On January 10, 1949, the largest decisive battle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party - the Huaihai Battle ended successfully. However, compared with the Liaoshen Campaign and the Pingjin Campaign, which were both three major battles, the proportion of enemies annihilated in this battle was obviously low; after all, the Liaoshen Campaign almost completely annihilated all the enemies in the northeast battlefield, and only the remnants of Liu Yuzhang's division of the 52nd Army escaped from Yingkou Port by luck; the Huaihai Campaign also annihilated more than 500,000 enemies in the Pingjin area, and only Hou Jingru's 17th Corps in Tanggu Port retreated by sea.
Liu Ruming was born in the Northwest Army
At the beginning of the battle, Liu Ruming's two armies fled south to the Huai River
The total strength of the enemy on the Huaihai battlefield exceeded 800,000, of which more than 550,000 were annihilated and nearly 250,000 escaped, close to one-third of the enemy's total strength. It turned out that there were two corps of heavy soldiers on the Huaihai battlefield who had been hiding on the edge of the battlefield and were always reluctant to go north to participate in the war. This enemy is the troops under the command post of Bengbu, Xuzhou's "Suppression General".
The command post was established in early October 1948, with Li Yannian, deputy commander-in-chief of the "Suppression Chief," concurrently serving as its director, and later Liu Zhi, commander-in-chief of the "Suppression Chief," came from Xuzhou and personally sat in charge, and its main task was to be responsible for commanding the appeasement areas in the rear and to unify the command of operations on the southern front. On the eve of the Huaihai Campaign, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the reduction of troops along the Longhai Railway, the 55th Army and the 68th Army of Liu Ruming's Division of the 4th Appeasement Zone originally stationed in Kaifeng, and the 99th Army originally stationed in Zhengzhou withdrew east to Xuzhou and then went to Bengbu along the Jinpu Railway.
He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia led the Northwest Army to revolt
The first part of the Northwest Army rebelled, and Liu Ruming's department was also suspected
On November 8, 1948, only two days after the start of the Huaihai Campaign, more than 23,000 people of the 59th Army and the 77th Army, the main force of the 3rd Appeasement Zone stationed at the junction of Shandong and Jiangsu Provinces, suddenly revolted under the leadership of He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia, deputy commanders of the Appeasement Zone, and the remnants of nearly 10,000 people hurriedly retreated south, and also withdrew to Bengbu under the leadership of the new commander Li Wentian. Together with the 96th Army, the 9th Traffic Police Corps, and the Railway Corps, the Baggage Automobile Regiment, the Engineer Corps, and the Signal Corps directly under the command post in Bengbu, the total strength exceeded 100,000.
Among these troops, Liu Ruming's troops and Li Wentian's remnants were all miscellaneous cards of the Northwest Army, and with the lessons of He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia, Chiang Kai-shek was worried that these two armies would not be reliable and would not dare to use them easily. The 96th Army had just been rebuilt and its combat effectiveness was limited, and the 99th Army had to stay in Bengbu for the time being, after a long journey from Zhengzhou. Li Yannian felt that there were no usable soldiers in his hands, and constantly asked for help from Nanjing.
Li Yannian, director of the Bengbu command post
The remnants of the Liaoshen battlefield were transferred to Bengbu and reorganized into Li Yannian's corps
Chiang Kai-shek had no choice but to transfer the 39th Army and the 54th Army, which had just withdrawn south from Tanggu, to Bengbu, and did everything possible to transfer the 20th Army and the 28th Army from Central China to reinforce them. However, the mobilization of the 20th Army and the 28th Army was obstructed by Bai Chongxi, commander-in-chief of the "Suppression Chief" in Central China, and his actions were slow.
After the arrival of the 39th Army and the 54th Army, Chiang Kai-shek immediately ordered them to be combined with the 96th Army and the 99th Army to form the 6th Corps, with Li Yannian as the commander of the Corps. Although these two corps numbered as many as 200,000 men in six corps, they were either rebuilt after the collapse of the army, or they were defeated by the remnants of the army that had been repeatedly defeated, or they were miscellaneous places with low morale. Although the 39th Army and the 54th Army were directly affiliated with the Central Army, they had just participated in the Liaoshen Campaign more than a month ago, and they had just withdrawn to Tanggu and taken a boat to Bengbu, thousands of miles away.
The Liu and Li corps always hid at the southern end of the battlefield
On 15 November, the Central Plains Field Army of the People's Liberation Army, under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, captured Suxian between Xuzhou and Bengbu, cutting off the Tianjin-Pudong Railway; on 25 November, Liu Deng's army marched westward and surrounded Huang Wei's 12th Corps, which had just been transferred from Central China, to Shuangduiji, southwest of Suxian, and attacked day and night. Li Yannian received a strict order and immediately commanded 2 corps to go north to rescue the trump card of Huang Wei's corps.
Li Yannian and Liu Ruming's corps passively avoided the battle, and they were afraid that the Central Plains Field Army would "encircle the point and send reinforcements," so they refused to act for a long time, and did not officially start the attack until 1 December. It was not until December 10 that it arrived at the Mars Temple area, which was 70 miles away from Shuangduiji, and was stubbornly resisted by the 6th Column of the East China Field Army and the Bohai Column, and has been stagnant since then.
The Liu and Li corps attacked slowly, but the retreat was rapid
On the 15th, the news of the annihilation of Huang Wei's corps came, and on the 17th, Li Yannian ordered all the armies to cover each other and retreat. Although this journey was not completed for half a month, the slowest unit in the retreat also returned to the starting point within three days, and the first part of the East China Field Army pursued to the side of the Lu River, and the 68th Army of Liu Ruming's corps, which served as the rearguard, simply blew up all the bridges before organizing the pursuit of troops to go south.
For a period of time after that, the East China Field Army and the Central Plains Field Army joined forces in one place, and were busy encircling and annihilating 300,000 people from the three corps of Du Yuming's group who fled south from Xuzhou in the area of Chenguanzhuang near Yongcheng, and they were unable to withdraw from the south for a while, and it was not until January 10, 1949 that Du Yuming's group was completely annihilated. However, as early as late December 1948, the corps of Li Yannian and Liu Ruming had abandoned Bengbu and began to flee south; by the end of the Huaihai Campaign, the 200,000 men and horses of the two corps had withdrawn across the Yangtze River and could not catch up.
The Battle of Huaihai ended victoriously