Chapter 32 8. Capture Chen Changjie Alive

According to the order of the Central Military Commission and the Pingjin Front Command, Liu Yalou issued an order to attack the city at 9:20 am on January 14, 1949. At that time, the Northeast Field Army was not equipped with the equipment when it first left customs.During the Northeast Liberation War, they not only seized a large number of American equipment sent by the "transportation captain" Chiang Kai-shek, but also established their own military industry.At that time, the weapons and equipment of the main force of Dongye were not only the strongest in the People's Liberation Army at that time, but they were not inferior to the general Kuomintang army.

Hong Xuezhi, the commander of the Sixth Column of the Eastern Field, described his troops at that time as follows: Our original organizational system was 3 infantry divisions and 1 artillery regiment.The Military Commission and the headquarters allocated us another infantry division (Independent Sixth Division).At the same time, a large number of turned peasants and liberation fighters were added. ...After the organization was reorganized, each infantry company had more than 190 people, the infantry regiment had 3,200 to 3,500 people, the division had 13,400 to 13,900 people, and the entire column had a total of more than 63,000 people.

The equipment of the troops has also been adjusted. Each infantry company has 9 machine guns, and the chief and deputy squad leaders and combat team leaders are equipped with submachine guns. The division artillery battalion added 3 to 5 chemical mortars or heavy mortars; the column artillery regiment added large-caliber howitzers.The old weapons have also been replaced with new ones, most of the infantry have been replaced with 30 rifles, and other equipment has also been improved. Our column pulled fifty or sixty wagons of the seized materials and ammunition. In addition to the field artillery regiment of the column, the Dongye headquarters assigned two artillery regiments for our column to use.Numerous cars and gun carts drawn by several mules and horses, stretching seven or eight kilometers on the road, are very mighty.

This is the case for a single column. From the perspective of the entire field army, on the way from the northeast to Guannei, the Central Military Commission issued an order on December 9, 1948, deciding to merge and expand the original artillery headquarters and artillery columns in Dongye, and reorganize them. It is the Special Forces Command, under its jurisdiction are the First Command Post of the Artillery Force, the Second Command Post of the Artillery Force, the Tank Command Post, the Antiaircraft Artillery Command Post and the Engineer Command Post. Except for the two regiments of the Engineer Command Post, There are three regiments, and there is also a mortar regiment directly under it.That is to say, our army not only has its own artillery division, but also has a tank division (at that time, tanks and armored vehicles are generally called combat vehicles), and has its own anti-aircraft artillery unit.

In order to strengthen the leadership of the special forces, Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan transferred Xiao Hua, the former political commissar of the First Corps, to the commander of the special forces, and Zhong Chibing, the former commander of the Dongye Logistics Department, to the political commissar.Su Jin, Jia Tao, and Kuang Yumin, who were in charge of the artillery headquarters and artillery columns, served as deputy commanders, and Qiu Chuangcheng served as deputy political commissar. In this attack on Tianjin, the special forces dispatched a total of 12 regiments of artillery, armor and engineers.The west attack direction is the first main attack direction, and the artillery is under the unified command of Su Jin; the east attack direction is the second main attack direction, and the artillery is under the unified command of Qiu Chuangcheng.

Because our army had such good equipment at that time, when Liu Yalou gave an order, our army's powerful artillery firepower opened fire on the enemy in unison according to the depth configuration arranged in advance. The shells of 538 various cannons (including howitzers, cannons, field artillery, mountain artillery and heavy mortars) dispatched by our special forces flew towards the enemy's fortifications in Tianjin.If the artillery of each column is added, our army's artillery group will be even more powerful.Taking the western front alone as an example, more than 1,230 artillery pieces of various types were concentrated at an unprecedented density. If the frontal breakthrough is counted as 1,500 meters, there is almost one artillery piece of more than 60mm for every meter.However, there are only more than 50 cannons in the entire Tianjin garrison, which is only one-tenth of the artillery dispatched by our special command.Our army's artillery shell preparations are also quite adequate, because on the battlefield of the Liaoshen Campaign alone, our army captured more than 400,000 rounds of various artillery shells.

Therefore, in terms of firepower, our army has an absolute and powerful advantage over the enemy.The first round of shooting was the "destruction shooting" of the artillery. It took a total of one and a half hours to hit each predetermined target. It blasted the enemy's defensive walls and city walls in front of our east and west assault troops. Most of the other fortifications were destroyed.At 11 o'clock in the morning, the second round of "suppressive shooting" began, which completely suppressed the firepower on the enemy's forward positions and paralyzed the enemy's forward positions behind the moat.Our assault troops successfully broke into Tianjin City amidst the sound of artillery.After the infantry company broke through, it erected a red flag at the relevant position to guide the artillery to "extend fire" on the enemy's position in front.In this way, a part of the artillery company followed the infantry company as support firepower and fought all the way to the city center.

This kind of siege battle in which artillery and infantry closely cooperated was the first time in the history of our army at that time, and it achieved very good results. Under the command of Li Tianyou, commander of the first column, the siege troops in the west of the city began to attack at 10:00 am.When tens of thousands of shells landed on the enemy's position, one after another was blown up, deer villages and barbed wire fences were torn down, the banks of moats were blown down everywhere, and gaps were blown up in defense walls and city walls. .At this time, the enemy also fought back, and two enemy planes came to help.but.The enemy never thought that there were anti-aircraft guns on our position, so the two defenseless enemy planes were shot down.Then, our tanks faced the artillery fire, crossed the crater, and rushed to the enemy's position; the engineers carried out blasting and demining.The sharp knife companies of the main attacking units of the infantry jumped out of the trenches, like groups of tigers descending the mountain, and rushed towards the enemy.The enemy here is the 67th Division of the 62nd Army.

The first task of the sharp knife company is to cross the enemy's main fortification moat.The first sharp knife company to rush to the moat was the "Red Three Company" of the First Division, the Second Division and the Fourth Regiment. After the blasters cleared the obstacles, the bridge-building platoon jumped into the icy river and built a reed bridge across the river.Then, he rushed up to the city wall that was blasted by our artillery.At 10:50 in the morning, Wang Yulong, the heroic flag bearer, first planted the red flag on the top of Tianjin City.The enemy immediately launched a frantic counterattack to the "Red Three Company", and the two sides fought hand-to-hand on the top of the city.At this time, the follow-up troops rushed up and suppressed the enemy.

However, more than half of the "Red Three Company" suffered casualties in this fight, and company commander Shi Dehong died heroically. At other assault points, crossing the river and breaking the city are the most difficult points in the battle.Most companies crossed the river by using various bridging methods prepared in advance; when some companies crossed the river, the ice layer in the river was thick, and the soldiers rushed directly from the ice; When the river was shallow, the soldiers waded forward in the thinly icy river; some companies cooperated with the chariot troops, sank the tanks to the bottom of the river, and then built bridges on top of the chariots.After crossing the river, the troops rushed straight for the defensive walls and city walls.For the breakthrough of defensive walls and city walls, most of the troops did not have much difficulty.From 10:50 am to 1:30 pm, 9 of the 10 breakthrough points on the entire line were successful.

During the battle to break through to the city, a 20-year-old heroic red-banner bearer appeared in the heroic knife company attacking Minquan Gate in the east. Minquan Gate is the most important gate on the Eastern Front, defended by four battalions of the enemy's 86th Army, with another four battalions as mobile support.It was the sharp knife company of the 70th Regiment of the 24th Division of the Eighth Column that our army attacked the Minquan Gate.When the artillery bombardment paused, the first company used continuous blasting to blow up 11 enemy obstacles with a depth of 50 meters within 15 minutes, and blasted a passage.The soldiers rushed over the icy moat and blew up several enemy bunkers.With the strong fire support of the artillery again, the company and the brother company repelled the enemy's many counterattacks, and finally broke through the civil rights gate.At this time, the 20-year-old soldier Zhong Yingen held high the red flag awarded by the head of the division before the war with the words "Kill and open the gate of civil rights", and put the red flag on the top of the gate of civil rights without thinking about his own life.All kinds of enemy weapons fired at him, and his legs were broken, and he fell beside the red flag.At this time, Zhong Yingen tried his best to raise the red flag for the second time.Enemy shells broke the flagpole and knocked him unconscious. But when he was awakened by the sound of gunfire, he endured unimaginable pain and climbed towards the red flag, grasped the flagpole with both hands, put his elbows on the ground, and raised the red flag for the third time.Until the sacrifice, his hands are still held high. After entering the city, the most troublesome thing for the troops is the street fighting when they develop in depth in the city.Because the streets in Tianjin are narrow and complicated, the enemy has built a lot of fortifications. During the battle, we have to attack the enemy's fortifications and attack the enemy's counterattack, and we must pay attention to protecting the houses and buildings from being destroyed as much as possible.In order to conduct proper command, the leading cadres of several columns entered the city with the vanguard and set up the headquarters in the city.Sometimes, the command post is even placed at the forefront and walks with the vanguard, such as the Sixth Column and Seventeenth Division.When the Fifth Company of the Artillery Regiment of the First Division and the Second Division attacked the Twelfth Police Station on Roosevelt Road, they could not launch normal shooting due to the narrow Louduo Street. They disassembled the artillery and carried it on their shoulders to the third floor. The "cannon upstairs" style of play destroyed the enemy's firepower point on another building, thereby protecting other surrounding buildings.It is precisely because our army has paid great attention to using precise tactics to destroy the enemy and protect the city from preparing to fight Tianjin to actually entering the city to fight street battles. Therefore, during the entire battle, except for the enemy of China Textile No. Apart from a lot of damage, buildings including Zhongyuan Company, the tallest building in Tianjin, and Nankai University, a famous university, were basically intact. This can be said to be a rare and important achievement in the siege battle. The Sixth Column and Seventeenth Division, the general reserve in Liu Yalou's hands, was not transferred out by Liu Yalou until the vanguard had already broken through.The task Liu Yalou gave to the 17th Division was to quickly enter the city for a breakthrough in street fighting.In order to complete this task, the Seventeenth Division has been preparing for several days. In addition to the most important technologies such as blasting, concealment, swat, and contact in street fighting, it is also necessary to be as familiar as possible with the streets and buildings on the way forward. The 17th Division entered the city from a traffic trench at the junction of one vertical and two divisions on West Road.In order to facilitate the command, Division Commander Long Shujin and Political Commissar Xu Binzhou led the division command post and the forty-ninth regiment of the vanguard to act together. The progress of the 49th Regiment started relatively smoothly, and soon reached the Tianjin Waterworks and Nankai Middle School.Blowing up bunkers with explosives was a specialty of the 17th Division. Soon, the bunkers around the waterworks were completely destroyed. Some enemies were killed, and some voluntarily walked out of the bunkers and surrendered.However, the enemy in the factory continued to resist on the second floor.It is easy to blow up this two-story factory building, but in this way, the water supply equipment in Tianjin will be seriously damaged.Commander Zhao of the 49th Regiment used the remnants of the bunker as a cover to go under the wall of the building and listened carefully. He heard the sound of machines inside, so he ordered his subordinates that the factory building must not be blown up, but it must be destroyed. Enemies upstairs.Head Zhao and several cadres made observations from various places, and finally found that there was an iron ladder in the middle of the gable to the west, which was used by the factory for maintenance of equipment.So, under the cover of fierce firepower, a squad of soldiers climbed up. After getting on the roof, use a bayonet to pry open the iron roof, and then shoot a burst of submachine guns to wipe out all the stubborn enemies inside.In this battle, the enemy was eliminated, the waterworks were preserved, and there were no casualties. Then, I went to Nankai Middle School, the tram company, and the 17th Division all the way to Jintang Bridge. After the Sixth Column and Seventeenth Division occupied Jintang Bridge, the Second Column also hit Jintang Bridge soon.At 5 o'clock in the morning, Bazong of East Road also arrived at Jintang Bridge.The main siege forces from the east and the west successfully joined forces at the scheduled meeting place.The pre-determined plan of "advancing east and west, cutting at the middle" was successfully realized.At this time, there were only 20 hours before our army launched a general offensive. On the evening of the 14th, Chen Changjie called a meeting with Du Jianshi, Lin Weichou, and Liu Yunhan to study countermeasures.Seeing that the Tianjin city defenses, which he thought would be unbreakable in a short period of time, were smashed to pieces by the powerful artillery fire of the People's Liberation Army in one day, and he must not be able to continue to hold on.At this time, several people present said "should be".Du Jianshi went to find Yang Yizhou and Li Zhuchen, a well-known person in Tianjin's industrial and commercial circles, and drafted a "peace declaration" together, asking Yang Yizhou to broadcast it on the radio.However, it was too late at this time, the guns of the People's Liberation Army were already approaching the chests of the Tianjin defenders, so what else could be discussed?What's more, in this fierce battle, few people were listening to the radio.Therefore, this "peace declaration" did not play any role.However, a small number of Kuomintang troops learned the news from the radio, and immediately planted a white flag in their residences and voluntarily surrendered to our army. However, the various troops of our army attacking the city continued to launch a sweeping attack on the enemy. Among the various siege armies, Yizong was the first to attack the Kuomintang Garrison Headquarters in Tianjin, that is, Chen Changjie's Tianjin Garrison Headquarters.In order to successfully take down the garrison headquarters, Yizong made special arrangements for the troops.The task of the first division is to conquer the core area and capture Chen Changjie alive; the task of the second division is to occupy the Shengli Bridge area and protect the left wing of the first division; the task of the independent tenth division is to go straight to Nankai University and protect the right wing of the first division; The 17th Division of the garrison will cooperate with a division to attack the outlying strongholds of the Garrison Command. The First Division and First Division Changjiang Yonghui personally commanded the first division and one regiment equipped with tanks to directly attack the garrison headquarters, the third regiment attacked Haiguang Temple, the southwest barrier of the garrison headquarters, and the second regiment attacked Yaohua Middle School (today's No. ). At dawn on the 15th, under the guidance of four comrades sent by the underground party, Liu Haiqing, the head of the first regiment, first solved the defenders of the Zhongyuan Company next to the security headquarters, and then led the commanders and fighters to launch an attack on the enemy's headquarters building. .When the commanders and fighters gradually wiped out the firepower points on both sides of the building and rushed into the building, they started a house-to-house battle with the enemy. Knowing that they were already powerless to resist, the special agent battalion of the garrison headquarters did not put up a tenacious resistance, so they put down their weapons.My regiment, the second battalion and the sixth company rushed from downstairs to upstairs in the building, and from upstairs to the basement.The deputy platoon leader Xing Chunfu and several soldiers first captured more than 20 enemy staff officers in a basement, and then captured 7 senior officers in the basement of the Japanese shrine "Martyr's Shrine" built by the Japanese occupation forces. Among them were Chen Changjie, his lieutenant general and deputy commander Qiu Zongding, major general Gao Can Yang Wei, and Cheng Zijian, the inspector sent by Chiang Kai-shek from Nanjing.They and about 1,000 other officers and soldiers of the captured garrison headquarters were all gathered in the yard, and a "surrender across the board" came.At this time, Zhu Qingxu, the deputy battalion commander of the Second Battalion, found the enemy's telephone operators and telegraph operators from among the prisoners, and asked them to check the equipment as much as possible, connect the lines, and then asked Chen Changjie to issue surrender orders to the various subordinate units that might be in contact at that time. Chen Changjie had no choice but to agree.So, under the gunpoint of our soldiers, Chen Changjie gave his last order to his troops. It was 1:30 pm on the 15th when Xing Chunfu and others escorted Chen Changjie out of the security headquarters building. Chen Changjie was quickly taken to the temporary command post of the First Division and First Division.When Commander Li Tianyou and Political Commissar Liang Biye came to the First Division, the First Division reported to them that Chen Changjie had been detained.Li Tianyou said to Liang Biye: "Chen Changjie and I have acquaintances once, let's go and see first." It turned out that in the summer of 1938, on the anti-Japanese battlefield in Shanxi, before the battle in Wucheng Town in southwestern Shanxi, he was in charge of the 685th Regiment of the Eighth Route Army. In order to cooperate with the Kuomintang troops, Li Tianyou and Yang Dezhi, the head of the 686th Regiment, once invited Chen Changjie, who was then the commander of the 61st Army of the Jin Army, to have a meal at Yang Dezhi's regiment headquarters.Li Tianyou asked Chen Changjie: "Do you still know me?" Chen Changjie didn't reply, maybe he didn't know me.Li Tianyou asked again: "Why didn't you order the troops to disarm and surrender?" Chen Changjie spoke, and he said the truth: "I have been in contact with various troops since four or five o'clock in the morning, but I can't get in touch." However, his telephone connection with Peiping was a relatively advanced wireless telephone at that time, so he has been in contact with Li Shijie, chief of staff of the North China "Suppression General" headquarters in Peiping, asking Fu Zuoyi to find a way to rescue him.Li Shijie always followed Fu Zuoyi's confession, and always asked him to try to recover the lost ground and stick to it.Fu Zuoyi asked Chen Changjie to stick to it while he was negotiating peace with the People's Liberation Army. In fact, it was entirely to use Tianjin, which was still able to hold on, to give him some bargaining chips in his negotiations.While Chen Changjie was completely loyal to Fu Zuoyi's principles, he stubbornly resisted to the end and became a prisoner.Because of this, on the night of January 14, Fu Zuoyi stayed up all night, listening to reports on the battle in Tianjin. At around 7 a.m. on the 15th, Chen Changjie and Fu Zuoyi had a direct conversation. When Fu Zuoyi knew that the city defenses of Tianjin had been completely breached by the People's Liberation Army and that Tianjin was about to be captured by the People's Liberation Army, he said to Chen Changjie, "Let's talk about peace!" , At this time, it is completely the end of the world, and it is too late.Before the phone call between Chen Changjie and Fu Zuoyi was over, our army had already rushed into the basement where Chen Changjie was.At this time, Chen Changjie was holding a microphone and saying, "The People's Liberation Army is not far away from me, and they are fighting fiercely with the guards." The last sentence was "They are coming in..." Fu Zuoyi should have heard the last words clearly. The troops of the 27th Division of the Nine Columns were the first to attack the Tianjin Municipal Government.The guard there was a pistol company.After shouting, the pistol did not even fire a single shot, and he surrendered.Upstairs, Du Jianshi, the mayor of Tianjin, came out and surrendered himself to our army after the pistol company surrendered. At the same time, the Seventh Regiment of the Three Divisions of the First Column invaded the French Concession. After fierce fighting, they captured the headquarters of the 86th Army of the Kuomintang in Xiaobailou. Army commander Lin Weichou was there (after Lin Weichou went to Chen Changjie for a meeting, the Jintangqiao area was occupied by our army, and he could no longer return to his own army, so he had to come to the headquarters of the Eighty-sixth Army) , and the two of them became captives together there. The end time of the Tianjin siege was 3 pm on the 15th.The enemy's 130,000 defenders were wiped out by me, and the total casualties of our army were only about 20,000. On January 7, 1949, Lin Biao said in a telegram to the Central Military Commission that "the whole battle to attack Tianjin should be resolved quickly." On January 14, the day when the siege of Tianjin started, Lin Biao told Deng Baoshan that it would only take three days to attack Tianjin.Now, Tianjin has been defeated.It actually took only 29 hours.