In Hubei Hong'an Gaoqiao District, a place called Yangzishan Village Zhangjiawan, where the distant mountains tower, the sky is blue and clear, passing through a lush greenery, one after another, the phoenix swaying crops, in the cracks of several slightly higher hills, you can see several old houses, on the side of the village entrance, there is a very ordinary bungalow adobe tile house, from the door hanging on the white background of the black sign can be seen, that is the founding lieutenant general Zhang Renchu's former residence.
Yangzishan Village Zhangjiawan
Zhang Renchu, born in 1909 in this village of a poor peasant family, when he was 3 years old, his mother's cause of illness did not have money to treat and died, he was very pitiful since he lost his mother at an early age, his father worked in the field all day and had no time to take care of him, from a young age he worked with his sister in the field, at the age of seven or eight years old, he picked up a family burden, and he could only watch the children of rich families go to school, and his heart was very envious. He often let the cattle graze, but he secretly lay outside the window of the academy to listen to mr. lectures.
When his father saw that he was so obsessed with studying, he gritted his teeth and carried a few loads of rice, sent him to a private school for several months, and finally because the family's life was difficult, he returned home to do farm work, and during the agricultural leisure season, he gave the landlord short-term work, carts, and burdens, and worked until he was sixteen years old.
Zhangjiawan is a small, impoverished mountain village, and although it is difficult to reach, it is not far from Wuhan, where the workers' and peasant movements are flourishing. As a result, this small mountain village always feels the revolutionary breeze of the outside world. At this time, his hometown organized special branches, secret peasant associations, night schools for the poor, etc., to mobilize the masses to propagate revolutionary ideas, and the Zhang Renchu brothers resolutely threw themselves into the vigorous peasant movement; in the struggle to fight against local tycoons and divided up the land, they took a firm stand, dared to struggle, disregarded personal safety, always rushed to the front, and were absorbed into the peasant association members and Red Guards, this year Zhang Renchu was seventeen years old.
With the upsurge of the revolution, peasants in various places have been organized and peasant associations have been set up, and the peasants have never raised their eyebrows and breathed like today, and they feel that Zhang Renchu, who is the master of his own house, has endless strength in doing revolutionary work, and he carries the shuttle sign every day to stand guard for the peasant association. The landlords and rich people, who were not willing to accept defeat, organized reactionary vigilante groups and big knives to make trouble. Every time he fought against the militia group, Zhang Renchu fought heroically and rushed to the front, which won the praise of the villagers.
With the deepening of the local struggle, soon after the jute uprising broke out in this area, Zhang Renchu and his brother felt the blood boiling in their whole body, bid farewell to their relatives with tears, and resolutely participated in the armed uprising. Wielding a large knife, he bravely rushed forward, and the bullets whizzed past his ears in complete disregard, and the peasant army finally captured the county seat, captured the county seat, captured the county magistrate alive, crushed the reactionary forces, and established the Huang'an workers' and peasants' power. The masses of workers and peasants beat gongs and drums, and firecrackers sounded in unison. In this uprising, Zhang Renchu held the "overthrow of the oppressors and seek liberation." "Firm conviction, heroic struggle, not afraid of sacrifice, joined the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, organized in a guerrilla brigade and a small group as a soldier, in the course of his life, from then on began a new chapter."
He followed the rebel army to Huangpi, Huanggang, Macheng and Xiaogan, and other places, and the troops ate and slept in the wind, starved and cold, went to and fought guerrillas, and went through a very difficult journey with the enemy. But he was not afraid, and when this team was reorganized into the Red First Army, Zhang Renchu was honorably assigned to be a Red Army soldier in the first division, one regiment, one battalion, and one company.
Zhang Renchu, who joined the Red Army corps, first made meritorious contributions in the three battles and three victories in the attack on Yangjiazhai Station, the ambush battle in Yangping District, and the battle at Huayuan Station, and was promoted to squad leader; subsequently, in the first anti-"encirclement and suppression" struggle in the Eyu-Anhui Soviet District, he was heroic and tenacious, and he made meritorious contributions again and was promoted to platoon commander; in the first anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, he led the commando team to attack Shanzhai and was promoted to deputy company commander, and later in the Long March of the Red Fourth Front, he was promoted to regiment commander.
In June 1935, the vanguard of the Red Fourth Front and the First Front, in the Maogong area of Sichuan, won the victory meeting, Zhang Renchu's regiment was transferred to the Red Army, he served as the commander of the second battalion, under the jurisdiction of Wang Kaixiang, the leader of the Red Fourth Regiment, and Yang Chengwu, the political commissar. At this time, Zhang Renchu was the advance regiment of the Right Route Army crossing the meadow. Crossing the meadow was the most arduous march of the Red Army. The grassland in northwest Sichuan, through which the Red Army's Long March passed, was located on a plateau of more than 3,600 meters above sea level between the Yangtze river and the Yellow River watershed, and was an inland sea of algae.
After six days of arduous trekking, Zhang Renchu's troops finally used their lives to open a way forward for the large army on the grass. It was followed by the Right Route Army Headquarters and a section of the Red Star Column, the Red Army University, and other victorious arrivals at Banyou. In the Battle of Lazikou, Zhang Renchu was resourceful and decisive, and his heroic deeds as a pioneer were commended by the general orders of his superiors. After the victorious completion of the Long March, Zhang Renchu was transferred to the Red Army University to study, he studied political theory assiduously, summed up the lessons learned in combination with his combat practice, and in just half a year, his political theory and military command level were greatly improved.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhang Renchu served as the commander of the 1st Battalion of the 686th Regiment of the 343rd Brigade of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, led the troops to participate in the Battle of Pingxingguan, served as the main attacker, and successfully completed the combat tasks assigned by his superiors. Subsequently, Zhang Renchu led his troops to fight two of the most famous battles, one was the Breakthrough Battle of Lufang, and the other was the Battle of Chongfang.
At that time, Zhang Renchu's troops, division headquarters and organs were besieged in the Landfang area of Feicheng by more than 5,000 Japanese troops and 3,000 puppet troops led by the commander of the Japanese army in Shandong, Ogao Guizang. This place is located in a small basin, surrounded by mountains on three sides, and hills on one side, how to break through? Zhang Renchu received the order to hold his position until dark.
It was an encounter, Zhang Renchu's troops had no time to build fortifications, and the battle began. He led the 1st And 2nd Battalion of the 686th Regiment to the southeast to block the frontal attack of the enemy at Fat Pig Mountain, Dishan Mountain, and Mopanling. After the battle began, Zhang Renchu personally commanded the battle at the position of Feizhu Mountain, which was attacked by the enemy's heavy troops, and led his troops to engage the enemy's short soldiers and launched a white-knife fight, fighting fiercely for a day, from morning to afternoon. In the face of the menacing Japanese army, Zhang Renchu calmly responded to the battle, and forced the Japanese army to die under the mountain, repelling a total of nine Japanese charges. In this battle, more than 1,300 enemy were killed and wounded, and finally persisted until nightfall.
At 11 o'clock that night, Zhang Renchu led the 686 regiment to cover the division headquarters and local party and government organs to quietly jump out of the encirclement circle of the Japanese army, and the next morning, after launching a fierce shelling on Fat Pig Mountain again, the Japanese army entered Lufang Village, only to find that the place was empty. They could not have imagined that the 115th Division headquarters had already camped in a salt-free village sixty or seventy miles away from here.
The victory in the Lufang Breakthrough Battle not only protected the security of the division headquarters and local party and government organs, but also forced the Kuomintang government to recognize the legal status of the 115th Fifth Division in Shandong. Chiang Kai-shek sent a special congratulatory telegram to the commander-in-chief on this matter, saying: "Special and comforting! In this battle, the 686 regiment led by Zhang Renchu was greatly famous and went to the land of Qilu.
Subsequently, Zhang Renchu, who was promoted to deputy brigade commander of the Second Guiding Brigade, learned that the Japanese army had drawn troops from Tancheng, Wharf, and Chongfang to attack the anti-Japanese armed forces on the Sulu border of our country in separate attacks, and the rear troops were empty, so he decided to lead his troops to attack Chongfang for a long time, pull out the enemy's strongholds, open up anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy in southeastern Lu, and gather the troops at dawn.
Chongfang is a large market town located on the bank of the Yi River, with more than a thousand families, and the terrain is high in the north and low in the south. The enemy set up a gun tower in the town, a stronghold, and built a 6-foot-high wall. Outside the wall there are deer and outer trenches. Taking advantage of the thin morning light as a cover, the three battalions of the main attacking force, under the leadership of battalion commander Lu Chongzheng, quietly passed through the enemy's outer trench fortifications and occupied the position of the charge. Just as the ladder was about to be erected, the enemy sentry fired in panic.
Using the smoke from the explosion, a ladder was erected and rushed into the wall. The enemy retreated. At this time, I followed the troops, and then rushed into the town and engaged in a fierce street battle with the enemy. Zhang Renchu ordered the soldiers to avoid the streets, string alleys, dig up walls and cross the courtyard, plunge into the enemy's rear, shrink the encirclement, and surround and annihilate the enemy. By about 10:00 a.m., nearly a hundred enemy troops had been annihilated, and the battle was over. After the victory in the first battle, he ordered his troops to seize the time to clean up the battlefield, set up guards, build fortifications, and prepare for a new battle.
When the Japanese army saw that The heavy factory was taken, it became angry and concentrated its forces, and with the help of dozens of cars and 7 tanks, it desperately launched a counterattack on the heavy square. The cannons in the whole town of Chongfang were tremendous, and smoke was billowing. After the fierce shelling, the enemy thought that there were few soldiers left in our army. Do you not know that when the artillery bombardment, the soldiers of our army cleverly and flexibly use all kinds of terrain and ground objects as cover; as soon as the artillery fire stops, the soldiers appear in front of the enemy like lightning, the bundles of grenades are like rain falling, and the machine gun fire crosses each other, dense as a net of fire, and the enemy is knocked down in pieces before the position is overthrown.
At this time, the light and heavy machine guns I was ambushing on the left and right opened fire at the same time, beating the enemy hiding behind the tank and rolling all over the ground. The tank lost the support of the infantry, turned around and ran. The warriors bravely pounced on it and engaged the enemy in a white-knife battle. In the fight, many warriors' bayonets are bent and broken, and they pick up the enemy's bayonets, sabers and enemies to continue fighting. In the fierce battle, one of the enemy tanks was destroyed by me, and when it was dark, the enemy finally collapsed in full force. In the end, the battle for the heavy square was won.
On the anti-Japanese battlefield, Zhang Renchu had a war horse named "Spotted Leopard", and he really rode this BMW and good foal. The "Spotted Leopard" carried this brave warrior on the anti-Japanese battlefield in Shandong, and repeatedly accomplished miraculous feats. During the battle, a Japanese leader drove a car to break through and escape, Zhang Renchu flew on his horse and rushed up, and the "spotted leopard" chased after him. The devils on the military vehicle in front of him turned around and opened fire on him, he immediately crouched down, holding two box guns in his hand, firing bows left and right, and the enemies on the car were shot one by one and fell out of the car, and finally, even the driver of the car was shot by Zhang Renchu, and the Japanese army car lay on the road, and all the enemies in the car were killed.
Zhang Renchu did not want to die because of the battle, and when he was in a hurry, he rolled up his sleeves and rushed forward, always rushing to the front, so his comrades-in-arms gave him a nickname called "Zhang Crazy Man", and after the founding of the country, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general.