Photo note: A squadron of Chinese Volunteers in the defense of Shangganling
The "Scud" was easy to learn, braving the enemy's dense firepower, quickly and flexibly jumping over one bullet crater after another and crisscrossing traffic ditches, quickly touching the enemy's first fire point, skillfully throwing it into the blast canister, "booming" a loud sound, and successfully blowing it up. However, at this time, Yi Caixue was completely exposed to the enemy, and the enemy in the second fire point violently strafed at him. Yi Caixue tried to rush out of the crater several times, but the dense machine gun bullets made him unable to raise his head several times.
The above is a fragment of General Qin Jiwei's memoirs describing the famous Battle of Shangganling in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The warrior Yi Caixue mentioned in the article is a native of Qianxi County, Bijie City. Yi Caixue was conscripted into the army in 1950, and later joined the Chinese Volunteer Army, and crossed the Yalu River with the troops led by Qin Jiwei, commander of the 15th Army, to the korean battlefield where the war was raging, and participated in countless arduous life-and-death battles. Among them, the Battle of Shangganling was the most brutal and lifelong battle among the large and small battles in which he participated.
On October 14, 1952, the enemy in the Korean battlefield, who was fiercely fighting along the 38th Parallel, concentrated his forces and firepower and launched the largest "Jinhua Offensive" against our volunteer army since the autumn of 1951, with the Ganling area as the main target of the attack. Shangganling is a small mountain village in central Korea, and it is the forward position of the Volunteer Army's five holy mountains, a strategic point in central Korea. The commanding heights set at the peaks of more than 1,000 meters above sea level are key combat area positions bordering the plains in the west, the coast in the east, and the traffic arteries in the south. The enemy threw all his strength into this campaign in order to gain the initiative in the Panmunjom negotiations, to attack the Jinhua area of the central line with heavy troops, to plan to tear open the opening of the central line to break through the volunteer defense line, and to protrude the military demarcation line into the hinterland of Korea at the negotiating table. Thus, since the night of October 12, the deafening sound of gunfire has broken the silence of the Five Holy Mountains north of Jinhua. The enemy concentrated more than 300 artillery pieces and more than 40 sorties of fighters, and by 5 a.m. on the 14th, a total of more than 300,000 shells had been fired and more than 500 aircraft had dropped bombs. The indiscriminate bombardment caused the mountain to be cut down by two meters, and the rock turned into dust more than a meter deep. Immediately afterward, the seventh division of the US army and the second division of the ROK army, a total of seven battalions each, launched a fierce attack on the volunteer positions of 597.7 highland and 537.7 highland Beishan, and the world-famous Shangganling Campaign began.
On the first day of the battle, the enemy carried out 14 fierce attacks on the 597.9 heights of Shangganling with 4 battalions of troops, all of which were heroically repelled by the soldiers of Yi Caixue's unit. In the afternoon, when the soldiers had turned to tunnel combat, a battalion of enemies climbed up to the field fortifications of the front platoon of the Volunteer Army. The enemy quickly formed a series of open-air bunkers with steel plates, wood, and sacks, and then the enemy's light and heavy machine guns, flamethrowers, 60 guns, and recoilless cannons frantically shot out of these bunkers, tightly blocking the counterattack path of the volunteer troops. In order to blow up these bunkers and win the victory of the counterattack, Sun Zhanyuan, the platoon leader of the assault platoon, led the first demolitionist of the assault squad, Yi Caixue, to make all preparations for attack, and quietly monitored the enemy at the mouth of the tunnel.
After receiving the order to attack, Yi Caixue took the explosive canister and grenade, and bravely and skillfully used the cover of the crater and the remnant trench to successfully blow up the first bunker. After blowing up the enemy's first bunker, Yi Caixue was pressed by a dense barrage of bullets and unable to move. At this time, suddenly from the roaring rain of bullets, he heard the voice of the platoon leader Sun Zhanyuan on the left: "From the right side, I will cover you!" Then Sun Zhanyuan's machine gun fired fiercely, and the fire from the enemy's second fire point was immediately attracted to the left. Yi Caixue stood up and hurriedly rushed upward from the right, but the enemy fired the flares again, and the position was suddenly like daylight. The enemy discovered Yi Caixue's action, and the machine guns in the third bunker suddenly strafed, and Yi Caixue immediately fell down and crawled forward in a rain of bullets that flew through the hairline and shot into the dusty and loose soil around him. He was unusually resourceful and flexible in constantly selecting favorable terrain and constantly climbing upwards. When he approached the enemy's second bunker and was about to blast it with a grenade, he saw clearly that 6 meters in front of the right side of this bunker was the enemy's third bunker, and he thought of the extreme danger of his position. If the second bunker is destroyed first, then the enemy in the third bunker will inevitably shoot at him immediately; if the third bunker is blown up first, the enemy in the second bunker will also turn the muzzle of the gun to shoot at him. In an instant, he saw the fighter plane, the enemy in the second bunker was frantically fighting back at Sun Zhanyuan, and the enemy in the third bunker was still blocking the road he had just climbed, seeing this favorable condition, he immediately decided to take this opportunity to blow up the two bunkers that violently spewed out tongues of fire at the same time. He knew that time was very tight, and if these bunkers were not blown up in the shortest possible time, it would bring heavy losses to the counterattack forces. However, blowing up two bunkers at the same time is extremely difficult in terms of technology and terrain, and the key is that he cannot withdraw from the explosion range during the explosion. However, at this moment, Yi Caixue did not hesitate at all, he tied the two explosive canisters tightly together, and took the grenade and grenade from his waist and put them next to him. He rolled to the second bunker and threw two canisters into the bunker with both hands; turned quickly and threw a grenade and three grenades into the third bunker. With a loud bang, the enemy's two bunkers and machine guns exploded. He succeeded in his studies, but he himself was stunned.
Photo note: Chinese Volunteer Infantry throws stones at the United Nations army after running out of ammunition
Sun Zhanyuan, who was hiding in the crater and using machine gun fire to cover Yi Caixue, saw that the enemy's two bunkers were blasted at the same time, and immediately raised the machine gun and charged upwards. At this point, the enemy's last point of fire, the fourth bunker, opened fire on him, and his legs were broken. However, he still struggled from the pool of blood to crawl to the place where Yi Caixue was lying, and commanded Yi Caixue to continue to explode after waking up. Yi Caixue shook the hand of the platoon leader With tears in his eyes and said, "Platoon leader, please rest assured, I will be like you, as long as I am here, I will definitely be able to complete the task!" Saying that Bi hurriedly took out the emergency bag to bandage Sun Zhanyuan. Sun Zhanyuan refused, and he gave orders to Yi Caixue: "Leave me alone, for the sake of the whole victory, you will immediately go to blast the enemy's last bunker." I'll cover you! So, Yi Caixue picked up the explosive canister again and angrily crawled toward the enemy's last bunker. He cleverly used the corpses of his enemies as cover during the crawl and quickly reached the bottom of the large rock where the bunker was located. Seeing the timing, he grasped the stones that suddenly came out and carefully climbed upwards. At this critical moment, the explosion of a grenade was heard from the platoon leader Sun Zhanyuan, and the platoon leader of Zhi Yong and the 7 enemies who had detoured up were killed and heroically sacrificed. Losing the cover of the machine gun, Yi Caixue's situation was even more difficult. Gritting his teeth, with grief and hatred, he took advantage of the gap between enemy machine gun fire, climbed into the communication ditch in front of the enemy bunker, pressed his body between the two gun holes of the bunker, quickly raised his hands, threw the blast canister into the bunker, and then rolled over and rolled down the steep rock. Just listen to "Boom! With a loud bang, the enemy's fourth fire point was blown up by Yi Caixue. This moment took only 20 minutes in total, as long as he blew up the first bunker. The path of the charge was opened, Yi Caixue turned over and jumped from the ground, and with the sound of the charge horn, he became the vanguard of the counterattack troops.
For successively blowing up 4 enemy bunkers, killing and wounding more than 100 enemy people, and capturing 14 light and heavy machine guns, 73 carbines, and 2 flamethrowers, Yi Caixue was awarded the International Second Class National Flag Medal by the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army, and was awarded the honorary title of Second Class Combat Hero by the Headquarters of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army. In April 1953, as a representative of the Volunteer Army, he returned to China to participate in the "May Day" and "May Fourth" celebrations in the capital, and attended the Second National Congress. After returning to North Korea, he took over the position of hero platoon leader Sun Zhanyuan. In the summer of 1954, he returned to China with the triumphant return of the Fifteenth Army. In 1958, he was disabled by fighting and returned to his hometown of Qianxi County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province, where he successively served as the chief of the security section of the county commercial bureau, the vice president of the re-commune, the deputy mayor of Zhongping District, the deputy secretary of the Chengguan District Party Committee, the member of the Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the vice chairman of the County CPPCC Committee. He died in the early hours of March 5, 2005, at the age of 75. After his death, the fathers and fellow villagers in his hometown spontaneously set up a spiritual shed. People filled the streets with wreaths and mourned in their own way the famous hero of the country and the relatives who made the people of their hometown proud. The inscription of the Lingtang Bang Lian reads: "Shuixi Wind Flow Zhong LingYu Xiuyu Martyr, God of War Heroic Beacon Fire Smoke Cast Hero." "Horizontal batch" Star Death Universe".
Source: Wenshi Tiandi Author: Zou Zhihua, Han Ximei