In November 1950, the 27th Army of the Volunteer Army, on the instructions of its superiors, decided to send a whole division of the 80th Division and the 242nd Regiment of the 81st Division to launch a large-scale attack on the enemy in the Xinxingli area.
At that time, the troops detected that there was a unit of the Us army stationed in Xinxingli, which was the famous "Polar Bear Regiment", the Thirty-first Reinforced Infantry Regiment of the Seventh Division of the US Army.
How did the title "Polar Bear Regiment" come about? The regiment was formed during the First World War, fought in the Siberian region, and made outstanding achievements, so it enjoyed this reputation.
At dusk on November 27, volunteer troops marched toward the predetermined theater of operations in Xinxingli and officially launched an attack on the Polar Bear Regiment at 24:00 that night.
Zhuang Yuandong, the instructor of the Fourth Company of the 239th Regiment, led a platoon to fire the first shot of the battle in Xinxingli. They found more than thirty American troops sleeping on the mountainside of Dongshan Mountain, and had planned to capture them all alive, but they did not expect that a soldier kicked over a can box and woke them up, so they had to open fire and destroy them all.
Almost at the same time, Li Changyan, commander of the fourth company, also led two platoons to launch a flanking attack and found an enemy camp. Li Changyan divided the troops into multiple combat groups, surrounded the enemy in separate routes, caught them off guard, and killed more than fifty American troops in one go.
When cleaning up the battlefield, Li Changyan and others saw that there were telephones, telephones, combat maps, and combat documents that had not been burned out in the enemy camp, and confirmed that this was the regimental command post of the "Polar Bear Regiment."
The base camp of the "Polar Bear Regiment" was destroyed at once, and the battle progressed so smoothly, which was really a great surprise to the volunteer soldiers. To their great delight, a colonel officer in the house was killed and later confirmed to be McLean, the leader of the Polar Bear Regiment.
The fighting lasted only one night, and the volunteer regiments completed their combat tasks as planned. However, early in the morning of the second time, a large number of American troops suddenly emerged from the nearby ravine and launched a counterattack.
Although the regimental commander was killed and the regimental headquarters was destroyed, the Polar Bear Regiment was an old unit after all, and after they converged, they began to organize a counterattack against the volunteers.
In fact, their counterattack did cause a lot of trouble for the volunteers. This was because, before the battle began, the Volunteers had learned that the U.S. army had only one battalion of troops, so they were somewhat ill-prepared for their sudden counterattack. In a hurry, the volunteers fought very passively and had to withdraw temporarily.
But the Polar Bear Regiments didn't take advantage either, as they were still compressed by the volunteers in a small area of less than two square kilometers.
That night, the Volunteers launched a second offensive against the Polar Bear Regiment. In the fierce battle that lasted for two days and two nights, the "Polar Bear Regiment" was hit hard by the soldiers of the Sixty Division, and the losses were very heavy.
However, the Eighty Division also paid a considerable price under extremely unfavorable conditions of severe cold, hunger, fatigue and severe shortage of weapons and ammunition, with more than half of combat casualties and frostbite. However, when the commanders and fighters were hungry and ate a handful of fried noodles and thirsty, their morale was still very high.
In the face of the desperate resistance of the "Polar Bear Regiment", the commander of the Twenty-seventh Army decided to transfer the main force of the Eighty-first Division to coordinate operations. On the night of the 30th, heavy snow fell, and the 80th Division and the 241st Regiment of the 81st Division joined forces to start the third attack on the "Polar Bear Regiment".
With the belief of victory, the volunteers braved the rain of bullets and bullets to rush bravely toward the enemy group. In the early morning of the next day, the various units of the Volunteer Army successively broke through the enemy's front line and engaged in extremely fierce and cruel repeated battles with the enemy.
At dawn on December 1, the Polar Bear Regiment completely gave up the idea of continuing to resist, and under the cover of more than a dozen tanks and more than forty aircraft, they began to break through to the south desperately.
The 241st Regiment of the Volunteer Army resolutely blocked it and beat the falling water dogs, causing a large number of casualties to the enemy. After desperately rushing out, the remnants of the enemy continued to flee south, and the volunteer units immediately switched from attack to pursuit.
After that, the remnants of the "Polar Bear Regiment" were no longer able to organize any form of counterattack, and only tried to take the road and flee desperately. With no way out, some of the fleeing enemies froze to death or drowned in the snow-covered Chosin Lake.
After dark, the 242nd Regiment of the Volunteer Army intercepted a remnant of the enemy fleeing south, with more than 400 people and dozens of tanks and cars accompanying them. After several hours of fierce fighting, the enemy was all killed.
At this point, a total of 3191 people of the "Polar Bear Regiment", a battalion of the Thirty-second Regiment, and the Fifty-seventh Battalion of the Division's Artillery were all annihilated by the volunteers.
A volunteer soldier named Zhang Jiqing picked up a piece of blue cloth when cleaning the battlefield, because its color is blue, which is different from the practice of red cloth for the flag of our army, so it did not attract attention, just as this blue cloth was used to make his own marching bag.
When the battalion commander Bi Shuyang heard about this situation, he ran to take a look and confirmed that it was the regimental flag of the "Polar Bear Regiment" and immediately handed it in. This regimental flag became the most valuable trophy in the Battle of Xinxingli.
In the history of the US military, the Xinxingli battle set an unprecedented record of humiliation, because their so-called "ace unit", the "Polar Bear Regiment" that founded the great military achievements, was completely destroyed by the Chinese army, not only the regimental commander died on the battlefield, but even the flag symbolizing the honor and dignity of the troops was also captured by the volunteer army, which is really a great shame!
The U.S. army did not want to let this embarrassing defeat leave a trace, so it revoked the name of the Thirty-first Infantry Regiment, the once indispensable "ace regiment", which has since disappeared forever on the earth.