Breaking through the Imjin River, the "Fire Line Department" sang triumphant in blood (I)
-- I would like to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Great War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea
Written by Fang Kaisheng
Note: Due to the long story, it will be issued in three installments. Stay tuned!
- Editor
"Fire Line Department" is the unit code name used by the 187th Division of the 63rd Army of the Chinese People's Volunteers in the Korean battlefield, and the 187th Division uses the title of "Fire Line Department" in the thousands of correspondence and telegrams exchanged on the Korean battlefield.
The 187th Division of the 63rd Army of the 19th Corps of the Northwest Field Army of the People's Liberation Army, after more than a month of training and refitting in the Zou County area of Shandong, was immediately included in the organizational sequence of the Chinese People's Volunteers. The astronomical time of this moment is locked by history at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of February 17, 1951, which is the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Year of the Rabbit.
At this moment, the snow was dancing wildly, and more than 10,000 soldiers of the "Fire Line Department" in the middle of the march quickly put on silver armor. The expressions of the people were solemn, there were no slogans, no singing, and there was no scene of propaganda and agitation along the way that is often seen in today's film and television works. Except for the soldiers stepping on the thick and hard ice and snow and making the sound of "clacking" and "clacking", there was no other sound in the empty four fields. More than half a century later, General Xu Xin, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, talked about the historical moment when he led his troops across the Yalu River that day, and said: "It's so quiet, even quiet and terrible, everyone knows that this is the eve of the coming big war!" ”
1. As soon as the Yalu River was crossed, the "line of fire" changed generals
After crossing the river, the snow was more than a foot thick, and the roads were full of potholes, which added an unexpected difficulty factor to the troops' advance. Liu Guangyu, division commander of the "Fire Line Department," Zhang Maijun, political commissar, Xu Xin, deputy division commander and chief of staff, Qi Qijun, director of the Political Department, and the leaders of the three infantry regiments and artillery regiments rode Mongolian war horses and urged the officers and men of the whole division to trude forward with difficulty.
At this time, the fourth battle of the Korean battlefield had been fought for more than 20 days. On January 8, after our army captured Seoul in the third battle, together with the previous two battles, more than 112,000 enemy soldiers were killed, wounded and captured. Due to the continuous fighting, the troops were extremely tired, the soldiers were not replenished, and the supply of materials was very difficult, so the Chinese and North Korean troops moved to rest and recuperate
After fierce debate within the White House, United States decided on the policy of "not withdrawing from North Korea" and operated the United Nations to adopt the so-called "five-step plan", and at the same time urgently transferred a large number of World War II veterans from United States mainland and other parts of the world to replenish the Korean Peninsula. On 25 January, Lee Qiwei, commander of the US Eighth Army, commanded 16 divisions and three brigades of the 1st, 9th, and 10th armies of the US Army and the 1st and 3rd Army Corps of the South Korean Army, totaling 230,000 troops, to launch a large-scale offensive on the eastern and western fronts of the Korean Peninsula, determined to recapture Seoul and press the Chinese and North Korean forces back to the area north of the "38th parallel."
On January 27, the Chinese and North Korean armies stopped resting and recuperated, and the whole line switched to mobile defensive operations, and the fourth battle began. On February 15, Chinese and North Korean troops withdrew from Seoul. By 31 March, the Chinese and North Korean armies had moved to the vicinity south of the "38th Parallel," and the 3rd and 19th Corps of the Volunteers who had subsequently entered the DPRK and the 9th Corps had returned to the front line to assemble in place, and the "United Nations Army" was fixed on the line of Kaesong, Hwacheon, Wontong-ri, and Gongseong. On April 21, the Chinese and North Korean armies ended the fourth campaign with more than 78,000 enemy killed, wounded and captured.
We return to the Yalu River on February 17th. The marching procession of the "Fire Line Department" traveled for an hour and came to a huge mountain pass. Xu Xin ordered the operations section of the headquarters to open a military map of 1/50,000, use a compass to determine the direction and establish a standing point, only to find that after crossing the river, the troops had only advanced less than four kilometers. Xu Xin looked back to the north, and the Yalu River was still clearly visible. When I turned around, the mountains were in front of me. At this moment, the heavy snow has stopped, and the sky is starting to darken. Xu Xin prepared to ask the division commander Liu Guangyu and ordered the troops to rest on the spot for 20 minutes.
Suddenly, a huge roar came from afar, and two US "F---86 Sabre" reconnaissance planes grazed the treetops and roared into the air. Fortunately, the "firing line department," which had just crossed the Yalu River and had no experience in overseas operations, did not panic and did not wait for the order to be issued, and the officers and men of the whole division immediately dispersed on the spot in accordance with the operational plan, took advantage of the mountain-shaped terrain to quickly conceal themselves, and instantly merged with the vast white earth. Xu Xin supervised the troops to practice this set of actions very skillfully when they were training in Shandong for the first time, but they didn't expect to use it just after entering North Korea.
The US reconnaissance plane circled in a long circle, and after the "line of fire" rested for 20 minutes, Xu Xin gave the order to continue advancing. It stands to reason that the previous operations were quite smooth, especially when the US plane was hovering over its head, the officers and men of the whole division did not follow the rules and regulations in a disorderly manner, calmly dealt with the situation, and displayed a very high technical and tactical quality. As expected, the troops had just begun to move forward when something happened. Division Commander Liu Guangyu's white Mongolia war horse suddenly slammed open, throwing Liu Guangyu, who was caught off guard, and the sitting bone and leg bone of Liu Guangyu's left body were instantly shattered by the startled horse!
In September 1949, the 19th Corps was transferred to Ningxia after conquering Lanzhou. The Corps assigned Mongolia war horses captured from the Majia Army in the northwest to each cadre above the battalion level. Liu Guangyu personally selected a white war horse with a docile personality and good quality. Division Commander Liu rode this Mongolian war horse, from Gansu, Shaanxi, Shandong to the Yalu River, all the way through the rain of bullets, all the way was quite smooth. Later analysis, although this peaceful Mongolia horse had been on the battlefield and heard the sound of gunfire and artillery, he had never seen a US military reconnaissance plane like a black owl at such a close distance, and he was suddenly shocked.
Fu Chongbi, commander of the 63rd Army, who was on the way in, received an urgent report from the "Fire Line Department" and went straight into the 69 jeep of Long Daoquan, political commissar of the 63rd Army. After an urgent consultation, the two leaders immediately sent an urgent telegram to the 19th Corps of the Volunteer Army: 1. Liu Guangyu, commander of the 187th Division, was smashed into a comminuted fracture by a frightened horse after crossing the river, and was immediately sent back to China for treatment; 2. Xu Xin, deputy commander and chief of staff of the 187th Division, acted as the commander of the division; 3. Geng Shuming, deputy chief of staff of the 187th Division Headquarters, acted as chief of staff of the division. Everything was fate, and Xu Xin, who had just crossed the Yalu River, began to exercise command authority over the "firing line department".
2. On the banks of the Imjin River, the "Line of Fire" ushered in the first battle of the Korean War
Xu Xin, who had just ended the Taiyuan Battle in April 1949, was promoted from the commander of the 562nd Regiment of the 188th Division of the 63rd Army to the deputy commander and chief of staff of the 187th Division. At the beginning, Xu Xinli, who was twenty-eight years old at the time, was reluctant to be the boss, because Xu Xin, who had been the head of the main regiment for more than six years, really looked down on this unit at that time.
The 63rd Army was an old unit born in the Jizhong Plain in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. After taking Fu Zuoyi's strategic town of Shimen (Shijiazhuang) in North China during the Liberation War, the 63rd Army has become the recognized main force of the three corps of the North China Field Army, and the 188th Division is the main force in the main force of this army.
And the 187th Division that Xu Xin came to is no stranger to everyone. From the literature, film and television works of the fifties and sixties of the last century, we can see Li Xiangyang in the guerrillas in the plains of the central Hebei region, Wei Qiang in the military engineering team behind enemy lines, and Zhang Ga, a small soldier in the Yanling team in Baiyangdian, are the true stories that happened in this unit. After the outbreak of the Liberation War, after several reorganizations, although these guerrillas, martial arts teams, and Yanling teams of that year also wore the earth-gray uniforms uniformed by the Taihang Quilt Factory of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region, and the troops were also reorganized into the Seventh Brigade of the Third Column of the North China Field Army, and then to the 187th Division of the 63rd Army. In the eyes of some leaders, although the 187th Division also has genuine units with Red Army genes transferred from Yan'an like the 559th Regiment, the main force is still cobbled together by the local guerrillas when they fought devils, and they play guerrilla warfare, tunnel warfare, mine warfare, and water sabotage warfare with Japan devils.
In September 1949, just after the Ningxia Campaign, the 63rd Army was transferred to the work of training, suppressing bandits, and rushing to repair the Tianbao Railway. Army Commander Zheng Weishan was determined to take advantage of this rare gap in the war to conduct a short-term training for military cadres at all levels of the 63rd Army, and Zheng Weishan personally appointed Xu Xin, deputy commander of the 187th Division, to concurrently serve as the head of the 63rd Army Teaching Corps.
Military cadres below the regimental level of the three divisions of the 63rd Army were sent to the training regiment in batches. In the preliminary assessment before the start of the training, the first brigade, which was composed of the trainees of the 187th Division, achieved the worst results. As the head of the teaching group, Xu Xin's face was particularly unbearable. Xu Xin regularly trained in the field of the first brigade, from the most basic shooting, assassination, bomb dropping, field obstacles, earth work, as well as the use of terrain and features to conduct command and operation training in attack and defense tactics of company platoons, and even taught them in person. In the final assessment, the assessment results of the trainees of the 187th Division have improved a lot, but the overall assessment is still at the bottom. Xu Xinxin knows that it is difficult to achieve a qualitative change in the quality and temperament of a unit that has been formed in 11 years from the formation of the Anti-Japanese War in 1938 to today, and it is difficult to achieve qualitative change overnight by relying on a short-term training.
In late October 1949, the 63rd Army transferred to preparations for war in accordance with the telegram order of the 19th Corps on "quickly gathering troops and preparing to fight in Korea," and on November 30, it went to Qufu and Zouxian areas in Shandong Province to conduct reorganization, redressing, and combat training. According to the agreement between the Chinese and Soviet governments, the Chinese government purchased equipment from the Soviet Union in the form of interest-free loans for 64 infantry divisions and 23 aviation divisions to cope with the invasion of Korea.
Xu Xin, deputy commander and chief of staff of the 187th Division, organized the troops to receive a full set of equipment for the Soviet Category B Infantry Division in the Far East, and personally supervised the training of the use of the new equipment. Xu Xin told everyone that although our unit is an old guerrilla fighter in the Jizhong Plain, there is a slight gap between it and the 188th and 189th Divisions, which are the main forces of the North China Field Army. However, this time, everyone changed the equipment of the Soviet army together, and they all went to Korea to fight with the American army together, and now the three divisions are on the same starting line, and no one is much higher than us! At the instigation of Xu Xin, the entire 187th Division set off an upsurge of training in mastering new weapons. In a short period of time, everyone felt that the combat effectiveness of the whole division had grown a lot from the scene of the dragon leaping and the earth-shaking killing sound on the training ground.
On March 20, 1951, Xu Xin and Zhang Junmai urged the soldiers of the "Fire Line Department" to travel for 31 days at night in the cold weather of more than minus 30 degrees Celsius, under the fierce storm and snow, and drove 1,200 miles with difficulty, and finally arrived at the assembly area south of the 38th parallel-the city border.
At this moment, the fourth battle is in full swing, and the battle situation is not optimistic. MacArthur commanded more than 200,000 troops of the "United Nations Army" and the South Korean Army to press on the entire eastern and western flanks of the Korean Peninsula, and the limelight was gaining momentum. The Chinese Volunteers and the Korean People's Army were forced to move to mobile defense, fighting and retreating, and most of them had retreated to the vicinity south of the 38th parallel.
The 63rd Army was ordered to organize a defense in the area near the Imjin River, exchange time for space, resolutely thwart the northward advance momentum of the enemy forces in the western front of the Korean Peninsula, and cover the retreat of the 1st Army Corps of the Korean People's Army and the main force of the 19th Corps to complete the defensive operation.
On 11 April, United States President Harry S. Truman announced a change of general, with Ridgway replacing MacArthur as commander-in-chief of the United Nations Forces, and urgently transferring Lieutenant General Van Vliet, a so-called mountain warfare expert, from Greece in the Balkans in Europe to become commander of the US Eighth Army. As soon as Van Vliet appeared, he put on a distinctive posture and accelerated the attack speed of the "United Nations Army" and the South Korean Army advancing northward; Increased bombardment density of bombs and aerial bombs. Among them, nearly half of the aerial bombs directly "strangled" our logistics supply lines of several hundred kilometers. All of a sudden, guns and artillery roared on the Korean Peninsula, and the flames of war soared into the sky, and the enemy and us launched an earth-shattering desperate battle in the area south of the 38th parallel.
In order to regain the initiative on the battlefield, Peng Dehuai and Kim Il Sung agreed and submitted it to Mao Zedong for approval in the name of the Sino-DPRK joint command, and decided to take advantage of the frontal attack of the "United Nations Army" to gain a firm foothold and its flank landing deployment had not yet been completed, so it immediately mobilized the 3rd, 19th, and 9th Corps of the Strategic Reserve to launch the fifth campaign ahead of schedule.
In mid-March, the "line of fire" that had gone against the trend within the formation of the 63rd Army marched in to meet the enemy, pressed to the north bank of the Imjin River, and pressed to the line of Wuzhili, Huazang Mountain, Gaoyangdai, and Gaodaoshan on the north bank of the Imjin River to quickly complete the covert assembly. Xu Xin sent two battalions of troops along the Imjin River, relying on the first-line points such as Changtuan, Gaolangpuri, and Matian-ri, and at the same time covering the northward retreat and transfer of the First Army Corps of the Korean People's Army with active tactical attack actions, and forming a posture of confrontation across the river with the enemy in front of him. On April 22, the "Fire Line Division" was ordered to break through the Imjin River within the formation of the army, and finally ushered in the debut battle of the fifth campaign.
(To be continued)
About author:Fang Kaisheng, male, retired cadre of the former General Logistics Headquarters, Cuiwei Road Military Rest House, Haidian District.