After the battle of Nianzhuang, the main force of Huang Baitao's corps was completely annihilated, and two of the four commanders trapped in Nianzhuang escaped and two were captured.
Chen Shizhang, commander of the 25th Army, and Zhou Zhidao, commander of the 100th Army, fled to Xuzhou one after another, while Wang Zejun, commander of the 44th Army, and Liu Zhenxiang, commander of the 64th Army, were captured.
The 4 commanders under Huang Baitao's command were all alive, so why did only the commander of the corps, Huang Baitao, die in The Mill?
What really happened in the final stages of the Battle of Mill?
November 18: Defeat is decided
On November 18, the eighth day of the Battle of Nianzhuang, with the successive loss of the positions of the 44th Army and the 100th Army, reinforcements were delayed. The remnants of Huang Baitao's regiment trapped near Nianzhuang were demoralized.
At this time, the main positions of Pengzhuang, Huangtan, and Caozhuang to the west and south of Nianzhuang were all lost. The remnants of the 100th Army and the 44th Army all retreated to the Big and Small Tooth Villages where the 25th Army headquarters were located. The remnants of the three armies were gathered together in chaos.
At present, Huang Baitao's corps can fight the 40th Division of the 25th Army and Liu Zhenxiang's 64th Army. Huang Baitao looked at the current situation, looking at the rumbling cannons in the direction of the Great Xu Family in the west, which was out of reach, and the reinforcements were still far away. Huang Baitao sighed and said:
"If Li Mi has Qiu Qingquan's strength, there is still some hope for the siege to be lifted, and now there is no hope!"
Huang Baitao and Qiu Qingquan have a deep contradiction, Qiu Qingquan is arrogant and usually looks down on Huang Baitao, who is from a miscellaneous brand. In the Battle of Eastern Henan a few months ago, his Second Corps also paid a huge price, but Chiang Kai-shek only gave Huang Baitao the Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun, and Qiu Qingquan was criticized instead. Qiu Qingquan has always been grumpy, believing that Huang Baitao intends to compete with him for merit.
Therefore, Huang Baitao expected that Qiu Qingquan would not only not go all out to rescue, but also fall into the well and wait to see his joke.
November 19: Empty joy
In the early morning of November 19, Huang Baitao was arranging the defenses of the mill village, when suddenly a plane in the sky was hit and caught fire, and a person fell into the encirclement of the mill village by parachute. This person was an air force major who was originally an airdrop air-to-air liaison station, so as to better cooperate with the Kuomintang Air Force in carrying out precision bombing.
In addition to bringing the radio, the air force major also told Huang Baitao: Qiu Qingquan's Second Corps has arrived at The Daxu family, and according to the current progress, it will arrive tomorrow.
By the evening, the PLA had not launched an offensive for a whole day. Combined with what the air force major said earlier, did the reinforcements really come? Has the PLA retreated? Huang Baitao innocently said to his subordinates:
"Did the communists run away?" Ask someone to send a small force out to search for it. ”
So the 64th Army sent a search force to reconnoiter, and not long after it went out, it was blocked by the People's Liberation Army. After Huang Baitao heard this, he was depressed again, just empty joy.
At about 8:00 p.m., suddenly the cannon rumbled, and it was Huaye's cannon that sounded. Huaye's general offensive began, and Huaye's 4th, 6th, 8th, and 9th columns launched a full-line onslaught against the remnants of Huang Baitao's corps.
The first attack was launched on the remnants of the most prominent Dayazhuang, and this group of troops composed of the 100th Army, the 25th Army, and the 44th Army was quickly annihilated. Chen Shizhang, commander of the 25th Army, and Zhou Zhidao, commander of the 100th Army, changed into the clothes of the soldiers and fled the battlefield of Nianzhuang in the midst of the collapse.
After Dayazhuang was captured, only Nianzhuang, where Huang Baitao's corps headquarters was located, Youjiahu, where the 40th Division of the 25th Army was stationed, and several positions controlled by the 64th Army, such as Dayuanshang and Wuzhuang. Huang Baitao's corps had been compressed into a very narrow area by Huaye.
In the night, our army did not rush to attack, because the remaining enemies were the most stubborn. Therefore, on the same night, artillery was first used to bombard the enemy trapped in the narrow area to reduce casualties during the attack.
November 20 and 21: Mill village finally collapses
After the fierce bombardment in the night, the position of Huang Baitao's corps was in a mess:
"Houses are in ruins, grass huts are on fire, cars are broken, people and horses are in ruins."
。
However, Huang Baitao and the others were hiding in a strong hidden bunker, and there was nothing he could do with the cannon. According to Huang Baitao's confidential secretary at the time, he recalled:
At this time, there was a shortage of food in the mill, and the troops' breakfast today was to eat horse meat, and then bury the dead bodies on the spot.
On the night of the 20th, several signal flares were seen rising in the sky, and then the 6th and 9th columns of Huaye launched a fierce attack. At that time, The Headquarters of Huang Baitao Nianzhuang deployed three infantry regiments, plus the directly subordinate guard units and heavy troops, accumulating nearly 10,000 people.
The battle lasted from the night of the 20th to the early morning of the 21st, and after a night of fierce fighting, Huang Baitao's troops were defeated. Hua Ye's warriors rushed into the mill, and the remnants of the defeated soldiers fled in a hurry. Huang Baitao, yang Tingyan, deputy commander of the 25th Army, Wei Ao, chief of staff of the corps, and others fled east to Liu Zhenxiang's position of the 64th Army.
Huang Baitao fled to the headquarters of the 64th Army. Liao Tiejun, chief of the Second Intelligence Division of the 7th Corps, recorded this scene in a reminiscence article:
Huang Baitao led Wei Ao, Tan Yue, Yang Tingyan, and others from Nianzhuang wei to the 64th Army command post on the compound. The yellow face was as earthy as the color of the earth, and he sat for a long time unable to speak, and then ate a little meal..."
At noon on the 21st, Huang Baitao fled to the Position of Wuzhuang garrisoned by the 156th Division of the 64th Army in an attempt to make a final stubborn resistance. That night, Hua Ye launched another onslaught, and the 4th Column first launched an attack on the 40th Division of the 25th Army, which was still stubbornly resisting at Youjiahu. The 40th Division was the main division of Huang Baitao's 25th Army, and its combat effectiveness was indeed strong; Chen Shizhang, commander of the 25th Army, ran away, and the 40th Division was still stubbornly resisting.
At this time, the 40th Division had been isolated, in order to avoid the 40th Division from fighting with trapped beasts, the commander of the 4th Column, Tao Yong, thought of a good way, he let the soldiers launch a psychological offensive against the enemy troops in the position, so that the psychological defense line of this lone army collapsed, so that a large horn was erected on the 4th Column position, and the soldiers shouted at the enemy with their throats.
Many of Huaye's fighters are liberation fighters, the so-called liberation fighters
Refers to a Kuomintang soldier who was captured by the People's Liberation Army during combat and thus joined the People's Liberation Army
。 These soldiers used their personal experience to persuade the officers and men of the 40th Division to lay down their weapons and stop fighting for Chiang Kai-shek.
The psychological warfare of this night was indeed very effective, and the 4th Column completely annihilated the 40th Division at Youjiahu lake without a fierce battle, and captured more than 5,000 people.
This method was also adopted when fighting the 64th Army, which was a Unit of the Cantonese Army, and the officers and men were basically people from the Guangdong region. Hua Ye sent the soldiers of the two Guangdong columns to persuade the 64th Army to surrender. This move really worked, these Cantonese soldiers were not very accustomed to the Central Plains, and when they heard the familiar hometown sound coming from the horn, the homesickness became higher and higher.
Just like when Xiang Yu was besieged, Liu Bang shook Xiang Yu's heart with Chu Di's songs. Our army also used this move to break the last psychological defense line of the officers and men of the 159th Division of the 64th Army, and on the morning of the 22nd, zhong Shiqian, commander of the 159th Division, led his troops to surrender.
Huang Baitao's ending
At this time, Huang Baitao, who had fled to Wuzhuang, had only a few thousand remnants of the 156th Division of the 64th Army left, and Huang Baitao asked Liu Zhenxiang to lead his troops to break through and said to Liu Zhenxiang:
"I'm old and sick, and I can't walk as a prisoner, and I'm embarrassed. You are still young and still have something to offer... I hope that you will break through and do something for the party-state. ”
At dusk on the 22nd, after deploying the plan for a breakthrough of the remnants of the 156th Division, he also changed into ordinary soldier clothes and fled northwest of Wuzhuang surrounded by a group of retinues, while Liu Zhenxiang led the 156th Division to break through.
Liu Zhenxiang was captured not long after he went out, and Huang Baitao, who fled in a daze, was finally left with only his old subordinate Yang Tingyan. According to Yang Tingyan:
He and Huang Baitao fled to a small village, surrounded by people who said that the People's Liberation Army, Huang Baitao did not want to be a prisoner, and then raised a gun to commit suicide. As a result, one shot was not dead, and seeing Huang Baitao struggling in pain, he made up another shot for Huang Baitao.
Then the People's Liberation Army came to interrogate what the situation was, and Yang Tingyan found the old man in the village to testify, falsely claiming that they were people from this village, who had been arrested in the battle, and had gone to work as a brother in the Kuomintang army, and the man who died was his brother. The PLA soldiers still looked at him pitifully, so the three of them buried Huang Baitao together. Yang Tingyan made a mark and left.
In this way, Huang Baitao became the commander of the first regimental regiment of the Kuomintang army to die in the Liberation War. However, there has been much controversy about Huang Baitao's death, including the death of a stray bullet, and there are also the above claims of suicide. But neither claim has the most direct evidence to prove it right.
Because no one examined Huang Baitao's body at the first time, and where Huang Baitao's body was in the end has always been a mystery. As the last person to accompany Huang Baitao, Yang Tingyan should know how Huang Baitao died. However, for the sake of publicity needs and various interests involved, he is also likely to lie, after all, there is no third person at the scene to see how Huang Baitao died. Therefore, Yang Tingyan's statement is just an isolated evidence.
Moreover, this Yang Tingyan's speech is indeed unreliable, because after Yang Tingyan ran to Xuzhou, he told Du Yuming affectionately about how "heroic" Huang Baitao was when he committed suicide, and Liu Zhenxiang also wore a medal to dedicate himself to the party-state. At that time, Du Yuming admired Huang Baitao and Liu Zhenxiang's "bold loyalty" in his heart.
However, after a few years, when Du Yuming met Liu Zhenxiang, who was also in the process of transformation in Gongdelin, he realized that Yang Tingyan's words could not be fully believed. Therefore, the death of Huang Baitao has become a mystery in history, and more confidential archives on the Taiwan side may be able to uncover the mystery.
Although Huang Baitao's death is mysterious, the Battle of Dahuaihai of our army is becoming clearer and clearer. With the collapse of Huang Baitao's 7th Corps at Nianzhuang, the Battle of Huaihai also entered a new stage.