In 1950, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea broke out, and in order to defend the country, the volunteer army crossed the Yalu River and entered the Korean battlefield to fight. Objectively speaking, at that time, the volunteer army's weapons and equipment and logistical supplies were far inferior to those of the US army, but in the end, the volunteer army won the victory of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea by virtue of its tenacious will.
It is inevitable that there will be casualties and prisoners in the war, and the same is true for the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea; according to statistics, more than 20,000 volunteers were captured during the entire period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Among the more than 20,000 people, there was a man named Wu Chengde, who was the highest-ranking general captured by the volunteer army. So, what is the story of Wu Chengde? How did he live when he returned home?
Wu Chengde was born in 1912, a native of Xindi County, Shanxi, in his early years, Wu Chengde was a teacher in his hometown, after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, in order to resist the Japanese invaders, he joined the Eighth Route Army, abandoned his pen and joined the military operation of resisting Japan and saving the country. After experiencing the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the subsequent War of Liberation, Wu Chengde ushered in the birth of New China under the leadership of our Party.
Shortly after the founding of New China, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea broke out, and at that time, Wu Chengde's unit was also reorganized into a volunteer army, and Wu Chengde entered the 180th Division of the Sixty Army and served as the director of the political department of the 180th Division. In 1951, before the outbreak of the fifth campaign, Wu Chengde's 180th Division entered the Korean battlefield and threw itself into the fifth campaign with little preparation.
It is worth mentioning that in the early days of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the logistics support of the Volunteer Army was mainly the responsibility of the Northeast Military Region, for example, Li Jukui, director of the Logistics Department of the Northeast Military Region, made tremendous contributions to the logistics support of the Volunteer Army.
Because of the problems in the logistics supply of the volunteer army, the commander-in-chief of the volunteer army, Mr. Peng Lao, decided to transfer the main force of the volunteer army to the north of the 38th Line, and on May 21, 1951, the 180th Division received the task of covering the transfer of large troops and blocking the enemy for at least three to five days. On 26 May, the 180th Division was surrounded by the enemy, and Wei Jie, commander of the 60th Army, first ordered the 180th Division to hold on to help, and soon after ordered the 180th Division to carry out a breakthrough.
Objectively speaking, at that time, the 180th Division had missed the best time to break through, and there was still a chance to wait for reinforcements, and the breakthrough meant that it would suffer a lot of losses, so after receiving the order from its superiors, there was a tense atmosphere inside the 180th Division. At that time, in addition to serving as the director of the political department of the 180th Division, Wu Chengde also served as the acting political commissar of the 180th Division, and he immediately called a meeting of the relevant personnel, which was held in a heavy atmosphere, and finally chose the method of dispersing the breakthrough.
After the dispersed breakout began, Wu Chengde rode his horse to check the breakthrough of the various units, and when he reached a mountain pass, he found more than 300 wounded people crowded together, and they could not keep up with the large troops because of their injuries, so they could only squeeze together. Wu Chengde saw them and decided not to leave these wounded, so he chose to break through with the wounded.
Objectively speaking, if Wu Chengde had not been with the wounded at that time, he would have probably followed the division headquarters to break through successfully, but when he saw the hopeful eyes of the wounded, he could not bear to leave them, and finally decided to break through with them.
However, the enemy blockade was very serious, and Wu Chengde was with the wounded, which seriously affected the breakthrough, and finally he led the wounded to persist in guerrilla warfare in the mountains for 14 months and was captured by the American army. As a division-level cadre, Wu Chengde thus became the highest-ranking general captured by the volunteer army during the entire period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
After being captured, Oh Sung-duk was imprisoned in Busan Prison, and in 1953, after the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, the two sides began to exchange prisoners of war, and as the highest-ranking general captured by the volunteer army, Oh Sung-deok was the last batch of volunteer prisoners to return home. Upon his return to China, Wu was immediately censored and expelled from the party in 1955. Soon after, Wu Chengde was placed in the Panjin Agricultural Reclamation Bureau of Liaoning Province as a deputy director of the Dawa Farm, living a dull life. In 1982, Wu Chengde was reinstated and rehabilitated, and in his later years he lived a dull life, dying of illness in 1996 at the age of 84.