Chapter 37 Five, three wars and four draws

On February 27, 1948, Lin Biao issued an order to capture Siping.Although the strength of the Siping garrison was not as strong as it was then, our army still used a fairly stable deployment in order to win: Attack the city with 3 columns plus the main artillery, use 4 columns to attack the aid of Shenyang, use 1 column to monitor the enemy in Jinzhou, and use 4 independent divisions to monitor the enemy in Jilin.The command of the siege was still handed over to Li Tianyou who failed to attack Siping in 1947. From top to bottom, our army attaches great importance to fighting Siping, but the Kuomintang does not.

After Chen Mingren was squeezed out by Chiang Kai-shek, Liu Anqi of the New Sixth Army took over the post of commander of the 71st Army.In order to consolidate the defense of Shenyang, the headquarters of the 71st Army and two divisions were stationed in Xinmin. There was only one 88th Division and some security teams in Siping City, with a strength of only 18,000. The reason why the 88th Division dared to defend Siping was because of the city defense system that once guarded Siping City. On March 2, our army surrounded Siping.After gradually clearing the periphery, a general offensive was launched on the 12th.In just one day and night, our army captured Siping and wiped out the defenders.

The Kuomintang army lost Siping, and in the Northeast, it could only shrink to 12 strongholds in three isolated areas of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou (including Shanhaiguan), and all of them were surrounded by our army. On the day when our army captured Siping, Chiang Kai-shek lost a total of 12 important strongholds including Luoyang, Lianshui, Funing, Laiwu, Ganquan, and Yijun on the national battlefield. The victory of three wars and four draws means the end of the winter offensive of the Northeast People's Liberation Army.During the battle of more than three months, our army wiped out 8 entire divisions of the enemy, wiped out a total of 156,000 enemies, captured 20 cities, and completely connected the entire Northeast Liberated Area.After the winter offensive, the area of ​​our Northeast Liberated Area has exceeded 300,000 square kilometers, accounting for 97% of the entire Northeast; it has a population of 18.6 million, accounting for 86% of the total population of the Northeast.Our Northeast People's Liberation Army has 12 columns, an artillery column, a railway column, a tank regiment, and 17 independent divisions, with a total of 53 divisions and more than 700,000 people.Including the second-line corps and local troops, the total strength has reached 1.03 million.In terms of equipment, there are already more than 1,600 light artillery pieces, 660 heavy artillery pieces, and 116 anti-aircraft guns.Therefore, even Mao Zedong said very proudly at that time: "Lin Biao is so strong now!" On the other hand, the enemy army only had 550,000 troops.The situation is very obvious. The conditions for a major counteroffensive in the Northeast and a decisive battle are ripe.

Before the decisive battle came, a famous fighting hero appeared in our Northeast People's Liberation Army. He sacrificed his young life to clear the way for the decisive battle, and injected a powerful spirit into the decisive battle. strength.He is Dong Cunrui. Dong Cunrui (1929-1948), a native of Huailai, Hebei, joined the Children's Corps in 1940 when he was only 11 years old, and joined the militia at the age of 15. In July 1945, that is, when he was 16 years old, he joined the Eighth Route Army and joined the party in March 1947. In May 1948, our 11th and 9th Columns, under the command of Cheng Zihua, wiped out the enemy forces on the passage linking Northeast China and North China in Eastern Hebei. On the 25th, Dong Cunrui served as the leader of the blasting team and participated in the battle of the 4th Division of the enemy's 13th Army that attacked Longhua, Hebei (which belonged to Rehe at the time).When more than half of Longhua had been captured by our army, the enemy's core fortification, Longhua Middle School, had dug outer trenches and built bunkers around it in advance, and was unable to capture it for a while.After the blasting team led by Dong Cunrui blew up 4 enemy gun towers and 5 bunkers in a row, the northeast corner of Longhua Middle School was opened, and the company launched a charge.At this moment, six fire snakes ejected from machine guns suddenly appeared on a bridge across the outer trench. It turned out that this was a bunker built by the enemy in advance and was not discovered by our army.

The two blasters sent by our army were unsuccessful, and the attack had to be stopped. At this time, it was only 15 minutes before the troops launched the general offensive.At this time, Dong Cunrui took the initiative to ask for a fight to blow up the bunker.Relying on his excellent skills, under the cover of firepower from his comrades-in-arms, he successfully passed through the open ground tens of meters wide by continuous jumping. Although his left leg was injured, he finally came to the bottom of the bunker.However, the moat was newly dug, and the two sides were straight, so there was no place to put the explosives.Dong Cunrui put the explosive package on the edge of the bridge twice, and it immediately fell down.Seeing the comrades-in-arms who had already launched the charge fall down row by row, Dong Cunrui resolutely raised the explosive pack above his head with his left hand, blew the fuse with his right hand, and shouted vigorously at the same time: "For the new China, comrades-in-arms, charge!" With a loud noise, the bunker was blown up, and Dong Cunrui died on the spot.This year, he was just 19 years old.Cheng Zihua, the commander of the second command post of the Northeast People's Liberation Army, witnessed this heroic scene on the front line. Afterwards, he held a grand memorial meeting and personally wrote the eulogy of "Comrade Dong Cunrui is Immortal".Later, Dong Cunrui was posthumously regarded as a model Communist Party member and a national fighting hero. The class he was in during his lifetime was named "Dong Cunrui Class", and Longhua Middle School was renamed "Dong Cunrui Middle School".After the founding of New China, Zhu De specially wrote an inscription for the monument to Martyr Dong Cunrui, "Sacrifice one's life for the country and live forever". In 2009, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China, Dong Cunrui, as a squad leader, was listed by the Party Central Committee as one of the "100 heroes and models who made outstanding contributions to the founding of New China".