On November 21, 1950, an army of nearly 100,000 men quietly crossed the Yalu River and entered Korea from Linjiang. What is surprising is that to this day, the people of Linjiang are completely unimpressed by this matter.
In the local historical documents of the Baishan area, "Hunjiang City Chronicle" and "History of the White Mountains of the CPC," in the relevant chapters of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the activities of the people in the Baishan area at that time, under the leadership of the party and the government, fully supported the activities of the people in the Baishan area to fully support the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, including incidents such as enthusiastically joining the army, guaranteeing materials, rushing to repair roads and bridges, and transferring the wounded and sick of the volunteer army.
At that time, the corps headquarters of the Ninth Corps of the Chinese Volunteer Army and the 27th Army and the 26th Army, totaling more than 100,000 people, could such a large group of people and horses cross the border so quietly?
This was entirely due to the precise deployment of General Song Shilun, who was then the commander and political commissar of the Ninth Corps.
First of all, why did the central authorities so eagerly transfer the Ninth Corps into the Korean battlefield?
It should be known that the Ninth Corps of the Volunteer Army, which was previously stationed on the southeast coast of the mainland, was a contingent preparing to attack Taiwan and has been paying close attention to training for sea crossing and landing operations. In June 1950, when the Korean War broke out, and then the Central Military Commission saw the United States forcibly intervene with the "United Nations Army", Mao Zedong and other leaders immediately keenly smelled the changes in the war situation, and in September of that year, they ended the Ninth Corps' sea-crossing and landing combat mission, and let them go between Xuzhou and Jinan on Jinpu Road at the end of October, and began as a three-month reorganization training in mid-November.
At the time when the Ninth Corps began to make a mission change, the first group of Chinese Volunteers had secretly crossed the border on October 19, 1950, and launched the first campaign on the twenty-fifth day, directly repelling an integrated regiment of the "American First Cavalry Division". However, this direction is only the Western Front.
In the first battle, the Volunteers caught the "United Nations Army" led by the United States by surprise in a surprise attack. Because the Americans refused to believe Chinese dared to stir up the muddy waters of the Korean Peninsula, but in fact Chinese dared. So, when the Americans reacted, they immediately gathered a large army. At that time, the entire Sino-Korean coalition army was almost pressed to the battlefield of the western front, and the strength of the eastern front was only two divisions of the Forty-second Army, that is, 30,000 people.
The "United Nations Army" side naturally saw this, and the commander-in-chief, "Five-Star General" MacArthur, formulated the "Christmas" offensive, intending to attack from the east and west at the same time. Previously, the US First Cavalry Division suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of White Mountain, and this time MacArthur sent another strong army of the US Army, the "First Marine Division".
At this time, after the baptism of World War II, the First Marine Division was already a modern army equipped with advanced American equipment, and its powerful mobility could ensure that the First Marine Division could smoothly cross the Chosin Lake area, cross the Wolf Forest Mountain, and cooperate with the "United Nations Army" brigade on the western front to crush the Chinese and DPRK coalition forces to death.
The United States thinks so, how can the senior leaders of the volunteer army not think of it? On October 29 of that year, before the first battle was over, Mao Zedong called Peng Dehuai, saying that the "United Nations Army" on the Eastern Front might send three divisions to sneak in, so it was necessary to use the main force of the Song Dynasty to grasp the Eastern Front, otherwise it would be unfavorable to the overall situation.
Moreover, on the evening of October 5, just after the end of the first campaign, Mao Zedong once again stressed in the telegram: If the Eastern Front is not fought well or in a timely manner, it is very likely that the Jiangjie that has been fought will be lost, and the US army will directly threaten the troops of the Western Front of the Volunteer Army from the east, then the Volunteer Army on the Western Front may be in the encirclement of the enemy's troops on the Eastern and Western Fronts, which will cause a great unfavorable situation in the overall situation, so the importance of the task on the Eastern Front is self-evident.
So back to our previous question, why did the Central Military Commission choose the Ninth Corps of the Song Dynasty?
Relatively speaking, the Ninth Corps went to Fight in Korea with two important shortcomings. First, the Ninth Corps was a soldier in the warm zone, and being temporarily sent to the bitter cold land in the northeast was certainly not adaptable, which would greatly weaken the actual combat capability;
Second, the Ninth Corps is on the southeast coast, to the northeast that is a thousand miles, the sea has been blocked by the United States, can not go, land transport, at that time the railway construction is far less developed than now, moreover, near the northeast of Inner Mongolia, Beijing and Tianjin region is not without soldiers. So, why does it have to be the Ninth Corps?
The key is the Song Dynasty wheel.
Song Shilun was one of Peng Dehuai's five deputy commanders, born into a peasant household and a teenager who joined the army, and was an elite among the elites of the old Red Army who had experienced the "Long March". And song shilun is best at fighting blocking battles and interspersed battles. In the Battle of Jinan, it was the team led by Song Shilun who was responsible for the main attack, and finally captured the "strong city" Jinan. The Eastern Assault Corps, which was dealing with the U.S. army, needed an elite division to block the attack.
At that time, although Song Shilun had been training troops to carry out sea crossing and landing operations, he was always paying attention to the Korean battlefield, and as a soldier, he spontaneously began to think about the confrontation between the Chinese and American armies.
Therefore, when the Ninth Corps of the Song Dynasty was relieved of the task of crossing the sea and landing operations, on September 15, the same day that MacArthur launched the Inchon landing, the Ninth Corps held a military education conference. At this time, Song Shilun already had a mature thinking about the operations of the US army:
Part I, What are the basic tactical characteristics of the US military?
First, the U.S. military has undergone modernization and greatly strengthened the role of ordnance in combat, so relatively speaking, their soldiers are more dependent on these machinery, and the combat tenacity of soldiers will be weaker.
Second, through the actual operation of World War II, the various branches of the US military are very perfect, what artillery, engineers, infantry, tanks... Each performs its own duties, advocating coordinated operations and gathering troops when fighting, while the First Marine Division, as a "sharp knife", prefers to actively attack, so relatively speaking, their defensive capabilities will be weaker;
Third, based on the dependence on artillery, the infantry of the US military will adopt an evacuation formation in the operation, because in this way it can avoid being affected by its own artillery fire, and this movement mode particularly emphasizes the ability of the commander who leads the team, the communication ability of the army, and pays more attention to the position of the command post, so in general, the individual combat capability of the US army will be weaker. However, the US military is well fed and ammunition, not to mention the logistical support, and the volunteers in this regard cannot be compared.
Through this part of the thinking, Song Shilun held that the new training direction of the Ninth Corps should be based on these characteristics and equipment of the US military, and it should always study the tactics and countermeasures in accordance with the Korean war situation, and should not build a car behind closed doors.
Part II, What is the basic way of playing the US military?
First, the US military has an air force and an aircraft carrier, and the air and sea supremacy are firmly in their hands, so the volunteer army cannot be tough and win by surprise. The so-called "favorable time and place" and "heaven and time" are all new soldiers to the Korean battlefield, and they are all afraid of the cold, which is almost the same; "people", the volunteer army and the US military have their own advantages and disadvantages in organization and logistics, and they are also even; then the final key is "geographical advantage", and the combat site chosen by the volunteer army must do its best to weaken the role of the US air force and navy.
Second, as a modern unit, the US military is very mobile, and although the volunteer army mainly relies on two legs, it is also useful in small-scale operations; when training, it is even more necessary to emphasize the human mobility of its own troops; tactically, it is necessary to cut off the opponent, break up the enemy's position, and strive for annihilation.
Song Shilun's view of the US military was so mature that the cadres attending the meeting at that time had a bottom in their hearts. These thoughts and suggestions of the Song Dynasty were later applied to the Korean battlefield, especially as the guiding ideology of the second campaign.
After all, Song Shilun was also a person who had fought in the northeast, and he knew that the cold in the northeast was too cold for the soldiers to be overwhelmed, and the DPRK in the northeast of the northeast would only be more severely cold, so in early October, Song Shilun set out with the vanguard of the Ninth Corps and personally asked the Shandong Provincial Party Committee and Government to solve the problem of combat uniforms in the cold area for the Ninth Corps, and in Beijing, he also learned antifreeze experience from Xiao Hua, deputy director of the General Political Department who had fought in the northeast battlefield during the Liberation War.
However, with the rapid deterioration of the Korean battlefield, Kim Il-sung was crying and begging his grandmother to ask China to send troops as soon as possible, so the volunteer army that was originally in the northeast quickly entered the DPRK on October 19, and on October 24, Mao Zedong also personally received Song Shilun and told him that the eastern front was a unit that needed the Ninth Corps to be good at fighting and resisting and fighting the evil enemy, and it was necessary to rely on the Ninth Corps to win the strategic initiative and reverse the occupation.
Moreover, Mao Zedong also told Song Shilun very bluntly that the Ninth Corps on the Eastern Front could only fight independently and should not have any hope for reinforcements, and Peng Dehuai did not have the strength to support the Eastern Front, otherwise he would not have called the Ninth Corps over so early. However, because of such a special mission, Mao Zedong also granted Song Shilun a very high degree of real power, and the deployment and command of the campaign were decided by Song Shilun alone, and neither the Central Committee represented by Mao Zedong nor the volunteer army headquarters represented by Peng Dehuai would interfere.
At this time, Song Shilun was already a veteran general, and his state of mind was already more peaceful than when he attacked Jinan City, and he knew that this was another difficult task, and naturally it was undertaken. On October 28, The Commander-in-Chief of the People's Liberation Army, Zhu Dezhu, personally rushed to Yanzhou to mobilize the officers and men of the Ninth Corps here before the battle.
However, on the same day, the Central Military Commission issued an instruction for the Ninth Corps to speed up into the DPRK, so the Ninth Corps immediately set off and rushed to the battlefield.
Therefore, from the beginning of October to the north to Shandong, to the middle and late October into the battlefield, the original "three-month training adaptation period" originally given to the Ninth Corps has not been realized, as for the relevant materials that should be equipped, it is naturally too late to arrive, it can only be a few days of short stay in the northeast, Song Shilun tried to get a batch of winter clothes, only fifty thousand pieces, and the Ninth Corps had 150,000 people, and these fifty thousand pieces were not finished, and the Ninth Corps had already urgently entered the DPRK on November 7. Such logistical deficiencies also laid the groundwork for a large number of non-combat attritions of the Ninth Corps in the Battle of Chosin Lake.
In view of the huge disparity in absolute strength between the enemy and us, Song Shilun also went through close thinking. At that time, although the Ninth Corps also had some artillery, engineers, armored troops, etc., but the arms were not sound, and the guns and guns were also "made in all countries", and various types of guns were not necessarily equipped with various types of shells, and as for the air force, it was even more important not to think about it, and even Soviet aircraft could not catch up.
The U.S. military is a complete navy, army and air force, and can dispatch thousands of sorties per day on average, dropping more than 40,000 tons of artillery shells. Therefore, in order to deal a heavy blow to such a US military, it is necessary to conceal the attempt and surprise it. Based on the experience of friendly neighboring units and the characteristics of the air raids of the US army, the entire Ninth Corps formulated a very detailed and meticulous secrecy system and camouflage measures.
Beginning on November 7, the soldiers of the Ninth Corps began a secret march. The personnel and apparatus of the troops were closely camouflaged, the news of the troops' march was completely blocked, even the radio was silent, and all the officers and men traveled night and night, taking hidden roads, and always maintained a high degree of confidentiality and surprise.
Therefore, although at that time, the US military carried out indiscriminate bombardment of various targets in the northern part of Korea and used all kinds of modern reconnaissance methods to monitor the Sino-DPRK border, it never found any trace of our army's movements. MacArthur himself flew over the Yalu River to observe.
In the air, he clearly saw the snow-capped North Korea and the northeast region of China, with towns, villages, and wilderness in his eyes, and there was no trace of the movement and assembly of large troops. To the negative MacArthur, of course, he proudly declared: "The traffic has been completely and completely destroyed, and there is no sign of a large movement of Chinese communist troops on both sides of the Yalu River!" In his heart, he always arrogantly believed that China could only send a little troops, and if it fought a war, it would be almost exhausted, and the second war would be very easy.
And just when MacArthur was triumphant, the Ninth Corps had all entered Korea. Except for the 20th Army, which crossed the border from Ji'an, the more than 100,000 people of the main force of the corps arrived at Linjiang before dawn every day, did not move during the day, and only secretly crossed the river at night, and basically had no contact with the locals, which showed the strict secrecy measures.
Therefore, back to the beginning of the article, the local people are not at all impressed by this army, and the local historical documents of that period record the Ninth Corps even more blank.
Only in the book "History of Baishan", there is a passage in the relevant record of the people of Baishan supporting the volunteer army and ensuring the supply of materials in the front: "In late November, when a certain unit of the volunteer army went to Puping, Houchang County, North Korea, on the other side of badaogou Village in Changbai County, due to the urgent task, the supplies were not available, and the soldiers had to eat fried noodles and drink snow water. After the Badaogou District learned of this situation, it immediately organized the masses to grind rice and grind noodles, grinding an average of 20,000 kilograms of corn flour every day to make pancakes and corn cakes. The Women's Association organized women to make shoes and socks for the soldiers, and also organized people to send a large number of vegetables and pork to the volunteer army. The blacksmith furnace worked day and night to make tens of thousands of horseshoe palm pieces for the troops. ”
From this account, it can be seen that the baishan people at that time had great support for the volunteer army, and such a huge supply was enough to see that this was a huge army, at least tens of thousands of people, and it was really not easy for Badaogou in Changbai County, which was still very sparsely populated at that time, to achieve such a degree
In fact, this unit was the 26th Army of the Ninth Corps. And the "History of the White Mountains of the Communist Party of China" was not published until 2003, at this time, fifty-three years have passed since the end of the battle, and there is no mention of specific troops in the text, which shows how many years this "military secret" has been kept secret!
Therefore, when the Ninth Corps suddenly appeared in the Chosin Lake area, it was like a heavenly divine soldier, directly stunned the entire United States, and the American headlines at that time directly exclaimed: "This is a miracle in the history of contemporary warfare!" ”
After entering the DPRK, the Song Dynasty immediately adopted a targeted strategic deployment, and the operational styles of attack, defense, obstruction, blockade, annihilation, detour, and encirclement were used at the same time, so that the US military "confused the second monk." Although the overall appearance of the Ninth Corps is too scattered, but at that time Chosin Lake as a natural barrier, the First Marine Division and the US Seventh Division were separated, and there was no need for the soldiers to re-cut, so the Ninth Corps had to surround the enemy first, and then determine who to eat first, and then who to eat later.
Song Shilun had already used this strategy when he was fighting the Kuomintang, so was it okay to fight the Yankees? At that time, General Song Shilun did not have a definite number in his mind, but he had to try. If you can do it, you can continue to use it, and if you can't do it, you will change the way you play, that is, you will fight a war of annihilation in the movement. In the words of General Song Shilun: "Invariance is relative, change is absolute, but change cannot be separated from its origin, that is, to destroy the enemy's living forces in large quantities." ”
As it turns out, OK!
Throughout the Battle of Chosin Lake, the First Marine Division suffered an unprecedented heavy blow, and the invincible "Polar Bear Regiment" was also completely annihilated, shattering the arrogance of the Americans at once, as if it had a nightmare, and this was only the beginning of the American nightmare.