In 1930, the officers and men of the 68th Regiment of the 34th Brigade of the Kuomintang Army stationed in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, under the leadership of underground party members, held two uprisings, and more than 230 officers and soldiers, including founding lieutenant general Chen Zhengxiang, successfully revolted and joined the ranks of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
Founding Lieutenant General Chen Zhengxiang
I. Old rival of the Red Army
First of all, a brief introduction to the 34th Brigade, the history of this unit can be traced back to the Yunnan warlord civil war before the Northern Expedition. In the 1922 Yunnan Warlord Civil War, Gu Pinzhen, commander of the First Army of the Yunnan Army, was killed in battle, and tens of thousands of his men retreated into Guangxi, declaring support for Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist government. Soon as Sun Yat-sen began to reorganize the Dian army, Hong Rujun, the commander of the 2nd Brigade, who was dissatisfied with him, led his troops to defect to the Beiyang warlord Wu Peifu and was reorganized into the 6th Division, which was commanded by Yang Ruxuan, who also broke away from the Dian army.
After the outbreak of the Northern Expedition, the Yunnan warlord Jin Handing, who had fled Hong Kong, with the financial support of his compatriot And third army commander Zhu Peide, recruited 2,000 soldiers to Yunnan and participated in the attack on Wu Peifu. With the gradual victory of the Northern Expeditionary Army, the size of the troops gradually expanded, and Jin Handing's troops were expanded into the Ninth Army. Yang Ruxuan saw that the situation was not good, and led his troops to defect to the Northern Expeditionary Army. In this way, the name of the 6th Division of the Beiyang Army became the 27th Division of the Ninth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.
Soon the Ninth Army was renamed the Thirty-first Army, and the main force of the army was also led by the commander Jin Handing to fight Zhang Zuolin in the north, and the rear traffic in Jiangxi was maintained by the miscellaneous troops of the 27th Division. At this time, the autumn harvest uprising troops led by Chairman Mao had already gone up to Jinggang Mountain and joined the Shonan uprising led by Commander-in-Chief Zhu, and the revolutionary movement in the entire Xianggan border was in a state of spark. Yang Ruxuan was ordered to go forward to attack, but was defeated by the Red Army, and the Red Army soldiers also made up a couplet "The Red Army eliminated two sheep (Yang) in Jiangxi without three points of effort" to ridicule Yang Ruxuan and another division commander, Yang Chisheng.
Jin Handing in the TV series "Founding Father Zhu De"
After the end of the Second Northern Expedition, the National Revolutionary Army was downsized nationwide, the 31st Army was downsized to the 12th Division, and the 27th Division was also renamed the 34th Brigade. Yang Ruxuan was deprived of his military power because he had lost the battle and was not a concubine of Jin Handing, and the brigade commander was Ma Kun, a close confidant of Jin Handing. Since then, the 34th Brigade has been stationed in Ganzhou, and sometimes the 68th Regiment has been sent to pursue the Zhumao Red Army. In the course of the pursuit, the officers and men of the 68th Regiment heard and witnessed the various propaganda of the Red Army and the people of the Soviet Zone, and became more and more sympathetic to the revolution.
II. The Military Movement of the 68th Regiment
After the defeat of the Great Revolution, a group of Party members and progressive youth were forced to lurk in the Kuomintang army because they lost their relations with the organization. Zhang Yang, an underground party member of the 68th Regiment and a lieutenant clerk in the headquarters, and Wang Tuo, a lieutenant platoon commander of the 1st Company, connected with the party organization in Shanghai. Peng Jialun, who had done military movement work in other units, was sent to lead the military movement work of the 68th Regiment together with Zhang Yang and Wang Tuo, and Peng Jialun's public identity was that of the 2nd Company Sergeant Clerk.
At that time, in order to control the troops, Jin Handing sent a group of young officers to the 34th Brigade as platoon commanders, all of whom were students who graduated from the Third Army Teaching Regiment of the Whampoa Military Academy and had personally heard Commander-in-Chief Zhu's propaganda and education in Nanchang. Therefore, although none of them were Communists, they were also very dissatisfied with the Kuomintang's betrayal of the revolution and the fight against the Red Army, rarely spoke ill of the Red Army, and turned a blind eye to the activities of Peng Jialun and others, which created favorable conditions for the development of the military movement work.
In view of this situation, Peng Jialun, Wang Tuo, and Zhang Yang first worked among progressive young officers to propagate Marxism-Leninism and our Party's ideas to them and expose the crimes of the Kuomintang. This work soon paid off and a number of underground party members were developed. Subsequently, Peng Jialun successively set up peripheral organizations such as Bai Tongzi, Social Drama, and Literary Research Society, carried out activities among ordinary soldiers, and recruited a group of activists.
Peng Jialun was the director of the Propaganda Department of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee after the founding of the People's Republic of China
At that time, the Kuomintang army was in financial difficulties, and the officers were deducted layer by layer, and the officers and men at the bottom were often owed salaries. On the eve of New Year's Day in 1930, the party organization learned that the officers and men of the 68th Regiment had not been paid for several months, so they called on the soldiers to launch a struggle for annual pay and demanded that the salaries be paid in a non-violent and non-cooperative manner of "not being out of work, not going to work, and not standing guard and putting on the guard." The struggle was eventually successful, and the 34th Brigade was forced to pay a month's salary, and thereafter more activists and the masses joined the party organization.
Third, the Line of Fire uprising has only passed by one company
In April 1930, the 68th Regiment was sent to Yudu Qiaotou, the base of the Independent 4th Regiment of the Jiangxi Red Army. Peng Jialun and others immediately held a secret meeting of the party branch and decided to take advantage of this opportunity to encourage the soldiers to make trouble in their positions and make preparations for an uprising in the line of fire.
Not long after, the Red Army came to attack the garrison of the 68th Regiment, and after entering the position, the officers and men suddenly collectively proposed: "No war without paying the salary!" At this time, the regimental commander Yang Yingzhi was panicked, and he was forced to whisper and plead with the officers and men: "After fighting this battle, go back to Ganzhou immediately to make up for your salary." Unfortunately, due to his long absence from the army in peacetime, he had no authority in the 68th Regiment, and most of the soldiers only listened to the orders of the platoon commander of the Progressive Company. Yang Yingzhi saw that everyone could not move, so he had to order the troops to withdraw from the position. When the Red Army saw that the enemy had begun to retreat, because it had no prior contact with the underground party of the 68th Regiment, it thought that the enemy was timid, so it simply concentrated its fire on the retreating enemy. Peng Jialun and others originally planned to take advantage of the chaos of the retreat and lead everyone to the Red Army. However, the Red Army fought too fiercely, and everyone hung white flags and blew military trumpets one by one, and the other side ignored them. In order to avoid being mistakenly wounded by the Red Army soldiers, they could only follow the large troops back to Ganzhou.
The Independent 4th Regiment of the Red Army was stationed at the foot of the Yudu Bridge
Of course, there was still a successful uprising, and Yang Shaoru, a lieutenant platoon commander of the 9th Company of the 2nd Battalion who walked in the last one, in the name of "covering the troops", tricked the company commander into leading dozens of people from each of the 9th Company, the 10th Company, and the Mortar Company to stay and block the attack, and then signaled everyone to raise their hands and surrender after the Red Army approached. The commander of the 9th Company, Li Company, was forced to participate in the uprising, and under his repeated requests, he was finally released by the Red Army half a year later.
Fourth, the second uprising pulled out another company
The Bridgehead Uprising did not catch Ma Kun's attention at first, and he thought that the dozens of soldiers who had lost were simply captured by the Red Army. Soon, Chen Yi concentrated on various guerrilla columns in southern Gannan to form the Twenty-second Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and under the instructions of the central authorities, decided to attack ganzhou city, where the 34th Brigade was stationed. At this time, Peng Jialun and others finally established contact with the Gannan Party organization and decided to cooperate with the Red Army to revolt again to seize Ganzhou.
To this end, Peng Garen and others gathered 32 underground party members and decided to destroy the brigade and regimental headquarters and open the city gates on the night of the Red Army's attack. Unfortunately, among the 32 people, there were people who saw the wind and the rudder, who immediately reported to the brigade commander Ma Kun, resulting in the arrest and death of 16 underground party members, but Peng Jialun, Zhang Yang and Wang Tuo all escaped from the army safely.
Although the underground party organization activities within the 68th Regiment were terminated, there were still many underground party members lurking, and Ma Kun also sensed the unreliability of the 68th Regiment, so he stepped up the promotion of reactionary officers and decided to further purge the 68th Regiment. Chen Zhengxiang, an activist of the 8th Company of the 2nd Battalion, and others did not want to sit still, and he connected a group of like-minded comrades-in-arms through the relationship between his hometown and friends, and planned to use the opportunity of the 2nd Battalion to go to Dayu in Guangdong to receive military salaries to launch an uprising.
Marshal Chen Yi was the commander of the Red Twenty-second Army
On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival in September 1930, Chen Zhengxiang and more than 20 officers and men of the 8th Company secretly carried weapons out of the dormitory, and after killing the evil Wang Company Commander, rushed to the red twenty-second army's garrison in Shangyou County, Jiangxi. By the next morning, the 7th Company Commander Artemisia Xinsheng and Sun Jixian (not Lieutenant General Sun Jixian, who participated in the Ningdu Uprising), who had also launched the uprising at the same time, also arrived with more than 100 people. This rebel force was eventually incorporated into the Special Task Force of the Red Twenty-second Army. After nearly 20 years of conquest, by the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the more than 230 officers and men of the 68th Regiment who participated in the two uprisings were only Chen Zhengxiang, Peng Jialun, Zhou Chunlin, Wu Liqiang and Liu Peng.
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About the author of the public account: Wang Zhengxing, a former officer of a field unit of the People's Liberation Army, has served in infantry detachments, headquarters, logistics departments and other units, is committed to the study of war history and tactics, and has a unique understanding of military tactics and non-war operations. His book "This is War" was recommended in two issues in May and June 2014 by Phoenix TV's "Eight Minutes of Open Volume" column. His public account name is also "This is war", welcome to pay attention