destroyed. Meantime, units of the communist 6th Column and 8th Column cleared out the remaining nationalist defenders in their caves of Lu Mountain, completely destroying the surviving 3,000 troops of the nationalist 58th Brigade. Nationalist commander's death When the Communists sent one of Zhang Lingfu's own distant relatives (nephew) to deliver the request for his surrender, Zhang Lingfu refused and had his nephew executed. The Communists consequently sent captured nationalist prisoners of war back to continue to request Zhang Lingfu's surrender, but the nationalist commander stubbornly refused and wanted to have them executed as well. However, his subordinates convinced him not to execute anyone else, as it would only help no one but the enemy propagandists. Still, the inevitable end was near. After learning that the nationalist commander had refused to surrender, the communists organized several assault teams to charge the nationalist commander's hideout. Each communist assault team consisted of seven members, and a communist squad commander of the 2nd company of the 1st Battalion of the 69th Regiment of the 23rd Division of the East China Field Army named Ge Zhaotian (葛兆田) was among the last assault team that finally reached their destination after all previous communist assault teams were killed. After fierce battle, the communist assault team only consisted of three members led by a deputy platoon commander when they reached the outside of the cave where Zhang Lingfu's headquarters was located, and requested the nationalists inside to surrender. As others went out the cave to surrender, Zhang Lingfu emptied his last magazine of ammunition on the communists, severely wounded the communist deputy platoon commander. This enraged the communists who fired back, and as Zhang Lingfu was fleeing further into the cave, he was shot and killed along with several other nationalists by the submachine gun fire from the communist squad commander Ge Zhaotian in the assault team. The surviving nationalists shouted to the communist to stop firing because they would indeed surrender and threw out their weapons, and a total of eighty-three survivors came out hiding from the cave and nearby makeshift fortifications (mainly a waist-high stone wall constructed by the nationalists earlier). All were captured alive and led away to the prisoner-of-war camps. By this time, the communist reinforcement led by a deputy divisional commander named Dai Wenxian (戴文贤) arrived, and seeing Zhang Lingfu's cadaver, the communist deputy commander was very upset because capturing the nationalist