Chapter 15 15. Battle in Tucheng

After the Zunyi Conference, the Central Red Army was divided into three groups. The Red First Army was the right army, the Red Third Army was the left army, and the Red Ninth Army and the Military Committee column were the middle army. They marched towards Tucheng and Chishui City, planning to cross north Chishui River, then cross the Yangtze River north between Yibin and Luzhou, and enter Sichuan to open up a new base. Tuchengchang in Chishui County (now Tucheng Town, Xishui County, Guizhou Province) is a small town built by the river. In 1935, this town was not much different from ordinary small towns in Southwest China at that time.There are hundreds of wooden houses scattered along a stone road all the way to the Chishui River.Tuchengchang is small, but famous for its salt and wine.Its wine is almost as famous as the neighboring Maotai Town; it is also an important wharf for Sichuan salt to enter Guizhou.Chishui City is in the north of Tucheng, and it is also close to Chishui River. It is not far from Yibin, Luzhou, Jiangjin, and Chongqing in Sichuan. After Chishui City, go northwest to Luzhou and Yibin.No one expected that Tucheng would go down in the annals of history because of a battle that related to the fate of the Red Army.

The Red First Army led by Lin Biao, with about 4,000 people, arrived in Tucheng as the vanguard.The Qian army in Tucheng, the aforementioned double spear soldiers, abandoned the city and fled.Lin Biao took a rest in Tucheng, then went north to Chishui City.When Chiang Kai-shek heard the news, he quickly mobilized troops to intercept and prevent the Red Army from crossing Chishui and entering southern Sichuan. It was night when Lin Biao led the Red Army soldiers to the outside of Chishui City. Since the beginning of the Long March, the soldiers had never entered a larger city. They were very excited when they saw the electric lights in the city.Excitement does not mean winning battles. On January 27, the First Legion spent a whole day dealing with the enemy outside Chishui City, but they made no progress at all. They could not enter the city, and they also discovered that Chiang Kai-shek had mobilized reinforcements.Lin Biao had no choice but to send a message to the main force overnight on the 27th that Chishui City could not be attacked for a long time.The action of the vanguard was frustrated, and the main Red Army was also pursued by a wave of enemies for several days.

As early as the autumn of 1933, the Red Army had cracked the telegram code of the Kuomintang army.After more than a year, the Red Army was able to easily decipher the contents of the telegrams between Chiang Kai-shek's presidential palace and the commanders of the Kuomintang army's battlefield divisions.The Red Army dared to stay in Zunyi for 12 days because of reliable information that Chiang Kai-shek's deployment to besiege Zunyi had not yet been completed. In Tucheng, however, the intelligence went wrong, making the Red Army believe that the enemy they encountered was the Qian Army, with a total of 4 regiments of six or seven thousand people.

The Qian army has always been weak, and it will be defeated as soon as it is hit. Otherwise, Lin Biao's vanguard troops would not enter Tucheng so easily-the Red Army decision makers thought that they only need to drag them down and clean them up. On the same day that Lin Biao was in a stalemate with the enemy outside Chishui City, that is, on the 27th, the main force of the Red Army came to the outskirts of Tucheng.Peng Dehuai's Red Army Corps and Dong Zhentang's Red Fifth Army Corps were deployed around the town.Based on the enemy's report received, the Red Army decided to meet the pursuers the next morning and wipe them out.Zhu Mao (Zhu De Mao Zedong) has learned a set of methods to deal with the enemy in guerrilla warfare: like a cat and a mouse, circling with the enemy, using the advantage of quick and flexible actions to hold the enemy, wait until the enemy is tired, and then attack by surprise.This time, they thought that they could quickly restrain this small group of enemies as usual, defeat them one by one, and get rid of the harassment.

At dawn on January 28, the Red Army, which had marched a long distance to Tucheng, launched an attack on the pursuers.The Red Army set up a temporary command post at Qingguopo to the east of Tucheng. This place has a wide field of vision and can look around and pay close attention to the battle situation.According to the experience of previous encounters, it only takes a few hours to deal with Wang Jialie's "Double Spearmen".However, until about 10 o'clock in the morning, the enemy showed no signs of being defeated. Instead, they fought more and more courageously. The situation on the battlefield showed that it was not the Qian army that was confronting the Red Army head-on, but another army.After receiving the telegram sent by Lin Biao the night before, it was further confirmed that the Tucheng Red Army made a serious mistake in judging the enemy's situation.

This enemy army is not the Qian army, but the elite division of Liu Xiang of the Sichuan army; there are not only 4 regiments, but 6 regiments, more than 10,000 people, and there are follow-up troops.It is true that there have been many brave soldiers in Shu since ancient times.This elite force was commanded by Guo Xunqi, a confidant general who was single-handedly promoted by Liu Xiang. He was very shrewd, cunning and capable, and was called "Maozi Guo".The Sichuan army is well equipped, well-equipped with ammunition, well-trained, strict discipline, and good at walking mountain roads. It is a veritable "mountain mouse".They have long occupied the favorable terrain of Tucheng Field, waiting for work with ease, and sniped the Red Army condescendingly.

At noon, the Red Army commanders realized that they were engaged in a dangerous battle. The Red Army marched a long distance, the ammunition supply was insufficient, and they were not familiar with the environment of Tucheng. , can only attack the enemy upwards under the cover of firepower.The Red Army was unable to get off the tiger, and with several attacks at the cost of flesh and blood, they only captured the hilltops and superficial fortifications in front of the enemy's positions, causing serious casualties. Following the Third Red Army, the Fifth Red Army, the Red Army Cadre Corps, and the Second Division of the First Red Army as a reserve team also joined the war one after another.Other units of the Sichuan Army continued to reinforce Tucheng and encircled the Red Army.In terms of numbers, the Sichuan Army outnumbered the combatants deployed by the Red Army, almost two to one.The Red Army did gather around 10,000 to 15,000 troops near Tucheng, but they dared not join the battle rashly.Because Chiang Kai-shek was gathering heavy troops, the Central Army (Wu Qiwei, Zhou Hunyuan, Sun Du) and Wang Jialie's Qian army all rushed to Tucheng, and another Sichuan army deployed defenses along the Yangtze River, trying to suppress the Red Army to the south of the Yangtze River. Annihilated in the areas east of the Qianjiang River and north and west of the Wujiang River.

In the afternoon, the battle in Tucheng continued, and the position of the Fifth Red Army was captured by the Sichuan Army, and the situation was not good.Lin Biao's Red Army was notified to return from Chishui City to aid Qingguopo.Lin Biao had ordered the troops to stop the attack the night before, and he was waiting for the order about 30 kilometers north of Tucheng. Although he could reach Qingguopo to reinforce the Red Army by half a day's rapid march, he would not arrive until dark at the earliest. The Red Army encountered another life-and-death situation after the Xiangjiang Battle. The Red Army Commander-in-Chief Zhu De asked to go to the front line in person.The ancients said: "In the midst of strategizing, the decisive victory is thousands of miles away." - Senior military commanders generally do not go to the front line in person, unless the battle situation is very urgent, and a move will affect the overall situation.At this time, Zhu De no longer cared about his own safety and insisted on going to the front line.

The other leaders of the Red Army have been reluctant to agree to Zhu De's request. The danger is too great. If an excellent military commander is sacrificed, it will not be worth the loss for the Red Army.Zhu De took off his hat and didn't care.At this time, what Zhu De was thinking about was not personal safety, but the safety of the entire Red Army team. As long as the Zunyi Conference could open up a new world, what would a mere Zhu De care about?Besides, the enemy's bullets cannot hit me, Zhu De.Zhu De is always so optimistic, and many officers and soldiers of the Red Army are also full of optimism like him to overcome temporary difficulties.Zhu De left the headquarters and went to the front to supervise the battle. Bogu (at this time he was still nominally the supreme leader of the Central Committee), Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian, Wang Jiaxiang, Mao Zedong, and some commanders and fighters of the Military Commission column all came to send Zhu De to the front.But the commander-in-chief went to the front in person, and it could not change the defeat of the war.The Red Army was short of ammunition and basically had no heavy weapons, except for two surviving Krupp guns. The Red Army of the artillery company carried them across the Xiaoshui River, the Xiangjiang River, and the Wujiang River to Tucheng.During the battle, Zhu De used one of the cannons to bombard the teaching brigade of the Sichuan Army, which was acting as a vanguard, and finished the remaining three shells.Later, Zhu De ordered the cannon to be thrown into the Chishui River.The casualties of the Red Army were mounting, and by evening the fighting continued.This is no ordinary fight.If the stalemate continues and the enemy gathers more and more troops, the Red Army is likely to be encircled and wiped out.

The Military Council had no choice but to hold an emergency meeting, which was the only emergency meeting held by the Red Army during the Long March.The meeting decided to stop the fighting at dusk, cancel the plan to capture Tucheng and cross the Chishui River in the north, and instead retreat near Tucheng and cross the Chishui River in the west. This is the familiar crossing of Chishui.After the Battle of Xiangjiang, the Red Army left more than 30,000 people, and the Red Army lost about 4,000 people in the Battle of Tucheng.