Wang Shitai's memoirs - The fourth column of the Northwest Field Army competed for Qinghai Ma Bufang in Baoji Xifu

Wang Shitai's memoirs - The fourth column of the Northwest Field Army competed for Qinghai Ma Bufang in Baoji Xifu

Wang Shitai

In the winter training, we also have an important task, that is, to form and improve the four columns. To this end, we first set up a column headquarters, with me as the commander, Zhang Zhongliang as the political commissar, Yan Yu as deputy commander and chief of staff, and Yang Jian as deputy chief of staff. In accordance with the central military commission's decision to reorganize the 1st Police Brigade, the 3rd Police Brigade, and the newly formed 6th Cavalry Division under the command of the Joint Defense Forces Command into the Fourth Column, and after the column party committee studied and reported it to the field army party committee, it was decided that the 1st Police Brigade, the 3rd Police Brigade, and the 6th Cavalry Division Headquarters should be composed of the following responsible persons:

Gao Jinchun, commander of the First Police Brigade, Zuo Ai, political commissar, Liu Maogong, deputy brigade commander, Li Zhenhua, chief of staff, and Hu Youzhi, director of the Political Department;

Huang Luobin, commander of the Third Police Brigade, Gao Weisong, political commissar, Liu Dianying, chief of staff, and Liu Changhan, director of the Political Department;

Hu Jingduo, commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division, Li Zonggui, political commissar, Yang Zhengmin, deputy division commander, Zhang Tao, chief of staff, and Shi Yuan, director of the Political Department.

There were three brigades (divisions) and six regiments in the whole column, with 9645 people.

　　Although the fourth column was formed, the strength of the fourth column was insufficient, and only the three regiments and the second regiment of the first brigade of the police (more than 500 people) and the five regiments of the third brigade of the police were really able to enter the battle. The 3rd Police Brigade originally had the 5th, 7th and 8th Regiments. The Eighth Regiment has been stationed on the three sides, and its main task is to resist Ma Hongkui's troops and prevent the enemy from invading the border areas from Inner Mongolia. During the confrontation with Ma Hongkui's troops, the Eighth Regiment was crushed by Ma Hongkui with superior troops, and had to be reorganized, still staying on the three sides; the Seventh Regiment had been fighting with Peng Zong in the Battle of Defending Yan'an, and after several fights and resistance, the casualties were very large, and then the whole regiment fell ill with typhoid fever and recuperated for several months at Meridian Ridge, until the column was established, but the combat effectiveness was also greatly weakened. The Sixth Cavalry Division was reorganized from the uprising, with only a thousand men, and although it was assigned to the Fourth Column, it was in fact still under the direct leadership of the Northwest Bureau. The 6th Cavalry Division was not rebuilt until after the Battle of Xifu, and after reorganization, it was reduced to a regiment, namely the 28th Regiment of the 10th Division, with Zhang Yaxiong as its commander. Former divisional commanders and cadres of organs were assigned separately.

Memoirs of Shitai – The Battle of Xifu

On April 13, 1948, Nishino Command held a meeting of cadres at and above the brigade level in Malan, conveyed the decision of the former General Headquarters on conducting the Xifu Campaign, and deployed the battle plan. At the meeting, General Manager Peng explained the purpose, basis, and operational plan of the campaign. He pointed out that the basis of this plan is that the enemy forces in the Xifu area are empty, the defense is weak, the Kuomintang army is full of contradictions within itself, the factional struggle is fierce, each of them is to preserve their strength, and there are large loopholes in coordination and cooperation, which are easy to be divided and disintegrated by ourselves, and each one is broken. Therefore, if we attack Baoji quickly, we will not only be able to obtain a large number of materials, open up new base areas in Linyou Mountain and Longshan Mountain, and destroy the enemy in this area.

　　In order to realize the above strategic intentions, the former general decided to divide the four columns of our Northwest Field Army into three roads of left, center, and right to attack Xifu on the 16th. Its specific deployment is:

The second and fourth columns were the Left Route Army, commanded by Zhang Zongxun, who took the town of Gaowang, crossed the Jing River in the south, and captured the Supervision Army and Qianxian County, and after winning the fourth column, they seized Liquan and pretended to move toward Xianyang, on the one hand, giving the enemy the illusion of seizing Xianyang, and on the other hand, containing the Kuomintang troops in this area.

The second column captured Wugong, Fufeng, and Qishan, and the camera captured Baoji; the sixth column was the Right Route Army; the first column was the Middle Route Army.

　　After crossing the Jing River, the four columns assembled in the area north of The Zhaoling Tomb in Liquan to carry out the task of containing the enemy army. At this time, he received an order from Zhang Zongxun to let Liu Mao's power department go deep behind enemy lines to destroy the railway bridge from Sanyuan to Xianyang. Although I believed that this area was heavily guarded by enemy troops and it was difficult to complete the task, I still sent Liu Mao's power police brigade, three regiments, one battalion, and some engineers to carry out the task. As a result, Liu Mao's power department not only failed to complete the task after four days of circling with the enemy, but also lost contact with us, and finally had to take a detour back to the Guanzhong Border Area.

　　On the night of the 25th, the first and second vertical Baoji attacked forward, and on the 26th, the attack was launched at dawn, and by 22:00, all the enemies defending Baoji were annihilated. Xu Bao, commander of the enemy's 76th Division, was also injured by our attacking troops in this battle and died the next day. Baoji was liberated.

　　Just as the first and second columns were preparing to attack Baoji, our fourth column received an order from Zhang Zongxun to rush to the first line of Xinglin Town in Fufeng County to take over the defense of the Second Column and Sixth Brigade.

When the four columns reached the designated position, they encountered a fierce attack from the enemy, and the troops did not have time to make a careful deployment, that is, they hurriedly entered the battle. In the afternoon of the battle, Ma Bufang's reorganized Sixty-fifth Division broke into our flank, and the enemy's First Division also moved closer to the Sixty-fifth Division from the direction of Yangling, and the reorganized Thirty-sixth Division followed. Faced with the strong enemy of the three reorganized divisions, our army fought and retreated, and that night it shrank to the front-line camps in Qinghua Town and Yidian Town.

At dawn on the 26th, the enemy's reorganized Sixty-fifth Division launched another onslaught on our garrison in two ways, and after more than three hours of fierce fighting, the defensive line was finally broken.

When General Peng learned that the enemy had broken through our defensive line and was approaching Baoji, he decided to withdraw the main force from Baoji and move his camera north to annihilate Qingma and recover the lost land in Longdong. On the 28th, our first and second columns blew up some of the materials that had not been transferred in time and marched toward Qianyang; the fourth column was also ordered to set off from Qishan and go north through Liangshe and Zhaoxian.

　　After Hu Zongnan learned that our army was moving north, he ordered his First Division, the Thirty-sixth division, and the Sixty-fifth Division to pursue it, and the Thirty-sixth Division and the Thirty-eighth Division immediately marched west into Binxian and Jingchuan, bordering the eighty-second division's defensive line, in an attempt to attack from the north and south, and to wipe out our army in the areas of Changwu, Lingtai, Jingchuan, and Zhenyuan.

　　On May 1, Mr. Peng decided that our main force would march towards Dong Zhiyuan. On the 3rd, the main force passed through Jingchuan, Pingliangjian Huasuo, and Wangcun through the Xilan Highway and the Jing River, preparing to capture Lizhen, Xiaojin, and Xifeng. The four columns also crossed the Jing River with the main force through Taixian, Heaven, Bailiang, and Mulin, and arrived at Dangyuan on the 4th.

On the 5th, the 6th Column of the vanguard force instructed the brigade to enter the town of Tunzi, but because it did not take timely precautions, it was surrounded by three regiments of infantry and cavalry of the Eighty-second Division. General Peng ordered the brigade to stand firm and wait for help, and urgently dispatched the first and fourth columns to break the siege. The fourth column reached the vicinity of the town of Tunzi at about 4 p.m. and immediately attacked from east to west until late at night, repeatedly striking the counterattacking enemy. Afterwards, it was learned that due to poor radio communication, the troops could not receive telegrams in time, and the arrival time of the various relief units was uneven. In addition, the 358th Brigade of the 1st Column was blocked by the 65th Division in the Yudumiao area, and the Independent 1st Brigade confronted the enemy's cavalry regiment in the western slope, thus greatly weakening the attacking power of the encirclement troops.

At 21:00, the Independent First Brigade and the newly formed Fourth Brigade also attacked from south to north. Although the troops who broke the siege were charged several times and fought repeatedly, they were still unable to break the siege of the teaching brigade, until midnight, when the former commander-in-chief ordered the teaching brigade to disperse and break through in the dark of night, and finally broke out of the siege under the cover of the peripheral troops, but suffered heavy losses.

　　After the fierce battle in Tunzi Town, General Manager Peng began to know the strength of Qingma and the consistency and resoluteness of Huma's joint anti-communistism.

Therefore, it was decided to temporarily abandon the plan to retake Longdong and lead his troops to move eastward and approach the border area. At about 12 o'clock that night, Yan Yu, deputy commander and chief of staff of the Fourth Column, received a phone call from General Peng, saying: "We will no longer fight, and the main force will retreat to the east." The route of your four-column retreat was to retreat from the garrison to the direction of Ning County via the Three Passes (place names). ”

After receiving the call, we immediately convened a meeting of the party committee of the column to study the deployment of the retreat: First, the two regiments of the third brigade of the police were withdrawn from the battlefield, and the retreat was alternately covered in the direction of the three passes to prevent the pursuit of the enemy cavalry;

Second, it was determined that Zhang Zhongliang, Gao Jinchun, Gao Weisong, and Zuo Ai would lead a battalion of the first brigade to cover the column, two brigade headquarters organs, and the wounded to retreat first, and Huang Luobin and I would lead the third brigade of the police to follow up the retreat;

Third, it was decided that Yan Yu would take a few guards to the front general to report on our retreat plan and see what instructions the former general had.

The troops then began to retreat, reaching the vicinity of Sambu at noon the next day. Since the troops were on the move, they withdrew their telephones and radios, and could not contact the former general manager, nor did they have any news from Yan Wei, so they had to wait for new orders at the Three Passes.

At this time, we received a written order written by the former general to camp at night at The Li family in Nanzhuang to build fortifications and prepare to fight the enemy. I gave this order to the brigade commander of the Third Police Brigade and asked him to lead the troops back to the Li family in Nanzhuang to carry out the mission.

After two or three hours, he brought the troops back and said: "The gunfire of the Li family in Nanzhuang is very fierce, and according to the ordinary people who ran out, the Li family in Nanzhuang has been occupied by the enemy. "I took his word for it and didn't let them go back on a mission. Soon after receiving the former general order, the fourth column attacked the county seat of Ning County, and I immediately sent the third police brigade to carry out the task.

The Third Police Brigade arrived in Ning County and ordered the Five Regiments to attack the county seat, but since Ning County was a county town that crossed the mountain, the enemy was condescending and prevented us from attacking, and after several onslaughts, they could not overcome it. I ordered the Seventh Regiment to clear the enemy on the outskirts of Ning County, quickly occupy the eastern bank of Ning County, and cover the retreat of the main force. The next morning, the former commander and other columns retreated eastward through Ning County.

After the main force retreated, the fifth and seventh regiments began to alternately cover the retreat. While our main force was retreating, several independent cavalry regiments of Ma Bufang's Eighth Cavalry Division reared after us, and when we reached Dongyuan in Ning County, we encountered Ma Bufang's cavalry. We retreated as we fought. After a day of resistance, I retreated to Pingzi Town and Liangping. Because the fifth regiment and the seventh regiment were separated by a certain distance, the result was that Ma Bufang's cavalry inserted from the side, cutting off our fifth regiment and the seventh regiment, and encircling the seventh regiment.

In this war of resistance, we have adopted the experience summed up over many years of fighting Against Qinghai Ma Bufeifang. The whole regiment was not dispersed, concentrated its troops, relied on the favorable terrain of Liangping Village, insisted on the village village, stubbornly resisted, fought bloody battles day after day, suffered heavy casualties, continuously repelled the enemy's fierce attacks again and again, inflicted heavy casualties on the horse bandits, and finally completed the task of covering the main force's eastward advance, and did not withdraw from the battle until late at night. The Seven Regiments fought very well in this battle and were commended by the former Commander-in-Chief.

On the 10th and 11th, the first, second, sixth, and fourth columns of our field army marched from Zhengning and Zhitian town to the border area in turn, and on the 12th they reached Malan, Turning Corners, and other places, getting rid of the passive situation of the Hu and Ma armies attacking.

　　Because the troops had been fighting continuously for more than three months, they were quite tired, especially after entering Longdong, they had been in a very passive situation, with serious casualties and urgent need to rest and replenish. Therefore, the former general decided that starting from May 17, the 1st, 2nd, and 6th columns would go to the Liberated Area at the foot of the Huanglong Mountains for recuperation.

Our fourth column continued to stay in the Guanzhong area for supplementary rest. At this point, the Battle of Xifu was over.