Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Dilemma

After the Lianghekou meeting, according to the central resolution, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Guotao, and Wang Jiaxiang worked together to quickly draw up the "Songpan Battle Plan", which was distributed to the first and fourth front armies on June 29, 1935. The deployment of the campaign is as follows: the main force of the Red Army is divided into three groups. Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai lead the 16 regiments of the Red Front Army as the Left Army; Xu Qianqian leads the 10 regiments of the Red Fourth Front Army as the Middle Army; .The three armies marched side by side, preparing to concentrate their superior forces to seize Songpan, an important military town in northwestern Sichuan, and control the road leading to Gannan.Wang Shusheng, deputy commander-in-chief of the Fourth Red Army, and He Wei, commander of the 9th Red Army, respectively led the Minjiang Detachment and the Maogong Detachment to cover the safety of the Red Army's rear.Zhou Chunquan, director of the General Political Department of the Red Fourth Front Army, led the garrison units to be responsible for the security work of the central and front army headquarters in Zhuokeji, Aba and other places.

As soon as the Red Army started to move, some unexpected difficulties and bad luck came.They do not come from the Kuomintang and Sichuan warlords, but from the natural geographical environment of the northwestern plateau of Sichuan and the Tibetan aborigines. The natural landforms in Northwest Sichuan are very complex. The Minshan, Qionglai and Daxue Mountains in the Song, Li and Mao areas tower into the sky, densely covered with primeval forests, and deep and fast-flowing river valleys.Today the beautiful natural scenery here attracts many tourists, but at that time it brought great difficulties to the Red Army on the Long March.The mountains are high and the roads are dangerous, and it is very difficult for the troops to move forward.Because it is located in an alpine region with an altitude of 3,500-4,000 meters, the population is sparsely populated, and the only food crops are barley and barley, and the yield is very low.Now a hundred thousand Red Army troops have come to this desolate area. What they eat and where to find enough food and supplies immediately become serious problems.

This area has been inhabited by Tibetans for generations.Their history can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century AD.At that time, their ancestors, the Tubo people, migrated here from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and fought many times with the Tang Dynasty army in order to compete for the wealth of the Chengdu Plain.The site of Jiangwei City built by Prime Minister Li Deyu of the Tang Dynasty still stands on the mountainside in Maowen.Since the Republic of China, the warlords in Sichuan have expropriated and extorted the Tibetans in Sichuan and Tibet, arousing the hatred of the Han people among the Tibetans.Closeness and ignorance make chieftains and living Buddhas the supreme masters of poor Tibetans, and the society here is still in the era of slavery and feudalism.The Red Army came here suddenly, breaking the silence in the mountains.But what they brought to Tibetans was not surprise, but fear.

Not long after the Red Fourth Front Army arrived here, Xu Xiangqian felt keenly: "The conditions here are far from those in Tongnanba, and the work of mobilizing the masses is full of difficulties. One is the language barrier and there are great obstacles. The other is that the ethnic barriers formed in history are very deep. It is not easy to eliminate in a short period of time. Third, the land is vast and sparsely populated. If you walk on a mountain road for more than a hundred miles, you will often not see a stockade. Fourth, a small number of upper-level reactionary chieftains and lamas use their ruling power and influence to secretly carry out sabotage activities. , and even openly organize counter-revolutionary armed forces.”

The action against the Communist Party and the Red Army was jointly planned by local Tibetan chieftains and religious elites.After the Red Army entered Northwest Sichuan, the Kuomintang army was unable to send a large army to pursue them due to the difficulties in high mountains and high mountains, transportation and logistical supplies, so they used Tibetan religious elites and local chieftains to conduct reactionary propaganda to the Tibetan masses.At that time, although the religious leaders and chieftains in Qinghai and western Sichuan had conflicts with the Kuomintang warlords, they had the same stand against the Communist Party and the Red Army. On June 9, 1935, Chiang Kai-shek summoned the exiled Chamdo Nona Living Buddha in Chengdu and named him "Xikang Consolation Envoy".This move was ridiculed by local reporters as "do not burn incense when you are free, but rush to hug Buddha's feet".But Nona himself is grateful and willing to do his best. On June 22, Nona published the "Communication to the Tibetans in Kangkang", cursing the Communist Party for "killing people and setting fires, looting and raping, and destroying all religions."Tibetan monks should "all be single-minded and single-minded, so as to fight to the death with the bandits, and in any case, do not allow them to go beyond the well-being."These propagandas undoubtedly have great deceptive and appealing power to those Tibetan people who believe in Lamaism.

After the first Red Army and the Fourth Army joined forces, the Fourth Army, led by Fu Zhong, marched towards the Matang and Kangmao Temple areas in the northeast of Zhuo Keji. At Kangmao Temple, they encountered monks and cavalry led by Ritou Lama, and the two sides exchanged fierce fire.Fu Zhong captured two prisoners for interrogation. After learning about the situation, he immediately wrote a written report to Zhang Guotao.The report said: "The Ritou Lama has led a large number of reactionaries, and has gone to the grassland. Now only a few people have disappeared in the old forest on the left mountain of Kangmao Temple, in an attempt to continue to disturb....According to the confession of the captured reactionaries, they listened to It is said that the blackwater savages are coming, and those who do not run will be killed, so they run. This is completely a reactionary way of using the public's tone to cover up their own words. Otherwise, they would not be ready to fight me openly. In short, the Zagunao incident the day before yesterday was entirely due to the conspiratorial collusion between the Lama Temple in the area, the Luhua, the Heishui reactionary, and the local officials of the Fan nationality in Kaoshangou. Therefore, the day before yesterday, our Political Department and the Second Independent Division went all the way to the big and small When fighting against the revolution in Gougou and Mucungou, they captured three Fan people, who came back from Zagunao to Heishui and Zuoergou for the reaction.” Fu Zhong sent a message to the headquarters: the Tibetan religious upper class and chieftain planned organized The campaign against the Red Army had already begun.

The original plan of the Red Army was to win the support of the Tibetan people according to the old method of attacking local tyrants and dividing the land in the Soviet area.Then raise food and fund, and prepare materials for going north.However, everything in reality puzzled the Red Army soldiers. Wherever they went, the Tibetans fled without knowing where to go, and all the food and belongings at home were hidden.Those who did not escape were concentrated in the Lama Temple, armed with guns, and the Red Army was not allowed to approach.This made all previous policies and measures of the Red Army ineffective.However, food must be raised, which is the most important matter related to the life and death of every Red Army soldier.

The General Political Department of the Red Army issued the "Notice on Collecting Grain" in Lianghekou on June 25. The policy boundaries are still very strict.It stipulates: "A. When buying grain, we must do a good job of publicizing it to the masses, so that the masses will voluntarily sell part of their own grain to the Red Army, and help the Red Army to collect grain. B. When buying grain, we must give C. The masses have only a small amount of food for themselves, and they should not be forced to buy it without their own consent. ... E. When the masses flee and are not at home, they must go with the nearby masses to buy their grain. And pay the price to the people in the neighborhood, and leave a letter to the people who fled.” A week later, the General Political Department found that the original policy would not work at all.Not only did all the Tibetans flee, but they also fortified the wall and cleared the country.If the old policy is still followed, the Red Army will soon run out of food and even starve to death.The serious situation came so quickly that the General Political Department issued a stern order on July 3.He pointed out: "At present we are at the juncture of the battle to seize Songpan, Chihua, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. In order to achieve this historical task, overcoming the food difficulties currently in front of us is a task of serious strategic significance. It is estimated that the amount of food on the way forward It is even more difficult. The Hehu enemy has collected all the grain near Songpan, and the Hefan people have to use all their strength to overcome the food difficulty. The political departments of each army must mobilize the company to use all means, such as confiscating, searching the mountains, and buying Waiting to collect food."

In this vast and desolate land, a struggle for food and survival begins. The first and fourth front armies did not leave complete records of the specific process of the Red Army collecting grain in Tibetan areas.After the Long March of the Second Red Army, Comrade Gan Siqi, Director of the Political Department of the Front Army, wrote a detailed "Summary Report on the Political Work of the Second and Sixth Army's Long March" to the Central Committee.Talking about the situation and countermeasures when raising food in Tibetan areas, he said: To solve the problem of food supply in Fan District, we feel that the lack of food in Fan District, the hiding of food by the people, and the fleeing of the people in the mountains make us feel very threatened in terms of food supply.The way we search for food is as follows:

——Soushan: Most of the food for the masses and the chieftain lamas has long been hidden in the mountains, and the cattle and sheep have long since moved away.In order to solve the problem of supplies, we had to search mountains.Naturally, we searched the mountains in principle to investigate the grain or cattle farms of the chieftains, and confiscated part of them, so as not to infringe the interests of the masses as much as possible.But in fact, it is very difficult to see the masses on the mountain, and it is impossible to investigate and distinguish them clearly. Sometimes the Fanmin armed forces cover these grain or cattle farms, and after we shoot them, they have already fled, and we can’t figure out who they belong to. Mountain time violates the interests of the masses.

——Digging cellars: A lot of food in Fan District is buried in houses, soil, walls, and remote places. Due to food shortages, we dug cellars as soon as we arrived at the campsite, and we found a lot of food. ——Loan notes: We don't know who owns the food we get from searching mountains and digging cellars, and we can't hand over the money to anyone.When we first entered the Fan District, if the people did not eat his food at home, some would put the money in the sutra hall and write a note to the owner, and some would hand it to a local lama.As a result, the troops advanced first and then advanced, and some Fanmin took the opportunity to search randomly after leaving in the front echelon.In fact, we don’t know whether the money belongs to the owner of the family, so we issued a loan certificate by the Ministry of Supply (the content is: because the owner has escaped when picking up the grain, it is inconvenient to hand over the money to anyone, and the price is set according to the grain eaten. Explain that if you encounter any Red Army in the future, you can take this coupon to pick up the money), and leave this coupon when you search mountains and dig cellars to obtain food if there is no owner. ——Purchasing: If the masses or lamas are at home, we usually buy their food with money.In Gaduo Monastery, we first obtained the permission of the housekeeper Lama, conducted an inventory in the monastery, and convened a meeting of lamas, explained the reasons for purchasing from them, obtained their consent, mobilized them to help concentrate, and gave money according to the price. ——Happy Donation: After advocating to the Lama Temple, the Lama Temple has voluntary donations. (such as Zhongdian, Baiyu, Gaduo Temple) ——Compensation price: After collecting food, some people came back voluntarily, and some came back because of propaganda.After the masses came back, they would call a tea party, publicize and encourage them through the general affairs, and compensate them part of the money, so that the masses were happy. (such as in Dangcun, Zhongzan) ——Request for compensation: When we were in Rinpo Temple, the Lama of the temple resisted tenaciously. We killed and injured several people and asked him for compensation (how much food), but he sent some. It should be pointed out that the Second Red Army was the last to pass through the Tibetan area. At this time, after a period of understanding, the attitude of the Tibetans towards the Red Army has eased.Prior to this, when the First and Fourth Front Army raised food in Tibetan areas, the methods adopted by the Second Front Army were roughly similar.But their conflict with the Tibetans was far more intense.From the records and memories of various aspects in those years, we can learn what happened to the First and Fourth Front Army there. Lin Boqu, then Minister of General Supply of the Red Army, was in charge of collecting and distributing food for the entire army. After arriving in Maogong on June 18, 1935, he immediately led the food collection.On the first day, June 19, 1.7 million catties were raised.On the second day, 41,000 catties were raised.However, the good times were like a flash in the pan, and the limited grain reserves in this area were quickly exhausted. On June 24, Mr. Lin only received 30 catties of wheat and 1 pig in his account; on June 25, he received 280 catties of grain and 8 catties of rice.For a whole month after that, there was no food entry in Mr. Lin's diary! (It is possible that each army is raising food by itself.) In his diary on July 31, Mr. Lin anxiously wrote: "When raising food and distributing food, it is extremely tense." Food is not enough, but people have to eat every day.The 100,000 Red Army faced a serious threat of starvation.No one wanted to sit still, and all the troops took action to search for food. The Red First Army under the command of Lin Biao and Nie Rongzhen was the vanguard, and Xiao Feng was the secretary of the party branch of the army directly under the army. On June 26, when they started marching northward, the army was short of food. "Soldiers and cadres can't eat enough, and their legs have no strength." On June 29, the troops marched to Somo. "The village here is relatively large, with more than 200 households, and the barley is growing well. The troops rest in place and collect food." But "the Tibetans hid and fled, and hid all the food. Therefore, everyone actively used their brains to find ways to obtain food. The chief of the artillery company led the soldiers to dig a cellar and found hundreds of catties of bacon and a lot of food. The owner was not there, so he left an IOU.”Word spread, and companies followed suit. After camping at Kangmao Temple on July 2, "each unit raised grain separately. The engineers and soldiers dug the cellar and got more than 1,000 catties of grain." The food in the village was quickly collected, and the Red Army soldiers split up and moved around, looking for Tibetans and food hiding in the wild.In Poluozi, one day, Xiao Feng took his guards to the green hills dozens of miles away to look for food. "On the way, halfway up the hill, I suddenly saw four adults and one child running out of the cave, desperately running down the mountain in darkness. We walked into the cave and saw four bags of barley. We wrote an IOU: The Red Army borrowed the four sacks of highland barley that you hid, and repaid them double after the revolution was victorious. I was really sad to have borrowed the people’s food, but there was no other way.” The Red Army under the command of Peng Dehuai lived in Yimian for more than ten days, and all the Tibetans ran away.The highland barley in the field was very limited, not enough for the Red Army to eat for a few days.Wang Ping, who was the head of the 11th regiment at the time, recalled: "The troops had no food to eat, so they had to slaughter the pigs, dogs, cattle and sheep left by the Tibetans. The head of the Peng (Dehuai) army said: 'When I heard the barking of these animals, I The heart beats. Don’t kill them, and the troops have no food. It’s really embarrassing.” Tibetans sometimes run down the mountain at night and shout outside the garrison: “Red Army, when are you leaving? If you don’t leave, take the food If we eat up, we will starve to death!' Listening to these shouts is even more heart-wrenching. But in a desperate situation, we have to do this against our will." German adviser Li De was in action with the Red Front Army at that time.He described in his memoirs: "As for our relationship with the local people, it was even worse than the march from Luding to Maogong. Strictly speaking, it has almost nothing to do with it. If you can meet some residents, although almost all of them are from western Sichuan, then there is no trace of people in the north of Maogong. The villages and courtyards have been abandoned, the stored grain has been collected and removed, and the livestock have been driven away. There was nothing to buy or receive from the landowners. We had to take everything we found, even the last grain, whether people wanted it or not, and had to send requisitions into the mountains one after another, To hunt the wandering stock. The farther north we go, the worse the feeding situation becomes." The soldiers of the Fourth Red Front Army fixed their eyes on the watchtowers and Lama Temples of the Tibetan Chieftain.These huge and resplendent buildings form a huge contrast with the dilapidated small houses of the poor in the wilderness.In the eyes of Tibetans, Tusi Palace and Lama Temple are symbols of sacredness and inviolability.In the eyes of the Red Army soldiers, all the wealth there was exploited and belonged to the local tyrants who should be beaten.Along the way, these chieftain palaces and lama temples brought two major benefits to the Red Army: first, the houses were large enough to serve as camps for thousands of Red Army soldiers; Xiao Yongzheng, the head of the food and fodder section of the Supply Department of the Red 30th Army, once had a legendary experience.When the troops were about to arrive at Maoergai, Lin Boqu, the Minister of General Supply, issued a 600,000-jin grain receipt and asked him to take a transport team to a certain place to collect grain.He led the grain transportation team of each division with a total of 2,000 people, and arrived at the designated place excitedly, but he did not expect that the grain had already been collected by the vanguard.Xiao Yongzheng was in a hurry to get angry. This is related to the survival of an army, and the responsibility is heavy.They were led by the comrades of the First Army to rest in a huge chieftain's residence. This tall stone building built against the mountain can accommodate thousands of people.Xiao Yongzheng was still worrying about food, suddenly, a miracle happened.He recalled: "Just as I was going upstairs, the kid who was in charge of my horse hurriedly ran up from downstairs and said to me: I found a hole downstairs, it was dark, and I couldn't see the bottom at a glance, it seemed like a bottomless pit." The little ghost and I went downstairs to have a look. It turned out that there was a gap between the stone wall and the stone floor. At first glance, it was pitch black and bottomless. Going down a few feet deep, I smelled the smell of grain very sensitively. I guessed in my heart that this must be a big grain cellar. But the little devil had sharp eyes and saw what was inside, and he exclaimed: "Grain! Grain! So much food!" Lots of food!' We held up the torch to take a picture, and it turned out to be a piece of golden yellow, all high-quality barley. The little ghost rolled over happily on the 'Mai Hai'. Passing through the 'Mai Hai', another cellar appeared. Inside were neatly stacked whole cured pigs, cured sheep, whole pieces of cured pork and butter, and a lot of cloth.” At that time, everyone was excited, as if Ali Baba had discovered the forty thieves treasure.As a result, all the chieftain's storage was removed by the Red Army. In this vast and desolate Tibetan area in northwest Sichuan, food is life.Edgar Snow described: Under the circumstances at that time, "The Red Army was forced to fight for a few livestock except for guns. Mao Zedong told me that there was a saying at the time: 'To buy a sheep, you have to ride a Human lives.' They cut highland barley, harvested sugar beets, radishes and other vegetables from the Tibetan fields. They crossed the grasslands in such a situation of extreme lack of supplies. 'This is the only foreign debt we owe,' Mao Zedong said humorously : 'One day we must repay the Tibetans for what we had to take from them.'” The actions of the Red Army to raise food sharply deteriorated the already tense ethnic relations, and the conflicts and contradictions escalated into armed confrontation and war.Under the instigation and command of Nona Living Buddha and the chieftain, the Tibetans attacked and attacked the Red Army in various ways.Some formed cavalry teams and fought mobile on the grasslands; some hid in the mountains and forests and sniped at the Red Army; On July 2, Tong Xiaopeng followed the Red First Army from Zhuokeji to Songpan.The first thing to do in the march is to find a guide, but wherever you go, the village is empty.We had no choice but to follow the footsteps of the vanguard.Suddenly, "I saw a large snow-capped mountain in front of me. When I saw the vanguard stepping through the snow, everyone said strangely: Why did I know about climbing the small snow mountain before, but I don't know about climbing the big snow mountain today?" All the people fled, and there was no way to investigate the route."After crossing the snow-capped mountains with difficulty, I was originally scheduled to camp in a village called Chaga. "Because the bridge in front was destroyed by Tibetans, we met the leader and turned back on the way. We also turned back up the mountain and camped in Cangde." The water washes away, so there is no way to cross without a bridge - author's note) I only walked 30 miles this day. On July 3, they advanced from Maoergai to Poluozi. "We hadn't gone ten miles before we set off, but the Tibetans made trouble on the way, so we had to stop fighting him, and after about an hour of fighting, we beat him back. We were wounded by him, including two horses. The front troops hadn't reached Poluozi yet. Because the bridge near Poluozi was torn down by the Tibetans and they were building a bridge, we had to camp on the way. The long-awaited Poluozi has not yet arrived.” Such a march is really annoying. Xiao Feng's troops set off from Somo on June 30. "There are virgin forests on both sides of the mountain road in this area. There are no Tibetans in sight, only the shouts of 'Ya Luo, Ya Luo! At that time, he was killed by the reactionary armed forces of the Tibetan leaders." "The reactionary armed forces of the chieftains along the way often hid in the woods and shot coldly, attacking and capturing the sporadic personnel who fell behind and carried out tasks. According to statistics, there are two More than a dozen people were arrested and killed." The scale of Tibetan armed attacks became larger and larger. On August 3, in the Maoergai area, the 7th Company of the 3rd Regiment of the 1st Legion "put out guards in the Shangdagushan Gorge and was attacked by local reactionary armed forces. Except for one correspondent who escaped, the remaining 65 comrades were all killed."From Zunyi to here, on the one hand, the army has rarely suffered such a big loss.Xiao Feng himself experienced a danger. On August 5th, "I got up during my afternoon nap and went to the back of the house to relieve myself. Suddenly, three people dressed as Tibetans ran desperately from a small forest to catch me. I was so anxious that I ran away with my pants up. I God, almost got killed by them." In the confrontation between the Red Army and the Tibetans, there were also some dramatic scenes.One day, Wang Ping led the 11th regiment into a Tibetan courtyard. "All the young people in the house ran away, and only an old man in his 70s and 80s was left to look after the courtyard. The walls and doors are very thick. Whoever approaches the courtyard will be Just hitting stones on the fence. He doesn’t understand Chinese, and it’s useless for us to shout. The troops can’t find another house anymore, and they are very anxious.”Wang Ping said to Peng Dehuai: "Just give him a shot." Peng Dehuai refused to let him shoot.Wang Ping fired a shot with his pistol, trying to scare the old man, but the old man didn't move.Commander Deng shot the old man with a rifle. Unexpectedly, "the old man climbed down from the wall and opened the door. He also gave a thumbs up, which meant that he praised the commander for his accurate shooting, and he admired it."Only then did everyone understand that Tibetans "like to be strong and despise cowardice; only if you are better than him in martial arts and skills, he will obey you and listen to you." The most difficult thing was Chen Bojun's Fifth Red Army Corps. They served as rear guards together with the Ninth Army of the Fourth Front Army, stationed at Maogong, and covered the safety of the Red Army headquarters.Under the harassment of Tibetan cavalry, they fought almost every day.After a stalemate with the Tibetan army for several days, by July 11, the food for the troops in Maogong City was only enough for seven days, and they would starve if they waited any longer.Chen Bojun ordered his troops to go out to search for food and attack the stubborn enemy. On the 18th, a grain gathering team went to Sanchagou under the cover of troops and was attacked by Tibetan armed forces on Danba Road.Troop leaders failed to organize effective resistance and suffered heavy losses.Upon hearing the news, Chen Bojun "immediately ordered the head of the 39th Regiment to lead the 2nd Battalion to go for reinforcements. After the inspection, nearly 40 long and short guns were lost, and 40 people were injured or injured." A few days later, the Fifth Army and the Ninth Army moved to Fubian.The Military Commission ordered them to stick to Fubian and the Bajiao line to ensure the safety of the Red Army's rear.But the Tibetan armed forces followed closely behind, making people uncomfortable. On the morning of July 29, Chen Bojun sent two companies to collect food in the area of ​​Shiguanyin. "When they returned, they only got a few vegetables, and they lost one gun each."In the evening, news came that the 9th Army's "79th regiment was attacked by barbarians and a small number of white troops, lost its octagonal position at 21:00 p.m., and retreated to Mupo".After finding out the situation the next day, Chen Bojun ordered the 79th regiment to send the main force to recover Bajiao.However, the commander of the regiment hesitated and hesitated.The troops were sent to Bajiao the next day.As a result, due to improper command, the star anise was gained but lost again. The 79th regiment was defeated again.The continuous defeat of the Red Army shows that the Tibetan armed forces are indeed fierce and good at fighting.It was later found out that the tribe that attacked Fubian was the tribe of the Tibetan leader Diamond Diamond. On August 8, the enemy situation became more serious.The Sichuan warlord troops also came from Maogong.Fierce fighting took place on the front lines of Mupo, Shiguanyin and Panjiashan around Fubian.Despite repeated charges, the Red Army was forced to abandon Fubian and retreat to Lianghekou due to too few troops and being outnumbered. While the rearguard troops of the Red Army were repeatedly attacked and harassed by the Tibetan armed forces and the Kuomintang army, and fought and left, the vanguard of the plan to attack Songpan was not progressing smoothly. On June 29, Lin Biao, head of the Red First Army Corps commanding the left army, issued an order to advance. With Chen Geng and Zhu Rui leading the 5th and 6th regiments of the Red 1st Division as the vanguard, they moved from Kangmao Temple to Rangkou (now Hongyuan) county) and prepare to go back to Songpan.When the troops arrived at Zhongyangkou, they encountered more than a thousand Tibetan cavalry led by Maisang native officer Yang Jun Tashi, and fought fiercely.The terrain in this area is open, and the Tibetan cavalry rushed to and fro. The Red Army lacked experience in fighting cavalry and suffered relatively large losses.The Red Army failed in battle and was forced to return to Kangmao Temple.Afterwards, Chen Geng and Zhu Rui called Zhu De and Lin Biao to review the reasons for the failure and said: "The reason for this battle is that the commander's command was improper. The enemy's strength is more than double that of ours. In addition, the three-day guerrilla command of the combatants, hunger and fatigue, and failure to fight with the cavalry I have fought a war, and my mood is greatly threatened, so I cannot fight." The telegram concluded: "According to the terrain, enemy situation, roads, masses, food and other conditions, according to our current strength, it is impossible to detour to Songpan and the north of Songpan from this road. .” After receiving the report, Lin Biao quickly revised his plan, gave up the decision to detour to Songpan from Rangkou, and ordered the troops to march towards Maoergai from Heishui and Luhua instead. On July 9, the main force of the 88th Division of the 30th Army of the Red First Army and the Fourth Front Army arrived at Maoergai.This is the necessary place to attack Songpan and go north to Gannan, and it is guarded by a battalion in the south of Hu Zong of the Kuomintang Army.They occupy a lama temple in an attempt to resist.The Red Army cleared the perimeter and surrounded the Lama Temple.Li Riji, the commander of the battalion defending the enemy, was beaten by the Red Army and asked Hu Zongnan for reinforcements.Hu Zongnan sent back a telegram ordering: "After the telegram arrives, the battalion will immediately withdraw and smash the radio station. The soldiers who come back will be rewarded with 10 yuan for each foreign currency and 20 yuan for each weapon they bring back." "Destroy" and didn't translate it further, smashed the radio station, and escaped alone in the dark night and fog.Mao Ergai's defenders were all wiped out.Li Riji fled back to Songpan, and the adjutant asked him to receive a reward, but he still didn't know what reward he would receive. The Red Army occupied Maoergai and then marched towards Songpan.Since the Qing Dynasty, Songpan has been an important military town on the northwestern plateau of Sichuan, controlling the main passage leading to Shaanxi and Gansu.Songpan City is small and strong, and most of the people in the city are Han Chinese.There are mountains outside the city that can be used as commanding heights, which are easy to defend but difficult to attack.Before the arrival of the Red Army, Hu Zongnan was ordered to station in Songpan to block the Red Army from going north.The Tibetan chieftain of Aba said to Hu Zongnan's liaison personnel: "From the north of Aba's upper and lower seats, there are desolate swamps and grasslands, even birds can't fly there. Insurance can block the Communist army." So Hu Zongnan arrived after the Red Army arrived. , Rapidly shrinking troops and concentrating inside and outside Songpan City, determined to defend Songpan to the death. At this time, Xu Xiangqian led the Red Army's Central Route Army, which was struggling to advance towards Songpan.He recalled: "From Mao, Li to Songpan, the mountains are high and the forests are deep and the road is dangerous. Due to the earthquake, the rocks continue to collapse, making it extremely difficult to pass. The troops marched while eliminating the landslides. They could only pass one regiment a day. The 31st Army had a Squad encountered a landslide on the way, and all died. When our army first arrived in Northwest Sichuan, we planned to occupy Songpan, but due to the difficulty of marching, we were controlled by Hu Zongnan. The area. This time the troops were transferred up to prepare to fight Songpan again, and they did it bravely." The development of the war proved that Xu Xiangqian's worries were not unreasonable. In late July, the First Red Army Corps and the 4th Army and 30th Army of the Fourth Front Army launched an attack on Songpan's peripheral defenders from several directions, intending to take Songpan in one go.But Hu Zongnan's troops stubbornly resisted.In Yangjiaotang, west of Songpan, the First Red Army Corps fought fiercely with Hu Zongnan's Liao Ang Brigade for a day. The enemy's bunker fortifications and superior firepower made it difficult for the Red Army to advance, so they had to withdraw to Kalong.The 4th Army led by Xu Shiyou and Wang Jian'an rushed and fought hard, dealt a heavy blow to Hu Zongnan's Ding Delong brigade, and advanced to Yaniugou, a dozen miles away from Songpan City.After all, Hu Zongnan was a direct descendant of Chiang Kai-shek, so he bit the bullet and resisted not to run away.He moved the headquarters to the front mountain and sat in the town himself.Greet the follow-up troops and quickly move closer to Songpan. The Red Army attacked for ten days without making much progress.Some positions saw-saw back and forth, gaining and losing.Due to the lack of food, the combat troops had to eat one meal a day and eat two meals a day.The stomach is not full, and the charge is weak.How can we fight when we have to raise food while fighting?Moreover, since the Long March, the Red Army has lost all its heavy weapons, only rifles and a few machine guns, and they are helpless in front of the bunkers.Forced attack can only sacrifice the lives of soldiers in vain.Weighing the pros and cons, the Red Army headquarters ordered to stop attacking Songpan and withdraw the troops to Maoergai.The original Songpan battle plan was actually no longer implemented. In fact, Hu Zongnan's life was no better than that of the Red Army.After his troops arrived in Songpan, most of them were not acclimatized to the soil and water, and had diarrhea after eating barley, so they had to hire porters from Jiangyou, four hundred miles away, to transport grain to Songpan.The road is difficult and dangerous, and you have to cross Xuebaoding at an altitude of 5568 meters.Today it is a picturesque Huanglong tourist resort, but at that time it was the road to death for porters. It was difficult to climb the mountain alone, let alone carry a hundred catties?The food transported to Songpan by manpower is quite limited, and it cannot fill the stomach of this army at all.Hu Zongnan issued an order: "In the face of a national crisis, everything must be economized. From the commander to the soldiers, they only eat one meal a day and set off cannons for lunch." So the whole army tightened their belts (of course, Hu Zongnan would not really suffer) Hungry, he has biscuits, canned food).When the Red Army arrived, Hu Zongnan was also terrified and uncertain whether he could hold Songpan.Unexpectedly, after resisting for a few days, the Red Army voluntarily withdrew.Everyone in the Hu family was naturally overjoyed and breathed a sigh of relief. After the end of the Songpan Battle, the situation of the Red Army became more serious: the road to the north was blocked by Hu Zongnan, the Aba grassland to the west was a deserted wilderness, and the retreat route to the south was blocked by the Sichuan warlords.It seems that there is only one way left—to go to the desolate and mysterious Songpan Grassland.Facing a difficult situation, most people in the Red Army hope to leave as soon as possible and choose a new path suitable for survival and development.Whether to go north or south, Mao Zedong and Zhang Guotao are about to have a showdown.