In mid-October 1947, shocked by the news that the Yangtze River channel had been cut off by Liu Deng's army, Lao Jiang hurriedly flew to Jiujiang to urge the "advance and suppression", and strictly ordered the reorganized 40th Division and the 52nd Reorganized Division to be dispatched from Huang'an and Macheng in Hubei to occupy Guangji.
Guangji was located on the tip of the horn in the southwest corner of Hubei, and the occupation of Guangji was equivalent to cutting off the three columns and other columns and links, causing a favorable situation for Jiang's army to divide and annihilate the columns of Liu Deng's army.
The Forty Division was a unit of Chiang Kai-shek's army, all of which were equipped with American weapons, and the division commander Li Zhenqing, known as "Li Tietou", was fierce and good at fighting, and followed Liu Deng's army from southwest Lu to the Dabie Mountains.
After thoroughly analyzing the situation between the enemy and ourselves, Chief Liu Deng believed that he could lay a groundwork in the high mountains to fight the Forty Division and give Jiang Jun a blow in the head.
Determined, Liu Deng began to issue operational orders, and the columns acted urgently. Liu Deng ordered Yang Yong (who became a founding general in 1955) to lead a large column of the main force to lure the enemy's 40th Division to Gaoshanpu.
At this time, the main force of the first column was in the Guangji area, and after receiving the order, the commander Yang Yong decided to send a suspicious army to lure the enemy deeper and then annihilate his enemy in one fell swoop.
To this end, Yang Yong ordered the ninth company of the 4th Regiment and the Ninth Company of the 4th Regiment of the Central Plains Independent (Li) Brigade to act as suspects, disguised as guerrillas, and make contact with the reorganized 40th Division along the highways of Liugonghe and Caohe Town, and fight and leave.
Li Tietou held up a telescope to observe, and when he saw that the PLA troops blocking the attack on the hill in front of them were in disarray and their equipment was worn, it was expected that it was a local guerrilla unit, so he did not pay attention to it and led the reorganized 40th Division to boldly advance.
The reorganized 40th Division was thus lured by the suspicious soldiers sent by Yang Yong and obediently arrived at Gaoshanpu on October 26.
Located south of Puchun, Gaoshanpu is a small basin surrounded by mountains on all sides, and the terrain is dangerous, which is a rare ambush battlefield.
When the Forty Division advanced towards Gaoshanpu, Yang Yong and Su Zhenhua led a column of main forces to seize the hills on the east, south and north sides of Gaoshanpu.
Wang Jinshan, commander of the Sixth Column, and Du Yide, political commissar, waited until the Forty Division entered the Mountain Pushan Mountain, and immediately commanded the Sixth Column to attack from the mobile area, seize the commanding heights of the enemy's tail, and block the retreat of the Forty Division.
The second column and the third column were assembled as reserves in the Puchun area.
Liu Deng ordered Yang Yong to concurrently serve as the commander of the front-line command and command all the battles.
On the morning of October 26, Li Tietou led the reorganized 40th Division into Gaoshanpu and continued to advance south along the Hun-Guangzhou Highway, but was immediately stubbornly blocked by a column and a brigade.
Li Tietou was in a great trouble, and until this time, he still did not wake up, still thinking that he had encountered the small troops of Liu Deng's army.
He adjusted his formation and ordered the infantry units, with the cooperation of the aircraft, to launch a group charge against the positions of the first column and one brigade of our army.
After a day of fierce fighting, the Forty Division was still unable to advance a step, at which time Li Tietou felt that things were not good, the intelligence was wrong, and it was possible that the main force of Liu Deng's army had arrived.
Li Tietou ordered the troops to take a short rest, and then go out to capture the surrounding commanding heights such as Zizi Mountain, Centipede Mountain, and Ant Mountain.
Heavy rain poured down that night, making the mountain road particularly slippery, and Jiang Jun was attacking upwards, so it was very difficult to fight, and repeated attacks were unsuccessful.
Six brigades of Liu Deng's army, one or six columns, and a total of 7 brigades of the Central Plains Independent (Li) Brigade, firmly controlled the Gaoshanpu position, and the Forty Division had been firmly encircled in the small basin of Gaoshanpu.
The next day, October 27, 1947, Yang Yong and Su Zhenhua ordered all the troops to launch a general offensive, officially starting the Battle of Gaoshanpu, which is famous for its military history!
At 8:30 a.m., the 1st Column and 1st Brigade attacked the headquarters of the reorganized Fortieth Division nearby, and annihilated it without much effort.
The Forty Division lost the command of the "brain", the various units were suddenly in chaos, and the Second Brigade and the Central Plains Independent (Li) Brigade immediately launched an attack, and the two brigades violently attacked and annihilated most of the men and horses of the reorganized Forty Division.
Under the command of commander Wang Jinshan and political commissar Du Yide, the sixth column launched a fierce attack on the eighty-second brigade of the enemy's fifty-second division. The Eighty-second Brigade collapsed without a fight, and fled with the remnants of the Forty Division to Dushan and Shilipu.
Suddenly, the basin was full of officers and men of Chiang Kai-shek's army who were fleeing for their lives in a rout, and their ordnance was thrown everywhere.
The officers and men of Chiang Kai-shek's army took off their cotton coats, threw down their guns, and fled wildly, and many people were trampled to death or fell into mountain streams and streams.
When a large group of defeated soldiers fled to Ansan, southwest of Gaoshanpu, they were immediately attacked by the six columns and one of the six columns deployed here.
The defeated soldiers were driven into the rice paddies of the ravines, which were already muddy, and the heavy rains and torrents simply turned the muddy area into a country of zeal and a quagmire.
So there was a very interesting scene on the battlefield -- the PLA soldiers took great pains to pull the defeated soldiers of Chiang Kai-shek's army out of the muddy water one by one, and finally the soldiers of our army arrested tens of thousands of "mud soldiers" who were in a terrible state.
At 2 p.m. on October 27, the main force of the enemy's reorganized 40th Division and most of the 82nd Brigade were annihilated, achieving a great victory in the history of the army.
After the battle, a very interesting thing appeared - when the generals of our army withdrew from the battlefield with a large number of prisoners, two Chiang Kai-shek planes flying from Wuhan suddenly appeared over the mountain bunk, dropping many buns, steamed buns, flatbread, fruits and ammunition, and these materials that fell from the sky brought a surprise to the soldiers after the great victory.
In this battle, Liu Deng's army took less than two days to annihilate in one fell swoop more than 12,600 Chiang Kai-shek's army of the 40th Division, 3 brigades, and 5 regiments, and captured 33 artillery pieces of various kinds, more than 370 machine guns, and countless weapons and military supplies. This battle was also the first major victory of Liu Deng's army in crushing Jiang's army's attack on Dabie Mountain.