Chapter 12 12. Wujiang Aria

When the Red Army marched westward into Guizhou, the enemy was surprised.Chiang Kai-shek and He Jian's original plan to fight the Red Army in western Hunan fell through, and they were forced to adjust their deployment, ordering the main force of the First Corps of the "Pursuing and Suppressing" Army to pursue Shi Bing from western Hunan via Jianhe. On December 28, 1934, the unit entered Jin Ping; the main force of the Second Corps of the "Pursuing and Suppressing" Army pursued Shibing and Kaili from the Zhijiang and Hongjiang areas via Huang County (now Xinhuang) and Yuping. On the 27th, Wu Qiwei's column attacked Zhenyuan; Wang Jialie's department concentrated 6 regiments to deploy defenses in Shibing and Huangping areas to prevent the Red Army from advancing westward to Guiyang.

Based on the above-mentioned enemy situation, the Central Red Army marched westward day and night in accordance with the order of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. On December 28, 1934, the First Regiment of the First Division of the Red First Army of the Right Column occupied Yuqing, and the Second Division occupied Laohuangping (now Jiuzhou); the Third Red Army of the Left Column occupied Huangping, and the Military Commission column entered Shibing and Huangping In the middle area, the Fifth Red Army entered Taigong (Taijiang). On the 29th, the First Red Army divided into two groups and approached Wujiang River. The Second Red Division occupied Houchang (now Caotang) and Chenjiazhai on the 30th, and Mulaoping and its northeast region on the 31st.The Red First Division set off from Yuqing and arrived at Longxi, the ferry of Wujiang River on the 30th. At 15:00 on the 30th, the Field Army Command arrived at Monkey Farm.

On January 1, 1935, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting in Houchang, reaffirming the resolution of the Liping Conference on the establishment of a new base area on the Sichuan-Guizhou border, and criticized Bogu and Li De for their reluctance to cross the Wujiang River and establish a Soviet area in the Sichuan-Guizhou border area. It is still necessary to look back on the wrong idea of ​​​​joining the Red Second and Red Sixth Army; it is decided that the Red Army will cross the Wujiang River and capture Zunyi.The meeting passed the "Decision on the Action Policy of the Field Army after it Passes the Wujiang River."The decision pointed out: "After the field army has crossed the Wujiang River, the main task is to fight against Chiang Kai-shek's main force (such as Xue Yue's Second Corps or other troops), first to destroy part of him, to establish a new Soviet base area on the border of Sichuan and Guizhou, and then to move toward southern Sichuan. Development is the most central task at present." The decision also pointed out: "We must make the best use of the time we have won, so that the troops can get a short-term rest, and carry out rectification and supplementary work. Especially strengthen the political work in the company." The meeting demanded The CMC columns must continue to shrink in order to adapt to the new operational environment.The meeting also requested that the Military Commission must pay special attention to the analysis and research of the enemy's situation, the reconnaissance of the road and the enemy's situation, seize the favorable opportunity for counter-offensive, and seek to defeat the enemy one by one in mobile warfare without losing the opportunity, so as to secure victory.

At this time, the 4 divisions of Wu Qiwei's column, the enemy chasing the Red Army, had occupied Shibing, and the 4 divisions of Zhou Hunyuan's column had occupied Shidongkou, approaching the old and new Huangping, in an attempt to annihilate the Red Army in the east and south of Wujiang River.In order to implement the resolution of the Houchang meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the Central Red Army was determined to cross the Wujiang River quickly and advance to the Zunyi area before Xue Yue's troops arrived. Wujiang River is the largest river in Guizhou Province.It obliquely runs through Guizhou Province from southwest to northeast, and is also a natural barrier for all lines in northern Guizhou.

Before the Red Front Army reached the south bank of the Wujiang River, Wang Jialie had ordered that from Tangtou in Sinan County in the east to Laojunguan in Zunyi in the west, he would step up the construction of defenses at more than a dozen ferry crossings in the 100-kilometer-long river. fortifications.At this time, Hou Zhidan, another warlord in Guizhou, who was then deputy commander of the 25th Army of the Kuomintang, commander of the instructor, and commander of the Southern Sichuan Frontier Army, also transferred the two regiments of Lin Xiusheng's brigade back to the north of Wujiang.Wang Jialie also assigned the Eighth Army (Wan Shijiong Division) stationed in Meitan to be under the unified command of Hou Zhidan; the two columns of Wu Qiwei and Zhou Hunyuan, who were chasing the Red Front Army, had arrived at Shibing, Huangping, and Zhenyuan at this time. line.The Liao Lei Division of the Guangxi Army has also entered the Duyun and Dushan areas.When the Second Division of the First Red Army Corps arrived at the south bank of the Wujiang River in three routes, Hou Zhidan sent his deputy division commander, Hou Hanyou, to command the front enemy. A regiment was stationed in Zunyi and was responsible for city defense.

After Hou Zhidan returned to Zunyi, he convened a meeting with the brigade and regiment leaders.He said at the meeting: "The teacher was ordered to defend the Wujiang River. He must block the Red Army from crossing. If there is any dereliction of duty, the military law will follow." Or they dare not attack the Wujiang River, and may take other routes.” However, he still appointed his brigade commander Lin Xiusheng as the commander of the river defense to strengthen the defense of the crossings.At the same time, the enemy chasing after him is also stepping up their approach. The Wujiang River is only two to three hundred meters wide, and the river is very deep, with a flow velocity of about 1.8 meters per second.The peaks on both sides of the strait are undulating, and both sides of the river boundary ferry are as high as 500 meters.When the fourth regiment of the Second Red Division arrived at the ferry, the boats and equipment had been moved or burned, and even the huts at the ferry were burned up.The local people said: To cross the Wujiang River, three conditions must be met: first, there must be a large wooden boat, second, it must be sunny, and third, there must be a good boatman who is familiar with the Wujiang River.However, these three conditions are not met at present.If you don't cross the river quickly, you are in danger of being forced to fight against the enemy.

At this critical juncture, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission ordered the First Red Army led by Lin Biao to forcibly cross the Wujiang River. The Second Division was directly commanded by the Military Commission, and the First Division was led by Lin Biao and Nie Rongzhen to break through at Jiangjie and Longxi Ferry respectively. At dawn on January 3, 1935, Zhang Yunyi, deputy chief of staff of the Military Commission, rushed to Jiangjie Ferry, where the Red Army’s Fourth Regiment of the Second Red Division was stationed, and told the regiment leader Geng Biao and political commissar Yang Chengwu that Xue Yue’s column, which was chasing the Red Army, was not far away, and urged They quickly completed the task of crossing the river.Later, he also sent an engineer battalion under the command of the Fourth Red Regiment to take on the task of building bridges.At 9 o'clock in the morning, the troops had tied up more than 60 bamboo rafts.In addition, there was a forced crossing during the day and a smuggled crossing at night on the first day. Only the commander of the third company, Mao Zhenhua, led four soldiers to the opposite bank on a small bamboo raft, and hid under the rocky cliffs by the river, waiting for the opportunity to attack.At the beginning of the forced crossing of the Wujiang River, the Red Fourth Regiment still feigned an attack with a small force at the Dadukou, but the real attack target was a small ferry called Tiger Cave 500 meters upstream. In the early morning of the 3rd, more than a dozen selected swimmers, shirtless and shorts, braved the severe cold and began to cross by bamboo rafts.Under the cover of intensive firepower, together with the firepower cooperation of 5 people, including Company Commander Mao, who was ambushing on the opposite bank, they succeeded in scrambling to cross.In the battle to seize the fortifications on the north bank of the river, it was thanks to Zhao Zhangcheng, the commander of the artillery company directly under the regiment, who was a master gunner.The artillery company carried 5 mortar shells when it set off from the Central Soviet Area, but this time it used 4 rounds.The shells exploded in the enemy group as if they had eyes, and immediately fell a large number of enemy corpses, while the rest of the enemies fled back screaming.

At this time, the engineer battalion built a pontoon bridge with bamboo rafts and door panels, and the troops crossed the Wujiang River on the pontoon bridge. At the same time, a regiment of the Red First Division crossed under the command of regimental leader Yang Dezhi and political commissar Li Lin at Huilongba Ferry in Longxi, the lower reaches of the Wujiang River.In his memoirs, Yang Dezhi talked about the forced crossing of the Wujiang River.He and political commissar Li Lin went to the nearby villages to investigate, not to mention that there were no boats here, and even decent wooden boards were seized by the enemy.It is impossible to ferry or build bridges.Fushui crossing, the water is deep and the current is fast, the turbulent river will engulf you and wash you away.In the afternoon, the people they sent to the nearby villages also returned. There were no boats at all, and all the boatmen ran away.It was a stormy day again, with the sound of the wind and the howling of the waves, and the rain became heavier and heavier.Yang Dezhi and Li Lin thought hard, but still couldn't come up with any solution, so they paced back and forth in the depression by the river in a hurry.At this time, the arrogant enemy probably guessed that the Red Army had nothing to do, and fired at the opposite bank again.Yang Dezhi was about to take out his binoculars to check the situation of the enemy on the opposite bank, when he suddenly found a section of bamboo floating from the center of the river, spinning with the impact of the waves, even though it was submerged by the waves one after another, it surfaced again after the waves passed.When he saw the bamboo rising and sinking suddenly, he was suddenly inspired. "Old Li!" He pointed at the bamboo and said, "Look! There is a solution!" They ran to the village behind the mountain while wiping the raindrops from their faces.As soon as I told everyone, I immediately got a lot of bamboo from the village, and everyone tied it up and tied each other. In three hours, they made bamboo rafts more than 1 zhang wide and 2 zhang long.As a result, everyone was in high spirits, and the soldiers signed up one after another to row the first bamboo raft across the river.

The bamboo rafts were tied up, but it was not sure whether they could cross the river, so they selected 8 warriors who were familiar with water from the vanguard battalion, and decided to let them try to cross the river first. Each of the 8 warriors was equipped with enough weapons and ammunition. If they didn't have wooden oars, they used bamboo slices instead. It was getting dark, and these 8 warriors jumped onto the bamboo raft. The sparse gunshots from the opposite bank were still ringing. The bamboo raft slowly left the river and rushed through dangerous waves. Suddenly, the bamboo raft bumped twice in the river. A hill-like wave of water rushed towards the bamboo raft, and all the people on the bamboo raft were swallowed by the water.Everyone on the shore broke out in a cold sweat.After a while, the bamboo raft emerged from the water again, and there were still 8 people on it. "Keep moving forward!" The voice of the bamboo raft supervisor came from the middle of the river. Everyone was proud of having such a brave fighter.

Suddenly there was another "pop", and the bamboo raft hit the reef, and everyone became nervous again.However, it doesn't matter, the bamboo raft doesn't care at all, and moves on.After about a few minutes, suddenly someone among the Red Army soldiers on the bank said "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh downstream.A few black spots floated in the waves for a while, and then were swept away by the vortex. Needless to say, they were comrades on the bamboo raft. The wind is still blowing and the rain is still falling.Yang Dezhi looked at Commissar Li Lin who was staring at the heart of the river, and said in a low voice, "What should we do?" "It must be crossed!" Li Lin said.Then, they handed over the task of continuing to cross the river to Sun Jixian, the commander of the first battalion.Sun Jixian selected a dozen fighters with the same equipment as the crossing tools and just now. The difference is that this time the river crossing point was changed to a place tens of meters downstream where the current was slow, and several sailors were added to the bamboo raft.At this time, it was dark and I couldn't see anything.Bamboo rafts left the river.Everyone stared at the opposite bank in the dark. From time to time, there were a few cold gunshots on the river.More than an hour passed, and suddenly there were two "bang bang" shots on the river.Li Lin immediately exclaimed: "It's ours!" Everyone couldn't control the joy in their hearts. "Start the boat!" Yang Dezhi shouted the order excitedly, and the other bamboo raft that had been prepared was dispatched again.At around 11 o'clock the next morning, the whole regiment successfully crossed the Wujiang River.

On January 3, all the Red Army at the two crossings crossed the Wujiang River.When Xue Yue's troops chased to the riverside, the Red Army had already burned the pontoon bridge, dismantled the bamboo rafts, and continued to advance north. The vanguard of the Red Army crossed the Wujiang River to the north bank, and the enemy's river defense troops retreated steadily.A company of the 1st Battalion of the Red Fourth Regiment boarded the north bank and immediately followed and chased the enemy. The enemy was so frightened that they broke into an army, and the pipes and rifles of the "Double Gunners" were discarded along the way.Lin Xiusheng, the commander of the enemy's defense against the river, didn't even want telegrams and confidential documents. He took his three regiments guarding the Wujiang ferry and fled in the direction of Zunyi.The Red Army chased 20 kilometers in one go, occupied the pig farm in the afternoon of the same day, and camped there. On January 15, 1935, the "Red Star News" of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission published the headline "The Military Commission Rewards the Heroes in the Wujiang Battle": "Mao Zhenhua, the commander of the third company of the Red Fourth Regiment, won the Red Star Medal, and each of the rest received a set of military uniforms The list of combat heroes includes Luo Youbao, Lin Yu, Wang Haiyun, Zhong Jinyou, Jiang Dabiao, Yang Shangkun, Sun Ming, Zhu Guangding, Lin Wenlai, Luo Jiaping, Ding Shengxin and other comrades." Comrade Yang Chengwu later said that the award text "has no adjectives, almost all It is the name, but the heroes who are listed on the gold list, they will be famous in the long river of history forever like the flowing water of Wujiang River."