For a military commander, it is very important to have a flexible and changeable tactical thinking, only in this way can we deal with the extremely complex situation on the battlefield and firmly grasp the initiative.
Founding Major General Deng Yue was such an excellent commander who created quite peculiar tactics in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, which was highly appreciated by Western military researchers.
It was in February 1951 that Deng Yue, commander of the 118th Division of the 40th Army of the Volunteer Army (who became the founding major general in 1955), received an order from the military headquarters to lead your division as the first echelon of the main offensive force to launch a frontal attack on the 8th Division of the South Korean Army stationed at Hengcheng.
While studying his battle plans, General Deng Yue, a 33-year-old general, discovered a noteworthy spot in the map: on the attack route of the 118th Division, there was a three-way junction formed by the intersection of two roads.
This three-forked road seems unremarkable, but for a general like Deng Yue, who has experienced hundreds of battles, he is keenly aware of a problem: only by arranging a force in this position and cutting off the enemy's escape route can it be possible to annihilate the enemy completely!
The reason why Deng Yue made this judgment was because since the 118th Division entered the DPRK, the South Korean army it encountered had a common feature: the battle was fought poorly, but the escape skills were first-class.
However, after the enemy was attacked by many of our main forces in the Hengcheng area, he was bound to flee south, and this three-forked road junction was the only place where the enemy fled south.
Of course, in order to achieve the goal of annihilating the enemy here, there is an important prerequisite, that is, the 118th Division must send a unit to risk great danger and detour to this three-way junction.
The Volunteers were very good at interspersed operations, but in the past they had sent small units to carry out interspersed tasks, because the targets were small and not easily exposed.
However, this time, Deng Yue thought that there were too few people to complete the task of annihilating the enemy, and he actually proposed to break the convention and send a whole regiment to the three forks of the road!
The cadres of the battalion company were taken aback, because this method of warfare was too bold: an entire regiment, which had to march 50 miles in a hurry, arrived at its destination before dawn the next day, and the road was full of dangers, and if it was discovered by the enemy, the consequences would be unimaginable.
In the face of the doubts of the generals, Deng Yue tried his best to dispel the opinions of the people: if you want to win the battle, you must take a little risk, otherwise you can only watch the enemy slip away.
In order to ensure that this regiment could be successfully penetrated to the three forks of the road, after some painstaking consideration, he proposed a very creative method of warfare: send two regiments, one left and one right, to advance side by side, to break through the defensive line of the Twenty-first Regiment of the Eighth Division of the South Korean Army, and to cover another regiment of our army to take advantage of the void from the middle, infiltrate into the hinterland of the enemy army, and then penetrate into the three forks.
A good one to break through side by side, penetrate in the middle! It's amazing!
This extremely creative method of warfare not only made the generals of the 118th Division feel new, but later also made some scholars engaged in military research in the West marvel at it: It is really imaginative! General Deng Yue is simply an artist on the battlefield!
Facts have also proved that this method of warfare proposed by Deng Yue seems to be whimsical, but in fact it is very effective.
After the 118th Division launched an attack on the enemy, the 353rd regiment and the 354th regiment responsible for cover broke through the positions of the South Korean army in only one hour and half an hour respectively, and continued to advance deeper.
Just when the enemy and us were fighting fiercely, the 352nd Regiment, which was responsible for interspersing, took advantage of this opportunity to quietly develop behind the enemy lines. Because the South Korean army was overwhelmed by the 353rd regiment and the 354th regiment, it did not notice that another volunteer army had crossed the defensive line and advanced all the way south.
That is to say, the 352nd Regiment did not encounter any enemy resistance at all at the front, and in the fierce gunfire, it swung into the enemy's hinterland.
It was not until the three battalions and seven companies of the sharp knife company passed through The upper Yu Cave that they met a platoon of the South Korean army, and the commanders and fighters of the seventh company eliminated all the enemies without much effort.
At four o'clock in the morning of the next day, the main force of the 352nd Regiment successfully reached the three forks of the road designated by Deng Yue's division commander, where an ambush position was set up.
Surprisingly, it was not the South Korean Army that first threw itself into the net, but an armored battalion of the US Second Marine Division.
They were ordered to rush to the hengcheng front, the task was to reinforce the defeated Eighth Division of the South Korean Army, but they did not expect to ambush a regiment of the volunteer army at the three forks of the road tens of miles from the front line.
Faced with the surprise attack of the 352nd Regiment, the American armored battalion was caught off guard and collapsed with almost no decent resistance.
To the great delight of the commanders and fighters of the 352nd Regiment, the enemy sent a great gift: more than 140 cars, 10 anti-aircraft machine guns, more than 20 howitzers, and various other military supplies.
Not long after, when the Eighth Division of the South Korean Army, which had suffered a crushing defeat on the Hengcheng front, also came to the three forks in the road, it also fell into the tianluo net set up by the 352nd Regiment, and all the remnants of the enemy were annihilated.
After the battle, when the prisoners of the Us and South Korean armies were interrogated, they even said that they were incredible: the volunteer army was really haunted, and it quietly penetrated into the depths of the "United Nations Army" far from the front line, causing the American army and the South Korean army to suffer a painful defeat.