There are too many interpretations of the reasons for the failure of the 180th Division on the Internet, including various military publications, which can be summed up in two points:
What this article wants to say is that in order to clarify the reasons for the defeat of the 180th Division's Hanjiang troops, we must first find out -- the contents of the telegrams exchanged with the military headquarters by the 180th Division since it received the order to retreat, the tasks, and the execution process, as well as the final failure, during which the 180th Division really experienced what the 180th Division experienced...
(Wei Jie, commander of the 60th Army, was awarded the rank of lieutenant general in 1955, after which Wei Jie was removed from his post and Zhang Zuyu took over as commander)
On May 21, Shiji Peng Dehuai sent a telegram: Due to the lack of our means of transport, the inability to receive food and ammunition, and the fact that the US troops on the western front have come to the aid of the east, it will be more difficult for me to continue to expand the offensive, so the fifth campaign is temporarily over.
On the 21st, the Three Corps received orders from Shiji that the corps (3, 9, 19) should prepare to begin moving to the areas of Lianchuan, Tieyuan, Jinhua, and Huachuan on the evening of the 23rd.
The order issued to the 60th Corps by the Third Corps on the 21st was: The 60th Army should be used as the task of blocking the regiment, and the army was placed in Baiyili and south of BaijiShan, from the demarcation line with the 9th Corps in the east and the demarcation line with the 19th Corps in the west...
The orders issued to the 180th Division by the 60th Army on the night of the 22nd were: two companies of the 2nd Artillery Division of the 180th Division attached to the 180th Division, with an infantry regiment moving north to the north of the Han River to form a blocking position, the main force of the division to the south of the North Han River to cover the northward movement of the corps and the transfer of the wounded, the division's combat area was Xinyanjiang, Zhiyanli, Baijishan, and the area south of Shanghai Peak, and pay attention to contact with the 63rd Army on the right side.
Therefore, after Fu Chongbi's 63rd Army received the telegram, according to the telegram order of the 19th Corps, it was resolutely carried out of the order of the superiors by leading the 63rd Army to withdraw from the battlefield in a timely manner, and there was nothing wrong with it.
The 63rd Army had no reason to carry this pot for the 180th Division.
It was not until 11:00 a.m. on the 23rd that the 180th Division found that the 63rd Army on its right flank had withdrawn without warning...
The problem arose, leaving aside why the 63rd Army did not say hello before retreating, the 180th Division had received the order to retreat in the early hours of the morning, but it was not until eleven o'clock that it found that the right wing was empty, received the order for 10 hours, and the telegram clearly demanded "... And pay attention to contact with the 63rd Army in the right neighbor. Why did Zheng Qigui, commander of the 180th Division, not contact the 63rd Army during these 10 hours? Nor did it find that the 63rd Army had already withdrawn?
But this is not fatal, nor does it constitute the cause of the defeat of the 180th Division, if during this period of time, because the 63rd Army did not withdraw, and the US army took advantage of the gap leaked by the 63rd Army to cut and surround the 180th Division, it was of course the responsibility of the 63rd Army, but this did not happen, until the 24th, the US army did not step into this gap.
At 12:00 on the 23rd, the 180th Division sent two companies to occupy the defensive area of the original 63rd Army. The main force of the division has just begun to prepare, preparing to collect crossing materials, cross the North Han River fortification, and wait for the opportunity to move to Chuncheon.
The 12 hours wasted in vain were the result of Commander Wei Jie misreading the military order, and the 180th Division received 5 telegrams from the military headquarters in succession after receiving the retreat order for the first time in the early morning of the 23rd, with the same content, and 100,000 urgent, one after another...
At 3:00 a.m. on the 23rd, the 180th Division received successive telegrams from Wei Jie ordering the retreat to stop: Your unit immediately stopped retreating north and continued to cover the transfer of the wounded of the whole corps south of the North Han River. ...... The Jiangnan forces (of the 180th Division) should strive to hold out for 5 days.
When hundreds of thousands of troops of the three corps of the whole line were retreating, why did the 180th Division alone order the 180th Division to cover the transfer of the wounded of the whole corps? Where are all the wounded of this regiment? The various units of the 3 corps were scattered on a defensive line of nearly 200 kilometers in length, and the retreat routes of each unit were different, the retreat time was different, and the assembly sites were different...
How should the 180th Division take cover???
Where should the 180th Division go to cover???
Wei Jie, commander of the 60th Army, misunderstood the "various departments" in the corps's emergency telegram as "ordering its own 60th Army to cover the transport of the wounded of the whole corps."
Therefore, this task was handed over to the 180th Division with 5 consecutive telegrams.
The US army did not find that the volunteer army had retreated on the whole line until the afternoon of the 23rd, and on the 24th, it quickly passed through the gap between the 3rd Corps and the 19th Corps, one quickly crossed the North Han River, one entered the defense of the former 63rd Army, and the two companies left behind by our army on the position fought and retreated, and converged at the chenghuangtang ferry port and the artillery battalion of the friendly 540 regiment that could not cross the river in time due to heavy equipment, and under the command of the battalion instructor Ren Zhenhua, persisted to the last soldier and one bullet, Ren Zhenhua pulled the last grenade, and died with the enemy...
At this point, a day and a night have passed, and all of our army, except for the 180th Division, has broken away from the US army by more than 100 kilometers, and the 180th Division has been unable to retreat at this moment, and all the ferries on the North Han River are controlled by the coalition forces, and they are trapped in a dead place with one side back to the water and three sides surrounded...
At this moment, the 180th Division spent almost a full day and 1 night in place waiting for the American encirclement, while the 63rd Army and other friendly and neighboring units had already safely and quickly withdrawn to their respective assembly areas according to their respective orders.
At this moment, it had been nearly 40 hours since the 180th Division had first received the order to retreat. Although he was trapped in the ground of death, at this moment the whole division basically did not have major losses, the regimental structure was basically complete, the whole division still had more than 10,000 people, and it should not have been annihilated, but then, the corps, the army, the division, the three levels are all bad tricks in an endless stream, and posterity can only issue a sigh...
On the night of the 24th, when Wei Jie knew that the 180th Division was surrounded and that the 60th Army Headquarters could not contact the headquarters of the 3rd Corps due to poor radio, he sent a telegram ordering the 180th Division to withdraw across the North Han River and continue to complete the task of deploying along the river.
Late at night, after the 180th Division's wired and wireless communication was interrupted and 12 successive correspondents failed to convey the retreat order, the 180th Division's staff officers Fan Rihua and Lang Dongfang personally sent the retreat order to the 538th and 539th Regiments, which were holding out fierce battles on the south bank.
In the early hours of the morning, the 538th and 539th Regiments smuggled across the Beihan River with the wounded on three wires, and more than 600 soldiers were swept away by the rapids.
The 538th Regiment formed a defensive line in the Areas of Shangxiafangdong and Xishangli, the 539th Regiment formed a defensive line in the Mingyueli and Jiuzhidaishan areas, and the 540th Regiment formed a defensive line in the Jiguanshan and Beipeishan areas to cover the entire corps' retreat to the north.
By the 25th, the 180th Division had run out of food, but the situation was still lagging behind, and it was attacked on three sides.
At this moment, the 180th Division successively received two identical telegrams from Wei Jie of the 60th Army and Wang Jinshan of the 3rd Corps:
This made the 180th Division, which was already carrying out Wei Jie's orders, embarrassed, at that time, the 180th Division was following Wei Jie's orders, the division and the division hospital were moving north, the 538 regiment was the vanguard, the 539 regiment was followed, and the 540 regiment was holding the cover of the Driving Deshan position.
In desperation, the division commander Zheng Qigui had no choice but to order the troops to suspend the operation and instead carry out the orders of the 3rd Corps Corps Headquarters. (If Zheng Qigui at this time can firmly carry out Wei Jie's orders without interference, the whole division can safely escape danger.) ）
However, the divisional organs, the directly subordinate medical, communications, logistics and other detachments, as well as the 3rd Battalion of the 539th Regiment, which were on the way, still marched forward as planned because they did not receive Zheng Qigui's order to suspend the operation in time.
At dawn on the 26th, the 538th Regiment reflexively moved south, reoccupied the position of Chadeshan, and prepared to block the enemy army together with the 540th Regiment.
At this time, the US 7th Division on the left side of the 180th Division had broken through the position of the 179th Division, divided the 179th Division and the 180th Division, and penetrated deep into the flank of the 180th Division, cutting off the retreat of the 180th Division.
However, the night before, because they did not receive the order to suspend the operation, the divisional organs of the 180th Division, the direct subordinate detachment and the three battalions of the 539th Regiment that continued to retreat north were fortunately out of danger.
The main force of the 180th Division, which faithfully carried out the orders of the corps headquarters, fell into a heavy siege of the enemy of 5 divisions south of Shibayanli.
At the same time, Wei Jie sent a report to the 181st Division: Order your troops to set out from the vicinity of Huachuan and plan the breakthrough of the 180th Division!
Send a report to the 536th Regiment of the 179th Division, ordering your unit to quickly occupy Mapingli and attack Zhiyanli to meet the 180th Division!
Political Commissar Yuan Ziqin added a telegram: Please rest assured that the 180th Division will be able to respond with troops, cross the highway, and the position of our army will be under the Eagle Peak Mountain north of Mapingli, and I firmly believe that you will be able to break through the siege in victory!
However, after a fierce and bitter struggle, by the early morning of the 27th, the two breakthrough teams of the 180th Division, at the cost of 2/3 casualties, broke through the encirclement, crossed the road, and reached the foot of Eagle Peak Mountain, the whole division had less than 2,000 people.
However, what awaited them under the main peak of Eagle Peak Mountain was not the receiving troops of the 179th And 181st Divisions, but the heavily armored troops of the US 24th Division, and the 180th Division was once again encircled.
(Zheng Qigui, commander of the 180th Division, was awarded the rank of colonel in 1955, while most of the other division commanders who participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea were major generals, and the worst was also awarded the rank of colonel.) After this battle, Zheng Qigui was dismissed from his post for 1 year, and then appointed as the chief of the 3 Corps Management Office, and in 1970, he retired with the treatment of a full division and left the army prematurely. ）
The desperate Zheng Qigui personally got on the plane to talk to Wei Jie, and Wei Jie's last order was: Order you to concentrate on breaking through in the direction of Shi Cangli! The military department will send troops to meet you, and will definitely send troops to meet you!
At this point, the so-called 180th Division, which was issued in order to unswervingly carry out the so-called task of covering the transport of the wounded in order to unswervingly carry out The misinterpretation of the telegram by Wei Jie has left a black memory in the history of our army...
Documented for the following persons:
1. The first to stand out was a squad led by Hu Jingyi, chief of staff of the 538th Regiment, who continued to gather scattered soldiers along the way, and finally reached the position of the friendly 181st Division after many battles, there were more than 50 people, and 14 American troops were captured along the way, creating a miracle.
2. Ding Zhansheng, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 539th Regiment, brought back more than 100 people.
3. Guan Zhichao, instructor of the 2nd Battalion of the 539th Regiment, brought back more than 60 people.
4. Guo Fuming, the leader of the 539 regiment health team, brought back 22 people.
Wei Fushan, instructor of the 3rd Battalion of the 539th Regiment, and Xing Chunsheng, deputy battalion commander, commanded the headquarters and the personnel gathered along the way, and a total of 366 people returned.
6. Zhang Jie, chief of the division's military affairs section, and Wang Yimin, chief of the direct engineering section, led the division's reconnaissance company and gathered more than 400 personnel along the way to return to the team.
7. Li Beizhao, political commissar of the 540 regiment, and Wang Ti, director of the political department, brought back more than 20 people.
8. 538 Regiment Commander Pang Kechang brought back some personnel. (Number of people unknown)
9. After many battles, the division guard company led by division commander Zheng Qigui, deputy division commander Duan Longzhang, and chief of staff Wang Zhenbang and some of the division's personnel were finally caught up by an American infantry detachment on a slope at dusk on May 31.
Commander Zheng Qigui ordered the troops to disperse and run away, and one could live one by one, but his guard squad vowed to die, and while two soldiers protected Zheng Qigui's evacuation, the other guards ran in the opposite direction and did not disconnect their guns, attracting American fire and pursuit. In the end, Commander Zheng Qigui returned from danger, and all the guards and soldiers were sacrificed.
After more than a month, the 180th Division finally returned to the construction of more than 4,000 people.
They were a team of more than 700 people led by Wu Chengde, director of the division's political department, composed of most of the female soldiers of the division's cultural and labor corps, as well as the wounded who had gathered along the way.
Director Wu was originally escorted by a guard squad, and because of the small target, he had a good chance of leaking out of the gap in the enemy's joint department, but on the way he encountered non-combatants such as the divisional cultural and industrial regiment that had fallen behind, and in a mountain hollow, he encountered a large number of wounded people who voluntarily gave up the breakthrough in order not to drag down the troops, so he pulled out his pistol and killed his warhorses, and encouraged the wounded: Don't be afraid, I am with you, we will definitely be able to stand out...
Along the way, people kept joining in the procession, and some people kept falling in the battle, and the more people fought, the fewer and fewer people fought, and finally Wu Chengde led the remaining 33 people to abandon the breakthrough and turn to the mountains and forests to fight guerrillas, expecting to return to the construction when the large troops counterattacked. This small force actually persisted for a year, but he never waited for the volunteer counterattack, and finally was captured by the US army mountain search team when there were only 3 people left...
Wu Chengde, director of the Political Department of the 180th Division, was the highest-ranking of our army's captured personnel in the Korean War (deputy division post).
However, there is no clear number of captives, the specific and conclusive number of captives has not been declassified, and all kinds of data circulating in society are all fabricated and imaginary figures.
(The Joju Island POW camp in South Korea once held 150,000 Korean People's Army prisoners of war and more than 20,000 volunteer prisoners of war.) ）