71 years ago today, that is, on October 25, 1950, the Chinese Volunteer Army launched the first battle to resist the United States and aid Korea, thus opening up the battlefield miracle of defeating the strong with the weak in the history of human warfare.
Pyongyang fell on October 19, the same day that the Chinese Volunteers crossed the Yalu River. Ma Fuyu, the instructor of the Fifth Company of the 26th Regiment of the First Artillery Division of the Volunteer Army, looked at the torrent of steel, could not suppress his excitement, and wrote with a stroke of his pen:
Majestic, angry, across the Yalu River,
To safeguard peace and the motherland is to protect the homeland,
Good sons and daughters of China, united and tight,
Defeat the American Ambition Wolf!
Later, after being modified and arranged by the composer, the song became the strongest voice of that era, and has been sung to this day.
The first to enter korea were the four corps of the 13th Corps: the 38th Army, the 39th Army, the 40th Army, and the 42nd Army. In order not to scare the snakes and achieve military secrecy, all the soldiers did not have any signs on their clothing, green single clothes and cotton clothes were mixed together, the soldiers wore uniformly distributed white towels on their arms, hats made of branches and leaves on their heads, people and mule and horse convoys with artillery were handing over, the footsteps of the entire march were chaotic and hurried, and the soldiers understood that they were going to fight the American devils and prevent the war from burning to the Yalu River. At that time, crossing the river was an absolute military secret, and in order to prevent enemy reconnaissance, it was chosen to advance at dusk.
The first to cross the border was the 370th Regiment of the 124th Division of the 42nd Army, operating the vanguard reconnaissance unit, which advanced three days. Military Commander Wu Ruilin and Political Commissar Zhou Biao stood on the side of China at the head of the railway bridge, watching a procession of more than 50,000 people crossing the river from the Manpu Iron Bridge and the improvised pontoon bridge, targeting the Chosin Lake area of North Korea.
At this moment, it is around 18:00 Beijing time on October 19.
The 39th and 40th Armies of the fraternal forces crossed the river in Andong in the middle of the night, and it was very dark and quiet along the way. The four columns of soldiers of the 40th Army stepped on the Yalu River Bridge, there was a white national boundary in the middle of the bridge that was very eye-catching, a Soviet jeep honking its horn drove over the bridge, the soldiers consciously gave way to the road, no one paid attention to this car, company commander Wen Yucheng could not imagine, sitting in the car was peng Dehuai, the commander of the volunteer army.
After crossing the river, Deng Yue, commander of the 118th Division of the 40th Army of the Volunteer Army, received orders from his superiors, so his 354th Regiment built fortifications in the area of Fengxiadong and Fuxingdong north of Wenjing, and the main force of the division gathered more than 10,000 people in the area of Liangshuidong and Beizhen, and decided at that time that if the enemy did not go north, he would continue to advance tomorrow night.
The officers and men of the 13th Corps of the Volunteer Army had all entered Korea, but the U.S. and South Korean troops knew nothing about it, and the South Korean army, as the vanguard, continued to march north.
On October 25, 1950, the 2nd Regiment of the 6th South Korean Division broke into the encirclement of the 354th Regiment of the Volunteer Army, and it was incomprehensible that this regiment actually put heavy artillery in front of the entire team and walked on the road with a big swing, without thinking of fighting. As soon as the gunfire rang out, the South Korean soldiers with no combat experience were in a mess, and He Yiqing, a mortar gunner of the 358th Regiment's three battalions and eight companies, shot a shell and knocked down the truck that was about to reverse and flee, blocking the road, and now the 60-mm gun is still on display in the Chinese Revolutionary Military Museum.
The blinded South Korean soldiers were like headless flies, running around the mountains, almost no effective resistance was organized, the volunteer army at this time had been honed by the civil war, the fighting techniques were pure, the 2nd Regiment of the 6th Division of South Korea was beheaded and tailed, one battalion was solved in 20 minutes, it was difficult to understand that the other battalion heard the sound of artillery and still swung forward, did not stop to listen to the news or return to the division to assist, at 15:00 pm on the 25th, the battle ended, 350 of the 750 people in a battalion were killed, wounded or captured, 12 artillery pieces, 38 vehicles, 164 guns of various kinds were captured, and two U.S. advisers were killed and wounded.
The 358th Regiment won the battle, and in contrast to the 360th Regiment of the 120th Division, the advance regiment of the 40th Army, fought more bitterly, and they set up positions at 262.8 heights north of Unsan City to block the South Korean army that was trying to move north from Unsan City.
First and foremost were a battalion of three companies, who were not afraid of the heavy artillery fire and bombardment of dozens of tanks of the South Korean First Division and US fighter jets, and held the position of Namsan Inma-dong without retreating.
The battle was extremely fierce, the hill, which was only 100 meters high, had withstood the indiscriminate bombardment of 20 US fighter-bombers, and the Chinese soldiers did not take a step back under the bombardment of american fighter aircraft aviation bombs, napalm and rockets, and whenever the South Korean soldiers shouted and rushed to the middle of the mountain, the volunteers shot rain-intensive bullets from the trenches.
More than 20 South Korean soldiers rushed to the other side of the hill when the volunteer army ran out of ammunition and food, and Shi Baoshan stood up from the tattered fortifications carrying the explosive canisters, and without the slightest hesitation, rushed into the enemy group to sound the explosive canisters, and he was the first volunteer soldier on the Korean battlefield to die with the enemy army. On this day, the three companies of a battalion lost more than half, but finally held their positions.
On the same day, the War on the Eastern Front of the Chinese Army began. Participating in the battle was the second battalion of the 370th Regiment of the 42nd Army, who blocked the South Korean Capital Division in the area of Huangcaoling, and the volunteers of the second battalion were bombarded with American aircraft on their heads, and the position was ravaged by american 105 mm howitzers, and they held their positions with steely will, and finally won the victory of the blockade.
On the 25th, the Volunteer Army and the United Nations Army simultaneously fought in two locations in Korea, and since then, the heroic and indomitable sons and daughters of China have begun the two-year and nine-month War to Defend the Homeland and resist the United States and Aid Korea, and finally won victory by sacrificing their lives and forgetting their lives. Victory was not easy to come by, in the face of the MOST advanced weapons and equipment of the Us army at that time, this war, we paid 197,000 young and fresh lives, many children went, left their lives in a foreign country, never came back...
"If we don't fight this battle, our next generation will fight it," the phrase is loud and clear.
Indeed, looking at the international situation, if there were no countless martyrs who sacrificed their lives in the last century, it may be us who are now carrying guns to the battlefield, looking back at history and remembering the heroes.
Look back on the past and cherish the hard-won peaceful and happy life.