky that never stops fighting,
Mr. Peng was always restless and worried
。 The division commander personally called the soldiers on the front line and encouraged them to bravely face the enemy's attack. The soldiers who received the call were ecstatic, and it also increased their belief in victory.
The distraught U.S. army decided to change its strategy and launched an attack at an altitude of more than 600 meters on the flank of the 563rd Regiment.
This high ground was in a dangerous position, and the combat deployment of the volunteer army could be fully seen. If captured by the enemy, not only will the flanks of the volunteer army be completely exposed to the blows of the American army, but the breakthrough points of the condescending resistance troops will be discovered by the enemy.
In order to prevent the Eighth Company from being surrounded, Guo Enzhi, the commander of the Eighth Company, was immediately ordered to prepare for a breakthrough.
Tu Shu always tugged at his heart to observe the frontline Peng Zong
The U.S. First Cavalry Division continued to increase its offensive strength, and once the Eighth Company withdrew its forces, the two companies and two platoons exposed on the left flank to the east would be quickly surrounded by the enemy.
The commander of the 563rd Regiment came from this company, but at this moment, the regimental commander could only make a difficult decision, abandoning the first company and the second platoon, letting the eighth company withdraw, and then finding an opportunity to rescue the soldiers of the second platoon.
However, there were too few troops that could be mobilized, and it was difficult for the second platoon to break through with only a dozen men. After several attempts,
The sound of gunfire in the second row of positions gradually disappeared
Ma Zhaomin, the regimental commander who learned the news, once again shed tears
The last few hours,
The eight warriors chose to jump off the cliff when they saw that a breakthrough was no longer possible.
Figure丨 Volunteer Army blocking positions
"Victory belongs to us, long live the motherland" After eight people shouted the slogan of the mighty mountains and rivers, they jumped off the cliff.
Five of them died heroically, and the remaining three survived because they were blocked by branches. The names of the eight heroes are
"Li Bingqun, He Chengyu, Cui Xuecai, Zhang Qiuchang, Meng Qingxiu, Hou Tianyou, Luo Juncheng."
Their names entered the military history of the 63rd Army and were remembered by posterity.
On 9 June, when the whole regiment received orders to retreat,
Only 247 of the original 1,600-strong force remained
。 Thousands of young beings were left behind on the battlefield of Tieyuan.
The last thing the soldiers wanted to do from then on was to hold a roll call meeting, and the comrades who had accompanied them for many years left. The surviving company commander Guo Enzhi became more courageous in the future battles and won the title of combat hero.
Figure丨 The volunteer army has nowhere to block the position, a very classic photo
The eleventh day of the Battle of Tetsuhara.
The U.S. military dispatched dozens of B29 bombers to drop thousands of 500-pound bombs on the ground.
The heavily bombed battlefield is full of craters. The U.S. First Army drew an armored unit from the fiercely fighting Battlefield to directly into Route 87.
Frank William Mirburn, a two-star lieutenant general, was the commander of the US First Army, nicknamed "Prawn", a small man who was less than one meter and seven meters tall.
And the age is also more than 60 years old
South Korean General Baek Sun Yel once commented
He was a good commander who looked mild-mannered but acted in an unusually brave style.
Pictured by Frank William Milburn
The ability to hold Route 87 became a key node in the Tieyuan Blockade War. The 63rd Army focused on areas known as Negard and Ungaard to intercept the UN offensive.
Cao Buqi, the commander of the 564th Regiment of the 188th Division, was ordered to garrison here.
This Man from Shaanxi has joined the revolution since he was 16 years old
But he was usually gentle and elegant, not like a warrior.
Zhang Yinghui, commander of the 188th Division, once commented
He has a lot of ideas, but the implementation is poor, the battle is stupid and not very flexible, but the execution of dead tasks is absolutely not discounted
How should he face this problem if he is not flexible enough? The biggest problem facing the regimental commander was that there was only one lonely mountain to defend at this juncture.
However, guarding the Lonely Mountain is undoubtedly a taboo for soldiers, because it is easy to be surrounded, there is no cover on both sides, and it is easy to defend the rear without danger, and the Lonely Mountain is plain in front of and behind.
Figure丨 A unit of the Volunteer Army held a blocking position in Tieyuan
The lonely hill was guarded by a company of troops set up by the regimental commander Cao Buqi, and there was a reservoir on the north side of the road.
Commander Cao decided to blow up the reservoir and retard the offensive footsteps of the mechanized armed enemy,
But the consequence is also to disconnect the back road of the five companies
, with little possibility of a safe retreat.
Eight fighters and more than forty artillery shells began to attack this small isolated mountain inside and outside. The amount of ammunition in the U.S. military almost flattened this small isolated mountain.
More than 70 men of the Five Companies were stationed on this small hill hill, and their strength and firepower were far inferior to those of the Americans, and they could only use grenades, submachine guns and rifles
Engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy in trenches dug out with both hands
The U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber dropped bombs on North Korea, and the bombs were like rain
On the day of the offensive, a total of 707 Sorties of U.S. squadrons dropped incendiary bombs and napalm shells on the Volunteers, turning the mountain into a mountain of flames.
In one day, all the fortifications were destroyed, and bullets and grenades were exhausted. Volunteer soldiers could only collect ammunition from enemy corpses.
But this is dangerous, because the enemy's 24-hour non-stop attack will not leave them to collect ammunition, and the bullets and flares that pass by are the greatest threat to the soldiers who collect ammunition.
The huge smoke formed after the explosion of the RAIN-like shells of the US army shot straight into the sky
And a steady stream of large-caliber shells exploded around them at any moment, and reconnaissance planes pouring out of the sky were constantly harassing the extremely tired and hungry soldiers.
But they repulsed the American offensive again and again.
Obsessed with advanced weapons and equipment, the U.S. military was scolded by its own media to spew blood.
Time and again, the favorable fighters of the American army, which were dragged down by the volunteers, were losing out little by little. The U.S. army organized infantry to charge the hilltops from all directions in batches.
The fifth company lost contact after the last call with the regimental commander.
Both the General Headquarters of the Volunteer Army and the top brass of the US Military paid close attention to this lonely mountain. The flesh and blood of more than 70 people resisted the attack of more than ten times their own troops, and they hoped that they would hold out until the arrival of night, and the American troops who were not good at night fighting would stop attacking.
A whole day' time. The soldiers of the Fifth Company exchanged their lives for an entire day.
The 279.5-meter mountain was blown off several meters. Here there are not only the corpses of volunteer soldiers but also the corpses of a large number of attacking American troops.
Picture 丨 U.S. artillery positions
The 188th Division discovered the presence of American troops east of Iron Plains.
The eastern flank of the 63rd Army was exposed
At this time, Fu Chongbi was faced with a situation where there were no soldiers to adjust, and the military commander was eager to go to the front line himself. The reconnaissance infantry of the 188th Division spotted the units of the US Third Division.
Robert Saul's Third Division has always been known as a fresh force
"Fire Brigade"
They are the elite of the US military.
The U.S. Third Division had more than 19,000 men and more than a hundred tanks
。 Fu Chongbi could only dismantle the eastern wall to supplement the dispatch of troops from the western wall.
The battle had reached its thirteenth day, and just as he was about to fight everything, he received a call from Mr. Peng.
Picture 丨The political commissar of the 63rd Army of the Volunteer Army in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea Long Daoquan (left) and military commander Fu Chongbi (right)
Mr. Peng said on the phone that the Fortieth Army had been fully equipped and could replace him
Fu Chongbi, who had received the order to retreat, did not return for half a day.
Thirteen days. VanVleet of the United States could not sit still any longer, and he ordered the American media to declare the occupation of the Iron Triangle region of Tieyuan.
As a result, the Volunteers had occupied a new defensive line and were ready to launch a deadly counterattack against the Americans, and Ridgway, realizing that the Volunteers had been renovated, immediately ordered the Entire American Line to stop the offensive and turn into a defensive state.
The volunteers finally used their tenacious will to resist the victory pursuit of the American army and forced the Americans to the negotiating table.
Ridgway's memoirs recorded the tenacious will of the volunteers and considered the strategy of exchanging space for time to be successful
Pictured: A group photo of a pioneer company of the Volunteer Army
What exactly does the Chinese military rely on to resist the US military?
This question has become a question that the US military thinks deeply about.
It has also been analyzed many times by the United States Military Academy at West Point
This oriental spirit in Chinese soldiers is the one they least understand.
How is it possible to confront the U.S. military with such rudimentary weapons and stormtroopers? The volunteers who could not eat, drink, wear, and ammunition were forced to block the powerful offensive of the US army, and the Chinese soldiers who were not afraid of death made the US army afraid.
After the battle, the Sixty-third Army did a physical examination, and all the soldiers lost a lot of weight, including the commander Fu Chongbi, who lost more than twenty pounds.
In the middle of the picture is Fu Chongbi
After successfully completing the task, they slept for two or three days
。 The severe attrition of the withdrawn troops made the commander's heart like a knife, and his heart was also very aggrieved, so there was a dialogue with Mr. Peng.
Anyone who makes it back home alive will miss the real heroes, the soldiers who bravely sacrificed. However, since then, China's development in a stable environment has depended on the bloody sacrifices of these lovely people. It was they who made the whole world aware that the people they had once looked down upon had stood up.
Defeated the world's strongest country, defeated the delusion of the U.S. military, which once thought it was invincible. The Volunteers secured the rear during this campaign. Mr. Peng also made a profound review of such a huge sacrifice, although in the face of all mechanized American dramas, there is no way to avoid casualties. But in the end, there would be such huge casualties and sacrifices that the top level of the Volunteer Army absolutely did not expect.
Although the U.S. army and the volunteer army continued to fight for two years. But there was no bigger battle, which became a watershed in the Korean War.