In late October 1949, Bai Chongxi, commander-in-chief of Central China's "Suppression Chief", finally escaped back to his old nest - Guangxi. Although he had always tried his best to avoid fighting the main force of the People's Liberation Army, he did not hesitate to abandon Wuhan, Changsha and other cities, and led his army to retreat all the way to Hengyang and other places in southern Hunan. In the Battle of Hengbao, which just ended a few days ago, the most elite 7th Army, the main force of the 48th Army and the 62nd Division of the 14th Army, the only all-American armament, were annihilated, with more than 47,000 soldiers.
The Gui troops quickly completed the replenishment
Bai Chongxi originally had more than 200,000 troops under his command, but with the uprising of Hunan Provincial Chairman Cheng Qian and the commander of the 1st Corps Chen Mingren in Changsha, nearly 100,000 troops were pulled away, and although 40,000 people defected back, Bai also lost a quarter of his troops; This time, a quarter was lost again, plus those who fled all the way, and in the end, less than 100,000 remnants fled with Bai Chongxi.
Fortunately, the Gui Department has been operating in Guangxi for many years and has a deep foundation. As soon as he arrived in Guangxi, Bai Chongxi ordered all the local armed forces such as the security regiment and the self-defense forces in various places to be incorporated to supplement the losses in the Battle of Hengbao. At the same time, five military and administrative districts were set up in Guidong, Guinan, Guixi, Guibei, and Guizhong, and new recruits were recruited according to the standard of one soldier and one gun drawn from each village, and tens of thousands of armed men were soon added. By November 10, when the Northeast Field Army invaded Guangxi, Bai Chongxi restored his troops to 5 corps, 12 corps, and 32 divisions, with a total strength of 180,000 troops.
Our army concentrated 400,000 people to encircle and annihilate
However, these 180,000 people are no longer the same as the Bai Chongxi group in the past, and there is no elite like the 7th Army and the 48th Army to act as the backbone, and the equipment of each unit is seriously lacking, there are many new soldiers, and the combat effectiveness has seriously declined. In spite of this, our army still did not underestimate the enemy in the slightest, not only assembling the 12th and 13th Corps, a total of five corps, to march along the Guizhou-Guizhou and Hunan borders respectively, but also the 43rd Army and the Chen Geng Division of the 4th Corps of the Central Plains Field Army cooperated with the Lianjiang and Maoming areas on the Guangdong-Guizhou border to cut off the enemy's retreat route to Hainan Island through the Leizhou Peninsula, bringing the total number of troops invested to about 400,000 people in 30 divisions of 9 armies.
On November 24, in order to ensure the retreat of Hainan Island, Bai Chongxi concentrated the 3rd and 11th Corps to counterattack on Lianjiang, but the counterattack of Chen Geng's corps was extremely fierce, and Bai Chongxi's troops could not resist at all, so they had to retreat on all fronts, and on December 1, they were all surrounded and annihilated in the Bobai area. At the same time, the 12th and 13th Corps of the Northeast Field Army also began to march into the hinterland of Guangxi, and Bai Chongxi was unable to resist and ordered all units to urgently retreat to Qinzhou.
On December 4, the 13th Corps captured Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, and liberated Qinzhou on the 7th, blocking the enemy's retreat from the sea. On the 12th, Zhennan Pass (now Friendship Pass) on the Sino-Vietnamese border was also liberated, and Bai Chongxi's troops were all closed in our country except for more than 10,000 people who escaped into Vietnam, and the rest of the more than 100,000 people were all closed in China, and finally the whole army was wiped out. At this point, the Gui military and political clique, which had been active on the stage of Chinese history for more than 20 years, completely collapsed.