Chapter 12 Battle of Yinan

The "Bashan Secret Agreement" enabled the Fourth Red Army to avoid the passive situation of being attacked by the enemy, and was able to concentrate on dealing with the Sichuan Army and develop southward. The development of the Red Army in Sichuan and Shaanxi made Chiang Kai-shek restless.Although destroying the Red Army was Chiang Kai-shek's ultimate goal, he pursued and intercepted the Red Army all the way, but after the Red Army arrived in Sichuan, he hesitated and hesitated.Among the warlords in several provinces in China, Chiang Kai-shek is particularly troublesome to the Sichuan warlords. The Sichuan warlords are fighting each other internally, fighting each other, and beggars for neighbors.

The internal strife in the Sichuan Army objectively reduced the military pressure on the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army.However, due to the enemy's strict blockade, the lack of various living materials, especially the lack of salt, has become an urgent problem for the army and the people in the Soviet area to solve. Salt is an important material in life. People living today feel very ordinary about salt, but in the 1930s, in poor and backward China, salt was an extremely important and extremely precious material.As the saying goes: "If you don't eat salt for three days, you can walk with flashes." It vividly illustrates the important role of salt in people's lives.

There are two types of salt in China, one is sea salt and the other is mineral salt.The salt in Sichuan is mineral salt. The production of mineral salt involves pumping brine from underground wells hundreds of meters deep, draining, boiling water, and then boiling it into salt. The process is very complicated.The south is the main salt-producing county in Sichuan, with nearly 10,000 salt wells. "The south does not produce salt, and the people of Bazhou are so light." Controlling the salt wells controls the local economic lifeline.In Sichuan at that time, table salt was as expensive as two silver dollars.At that time, one silver dollar could buy three buckets of rice (45 catties), or thirty catties of pork, or enough for one or two people to live for a month.The price of salt is so expensive that cooking salt has become a luxury. In some places, salt can even be used as currency to circulate, which shows the value of salt.A family with a few catties of salt is enough to be rich.The poor people in Sichuan can't eat salt all year round, and the Red Army troops don't have salt either.In the Sichuan-Shanxi Soviet Area, only a few salt wells connected to the river produced salt, and the output was very low, unable to meet the minimum needs of the vast number of soldiers and civilians.Salt has become the most scarce and urgently needed material for the military and civilians in the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Area.The survival of the military and civilians was threatened, and the development and growth of the Soviet area was out of the question.

In June 1933, after Tian Songyao's "three-way siege" failed, most of his troops withdrew to the west of the Jialing River, and only deployed some troops to garrison in Guangyuan, Cangxi, Langzhong, Yilong, and southern areas in the east of the river.Xu Xiangqian and Chen Changhao decided to take advantage of the victory to launch the Yi (Long) South (South) Campaign to seize the salt wells in the southern county to solve the serious problem of salt shortage in the Soviet area. Xu Xiangqian described the Battle of Yinan as follows: Nanbu County is a famous salt-producing area in Sichuan, with many salt wells.The capture of the salt wells in the south is one of the reasons we launched this campaign.The Sichuan-Shaanxi base area has grown to more than two million people... It's okay if the problem of eating salt is not solved!Salt is related to the vital interests of the masses, to the combat effectiveness of the Red Army, and to the survival and consolidation of the base areas. It was an issue of strategic significance at that time.

Yilong is an ancient city with hundreds of years of history, surrounded by the Jialing River.Several streets in the urban area are distributed along the banks of the Jialing River in a well-shaped shape. The stone-paved roads in the city are narrow, and the houses are connected together. The streets follow the river, and the alleys follow the houses.The county seat is built on a hillside with thick and strong walls. Yilong and Nanbu counties are located in the southwest of the Soviet area and east of the Jialing River. They are the defense areas of Tian Songyao's troops. The main force of Tianbu has retreated to the west of the Jialing River to rest and reorganize. Only part of the troops are left in the east of the river. Six regiments of the Fifth Route and the Independent Division are in Guangyuan. The second division and the fourth brigade are near Guangyuan, the third regiment and three regiments are in Cangxi, the third division and five regiments are on the line from Cangxi Yanfenglou to the southern Shuangshanya, and the first regiment and four regiments are in Xinglongchang, Riyilong Xingchang line.

In order to obtain salt, the headquarters of the Fourth Front Army decided to attack in multiple ways and control the enemy in several places, forcing the main force of Tian Songyao on the west bank not to rush across the river to help, in order to concentrate a part of the main force and quickly encircle and wipe out the enemies in Yilong and the south.The offensive deployment is: The Ninth Red Army took on the main task of this campaign, attacking Yilong and the south from the Enyang River area west of Bazhong; part of the Thirty Red Army approached Cangxi, and part of the Thirty-first Red Army attacked Guangyuan. , to cooperate with the Ninth Army; the Fourth Red Army restrained the troops of Yang Sen and Liu Cunhou in Jiangkou, Hongkouchang and other places.

Yilong belonged to Liangzhou in ancient times, and Yilong County was set up in Liangzhou in the Southern Dynasty, named after Yilong Mountain in the west of the county.Yilong County is located in Jincheng Mountain.Since the construction of the county in the Sui Dynasty, it has been abandoned and repaired repeatedly, and the scale has continued to expand. Up to now, the city has high walls and thick walls, making the county easy to defend and difficult to attack.Not far from the south of the city is a mountain named Ma'anshan, where a regiment defending the enemy is stationed.Xu Xiangqian decided to use the strength of the four regiments of the Ninth Red Army to first wipe out the enemies of Yilong, targeting the outlying strongholds such as Rixing Field to the east of Yilong County, and then attacking the south.Wang Xueli, the commander of the 27th Division, led the 81st Regiment and the 73rd Regiment of the 25th Division to attack the enemy's left flank.Xu Xiangqian specifically explained that the attack on Yilong will definitely wipe out the enemy.Special attention should be paid to cutting off the communication channel between Yilong and Pan Wenhua's troops defending the enemy in the south, and the channel between Yilong and Liu Hanxiong's troops defending the enemy in Langzhong, so as to form a situation of closing the door and beating dogs.

Yilong's terrain is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack. In order to reduce casualties, Xu Xiangqian and Chen Changhao approached Wu Ruilin, who had worked as an underground party traffic officer here, and learned about Yilong's topographical characteristics in detail, and sent him to lead a team of six soldiers. The ten-man squad went straight to the border between Yilong and the south. Before the general offensive began, they seized the main road Huangshilin, blocked the retreat of the enemies in Yilong, and blocked the reinforcements from the south. On August 11th, the night was as dark as paint. Under the leadership of Wu Ruilin, the small team set off in the dark and walked through the 30-mile mountain road to Zhangye Temple in Huangshilin. They captured all the enemies in their dreams without firing a single shot.In order to prevent the captured enemy from escaping and reporting the news, Wu Ruilin came up with a unique trick. He tied a grenade to all the prisoners. will kill himself.Seeing the grenades hanging on their bodies, the captured enemy soldiers sat on the ground obediently huddled together, and no one dared to move.The squad then went all out to occupy Ma'an Town in the south of Yilong and the commanding height of Ma'anshan, cutting off the passage between Yilong and the south.

On August 12, the "salt grab" battle began.Xu Shiyou led the 74th and 75th regiments of the 25th division to advance from Bazhong to Yilong. The sun in August scorched the earth like a furnace, and the temperature rose to 378 degrees Celsius. The heavily armed soldiers were all thirsty and sweaty, but no one slowed down because of this. The billowing torrent moves forward.The Qianwei Battalion reported: "Yinjiapu found about one regiment of enemies." "Kill it!" Xu Shiyou gave the attack order without hesitation. Pan Youqing, the head of the 74th regiment, immediately led the whole regiment to rush towards the enemy like a tiger.The encounter lasted only half an hour, more than 200 enemies were wiped out, and the remnants of the enemy fled in the direction of Langzhong.Xu Shiyou didn't love to fight. After cleaning the battlefield, the troops continued to move forward without taking a breath. On the 13th, the troops attacked and advanced, taking Xinglong Town, Zhongbachang, Huilongchang and other places in one go.Left-wing Wang Xueli led the 27th Division to Lianke Fulin, Dafeng, Laiyi and other places.Within a few days, all the enemies outside Yilong were wiped out.The left and right wings of the Red Army are like two iron tongs holding Yilong County tightly.

On August 22, the besieging troops launched fierce attacks on the east gate, south gate, and west gate of Yilong County.Relying on the solid city wall, Li Weiru, who defended the enemy, built a large number of open and dark fortresses on the mountainside, equipped with three-dimensional firepower, mortars, light and heavy machine guns to form a dense fire net. The soldiers charged again and again, but all retreated because of the heavy casualties. Seeing groups of soldiers lying down on the charging road, Xu Shiyou was angry and anxious, gnashing his teeth.At dusk, Zhu Daiqing, an underground party member dispatched by the Northern Sichuan Special Committee of the Communist Party of China, came to the front line and brought the "Yilong City Map" drawn by the underground party.

This map clearly marked the streets and alleys in Yilong City, which buildings had bunkers, and which intersections had firepower points, all of which were marked one by one.Xu Shiyou slapped the table excitedly: "That's great, Comrade Zhu, you are so timely!" Xu Shiyou said to political commissar Chen Haisong: "Our army is attacking the east, south, and west today. The terrain is indeed favorable for our attack. However, according to Lao Zhu's intelligence, this is precisely the key point of the enemy's defense. North Because of the dangerous terrain of the gate, high slopes and steep rocks, and Jinchengzhai as a strong support, the enemy predicts that we will not attack from the north gate, and the defensive force is estimated to be small. Now our attack is blocked. If we hit hard, the casualties will be too great. The enemy Thinking that we won't attack from the north, I wanted to stab him in the ass. Tonight, I insisted on a feint attack, and I sent a surprise attack on Jincheng Village. If Jincheng Village succeeds, it is equivalent to taking Yilong City!" That night, Zhu Daiqing led the way, and Han Dongshan, head of the 75th Regiment, led the troops to make a detour to the side of Jincheng Mountain quietly, using the night to hide under the slope rock.Although the slope is steep and the rocks are high, there are many thorns and kudzu vines, which are convenient for hiding and climbing.At dawn the next day, the frontal troops launched a feint attack on the enemy, and the enemy responded with fierce artillery fire.When the frontal battle was in full swing, the warriors of the Seventy-fifth Regiment clung to the vines, climbed Jincheng Mountain from the back, and then condescendingly entered Jincheng Walled.There are not many enemies here, because they have not been attacked, they are all idle, and some are even smoking opium.The Red Army suddenly appeared, beating the group of enemies to the ground and rushing towards the city from the hillside in the north.The soldiers of the 75th Regiment took advantage of the momentum and followed the defeated enemy into Yilong City from the north gate.When the defeated troops entered the city, the defenders in the city were thrown into chaos.The enemy army was overwhelmed, those who surrendered surrendered, and those who fled fled. At 9:00 am on the 23rd, the Red Army captured Yilong County.In the afternoon of the same day, the Ninth Red Army immediately attacked and advanced to the south according to Xu Qianqian's deployment.It is only a hundred miles from Yilong to the south, and the main roads Ma'an and Huangshilin along the way have been controlled by the Red Army. The two divisions of the Ninth Red Army with seven to eight thousand people rushed to the south like a torrent of steel. Within two days, they occupied Hongshan, Sanhe, and Beiyuan areas rich in salt, controlled more than 90 salt wells, and seized more than 100,000 catties of salt.Those mountains of salt are mountains of gold and silver in the eyes of the Red Army soldiers.Xu Shiyou once recalled: "The occupation of a large number of salt wells is of great significance for ensuring the supply of salt to the army and civilians in the base area and breaking the enemy's economic blockade. At that time, the salt in the base area was extremely scarce, and some farmers could not even eat a grain of salt all year round. When we When I occupied the salt well, the excitement I felt was indescribable, I was more happy than discovering the mythical treasure cave.” A part of the Red Thirty-one Army attacked in the direction of Guangyuan, captured Liulinzi, an important place in the southeast of Guangyuan City, approached Guangyuan City, and developed a force towards Ningqiang in southern Shaanxi.A part of the Thirty Red Army also entered the outskirts of Cangxi to confront the enemy. In less than half a month before and after the Yilong and Nannan campaigns, the Red Army wiped out more than 3,000 people from Tian Songyao's tribe and seized more than 1,000 guns. The Soviet area expanded to the entire territory of Yilong County and Guangyuan, Zhaohua, Cangxi, Langzhong, Nanbu and other counties Until the east bank of the Jialing River, the salt supply for the soldiers and civilians in the Soviet area was completely solved, and the campaign plan was fully realized.When Xu Xiangqian talked about the Battle of Yinan, he said: In this campaign, we want to achieve military, political, and economic victories, that is to say, to move forward militarily and eliminate the security forces and salt police forces... Politically, we must negotiate with Yang Sen to resolve the Yushan Field and Dingshan Field. Continue to fight Tian Songyao to buy time to buy and mine salt; economically, we need to use various trading methods to buy our urgently needed materials such as salt, cloth, and medicine. The salt is in hand, but it has become a big problem to transport the more than 100,000 catties of salt and other materials back to the Tong, Nan, and Pakistan base areas.In the names of Xu and Chen, Chen Changhao wrote a letter to Zhang Guotao and Zhou Chunquan, secretary of the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, requesting that the rear must mobilize and organize forces to rush for transportation in time. After mobilization, the Sichuan-Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee organized a salt transportation team of more than 600 people. The Red Army also sent horses and manpower to participate in the salt transportation. Salt army.Nanfang County is more than a hundred miles away from the Bazhong base area. The road is full of high mountains and dense forests. There is no road. The transport team trudged through the deep mountains and old forests with heavy and precious salt on their backs.On the way, the salt on their backs was melted by the body heat of the salt workers, and the salt water and sweat flowed down their backs. A white layer of salt-alkali accumulated on the salt workers' bodies. Alkali corrosion, red and swollen at first, then bleeding, the festering wound was then flowed by salt water, the pain was unbearable.That's it, everyone still insists on carrying the precious salt to the base.The salt in the south completely solved the problem of eating salt in the Sichuan-Shaanxi base area, and stabilized the morale of the army and the people. In addition to the seized salt, the Red Army also controlled many salt wells in the south.When the reactionary salt owners in Nanfang County fled, they destroyed a lot of salt mining equipment. They burned salt houses, sun sheds, salt trucks, derricks, and water tanks, dug salt wells, smashed salt stoves, and some even threw them into salt wells. Sand and stone destroy the production of salt wells.After the Red Army took control of the salt wells, they immediately organized local salt workers to repair them, and the production of salt wells quickly resumed. The number of salt wells increased from more than 2,000 to more than 8,000, with a monthly output of more than 700,000 jin of salt.The salt and the seized salt totaled millions of catties, and became the biggest spoils of war in the Yinan Battle.