Author: Station Fengxue (Without permission, please do not copy the full text to carry!) ）
One night at the end of November 1950, "the moon is high and dark", a group of figures carefully groped in the ravine under the cover of night! Not far away, on the mountainside, there are repeated lights, which are actually a camp of the US army.
At this time, marching in the ravine was a vanguard of the Volunteer Army, and the goal of their attack was to find the 31st Regimental Battle Group of the US Seventh Infantry Division stationed near Sungsang-ri in North Korea, and launch a surprise attack in the dark of night.
The vanguard force consisted of only about one platoon, and they didn't know exactly how many American troops were stationed in the camp on the mountainside. Therefore, the platoon leader told the soldiers to approach the camp carefully, quickly find out the enemy's situation, and do not act rashly until the last resort!
It was getting closer and closer to the camp, and the soldiers could already hear the American soldiers in the camp. The platoon commander asked the fighters to continue their march behind a grassy area, where they could take covert observations and seek an opportunity to attack.
Unexpectedly, just as everyone was about to arrive at their destination, they suddenly made a "ding-dong" sound, which was particularly harsh in the dark night! It turned out that a soldier accidentally stepped on a pile of cans thrown on the ground by the Us army, and the soles of his feet slipped and fell to the ground unexpectedly.
At this moment, a awakened American soldier came out of the tent cursing and grinning. He shouted something in the direction of the volunteer soldiers! A volunteer soldier raised his gun and hit him, and the American soldier fell to the ground almost at the same time.
Subsequently, the volunteer soldiers of this platoon did not stop and launched a direct attack on the camp. The U.S. troops in the camp were suddenly attacked in their sleep, and for a time they panicked and collapsed. After eliminating the enemy outside, the volunteer soldiers rushed into the tent one by one to clear the enemy.
Polar Bear RegimentAl flag
In one of the tents, several fighters found a colorful flag, which they later learned was the "regimental flag" of the U.S. army. After the battle, the fighters took back the flag and finally confirmed that the camp they had dropped that night was the headquarters of the American "Polar Bear Regiment".
What was even more surprising to everyone was that the first American soldier to be killed at that time was McLean, the leader of the US "Polar Bear" regiment.
The explanation given by the US military later was that McLean found someone in his camp defense circle at that time, but he mistakenly thought it was his own person, so he walked out of the tent and reprimanded loudly, but he did not expect to be shot directly by the volunteers.
The U.S. Army's 31st Regimental Combat Group is part of the U.S. Seventh Infantry Division. Because in the early years this unit invaded the Siberian region of Soviet Russia, it was also called the "Polar Bear Regiment".
This US army unit has experienced the baptism of world war II artillery, so the officers and men have a lot of combat experience. Before entering the Xinxingli area, the regiment was also equipped with a battalion of the 32nd Regiment, a divisional artillery battalion and a heavy mortar company, an anti-aircraft machine gun company, a total of 3288 people to form a strong regimental combat group.
However, the regimental commander McLean never expected that he would be killed on the spot by the volunteers in an unexpected way. But this one is not the most unlucky, after all, he died a very painful death!
Tang Dynasty. Fiss
His successor: Don. Feith, not so lucky, he is the real unluckiest person in the real battle of the US army.
He was tragically "beheaded" during the rout, and the body was not found.
Lieutenant Colonel Feith, who succeeded as commander of the Polar Bear Regiment, served in the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division during World War II and participated in the Normandy landings. After the end of World War II, he came to China and served on the U.S. Military Advisory Group, helping the Kuomintang army fight the civil war.
At that time, Lieutenant Colonel Feith and the head of the US military advisory group, Bada Wei (who was the commander of the US 7th Division at the time of the Battle of Chosin Lake), scolded the "Chiang Kai-shek Army" every day as a bunch of waste and would not fight at all. And now, they finally have the opportunity to "personally pass the trick" with our army, and the result is that they have not taken advantage of anything.
But After all, Feith was also a person who had experienced the baptism of World War II, and after he took over the command of the "Polar Bear Regiment", he formed a circle of defense in tanks to block the attack of the volunteer army with dense infantry firepower. At the same time, a large number of US transport aircraft also airdropped a large number of supplies for this regimental-level battle group.
Several regiments of the 80th Division of the Volunteer Attack Force had been reduced by nearly one-third in the previous bloody battle. Moreover, the soldiers did not eat a hot meal for several days, the ammunition supply on hand was almost exhausted, and the so-called heavy weapons were only grenades.
Therefore, in the next offensive and defensive battles, the US military used a steady stream of firepower to use 4-barrel .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine guns and double-barreled 40 mm M19GMC anti-aircraft cannons to launch flat fire on the ground, causing huge casualties to the 80th Division of the Volunteer Army.
The two sides fought until the night of 30 November, when the Volunteer 80th and 81st Divisions, in coordination, launched a fierce attack on the besieged positions of the 31st Regiment.
On December 1, 1950, the commander of the "Polar Bear Regiment" battle group, Feith, seeing that he had no hope of foreign aid and would be completely annihilated by the volunteers if he held on any longer, decided to take 10 tanks as the spearhead and more than 40 aircraft to take cover in the air, and began to lead his troops to break south along the road at 13:00 on December 1.
At that time, the American soldiers were almost in a mess, and if it were not for the fire cover of tanks and aircraft, it would be difficult for them to fly out of the encirclement of the volunteers even if they were inserted with wings. Sensing the strategic attempt of the Polar Bear Regiment, the Volunteer 27th Army immediately launched a blockade battle.
Among them, the 242nd Regiment of a certain division quickly blew up a section of the bridge on the road and successfully intercepted the remnants of the "Polar Bear Regiment" in front of the 1221 heights. The other regiments of the Volunteer Army, relying on the favorable terrain on the east side of the road, simultaneously attacked from the enemy's flank, front and tail.
At that time, in order to avoid the strong air superiority of the US army, the various units of the volunteer army resolutely rushed down the road and mixed with the US army to start a melee. In this way, the US planes in the air did not dare to open fire for fear of accidentally injuring their own people, so they had to fly around the battlefield and carry out "blocking shooting" at the volunteer troops in the distance.
It was in this melee that Lieutenant Colonel Feith, commander of the Polar Bear Regiment, was wounded by a volunteer grenade while retreating. Fiss ended up squeezing into a truck with many of the wounded, trying to rush down the road under the cover of tanks during the battle, and then escaping from the frozen lake.
As a result, the truck he was riding in was hit by an incendiary bomb from the Volunteers, and most of the people on board were burned alive on the spot, including Commander Fiss. The truck driver then discarded the truck and the body of the officer to escape, and Feith and the truck may have sunk to the bottom of the river due to the melting of the ice surface by the fire, and were later listed as "missing persons" by the US military.
The final result of the battle: the "Polar Bear Regiment" battle group was almost completely annihilated by the volunteers, and eventually about 200 people escaped (the U.S. military count including more than 1,000 wounded).
Exactly 60 years, finally confirmed "death"!
The Korean War was also the first time our army fought against the highly mechanized US army. After all, the US army is different from the previous Japanese and Nationalist troops who rely on mule and horse maneuvering and are tactically dull: although the fierce attacks of the volunteer army often blind the US army, the other side often relies on its own strong mobility and repeatedly successfully jumps out of the encirclement of the volunteer army.
Therefore, the annihilation of the "Polar Bear Regiment" battle group was also one of the few battles of the Volunteer Army to "completely annihilate" the US army into an organized unit, and in the battle, it also killed two top commanders of the US military battlefield and captured the flag of the other side.
In particular, Don Feith, the commander of the US army, has not received any "name" after his death 60 years after his death because he has been listed as a missing person by the US military after the war. It wasn't until 2011 that the U.S. military found a U.S. military skeleton on the battlefield site, and later after DNA comparison, it was finally determined that it was Don Feith.
American General Oliver M. Smith mourns the fallen soldiers
It was only at this time that Fiss officially went from disappearance to death. Later, the U.S. Congress posthumously awarded him the "Medal of Honor", hoping to give Some Comfort to The Undead of Fiss in this way. But for 60 years, I believe that the "ghost" of Feith has been shouting lonely under the river: I am really miserable!
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