Chapter 63 Mao Zedong went out to meet the Red Army Brigade

The 28th and 29th regiments, the main force of the Red Army, went to southern Hunan, and the military strength on the border was greatly weakened. Facing the "suppression" by a total of 11 regiments of the two enemies from Hunan and Jiangxi, the Special Border Committee decided that Yuan Wencai would lead the Red Three The 12th Regiment defended Ninggang, and Mao Zedong led the 31st Red Regiment to engage in guerrilla warfare in Yongxin. This is a strange war: the enemy is aggressive and intends to use Yongxin as a base and advance to the central area of ​​the base. On the other hand, the soldiers and civilians on the border skillfully dealt with each other and harassed the enemy day and night in the form of guerrilla attacks on all sides, making it difficult for the enemy to sleep and eat, and to move an inch.

In order to meet the enemy, Mao Zedong divided the 31st regiment into east, north, and middle routes, and established the East Road Administrative Committee with Mao Zetan as the secretary and Chen Yi'an as the command; the North Road Administrative Committee with Wan Xixian as the secretary and Wu Zhonghao as the command; He Tingying is the secretary, and Zhu Yunqing is the executive committee member of the middle road.The Yongxin County Party Committee mobilized more than 10,000 revolutionary masses to cooperate with various Red Army operations. As a result, the enemy's regular army of 11 regiments was besieged by the 31st Red Regiment and more than 10,000 local revolutionary masses in Yongxin County and within 30 miles nearby for 25 days.

This was a successful trapping of the enemy. With his extraordinary courage and successful command, Mao Zedong created a miracle in the history of the Red Army's guerrilla warfare. Regarding this trapped enemy, Yang Kemin said in a later "Comprehensive Report on the Situation of the Hunan-Jiangxi Frontier Soviet Area": ​​"Our advantages are: first, we are familiar with the terrain; second, the enemy's situation is relatively clear; 4. Every time the enemy has been defeated, the enemy is afraid of our power; 5. The masses participate in every battle, and the army is scattered among the masses to deal with the enemy, so it can be said that it has the support of the masses; Being in the enemy's front, rear, left, and right sides, they come and go, disturbing the enemy, making it difficult for the enemy to deal with, while the enemy is completely opposite, and the terrain is unfamiliar, so he can't understand our situation. There is no crowd to help them, and the soldiers are afraid of our bravery in battle. Therefore, we We were able to deal with an enemy many times our size for more than ten to twenty days with a very small number of troops, and the enemy was finally helpless to us."

Although Yongxin trapped the enemy successfully, it could not fundamentally change the disparity in the strength of the enemy and ourselves. Especially after the defeat of the Red Army Brigade in southern Hunan, the enemy found out the strength of our army in the base area, so they made a large-scale attack on the base area without any scruples in early August. attack.In order to preserve its strength, the Red Thirty-One Regiment turned to the mountain guerrilla.The enemy has occupied Yongxin, Lianhua, Ningkang and other places. Soon, the Jiangxi enemy suddenly broke out in internal strife, and had to withdraw from the base area and retreat to Yongxin County. The enemy's first "meeting suppression" was declared bankrupt.

At the same time, news of the defeat of the main force of the Red Army in southern Hunan came back to Jinggangshan. At that time, Mao Zedong was holding an emergency military meeting for cadres above the company level in Jiubei Village, near Chaling County, Yongxin Xixiang. The purpose of the meeting was to summarize the experience of the enemy trapped in Yongxin and to study countermeasures against the enemy.Not wanting to be in the midst of the meeting, Yuan Desheng, a representative of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, came to Jiupi. This was his third trip to Jinggangshan in a short period of time.

Yuan Desheng brought an instruction letter from the Hunan Provincial Party Committee to the Fourth Red Army, in which he asked the Fourth Red Army to develop towards eastern Hunan: "The strategy for the Red Army to develop towards eastern Hunan is absolutely correct under the current situation. Acquire Ping (township) and An (source) quickly and without hesitation, arm the workers in Anyuan, establish connections with the riots in Jiangxi and Pingjiang districts in eastern Hunan, and echo the riots in southern Hunan." Mao Zedong, who advocated persisting in the struggle in the base areas, was very angry with this instruction letter from the Hunan Provincial Party Committee.In "The Struggle in Jinggang Mountains", he described his dissatisfaction unabashedly at that time: "Yuan Desheng came again for the third time, only ten days apart. Going east is said to be an 'absolutely correct' policy, and we are required to 'not hesitate'. We have accepted such a rigid instruction, and if we do not follow it, we will be close to disobedience, and if we follow it, we will know that we have failed. It is really not good."

For this reason, Mao Zedong once asked Yuan Desheng at the meeting: "Since the provincial party committee thinks that the situation in Hunan is abnormally high, how about the labor movement in Changsha? How is the struggle? How is the student movement? Are there any strikes? How are the soldiers of the White Army doing? Has there been mutiny? Have the merchants shown signs of going on strike?" Yuan Desheng was speechless. The comrades who participated in the meeting supported Mao Zedong's opinion, and believed that if the only two regiments on the border were sent to eastern Hunan in accordance with the instructions of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, the base area would cease to exist.Therefore, everyone expressed dissatisfaction with the arbitrary instructions of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee.

Just when the meeting was in a dilemma about whether the troops should go to the east of Hunan, a farmer who was a porter for the Red Army Brigade returned to Jiupi and brought a shocking news: the Red Army Brigade was defeated in Chenzhou, and almost the entire 29th Regiment overwhelmed. The meeting changed the topic again to discuss the course of action after the failure of the Red Army Brigade, and Yuan Desheng was inconvenient to mention the matter of going to eastern Hunan.After urgent discussions, it was decided that Mao Zedong would personally lead the 3rd Battalion of the 31st Red Regiment to welcome back the Red Army brigade in southern Hunan, while the 1st Battalion of the 31st Red Regiment and the spy company would stay in Jinggangshan with the 32nd Red Regiment.

Rescuing soldiers is like fighting a fire, and Mao Zedong led the third battalion to set off for southern Shonan soon.The porter said that the 28th Red Regiment had retreated to the east of Guangxi, Hunan. Therefore, Mao Zedong led his troops to meet in the direction of East Guangxi. In August in the south, the sun was scorching hot, and the Red Army commanders and fighters were so anxious that they went straight to the east of Guangxi, regardless of the scorching heat and the rugged mountain roads. After the troops entered Guidong County, Mao Zedong immediately sent people to contact the Red 28th Regiment led by Zhu De and Chen Yi.

After several twists and turns, on August 23, the troops of the 31st Red Regiment led by Mao Zedong and the 28th Red Regiment led by Zhu De and Chen Yi finally met in Guidong County. When Mao Zedong saw Du Xiujing, the first sentence he asked was: "How is Commander Zhu? Is Commander Zhu okay?" When Mao Zedong saw that Zhu De, Chen Yi and other army leaders were safe and sound, and the main force of the Red 28th Regiment did not suffer much loss, he had a smile on his face. Mao Zedong held Chen Yi's hand tightly and told him: "This time I came to work with the 31st Regiment. Don't talk about the shortcomings of the 28th Regiment. You can rest assured. Fighting is like chess. If you make a wrong move, you will be killed immediately." You lose, you learn your lesson."

It turned out that Mao Zedong was worried that the Red 28th regiment would have ideological burdens and was unwilling to return to Jinggangshan.So on the way to East Guangxi, even though the march was tense, he still specially explained to the commanders and fighters of the 3rd Battalion of the Red 31st Regiment: When we go to welcome the Red Army Brigade back, we must adopt a united and welcoming attitude, and do not talk about their shortcomings. Zhu De, Chen Yi, Wang Erzhuo and other leaders in the army and the commanders and fighters of the Red 28th Regiment were already very excited to see Mao Zedong personally leading the Red 31st Regiment to find and greet them in southern Hunan.They were even more moved by Mao Zedong's sincere feelings and broad-mindedness towards them, as well as the enthusiastic attitude of the commanders and fighters of the Red Thirty-one Regiment. On the night when the two armies joined forces, Mao Zedong hosted an enlarged meeting of the Front Committee of the Red 28th Regiment and Red 31st Regiment battalion-level cadres in the Tang Family Mansion in East Guidong.Zhu De, Chen Yi, Wang Erzhuo, He Changgong, Wan Xixian, Gong Chu, Du Xiujing and other leaders attended the meeting. The fall of the base area, the failure of the aggressive advance into southern Hunan, the collapse of the 29th Red Regiment, and a series of setbacks weighed on the hearts of the participants, making the atmosphere of the meeting extremely dull. Mao Zedong introduced the struggle situation in the base areas after the Red Army brigade left; Du Xiujing reviewed his serious mistakes in this aggressive advance into southern Hunan that caused the army and the border to return together; Zhu De, Chen Yi, Wang Erzhuo, etc. Due responsibility. It was decided at the meeting that the main force of the Fourth Red Army would return to the Jinggangshan base area and establish an action committee with Mao Zedong as the secretary to lead the Red Army's actions. In view of Du Xiujing's mistakes, the meeting decided to recommend that the Hunan Provincial Party Committee punish Du Xiujing.At the same time, considering the requirements of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee for the work in southern Hunan, and the special role of the southern Hunan region in the Jinggangshan base area, the meeting also decided that Du Xiujing and Gong Chu would stay and form a new Hunan Special Committee, and designated Du Xiujing to temporarily Secretary of the special committee. The enlarged meeting of the front committee of the Tang Family House unified the thinking and understanding, solved some problems faced by the troops, and made the main force of the Red Army in trouble have a clear direction. The troops quickly withdrew from southern Hunan and moved to the Jinggangshan base area. The Hunan enemy chased after them, and the Red Army had to fight and retreat, fighting bloody all the way, until they entered Chongyi County, Jiangxi Province, and gradually got rid of the Hunan enemy's pursuit. There was no threat from the external enemy for the time being, but at this time the internal traitor stabbed the wounded body of the Fourth Red Army severely. The traitor who stabbed him was Yuan Chongquan, commander of the Second Battalion of the Red 28th Regiment.On the way back to Jinggangshan, the main force of the Fourth Red Army, Yuan Chongquan led the second battalion of the Red 28th Regiment and the regiment's machine gun company and mortar company as the vanguard of the whole army. Yuan Chongquan had long intended to rebel.He was tired of the hard life in Jinggang Mountains, and he was always looking for opportunities to leave the revolutionary ranks, and the defeat in southern Hunan made him quicken the pace of rebellion.Therefore, when he was ordered to lead the vanguard, he immediately realized that the opportunity had come.He made up his mind to take the 6 companies he controlled to join Liu Shiyi, the enemy's 7th Independent Division in southern Jiangxi. With this ghost in mind, Yuan Chongquan led the troops to continue marching to Xindiwei instead of camping at Sanjiangkou as Zhu De had arranged, leaving the Red Army brigade far away. Yuan Chongquan's behavior aroused the suspicion of some company and platoon cadres, such as He Ducai, the party representative of the machine gun company, Zhao Erlu, the party representative of the sixth company, and Su Yu, the commander of the fourth company. Pulled out of the campsite, traveled on a starry night, and returned to the military headquarters in the early morning of the next day. Yuan Chongquan's rebellion angered the soldiers of the Fourth Red Army, and they all advocated "fighting back" and killing him! Wang Erzhuo, chief of staff of the army and head of the 28th regiment, who is also a Hunan fellow with Yuan Chongquan, thinks that he can "get back".Without waiting for Zhu De to make a decision, he led the 1st Battalion of the 28th Regiment to pursue. It was near dusk, and Wang Erzhuo led his team to catch up with Yuan Chongquan at Sishunwei. "I'm Wang Erzhuo, the head of the regiment, and I'm here to pick you up!" Wang Erzhuo shouted, leading the guard platoon into the village. Some of the coerced soldiers heard the voice of the regiment leader and immediately returned to Wang Erzhuo's side. Wang Erzhuo then came to the ancestral hall in the village, where Yuan Chongquan and other leaders gathered. "Yuan Chongquan, come out quickly, come back with me!" Wang Erzhuo, who considered himself a fellow villager with Yuan Chongquan and a classmate of Huangpu, yelled towards the ancestral hall defenselessly. Suddenly, Yuan Chongquan rushed out with two guns in hand, and fired several times at Wang Erzhuo. Wang Erzhuo fell to the ground and died on the spot.Yuan Chongquan escaped from the village taking advantage of the chaos, and soon joined the enemy Liu Shiyi's department. Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Chen Yi and the Red Army soldiers who came afterward were all deeply saddened to see Wang Erzhuo's sacrifice, and Zhu De even cried bitterly while holding Wang Erzhuo's body. The sacrifice of the 27-year-old Red Army commander Wang Erzhuo was a major loss for the Fourth Red Army and the Jinggangshan base area.After returning to Ninggang, the Fourth Red Army held a grand memorial meeting.On the mourning gate of the meeting place were written the four characters "Red Tide Surge", and on both sides there was an elegiac couplet pasted with cotton, which was written by Mao Zedong himself: "Crying for compatriots for the first time, compatriots for the second time, compatriots are dead now, and it is difficult for workers and peasants to stay behind." ;Life is a class, death is a class, what is the concept of class, it will not stop until it is liberated. Today, in the mountains and forests of Sishunwei, Chongyi County, Jiangxi Province, the loyal remains of Wang Erzhuo are buried. On the mausoleum and tombstone built for him by the People's Government of Chongyi County, the inscription of General Xiao Ke is engraved, entrusting people's love for him. The deep memory of the Red Army general who died young.