Among the founding generals who were awarded the title in 1955, Admiral Xiao Ke can be said to be a man of hundreds of battles without losing his elegant demeanor, and the marshal of a thousand armies still has a bookish temperament.
Admiral Shaw
He was a general who participated in the Northern Expedition and the Nanchang Uprising, and participated in the struggle to create the Jinggangshan base area and defend the Central Soviet Region. He was one of the youngest senior commanders in the history of our army: he became a military commander at the age of 25; at the age of 27 he led the Red Sixth Army on an advance expedition to the west, kicking off the prelude to the Long March; at the age of 30, he led the Eighth Route Army to encircle Peiping and establish a base area behind enemy lines; at the age of 40, he participated in the struggle to command the Fourth Field Army to march into zhongnan, directly pursue the poor Kou, bury the Chiang family dynasty, and liberate all of China.
He was a military educator who trained talents for the development and growth of the Revolutionary War and our army.
He was a writer who wrote a novel, "Bloody Luoxiao," during the war years. This strange book was published 50 years later and won the Mao Dun Literature Prize.
He was a poet, and in his days of suffrage, he secretly gave many moving poems, wrote down his emotions and thoughts, and revealed his mental journey.
He was a calligrapher, and his calligraphy brush walked the dragon and snake, straight to the chest, showing the personality of a soldier and a poet.
He was also the commander-in-chief of the Cultural Corps, and he led more than 100 experts and scholars to compile an unprecedented cultural masterpiece ——— "General History of Chinese Culture" over 8 years.
On July 14, 1907, Xiao Ke was born in Xiaojie Tiancun, Jiahe County, Hunan Province, and his original name was Xiao Wuyi. The family has two older brothers, two older sisters and one younger sister. Xiao Ke's family is poor, and since he can remember, he has often seen his parents and eldest brother working hard and worrying about their livelihood.
Xiao Ke's ancestors have been readers for generations, three of his five brothers are from the book, of which the three uncles have the best learning, the family has collected many books, and Xiao Ke loves to go to the three uncles' house to read books. The Third Uncle was a patriotic literati, full of hatred for Yuan Shikai's restoration, disappointed in the weak Republic of China government, Xiao Ke was influenced by the patriotic ideas of the Third Uncle from an early age, and organized the "Gongxue Society" when he was a student, actively participating in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal patriotic student movement.
In February 1926, Xiao Ke left his hometown and went to Guangzhou to be admitted to the second phase of the Central Military Commission's Gendarmerie Training Institute, officially embarking on the military road. After graduation, Xiao Ke went to the 24th Division of the 11th Army (the 11th Army was expanded by the 1st Army, and Ye Ting served as the commander of the 24th Division), and was assigned to the 3rd Company of the 71st Regiment as a political instructor. Although the roar of the shells was incessant, he was not afraid, assisted the company commander in commanding the battle, repelled the enemy's attack one after another, and finally had the opportunity to practice the military knowledge learned from books.
Shaw in his youth
From April to July 1927, Chiang Kai-shek launched counter-revolutionary coups in Shanghai, Xu Kexiang in Changsha, and Wang Jingwei in Wuhan, hunting down communists and revolutionary progressives. At this critical juncture of bloody rain and wind, Xiao Ke threw himself into the torrent of armed struggle against the Kuomintang reactionaries and joined the Communist Party of China in May 1927. Since then, he has embarked on the road of fighting for the cause of communism all his life.
After the Zhumao Jinggangshan Division met, on May 10, 1928, two regiments of the Yang Ruxuan Division of the Gansu Enemy drove from Ji'an to Yongxin, and the soldiers attacked the Red Fourth Army in two ways. According to military intelligence, Mao Zedong and Zhu De planned countermeasures at Maoping, and decided to concentrate their elites to crush the enemy troops along the way first, and Zhu De led the 28th regiment and 29th regiments out from the direction of Ciping to meet the enemy.
At 11:00 a.m. on May 11, the Red Army of the two regiments passed through Cinnabar Chong, and Zhu De ordered the 29th Regiment to rush to Huang'ao as a vanguard. Hu Shaohai, the commander of the 29th Regiment, ordered the 1st Battalion to lead the way, and Xiao Ke served as the commander of the 3rd Company in the battalion. The 3rd Company was the most effective company in the regiment. The 1st Battalion marched not far from the mouth of Huang'ao Village, and the Sharp Soldier Squad returned to report to Xiao Ke that the enemy was resting in pairs on the river beach and on the side of the road in Huang'ao Village. When Xiao Ke heard that Huang Ao had arrived at the enemy, he said to the battalion commander Zhu She: "The enemy has also just arrived, and he should take advantage of his lack of preparation to fight!" Zhu She hesitated and said, "Just if we fight it, what if the 28th Regiment can't follow up?" Xiao Ke replied: "One minute early will be one point stronger, and the 28th Regiment will definitely catch up." Zhu She, when I saw Xiao Ke's decisive words, thought that Xiao Ke had fought many battles in the Northern Expeditionary Army and should be sure, so he replied to Xiao Ke: "Well, you can fight the forwards even!" ”
In 1938, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Deng Xiaoping, Xiao Ke (second from right), Peng Xuefeng, and others were headquartered at the Eighth Route Army in Mamu Village, Hongdong County, Shanxi.
Xiao Ke commanded the 3rd Company and two other companies to rush into the Yellow Pass and start the battle. In the blink of an eye, the enemy who was caught off guard killed or wounded forty or fifty people. The enemy in the village rushed to participate in the battle, and as soon as they reached the mouth of the village, they were met with rows of bullets firing head-on. The enemy saw that he was beaten alive and had to retreat to the village. Shaw ordered his troops to pursue them. With the arrival of the follow-up troops, in only ten minutes, the 29th Regiment, with Xiao Kelian as the forward, crushed the advance battalion of the 81st Regiment of the Gansu Enemy, eliminated more than 100 enemy troops, and captured more than 40 people. Shortly thereafter, Zhu De led the 28th Regiment to arrive, asked about the situation, and said happily: "As the saying goes, a fight depends on the first place, and this battle is well fought!" "Then I praised Zhu She for my proper command. Commander Zhu pointed at Xiao Ke and said, "At that time, I couldn't make up my mind, but It was Xiao Company Commander who said that he would take advantage of the enemy's lack of preparation to fight him." Zhu De looked at Xiao Ke and nodded: "If you want to get, you must pay attention to speed in fighting, and whichever takes the lead will gain the profit!" ”
At 10:00 a.m. on May 12, the Red Army defeated the enemy's 81st Regiment at Wudou River, and the regimental commander Zhou Tiren fled with only more than 200 remnants. The Red Army left 1 company to clean up the battlefield, and the troops took advantage of the victory to pursue and occupy the county seat of Yongxin for the first time. In the first victory of the Red Fourth Army, Xiao Ke left a deep impression on Zhu De and Hu Shaohai.
In April 1947, Xiao Ke (first from the left) was on the front line of the Battle of Zhengtai with Nie Rongzhen and Yang Chengwu.
In the early days of the founding of New China, our army was at a turning point in history, and with the gradual reduction of our army's combat tasks after the seizure of national power, the army's education and training will inevitably become the main task of army building in the new period. In March and April 1950, Xiao Ke officially received a notice in Hankou, Wuhan, to be transferred to the military training department of the Central Military Commission. Recalling his mood at that time, Xiao Ke said: As a veteran who participated in the initial struggle of the people's army, I feel honored to be able to undertake such a mission at a turning point in history, and at the same time I feel that my responsibility is heavy.
On the second day of arriving in Beijing, Xiao Ke hurriedly reported to the General Staff Headquarters and expressed to Acting Chief of General Staff Nie Rongzhen his urgent desire to carry out his work as soon as possible. Who expected Nie Shuai to laugh and say, "Where do you think the Military Training Department is?" Right in your head, in your hands. At this time, Xiao Ke learned that the military training department that appointed him as the minister had only one "light pole commander" - no office space, no staff. Xiao Ke was worthy of a generation of famous generals with courage and insight, and he took over the burden of forming a military training department. After 5 months of preparation, the framework of the Military Training Department was set up, and all the work was ready. In June, the Central Military Commission officially issued an order appointing Xiao Ke as the head of the Military Training Department.
Mao Zedong shook hands with Xiao Ke cordially
The first thing Shaw did when he took office was the preparation for the establishment of the Army University (later changed to a military academy). According to the decision of the Central Military Commission, Xiao Ke served as the director of the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of the Army University, and in the process of surveying the site of the school, he adopted the opinion of Marshal Liu Bocheng and selected the site of the former Kuomintang Army University in Nanjing as the address for the preparation of the military academy. On January 15, 1951, the Nanjing Military Academy was officially opened, and since then, our army has had a regularized higher military academy.
Many of the founding generals who were awarded the title in 1955 were only gradually learning culture in the revolutionary army, and then learning war in war. During the war years, almost everyone who graduated from high school was called "intellectual." Among these generals, Xiao Ke, who could write poetry and good books, can be regarded as a veritable Confucian general, as Mrs. Snow's former wife commented in "The Older Generation of Chinese Revolutionaries (Autobiography)": "Like Zhou Enlai, Xu Xiangqian and Mao Zedong, Xiao Ke is the reincarnation of what Chinese call 'military scholars'. ”
On July 30, 1975, Xiao Ke (second from right) accompanied Ye Jianying and Xu Xiangqian to receive cadets of the Military and Political University of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Speaking of Xiao Ke's outstanding "achievements" in literary creation, the most commendable is the book "Bloody Luo Xiao", which the famous writer Xia Yan called "a strange book in the history of contemporary Chinese military literature". On the eve of the Founding Day in 1988, "Bloody Luoxiao", which was born in the flames and smoke of the War of Resistance Against Japan, was finally published across half a century; the author Xiao Ke also changed from a 30-year-old man to an 81-year-old man, and the bittersweet and bittersweet in it are difficult for outsiders to appreciate.
In March 1991, "Blood Luo Xiao" won the honorary award of the 1984-1988 Mao Dun Literature Award. Later, through the introduction of Xia Yan and others, Xiao Ke became a member of the Chinese Writers Association.
After the publication of "Bloody LuoXiao", Hu Yaobang gave it to him with seven absolutes
Talking about the background of Xiao Ke's creation of "Blood Luoxiao", we must start from a Soviet novel "Iron Stream". After the Xi'an Incident, Xiao Ke had the opportunity to read the Soviet novel "Iron Stream", which excited him about the story of the Armed Forces of Russian workers and peasants and the heroic image of the Commanders and Fighters of the Red Army. Xiao Ke thought that the scale of China's revolutionary war was larger than Russia's, its time was longer than Russia's, and its influence was far-reaching than theirs, and it was entirely possible to write China's "Iron Flow". After conceiving, he decided to take the growth of a small guerrilla force of the Red Army in the Luoxiao Mountains during the fourth anti-"encirclement and suppression" period as the main story line, so as to show the rise of Chinese revolutionary forces.
The creative process is very arduous. Lack of information, Xiao Ke relied on his own memory to recall a little; without scratch paper, he used office paper, letter paper, different colors, different sizes.
From May 1937 to October 1939, Xiao Ke wrote the first draft of the novel of 400,000 words, tentatively titled "Luo Xiaojun". In the following four or five years, he made 3 major revisions and countless minor revisions. After the outbreak of the Liberation War, Xiao Ke's wife, Jian Xianfo, took the manuscript and children with her, and a group of cadres from Yan'an to Northern China. When resting in a unit station near Luanping, Hebei Province, it was found that the leather bag containing the manuscript was missing, and the local garrison was mobilized to help Jian Xianfo find the leather bag, but it was not found for a day. Who knew that at night, the purse appeared again on a gasoline barrel in the station.
What Xiao Ke and Jian Xianfo did not expect was that this manuscript of the novel that had been preserved by all means would bring them disaster. In the 1958 anti-"dogmatism" movement, the manuscript that had been sealed for 21 years was used as "evidence" of Shaw's crime. In order to achieve the effect of criticism, the novel manuscript was printed out, and the words "for criticism" were attached, and bound into three volumes "internal" to read, and Xiao Ke, the critic, also had a set. When he got it in his hand, he was so happy that he threw the original draft into the fire. During the Cultural Revolution, Xiao Ke and his novels were once again doomed. The rebels criticized him and the novel with a new perspective of line struggle. In order to criticize Shaw, the rebels took the manuscript and mimeographed hundreds of copies. Some joke that this is the only novel in the country that has been mimeographed twice before it was officially published.
Comrade Xiao Ke's life was a life of revolution, a life of fighting, and a brilliant life, a life of being born into death and working hard for the cause of national independence and people's liberation, and a life of bowing down and dying for socialist construction, reform and opening up, the building of the people's army, and the cause of national defense education.
General Shaw in his later years
At 12:51 on October 24, 2008, the 102-year-old General Xiao Ke completed his legendary life in Beijing.
This article is based on historical sources