On May 2, 1949, the 61st Division of the 21st Army of the People's Liberation Army attacked the ancient city of Hangzhou, and ordered the 185th Regiment to serve as the first echelon and capture the Qiantang River Bridge as quickly as possible.
Completed in September 1937, the Qiantang River Bridge is the earliest double-decker bridge for railway and highway designed and built by itself in China, and is a strategic hub for transportation between east and south China, with important values in many aspects such as politics (governance), military and economy.
Before the Battle of the Crossing River, He Jingzhi (named Yingqin) personally flew to Hangzhou on the orders of old Chiang Kai-shek and convened a secret emergency meeting of a group of Zhejiang politicians (important officials).
He issued a death order at the meeting: "Before the PEOPLE's Liberation Army approaches Hangzhou, we must blow up the Qiantang River Bridge and prevent the People's Liberation Army from going south!" ”
In order to ensure that the plan to destroy the bridge was foolproof, He Jingzhi also specially summoned Hou Jiayuan, director of the Zhejiang Gansu Railway Bureau, to Yuhuang Mountain to study the problem of blowing up the bridge.
At 3:00 a.m. on May 3, the 2nd Battalion of the 185th Regiment, which was the main task of attacking the bridge, marched rapidly toward the Qiantang River Bridge. In order to arrive before the enemy blew up the bridge, the battalion commander Wei Jinmao ordered the troops to put down their backpacks and carry only weapons and ammunition lightly.
On the way to the bridge, the soldiers of the second battalion were repeatedly blocked by the defenders along the line, but they stubbornly counterattacked. After several fierce battles, the second battalion took full control of the northern end of the bridge, cutting off the enemy's escape to the south.
Subsequently, the commander of the second battalion ordered the fourth and fifth companies to immediately launch an attack on the enemy south of the bridge, and at the same time ordered the sixth company to build fortifications north of the Sixth Harmony Tower to prevent the enemy in the downtown area of Hangzhou from fleeing south.
The Fourth and Fifth Companies were suppressed by enemy fire when they attacked south of the bridge. So the warriors took full advantage of the bridge as a double-decker bridge, adopted the tactic of advancing in groups with upper and lower cover, and quickly approached the south bridgehead.
The enemy on the south side of the bridge saw that the Qiantang River Bridge could not be defended, so he set fire to the bundles of explosives that had been prepared long ago. Then there were several dull explosions on the bridge, and a large cloud of smoke and dust covered the bridge deck.
The soldiers of the second battalion thought that the bridge was about to be broken, and everyone raised their hearts to their throats. However, when the smoke cleared, they found that the bridge was still standing majestically, with only a small section of the plank deck of the railway and road bridge slightly damaged.
The officers and men of the second battalion were overjoyed, and they all breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately rushed forward to seize the Qiantang River Bridge.
As one of the most capable cadres under Lao Jiang, why did the bridge bombing plot he personally deployed end in failure? He may not have dreamed that it was a small person who smashed his bridge bombing plot, Lin Zhengfa, a railway worker in Hangzhou.
One day at the end of April, Lin Zhengfa went to the Qiantang River Bridge to overhaul the railway tracks. He felt that the atmosphere of this day was completely different from the past, the bridge was heavily guarded, the sentry was lined up, and many strange faces appeared in the ranks of Chiang Kai-shek's army guarding the bridge.
Lin Zhengfa was watching, when he suddenly saw Zhou Fuyuan, who knew him from the soldiers guarding the bridge. Because this person did not have enough to eat in the army, he often went to Lin Zhengfa's house to eat and drink, so the two had a good relationship.
When Zhou Fuyuan was talking to Lin Zhengfa, he inadvertently slipped his mouth, so that Lin Zhengfa was aware of Jiang Jun's intention to blow up the Qiantang River Bridge.
After Lin Zhengfa's repeated questions were confirmed, he couldn't help but be impatient: on the one hand, he had been mixing rice on the railway for many years, and blowing up the Qiantang River Bridge was tantamount to smashing his rice bowl; on the other hand, he had a simple patriotic idea in his heart, and he could not bear to let this bridge that runs through the north and south be destroyed by Jiang Jun's hands, leaving the entire city paralyzed.
Based on this idea, Lin Zhengfa decided to stop Jiang Jun's operation to blow up the bridge. He invited Zhou Fuyuan to his home, where he had good wine and good food, hoping to find out useful information from it.
Zhou Fuyuan complained while drinking: "Mother X, all the officials have withdrawn to Dinghai, and left us poor soldiers to guard the bridge." If he can get a sum of money, Lao Tzu will definitely run back to his hometown! ”
"If the bridge blows up, where are you going?" Lin Zhengfa said tentatively, "Is there a way not to blow up the bridge?" ”
"No, no, no!" Zhou Fuyuan shook his head desperately, "I heard that the senior officials from above should personally supervise the blowing up of the bridge, how can I do it without blowing up?" ”
Lin Zhengfa said: "Can you tell your brothers about decorating less explosives under the bridge to help me keep this job, in case there is any situation, the brothers can still have a way to live!" ”
Zhou Fuyuan refused: "Now we all recognize money and do not recognize people, this matter cannot be done." ”
Although Zhou Fuyuan did not agree to help, Lin Zhengfa had an idea in his heart: if it really didn't work, he had to find a way to get a sum of money to "pay bribes" to see if he could solve this problem.
In the next few days, Lin Zhengfa ran around, looking for relatives and co-workers to move from place to place, and then took away some valuable things in the family, and it was difficult to scrape together 100 silver dollars.
In the end, Lin Zhengfa, under the recommendation of Zhou Fuyuan, found the yellow platoon leader of the sapper platoon responsible for blowing up the bridge. When the man saw the silver dollar of the white flower, he couldn't help but smile and agreed to do something with the explosives.
However, the key to the fact that he agreed to do this head-off thing was that when Jiang Jun was defeated, everyone who was a soldier was in danger of themselves, afraid that if they really blew up the bridge and become a sinner, the People's Liberation Army would not be able to get rid of it when it came. Now that you have money to collect, why not enjoy it?
The 100 silver dollars that Lin Zhengfa used to "pay bribes" did not float in the water — when the Yellow Platoon Commander was preparing the explosive packages, he ordered his men to mix a large amount of sand and only a small amount of explosives in the explosives packages that were supposed to contain 60 kilograms of explosives.
When the People's Liberation Army attacked and Jiang Jun began to blow up the bridge, these explosive packages that seriously cut corners of material certainly did not play a role, and the Qiantang River Bridge was thus saved.
In this way, the soldiers of the 185th Regiment successfully captured the Qiantang River Bridge, and then the battalions marched in tandem and controlled the main traffic route to the downtown area of Hangzhou in one fell swoop. A passage was opened for the main forces of the Sixty-second and Sixty-first Divisions to enter and occupy the city of Hangzhou.
At 3 p.m. on the same day, Hangzhou was liberated. However, few people know that it was Lin Zhengfa, an inconspicuous railway worker, who "paid bribes" with a hundred silver dollars, smashed He Jingzhi's conspiracy, saved the Qiantang River Bridge, and made a miraculous contribution to the ancient city of Hangzhou in obscurity.
Note: This incident is recorded in the book "A Thousand Miles down to Hangzhou" in the biography of the founding general Wei Guoqing, "Bing Jianghuai" (national defense university press, 1997).