As the saying goes, victory and defeat are a common thing in soldiers. The military history of modern China, from the beginning of the First Opium War to the end of the Liberation War, has included countless victories worth remembering, and naturally includes countless defeats.
In the War of Liberation, there was such a battle, our army had an advantage in terms of strength, with more and less, but still regrettably defeated.
So, what exactly is this battle? What impact did it have on the subsequent war?
This battle is the Battle of Datong Jining.
In June 1946, the People's Liberation War began.
As a strategic place in North China, Datong has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times.
In June and July, the main force of our Shanxi-Sui Military Region was exhausted, and with the cooperation of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region, the vast area north of Xin County and south of Datong was liberated in one fell swoop, cutting off the connection between Datong and Taiyuan, and completely isolating the enemy in Datong.
Under such favorable conditions, the operational policy of seizing Datong and thoroughly opening up the links between the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region and the Jinsui Military Region was thus placed in front of the commander and political commissar of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region.
**。In August, our Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region and Jinsui Military Region gathered a total of 120,000 men and horses to prepare to launch an offensive against Datong, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and gnaw this hard bone.
The commander-in-chief of our army in this attack on Datong was Zhang Zongxun of the Jinsui Military Region, the political commissar was the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region, and the deputy commander was Yang Chengwu.
Zhang Zongxun. The Datong garrison was less than 20,000 people, and the highest leader was Chu Xichun, deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Group Army under Yan Xishan.
In order to hold Datong, the defenders of Yan Xishan relied on the 12-meter-high city wall, the blockhouses on the high part of the city wall and the periphery, the gun holes in the city wall, and the barbed wire fence outside the blockhouse, forming a solid defense system.
However, despite this, because the Datong garrison is not unified in structure, its combat effectiveness is not strong, and our army is overwhelming, it is only a matter of time before Datong is captured.
Yan Xishan was obviously aware of this, so since Datong fell into a lonely city, Yan Xishan sent troops to rescue him many times, but he was repelled many times.
Helpless, Yan Xishan had no choice but to ask Chiang Kai-shek for help.
Looking at the battle situation, the only person who could rescue Datong was Fu Zuoyi's troops stationed in Guisui (now Hohhot), 160 kilometers northwest of Datong.
Fu Zuoyi. So under the promise of Lao Jiang's ** Houlu, Fu Zuoyi finally decided to send troops to the east to help, and formulated a battle plan of "encircling Wei and saving Zhao".
This "Zhao" is Datong, and this "Wei" is Zhangjiakou, or Jining.
Zhang Zongxun later recalled the battle of Datong Jining in his memoirs, and said that at that time, our army had held a Yanggao meeting before Fu Zuoyi's eastern aid, but at the meeting, no one paid enough attention to Fu Zuoyi's eastern aid, and everyone generally believed that Datong was not a Gu Zuoyi jurisdiction, and even if Fu Zuoyi decided to help, he would not send many troops, and the action would not be very fast, so as long as Datong was captured, Fu Zuoyi's department would not dare to come east.
And it was this kind of cognition that had a very negative impact on the development of the later campaign.
At that time, the center of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region was in Zhangjiakou, and all the main forces of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region were dispatched to fight Datong, which caused an emptiness in the rear.
And Fu Zuoyi was keenly aware of this, so he did not choose to go directly to Datong to relieve the siege, but divided his troops into three routes, pointing to Zhuozi, Jining and Liangcheng respectively.
Among these three places, Liangcheng is the closest to Datong, but it is also the "smoke bomb" deliberately put by Fu Zuoyi.
Fu Zuo's Volunteer Aid Department attacked Jining in the north, Liangcheng in the south, and Zhuozi in the middle, the real purpose was to take Zhuozi first, and then hit Jining.
And our army misjudged Fu Zuoyi's strategic intentions from the very beginning, thinking that what Fu Zuoyi's aid department wanted to take the most was Liangcheng.
Therefore, among the three places of Zhuozi, Jining and Liangcheng, the weakest deployment force is Zhuozi, and only one brigade is left in Zhuozi.
As a result, the first thing Fu Zuoyi wanted to take was Zhuo Zi, for this reason, Fu Zuoyi directly dispatched three divisions, and it only took 8 hours for Zhuo Zi to be taken by Fu Zuoyi's department.
At this time, our army's attention is still on the difficult bone of Datong, at this time, our army's prediction for the next step is that Fu Zuoyi will send troops to attack the nearest Liangcheng from Datong first, and relieve the siege of Datong.
As a result, Fu Zuoyi played another trick, he first sent people to contact our army and proposed to make peace, but in fact, he quickly gathered a large number of troops and went to Jining.
Due to a mistake in prediction, our army only deployed three regiments of troops in Jining at that time.
Under the fierce attack of Fu Zuoyi's troops, seeing that Jining was about to change hands again after Zhuo Zi, the main force of our army quickly returned to help, and Fu Zuoyi's troops implemented division and encirclement, so that Fu finally repulsed.
At this time, in fact, the most critical moment of the battle was unknowingly.
At a time when our army should concentrate its forces to destroy the enemy's living forces in one go, the commanders and fighters of our army believed that they had already gained the upper hand and ordered their troops to rest and recuperate.
In the following daylight on September 12, our troops did not choose to launch an offensive while the iron was hot, but did not begin until the afternoon of September 12.
This inevitably gave Fu Bu a chance to breathe, and the enemy army was rested and waited for rescue.
**Later analysis said:
"The front command of our army was far from the battlefield and did not know the situation at the front, and in one day it did not organize a continuous offensive, giving the enemy a chance to breathe and reorganize. ”
Dong Qiwu. At 4 p.m. on the afternoon of the 12th, when our army launched a general attack on the enemy's 31st Division, which was besieged on the slopes of the southwest of the city, the elite 101st Division of the Fu Department had already arrived for reinforcements.
It can be said that at this critical moment, our army is catching wolves and evil tigers, and the situation is very tight.
And it was in such a tense situation that our army made another fatal mistake, that is, it gave up attacking the enemy in front of it, that is, the newly formed 31st Division, and chose to concentrate its forces to the west to attack the 101st Division.
At that time, when all units received this order, they were actually unwilling to give up the enemy in front of them, but in the end they still carried out the order of the front command.
As a result, our army directly missed the great opportunity to gather and annihilate the enemy who was about to be annihilated under Jining City.
However, the location of the 101st Division, the route of the march, and the specific deployment of the operation were not clear to our army, and the final reinforcement plan was not realized.
On the morning of 13 September, the newly formed 31st Division and the 101st Division successfully rendezvous, and our fighters had lost their planes and were flanked by the enemy.
In the continuous encirclement and counter-encirclement of both sides, on the afternoon of the 13th, reinforcements from the newly formed 32nd Division and the newly formed 4th Cavalry Division of Fu Zuoyi's division rushed to our army and quickly launched a counter-siege operation against our army, and the disadvantages of our army have been revealed.
At this time, Fu Zuoyi held six divisions and gathered on the outskirts of Jining.
After a day and a night of continuous battles, especially the round-trip movement of the troops of our Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei and Jinsui Military Regions, especially the round-trip movement of the whole night on the 12th, fatigue and hunger completely attacked.
With the continuous breakthrough of our army's positions, the operational plan of annihilating Fu's reinforcements near Jining was no longer possible.
In this way, our army could only be forced to withdraw from Jining on the evening of the 13th and move to the northeast.
At this time, after Zhuozi and Jining were lost one after another, Fu Zuoyi's department also posed a threat to my Zhangjiakou.
In the direction of Datong, Fu Zuoyi's troops and the defenders of Datong formed a flanking attack on our army, which was already very unfavorable to our army's implementation of the established plan to attack Datong.
After this battle of Jining, Fu Zuoyi was out of the limelight, and our army's vitality was greatly damaged, and it was no longer able to seize Datong, and the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region finally decided to withdraw from Datong. The Battle of Datong Jining came to an end.
In addition, what is more serious is that after this battle, the door of Zhangjiakou, the center of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border region, was opened, which directly caused the loss of Zhangjiakou.
There is a saying that as a key battle in North China, the impact of the defeat of the Jining Battle was extremely far-reaching and significant.
So, who is ultimately responsible for the defeat of this campaign?
After the war, Nie Shuai took the initiative to take responsibility.
**。At the beginning, the decision to take the lead in attacking Datong was made by ***.
** Thinks that he has "misconsidered" and analyzes and points out the mistakes of front-line command.
Among them is what Fu Zuoyi called "a fluke", that is, on the night of September 12, our army gave up first annihilating the enemy who was about to be annihilated, and went to fight the 101st Division that the enemy rushed to reinforce, which led to the defeat of the battle.
This point, Fu Zuoyi later recalled and said, in fact, at that time, the battle of Jining, he was also terrified, because according to the situation at the time, Fu Zuoyi's department was also quite dangerous, and there was a possibility of failure, until the 101st Division participated in the battle, the People's Liberation Army chose to fight the 101st Division with all its might, and did not attack the new 31st Division, which made Fu Zuoyi deeply feel the possibility of victory.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the battlefield is changing rapidly, and from God's point of view, we will all find mistakes in front-line command, and some people like to compare the Battle of Jining with the Battle of Menglianggu, thinking that Zhang Zongxun does not have Su Yu's determination to pull out his teeth.
But in fact, the two battles were incomparable in terms of the Kuomintang reinforcements they faced, The Kuomintang reinforcements in the Battle of Menglianggu were weak and weak, and in the Battle of Jining, Fu Zuoyi's reinforcements of the 101st elite division were resolute and powerful, and our army did not have the ability to quickly annihilate Dong Qiwu's troops at that time, in other words, Dong Qiwu's troops did not go to the end of the mountain, even if they were besieged, but their combat effectiveness was still not weak, which was seen from the 101st Division and Dong Qiwu's division, Dong Qiwu's troops could quickly recover their blood, and the situation of the Jedi ** can also be seen.
In addition, there are many factors for the failure of the campaign, including some subjective factors and some objective factors.
Since many units of our army have just been formed from guerrilla units, it is reluctant to directly fight such a large-scale offensive battle; In addition, our army's equipment was too poor, and when facing the city wall on which the enemy relied on the defenders of Datong and the pillboxes outside the city wall, the artillery fire was obviously insufficient, and "only using grenades and ladders to attack the enemy's pillboxes had little effect."
As a result, the battle time was delayed again and again, and the enemy's reinforcements were given sufficient time to prepare.
Then there is the fact that the commanders and fighters of our army have a tactical light enemy on the reinforcements of Fu Zuoyi's department, which is clearly mentioned in the memoirs of Zhang Zongxun, the commander-in-chief of this battle, on August 2, ** presided over the Yanggao meeting, but unfortunately, the Yanggao meeting did not pay enough attention to Fu Zuoyi's department.
All in all, the battlefield is ever-changing, and a defeat in a battle is caused by many aspects.
Victory and defeat are a common thing in soldiers, and victory is worth remembering, in fact, defeat is also worth remembering, and only in this way can we better set off and make us realize the hard-won peace and prosperity of today.