In October 1948, after the Northeast Field Army conquered Jinzhou, the Ninth Column, under the leadership of commander Zhan Caifang (Hubei Huang'an, founding lieutenant general) and political commissar Li Zhongquan (a native of Daxian County, Sichuan, founding major general), after six days and nights of forced marching, was ordered to advance to the vicinity of Dahu Mountain.
At this time, they suddenly received an urgent telegram from the "Eastern General", saying that the enemy had a tendency to open the camp mouth and escape from the sea, and demanded that the nine arsons rush to the camp and cut off the enemy's escape route.
This is a sudden emergency task. After the Ninth Column participated in the jinjin attack, it marched north according to the instructions of its superiors, and the 26th Division, the vanguard unit, had already thrown itself into the battle with the brother column to encircle and annihilate Liao Yaoxiang's corps.
Zhan Caifang and Li Zhongquan both understood that this situation was extremely urgent.
At that time, our army did not deploy any field columns near Yingkou, which meant that the enemy in Shenyang entered and occupied Yingkou and then fled from the sea, and our army could not stop it for the time being.
If the Ninth Column wants to seize Yingkou, it will also face many difficulties.
This is because the enemy from Shenyang to Yingkou is not only closer than the ninth column, but also can walk by car.
The Ninth Column will go south to Yingkou and must pass through the dense water network area around the Yang River, the Liao River, the Hun River, and the Taizi River, which will make it more difficult for large troops to march.
All in all, it is entirely possible that the enemy will seize Yingkou before our army, and many remnants of chiang kai-shek's army in the northeast, which should have become turtles in the urn, will become fish that have slipped through the net, which will affect the war situation of the entire Liaoshen campaign to a certain extent.
Faced with this situation that could not be postponed, Zhan Caifang and Li Zhongquan immediately ordered: The 25th Division took the lead in crossing the Liao River from Tai'an East and went straight to Yingkou, thus playing the role of suppressing the enemy from the front; the 26th Division only marched to Yingkou after the end of the siege and annihilation of the Liao Corps; and the 27th Division first captured Haicheng and cut off the enemy's southward escape route.
The Yingkou pursuit battle, which is famous for its military history, began, and a rapid march with the enemy to seize speed and compete for time began.
Where the Ninth Column passed, it was full of tragic images after being looted by the enemy, and there were no cattle and sheep, no chickens, only the troops rushing forward and the dust rising, only the rapid footsteps of the soldiers...
As a result of the continuous marching and fighting for several days, the troops have not yet had time to change their clothes, and the soldiers are still wearing thin single clothes, and must fight against the increasingly harsh cold.
Along the way, it had to pass through a large number of small streams and rivers, but when the enemy retreated, almost all the bridges and boats were destroyed, and the ninth column was too late to build a bridge, and could only wade and march, and it was really a place where the water was deep and fast before driving a small boat to cross the river.
In order to buy as much time as possible, the soldiers rarely rested at night, and it can be said that they were desperately advancing with extreme exhaustion.
However, it was still one step too late, and the enemy's 51st Army and its subordinate 2nd and 25th Divisions had preemptively occupied the battalion and were building fortifications in a vain attempt to cover the escape of the enemy in Shenyang from the sea.
Counting from the Battle of Jinzhou, the Ninth Column had been marching at an average rate of 140 miles a day for seven or eight consecutive days, and most of the soldiers' feet were full of blood blisters, and some of them even fainted due to excessive fatigue.
However, when the soldiers learned that the enemy had seized the camp and tried to escape, they immediately threw their illness and fatigue out of the cloud of nine clouds. They poured their desire for victory into strength into their legs.
At this time, there was only one belief in the whole vertical: rush to Yingkou as soon as possible, annihilate the enemy, and make further contributions to the liberation of the entire northeast!
Many outstanding cadres and fighters, despite their own fatigue, rushed to pick up sick numbers and carry things for others, and medical personnel were treated while marching.
Some troops dispatched only a few cars to pull the cooking squad to the front to make a good meal, and when the large troops arrived, one bowl per person, eating and walking.
The soldiers were extremely tired, and many people fell asleep while walking, which not only affected the speed of the march, but also easily led to injuries.
In response to this widespread situation, the troops came up with a high-level move: to give each squad a rope, with the squad leader leading one in front and the deputy squad leader dragging the other end, and the soldiers could doze off while walking in the middle to prevent falling behind or falling.
This peculiar scene also made the Ninth Column soldier still remember it many years later, saying that the Yingkou Pursuit Battle was a battle "led by a rope".
After several days of rapid marching, various units of the Ninth Column approached Yingkou one after another.
In the last 4 hours of approaching Yingkou, some of the troops actually ran more than 70 miles, which was simply all the way to Yingkou.
The enemy was not stupid enough to be incomprehensible, and they waited for work to suddenly launch a fierce attack while the exhausted nine column soldiers were not on their feet.
However, the morale-high 25th and 27th Divisions faced the enemy's onslaught, but they fought calmly, heroically and tenaciously, and broke the enemy's attack.
The first engagement of the 25th Division and the 27th Division fully realized that although the enemy at Yingkou had strong fortifications and abundant physical strength, they were already in a big way, and the army had long been scattered, and the so-called impact was nothing more than a return to the light.
Although our army is a fatigue division, it has high morale and experience in attacking tough battles accumulated in the Battle of Jinzhou, and it will certainly be able to conquer Yingkou alone.
On November 1, Zhan Caifang and Li Zhongquan requested to Xiangdong zong to take Yingkou alone, and with the approval of their superiors, they immediately began to deploy operations.
The "running with a rope" Yingkou pursuit battle ended at 10:00 a.m. on November 2, and most of the enemies were annihilated, and only a small number of enemies escaped.
The Ninth Column annihilated more than 14,800 enemy personnel, captured 88 cannons of various kinds, 301 light and heavy machine guns, 2,574 long and short guns, 66 cars, and sank 1 enemy troop carrier and 22 sailing ships.
The Liaoshen Campaign ended in victory, and Yingkou was officially liberated. Some of the Ninth Column generals quipped that the troops had given each squad a rope, but it had drawn a satisfactory end to the Liaoshen Campaign.