Chapter 156 9. Turn the enemy into me

On June 9, 1947, Chen Yi received the general-level officers of the 74th Division who were captured by our army in the Battle of Menglianggu.At that time, the Huaye Political Department organized these military officers to hold a symposium on current affairs. Chen Yi met with the participants and shook hands one by one to express condolences. Chen Yi said to the officers present: "For everyone here, I should be responsible for taking care of you and loving you. The sacrifices of your division commander Zhang Lingfu and deputy division commander Cai Renjie are meaningless and should be regretted. Stay in the liberated area to study the problem carefully and re-understand Questions, you should regard it as the greatest blessing in your life. Where we can help you, we will try our best to help you, and we will never make it difficult." After the meeting, Chen Yi had dinner with them. ("Chen Yi Biography", Chapter 7, Section 6)

They were deeply moved by Chen Yi's frank and enthusiastic attitude towards the captured officers of the 74th Division.Later, these people were transferred to Qingyun County, Bohai Navy Region, where they gathered with the Kuomintang generals and schools captured in the Lunan and Laiwu battles to form the "East China Liberation Army Officer Training Group" to receive education and reform.Our army's lenient policy and in-depth ideological and political work have brought about profound changes in the thinking of these Kuomintang officers.While reflecting on themselves, they also used their expertise in military business to make suggestions to our army to help our army commanders improve their tactical level.The head of the East China Field Army attached great importance to these opinions, collected them, and reported them to the various columns.

It is an important task of the East China Field Army to melt captives, reform captives, and replenish troops during the war.Chen Yi attaches great importance to this.According to the statistics of the Huaye Political Department, in the first year of the Liberation War, our army wiped out 8 divisions and 29 brigades of the Kuomintang Army, a total of 430,000 people, and captured 260,000 Kuomintang soldiers.Except for a few officers who were sent to the rear to study and reform, and some wounded soldiers who were released in poor physical condition, most of them were added to our armaments.Because in each battle, each column will have different degrees of casualties, and replenishing the Kuomintang captured soldiers into the army is a necessary measure to maintain the integrity of our army's organizational system and restore its combat effectiveness.

When reviewing the situation in the early days of the Liberation War, Chen Yi said: "After each battle, each regiment needs to replenish more than 1,000 captive soldiers. After the captives are captured, they will be sent to fight. We have a set of experience in melting captives: one is to use old liberation fighters to win The second is to use turned peasant soldiers to educate the captives; the third is not to search their pockets, and they will be compensated if they lose something; the fourth is to educate the prisoners by migrant workers. There are two to three hundred migrant workers in each regiment of our army, and they are 40 to 50 years old. They are old peasants. Although they don’t wash their faces, their hands and feet are very dark, and they wear plain clothes, but after reducing rent and interest and land reform, they have a high level of class consciousness and understand current affairs and politics. They are used to educate the captured soldiers and make them feel great. An ordinary person knows so many things, which are often more effective than the speeches of instructors or senior cadres. After evaluating their merits and recording their merits, they will hang a red cloth on them and be promoted to squad leader. They are very happy: "With Chiang Kai-shek, serving as a soldier I can’t be promoted in my life, and I was promoted to squad leader within a few days after joining the PLA. Many of our commanders are willing to want liberated soldiers and don’t turn over peasants. Because liberation soldiers obey the command and have combat experience, they think that turned peasants come to the army to teach you democracy, and sometimes they desert , it is difficult to serve. But the liberation fighters have no problem when they win a battle, and they desert when they are in trouble. If Central China retreats and the counter-offensive shifts, the liberation fighters will desert in large numbers, and there are few or even no peasants who have recovered. We replenish 10% of our troops The third is the rehabilitated peasants, and seven out of ten are liberation fighters. Some units don’t want them, and exchange the rehabilitated peasants with others for liberation fighters. Later, because many liberation fighters escaped in difficult times, everyone was unwilling to accept liberation fighters. The best troop supplement The proportion of soldiers is 4 out of 10 rehabilitated peasants and 6 out of 10 liberation fighters. Over the past year, we have added 200,000 liberation fighters and 120,000 rehabilitated peasants." (Chen Yi: "Summary of a Year of Self-Defense War")

After the Battle of Menglianggu, the captives of the 74th Division were transferred to the rear, after review, training, and then assigned to the columns, which went through a tortuous process. In the end, the ideological consciousness of these "liberation fighters" has been greatly improved.They really understood who the soldiers were fighting for, and found their own direction of struggle.During the war of liberation, the East China Field Army paid attention to melting and reforming the captives of the Kuomintang army, and continuously replenished them into our army.Maintaining and improving the combat effectiveness of our army has also caused the quality of the Kuomintang army to continue to decline.The balance of power balance is increasingly tilted towards our army.The key to turning the enemy into us and allowing the "liberation fighters" to become the backbone of our army to play a role lies in ideologically transforming them into proletarian fighters who consciously fight for the interests of the people.This is a major achievement of our army's ideological and political work, and it is also the root cause of our army's invincibility.