In August 1937, after arduous negotiations, the Kuomintang and the Communists shook hands for the second time and made peace, and Chiang Kai-shek agreed to reorganize the Red Army into the Eighth Route Army. The Red Army troops were given the number, but Chiang Kai-shek harbored evil intentions and deliberately reduced the organization of the Eighth Route Army, allowing only the Eighth Route Army to be organized into three divisions.
Usually a division had three brigades under its command, but Chiang Kai-shek allowed only one division of the Eighth Route Army to be organized into two brigades. Therefore, the Eighth Route Army has only six brigades in total. These six brigades were all seeds of the Red Army, the revolutionary elite, from which many founding generals later emerged.
So, which of the six brigades will have the most founding generals?
The 344th Brigade walked out of the two founding generals. The 344th Brigade can be said to be a "brigade of great generals", and the brigade commander (Xu Haidong) and the political commissar (Huang Kecheng) have become generals, which is unique among the six brigades of the Eighth Route Army. Unfortunately, the 344th Brigade only had two founding generals, and initially they were not in the brigade headquarters, one was the deputy regimental commander, he was Han Xianchu, and the other was the regimental political commissar, he was Liu Zhen.
Han Xianchu and Liu Zhen were fearful descendants, and later came to the top, both of them later became the brigade commanders of the 344th Brigade, and during the Liberation War, they each brought out an ace army that swept through a thousand armies, that is, the Fortieth Army and the Thirty-ninth Army.
The 359th Brigade also walked out of the two founding generals. They were brigade commander Chen Bojun and deputy brigade commander Wang Zhen. Of course, Wang Zhen soon took over the post of brigade commander, and he was the most famous and representative brigade commander of the 359 Brigade.
The 385th Brigade also walked out of two founding generals, namely the brigade commander Wang Hongkun and the regimental commander Chen Xilian. This 385 Brigade is more interesting. Wang Hongkun led a regiment to stay in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, and Chen Xilian led his regiment to the anti-Japanese front. However, Chen Xilian's regiment developed too rapidly, and in less than a year,000 years, it actually grew to eight thousand people. Where is this still a mess? Therefore, this regiment was also renamed the 385 Brigade, which is the new 385 Brigade.
The 358 Brigade walked out of three founding generals, one was the brigade commander Zhang Zongxun, and some people said, isn't the brigade commander of the 358 Brigade Lu Dongsheng? Yes, but Lu Dongsheng did not actually arrive at the post, and Zhang Zongxun soon took over as the brigade commander of the 358 Brigade. The other two were also originally regimental generals, one was the regimental commander Song Shilun and the other was the deputy regimental commander He Bingyan.
Finally, I have to talk about the 386 Brigade. In fact, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, the 386 Brigade won a lot of word of mouth, for example, some people said that the 386 Brigade was the best brigade in China, and some people said that the Japanese army pulled a banner that said that it specialized in the 386 Brigade. So, how many founding generals did the 386th Brigade walk out?
There should be five, namely Deputy Brigade Commander Chen Zaidao and Deputy Brigade Commander Xu Shiyou. How come there are two deputy brigade commanders? They were in order, Xu Shiyou was after Chen Zaidao. There was also political commissar Wang Xinting and chief of staff Li Jukui, both of whom were founding generals. There were four of them, and another regimental political commissar who later became a founding general was also the political commissar of Chen Xie's corps.
So, is there a brigade of more founding generals than the 386 Brigade? Yes, this is the 343rd Brigade. The 343rd Brigade should have walked out of six founding generals, one for the brigade chief of staff Chen Shiyu and one for Xiao Hua, who later served as the brigade's political commissar.
The two regiments of the 343rd Brigade were also famous generals, the two regimental commanders Yang Dezhi and Li Tianyou were both founding generals, and one deputy regimental commander, Yang Yong, and Deng Hua, director of the Regiment's Political Training Office, were also founding generals. So you see, is the founding general of the 343rd Brigade coming out of the country the first?
Of course, this was the ace brigade that was reorganized from the Central Red Army of that year.