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In 1947, our army won a complete victory in the first battle of Meng Lianggu, and the enemy's elite 74th Division was completely annihilated by our army.
However, after the war, Su Yu observed the new situation, and there were still many problems to deal with after the war, and after Chen Yi learned about the situation, he bluntly said that none of the prisoners in this war could be spared.
After our army captures the enemy, it will generally be incorporated or let them return to their hometowns according to the captives' wishes, why did Chen Yi say that none of the prisoners in this war will be spared? What are the differences in this war?
Click to pay attention and walk into the story of the Menglianggu War together.
The elite of the national army
The captured 74th Division was one of the Kuomintang's ace armies, which was founded in 1937 and was originally called the 74th Army, which was a well-equipped and well-trained army formed by Chiang Kai-shek for the War of Resistance Against Japan.
After the formation of the team, it participated in the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing, although both of which had to be transferred due to the lack of troops on our side, but this army was greatly trained in these wars.
It can be said that since the establishment of this army, the target has been the Japanese army, which has advanced weapons and equipment and strong combat capability, so the Kuomintang has invested much more in all aspects of this army than other armies.
Because of this, this army has a combat effectiveness and execution power that far surpasses that of other Kuomintang units.
Although the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing did not achieve the expected good results, this army can be regarded as having experienced a baptism of war and has been continuously strengthened in the belief of defending the homeland and the country.
Of course, being able to become one of the ace troops of the Kuomintang, having only participated in two wars, will definitely not be able to achieve this result.
In the subsequent wars, the 74th Army can be said to have participated in almost all the large-scale wars of the Kuomintang on the battlefield of resistance against Japan.
In 1938, during the Battle of Wuhan in Wuhan, the 74th Army made a name for itself because of its courage in fighting and eliminating a large number of Japanese troops.
In addition, Zhang Lingfu, the commander of the 74th Division, was also a fierce general during the anti-Japanese period, and he had a great reputation in the army, and Chiang Kai-shek trusted and loved him very much, and it can be said that he was one of Chiang Kai-shek's favorite generals.
During the entire Anti-Japanese War, the 74th Army became more and more courageous under the leadership of Zhang Lingfu, and almost became the most powerful force in the Kuomintang, and even had the title of "Anti-Japanese Iron Army", and even the Japanese army was a little afraid of them.
An American adviser once commented on the 74th Army: "Only the 74th Army in the Chinese National Army can fight."
Of course, the 74th Army can have such strong combat effectiveness, and their leaders are also related, for example, the second commander of the 74th Army is Wang Yaowu, he is a famous general during the Anti-Japanese War, and he has repeatedly repelled the enemy army head-on, and it is he who led the 74th Army, which has played the title of "Iron Army".
Lao Chiang attached great importance to the 74th Army, and completely regarded him as one of the most important troops under his name, and during the Liberation War, although the 74th Army was reorganized into the 74th Division, they were all equipped with American-style equipment, and the treatment of 30,000 soldiers was the best in the entire army.
However, Chiang Kai-shek could never have imagined that the trump card troops he was proud of would be completely annihilated by our army in just three days. And his favorite general, Zhang Lingfu, died in the war with our army.
In 1947, after the Kuomintang army completed its assembly in Shandong, it was destined to have a fierce large-scale war with our army, but there was no definite news about the cause, time, and attack method of the war.
In fact, we were ready for battle, but Chairman Mao called Su Yu and asked him to stand still for the time being, and to be patient and observe the changes in the Kuomintang.
Sure enough, the Kuomintang soon couldn't hold it back.
At the beginning of May, Zhang Lingfu received an order to lead the 74th Division to advance into the Menglianggu area, which has complex terrain and is easy to defend and difficult to attack.
They also wanted to take advantage of this to lure the East China Field Army into the Menglianggu area, and then encircle and suppress the East China Army inside, further attack the overall strength of our army, and turn the tide of the war.
The strategic location of the Menglianggu area is very prominent, and it is an important transportation artery for the war in the entire Shandong region.
In order to win this war, the Kuomintang sent 450,000 troops, of which the 74th Division was also sent by him.
Since the Kuomintang attaches great importance to it, we will not take it lightly, and this battle will take the key place of Meng Lianggu.
However, at that time, the East China Field Army was only 270,000, and in the face of several times the enemy and a large number of powerful American-style equipment, how could our army win this war when the weaponry and number were not superior?
In the face of such an extremely difficult war, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has never been afraid, and since the establishment of the army, we have fought countless wars in which we have won more with less, and we are confident that we will win the battle whether it is the Japanese army or the well-equipped national army.
In order to win this war, they all sent two generals, Su Yu and Chen Yi, how should they deal with a strong enemy?
Meng Lianggu fought a battle
Regarding Zhang Lingfu's troop tactics, Su Yu carefully observed, Zhang Lingfu wanted to encircle the East China Field Army and then annihilate it.
Since Zhang Lingfu intends to besiege our army, then we can also besiege the 70th Division in turn.
Su Yu first sent the first and eighth columns to insert into the flanks of the 74th Division, and Chiang Kai-shek originally sent two larger teams on both sides of the 74th Division to protect them, but this Zhang Lingfu was a little arrogant, and the leadership relationship with the other two troops was average, so the other two troops did not follow closely, and there was a gap in the middle.
Su Yu directly sent troops to intersperse the two flanks of the 14th Division to cut off the peripheral support forces on both sides, and at the same time sent the sixth column to the direction of Duozhuang overnight, which was actually the retreat of the 74th Division, but since they wanted to surround them, then directly cut off their retreat, so that they could not retreat.
Zhang Lingfu never imagined that the strategy he was going to use to deal with the East China Field Army would be used on himself.
Our army has also learned about the troops distributed by the national army on the periphery, and only sending two columns is actually not enough to block it, and doing more can only delay the arrival of support for a certain time.
Therefore, it is necessary to take Menglianggu as soon as possible before the reinforcements open the encirclement of our army, otherwise when the reinforcements enter, then we will be in a passive situation, and the situation on the battlefield will not be favorable to us.
After a day of fierce attack, Zhang Lingfu found that the enemy's offensive was too strong, and he had the intention of retreating temporarily. However, when he prepared to retreat, he found that the surroundings were already surrounded by the People's Liberation Army, and the reinforcements were far away.
Zhang Lingfu, who had no choice but to march up the mountain with his army, kept asking for help from the surrounding troops.
But the troops on the flank were not close to him, and it would take a few days to arrive, which was enough time for the PLA to disperse all his troops.
After three days and three nights of fierce fighting by our army, although our army paid a heavy price, it also annihilated 32,000 enemy troops, captured more than 6,000 soldiers, and killed the enemy's main general Zhang Lingfu on the spot, and completely won the victory of the Menglianggu battle.
This war was not just as simple as destroying the enemy's trump card, we caused Chiang Kai-shek's vitality to be greatly damaged, completely lost the initiative in the East China battlefield, further expanded our army's superiority on the battlefield, and was also a great progress for our army in winning the entire liberation war.
In the war, we have made great achievements in it, and at the same time we have captured a large amount of trophies, including more than 7,000 long and short guns, nearly 1,000 pounds of light and heavy machine guns, more than 2,000 submachine guns, and hundreds of shells of all kinds, which have greatly enriched the demand for weapons in our army.
However, among the captured trophies, we also found that although there were more guns and shells, there were not many ammunition in them, and there was almost no state, which shows that the 74th Division was determined to kill the last bullet in this war.
Although the 74th Division fought hard, their end was already doomed, it stands to reason that the casualties of the army in this war reached more than 32,000, so in addition to the number of people who died in the war, there should be a lot of prisoners.
But there were only a few thousand prisoners, which was completely unreasonable, and the intelligence department instantly became alert and reported the matter to Su Yu. Su Yu immediately took it seriously, and his intuition told him that there might be other hidden dangers in this war, so he sent an army to reconnoiter the nearby valley.
Under the careful investigation of the technical department, some weak telegraph signals were found in the valley, these signals did not belong to us, it was likely that the remnants of the national army who had not yet been captured, hiding in the valley, asking for help from the outside world through telegrams, the remnants of the soldiers may still have the intention of counterattacking, this is a threat to our army, and it must be removed.
While he asked the soldiers to continue to count the prisoners of war and supplies, he asked people to secretly investigate in the nearby valley, and sure enough, he found traces of a group of remnants in a valley between Menglianggu and Diaowo, and there were quite a few people in the past at a glance, and everyone estimated that this group of people was between 5,000 and 10,000.
Su Yu immediately ordered to send troops to lurk near the remnants and annihilate them in one fell swoop.
However, the annihilation of the remnants was not the end of the war, as they found that the captives of this army were somewhat different.
Chen Yi's vision
The 74th Division, the ace of the national army, was completely annihilated, but Chen Yi ordered that not a single prisoner should be spared, why?
In fact, in our war with the Kuomintang, the issue of prisoners has always been treated preferentially, and generally speaking, there are two ways to deal with it, one is to solicit their wishes, see if these prisoners are willing to submit to our army, and give them a chance if they are willing.
If they are not willing to join our army, they will be educated, and then they will be given a sum of money to return to their hometown. We will not beat or insult the captives, let alone loot their supplies, but give them the respect they deserve.
Our army's policy on treating prisoners is also clear to the 74th Division in front of them, just when they thought that the PLA would treat them according to the usual practice, Chen Yi's order was a little surprising, he ordered: "None of the prisoners of the 74th Division can be released!"
The prisoners of the 74th Division were different from other Nationalist soldiers, most of whom came from "strong men", and many of them were forced to join the Kuomintang army, and they were not sincerely loyal to Chiang Kai-shek.
The 74th Division is different, most of them graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy, they are Chiang Kai-shek's descendants, and they are extremely loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, if they are put back, it is difficult to guarantee that they will not become enemies of our army again.
Second, the 74th Division made great achievements in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and was known as the "Anti-Japanese Iron Army" with high quality soldiers and strong combat effectiveness.
We must be even more cautious in handling these national troops who are not to be released, first of all, we will conduct a graded examination of the prisoners of war, classify the soldiers with different divisions of labor, such as instructors and intelligence personnel, and manage them differently.
The staff selected 10 members of the 74th Army to form a visiting group to convey the policy of our army to the personnel of the 74th Army, and also held a prisoners' meeting to emphasize the national policy to them and encourage the prisoners of war to confess as soon as possible.
The 74th Division has been uncomfortable since it first entered the PLA, but our army has been constantly helping them adapt to our army. For example, take them to get closer to the people and let them experience the fine traditions of our army.
Not only ordinary soldiers are educated, but even captured officers have to learn, and the officers of the national army are generally responsible for the living affairs of their subordinates, but many officers in our army will also take care of the soldiers themselves.
In order to really subdue this force, these means alone are not enough, the key is to convince them of us, so the PLA often holds various forums and debates with prisoners of war to discuss the war.
During the debate, it was found that the tactical thinking of the 74th Division was indeed relatively advanced, and it was more consistent to say that they were the strongest in the national army. But then again, no matter how strong they are, they are always defeated by us, which can also show the strength of our army on the other hand.
In order to increase the enthusiasm of the prisoners of war for reform, we have specially set up incentives for them to actively make meritorious contributions, and no matter how big or small the merits are, as long as they have meritorious deeds, they will be recorded in the files, which will be beneficial to their subsequent transfer and distribution.
Under the various measures taken by the PLA, the POWs actively performed meritorious service, and also unconsciously deeply instilled the ideas of the PLA into their minds, and many of them performed well after joining the PLA.
The 74th Division is equipped with American-style equipment, and the conditions are top-notch in all aspects, for example, there are many technical personnel among them, especially in the operation and use of advanced equipment. Although our army has strong combat effectiveness, it does not have many weapons and equipment and specialized technical personnel, and sometimes advanced equipment has been captured in the war, but no one can use it.
Just when we were distressed, the prisoners of war of the 74th Division were reformed and were willing to join our army with technology, which also further enriched the personnel of our army.
Although the process of transforming the 74th Division was long and arduous, the PLA never gave up on one person, and the 74th Division, the ace unit on the anti-Japanese battlefield, continued to protect the country and the people in its own way after integrating into the PLA.
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