As the box office of the movie "Chosin Lake" exceeded the 4 billion mark, the audience was not only shocked by the magnificent war scenes, but also infected by the spirit of the volunteer army to defend the country.
"Chosin Lake" was released, once again telling this magnificent history through the screen.
However, the real battle is far more tragic than the movie.
In this artificial lake with a total area of 54.2 square kilometers, 71 years ago, the Chinese Volunteer Army launched a 20-day hard battle with the most elite Marine Division of the US Army in the extremely cold weather of minus 40 degrees, and the People's Volunteer Army left behind a heroic deed that can be sung and wept in this battle.
The following content and pictures are from "The Temperature of History 3: The Times Come to the Face, and History Becomes a Flash" by Mantou Master Zhang Wei.
From grand narratives to historical details, look for the true story of the times. When history is in turmoil, how do the heroes change the times, or be changed by the times?
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Liu ShenLei, Luo Zhenyu, Ma Yong, Xu Danei, Yan Feng, Zhang Wei and other strongly recommended.
Zhang Wei said: "In the Korean War, the Battle of Chosin Lake was the last thing I wanted to write about, and a very important reason was that it was too tragic, too tragic. ”
November 2, 1950.
Oliver Smith is in the ice and snow of -30 degrees Celsius in North Korea, but his mood is a little irritable.
As the commander of the U.S. Army's ace First Marine Division, Smith was unable to calm his inner turmoil. This irritability, as the US military broke through on the Korean battlefield, all the way north, became more and more intense.
At the end of September, the "United Nations Army" successfully recovered seoul, the capital that had previously been easily lost by South Korea; in early October, the "United Nations Army" crossed the 38th Line and invaded North Korea; on October 20, the "United Nations Army" captured Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and the main force of the People's Army was basically destroyed.
MacArthur gave an encouraging instruction to the American soldiers: "Rush to the Yalu River and all can go home." I promise you'll count, and you'll be able to have Christmas dinner with your family! ”
But a piece of news that worried the Americans turned out to be a reality: Chinese sent troops into North Korea.
Smith, commander of the U.S. First Marine Division
Against this backdrop, on 24 November, Smith's 1st Marine Division entered Liutan. Liutanli, located on the shore of Lake Chosin, is basically at the northernmost end of the entire front of the US military, and is close to the Yalu River on the border between China and North Korea.
The inexplicable irritation in Smith's heart then found the cause.
The 7th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division stationed in Liutanli captured 3 Chinese soldiers. From the mouths of the Chinese soldiers, they belonged to the 20th Army, a new unit designation that was completely out of the hands of the U.S. military.
But the confessions from the Chinese captives were even more alarming: at least two Chinese units of military rank and above were about to begin attacking the U.S. First Marine Division, and at the same time, Chinese troops were going to attack Hagaru-ri, a retreat route for the First Marine Division to the south.
The Chinese army is actually preparing to annihilate the First Marine Division?!
The First Marine Division, founded in 1941, is an amphibious force that has experienced purgatory-like bloody battles such as Guadalcanal and Okinawa in the Pacific Theater, with a full load of 25,000 people, and is one of the most effective units in the U.S. Army, which can be called the trump card of trump cards.
Encirclement and annihilation of the First Marine Division? According to Smith's estimation, Chinese would have to prepare at least 100,000 troops to dare to say so.
But how many heavy troops are needed for the mobilization of 100,000 troops? On the snowy land of North Korea, the US reconnaissance planes did not find any traces of the movement of the Chinese Grand Army, so did they all drill out of the ground at that time?
After capturing the Chinese army prisoners, Smith felt his irritable mood calm down a bit.
Because he felt that he would not miscalculate, it should be Chinese crazy.
But Smith did miscalculate.
When he took the telescope to observe the icy plains, he did not find that there were really tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers lurking in the snowy fields where the north wind was whistling.
What Smith did not know was that his First Marine Division was now facing the Ninth Corps, the most elite of the East China Field Army, and the commander of the Corps, Song Shilun, had 20, 26, and 273 reinforcements under his command (compared with the general "three-three system", the reinforcement army had 4 divisions, each division had 4 regiments, each regiment and even 4 battalions under its jurisdiction) a total of 12 divisions, a total of 150,000 people.
According to the original plan, the Ninth Corps has been fighting hard in the Fujian area. However, the sudden outbreak of the Korean War disrupted China's overall plan, and under the premise that the Soviet Union was reluctant to send troops, China decided to send volunteers into Korea after fierce internal debate.
Due to the tight time, the plans of the soldiers of the Ninth Corps who had been living in Jiangnan for a long time to change their winter clothes in Shenyang were also compressed, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers wore thin cotton clothes from the south and prepared to enter the DPRK.
Founding General Song Shilun. At that time, many soldiers of the Ninth Corps did not even have cotton hats, and wore large hats such as Song Shilun.
At that time, when passing through the border line, He Jinnian, who was then the deputy commander of the Northeast Military Region, saw the cotton clothes on the soldiers of the Ninth Corps (not pure summer clothes, but not the big cotton clothes of the north, and the cotton clothes in the south at that time were very small), and they were shocked: "You enter the DPRK like this, let alone fight, and freezing can freeze you to death!" ”
At that time, He Jinnian immediately took out tens of thousands of Japanese cotton coats and cotton shoes in stock and distributed them to the soldiers of the Ninth Corps, and many cadres and soldiers of the Northeast Border Defense Force directly took off their cotton clothes and cotton pants at the station and changed them for the officers and men of the Ninth Corps.
However, due to the tight time, except for the last batch of twenty-sixth army that entered the DPRK, they changed into some winter clothes, and most of the soldiers of the Ninth Corps were assigned a cotton coat, some were assigned a pair of cotton pants, but more were wearing thin clothes and pants, wearing a big cap that could not withstand the wind and cold at all, stepping on thin rubber-soled shoes, and entering the North Korea where the north wind was whistling.
In its first week in North Korea, the Ninth Corps suffered a cold snap that North Korea had not encountered in 50 years —fighters who had just come from the south at 15 degrees Celsius immediately felt the coldness of minus 20 degrees Celsius.
In the first week of their reign, more than 700 soldiers in a single division of the Twentieth Army were incapacitated by severe frostbite—the volunteers did not know that the bitter cold weather would become their worst nightmare.
Even so, the Ninth Corps, which had more than 100,000 people, quietly entered the designated position under the eyes of the US reconnaissance plane. Joseph Gordon, a well-known military commentator in the United States, later lamented: "No matter what standard is used, the Chinese military's forced force capability is extraordinary." ”
Nine Corps on the march
Chosin Lake, the largest lake in northern Korea, originates in The Grass Shoe Ridge, located between Liutan-ri and Hagaru-ri, and ends up north into the Yalu River.
On November 27, it will go down in history for a bloody battle of purgatory.
22 points, november 27, 1950, night.
Temperatures drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius.
Almost every U.S. officer and soldier who later retreated from Liutan can clearly recall the horrors of that night:
A very harsh military trumpet suddenly sounded, and suddenly gunshots rang out in the valley, accompanied by the sound of "rustling" from all directions—they later learned that it was the sound of the Thin Rubber Shoes of the Chinese Army stepping on the snow.
Many American officers and soldiers could not believe their eyes at that moment: the plain in front of them was still snowy in the daytime, and those Chinese soldiers, after hearing the charge, suddenly wore thin clothes and pants, jumped up from the snow, and roared at themselves -- are they human beings like themselves?
But what the U.S. military did not know was that when the stormtrooper sounded, many volunteer soldiers stood still in the ambush and never stood up again - they were directly frozen to death.
On the morning of the 28th, Smith, commander of the First Marine Division, discovered a situation that frightened him: one night, more than 100,000 Chinese troops emerged from the ground, dividing the US First Marine Division and the Seventh Marine Division into 5 pieces from north to south in Liutanli, Xinxingli, Gutuli and Xiajieli!
But in terms of the Chinese volunteer army, there is nothing to be optimistic about - when it is really handed over, the Chinese army finds out where the US military is a "paper tiger".
Take the battlefield in Liutan, for example. Three volunteer divisions tried to encircle and annihilate two regiments of the U.S. Army's First Marine Division — this "dumpling-wrapping" style of play In the Liberation War, the PLA was familiar with it.
Attack posture map of the Ninth Corps at the Battle of Chosin Lake
Image source: Predator Community
But after playing one night, I couldn't beat it at all.
Compared with the American army, the firepower of the volunteer army is really much worse:
An Army division of the United States Army, with 432 howitzers and cannons, can also be supported by non-divisional artillery of the same caliber and larger caliber; a division of the Chinese Volunteer Army has only one mountain artillery battalion and 12 mountain artillery.
As for heavy weapons, the most commonly equipped volunteers were light mortars – but in the cold of north Korea's near-40 degrees Celsius, many of the shells were dudded. The artillerymen kept crying when they looked at the duds, because they saw that without fire cover, the infantry comrades who were desperately rushing forward could only become living targets for the American army.
Moreover, the volunteers had never fought with the American army, nor had they ever encountered such powerful firepower. Many of the attack formations that had been tried and tested in the War of Liberation were of no use to the tight fire network of the US army, and there were even a situation where an entire battalion was killed in front of the US position in a combat formation - they were quickly shot in a short time.
The night of Chosin Lake belongs to the volunteer army, and the day belongs to the American army.
Because the US military has absolute air supremacy, during the day, a large number of aircraft will be dispatched to indiscriminately bomb the volunteer positions. After a night of siege in Liutanli, although the volunteer army successfully formed a siege posture, it was unable to attack due to heavy casualties.
It was also at this time that Smith finally fully woke up, cursed the commander of the Tenth Army, Almond, insisted on the order of the First Marine Division to "attack forward" and began to prepare for retreat.
On November 30, after two days of holding out, Smith finally gave the order to retreat—he knew that if he didn't go, he would really be completely annihilated.
American troops on the way to retreat
Faced with the retreating American troops to the south, the volunteers began a difficult blockade battle.
The rugged road from Liutanli through Hagaru-ri became a shura field for the Chinese and American armies to hang. During the day, with the cover of aircraft and tanks, the US troops slammed and rushed, desperately breaking through to the south, and at night, the volunteers took advantage of the night counter-assault to snatch back the heights and positions lost during the day, and then after dawn, they used their flesh and blood to block the US attack.
On the most intense day of the fighting, the American army only retreated 500 meters throughout the day.
U.S. troops repairing in the snow
However, the price paid by the volunteers was also heavy.
An American corporal named Heylord Molhausen recalled the attack on a hill of the Volunteers during the retreat:
"As soon as I reached the top of the mountain, I was stunned by the scene in front of me. The small hill was littered with dead Chinese soldiers, about one or two hundred corpses of volunteers. Every step you take is a corpse. Most of them seem to have been killed during air raids and shelling, with incomplete bodies and scattered limbs.
"But the squad leader deduced from their livid complexion and bloodless limbs that many of the volunteer soldiers had frozen to death before our airstrikes and shelling. Some of the corpses were hugged in pairs, which showed that they wanted to use the body temperature of their comrades to maintain their lives.
"They were all wearing thin coats, thin pants, single shoes, no cotton coats. Didn't the Chinese volunteers know about north Korea's cold climate? They have arms supplies, but they are not prepared for the winter? If it weren't for the so many volunteers who froze to death and suffered frostbite, the one or two hundred corpses might not have been Chinese, but of our U.S. Marines. ”
It's not just the cold, it's hunger.
When the volunteers entered The DPRK, each carried a dry grain bag with six or seven catties of sorghum rice in it. By the time we arrived at Chosin Lake, the dry food had already been eaten, and the only thing except for eating snow was to nibble on two potatoes.
However, due to the inability to make a fire (which would be used as a target by A.S. aircraft), the volunteers had to eat potatoes raw. In the freezing cold of minus 30 degrees Celsius, the potatoes were frozen like stones. The warriors could only warm the potatoes under their armpits, soft one layer, nibble one layer, put it in their mouths to warm it, and then swallow it.
The Battle of Chosin Lake was fought until early December, and there was good news and bad news for the volunteers. The good news is that on the eastern front of Chosin Lake, after a bitter battle, the 80th Division of the 9th Corps and the 27th Army finally completely annihilated the 31st Regiment of the US 7th Division, known as the "Polar Bear Regiment"," which was the only American unit of the Volunteer Army that was annihilated in the Korean War.
The bad news was that the Ninth Corps had suffered heavy losses throughout the attack and blockade battle, and although it had done its best, it had watched as the US First Marine Division retreated to Shimogaru-ri.
Hagaru-ri is a small town at the top of the line, a must for the U.S. military to retreat, and there is also an airstrip.
The Fifty-eighth Division still launched a large-scale attack on the night of the 28th, which was icy and snowy. As in the battle at Liutanli, although the volunteers showed amazing willpower and courage, the attack was fierce and slow under the pressure of weather conditions and the overwhelming firepower superiority of the American army -- after a night of fierce fighting, the volunteers only seized the highlands east of Hagaru-ri.
But even so, this high ground could overlook any corner of the defensive position in Hagaru-ri, so as soon as dawn came, the American army organized a large number of soldiers to start a counterattack.
Guarding the eastern highlands was a platoon of the Third Company of the 172nd Regiment of the Fifty-eighth Division, and the company commander who personally led the team to the position was named Yang Gensi.
Before each soldier took up his position, his pocket was stuffed with grenades except for three frozen potatoes from the hard states.
After dawn, the U.S. army began to prepare for artillery fire, and aircraft began carpet bombing of the highlands. Chinese soldiers, without any air defense facilities or counterattack capabilities, could only huddle up in everything they could hide, endure artillery fire, and shout the names of their comrades to each other to ensure that the other side survived.
The artillery fire and bombardment ended, and the Americans began to charge the heights.
Miraculously, on the high ground where life was impossible, a trembling and shaky line of Chinese soldiers stood up, and they raised grenades that had been pulled open and threw them down the mountain like raindrops.
The Americans charged several times in a row, but they were all repelled, and on the high ground, there were only 3 volunteer soldiers left- Yang Gensi, a platoon leader, and a wounded soldier.
Yang Gensi forcibly ordered the platoon leader to withdraw from the high ground with the wounded wounded to report to the battalion commander that he was left alone in the position.
Another round of American charge began.
When the U.S. military found that there were no more gunshots and could see the top of the hill, a Chinese soldier suddenly stood up from the pile of corpses, and he rushed to the group of American soldiers holding the Marine Corps flag with his almost frozen legs and a bag of explosives.
A cry of surprise, a loud noise, fragments of the flag, and all kinds of broken limbs...
Yang Gensi, later sanlian was named "Yang Gensi Lian".
On 1 December, the Nearly Crippled Volunteer Fifty-eighth Division, assembling the last of the remaining 1,500 fighters, made a final decisive attack, but unfortunately failed in the face of a solid American ring position.
On the same day, at the U.S. airstrip in Hagaru-ri, a highly efficient retreat by aircraft began.
In the Battle of Chosin Lake, the pockets of the volunteers were eventually broken.
From Hagaru-ri to Koto-ri, the retreating American troops eventually came together.
Considering that Gutuli was much smaller than Hagaru-ri, and it was dangerous for so many American troops to huddle together, Smith ordered a further retreat southwards—via Zhenxingli to Xingnan Port, and from the sea.
From Gutuli to Zhenxingli, the straight-line distance is only 11 kilometers, but the altitude difference is 730 meters.
At the foot of the steep mountain, there is only one single-lane road for one car, and there is a highland on the side of this road, called Highland 1081.
Everyone knows that the capture of Hill 1081 can block the last retreat of the American army - the volunteer army has long sent troops to occupy that high ground.
However, when it was the turn of the American army to attack, it did not take much effort, and only one battalion was invested, and this high ground was captured.
Zou Shiyong, then an instructor of the Third Company of the 235th Regiment of the 79th Division of the 27th Army, recalled the scenes that the troops later saw when they went to the highland positions along the highway, saying that he would never forget it in his life:
"I went up to take a look and saw that it was a unit of the Twentieth Army, wearing a large cap, a towel to cover my ears, rubber shoes and cotton coats from the south.
"Every soldier crouched in that snow pit, and the gun was pointed toward the road. I wanted to pull it, but I found that they were all hard, and they all froze to death in that place, one by one. They were either killed, they froze to death, and the guns were all pointed at the road. I will never forget this scene. ”
In the freezing cold weather, even the opportunity for the volunteer soldiers to fight to the death was not given.
The Ninth Corps has historical records that all three companies froze to death on their positions, namely, the 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 177th Regiment of the 59th Division of the 20th Army, the 2nd Company of the 180th Battalion of the 180th Regiment of the 60th Division of the 20th Army, and the 2nd Battalion and 5th Company of the 242nd Regiment of the 80th Division of the 27th Army.
December 25, 1950, was The Christmas day that MacArthur promised American soldiers to end the Korean War.
On this day, the volunteer army fully entered the southernmost retreat base of the US army, Xingnan Port, before that, the heavily encircled US army transported more than 100,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles and 35,000 tons of supplies from Xingnan Port by ship.
There is no doubt that the Volunteers achieved their strategic objectives: to face the "United Nations Army" trying to advance northward, to completely expel the US troops who claimed to be "drinking horses on the Yalu River", and to make the so-called "Christmas Offensive" a joke.
According to official information released in 1988, the Ninth Corps of the Volunteer Army, which severely damaged the FIRST DIVISION OF the US Army, also paid a very high price, with combat losses of 14,062 and non-combat losses due to frostbite reaching 30,732 (according to the "Summary of Health Work in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Health Service", Ministry of Health of the General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, March 1988, 1st Edition, p. 327).
In September 1952, the Ninth Corps was ordered to return from Korea.
The car drove to the Yalu River, and the commander of the corps, Song Shilun, asked the driver to stop.
After getting out of the car, Song Shilun stood silently for a long time in the direction of Chosin Lake, then took off his hat, bent down, and bowed deeply.
When he looked up, Song Shi, who had gray hair, was in tears and couldn't sustain himself.