The Battle of Changjin Lake was a very tragic battle.
On that battlefield, the volunteers faced not only the United Nations army with advanced weapons and equipment, but also the terrifying low temperature in the Changjin Lake area.
According to the memories of the US military, many volunteers fell less than 3 meters in front of the position.
How tragic was the Battle of Changjin Lake?
The plight of the volunteers
If there were enough warm clothes, the situation faced by the volunteers would not be so difficult, the problem was that the 9th Corps entered the DPRK too hastily and simply did not have enough time to prepare supplies.
To add insult to injury, the 9th Corps had been preparing to liberate Taiwan in the southeastern coastal areas before entering the DPRK.
After staying in a place where the climate was far from North Korea for so long, they were sent to North Korea, and the soldiers were not adapted to the battlefield one can imagine.
From the situation of the 20th Army of the Volunteer Army, we can see the overall situation of the 9th Corps at that time. According to post-war statistics, the 20th Army fought for a total of 30 days on the Eastern Front in the entire Second Campaign, and 5,539 soldiers were wounded in battle;
There were 11,468 frostbitten fighters;
2,963 fighters were killed as a result of the battle.
Overall, the casualty attrition rate was 399.4 per thousand before frostbite and 170 per thousand without frostbite.
However, the attrition of the 20th Army in the Battle of Changjin Lake did not stop there.
The 20th Army entered the Changjin Lake area to fight in late November, when the climate in the area was quite cold, and if it was in the high mountains, the temperature could be as low as minus 38 to 40 degrees. It was in this environment that the soldiers of the 20th Army fought continuously for 12 days and nights.
Because there was no thick clothing to keep warm, and the food supply was seriously insufficient, the fighters were weak in their ability to resist the cold.
In addition, most of the soldiers of the 9th Corps live in temperate regions, where the climate is warm, and there has never been such a low temperature.
It is really difficult for them to adapt to this extreme cold zone in a short period of time.
Not only that, but most commanders and fighters also lacked knowledge of how to deal with this cold weather, which led to 9,399 frostbitten fighters in the six days from November 27 to December 2.
By the end of the Battle of Changjin Lake, the entire 20th Army had a total of more than 25,000 frostbite, of which as many as 11,092 were in serious condition and had to be hospitalized.
This situation can be said to be quite serious. A corps of volunteers usually has less than 30,000 people, which is almost equivalent to the entire army having varying degrees of frostbite.
Song Shilun sent a telegram to Chairman Mao on December 14, saying that the 20th Army was now organized into only one platoon in the 172nd Regiment of the 58th Division, and only three of them could walk, and the 173rd and 174th regiments were each organized into eight squads, and most of them could not walk.
The 59th Division had only a small battalion per regiment, and each company had only 4 to 6 squads.
In fact, when the US 1st Marine Division began to break through on 6 December, the 20th Army had already undergone a significant downsizing due to the combat and non-combat attrition brought about by the vicious fighting and the adverse effects of the severe cold.
On December 8, the Changjin Lake area ushered in a major cooling, and the situation faced by the fighters was even more difficult.
However, the war was urgent, and there was no time for everyone to rest and recuperate, so Song Shilun could only order: continue to organize those who could barely fight, and resolutely destroy the enemy.
In this case, the non-combat attrition of the 20th Army made the situation even worse. Of the 180 regiments that were interspersed between Menhyeon and Baohouzhuang, only 20 people remained. The regiment commander Zhao Hongji died heroically in the battle, and the chief of staff was seriously wounded.
On December 10, the 58th and 60th Divisions were still able to fight, and the combined number of men was less than 100. Cai Qunfan, chief of staff of the 60th Division, led these people to pursue the US troops, of which Wang Xiang, the commander of the 172nd Regiment, led a squad to chase more than 10 kilometers.
Our ancestors, in the face of such a huge gap between friend and foe, still bravely went forward to fight the enemy.
Before 1951, the Volunteer Army had not been equipped with Soviet-style weapons on a large scale, and mainly used old Wanguo brand weapons. With the exception of some of our own weapons, they were captured from the Nationalist Army or the Japanese Army.
Therefore, at that time, the weapons of the volunteer army were quite miscellaneous, including American weapons, German weapons, national weapons, etc., and because of the perennial war and lack of maintenance, many weapons were in a good state if they could fire a shot.
With such weapons, it was difficult for the volunteers to have an advantage in front of the enemy. The 1st Marine Division was equipped with tanks on the Changjin Lake battlefield, mainly the Chang-76 Sherman, or the Sherman 105.
The Sherman, to be honest, was a relatively weak medium tank in the European theater during World War II. But this kind of enemy is very difficult for the volunteer army to deal with.
Moreover, in terms of equipment, the 9th Corps does not belong to the first echelon in the Volunteer Army. It is an exaggeration to say that the Soviet-German battlefield can be said to have an anti-tank rocket launcher per person, which is considered a luxury for the volunteers.
Even at the end of the war, Germany was able to distribute iron fists to the citizens of Berlin in large quantities. In comparison, the mainland at that time was so poor and white!
At that time, it was very common for the Volunteer Army to have only a few bazookas in an entire army.
The 20th Army of the Volunteer Army, which fought on the battlefield of Changjin Lake, usually had anti-tank means as "death squads". Thirty fighters were formed into death squads, each carrying 6 grenades tied together, and in small groups pounced on the tank from all directions.
These daredevils had to stick the grenades precisely into the crevices of the tracks, so that they could not fall out so that the tanks could lose power and stop.
Of course, tanks are never so easy to approach, even for a not-so-powerful tank like the Sherman. The fighters had to advance against the tanks under all kinds of light and heavy firepower of the American army, not to mention that sometimes they faced the Sherman 105.
You know, the Sherman 105 was an infantry killer at that time.
How many lives do you have to pay to change a track?
By '51, the situation of the Volunteer Army had improved, as the Soviet Union began to provide arms assistance. Among those weapons, there are also special anti-tank grenades, and the fighters no longer need to organize death squads.
Ice-blooded Changjin Lake
You may have watched a CCTV program where they gave an exclusive interview to a veteran named Liu Anshi. Liu Anshi said that at that time, the volunteers formed a 30-member death squad to rush forward, and when the grenade was successfully stuffed into the track, only two people remained.
Some time ago, the movie "Changjin Lake" was a big hit, and when everyone saw the plots including the ice sculpture company, many people couldn't help but shed tears.
In fact, the plot in the movie is still processed, and the real history is more cruel than in the movie.
At that time, due to various considerations in the international community, in order not to plunge the mainland into the flames of war, the volunteers secretly entered the DPRK. The fighters stood and crammed into train carriages, without seats, not even small benches.
Supplies were made when they arrived late at night, and these supplies were also limited to water and food, and there were no cotton clothes. This point is also related to some black-hearted profiteers at that time: our party bought cotton clothes from these merchants, and the profiteers used black-hearted cotton to be shoddy.
After entering North Korea, the soldiers got off the train and did not have much time to rest. They all marched while sleeping. How?
With the class as a unit, the whole class pulls a rope, the person in the front is awake, and the person in the back walks while sleeping, and is carried away by the person in front in a daze.
Only in this way will our troops be able to avoid the wanton and indiscriminate bombing of US planes.
When the day dawned and the troops arrived at their destination, the battle began, and there was not a second to rest.
On the battlefield of Changjin Lake, the threat to the soldiers is not only the cold, everything is challenging the limits of human beings.
Of course, there are also heartwarming things on the battlefield in Korea. Every Korean citizen that the volunteer soldiers came into contact with there was very friendly.
Many people did not have much money and food in their own homes, but they sent the best things to the front line and gave them to the volunteers free of charge. You know, North Korea was poorer than the mainland at that time!
As for the fighting quality and combat will of the volunteers, even the US military, which is the enemy, has no choice but to give recognition. In their high school textbooks, there are some descriptions of the Korean War:
At first, the United Nations forces entered Korea and suppressed the Korean People's Army, but soon the volunteers joined the battle and advanced with a tidal wave of offensives, creating a chaotic "stalemate" for a time.
In general, it can be regarded as saving face for both sides, after all, it is not easy to say that he did not play well.
However, when describing the situation on the battlefield, he gave the volunteers a good evaluation: the United Nations troops watched the volunteers rushing from all directions, falling row after row, and pouring out row after row, as if endless.
The volunteers held backward weapons and wore shabby overcoats, and their courage in the face of death was shocking and terrifying.
I have to say that this description still slanders the tactics used by the volunteers into crowd tactics, and the text is not without derogatory meanings. However, this is a description that appears under the great contradiction of ideology, which already seems quite admirable.
The South Korean Army was also deeply impressed by the Volunteers, and when it came to the Korean War, they had to admit the strength of the Volunteers no matter how unhappy they were.
In the South Korean movie "Highland Warfare", the volunteers are simply described as the bosses in horror movies, and they appear all over the mountains and fields at night to scare the South Korean soldiers.
The South Korean army in the movie, as soon as they heard that their superiors told them to hold their positions, they didn't want to do it one by one. The company commander ordered them not to escape, saying that the soldier must obey the order, and the next second the soldier raised his gun and aimed it at his head:
"Do you know what kind of army the Volunteers are? Do you know how much it costs us every time we fight them?"
With a "bang", this company commander with a "military spirit" was killed by his own soldiers. This is not the first time this company has done this kind of thing, the previous company commander also forcibly ordered them to fight against the volunteers, and they were also solved with one shot.
There is no doubt that the volunteers have made an extremely significant contribution to the country, and its significance is far more than a simple war. The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea is a war that really helps us straighten our backs, and it is this war that allows us to gain a foothold in the international community.
Every volunteer soldier who fights to the end is the most admirable hero!