Chapter 26 Six Character Poem To Comrade Peng Dehuai

The mountains are high, the roads are far and the pits are deep, and the army is galloping. ! This poem was first published on August 1, 1947 in Comrades in Arms (sponsored by the Political Department of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region). In October 1935, since the main force of the Central Red Army entered the Northwest Plateau, the enemy "Central Army" Mao Bingwen, Ningxia Ma Hongkui, Ma Hongbin and the cavalry units of the Northeast Army have been chasing after them. On October 19, when the Red Army entered Wuqi Town in northern Shaanxi, Mao Zedong proposed not to bring the enemy into the Soviet area, but to cut off the "tail".On the same day, Mao Zedong called Peng Dehuai, the commander of the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment, to "come to Wuqi to discuss the policy of action."After Peng Dehuai arrived in Wuqi Town on the 20th, Mao Zedong and him planned a plan to retreat from the enemy, and decided that Peng Dehuai would command the battle.After planning, the Red Army planned to set up an ambush on the mountains around Toudaochuan and Erdaochuan in the northwest of Wuqi Town. On October 21, the cavalry regiment of the 35th Division of the enemy Ma Hongbin entered Erdaochuan, and was defeated by the Red Army's violent attack; while the Northeast Cavalry Division led by the enemy Bai Fengxiang had just entered Toudaochuan and was also encircled.In this battle, the Red Army wiped out one cavalry regiment of the enemy, defeated two cavalry regiments, and captured more than 700 enemy officers and soldiers.On the morning of the battle, Mao Zedong was originally in a safe place. Because he was very concerned about the combat situation, he brought the guards and the communication team to the command position at four or five o'clock in the afternoon.The guard squad accompanied Chairman Mao to the position. Mao Zedong kept observing the situation with binoculars and listened attentively to the direction of the gunshots. He did not return to the station until the gunshots faded away and it was estimated that the enemy had fled far away.After winning this fierce battle, Mao Zedong was very excited. He held Peng Dehuai's hand and said with a hearty smile: "Infantry chasing cavalry is a miracle that only our Red Army can create!" The poem praises Peng Dehuai.

This poem by Mao Zedong, with 24 characters, portrays the image of a brave and invincible general.It is similar to the "Great Wind Song" written by Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, in twenty-three characters. "Who dares to slash immediately? Only I, General Peng!" This is an artistic image created by Mao Zedong, quite similar to the heroic style of Zhang Fei reining in his horse and driving back a million Cao soldiers at Changban Bridge that he was familiar with. "Hang Dao Li Ma" is of course only an artistic truth, not a historical truth, because Peng Dehuai did not ride a horse when he commanded the battle, but hid it in a trench.The gun he uses is not an ancient weapon such as a broadsword or spear for short-distance combat, but a modern weapon "box cannon" that can shoot at a longer distance.But this sentence does portray an image of General Peng who stands up to resist the enemy and is extremely brave.

On the battlefield, after Peng Dehuai saw this poem, he changed the last line of the poem, "Only I am General Peng" to "Only I am the heroic Red Army", and returned the original poem to Mao Zedong.Unfortunately, the original manuscript of the poem has not survived.But the poem spread like wildfire. Twelve years later, it was unofficially published in Comrades in Arms Daily on August 1, 1947 (sponsored by the Political Department of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region), and later published in the April 1957 issue of Liberation Army Literature and Art in the form of a letter.This poem was officially included in "Selected Poems of Mao Zedong" in 1986.The anthology was presided over and edited by Hu Qiaomu, who served as Mao Zedong's secretary for a long time. The editors of the Central Documentation Research Office included it for the first time after confirming the basic plot of Mao Zedong's creation of this six-character military poem based on reliable historical materials from various sources, and added The title is "To Comrade Peng Dehuai".The anthology is published by People's Literature Publishing House.Since then, this poem that has been circulating for decades has been officially included in the collection. In 1996, it was published by the Central Literature Publishing House, and it was also included in it.

However, Mao Zedong's poem recorded in "Peng Dehuai's Self-narration" is like this: "The mountains are high, the roads are far and the ravines are deep, and the cavalry is up to you. Whoever dares to shoot straight away, I am General Peng." In this way, Mao Zedong praised Peng Dehuai's There are two versions of the six-character poems, one is the version that has been collected in the army and has been circulated in the army for a long time, and the other is the version that Peng Dehuai wrote from memory in a letter to Mao Zedong in 1962.The two versions of this six-character poem are roughly the same, but there is a big difference in the use of words. There is a complete inconsistency in one sentence. There are 8 different characters in a total of 24 characters. If the position changes are added, there are 10 different characters.Out of respect for Peng Dehuai's memories, when the writing team of "Biography of Peng Dehuai" led by Wang Yan quoted this poem in "Biography of Peng Dehuai", they used the version written by Peng Dehuai from memory.The advantage of Peng Dehuai's version written from memory is that it is more in line with historical reality and artistic reality. It clearly reflects that Mao Zedong properly described the topography of northern Shaanxi and captured the Red Army's ambush of enemy cavalry. The artistic conception of victory is shown, and the heroic image of Peng Dehuai is portrayed.

"The mountain is high, the road is far away and the pit is deep", this sentence is indeed a true portrayal of the local landform.In "Memoirs of the Long March", Cheng Fangwu once described the scene of the Red Army setting off in Baiyang City after passing Liupan Mountain: "As soon as you leave the city, you have to cross the ditch. After going down to the bottom of the ditch of thirty or forty feet, I went up two or three miles and left the ditch." "After passing this ditch, I went up the mountain again, and then passed three deep ditches, and I didn't arrive at Yangjiayuan until midnight. We have traveled more than a hundred miles. We have rich experience in marching at night, but we have never had the experience of crossing a deep ditch at night. The deeper the ditch, the darker it is, and we cannot see the road clearly, and the road is very narrow. If you don’t pay attention, it will be very dangerous.” Indeed, due to soil erosion, the area around Wuqi Town in the hilly area of ​​the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi is mostly high mountains, deep ravines and dangerous ravines.It's just that when the Red Army crossed the Laoye Mountain at the junction of the three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia and headed east, the terrain gradually declined.

Based on the analysis of the version of "Peng Dehuai's Self-Report", "The cavalry is up to you", which means to see how long you cavalry can run rampant. "Vertical and horizontal", the meaning of tyrannical, unrestrained, and unimpeded, is to describe the arrogance of the enemy's cavalry.This sentence embodies the calmness and composure of Mao Zedong and the Red Army soldiers led by Mao Zedong, who are determined to wipe out the enemy and are sure of victory, and their contempt for the arrogant enemy. "Who dares to shoot straight away? Only I am General Peng!" The artistic image created by Mao Zedong overlaps with the brave generals on the ancient battlefield, which is admirable.

However, it has also been suggested that a reprinted version of the poem by Mao Zedong in 1947 exists. In 1979, when Huang Kecheng wrote an article mourning Peng Dehuai in the "People's Daily", he mentioned that Mao Zedong had rewritten the six-character poem praising Peng Dehuai in 1947.He said: "Chairman Mao spoke highly of Boss Peng's excellent command and brilliant achievements. At a military meeting after the victory of the Shajiadian Battle, Chairman Mao took the opportunity to write a new book for Boss Peng on the Long March. On the road, he warmly praised Boss Peng’s poem: The mountains are high, the roads are far and the pits are deep, and the army is galloping. Who dares to cut a knife and immediately, I am General Peng.” But Huang Kecheng said that Mao Zedong rewritten the poem. He was far away in the Northeast, serving as the deputy commander and political commissar of the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army.At the same time, if this mourning article was not drafted by Huang Kecheng himself, the acting drafter may have written relevant information into the article.If it was true that Mao Zedong rewrote the six-character poem praising Peng Dehuai in 1947, Peng Dehuai would have recalled it in his memory.But he did not recall.The statement that Mao Zedong rewritten the six-character poems in 1947 was agreed by some researchers of Mao Zedong's poetry.Mr. Wei Aimin, former deputy editor-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army Daily, disclosed the following information in the article "Which Newspaper First Published the Poem "General Peng"": He once held an important position in the "Liberation Army Daily" "Wang Yan, the leader of the editorial team, said to him in 1990: "The poem 'General Peng' was written by Mao Zedong, and there is more direct evidence. Later, I saw the memoirs of the staff around Mao Zedong. It describes the process of Mao Zedong recording this poem again after our Northwest Field Army wiped out the enemy's reorganized 36 divisions in the Shajiadian area in August 1947." Wang Yan also said that the full text of this poem published in "Zhan You Bao" in 1947 is " Mao Zedong focused on the long-term nature of the entire revolutionary war", "the road is far away and the pit is deep", "making this poem have a deeper artistic conception". "Mr. Peng recalled the second sentence 'cavalry is up to you' and the third sentence 'who dares to shoot straight away'. It seems that his memory is not accurate." However, there are two contradictions here: first, if Mao Zedong is This poem was republished after the "Shajiadian Great Victory" on August 19, 1947, so the poem published in "Zhanyoubao" on August 1, 1947 did not come from this poem rewritten by Mao Zedong, but indeed from "Written in the Long March" poems collected in the circulation.Second, in his memoirs, Li Yinqiao, the guard next to Mao Zedong, recalled that after the great victory in Shajiadian in 1947, Mao Zedong did not rewrite the six-character poems, but only wrote two sentences: "Mao Zedong was very excited, and wrote 12 big characters for Peng Dehuai: 'Whoever dares to slash immediately, I am the only one, General Peng.'" But the place where it was written was not at the "military meeting", but at the place where the Liang family lived.Coincidentally, these 12 words written by Mao Zedong are the same as Wu Xiuquan's recollection of the situation in 1935: "Chairman Mao once wrote a poem to praise Comrade Peng Dehuai: 'Whoever dares to cut a knife immediately, only I am General Peng.'" Therefore, whether Mao Zedong rewritten the six-character poems in 1947 is still unclear.Furthermore, the version included in the book may have been inadvertently changed during the circulation process, resulting in inconsistent statements.For example, in a telegram written by Mao Zedong to Peng Dehuai in October 1935, there was a sentence "The mountain is high, the road is far away and the ditch is deep", but this type of telegram was not found in "Mao Zedong Military Collection".From the above, it can be deduced that the transcript first published in "Zhanyoubao" in 1947 may have the same origin as Peng Dehuai's memoir, and it was not rewritten by Mao Zedong.If you make a comparison, the poems written by Peng Dehuai's memory are more reliable and artistic. Moreover, Peng Dehuai is the person involved and the person who revised the last line of the poem. It is more reliable to accept the version written by Peng Dehuai's memory.

Of course, "The mountains are high, the roads are far away and the pits are deep, and the army is galloping. Who dares to slash a horse? Only I, General Peng!" It is also magnificent.It can be understood that Peng Dehuai took a major role in the army, commanding the Red Army on an expedition, breaking through the encirclement of the enemy, and overcoming obstacles along the way.This general slashed his sword straight away, with undue courage, making the enemy frightened, which is extremely admirable. It is impossible to imagine that the 80,000-strong army set out from Jiangxi became a 7,000-strong Red Army!