Soldiers have always attached importance to knowing oneself and knowing the other, and winning every battle. To "know the other side," it is necessary to study the enemy army, become familiar with the enemy army, understand the history and current situation of the enemy army, grasp the strengths and defects of the enemy army, and gain insight into the deployment and movement of the enemy army. The achievements of the East China Field Army in this regard are worth a book. In addition to the above-mentioned means of studying the enemy through prisoners of war, informing the enemy's situation from higher levels and friends and neighbors, and reconnoitring the enemy's situation in person on the battlefield, infiltrating into the enemy's interior to obtain strategic intelligence is one of the important and effective means of achieving and "knowing the other."
The strategic intelligence organization directly controlled by our Political Department is called the Huaye Liaison Department's Outer Line Working Group and the Xuzhou Office of the East China Field Army. Comrade Shao Xiaoping, deputy chief of the Organization Section of the Liaison Department, and director of the office, are members of Comrades Li Binren, Jiang Ziyi, and others. In accordance with the CPC Central Committee's policy of "laying ambushes for a long time, making friends (we can and must cautiously recruit party members individually), accumulating strength, and waiting for the opportunity," with the aim of "actively serving the war, and with the Xuzhou Kuomintang General Headquarters as the main target of work, they have established a strategic intelligence network inside and outside the enemy army. Underground intelligence work was carried out in the first division (military affairs office) of the Kuomintang Army Xuzhou General Headquarters; the radio station of the Kuomintang Army Joint Logistics Department in Xuzhou's Eighteenth District; the Guard Regiment Blocking Company of the Xuzhou Suppression Headquarters; the Xuzhou Railway Station of the Tianjin-Pudong Railway; the Kuomintang Xuzhou Army General Hospital; and the Xuzhou Wanzihui Primary School. Among them were CCP members who were in charge of the core secrets of the Kuomintang army, some of whom established underground PARTY branches, and some of whom established anti-Chiang Kai-shek alliances with the Xuzhou branch of the China Democratic League. They also assigned underground traffic liaison officers to collect, summarize, and transmit strategic information of the enemy army from different angles and at different levels, and did a lot of fruitful work.
The supreme command organ of the enemy troops in front of our East China Field Army Theater was the headquarters of the Xuzhou Kuomintang Army Theater, which had changed its name three times: first it was called "Xuzhou Appeasement Office"; after Xue Yue's dismissal, Gu Zhutong sat in Xuzhou and changed his name to "Xuzhou Headquarters, Commander-in-Chief of the Army"; later renamed "Xuzhou General Headquarters for Suppressing Bandits".
In order to obtain strategic information on the enemy army, we sent Comrade Qian Shuyan, a member of the Communist Party of China, to infiltrate the headquarters of the enemy army in Xuzhou for 3 years. His work was outstanding, left and right, flexible, not only won the trust of his "superiors", but also successfully completed the task of intelligence gathering, and was never exposed. At that time, his public identity was that of the first lieutenant secretary of the "Xuzhou General Headquarters for Suppressing Bandits," and he handled confidential documents such as orders issued, express mail and telegrams, statistics on the strength of personnel and horses, and deployment and mobilization of troops, which were very ideal and rare sources of intelligence. Through his ingenious work, and through the dissemination of underground traffic officers Zhu Boping, Wang Zhaoxuan, Yuan Jieru (Hou Wujie), and the radio station of our 10th Column near Xuzhou, all kinds of important strategic intelligence sources of the enemy army were sent to our Huaye Front Committee. Important information on enemy situation shall be promptly reported to the Central Military Commission and copied to the chiefs of friendly and neighboring units. For example, Gu Zhutong's deployment of troops in the Xuzhou Theater south of the Yellow River, north of the Yangtze River, east to the Yellow Sea, and west of Tongguan, including the core secrets of the Xuzhou Headquarters and the Zhengzhou Command Post, the names of the chief officers, and the statistics of strength, are being implemented by the enemy army, and we have obtained them. By the time their deployment is complete, our determination to respond has already been issued, and even before some of them have been deployed, our military hammers have been smashed on the heads of the enemy. Chief Huaye's command is free, to a certain extent, thanks to the timeliness and accuracy of intelligence.
The underground party organization "Xuzhou Second Working Committee of the CPC" established on the outskirts of Xuzhou has actively carried out intelligence work under the leadership of Secretary Li Kai, and it has also been very effective. They formed an anti-Chiang Kai-shek joint front with Jiang Taosheng, Mo Shaozhang, Zou Feng, and others of the Xuzhou Branch of the China Democratic League, taking the Kuomintang Xuzhou Army General Hospital, where Jiang Taosheng was the president, as their bases, and through the enemy generals, party and government bureaucrats, celebrities, and hospitalized wounded and sick who came to the hospital to inspect and offer condolences, they learned about the internal relations of the enemy army, the changes and characteristics of the commanders, the proportion of new veterans, the morale of the troops, logistical support, and other information, and analyzed the situation for the Huaye Front Committee, judged the enemy's situation, and made up their minds to annihilate the enemy. Many important references are provided.
The enemy's strategic intelligence is true, and our army is clear in its ears and eyes. In the fierce confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Communists in the Liberation War, many vivid and vivid wonders of war were related to the timely and accurate provision of strategic information. For example, in the autumn and winter of 1947, when the three major armies of Liu Deng, Chen Su, and Chen Xie were mainly tasked with establishing and consolidating the Dabie Mountain base area, Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang hurriedly called back heavy troops from Shandong and other places in a vain attempt to fight a decisive battle with me in the Central Plains. Because our intelligence was timely and accurate, had insight into the enemy's every move, and understood its strategic intentions, the chief of Huaye did not fight a decisive battle with him, but took advantage of the enemy's eagerness to fight, and used some troops to lead the enemy's nose to maintain a certain distance and contact. In front of this was our Huaye Field Line Corps, followed by the New 5th Army and other ace enemy troops who were looking for a decisive battle, followed by the Kuomintang homecoming regiment. The homecoming regiments did not dare to stay, and they were again driven away by our local armed forces and militias. In this way, circle after circle was led by one part of our army to lead the enemy army, forming a large parade of "armed exercises" between the enemy and our two armies in the Yuwan-Anhui-Suzhou region, while the large troops of our army were scattered in western Henan and Jiluyu and other places to rest and recuperate, and when the enemy army was led by me to the east and west, and was exhausted, the columns of our Huaye Field Line Corps joined forces from time to time, broke the railway, attacked the city strategically, gradually consumed the enemy army, seized the enemy's grain and ammunition and equipment for themselves, and finally launched the Luoyang Campaign in the spring of 1948, annihilating about 20,000 enemy troops, and then annihilating the enemy in the Battle of Eastern Henan9 More than 10,000 people inflicted heavy losses on the enemy in the Central Plains, creating very favorable conditions for the later Battle of Jinan and the decisive battle of Huaihai.