In the late autumn and early winter of 1931, Zhang Aiping, who was working in Ruijin, heard that Zhou En had arrived in Ruijin, and immediately ran to visit. What caught Zhang Aiping's eyes was a young and handsome face set off by a large beard. "You are..."
"I am Zhou Enlai." Zhou Enlai had already warmly shook his hand: "May I ask, which one are you?" ”
"I am Zhang Aiping, who was injured in Shanghai and asked you for your approval to come to Jiangxi."
"Oh, it was you." Zhou Enlai took his left hand, stroked it carefully, and looked at it, "Is it completely fine?" ”
"Okay, all right, you can play basketball and climb the horizontal bar."
"Okay. Good. Vice Chairman Zhou smiled heartily.
On November 7, 1931, the "Central Workers' and Peasants' Government" was established in Ruijin. Shortly after the establishment of the democratic government, Zhang Aiping was transferred to the Central General Headquarters of the Young Pioneers as the head of the general team, and the representative of the General Party was concurrently served by Zhou Enlai, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Since then, Zhang Aiping and Zhou Enlai have had direct contact in their work and have personally received zhou Enlai's teachings.
At that time, Vice Chairman Zhou's work was very busy, and Zhang Aiping and other young comrades wanted to do more work to reduce Vice Chairman Zhou's burden. However, late at night on the first day of Zhang Aiping's arrival, Vice Chairman Zhou called and asked him to come over. When Zhang Aiping came to Zhou Enlai's office in a hut between the bamboo bushes and trees, Zhou Enlai had just finished handling the work of the Central Military Commission and was already very tired. Zhang Aiping wanted to finish the work concisely and concisely so that Vice Chairman Zhou could rest early, but Zhou Enlai asked very carefully and told his opinion very seriously. When the conversation was over, it was early the next morning.
After that, Zhang Aiping often received a call from Vice Chairman Zhou at night, and then walked through the hillside and bamboo jungle to the hut with the lights, reported to Zhou Enlai on the soil work, studied the inter-topics, and greeted the glorious dawn together.
In order to boost everyone's fighting spirit, Zhang Aiping often told the young pioneer comrades about Vice Chairman Zhou's all-night work in spite of fatigue, and all the comrades of the Young Pioneers deeply felt the concern of the representatives of the General Party and received great encouragement and strength from vice chairman Zhou's work spirit.
In October 1933, Chiang Kai-shek launched the fifth "encirclement and suppression" campaign against the base areas. In the face of the tense situation, Vice Chairman Zhou particularly stressed that the Young Pioneers should mobilize the backbone to form a model team and join the Red Army in whole squads, platoons, companies, and camps. Later, the Party Central Committee decided that the workers of the Red Guards should form a workers' division, and the exemplary members of the Young Pioneers should form the International Division of the Young Communist Party, and Vice Chairman Zhou put forward the call for the Young Pioneers to join the Red Army as a whole regiment and a whole division. Zhang Aiping resolutely carried out Zhou Enlai's instructions, actively mobilized the vast number of Young Pioneers, responded to the party's call, and enthusiastically joined the Red Army, so that the International Division of the Young Communist Party could be developed and grown, full of vitality, and well-known.
Zhang Aiping has always had very good memories of this experience of working with Zhou Enlai, and for many years, the lights in the bamboo forest on the hillside have been lit in his heart. He said: "Vice Chairman Zhou has never been willing to just put up a name for himself, and not only has he not taken care of the Affairs of the Young Pioneers as we initially thought, but on the contrary, he has more, more detail, more worry, and more fatigue than we have.
In February 1935, after our army crossed the Chishui River and occupied Tongzi City, it was learned that the troops of the Guizhou warlord Wang Jialie were advancing from Zunyi to Tongzi. The commander of the Three Corps, Peng Dehuai, urgently ordered the Thirteenth Regiment to travel through the night and strive to advance the enemy first to occupy the key pass of Tongzi leading to Zunyi---- Loushan Pass.
Zhang Aiping and the eleventh regiment had just arrived outside Tongzi City, and before the troops had camped, they received an urgent order from the commander of the Peng Army: "The battle at Loushan Pass is fierce, and the whole regiment is advancing rapidly!" ”
Zhang Aiping and several other responsible cadres of the regiment galloped along the main road from Tongzi to Loushanguan. In the woods not far from Loushan Pass, I saw Commander Peng and Chief of Staff Deng Ping, and only then did I know that last night an enemy division (four regiments) came from Zunyi to occupy Loushan Pass before me, two of its regiments held the pass, the division headquarters led a regiment to guard the town of Banqiao, about 30 miles south of the pass, and another regiment attempted to go out of Loushan Pass to reinforce Tongzi, and encountered our army halfway up the mountainside of Loushan Pass. After repeatedly charging and killing, the thirteenth regiment occupied the pass, but was fiercely counterattacked by the enemy, and is now confronting the enemy under the pass.
Commander Peng determined the combat deployment; It is not only necessary to seize Loushan Pass and open the road to Zunyi, but also to annihilate the enemy who is guarding the pass and create conditions for taking advantage of the victory to occupy Zunyi. He then ordered the Twelfth Regiment to take over the Thirteenth Regiment's frontal assault; The thirteenth and tenth regiments surrounded the enemy guarding the pass from the left and right sides of the enemy; The Eleventh Regiment detoured from the left flank of Loushan Pass to detour the Banqiao enemy and cut off its retreat.
The sunset reflects the huge peaks of the mountains, and Loushan Pass looks even more majestic. The eleventh regiment made a sharp advance along a winding path toward Banqiao. Because of the long detours and the mountain march, every minute and second is precious. As soon as the troops advanced, they issued tasks layer by layer and carried out political mobilization. When the warriors heard about the enemy's ass, they all jumped with joy, and the slogans and laughter kept going on.
In the middle of the night, the stars and moon suddenly hid in the thick clouds, the sky fell a drizzle, the steep mountain road, as if rubbed with oil, slipped and slipped, and more and more people fell. Some people started seeing others slip and fall, laughing and shouting "One more!" The words did not fall, and he slipped himself, causing everyone to laugh. The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and the mountain road was steeper and slipperier, but none of this could stop the Red Army's rapid advance!
Before dawn, the eleventh regiment rushed to the vicinity of Banqiao. If the enemy on the outskirts of Banqiao encounters "the flying general descending from the sky", he will rush to the battle. The eleventh regiment seized a hill outside the town of Banqiao and took advantage of the situation to rush into the town, and the enemy's main force collapsed to the south and fled.
At the same time that the eleventh regiment was detouring towards Banqiao, the twelfth regiment launched a fierce attack from the front of Loushan Pass. The enemy knows that Loushan Pass is the gate of Zunyi, but of course they refuse to give in easily, and they have repeatedly competed with our army for every hill by virtue of the dangerous terrain of "one husband and one pass, and no one can pass the pass." However, Wang Jialie's troops were famous "double-gun soldiers", each of whom had a large smoking gun in addition to a steel gun. They have enough of a smoking addiction, relying on the dangerous terrain, although they can fight a breath, but when the addiction is launched, the natural danger Loushan Pass will not be able to save their fate. In particular, our army's sudden turn back this time has already made them dizzy and frightened. Under the frontal onslaught of our army and the encirclement of the two wings and the roundabout attack in the rear, the defending enemy finally collapsed and collapsed. Our army launched a large-scale pursuit and annihilation battle in the mountains around Banqiao.
The whole day and night of marching and fighting, the journey of more than 150 miles, comrades did not enter the grain of rice. But the joy of victory has made everyone forget hunger and fatigue. After resting in the evening, they couldn't help but talk about it: "Tomorrow, I will go to Zunyi for lunch!" ”
Before dawn on the second day after our army captured Loushan Pass, Zhang Aiping led the eleventh regiment as the vanguard of the regiment and ran quickly along the road to Zunyi. They got up early and walked fast, and everyone was eager to give birth to wings and fly up the walls of Zunyi at once. run! pursue! Along the road were full of enemy stragglers, running in groups of three or five. Some smoke ghost soldiers who could not run, lying on the side of the road, with snot and tears; Some smoking guns have not been lost, but they lie on the side of the road, light smoke lamps, and become addicted to smoking. Asked why they didn't run, they said the Red Army "flew" too fast and they couldn't run.
At about 9 o'clock in the morning, on the slope of a mountain that broke the road like a saddle, suddenly gunshots rang out. The warriors shouted happily, "Catch up, catch up again!" ”
This is a stone shop, about 30 miles away from Zunyi, and is a small pass in Loushan Pass through Zunyi. The enemy sent a battalion from the city to block our army by the mountain. In a fierce battle, my eleven regiments occupied the top of the hill. In addition to being annihilated, the remnants of the enemy fled toward Zunyi. Zhang Aiping commanded the post, followed closely behind, and chased all the way to the city.
Zunyi is divided into two cities, old and new. When I was chasing the eleventh regiment through the new city and was about to reach the east gate of the old city, a small river cut off the road. The defenders of the old city were about to close the gates of the city. Fifty or sixty enemies who had retreated from the stone paving were imprisoned on the bridge outside the city and taken prisoners of our army.
Zunyi City is larger, and there is a river between the old city and the new city as a boundary. In the afternoon, our army seized the new city and the villages on the edge of the city. In order to quickly take the old city, my eleven regiments, braving the enemy's guns, crawled forward and forced themselves into the river beach under the city, shaded by a small mound of grass. When Zhang Aiping was using the telescope to observe the terrain and the deployment of the enemy's defensive city, Deng Ping, chief of staff of the regiment, also came to the front to observe the enemy situation with Zhang Aiping. Deng Ping said, "Your regiment will first restrain the enemy defending the city, and when the main force of the legion arrives, launch a general offensive tonight, and will definitely take Zunyi before dawn tomorrow." The situation is urgent, and tomorrow the enemy Xue Yuebu who reinforces Zunyi may arrive..." Suddenly, Comrade Deng Ping fell headlong into Zhang Aiping's right arm, and Zhang Aiping had not yet figured out what was going on, and the blood of Yin Hong, who had heroically sacrificed herself for the revolutionary cause, had already stained her clothes red. Deng Ping was unfortunately shot, and before she could finish saying what she had to say, she died tragically.
Chief of Staff Deng Ping, a student of the early Whampoa Military Academy, had participated in the Pingjiang Uprising, and his combat commander was heroic, tenacious, calm, and decisive, and was a powerful assistant to Commander Peng. His sacrifice made Zhang Aiping extremely sad.
That night, with the full anger of avenging the revenge of Chief of Staff Deng Ping, our three legions launched a fierce attack on the old city of Zunyi and successfully reoccupied the city of Zunyi!
In the city of Zunyi, the people were full of joy and lights, and welcomed the Red Army back to Zunyi.
At the same time that our army was retaking Zunyi, Chiang Kai-shek hastily dispatched two divisions of his Central Army's Wu Qiwei Column to rush to Zunyi from the south bank of the Wu River. In order to annihilate the enemy, the Central Military Commission ordered the Red First and Third Armies to send a regiment each to attack in two directions in the direction of Lazy Bench and Duck Creek. The order stipulates: After encountering the enemy in the middle, the wide frontal movement defense tactics will be adopted to resist step by step, and the enemy will be exhausted. When the enemy was drawn to the outskirts of Zunyi City, the two regiments built fortifications side by side, held firmly on the mountain, and resolutely grasped the enemy, so as to make the main forces of the First and Third Armies of our army attack and annihilate the enemy from the left and right flanks. The two regiments that attacked to meet the enemy were the second regiment of the first legion, and the eleventh regiment of the third legion--- that is, Zhang Aiping's regiment.