Chapter 41 second quarter

At the beginning of the War of Liberation, Li Desheng was the brigade commander of the 17th Brigade of the 6th Column of the Shanxi-Hebei-Luyu Military Region. The first battle I participated in after becoming the brigade commander was fighting Lanfeng.Lanfeng was on the Longhai Line, defending the enemy as the Kuomintang Army reorganized the 55th Division, 74th Brigade, 220th Regiment Headquarters and 2 Battalions, plus a security team of 3,000 people.Its main force is deployed in the north of the city, and a part is stationed at the South Pass and the railway station. Li Desheng's 17th Brigade attacked from the west and south of the city and was responsible for annihilating the enemy at the railway station. The command post of the 17th brigade was by the small river outside the west gate. Li Desheng and brigade political commissar He Zhucheng had a good grasp of the overall situation. Deputy brigade commander You Taizhong and chief of staff Lai Guangxun followed the siege 49th and 50th regiments to Nanguan and the railway station to command.

At dusk, the troops began to engage the enemy.At this time, the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 50th Regiment reported that they had captured a railway patrolman in Xiaozhaozhuang, two miles away from the railway station, and provided the latest enemy information: a train was parked at the railway station, and a battalion of enemies and All 11 tanks have already boarded this train: a train coming from Kaifeng is about to arrive at Lanfeng Station. After that train arrives, this train carrying tanks and a battalion of the enemy will leave. What an unexpected change!The first is that the train from Kaifeng will arrive soon.At this time, there are no passenger cars, so the ones coming must be military vehicles; how many carriages does this train have?Are the vehicles pulling enemy troops or supplies?How many enemy troops?There is no way of knowing.The second is that the enemy and 11 tanks on the train in the station are about to escape, how to intercept and destroy them?The third is the problem of siege.The city is dead, I can't escape, and the enemies in the city are surrounded by me, but there is no time to delay to act together during the general attack.But the looming problem is the two trains.

After research, Li Desheng and several chief officers in the brigade decided that the first thing to do was to blow up the vehicles coming from Kaifeng.In case there are a large number of enemy combat troops on the vehicle, it will complicate the situation and affect the implementation of the siege plan as soon as it arrives at the station. According to the time provided by the railway patrol, the train was about to arrive at the station in about 20 minutes. Li Desheng immediately ordered the 49th regiment to prepare to blow up the train. The 49th regiment dispatched Chang Guohua, commander of the 3rd Battalion, to lead a company and a regiment engineering squad to perform the task.

Chang Guohua took his troops and ran westward. About two miles away from the station, he happened to find a 10-meter-long iron bridge. It was great, and the bridge was blown up!As soon as the train gets on the bridge, it will be blown up, and the bridge will be broken and the train will be destroyed!The telephone squad of the battalion headquarters cooperated with the engineers to take out the stones under the railroad tracks, bury the explosives, and connect the detonating wire. As soon as the arrangement was completed, there was the sound of rumbling wheels on the rails, and soon the bright headlights of the cars were seen coming!When the train was approaching the station, it slowed down. As soon as the front of the train got on the iron bridge, our engineers pressed the explosives, and there was a loud "bang". When the fireworks started, the locomotive fell into the water with the broken bridge. One was thrown out of the track and crashed in all directions.At this moment, machine gunfire rang out in the rearmost carriage.

Sure enough, it was a military vehicle, and the enemy opened fire.More enemies shouted and jumped out of the car to flee. The soldiers of our army ambushing on both sides of the railway attacked the enemy on the train with machine guns and grenades, and rushed towards the train while hitting them.After a fierce battle, an enemy group was wiped out and more than 70 prisoners were captured. After interrogation, the prisoners confessed that the train was traveling from Kaifeng to Xuzhou, with a total of 9 carriages. The enemies on board were the armed officer battalion of the 11th Division reorganized by Chen Cheng's direct lineage, the communication team of the health team directly under the 18th brigade, and 2 members of the supply battalion. Company, a total of more than 300 people.There were a lot of military supplies on board. The 17th Brigade seized 7 radio stations, more than 20 British-made bicycles, dozens of boxes of western medicine and new imported medical equipment.This batch of medical supplies equipped the health departments of the columns and brigades, and played a major role in subsequent wars.

At the same time as the bridge was blown up, Ma Ning, the deputy head of the 50th regiment, approached the station with the 2nd battalion.There used to be only one company of enemy defense here, but now there is a new battalion and 11 tanks ready to escape.The enemy's strength has increased and there are tanks. Zhang Erpang, the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 50th Regiment, murmured in his heart. He has never seen a tank before. How to fight! Just thinking about it, Huo Wenbing, the commander of the 3rd company, was so anxious that he pinned seven or eight grenades all over his body and wanted to blow up the tank.Zhang Erpang told him not to worry, but to touch it first to see the situation.Huo Wenbing resisted his impatience and led the troops to approach the train quietly.At this time, the sky was dark and the station was very dark. The train headed west and ended east, lying on the railway like a long snake, and there was no sound anywhere.Although our army blew up the train from Kaifeng two miles away, ignited a fire, and the gunfire was fierce, but there was no movement here.Is the enemy calm?Or are there no enemies on board at all?Huo Wenbing quietly touched the train to observe for a while, then ran back excitedly to report to battalion commander Zhang Erpang:

"I've seen it all. The enemy is in a convertible car, sitting quietly and silently, probably because he is afraid of exposing the target and getting beaten, and wants to wait for the car to slip away quietly. Let's do it quickly!" Zhang Erpang was very satisfied with Huo Wenbing's reconnaissance, and immediately agreed: "Man, let's do it, or the enemy of this battalion will be in trouble when they get out of the car!" It was nine-thirty at night, and with a single command, rows of grenades were thrown onto the train.The enemies who were hit by the sudden blow were thrown into confusion, and all of them covered their heads in fright, shouting to the heavens and looking down at the car, but they didn't fight back, they just ran for their lives.It took a while for the enemy officer to wake up and command the remaining personnel to counterattack.

After fighting for more than 20 minutes, the enemy suffered a lot of casualties, and the rest ran into the box office.Our army chased after them, climbed up the watchtower and wiped out the security team guarding it, but the doors and windows of the box office were closed, so we couldn't get in for a while. The enemy tanks parked on the flatbed train, seeing that the battle had started, also fired at our army, but the distance was short, the angle was high, and the bullets were flying in the air. When the enemies on the tanks discovered this situation, they fired one after another. The vehicles drove the tanks off the train along the springboard, all concentrated around the box office, and turned the turret to shoot in all directions.

Many officers and soldiers of our army had never directly fought against tanks. Some soldiers saw the tanks approaching and threw grenades at the tanks. They only heard the explosion of the grenades and sparks, but the tank was not damaged at all. After Li Desheng received the report, he immediately ordered the troops to dig ditches around the box office and surround the tanks so that they could not be let go!Call for artillery support. The commander of the column, Wang Jinshan, quickly ordered: adjust the bazooka and anti-tank guns, and go to the train station to fight tanks! The bazooka squad came to the train station and opened fire on the enemy tanks.Now the enemy tanks panicked and rushed out one after another, but they were all blocked by the trenches, and none of them came out. They could only blindly fire and sweep machine guns to prevent our troops from approaching.

In order not to affect the general offensive plan to capture Lanfeng, the column ordered the 17th Brigade to temporarily surround the enemy at the station, and after the battle in the city was over, they would go back to clean up the enemy at the station. The 49th Regiment of the 17th Brigade mainly attacked the south gate, and Gou Zaihe, the deputy head of the regiment, personally led an assault company to attack the city. The enemies in the city closed the city gate tightly, set up machine guns on the city wall and fired violently to prevent me from attacking the city.When Gou Zaihe saw that the soldiers in front were unable to move forward under the pressure of the enemy's firepower, he scolded them away. The cadres of the 49th Regiment respect Gou Zaihe very much, and they all know that he likes to swear a few foul words when the battle is tense, but no one is angry, because as soon as they hear the swearing, they know that the deputy head of the regiment is fighting with everyone, and it is even more difficult to fight. exciting.At this time, Gou Zaihe cursed the enemy, and told everyone to wait for the opportunity. When the enemy's machine guns stopped and the shuttles were changed, he led the troops to leap forward. After a few rounds, he rushed to the bottom of the city gate. He immediately took the lead after setting up the ladder. Climb the city.But the ladder was short and the city wall was too high to climb up. Gou Zaihe organized engineers to blast the city gate.After continuous blasting, a big hole was finally blasted into the city gate.

As the troops were about to charge, the firepower of the bunker next to the city gate was opened. Gou Zaihe immediately ordered the engineers to tie the explosives on a long bamboo pole and stick them in through the door opening to blow up the bunker.The assault company attacked in and opened the city gate. All the troops of the two regiments of our army rushed into the south gate and started street fighting with the enemy. The 46th regiment, which was the main attacker at the east gate, approached the city without the enemy noticing it. It was not until the troops passed through the moat and climbed up the city wall that the enemy found out, and then the two sides fought fiercely.At this time, if the follow-up troops of our army do not enter the city for reinforcements in time, the few commandos in the city are in danger of being flanked and wiped out by the enemy.The brigade quickly dispatched the only mountain cannon and bombarded the city gate.As soon as the enemy heard the sound of the cannon, they had no intention of fighting, and all fled. Our army took advantage of the momentum and attacked the city from the east gate. By the morning of August 11, the fighting in the city was over. Besides, the enemies and tanks trapped in the station could not escape or fight, so they stayed in the station and did not dare to move.I surrounded the troops to take advantage of this time to eat and rest.After the battle in the city was over, our army used rocket launchers, anti-tank guns, and cluster grenades to storm the enemy tanks.The tracks of the two tanks were blown off and they couldn't move.Seeing that the enemy had nowhere to go, he was thirsty and hungry in the car, and the boredom was unbearable!A tank lifted its lid, held up its white coat and shook it in surrender. However, the rest of the tanks were still attacking us with guns. The leader of the 50th regiment said to the technician of the captured tank: "You will not be killed if you surrender your guns. Hurry up and ask the people on those tanks to come out and promise not to hurt you." The technician asked back: "Is it true that he will not be killed?" He was too deeply poisoned by the propaganda of the Kuomintang reactionaries, and he had fought so hard with the PLA just now. He couldn't believe the PLA's captive policy and had many doubts.A platoon leader was anxious and said, "Whoever kills you will be brother-in-law!" The technician of the Kuomintang army felt a little relieved now, he gesticulated and shouted at the same time.After shouting several times, all the enemies in the tank stopped shooting, knocked on the cover of the tank, and all got out and surrendered. A total of 11 enemy tanks were destroyed, and this was the first time that our Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army captured enemy tanks since the beginning of the War of Defense.Li Desheng and the brigade leaders really had a "tank addiction". The next day, they went to the column to hold a celebration party and went to the column headquarters in a tank. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, one of the tanks was displayed in the Military Museum as a historical witness.