The 50th Army of the Volunteer Army, which is a relatively special unit, was the first Kuomintang army unit to revolt during the Liberation War, and it is also a unit with a long history in Modern Chinese History, the history of this unit can be traced back to the Yunnan New Army, and it participated in major historical events such as the National Protection Movement and the Law Protection Movement. After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, it was reorganized into the 60th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, that is, the famous 60th Army of the Dian Army, which repeatedly inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and made outstanding military achievements.
During the Liaoshen Campaign, the 60th Army of the Dian Army revolted under the leadership of its commander Zeng Zesheng. On January 2, 1949, more than 30,000 horses of the 60th Army of the Yunnan Army were reorganized in jiutai town and reorganized into the 50th Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the former 182nd Division, the provisional 21st Division, and the Provisional 52nd Division, which were named the 148th Division, the 149th Division and the 150th Division of the 50th Army respectively. The military commander is still Zeng Zesheng, and Xu Wenlie, former director of the political department of the Northeast Military and Political University, serves as the political commissar.
When the 50th Army was first reorganized, the discipline of the army was very poor, and many officers and men still retained the bad habits of the Kuomintang army. After the uprising, more than 2,500 officers and men of this unit still tried to escape, more than 500 attempted to defect, more than 480 political cadres were attempted to be killed, and the majority of those who did not want to be revolutionary were transferred to the cadres of the 50 Army, and they all had pistols under their sleeping pillows.
Xu Wenlie, the political commissar of the 50th Army, is an old revolutionary and has a lot of experience in reorganizing and training the rebel troops. After he came to the 50th Army, he immediately reorganized the guard battalion of the military headquarters, and Liu Yi, the current commander of the guard battalion of the military department, was ideologically progressive and continued to stay in office, and the soldiers were replaced by veterans of the 184th Division of the 60th Army of the Haicheng Uprising, which could first ensure the safety of the military headquarters and prevent assassination by the hidden agents of the Kuomintang.
After that, Xu Wenlie re-established the headquarters of the 50th Army, the Logistics Department, and at the same time established a political organ, and transferred 2,490 officers from the 60th Army to the Northeast Military and Political University to participate in intensive training and study, and also cleaned up 108 officers who were ideologically reactionary and committed the most heinous crimes. Xu Wenlie also asked the Northeast Bureau to transfer all Yunnan cadres from the Northeast Military Region to the 50th Army, and also summoned a large number of knowledgeable young people to the army, and drew quite a few combat backbones from other field armies to improve the military and political quality of this unit.
In fact, most of the soldiers and grass-roots officers of the 50th Army are also poor people, and their own families are also deeply oppressed by the landlord class. After more than half a year of training, the 50th Army took on a new look and began to march to the southwest.
After the reorganization, the 50th Army successively participated in the Battle of Western Hubei and the Battle of Chengdu, especially in the Battle of Jinchuan, the 50th Army cooperated with the First and Second Field Armies for 65 days, liberated 8 cities, and captured 27,000 Kuomintang troops. After that, the 50th Army went to the area around Shashi in Hubei Province to garrison, and in more than half a year, it reclaimed 3,200 acres of land, built more than 600,000 square meters of embankments, and transported nearly 6 million catties of public grain.
In mid-October 1950, the 50th Army went to the northeast, and the whole army was ordered to surrender its weapons and prepare to receive Soviet aid, and the whole structure was reorganized into artillery. Although the 50th Army was an insurrectionary force, the predecessor of the 50th Army was the Dian Army, which always attached importance to artillery, and a large number of artillery experts were produced in The Yunnan Daowutang, so the Central Military Commission was ready to reorganize this unit into an artillery unit.
However, just as the 50th Army was preparing to be reorganized into artillery and trying to learn artillery knowledge, on October 24, 1950, the 50th Army suddenly received an order from the Northeast Military Region, immediately resumed its equipment, and urgently went to the Sino-North Korean border to assemble. The train of the 442nd Regiment of the 148th Division of the 50th Army drove from Tonghua to the Ji'an area, and the troops were on standby on the train, at this time the regimental commander Zhao Guozhang was called down by the military representative to answer the phone, Zhao Guozhang picked up the phone to report his job name, and the other side ordered: "I am Gao Gang, commander of the Northeast Military Region, you immediately cross the river, cross the river and fight!" ”
In this way, the 50th Army entered the DPRK without any preparation, and when the 50th Army entered the DPRK, the first battle was already completed. In the second campaign, the 50th Army interspersed the air three times in a row and fired a large number of enemies. Although Commander Peng Dehuai did not say anything, it still made the 50th Army feel ashamed up and down, and some of the military and political cadres who were transferred said that they wanted to go back to the old unit and leave the insurrectionary unit immediately. When Zeng Zesheng heard this, his face swelled through, and he finally said, "I will go to the 38th Army as a cook!" ”
Under extremely embarrassing circumstances, Li Zuo, deputy chief of staff of the 50th Army who was a cadre of the uprising, quickly came out of the round field, and he laughed: "You can transfer back to the old troops, where do I transfer?" Political Commissar Xu Wenlie also knew that the battle was not fought well, and the main reason was the cadres, and he took on all the responsibilities, and then began to rectify within the whole army.
At the beginning of the third campaign to resist US aggression and aid Korea, the Volunteer Army broke through the Linjin River in one fell swoop and launched an all-out attack on the United Nations led by the US army. The 149th Division of the 50th Army was the fastest to penetrate, and the acting commander of the 149th Division, Jin Zhenzhong, was an old eighth road who was very good at interspersing, and he encouraged the troops to boldly intersperse, and finally blocked the Royal Oster rifle regiment and the Royal Heavy Tank Battalion of the British 29th Brigade in the parliamentary government area.
As a loyal ally of the United States, the British Empire sent its most elite troops to the Korean battlefield, and the 29th Brigade was one of them. This army was under the command of the famous general Montgomery, experienced the Second World War, participated in the Normandy landings, distinguished in battle, and was called an ace of the British Army, especially the squadron (battalion) directly under the Eighth Cavalry Regiment under its jurisdiction, equipped with "Captain Hundred" heavy tanks, weighing more than 50 tons, commonly known as the "Royal Heavy Tank Battalion", which is the pride of the British Army.
On the night of January 2, 1950, the 1st Battalion of the 446th Regiment of the 149th Division of the 50th Army of the Volunteer Army took advantage of the cover of night to attack decisively, and in only 20 minutes, it defeated the defenders of Gaoyang and occupied Gaoyang. After that, this unit attacked the 195.3 heights held by the British army without the arrival of the main force, caught the enemy by surprise, and after 30 minutes of fierce fighting, captured the 195.3 heights, killing dozens of enemy soldiers and capturing 37 people, without any casualties. After our army captured the 195.3 heights, the "Royal Heavy Tank Battalion" was separated from the main force of the British 29th Brigade, resulting in a favorable situation of annihilating the enemy.
The encircled British, under the cover of tanks, frantically launched an attack on our positions in an attempt to break through, but the first battalion persisted until the arrival of large troops. On the afternoon of the 3rd, the 2nd Battalion of the 446th Regiment of the 149th Division arrived and immediately surrounded and annihilated the elite British troops who were encircling. Our army had no anti-tank weapons at that time, only explosive packs, explosive canisters, grenades.
In the case of several unsuccessful explosions, Li Guanglu, a soldier of the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion, took the lead in opening the door, he squeezed the explosive package in his hand to only three centimeters long, successfully blew up two tanks, and then boldly climbed on the third tank, threw two grenades into it, and successfully detonated the third tank. The soldiers of the second battalion followed suit and finally destroyed the tank battalion. In this battle, our army blew up 27 British tanks, 3 cars, captured 4 tanks, 3 armored vehicles, 18 cars, two howitzers, killed and wounded more than 200 British troops, and captured 227 people, including British major battalion commander Konys.
The 149th Division of the 50th Army used two infantry battalions to shoot down a Tank Battalion of the British Army, which made many people dare not imagine, after the war report was reported to the Volunteer Army Headquarters, Peng Zong immediately became angry, saying: "Are the results real?" To lie about military information is to kill the head. Xu Wenlie, political commissar of the 50th Army, ordered Zheng Zhushu, a military combat staff officer, and Hu Baoyu, a photography officer, to rush to the scene for verification, and sent a platoon to protect the personnel collecting evidence.
After the battle staff officer Zheng Zhushu and the photographic officer Hu Baoyu arrived at the scene of the battle, Lin Jiabao, instructor of the 1st Battalion of the 446th Regiment, led them to take pictures of one tank and one tank to check how they fought and how many prisoners they had captured. When the convincing photo was placed in front of Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai immediately issued a commendation order to the 50th Army and informed the whole army of the 50th Army's achievements.
The soldiers of the 149th Division also captured more than a dozen supply transport vehicles after the war, but the soldiers did not run to the canned beef, compressed biscuits and other food, but rushed to the clothes, because before the battle, their winter clothes were not delivered in time, many soldiers were frozen, they changed into the British sweater sweater coat at the first time, and later Lin Jiabao, an instructor of the 1st Battalion of the 446 regiment, recalled: Anyway, enjoy a day counts as a day, maybe tomorrow will be killed.