Zhang Lingfu found that he was surrounded, why not break through
The reorganized 74th Division, as the vanguard of the first corps of the Kuomintang army to attack the Liberated Areas of Shandong, attacked Danbu, where the headquarters of the East China Field Army was located, but found it surrounded by the People's Liberation Army.
At this time, whether to obey the order to continue the attack or shrink to the plains to protect themselves, Zhang Lingfu's chief of staff and brigade commander were very controversial.
Lu Xing, commander of the 58th Brigade, resolutely advocated continuing to fight, believing that abandoning the heavy retreat without authorization would cause huge losses and could not be accounted for by his superiors.
The principal asked him to stick to the aid, "the center blossomed", zhang Lingfu chose to listen to the order.
The depiction of this part in the movie "Red Sun" is closer to historical facts.
According to Zhang Lingfu's instructions, the chief of staff called the brigade commander: "The way down the mountain must be passed", and it is necessary to overturn Meng Lianggu and retake Duozhuang.
Zhang Lingfu received the telegram, snatched the phone, and ordered the troops not to go down the mountain.
Zhang Lingfu, who was full of pride, said to his subordinates: "This plan is great."
Regarding the chief of staff's concern about the shortage of food, ammunition and water, Zhang Lingfu replied without worry: Xuzhou will be airdropped.
He and the brigade commander and other subordinates agreed that it would be no problem to hold for three days.
Zhang Lingfu just did not expect that the "anti-Japanese iron army" of the Kuomintang, which had made great achievements in battle, and the ace troops that attacked the city and plundered the land in the soviet union and northern Jiangsu, did not hold menglianggu for even three days, and the entire army was destroyed.
Afterwards, Chiang Kai-shek's words of praise for him were mainly that he obeyed orders.
Chiang Kai-shek wrote a eulogy at Zhang Lingfu's memorial service, asking his deputies, Lieutenant General Yang, to read it out, saying that Zhang Lingfu had been ordered to retreat to the Menglianggu Heights, cut off drinking water, run out of food and ammunition, and be attacked on all sides. However, "knowing that he could not achieve the task, he still took it as his duty to completely obey the order", held his position, "unyielding" and "killed himself".
The "Great" Center Blossom Program
Is Meng Lianggu's "central blossoming" a suggestion from Zhang Lingfu to Lao Jiang to actively stay and use himself as bait to attract Hua Ye's main force, or is it the "great" plan that Lao Jiang came up with behind closed doors to let Zhang Ling die?
Zhang Daoyu, the son of Zhang Lingfu, once said of Zhang Lingfu's defeat at Meng Lianggu: The menglianggu campaign plan was formulated by Commander Tang of the Corps, approved by Commander Gu of the Army, and approved by Chairman Jiang, and as a soldier, he had to obey the command.
On May 16, 1947, Zhang Lingfu, commander of the 74th Division of the Kuomintang Army, defeated Meng Lianggu and was buried in the Yimeng Mountains. At that time, his son Zhang Daoyu was still swaddling.
For decades, his son had been searching for the truth about his father's cause of death. Because of his identity, he was able to access a lot of historical real materials of that year, and he also met many witnesses.
Relatively speaking, although he has a certain positive tendency toward his father's defeat and death, as a descendant of the person concerned, his statement undoubtedly has a certain authority.
Battle plan of the Kuomintang First Corps
The battle plan formulated by Tang Enbo's first corps was to allow Zhang Lingfu to break through the center of the reorganized 74th Division and quickly capture Tanbu, where the headquarters of the East China Field Army was located.
This battle plan was issued by the Ministry of National Defense layer by layer.
After the battle, the battle details of Tombaugh's first corps also clearly recorded the reconnaissance, initiation, and process of the battle, and could also explain this plan.
From this point of view, the integrated 74th Division is only a sharp unit. Of the 450,000 troops of the Kuomintang army that focused on attacking the Liberated Areas of Shandong, they were only part of the fourth column of Tang Enbo's first corps.
The commander of the Ninth Column Reconnaissance Company, Qi Jinhu, went deep behind the enemy's lines, and grabbed a tongue; he was a staff officer of the reorganized 74th Division who delivered the combat order, and the captured documents and confessions also confirmed this battle plan.
The undercover Guo Rugui also copied a copy and asked the traffic officer to send it to the top brass of my army, but it should not have played much role in HuaYe, because when Guo Rugui knew about this plan, it was May 12, 1947, and the Battle of Menglianggu had already begun.
Due to the narrow and difficult road, Zhang Lingfu did not launch an attack according to the scheduled time, and the other troops were even more slow.
During the march, the spy team learned from the mouths of the people who went to Linyi that the military situation was unknown at hand, and that there were hundreds of thousands of main forces of the People's Liberation Army who were "going to suffer a big loss", so they reported to Tang Enbo and asked for the defense to be contracted.
Tang Enbo called Liu Fei, deputy chief of staff of the Ministry of National Defense, overnight, asking for a change in the battle plan.
Liu Fei said that the time was too late, "the old man fell asleep", and refused.
Tang Enbo called Gu Zhutong again. Commander-in-Chief Gu told Tang Enbo that the plan was an order from the Ministry of National Defense and the General Staff Headquarters, and he had no right to adjust the combat plan, so let's implement it.
They also know that front-line commanders are accustomed to exaggerating the enemy's situation.
Li Tianxia also said that the enemy he faced was the thirteen columns of the People's Liberation Army.
The Ministry of Defence sent back an order that the communists had little strength in the area and wanted the 74th Division to continue its attack.
The top brass did not pay attention to, or even trust, the intelligence on the front line, and only issued orders.
The front line is also helpless and can only execute orders.
These orders are above the corps headquarters.
Later confessions of the 74th Division's captives of middle and senior officers also proved this point, and blamed much of the loss on the lack of high-level intelligence and command errors.
Until May 14, Tang Enbo also conveyed Shangfeng's orders: Chairman Jiang ~ "Quickly attack Yishui", and commander-in-chief Gu ~ "capture Juxian County".
Tang Enbo was also a model of obeying the orders of the "old man", with the column commander below and the integrated division below the column commander.
By May 16, the fighting was unprecedentedly fierce, the 74th Division suffered heavy casualties, the positions were lost, the communication was intermittent, the command was chaotic, the wounds and sick could not be transported, and it had reached the point of defeat, and the order received by the 74th Division was still: Hold out!
Of course, Master Zhang could only obey the order.
How our army resolutely implements orders and flexible emergency response
"Will be spared the fate of the foreign king."
The on-the-spot decision of the front-line commanders not only determines the victory or defeat of the battle, but also determines their own life and death.
Su Yu found that the reorganized 74th Division was alone and deep, the left and right wings were separated by more than ten kilometers, there were interspersed gaps, the mountains were blocked, the rescue was difficult, the main force was in hand, and it was convenient to dispatch, so he and the chiefs of the Noji Division urgently consulted and adjusted the plan. Chen Yi decided to "take the rank of general among the million troops" and changed the order to attack the Gui troops to the encirclement and annihilation of the reorganized 74th Division.
The Ninth Column Xu Shiyou led his troops to travel 70 miles in one night, the commander of the Sixth Column, Wang Bicheng, more than 20,000 people flew 220 miles in two days, and the first column Ye Fei led the team and Zhang Lingfu to march forward at a distance of 100 meters...
Both Zhang Lingfu and deputy division commander Cai Renjie mistakenly believed that it was the reorganized 25th Division of the friendly army Huang Baitao.
Ye Fei commanded, boldly interspersed, regardless of them.
This is the courage and responsibility of front-line commanders.
Lessons from disobedience
One of the most common sayings of Kuomintang officers is: "It is the duty of a soldier to obey orders."
Many officers have reached the point of dogmatic rigidity in their obedience to orders.
Zhang Lingfu did not break through, which was different from the rest of the Tiger Ben troops in the Changde Defense War that year.
In the defense of Changde, the old Chiang Kai-shek boasted in the international community that his troops would coexist and die with Changde. As a result, although Yu Chengwan and the soldiers of the 57th Division of the 74th Army fought in blood, "ran out of bullets, aided, and destroyed the city", instead of choosing to hold their positions and die on the battlefield, they broke through with the last 300 people and let the Japanese army occupy Changde. Only 83 survivors remained in the breakout with Cheng wan, while more than 300 wounded remained in Changde City, killed by the Japanese occupation forces who showed off their strength.
This made the old Chiang lose face in front of the giants of Cairo and the international community. Therefore, he wanted to kill Yu Chengwan, an anti-Japanese hero who "did not obey orders", and if he interceded with the people of Dede, his generals tried their best to mediate, and Yu Chengwan, commander of the 57th Division of the 74th Army, was shot by Lao Jiang in the name of "disobeying orders".
Liao Lingqi, commander of the 58th Division of the 74th Army, also left the battlefield because he disobeyed orders and left the battlefield because he was attacked by a group of stone groups under the well by the Kuomintang generals. Forced Old Jiang to shoot Liao Lingqi as well.
Because of the misfortune and blessing, Zhang Lingfu, deputy commander of the 58th Division, became the commander of the division, and he could understand the temper of the "old man" better than others.
It is precisely because of this that Zhang Lingfu, commander of the 58th Division, was promoted to deputy commander of the 74th Army, and was specially approved by Chiang Kai-shek to enter the First Class (Lieutenant General Class) of the Army University with the rank of major general, and after graduation, he was successfully promoted to lieutenant general and commander of the capital garrison.
This is the concubine of the concubines, the confidants of the heart, the Kuomintang regular army of 4.3 million, how many can be compared?
In obeying the orders of old Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Lingfu was indeed more prominent than the generals of other Kuomintang troops.
Otherwise, the veteran general said all day long that "if you don't succeed, you will become a ren" and call on his Huangpu students to kill Chengren if the soldiers are defeated.
Dai Zhiqi of the Battle of Subei and Huang Baitao of the Battle of Huaihai were killed.
The veteran also praised Huang Baitao bitterly: "Huangpu does not die."
Unfortunately, in the War of Liberation, more than a thousand Kuomintang generals laid down their arms and surrendered to become prisoners.
Among them, there are 9 in the first phase of Huangpu, and Huang Baitao, who was sent out of the miscellaneous school, is not a graduate of Huangpu.
These people, who did not obey the principal's orders, survived.
Zhang Lingfu, who obeyed the order, died at Meng Lianggu.
Zhang Lingfu was killed
The image was taken by a storyteller in Menglianggu, Mengyin, Linyi, Shandong