General situation of wei county's tough battle

The battle of Weixian (also known as the battle of Changwei or the battle of the middle section of Ji Jiao Line) was an important battle launched by the People's Liberation Army in Shandong during the National Liberation War, with the conquest of Weixian as the center.

/kloc-in the autumn of 0/947, after the East China Field Army successfully smashed the Kuomintang's key attack on Shandong, according to the development of the situation, it formed an exterior corps (also known as the Western Corps) and an interior corps (also known as the Eastern Corps, later renamed the Shandong Corps). The exterior corps, led by Chen Yi and Su Yu, marched into southwest Shandong, Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu to carry out exterior operations. The internal army was commanded by Xu and Tan Zhenlin, and stayed in Shandong to coordinate exterior operations.

The Kuomintang reactionaries took advantage of our main force to go out and pieced together six divisions to invade Jiaodong Liberated Area on a large scale. Our Shandong Corps fought a hard battle to defend Jiaodong. After five months of bloody fighting, the enemy's "September offensive" was crushed, a large area except a few strongholds was recovered, the war situation in Shandong was reversed, and the enemy was forced to turn to "point-line-surface defense". They were forced to strengthen the fortifications of the Ji Jiao Line and the Jinpu Line, and consolidated them.

However, our army did not give the enemy any respite, and soon launched the west section of Ji Jiao Road in early March 1948. In just 12 days, Zhoucun, Zhangdian, Zichuan and Boshan were conquered successively, and the connection between Weixian and Jinan was completely cut off. On the whole Ji Jiao line, there are only three isolated strongholds, namely, Jinan in the west, Qingdao in the east and Weixian in the middle.

Weixian is a medium-sized city in Shandong Province, second only to Jinan and Qingdao. Wei county has been the hub of Deng (Zhou), Lai (Zhou) and Qing (Island) since ancient times, and is known as Jiaodong Corridor. It is located in the center of Ji Jiao Line with convenient road traffic. It is a hub connecting Bohai, Jiaodong and Luzhong, and its strategic position is very important. The Bailang River runs through the north and south, dividing wei county into two cities, east and west, commonly known as "Twin Cities". According to records, wei county has never been breached in history. East and west twin cities depend on each other, and there is a Tucheng village in each of the four passes in the city. The east wall is more than 7 meters high, and the west wall is more than 12 meters high, with a corner width of 8 meters and a top width of 6 meters. There are trenches (4 meters deep and 4 meters wide) outside these city walls, and the inner walls are steep, so it is easy to defend but difficult to attack.

The fortifications in Wei County are very complicated. After more than ten years of construction and reconstruction by Japan, the Puppet and Chiang Kai-shek, a semi-permanent defense system with Xicheng as the core and three lines of defense outward has been formed. The first line of defense is outside the city, with more than 90 independent strongholds, large and small. There are mines, traps, Abatis, barbed wire and other complex obstacles around the stronghold, and there are traffic ditches between forts. The second line of defense is at the four passes, each relying on Tucheng Village, laying more than 0/000 mines/kloc-to form an insurmountable minefield; The third line of defense is located in the walls of two cities, using high and thick walls, equipped with power grids and various bunkers. The whole defense system is a bit comprehensive, combining points with surfaces, and each point can support each other independently. In addition, bunkers were built in the streets, intersections and open spaces in wei county, and the streets were blocked by fire. Individual solid buildings have also been transformed into core fortifications, which are the last defensive positions.

Kuomintang reactionaries also attached great importance to wei county's security work, and deployed as many as 47,000 troops in wei county and its outlying strongholds. The Commander-in-Chief is Chen Jincheng, commander of the 96th Kuomintang Army and commander of the 45th Kuomintang Division. In addition to the troops directly under the division, there are 265,438+02 brigades, 265,438+04 brigades, the sixth and eighth security brigades, the eleventh and twelfth regiments of the third security division, and the eighth and twelfth regiments of the Kuomintang Shandong Division. Zhang Tianzuo and Zhang Jingyue, famous veterans of the whole province who fought against the people, gathered here. These Kuomintang troops, with wei county as the core, are distributed in the vast area from Changle and Tianma in the west to Hanting in the east and Anqiu in the south. Relying on strong fortifications and advanced weapons, they tried to defend wei county against the people. Chen Jincheng boasted that wei county's guards were "impregnable", and the Kuomintang also regarded wei county as a "fortress in the middle of Shandong".

In order to combat the rampant arrogance of the Kuomintang reactionaries and uproot wei county, an anti-* * fortress, our Shandong Corps, according to the instructions of the Central Military Commission and the East China Bureau, started the pre-war preparations for the Battle of wei county. Commander Xu first led the combatants in the war room of the General Staff Department and the main commanding cadres of the participating troops to explore the terrain in wei county, and studied the specific situation of the enemy forces' deployment, firepower equipment and fortification structure in the periphery of wei county and the east and west cities with the heads of local party organizations. Then, the Corps held a battle meeting to discuss the specific deployment of the campaign and worked out a detailed, safe and bold battle plan: first besiege Changle, clear the outlying strongholds of wei county, and then concentrate on attacking wei county. In terms of the deployment of troops, it was decided that the ninth column would be the main attack, attacking from the north of the city, and the Luzhong and Bohai columns would attack from the south of the city. Seven vertical, Bohai Military Region troops in Zhangqiu, Mingshui monitoring and blocking the enemy of Jinan East Aid. A certain unit of the thirteenth column cooperated with the troops of the Jiaodong Military Region to monitor and block the enemies of Qingdao's western aid on the Dagu River; The main force of the thirteenth column is the general reserve. On March 3 1 day, our participating troops began to assemble in Changwei area.

At the combat meeting, Commander Xu asked all the troops to "be brave and tenacious, not afraid of sacrifice, win the battle, overcome difficulties, and resolutely pull out the hard nail of wei county!" The political commissar of Tan Zhenlin asked all the troops to strictly enforce the discipline of urban policies, "go in with honor and come out cleanly to achieve' military and political victory'!"

At the same time, Party committees and administrative offices in Jiaodong, Bohai and other districts have also begun to make intensive arrangements to support the frontline work.

The determination has been made, the deployment is ready, and a tough battle is about to start.

But the enemy is not a fool. When our army assembled in Changwei area on a large scale, they had already discovered our army's strategic intention to seize Weixian County. Wang, commander of the second appeasement area of the Kuomintang, led his troops to wei county, conspired with him, made a battle plan for guarding the city, attempted to confront our army with the solid and complicated Yugoslav capital fortifications in wei county, and then waited for reinforcements to repel our attack. Before the enemy's deployment was completed, all the participating troops had acted quickly according to the campaign deployment. On April 1 day, it entered the predetermined position, forming a siege of wei county, and the battle of wei county began.

1April 2, 948, the battle of wei county officially started. According to the battle plan made before the war, Bohai Column and Lu Zhongjun went first, cut off the garrison contact between Chang (Le) and Wei (County), and tightened the encirclement. The battle plan was successfully completed in only one day. The 11th and 12th Regiments of the Third Security Division of the Kuomintang and the 6th Security Brigade were surrounded in Tianma, and they lost contact with the enemy troops on the defensive in Weixian County, and did not care about each other. At the same time, the ninth column moved eastward, and the thirteenth column set out from Jiaodong and successively entered the periphery of Weicheng and the scheduled place of Dayuan. On the 8 th, the enemy troops in the periphery of Weixian were divided, and they successively captured 20 Li Bao, Jiulong Mountain and Fenghuang Mountain, controlled the airport, cut off the air transport links between Weixian and Jinan and Qingdao, and seized two planes. Then he occupied the workshop.

Since April 9, according to the deployment, our siege troops have been doing geotechnical work around the clock, digging traffic trenches and hiding the enemy's situation. There is an open sandy land outside wei county with loose soil and rapid excavation. Some traffic trenches were dug five or six miles long, and some even dug from ten miles away, winding and extending to the moat at the gate. According to statistics, in the whole campaign, more than 70 kilometers of traffic trenches, more than 200 meters of covered tunnels, more than 23,000 hidden caves and more than 400 bunkers were dug. In this way, many complex fortifications painstakingly set by the enemy were completely destroyed by the trenches dug by our army from the ground. 14 night, our ninth longitudinal army captured Beiguan. 18, Bohai column and Luzhong troops occupied Nanguan. At this point, the battle to clear the enemy outside Weicheng is over, and the next step is to attack the city.

This is a tough battle, and it is the first tough battle initiated by our Shandong Corps. In order to paralyze the enemy and ensure the suddenness of the battle, our forward troops retreated slightly, but the enemy thought that our army was unable to attack the city because of continuous combat fatigue. Wang even held a celebration banquet in Jinan to celebrate "the rescue of Weixian County". However, on the evening of April 23, our army launched a fierce attack on Xicheng with intensive artillery fire, and the enemy suddenly became a mess. In the middle of the night, the 79th Regiment of the 27 th Division of the 9 th Longitudinal Division first boarded Chengtou from the north, and started its first breakthrough. The enemy is still fighting like a trapped beast, fighting back wildly against our troops entering the city. Under the indiscriminate bombing of enemy planes in the air and the suppression of fierce firepower such as artillery and heavy machine guns, the progress of our follow-up troops was blocked. In order to open a breakthrough and support the troops entering the city, the 73rd Regiment of the 25th Division of the 9th Vertical entered the city during the day and achieved success. At this time, the troops attacking from the south also made a breakthrough. The north and the south attacked each other and launched a fierce street battle with the enemy. By the evening of 24th, the west of wei county was completely in my hands.

With the victory of conquering the west side and not giving the enemy any respite, our army quickly prepared to capture the east side and launched a general attack on the east side at dusk on April 26. Using favorable terrain (the west side is 5 meters higher than the east side), under the cover of strong artillery fire, the siege troops quickly rushed across the Bailang River, broke through the city wall in one fell swoop, and started street fighting with the enemy. Chen Jincheng couldn't bear it. He escaped in disguise and was captured by our army. Zhang Tianzuo was killed. On the 27th, wei county Dongcheng was captured by me. Since then, the enemy troops trapped in Anqiu, Changle, Tianma and other places have also been annihilated by me, and more than 500 people of wei county Self-Defense Force/KLOC-0 uprising before the war.

While our army was attacking wei county, the enemy troops on the defensive in Jinan and Qingdao sent troops to rescue wei county in order to understand the siege of wei county. Since April 5th, Ding, the enemy on the defensive in Qingdao, led the reorganization of the sixty-fourth division, the fifty-fourth division and the fifty-seventh brigade, and the * * * five brigade troops marched westward into wei county, but they were strongly blocked by the troops of the 13th longitudinal and Jiaodong military regions, and more than 4,400 people were annihilated, stranded on both sides of the Dagu River and unable to move forward. Wang, a native of Jinan, led the troops of the 73rd Division, the 84th Division, the 75th Division and the * * * three divisions to wei county. More than 3,000 people were annihilated by the troops of the Seventh Longitudinal and Bohai Military Regions, and it was not until 2 1 that they entered Linzi and Yidu. Because Wei county was quickly conquered, on May 1 Sunday and May 8, these two roads helped the enemy retreat respectively. At this point, the victory of the Battle of wei county ended and the whole territory of wei county was liberated.