On the night of May 17, 1952, the 130th Regiment of the Forty-fourth Division of the Fifteenth Army of the Volunteer Army completed the encirclement of Mount Gary and sent a small and capable force to insert itself into the heart of the enemy, preparing to combine inside and outside, and completely annihilate the Thirty-eighth Regiment of the Second Division of the United States Army.
The first battalion of two companies, who were interspersed with sharp knives, unknowingly crossed the Zhaoyang River, bypassed the gary mountain defense line, and inserted along a ravine towards the big water cave.
As they approached the west end of the village, they were unexpectedly spotted by the enemy and the battle began early.
The village was large, and there were enemies everywhere outside the village, who woke up from their slumber and hurriedly got up to fight.
The U.S. army was crowded with people, desperately resisting, and mixed with volunteer soldiers.
Chang Tongmao,a 17-year-old correspondent (born in 1934 in Gong County, Henan), saw the company commander surrounded by several enemies and rushed to reinforcements.
Unexpectedly, two American soldiers suddenly drilled out from behind the rock, hugged him by the waist, tied up with wires and dragged him away, looking like they were ready to catch alive to ask for a reward.
The two men dragged on for a while, tired and sweaty, crouching on the ground and gasping for breath.
Chang Tongmao took advantage of the darkness when the enemy was not paying attention, secretly pulled out his right hand, and felt a grenade from his waist, killing the two enemies.
Only then did he find himself out of touch with the company and could only follow the gunshots and fire to find his comrades.
He had just figured out how far it was, overheard movement in the northeast direction, and lightly touched it to see that it was seven or eight wounded comrades-in-arms.
Xiao Zhao, a soldier of the third squad, told him: "The enemy regimental headquarters has been disrupted by us. We had a hundred or so men who fought against more than three thousand enemies, and the comrades fought bravely and tenaciously! ”
Unfortunately, the company commander and the instructor died gloriously in the fierce battle.
By this time it was already midnight, and our army had launched a general offensive. The cannons on Mount Gary roared, the flames soared into the sky, and the gunfire became denser and denser. The crowd judged that the main peak of Mount Gary might have been occupied by our army.
The crowd was preparing to move towards the main peak, but they were spotted by a group of enemies who rushed over and opened fire.
Chang Tongmao hid the wounded in place, lying behind a large rock himself, using grenades to circumvent the enemy and repulse their pursuit.
But before the crowd could move, a large group of enemies from the north came from the north, a group of enemies who had just retreated from the bottom of the mountain.
This meant that Chang Tongmao and the wounded were in a very critical position.
Chang Tongmao was in a hurry, and he and the lightly wounded Xiao Zhao stepped up to carry the seriously wounded into the trenches on the side of the road, and then climbed behind the rocks to fight back at the enemy who rushed up from the south.
When the enemy in the south and north approached, Chang Tongmao rolled into the trench. The enemies on both sides, thinking that the other was the enemy, caught fire and fought fiercely.
When the enemies on both sides were killing each other and fighting with full force, Chang Tongmao led the wounded along the trench and quietly and safely moved.
Subsequently, Chang Tongmao turned back and went to the enemy's position to continue looking for his wounded comrades.
He first found the injured machine gun squad leader Xue Qingyuan, and then found several wounded people based on the clues provided by Xue Qingyuan.
Regardless of his personal safety, Chang Tongmao braved the enemy's guns and bullets to break into the enemy position four times, crushed the enemy's multiple attacks, and rescued more than 20 wounded people on three occasions.
After moving the last of the wounded to safety, Chang Tongmao returned to the battlefield again.
On the way, he inadvertently found one of the enemy bunkers, so he quietly touched it and blew up the bunker with two grenades.
He continued to touch forward, and found that there was a large black and mushy thing not far in front of him, and when he looked closer, it turned out to be a canvas tent with two small light bulbs flashing in it.
Chang Tongmao knew that it was a telephone, and deduced from this that it was a command post for the enemy.
He threw two grenades into it, and the lights went out, shattering the telephone and intercom, and killing several of its enemies. He reached in and picked up two pistols and ran out.
Not long after, Chang Tongmao found a bunker, which, judging from the setting of the field fortifications, was likely to be used to protect the command post.
But by this time there were no grenades available around him, and he was suddenly caught in a dilemma.
Coincidentally, Chang Tongmao groped a few steps in the darkness and was tripped by a bunch of things. He reached over and touched it with his hand, and what tripped him was a pile of enemy grenades!
He was overjoyed, and immediately grabbed a few of them and stuffed them into the bunker and blew them up.
In this way, Chang Tongmao actually blew up the enemy's five bunkers in one fell swoop.
By this time it was almost dawn, and the fierce battle was still going on.
When a battalion fought the enemy in Dashuidong and Chang Tongmao single-handedly fought against the enemy, rescued the wounded, and blew up bunkers, the South Road units of the Volunteer Army also cut off the road from Dashuidong to Hongchuan, blocking more than 100 US cars and armored vehicles in the ravine, and the enemy's retreat route had been cut off by me.
At the same time, the north road troops destroyed the enemy line of The Gary Hills with heavy artillery fire, occupied the peaks of the Gary Mountains, and pressed the enemy into the ravines.
The regimental headquarters of the Thirty-eighth Regiment of Dashuidong was destroyed, and some of the remaining remnants of the defeated army were still dying.
After Chang Tongmao met xue Qingyuan and the soldier Xiao Zhao, he came to the Gary Pass to have a look, and sure enough, dozens of American troops were blocked there by wounded soldiers of our army.
This group of enemies is like a swarm of sharks in a net, chaotically squeezing and bumping into me, panicking.
Chang Tongmao, Xue Qingyuan, and Xiao Zhao took advantage of the opportunity of a US military officer smoking alone at the foot of the mountain and suddenly appeared alive to capture him alive.
When Chang Tongmao found out that this person understood Chinese, he immediately had a plan, and through both soft and hard means, he let this US officer stand up and shout, lured the soldiers to a cave to "take refuge", and thus cleverly captured 18 US troops.
Subsequently, Chang Tongmao and three others evacuated the battlefield with the prisoners and the wounded, and returned safely to the company.
After the battle, Chang Tongmao risked his life to go back and forth to the position many times, and one person made up the experience of saving the wounded, fighting the enemy, bombing a bunker, and capturing the US troops, which was highly praised by the soldiers of the whole regiment, praising this 17-year-old young soldier for "bravely breaking into the enemy's position as if entering no man's land, and one person made four miracles, which can be regarded as a model for the whole regiment."
In recognition of Chang Tongmao's heroic deeds, the leading organs of the Volunteer Army honored him with special merits and awarded him the glorious title of "Hero of The Courage of OneSelf".