In late 1948, during the Battle of Western Liaoning, the Northeast Field Army discovered the location of Liao Yaoxiang's corps and sent troops to shell it, and finally captured Liao Yaoxiang, the commander of the corps. This military action had a decisive impact on the course of the Liaoxi Campaign. There are different versions of this incident. Some people say that it was Commander Han Xianchu who intuitively judged the location of Liao Yaoxiang's headquarters and sent troops to attack, eventually destroying the enemy headquarters and capturing Liao Yaoxiang. Others said that it was the platoon commander Ren Bingquan who led the soldiers to find the enemy's command organ by mistake and successfully defeated the enemy headquarters. Opinions differ on this issue. Let's look back at that war-torn era and find the truth. In 1948, the Japanese army captured Jinzhou, and then formulated a battle plan to encircle and annihilate Liao Yaoxiang's corps, which was approved by the headquarters. In this battle, several columns of Dongye were involved, of which the XX column, as the first echelon, was assigned the task of attacking Liao Yaoxiang's corps. The situation between us and us is intertwined and chaotic. Therefore, the Higashino command delegated command, and each column could move freely, without consulting the superiors, and as soon as the enemy was found, they would go forward to charge, and as long as they heard the sound of gunfire, they would go to support.
The morale of the columns was high, especially the column commander Han Xianchu, who was eager for a hearty battle, which was also a battle of revenge for him. Liao Yaoxiang is no stranger to him, and he is an impressive opponent. In fact, Liao Yaoxiang was relatively good at using troops among the generals of the Jiang army, which caused some trouble to our army. In the War of Liberation, there was a saying in the Northeast Field Army: "To eat vegetables, you must eat cabbage hearts, and to fight a war, you must fight new." As one of the five main forces of Chiang's army, the army made many achievements in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In 1946, in Shaling Village, south of the Liao River, the Liaodong Military Region mobilized several times the enemy's troops, and surrounded Liao Yaoxiang's new army with more than 2,000 people from the Xth battalion and the division's machine gun battalion and training battalion. In 1946, the Democratic Alliance Army conducted a retreat campaign. In this battle, the performance of the New Sixth Army was remarkable, they lost more than 2,100 people, while the enemy army lost only more than 700 people, showing the tenacity of the New Army. At that time, Han Xianchu believed that the chief regarded the column as the first echelon and was mainly responsible for the responsibility of breaking through in the middle, and the focus of the breakthrough was not clear.
He stood in front of the map, carefully observed every place, and after many hours of analysis, he locked the target on the Hu family's shack, believing that this was the location of the enemy's main force and the core area of the Liao Corps. Han Xianchu decisively ordered the whole army to move quickly to assemble in this area and launch a fierce attack to take it by surprise. Subsequently, political commissar Luo Shunchu ordered to block the transportation arteries around the Hu family's shack, cutting off the enemy's food routes, and causing Liao Yaoxiang to fall into a panic. In the chaos, Liao Yaoxiang had to give up the cipher and command the army in plain text, which eventually led to confusion in the formation, and the column army took the opportunity to inflict heavy losses on the enemy army and capture Liao Yaoxiang and the senior generals. Han Xianchu initially only speculated on the location of the enemy's main force, and was not sure of the location of Liao Yaoxiang's headquarters. However, when he ordered the column to attack the Hu family's shack, Liao Yaoxiang's location had already been confirmed. This information was revealed by Ren Bingquan, a Korean platoon commander. It turned out that in the afternoon of that day, Xu Rui, the deputy commander of the First Regiment of the First Division, received an order from the political commissar Luo Shunchu, led the avant-garde to march urgently, and blocked the traffic arteries around the Hu family's shack that afternoon. At the same time, the platoon commander Ren Bingquan led the lead troops to rush to the front. Ren Bingquan immediately judged that the Hu family's shack might be the enemy's headquarters, not the division headquarters or regimental headquarters.
He and some of his warriors found a place outside the village to lurk, and the sun went down and night fell. When they arrived at the outskirts of Hu's shack, they found that Chiang's cars were constantly flowing, large trucks and jeeps were constantly coming and going, soldiers were loaded with ammunition, and some even carried strangely shaped machines with antennas. In the evening, a truck full of officers slowly drove into the entrance of the village. As soon as Ren Bingquan gave the order, the soldiers of the whole platoon immediately fired heavily with machine guns and rifles, surrounded the truck, and threw grenades. The enemy panicked, and after a sharp sweep, was eliminated. Then, another car drove out, carrying a squad of troops, and was killed in less than ten minutes. The fighters boarded the car and exclaimed: "Platoon commander, there are cannons in the car!."”。Two of the two fighters, two former gunners, volunteered to get into the car and set up small cannons to shoot fiercely at the village. The target of their shelling was none other than Corps Commander Liao Yaoxiang and his Corps headquarters. Despite the fact that our army had only one platoon, due to the use of machine guns and mortars, coupled with night operations, the enemy could not distinguish the real from the fake, and even thought that the main forces of our army had arrived. Liao Yaoxiang was greatly frightened, and hurriedly transferred in a panic, eager to avoid the fate of annihilation.
After the cadres and soldiers of our army rushed into the house, they deduced from the documents on the table and the items placed that this was the enemy's high command post, and unexpectedly revealed the enemy's main stronghold. Realizing that their strength alone could not make a difference, Ren Bingquan decided to cover all the soldiers and send a soldier out to report the news, so as to realize the encirclement of the Liao Corps. In the end, they all died in the Hu family's shack. After the battle began, Xu Rui, the deputy commander of the 1st Regiment of the 1st Vertical Division, already felt that something was wrong, and the arrival of the soldiers strengthened his judgment. Xu Rui immediately reported to his superiors, and Han Xianchu strengthened his judgment, commanding the troops to attack the area of the Hu family's shack on the one hand, and reporting to the head of Dongye on the other. Liao Yaoxiang panicked after receiving the blow and asked all the troops to move closer to him, resulting in the position of the troops and the route of march completely exposed. In the end, the corps was besieged and annihilated. To sum up, the credit for locking up the Liao Corps is part of Han Xianchu, as well as the contributions of Ren Bingquan and his comrades-in-arms, the two statements are not contradictory, but some articles exaggerate some factors. There is also a saying in the TV series "Liberation", claiming that after the soldiers learned the location of Liao Yaoxiang's headquarters, they decided to fight to the death and let the enemy open fire, because it was too late to report the news.
In fact, Han Xianchu had already determined the approximate location of the enemy's main force and was already blocking the enemy, so it was still too late for the soldiers to report the news.