On the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea 70 years ago, our army formulated a unique method of operation in accordance with the actual situation of the strategic stalemate between China and the United States, and the name is also very interesting, called "zero knocking brown candy." This operational policy ultimately guided the volunteer army to win a huge victory on the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. So what is the "zero knock brown candy" strategy? Kraft candy is a kind of sweet food made of maltose in southern China, but because of its hard texture, it is very difficult to chew, so the way to deal with it is to crush the kraft candy and eat it piece by piece.
Applying it to combat is actually to divide and encircle the powerful enemy, to accumulate small victories into big victories by means of carrying out small annihilation battles, and to gradually eliminate the enemy army.
The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was a war of great particularity and lessons learned, which was mainly embodied in the fact that the Korean Peninsula and the domestic environment were different, because the terrain of the Korean Peninsula was a narrow peninsula, and the terrain was dangerous, mountainous and sea-facing, especially the terrain near the 38th Parallel was even more lofty and mountainous, and the terrain was complex, which was not suitable for our army to carry out large-scale corps operations At that time, the US military also had absolute air and sea supremacy, so it was exactly what it wanted to carry out large-scale corps operations, and it was a disadvantage for our army everywhere.
In order to eliminate the enemy army, our army also chose the method of confronting the US army hard at the very beginning, concentrating its forces through the way of mobile warfare, penetrating deeply, and destroying the enemy by means of roundabout encirclement. Most of the battles fought were crushing battles rather than annihilation wars.
Due to the imperfect logistical support of our army, the entire war situation is often in a passive state, and the traffic conditions are poor, so that our army has a shortage of ammunition in previous battles, and at a critical moment it has to retreat to preserve its strength, which has seriously affected the realization of the goal of annihilating the enemy. This has caused our army a lot of suffering.
Out of various considerations, our army summed up the lessons and experiences in a timely manner, and carried out a scientific analysis of the battlefield law and current situation of the war against the United States and aid korea, and Mao Zedong clearly pointed out in his telegram to Peng Dehuai on May 26, 1951:
From the series of battles in the early stages, we have found that the method of dealing with the US army should be different from the method of dealing with the Kuomintang army of that year, and we should practice tactical small encirclement and fight a small war of annihilation.
On the 27th, when he met with Chen Geng, then deputy commander of the Volunteer Army, and Xie Fang, chief of staff, he instructed:
The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea should carry out a small war of annihilation, and the method was to use the principle of "zero knocking on the candy of the cow skin."
Not only that, but the volunteer soldiers also created flexible and diverse methods of small annihilation warfare for defensive positions and offenses according to different situations on the battlefield, and achieved remarkable results.
One of the most famous tactics is the sniper annihilation war of "cold guns and cold guns", which is characterized by the fact that in front of the two armies, a large number of sharpshooters and sharpshooters are dispatched to deal with the enemy, and this method is very effective, for example, our 15th Army once used sniper tactics to kill thousands of officers and men who were deployed in Jinhua to Tieyuan in 4 months, and the 60th Army killed more than 3,000 United Nations troops in less than two months.
This kind of mobile annihilation war has caused the US army to suffer a lot, and throughout the stalemate stage of the war, our army neither easily abandons its position nor simply sticks to it, but adopts a mobile defense, repeatedly competes with the enemy, and waits until the enemy is exhausted to choose the weak point to counterattack and annihilate the enemy's living forces. Implement a war of annihilation that integrates defense and attack. The most typical and brilliant example of the application of this method of warfare is the Battle of Shangganling. The campaign attracted 60,000 enemy troops to attack, and our army adopted the tactic of organically combining defensive operations with defensive operations against enemy companies and platoons to attack fortification points, achieving the goal of eliminating the enemy in large numbers, and after 43 days of repeated struggle, 25,000 enemy were killed and wounded.
In order to strive for a more favorable situation on the battlefield and force the enemy to sign an armistice agreement, in the later period, under the command of the Volunteer Army Command, the Volunteer Army adopted the principles of "steady and steady fighting" and "from small to large" and "combination of size", and pushed the "zero-knock candy" policy to a higher stage.
Therefore, the strategic principle gradually made some adjustments, and the volunteer army gradually organized a campaign-scale annihilation war in the later stages of the war, first using a corps as a unit to select a number of tactical points in front of the enemy to attack, the time is generally 7 to 10 days, and then moving according to the situation; if the enemy does not carry out a major counterattack, I will focus on a counterattack battle with another corps in another area; if the enemy carries out a large counterattack, he will take advantage of the opportunity of his counterattack and concentrate his relatively superior forces to annihilate and consume the enemy in large quantities. From May to June 1953, under the unified command of the Volunteer Army Headquarters, five corps of our army, focusing on the eastern front, first dispersed and annihilated 20 company support points of the enemy, annihilated more than 4,100 enemy personnel, and then captured 51 defensive positions below the enemy regiment, killing and wounding more than 41,000 enemy prisoners, and achieving the predetermined goal.
Implement the principle of "combining big and small" and carry out a strategic scale annihilation war. On the eve of the armistice, in order to counter the attempts of the Syngman Rhee clique to sabotage the armistice and to facilitate the realization of the purpose of the armistice negotiations, the Volunteer Army held a strategic counterattack at Jincheng. The five armies participating in the formation of three groups in the east, middle, and west, with the support of more than 1,000 artillery pieces, first selected multiple highlands in the salient part of the enemy's front line in the direction of Jincheng to attack, quickly broke through the defensive positions of the enemy's 4 divisions, and then carried out strategic in-depth operations, killing, wounding, and capturing more than 78,000 enemy personnel, thus realizing the "plan of annihilating one whole division or two or three whole divisions at a time," and finally forcing the enemy to sign an armistice agreement and winning a great victory in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.