Phase 3
On December 15, the day which the 12th army was wiped out, the 16th army under General Sun Yuanliang broke out from the communist encirclement on its own. Although Sun himself made safely back to Nanjing, most of his officers and soldiers were killed or captured in the process. Du Yuming decided to hold out as Chiang has ordered. As one of the ablest strategists in the nationalist army, Du Yuming came up with three different options for the current hopeless situation: first, recall the KMT troops in Xi'an and Wuhan to battle the communists; Second, to wait for reinforcements; and the third was to breakout on their own. He was disappointed when Chiang chose the riskiest one: order them to breakout. Unfortunately, there were more than one month of heavy snowfalls, which made the nationalist air forces impossible to provide air support to the besieged ground units. As food and ammunition ran out, many KMT soldiers killed their horses to feed themselves and communist forces used food to entice the nationalist forces to surrender, about 10,000 did so. On January 6, 1949, communist forces launched a general offensive on the 13th army and remnants of the 13th army withdrew to 2nd army's defense area. Four days later, communist forces captured General Du Yuming; General Qiu Qinquan shot himself while trying to break out with his troops; only General Li Mi was able to escape back to Nanjing. The 6th and 8th armies of KMT retreated to the south of Huai river, and the campaign was over.
Read more about this topic: Huaihai Campaign, The Three Phases of The Battle
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