In early April 1951, the Volunteer Army Headquarters held a party committee in which the corps commander and political commissar attended, and at the meeting, Peng Dehuai conveyed Chairman Mao's strategic policy of "preparing for war for a long time and striving for the short term as much as possible." In accordance with this guideline, our army drew up a battle plan for the fifth campaign.
The purpose of the fifth campaign of the Volunteer Army was to destroy several divisions of the enemy, crush the enemy's plans, seize the initiative on the battlefield, and the key targets of the attack were the First Division of the South Korean Army, the Sixth Division, the British 29th Brigade, the 3rd Infantry Division of the Us Army, the Turkish Brigade, the 24th Infantry Division of the US Army, the 25th Division, the means of the campaign was to implement a combination of campaign division and tactical division, and the participating forces were the Third Corps, the Ninth Corps, the Nineteenth Corps, and the 39th Army of the 13th Corps, the 40th Army and the four corps of the Korean People's Army.
In this operation, the volunteer army invested three corps, 11 corps, 33 infantry divisions, an anti-aircraft artillery division, and an artillery division, with a total strength of more than 600,000 people, and our army has an absolute superiority in strength. However, the enemy has an advantage in modern equipment such as air force, artillery, and tanks, and our army is still in difficulty in providing logistical support, and can only guarantee a minimum supply, and sometimes even a minimum supply cannot be guaranteed, and it cannot meet the needs of wartime. In wartime, it was mainly up to the commanders and fighters themselves to carry seven days' rations, and after seven days of fighting, they had to withdraw.
Our army fought very well in the first phase of the Fifth Campaign, but in the second phase of the campaign there was an accident, and the US army adopted the tactic of "gradually retreating, maintaining contact, and killing and injuring a large number of the enemy's living forces", which caused a lot of casualties to our army. In the process of the retreat of the volunteer army, Ridgway and Van Vleet retreated from the front with the main force on the one hand, and on the other hand, they used a task force composed of motorized infantry, artillery, and tanks to penetrate deeply along the road to the volunteer army, and cooperated with the paratroopers to occupy strategically important places, blocking the retreat of our army, and trying to divide and encircle our army and annihilate them one by one.
Pursued by the mechanized units of the Us Army, the volunteer units caused heavy casualties. At the end of May, Peng Dehuai ordered the 63rd Army to hold the strategic town of Tieyuan and cover the retreat of large troops. In the Tieyuan Blockade Battle, the 63rd Army exerted its momentum and the military prestige of the Volunteer Army, but at about the same time, there was another unit that did not receive the order and threw itself into the process of blocking the enemy, this unit was the 58th Division of the 20th Army.
The 20th Army was an ace unit of the Third Field Army, whose predecessor was the Red Army's Mindong Independent Division, which insisted on three years of guerrilla warfare in the south.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, it was reorganized
New fourth army
The 6th Regiment of the 3rd Detachment, after the Anhui Incident, was reorganized into the First Division of the New Fourth Army, and the division commander Su Yu was reorganized into Huaye Yi column during the Liberation War, and the first commander was the later founding general Ye Fei.
During the Liberation War, Huaye Yizhong ranked first among all the units in Huaye.
The predecessor of the 58th Division of the 20th Army was the First Brigade of the First Division of the New Fourth Army, the Huaye First Column and the First Division, which had strong mobility, especially good at offensive and defensive operations under field conditions, and was also able to attack and attack. With a strong assault force and penetrating force, he fought fiercely overnight in the Battle of Eastern Henan, divided the district corps into two, and played a decisive role in the total annihilation of the corps, and was the main division of Sanye First.
During the Fifth Campaign to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the commander of the 58th Division was the later founding general Huang Chaotian, who joined the revolution in 1928 and served as a guard for Commander Chen Yi.
On May 23, 1951, the units of the 20th Army began to move to the rear, at this time the United Nations Army concentrated the strength of six divisions of the Us Army and four divisions of the South Korean Army, launched a full-line counterattack, some of the US troops broke through the 20th Army flank friendly neighboring forces, by the evening of the 26th, the US advance team caught up with the 58th Division of the 20th Army of the Volunteer Army responsible for the rear of the temple. After the two sides exchanged fire, the U.S. army immediately moved to the Han River Bridge and east of the Huachuan area north of the Han River in an attempt to occupy the area and divide the contact between the Volunteer Army's Eastern Front Corps and the Central Front Corps.
Huachuan was the logistics center of the Fifth Battle of the Volunteer Army on the Eastern Front at that time, with a large number of soldiers and wounded, which had not yet had time to be transferred. Huachuan is also an important transportation hub, once the US army occupies here, the 12th Army, the 20th Army, the 27th Army, the Fifth Army of the Korean People's Army and other units under the Ninth Corps of the Eastern Volunteer Army will be divided and surrounded.
In the early morning of May 27, 1951, after the 59th Division of the 20th Army passed through Huachuan, the 172nd Regiment and the 173rd Regiment of the 58th Division also passed through Huachuan, but after Huang Chaotian, the commander of the 58th Division who followed the troops, arrived in Huachuan, he found that the troops were surrounded by American shells, and he left to realize that something was wrong, because the left wing of the unit had friendly neighboring troops responsible for cover, the American troops should not appear here, and the American shells could hit here, which could only mean that there was an accident with the left wing troops, which led to the Penetration of the American Troops here.
Huang Chaotian immediately ordered the troops to stop retreating and prepare to organize a defense, and on the morning of the 27th, Liao Zhengguo, deputy commander of the 20th Army, came to the 58th Division, and he also found that something was wrong, but they all knew that once the US army occupied Huachuan and continued to break through to the north, the consequences would be unimaginable.
At that time, there were two roads in front of the 58th Division, the first was to withdraw according to the original plan, even if something happened later, the 58th Division was also withdrawn in accordance with the operational plan of the superiors, and would not assume any responsibility; the second was to proceed from the overall situation, take the initiative to turn to the defense, stabilize the war situation, cover the withdrawal of the main force of the corps and the rear organs, but if the attack was blocked, the 58th Division did not receive orders from the superiors, the second did not have fortifications, the third did not have artillery support, and the fourth did not have the cooperation of friendly and neighboring troops, once the troops suffered heavy casualties, Huang Chaotian, the division commander, certainly couldn't eat and walk around.
After careful discussion, Huang Chaotian, commander of the 58th Division, and Zhu Qixiang, political commissar, decided to immediately gather the troops, seize important land, and turn all of them to the defense. The Yankees wanted to rush over unless the 58th Division was all dead! ”
Huang Chaotian ordered the 173rd Regiment of the 58th Division and the 174th Regiment to seize various key points in Huachuan to block the advance of the American army and cover the retreat of the main forces, and the 172nd Regiment served as a reserve, ready to reinforce the front-line troops. This action of the 58th Division saved the 12th Army of the Volunteer Army and the two ace units of the 27th Army that had not yet reached Huachuan, but the 58th Division suffered heavy losses, when the US Third Division, the 24th Division of the South Korean Army, and the 3rd Division rushed towards Huachuan, putting a lot of pressure on the 58th Division that Huachuan was blocking.
At this time, the 58th Division was in serious shortage of ammunition, with only half a base of machine gun ammunition, mortar shells, and 75 mm mountain guns with only one-third base, while the U.S. army poured 60 tanks, 230 large-caliber guns, and aircraft support into the Huachuan area.
Because of the ammunition and the superiority of troops, the 58th Division could only control some of the most critical and powerful terrain at first, especially the hills on both sides of the road, which was a key point that had to be adhered to. Before the battle began, the 58th Division also formed several anti-tank groups,
The echelons were arranged on both sides of the road to resolutely prevent the breakthrough of American tanks.
The 58th Division, as the first main force of the 20th Army, did fight fiercely, and in the case of insufficient ammunition, they disrupted the enemy formation in the first wave as much as possible, and then formed several combat groups to carry out a strong counterattack against the enemy, causing great casualties to the enemy.
On the morning of May 28, a day after the 58th Division and the enemy had already fought a bloody battle, Peng Dehuai, commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, and Song Shilun, commander of the Ninth Corps, issued orders to the front-line troops, ordering any troops to reach Huachuan to turn to local defense and resist the Attack of the American Army at any cost. When they learned that the 58th Division had blocked the enemy for a day, Peng Dehuai and Song Shilun were relieved, and Song Shilun said three "good" in a row.
On 8 June, the 58th Division and other reinforcements of the 20th Army successfully completed the blockade and were ordered to withdraw from the battle. In this battle, the 58th Division resisted the attack of 10 regiments of the "United Nations Army" for 13 consecutive days, killing and wounding more than 4,769 enemy prisoners, destroying 8 tanks, and successfully covering the retreat of the main force. The 58th Division suffered 2,795 casualties, of which 933 were killed. Huachuan Blockade Battle,
The Twenty Army emerged 6 first-class combat heroes and 17 second-level combat heroes, playing the prestige of the First Class Ace Army of Sanno.