Fan Xing
Nie Rongzhen once wrote in his memoirs: "The commander of the 30th Regiment of the Tenth Division, fought very well in Henan during the Northern Expedition, and the troops were very famous. He was both a well-known regimental commander and a loyal member of the Communist Party. ”
The regimental commander that Marshal Nie Rongzhen was talking about was Fan Xing.
Fan Xing, whose original name was Fan Mengsheng (范孟声), was born in 1899 in Fengcheng County ,Jiangxi Province (present-day Fengcheng City) in a family of scholars. At the age of five, he entered a private school opened by his father, and in 1915, he was admitted to Nanchang No. 2 Middle School to study. During his studies, he was ideologically progressive, actively participated in the student movement, and became dissatisfied with the Beiyang government's repeated concessions to the great powers. In order to enable the country to strengthen itself and no longer be bullied by the great powers, he set himself the goal of saving the country from the army. Just in August 1918, the War Department openly recruited military cadets to the public, and Fan Xing went north alone to register for the examination, and after a six-month enlistment life, he was promoted to the eighth infantry section of the Baoding Military Academy.
Whampoa Military Academy
In July 1922, after graduating from military school, Fan Xing was assigned to the Beiyang Army as a probationary officer, and was promoted to platoon leader half a year later. However, in the following year, he was extremely dissatisfied with the corruption within the Beiyang army, and gradually developed the idea of defecting to the revolutionary regime in the south. In November 1924, he resigned and went south, and on the recommendation of baoding classmates, he became a captain tactics instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy, and six months later he was promoted to major captain of the 7th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the Student Corps, and in 1926 he was transferred to the commander of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment.
While at the Whampoa Military Academy, Fan Cao developed a keen interest in the political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party and went on to become a secret party member. At that time, it was the honeymoon period of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and Fan Xing was again elected as a special party representative by the military academy because of his clear political views. After the Start of the Northern Expedition, Fan Xing was transferred to the field unit and served as the commander of the 30th Regiment of the 10th Division.
Northern Expedition
During the Nanchang Uprising in August 1927, Fan Xing led his troops to respond positively. However, due to the successive sieges of the Kuomintang troops after the uprising, the division commander Cai Tingkai (蔡廷kai) when the troops arrived in Jiangxi Jinxian had a crushing intention. All the Communists of the 10th Division were repatriated, and Four higher-ranking Communists, including Fan Mengsheng (Fan Xing), were detained. After that, he escorted Fan Xing and four other people all the way east to gradually break away from the rebel ranks, and contacted Zhang Fakui, the commander-in-chief of the Second Front Army, on the way. Zhang Fakui called and asked Cai to execute the four people on the spot, but Cai Tingkai wanted to leave a way back for himself, so he showed Zhang Fakui's telegram to the four people, and then said: "Zhang Fakui is too ruthless, Cai is willing to reserve room for future cooperation, and sends the chief of staff to hire a small boat to send the four of you to avoid, hoping that each of them will be cherished." After that, they were sent back to their hometown.
Cai Tingkai
For this reason, Zhou Enlai said bitterly ten years later: "In this way, our foundation in the Tenth Division has been completely destroyed..."
Some people say that Fan Xing later became a monk, but in fact, after fan Xing was forced to return to his hometown to work as a farmer for three years, in October 1930, under the introduction of Zhang Zhizhong, the former superior of the Whampoa Military Academy, he became the chief of the personnel section of the Hunan Provincial Security Department. Over the next seven years, he contributed to the construction of the Hunan local security forces. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in July 1937, part of the Hunan Security Forces was replenished to the field troops on the front line, and some of them were organized into new divisions to prepare for the war. In January 1938, Fan Xing was promoted to deputy commander of the 198th Division, newly formed by four regiments of the Hunan Security Forces.
After the establishment of the 198th Division, it was actively reorganized in Nanyue, and when the Battle of Wuhan broke out, it was transferred to Hubei to participate in the war. The 198th Division was tasked with garrisoning Puchun and the surrounding area, defending Wuhan from the north. In September 1938, the Japanese 6th Division attacked Guangji and then launched an attack on Tianjia town, and the 198th Division dispatched two regiments to reinforcements at the end of the month, which halved the 198th Division's garrison in Puchun and created difficulties for future operations.
In the early morning of October 8, the Japanese 116th Division (Division Commander Kiyomizu Kishige) and the 119th Brigade Regiment (Brigade Commander Ishihara Tomitaro) and the 120th Wing (Wing Commander Shimahara Yoshiyoshi) launched a fierce attack on Puchun. Although Fan Xing and the division commander Wang Yuying both went to the front line to supervise the battle, they were eventually forced to retreat to Pushui in the night due to insufficient troops and more suppressed firepower by the Japanese army. On the 21st, it was attacked by the main force of the Ishihara detachment of the Japanese 116th Division, and the 198th Division fought and retreated, and was forced to retreat to Huangpi after nightfall.
On the morning of October 24, the Sano detachment of the 36th Brigade of the Japanese 6th Division (Division Commander Inaba Shiro) (Brigade Commander Ushishima Man) launched a fierce attack on Huangpi. The detachment was organized by the main force of the 23rd Wing, half a brigade of the 45th and 47th Regiments, a squadron of light armored vehicles, a squadron of combat vehicles, the main force of the 2nd Wing of the Independent Mountain Artillery, and a brigade of field artillery. At this time, the 198th Division, after repeated battles, only one-third of the combatable strength remained, and the strength of the Japanese Sano detachment was like a drop in the bucket.
Fan Xing knew that Huangpi was already the last line of defense for the north gate of Wuhan, and if he did not fight to the death here, Wuhan would be directly exposed to the Japanese army. So with a heart of death, he personally led the reserve team into a fierce battle on the front line. At dusk, a unit of the Japanese 23rd Wing broke into the position again, and when Fan Xing organized his troops to counterattack, he was unfortunately shot and killed, at the age of 40. After Fan Xing's death, the 198th Division broke out in the direction of Shashi under the leadership of division commander Wang Yuying at nightfall.
Nationalist forces at the Battle of Wuhan
Some people say that if Cai Tingkai had not taken the 10th Division out of the Nanchang uprising, then Fan Xing might have been a marshal and a general after the founding of the country, after all, Lin Biao was the company commander, Chen Geng was the battalion commander, and Chen Yi was also the regimental instructor.
History has no ifs. Although Nie Shuai praised his "loyalty", Fan Xing, after being repatriated by Cai Tingkai, failed to continue to firmly follow the Communist Party and find revolutionary troops. When he chose to join the local troops of the Kuomintang, his fate was basically determined. Of the four people who were repatriated with him, two were determined to go back to the party organization. After returning to his native Ningbo, chief of staff of the 30th Regiment, Chen found the local guerrillas and fought a guerrilla war together on siming Mountain, where they were later captured and killed by the Kuomintang troops; Xu Shilin, chief of staff of the 28th Regiment, went to Shanghai to look for Xu Jishen...
However, he performed extraordinary in the national righteousness of the Anti-Japanese War, heroically killing the enemy and sacrificing his life for the country, which deserves the admiration and memory of future generations. As for the words of marshals and generals, they should be said in this way.
References: "Records of the Fallen Generals of the Anti-Japanese War in Blue Blood", "Chronicle of the Nanchang Uprising"