Most people have the impression that the Red Army is a "poor" armed force with scarce materials and poor equipment.
What is less well known is that this "poor" team has a special regiment, whose equipment, military appearance, and quality of soldiers are among the best in the army, and their combat effectiveness is even more frightening to the opponents.
There is a reason to call this regiment "special".
First of all, the members of this regiment are all cadres of the Red Army, and once the platoon commanders and company commanders of the Red Army enter this regiment, they can only start from ordinary soldiers, and this regiment also has a brigade, and its ordinary soldiers are all red army battalion commanders and regimental commanders.
This regiment was a cadre regiment of the Red Army with Chen Geng as its regimental commander and Song Renqiang as its political commissar.
Everyone may wonder how Chen Geng, one of the "Three Masters of Huangpu," was only a regimental commander; at the same time, many comrades whose qualifications and abilities were inferior to his were in important positions, and their positions were above him.
The answer is no; the Red Army respects and reuses talented people, and will definitely not bury such outstanding military talents as Chen Geng; the Red Army's arrangement is definitely a "stroke of God." What is going on, just look at the composition and positioning of the cadre regiment.
On the eve of the Long March, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission decided to merge the three Red Army schools in the Soviet Zone into a cadre regiment, consisting of two infantry battalions, a political battalion, a special branch battalion, and a "shanggan team" composed of senior cadres of the Red Army, with a total of nearly a thousand people in the regiment.
The duty of the cadre regiment is not only to train and store cadres, but also to be an important combat unit of the central column, and in fact it is also the "guard regiment" of the head organ of the Red Army.
Because of their particularity and the extraordinary roles they play, they are equipped with first-class weapons.
Of course, the source of the Red Army's equipment mainly depends on "capture", and there is a custom in the Red Army that all advanced weapons captured from the Kuomintang army will be given priority to the cadre regiment.
Therefore, the cadre regiment has the most advanced weapons and equipment in the whole army, including submachine guns, Mauser guns, machine guns, and a small number of mortars.
Ordinary officers and men of the Red Army have never worn steel helmets or leather boots, but these things are definitely not rare in the cadre regiment, and during the march, when charging into the front, the officers and men of the cadre regiment wear steel helmets and hold submachine guns.
Here we should give special mention to the "upper cadre team" of the cadre regiment; although it is only a brigade under the cadre regiment, the ordinary soldiers of this brigade are at least at the battalion and regimental levels.
The leader of the "Shanggan Brigade" was Xiao Jinguang, who had gone to the Soviet Union twice to study politics and military affairs, served as a lieutenant general party representative and director of the political department of the Sixth Division of the Second Army of the National Revolutionary Army, participated in the Northern Expedition, and later served as the political commissar of the Fifth Red Army.
After the liberation of the whole country, Xiao Jinguang was awarded the rank of general, and he was also the first naval commander of our army.
There are three sections under the "Shanggan Brigade", the chief of the command section is Zhou Shidi, a veteran party member who joined the party in 1924, graduated from the first phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, was the chief of staff of the Ye Ting Independent Regiment during the Northern Expedition, served as a division commander after the Nanchang Uprising, and was awarded the rank of general in 1955.
The head of the political section is named Su Jin, who graduated from the Japanese Non-Commissioned Officer School, participated in the Ningdu Uprising, served as the commander of the Red Forty-fourth Division, and was awarded the rank of major general in 1955.
The head of the local work section is called Feng Dafei, born in Huangpu I, he was the column commander of the Red Seventh Army during the Baise Uprising, and later served as the acting commander of the Red Eighth Army, but unfortunately he was injured in the Anhui Incident, arrested for traitor informing, and died in the Shangrao concentration camp in 1942.
The cadre regiment was essentially a mobile military academy of the Red Army, and even during the arduous and arduous Long March, it did not relax its study and practice of new tactics and new theories; at the first opportunity, Chen Geng would arrange for research and training on topics such as encounters, ambush warfare, and attack warfare, as well as the forced crossing of rivers and rivers, interspersed with detours, and so on.
In the early stage of the Long March, there were not many opportunities for cadre regiments to participate in the war, and after the Bloody Battle of the Xiangjiang River, the Red Army cadre regiment, a unit of more than 1,000 people, came to the fore in battle.
Every battle in which the cadre regiment participated was extremely difficult, in other words, if it was a battle of ordinary intensity and normal difficulty, the Red Army would not consider using the cadre regiment.
The biggest battle fought by the cadre regiment was the battle of life and death in Tucheng.
Due to intelligence errors, the Red Army was in trouble in the Battle of Tucheng, and the Red Army launched thirteen consecutive charges against the Kuomintang army without success, but instead risked being "bitten" by the Kuomintang army.
The Red Army was in danger, the situation was still deteriorating, and at that time, even the commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Mr. Zhu Lao, took up the position with a gun.
At a critical juncture, the Red Army had to urgently order the Chen Geng cadre regiment to join the battle, and the Chen Geng cadre regiment launched the 14th and final charge of the Red Army.
The appearance of the Chen Geng cadre regiment startled the Kuomintang army, they had never seen the Red Army wearing steel helmets, nor had they seen the Red Army armed with a single-color submachine gun, and there were bullets that came over their faces like a storm.
What made them even more timid was that this Red Army team wearing steel helmets went forward and continued to charge, and the battle was so dark that it was impossible for the Kuomintang army to support it any longer.
The commander-in-chief of the Red Army saw this scene with his own eyes from the telescope and said excitedly: "This Chen Geng can become a military commander in the future!" ”
Less than a month had passed, and the Red Army was in distress again during the second strike of Zunyi, and Chen Geng's cadre regiment rushed out to join the battle, quickly reversing the situation on the battlefield and forcing the Kuomintang army's Wu Qiwei troops to retreat in all directions.
Wu Qiwei was chased by Chen Geng's troops to the Wu River, and in a panic, Wu Qiwei ordered his men to cut down the pontoon bridge, and more than 3,000 Kuomintang soldiers who did not have time to cross the river were taken prisoner by the cadre regiment.
After several engagements, the officers and men of the Kuomintang army that surrounded the Red Army in the southwest region had a lingering feeling for this Red Army unit, and they called the Chen Geng cadre regiment "iron hat soldiers."
In the course of the engagement, once these Red Army troops wearing German-style steel helmets were found to appear, the Kuomintang soldiers would exclaim that "the iron hat soldiers are coming", pull out their legs and run, throw away their armor, and be embarrassed.
After the Long March reached northern Shaanxi, the Chen Geng Cadre Regiment merged with the military school of the Red Fourth Front to form the Red Army University, and some of the cadets of the cadre regiment were supplemented to the main force of the Red Army, and most of them served as red army commanders of higher ranks.
The Chen Geng Cadre Regiment has fulfilled its historical mission and has also trained a large number of outstanding military cadres for our army, and these elite forces have always been active on the stage of the Chinese revolution, making meritorious contributions, and shining brightly.