Chapter 1 Marine Division

"China has risen from their victory to become a world power that can no longer be underestimated. If the Chinese had not held their hands on the Qingchang battlefield in November 1950, the course of world history would have been different since then. ”

Excerpt from "The Battle of the Qing Chang" by Dr. Robert O'Neill, a strategist at the University of Oxford, UK.

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In late November 1950, although winter had just begun, the Gaima Plateau in northern Korea was already covered with ice and snow. The cold Siberian wind blowing across the Yalu River from northeast China is constantly whistling on this land, lifting the layers of misty snow and fog on the mountain peaks, and even more slaughtering, a haze pouring on this land that has already contained too much gunpowder smoke and war.

As soon as he walked out of his command post, Smith, the commander of the 1st Marine Division of the US Army, couldn't help but shiver fiercely. He couldn't help but curse the damn weather in his mouth, if he remembered correctly, today's temperature, even during the day, was minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. But looking at the energetic young men in his troops, Division Commander Smith still couldn't help but show a smile on his face.

The 1st Marine Division, but the pride of all American[***] people! The 1st Marine Division participated in the most brutal battle of Kuah Island in the Pacific War, and even shined in the First Battle of Okinawa. These young men fought bloody battles with the elite of the Japanese army who believed in the spirit of bushido and fought desperately, and they were invincible.

In the Pacific War, the 1st Marine Division continued to emerge dazzling combat heroes, and when the soldiers of the 1st Marine Division attacked the pillbox erected by the Chinese army on the top of the mountain, they used their hands to hold the grenade into the Japanese army's bunker and blast it, so as to prevent the soldiers in the pillbox from pushing out the grenade. Because of this achievement, after the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the 1st Marine Division became the first U.S. team to receive the "Outstanding Unit" award issued in the name of the president. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a heroic army that continues to grow in the flames of war!

The most important thing is that the current soldiers of this unit, including the members of the reservists, are almost all volunteers who have voluntarily enlisted in the army, and many of them have participated in World War II, have rich combat experience, and have "liked" to go to war. Because of this, the 1st Marine Division became the ace of the US army on the Korean battlefield and won the glory of being the first to land at Incheon.

This force even has an indispensable relationship with China.

In 1900, among the Eight-Nation Allied Forces that invaded Yanjing City and burned the Old Summer Palace, there was the 1st Marine Division; After the end of World War II in 1945, with the attitude of victors, American GIs who swaggered into Yanjing, Tianjin, Qingdao and other Chinese cities also had them; In 1946, the "Shen Chong Incident" in Yanjing that forcibly annihilated female students of Peking University was also news created by several officers and soldiers of the First Marine Division.

At this time, although the self-proclaimed "Volunteer Army" squadron had already appeared on the Korean battlefield and carried out a head-on attack on the United Nations troops, after analysis, military experts still believed that China was only a symbolic dispatch of troops, and General MacArthur, the supreme commander on the Korean battlefield, even hoped that China would send troops. Throughout China's modern history, every negotiation, every war between countries, has ended in China's defeat, in the minds of the Western powers, China is synonymous with slavery, weakness, selfishness, and scatteredness, and General MacArthur, even in public, threw down his own declaration: "Red China wants to send troops to Korea, that's better!" I could just send them back to the Stone Age! ”

General MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the [***] team, who had already judged that it was impossible for the [***] squadron to intervene on a large scale, out of his "absolute knowledge" of the Chinese, even put forward the slogan "Let the soldiers go home for Christmas". Under these circumstances, General Almond, the commander of the Korean Eastern Front, asked Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, to lead his troops to boldly advance north along Changjin Lake, quickly reach the Jiangjie, and join the Eighth Army on the Western Front.

Every day, Division Commander Smith receives a simple and direct order from General Almond: "1st Marine Division, attack, attack north at full speed!" ”

The fifty-seven-year-old Commander Smith, who served at the U.S. Embassy in Paris as a young man, had an experience that gave him an elegant scholarly aura, coupled with his tall and not overly majestic body, and the gentle smile that always rose on his face, making him always an easy object of favor for female surnames. He has participated in two world wars and can be called a hero of great merit, and in the 1st Marine Division, Commander Smith is a hero admired by everyone. Looking at Division Commander Smith from the perspective of a Chinese, he can undoubtedly be called a Confucian general.

Division Commander Smith is an excellent professional soldier, and it is his duty to obey orders, but after receiving the order of Commander Almond to attack with all his might, Division Commander Smith issued this order to his subordinates: "Slow down the pace of advance, and then return to the normal offensive speed after we and other troops really meet, and every day before the attack, we must determine the attack target and distance in advance, so as to ensure that the troops can maintain the maximum reaction and counterattack force when facing a surprise attack!" ”

The reason is simple, Division Commander Smith did not dare to risk the lives of his own 25,000 soldiers!

If possible, Division Commander Smith would have personally pulled General Almond out of the warm room with the fireplace, so that he could feel the biting Siberian cold on the Gaima Plateau, and let him open his eyes to see clearly the situation facing the 1st Marine Division

There is only one simple road with very complicated terrain on the more than 100-kilometer road between Xingnan Port and Changjin Lake, which is a narrow road paved with a mixture of mud and gravel, which zigzags through the mountainous areas and can only barely be regarded as a road. Especially in the mountainous area, the nearly 80 kilometers of road are so narrow that only one car can pass, and it is on the mountainside, next to the abrupt rocks on one side and a steep abyss on the other! All troops and supplies had to pass through this road, so that the whole marching army would drag on for a long time, and in order to ensure the smooth flow of this lifeline, garrisons had to be deployed at several important points, which would inevitably lead to the dispersion of troops, and once they were divided and surrounded, they would be easily broken by each one.

Moreover, the weather was so cold that the car could not be started at night, and the first thing the soldiers did every morning when they climbed out of their sleeping bags was to carefully roast their carbines on portable military kerosene stoves. This kind of gun has a good rate of fire, melee firepower suppression, and compared with those enemies with miscellaneous equipment, they occupy an absolute firepower advantage, but in the same way, it is because there are too many parts of firearms, and when the US military orders weapons from arms dealers, it does not take into account that it will invest a large number of ground troops in such a cold environment, and does not put forward too many requirements for the low temperature resistance of firearms, so some parts of these weapons have failed after a night of freezing. If not handled carefully, it is likely that in battle, these powerful and complex carbines will become a burning stick with no real meaning.

When the soldiers finally got the carbine hot and regained their effectiveness, they would pair compressed biscuits with chocolate and a toffee toffee to make a steaming soup. Just as the soup was boiling, these soldiers, under the leadership of their commanders, would take off their clothes, and one by one they would stand trembling in the cold wind like shrimp about to be thrown into a frying pan, grabbing a large amount of snow under their feet and smearing it on their bodies. According to some special forces instructors who are proficient in polar warfare, taking a "snow bath" every morning can not only clean the soldiers' bodies, wash away the sticky and greasy things on their bodies, help them save their physical strength, but also effectively prevent frostbite.

Even if they have sufficient cold protection tools, they can receive three Class B and three Class M canned food from the quartermaster every day, as well as a high-calorie and high-protein soup cooked by themselves, and they have to take a "snow bath" at least once a day, but every day there are still soldiers whose hands or feet are frostbitten and lose their combat capability.

Division Commander Smith, who has fought two world wars and has rich experience in actual combat, clearly understands that the first thing to fight in this harsh environment is logistics supply. The logistics supply line that cannot ensure a smooth flow is deep alone, and once it is counterattacked by the full force of the [***] team, the 1st Marine Division is likely to be on the Gaima Plateau and suffer Waterloo!

It was because of this concern that Division Commander Smith always put considerable energy into logistics and supply when the 1st Marine Division was advancing on its back...... Roads were rebuilt in Nidhuri to allow the passage of M-26 Pershing tanks and an airfield for small reconnaissance aircraft to take off. On 19 November, Division Commander Smith even gambled on the future of his own soldiers by sending an engineer unit to build a military airfield with five large bulldozers and set up a supply depot to store a large amount of military supplies in a small town called Xiajieyuli.

In the face of Division Commander Smith's disobedience to the general's orders again and again, and in the face of an elite ace unit like the 1st Marine Division, which was led by an old sheep and crawled forward at the speed of a snail, General Almond, the commander of the 10th Army, finally couldn't help it.

General Almond is a general of the U.S. Army, and Division Commander Smith is the division commander of the Navy. Since the telex order was invalid, the order sent by the staff officer to the division commander Smith was invalid, and the direct order was invalid by telephone, General Almond simply flew to the headquarters of the 1st Marine Division in a helicopter himself.

"I'm also a soldier, and I know exactly how dangerous the road ahead of your 1st Marine Division is, and I know that Mr. Smith is so careful because you care about the awesome boys in your unit. But I must say, Mr. Smith, you are really too cautious, so cautious that you have lost the bravery and strength of a soldier! Even has cautiously lost the judgment of a commander, who should be! ”

After walking into the division headquarters, the two commanders were left in the room and began to talk secretly, General Almond's anger finally broke out, he pointed to the battle map tiled by Division Commander Smith on the command table, and said: "I know that the environment here is very harsh, you have soldiers frostbitten every day, and everyone hopes to be able to go home for a happy Christmas, but Mr. Smith have you thought about it, with our equipment and supply status, the Air Force is airdropping a large number of supplies every day, and we, the commanders, have to face the situation of non-combat attrition." , not to mention those [***] teams? Division Commander Smith, please take a look at their long supply lines, their lack of cars, and the frequent bombardment of railway lines by our air force, not to mention basic cold supplies, even food, medicine, and ammunition, they can't guarantee them. Under such circumstances, how could they be lurking in the pathway ahead of you in such a terrible situation? ”

"Also," General Almond said this, and took a hard breath before continuing: "The 1st Marine Division is your unit, and you should clearly know the combat strength of this ace unit. How many troops do you think you need to mobilize with the peasants, with the weapons in their hands that are at most World War I-level, and their dull tactical thinking, in order to eat your 1st Marine Division?! ”

In the face of General Almond's rebuke, Division Commander Smith was silent, General Almond was right, with the equipment and supply situation of the [***] squadron, it was necessary to mobilize at least five times more troops before it could eat such a hard bone as the 1st Marine Division. In other words, the Chinese troops must at least invest a large corps of more than 100,000 men before they can launch a campaign to annihilate the 1st Marine Division.

But in common sense, this is impossible.

Division Commander Smith clearly knew that there was no eye-catching mark on the uniforms, and the equipment of the squadron called itself by the name "Volunteer Army".

Those squadrons, their logistical supply capabilities, even did not reach the level of the First World War, the color of their uniforms looked like rocks, in the icy and snowy Gaima Plain, if their large troops acted during the day, this strong visual contrast could make those bomber pilots easily find targets in the air.

Division Commander Smith once saw a photo of the squadron taken by an aerial reconnaissance plane, which was a unit that had not even been fully equipped with warm cotton caps, and a considerable number of soldiers could only wrap military quilts around their heads, and the shoes they wore were ...... Division Commander Smith really couldn't imagine how these Chinese wearing such thin rubber-soled shoes would survive on the ice and snow at night when the temperature would reach minus 30 degrees Celsius at night if there were really troops waiting in front to ambush their first army division.

According to the prediction of the intelligence department, by tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the minimum temperature in this ice and snow plain may reach minus 40 degrees! No matter how weird the people are, they are also people, they lack the necessary warm equipment, they dare not light a large number of open fires in order to lurk, and they even wear thin rubber shoes on their feet, in this case, as long as they lie on the ground for more than two hours, it is impossible for them to use their own strength to stand up again, and it is even more impossible for them to support such a cold and terrible winter night!

But I don't know why, looking at the combat map on the table, looking at the reconnaissance plane that has just been transmitted back, near the Yalu River, there is no reconnaissance information on the activities of the Chinese army, and looking at Commander Almond who has personally run to the front line to supervise the battle, Smith just felt that his eyelids were constantly beating, and he just felt that his chest was tight.

People who have never been on the battlefield will never understand that a person like Commander Smith, who has experienced a hundred battles and danced with death again and again, is an instinctive reaction to danger that is close to intuition, slowly cultivated like a beast on the battlefield.

If there are really tens of thousands of professional soldiers who have grown up step by step through the war, lurking in a certain place on the Gaimaping Plateau, quietly waiting for their 1st Marine Division to step into the death trap that has been prepared long ago, then in the long wait, contrary to this ice and snow world, it is the murderous aura of these soldiers that is suppressed to the limit, blazing like a flame, and has risen to the top!

The reason why Division Commander Smith did not hesitate to disobey the general's order, and even gambled on his military honor and future, to build an airport and a material warehouse in Jieyu was because he clearly felt that in front of him, there was an increasingly depressed danger! Division Commander Smith understands better that the momentum of an army has been forcibly suppressed again and again, suppressed to the limit, and finally got a catharsis point on the battlefield, and what bloomed in those soldiers was the craziest torrent of iron and blood!

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