The dust had settled on the Huaihai Battle in 1949, but for Lutz, the aftermath of the war was still reverberating. The body of Qiu Qingquan, the commander of the Kuomintang Second Corps, disappeared after the war, and the mystery weighed on his heart like a heavy stone.
As the head of the Huaye First Column Prisoner Management Office, Lu Ci faced not only the enemy on the battlefield, but also the urgency of time and the harshness of orders. Su Yu's order was simple and direct: "At all costs, you must also find Qiu Qingquan." ”
Will this task be successfully completed?
Survival in defeat: Qiu Qingquan's last figure
In January 1949, with the end of the Huaihai Campaign, the whereabouts of Qiu Qingquan, the commander of the Kuomintang Second Corps, became an unsolved mystery. This battle was not only one of the turning points of the Chinese Civil War, but also profoundly marked the heavy losses of the Kuomintang army. During the war, Qiu Qingquan's whereabouts suddenly became the focus of many attention.
Lu Ci recalled that in the later stages of the Huaihai Campaign, the situation of the war was increasingly favorable to the PLA, and the military command system of the Kuomintang had begun to collapse. In this context, one of his responsibilities as the head of the Huaye First Column Prisoner Management Division was to interrogate the prisoners and obtain battlefield information from them.
During an interrogation, Lu met Deng Junlin, the commander of the 70th Army of the Kuomintang, and Cui Xianwen, the commander of the 45th Division of the Fifth Army, who had been captured. The two high-ranking officials were arrested in the chaos of the post-war period and taken to the prisoner management office where Lutz was located. During the interrogation, Lu used the two senior officers' knowledge of the situation to try to piece together Qiu Qingquan's final actions.
Deng Junlin and Cui Xianwen were interrogated separately and taken to a modest room with only basic tables and chairs, and a dim lamp hanging on the wall. During the questioning, the two revealed that Qiu Qingquan was still at the headquarters of the Second Corps in Chenguanzhuang on January 9, the eve of the collapse of the Kuomintang army.
As far as they knew, Qiu Qingquan then hastily retreated to the headquarters of the Fifth Army in order to avoid being besieged, which was his last retreat. In the detailed description, Deng Junlin mentioned that when the battle in Chenguanzhuang was fierce, Qiu Qingquan had sensed that the situation was not good. He hurriedly ordered to prepare for a retreat and decided to go to the headquarters of the Fifth Army, where he hoped to reorganize the defensive line or find an opportunity to break through.
Cui Xianwen added that during the evacuation, Qiu Qingquan led a small force to move quickly, avoiding the main battlefield and minimizing direct contact with the PLA.
After listening to the statements of the two generals, Lu Ci sorted out Qiu Qingquan's possible escape route and the last possible location. This information will be crucial to his next plan of action. He immediately ordered the organization of a search party, targeting the Fifth Army headquarters and its surrounding areas, hoping to find more clues about Qiu Qingquan there.
In the days that followed, search teams penetrated deep into the area where the Fifth Army headquarters had been stationed, an area that had become a post-war ruin. Houses collapsed, vehicles burned, and traces of war were everywhere. The search team carefully searched the rubble for any clues that might be related to Qiu Qingquan.
They examined abandoned bunkers, broken equipment, and basements where they might be hiding, but the initial search yielded no results. Through the detailed interrogation of Deng Junlin and Cui Xianwen, Lu Ci and his team obtained valuable information, but it also showed the difficulty of finding Qiu Qingquan.
Fruitless search: Tracking Qiu Qingquan's whereabouts
The description of Li Hanping, the chief of staff of the Second Corps of the Nationalist Army, provided key clues to Qiu Qingquan's final whereabouts. According to him, the PLA had captured most of Chenguanzhuang by the end of the Huaihai Campaign, and the pressing situation forced the Kuomintang army's defensive line to retreat.
Under such circumstances, Qiu Qingquan, as the commander of the Second Corps, felt unprecedented pressure and crisis. After a fierce battle, the last defensive position of Chen Guanzhuang was broken through, and the Kuomintang soldiers began to break up.
In the midst of the chaos, Qiu Qingquan made a decisive move: he took off his general's uniform and changed into the clothes of an ordinary soldier, hoping to blend in with the fleeing soldiers and avoid being recognized by the PLA.
Night had fallen, and in the vast darkness, only sporadic gunfire and distant explosions echoed. After Qiu Qingquan changed into a soldier's uniform, he joined Daliu's retreating team, trying to retreat to a safer place with the other soldiers. With a handful of cronies and his retinue, he quickly crossed the battlefield, trying to avoid revealing his identity in the light.
However, the retreat was not an easy one. The PLA's pursuing forces were rapidly advancing towards the last line of defense in Chenguanzhuang, covering those routes of evacuation with machine guns and mortars. Qiu Qingquan and his accompanying soldiers had to change their route frequently, looking for hidden paths to avoid the enemy's sight and fire.
During an attempt to cross a small village that had been destroyed by artillery fire, they encountered a detachment of the People's Liberation Army. The two sides exchanged fire in the dark, and the battle was fierce. Several of Qiu Qingquan's retinue were killed in the firefight, and he himself was separated from the remaining soldiers in the chaos.
In the darkness of night and the sound of gunfire, he continued to move alone towards the intended assembly site, but no one could determine whether he had succeeded in reaching it at the time. In the days that followed, news about Qiu Qingquan was completely cut off. The People's Liberation Army occupied Chenguanzhuang and its environs and began to clean up the battlefield and contain scattered Kuomintang soldiers.
In this case, Qiu Qingquan's whereabouts became an unsolved mystery, and whether he survived, was captured, or died during the retreat is a question to be determined.
After Su Yu received the latest information about Qiu Qingquan, he immediately gave clear instructions, requiring that Qiu Qingquan must be found whether he is alive or dead. This order was particularly difficult in the context of the battlefield at the time, as the fighting around Chenguanzhuang had already led to a great deal of destruction and chaos, and the battlefield was littered with artillery pits and ruins, with many dead and wounded.
The search between graves
After receiving Su Yu's order, Lu Ci and his troops immediately took action and carried out a systematic search of the vast area from Chenzhuang to Zhangmiaotang. As the area was one of the most heavily fought in the Huaihai Campaign, the number of dead soldiers was high and bodies were everywhere, while many were rendered unrecognizable by explosions and fire coverage.
The search began in Chenzhuang, where Lu Ci organized detachments, each equipped with the necessary tools, including shovels, shovels, and items for marking. Their task was to systematically excavate each of the temporarily buried wild graves and to carry out preliminary identification of each body found.
In the process, the excavation of each grave is a challenge. Soldiers had to dig carefully so as not to destroy the integrity of the remnants or the remains themselves that could aid identification. Excavations were further complicated by the fact that many of the graves had partially collapsed due to soft soil, artillery fire from previous battles, and heavy machinery such as tanks.
The search continued for several days, and the soldiers toiled in the cold weather, gradually advancing north from Chenzhuang to Zhangmiaotang Village. The terrain is rugged and unexploded ordnance is often found in the area of craters and bomb craters formed by the fighting, creating an additional danger to search efforts.
After several days of hard work, when the search team reached three miles northwest of Danzhuang in Datun Town, they had already broken through thousands of wild graves. Most of the remains in these wild graves are so badly decomposed that it is difficult to identify them through direct observation.
Lu Ci commanded the troops to use descriptions obtained from captives to aid in identification efforts, particularly details about the soldier's clothing Qiu Qingquan may have been wearing at the time of his disappearance.
Eventually, on a small slope covered with weeds, the soldiers dug up a body dressed in a soldier's suit, and some of the features of the body matched Qiu Qingquan's description. Immediately after the discovery of the body, Lu Tz organized a more detailed on-site investigation, hoping to find further evidence from the body.
The soldiers meticulously cleaned the soil around the remains, carefully handling the remains so as not to destroy possible evidence. When the body was found, its uniform was torn but recognizable, and the rank and insignia were gone, but some remaining items, such as belt buckles and shoe styles, provided key clues.
After preliminary identification at the scene and comparison of known information, Lu Ci believed that they might have found Qiu Qingquan's body. He immediately arranged for communications to be contacted at the top to report this important finding and prepare for further identity verification work.
Authentication and burial: Qiu Qingquan's final destination
After exhuming what appeared to be the body of General Qiu Qingquan, Lu Ci quickly contacted Xu Guang, a journalist working on the front line. Xu Guang rushed to the scene with a photo of Qiu Qingquan before his death. In the cold weather, he carefully compared the photographs with the remains.
Although the facial features of the body are slightly blurred due to time and environmental factors, some unique physical characteristics, such as height and body shape, match Qiu Qingquan's photographs. In addition, some of the remains of the body's clothing, although damaged, could still be identified as higher-quality fabrics used by officers.
After confirming this identity, Xu Guang documented the scene and took several photographs of the body in preparation for reporting the important discovery to the wider public. The body was then carefully transferred to a makeshift camp for the Kuomintang Second Corps prisoner team, where Qiu Qingquan's former subordinates and colleagues were gathered.
In the camp, the bodies were first placed in a simple shack, and several army and division commanders who had had direct military ties with Qiu Qingquan were called in to identify them. One by one, they walked past the bodies, looking closely and comparing the features that were still recognizable.
Each of the officials who came to confirm showed a solemn attitude, judging by the size of the body, the contours of its faces, and some of its personal belongings that had not been seriously damaged. In the end, all the senior officers present agreed that the body was undoubtedly General Qiu Qingquan.
After confirming this, Su Yu received the report and immediately instructed Qiu Qingquan's body to be disposed of with military salute as much as possible. He ordered Qiu Qingquan's body to be changed back into a general's uniform in order to preserve the dignity of his identity. In addition, Su Yu ordered the production of a high-quality coffin and a proper wooden tombstone as a sign of respect and remembrance of General Qiu.
After all this was ready, Qiu Qingquan's body was placed in an elaborate coffin with a simple and solemn appearance. After completing these ceremonial preparations, the reporters of the Popular Daily were given permission to report the news. When the news was published in the newspaper, it was accompanied by a portrait of General Qiu, and the report quickly attracted widespread attention in society.
Through its channels, the East China Bureau informed the Kuomintang and Qiu Qingquan's family of the situation.
Resources:
- Han Bo, Wang Haiyi, Chiang Kai-shek's ace and fierce general Qiu Qingquan[J].Literature and History World,2010(2):19-21