Before the outbreak of the War of Liberation, the Nationalist army had an absolute superiority in both strength and weapons and equipment, so old Chiang Kai-shek was full of confidence and boldly said that the war could be ended in just one year. In the first year after the outbreak of the War of Liberation, the Nationalist army did occupy a certain advantage on the battlefield, but after entering the second year, it began to decline, and more and more Nationalist troops were surrounded by our army on the battlefield. After these units were surrounded, their combat effectiveness plummeted, and they were often easily solved by our army, but the Battle of Nianzhuang was an exception.
At the beginning of the Battle of Huaihai, because of Liu Zhi's wrong command, Huang Baitao's 7th Corps fell into the siege of Huaye at Nianzhuangwei. At that time, the total strength of Huang Baitao's corps was 100,000 people, and Huaye's siege force was 150,000, because it had an absolute advantage in the comparison of troops, so Huaye's command estimated that it would take only 3 to 5 days to solve the battle. But unexpectedly, Huang Baitao was very stubborn, huaye attacked for more than ten days before taking the mill, and paid the price of more than 60,000 casualties, Su Yu was heartbroken. So why is the Battle of Milling So so hard to fight? There are three main reasons.
The first reason is that the 7th Corps is very effective. Huang Baitao was a standard miscellaneous general, who followed the Beiyang warlords Li Chun and Zhang Zongchang successively, and after Zhang Zongchang's defeat, Huang Baitao defected to Lao Jiang. At first, Old Jiang did not trust Huang Baitao, and only let him become a staff officer in the Central Military Commission. By chance, Huang Baitao became acquainted with Chen Cheng, who admired his military talent and recommended Huang Baitao as the commander of the 25th Army. At that time, the 25th Army was a newly formed unit, mainly composed of the Sichuan Army, the Northeast Army and a small number of central armies, and its combat effectiveness was very low.
After Huang Baitao took office, he spent a lot of effort to strictly train the 25th Army, and the combat effectiveness of the army was rapidly improved. After the outbreak of the Liberation War, the 25th Army was reorganized into the reorganized 25th Division, and under the leadership of Huang Baitao, the 25th Division ranked among the best in the Nationalist army both offensively and defensively, and became one of the most effective units in the Nationalist Army. During the Northern Jiangsu Campaign, Huang Baitao led the reorganized 25th Division of Lianketai County, Gaoyou, Baoying, Yancheng, and Funing; soon after, he was transferred to Jiaodong to fight, and his achievements were equally outstanding, successively capturing Gaomi, Pingdu, Laiyang, Fushan, and Yantai.
The reorganized 25th Division was equipped with Japanese weapons, and its firepower was far inferior to that of the reorganized 11th Division and the reorganized 74th Division, but Huang Baitao's performance in offensive was far superior to That of Hu Lian, and even compared with Zhang Lingfu, he did not fall behind at all. During the Battle of Eastern Henan, Huang Baitao was promoted by Lao Jiang to the commander of the 7th Corps for his merits in rescuing ou Shou Nian Corps, and the main force of the corps was the reorganized 25th Division. In the Battle of Nianzhuang, the reorganized 25th Division, as Huang Baitao's concubine, showed a high tactical quality and fought extremely hard, and Hua Ye suffered heavy casualties as a result.
The second reason is that Huang Baitao held the heart of death and resisted until the end. In the later period of the Liberation War, there were many nationalist generals who were surrounded by our army on the battlefield, but there were very few like Huang Baitao. After the general generals of the nationalist army are surrounded, they often choose to stick to the reinforcements at the beginning, and then they begin to blindly break through after waiting for reinforcements. However, Huang Baitao was an exception; from the first day of being surrounded by our army, he was determined to die, and issued an order to all the departments to "prepare to fight independently and fulfill the duty of a soldier."
During the Battle of Nianzhuang, Huang Baitao also repeatedly gathered the generals at and above the division level and asked them to command their respective troops and "fight the communist army one by one." At the last moment of the battle, Huang Baitao said to Liu Zhenxiang, commander of the 64th Army, and others: "I am old and sick, and I can't walk as a prisoner, and I am embarrassed. After my sacrifice, let others still know that there are loyal people, or I can make those who are drunk and dreaming of death wake up, and there may be hope for the party-state. You are still young and still have a lot of work, and I hope that you will break through and do something for the party-state. He then committed suicide.
The third reason is that the enemy's positions are extremely cleverly constructed and the firepower is fierce. After Huang Baitao's corps entered the village, they immediately built a dotted ming fort and a dark bunker around the village, and most of the shooting holes were close to the ground, and even if our attack troops crawled forward, they would be killed or wounded. In addition, the enemy also built most of the fortifications into a mezzanine, which could be covertly fired from behind our assault troops. In the previous battles, HuaYe had never encountered such a cleverly designed fortification, so the casualties increased.
In addition, the enemy's firepower is extremely fierce. The staff officer who had returned from the front said to Su Yu, who was in command at the Fire Temple, "Huang Baitao is really difficult to fight!" More than a hundred meters wide on the front, there are more than twenty machine guns, bullets like beans! Our officers and men rushed upwards in waves! Because the enemy's firepower was too fierce, on the day the attack was launched, Tao Yong's 4 columns suffered more than 2,000 casualties.
In the end, relying on the method of digging trenches in the soil work industry, Huaye's attack troops gradually approached the core fortifications of Nianzhuang and eventually eliminated Huang Baitao's corps, but Huaye himself also suffered more than 60,000 casualties, such a heavy casualty made Su Yu sad, no matter from what level, the Battle of Nianzhuang can be called the most tenacious and hard-fought battle of the Nationalist army during the Liberation War, although Huang Baitao is not a concubine of old Chiang, but his performance in the Battle of Nianzhuang is far better than Hu Lian and Zhang Lingfu, worthy of being the first general of the Nationalist army.