In June 1929, Xu Qianqian came to the revolutionary base area in northeast Hubei and led the 31st Division of the Red Eleventh Army to carry out a struggle against the enemy. The base area of northeast Hubei is located on the border of Hubei and Henan provinces, close to western Anhui, and its strategic position is extremely important. After Xu took office, he immediately took advantage of every opportunity to familiarize himself with the cadres and grasp the situation in all aspects. He respected the local cadres, led by example in everything he did, and quickly won the trust of local cadres and the masses.
Almost at the same time, Chiang Kai-shek defeated the Gui warlords and seized the Gui territory in Hubei and southern Henan. In order to hinder the development and growth of the Red Army in this area, Chiang Kai-shek immediately mobilized two regiments of Luo Lin's independent Fourth Division, a battalion of Li Kebang's Provisional Second Brigade, five or six thousand members of the Reactionary Militia Regiment's Red Gun Society, the supplementary regiment of Xia Douyin's Thirteenth Division, and the landlords' armed forces, and carried out "meeting suppression" against the Red Thirty-first Division in three ways, in an attempt to destroy the revolutionary base area on the Eyu border in one fell swoop.
At that time, although the Red Thirty-first Division was known as four regiments, it only had 4 brigades and more than 300 troops, only two brigades and more than 100 guns in the base area, and some new recruits only had large knives and spears as weapons. In the face of the enemy's invasion, the CPC Hubei Special Committee resolutely decided to adopt tactics such as the enemy advancing and retreating, the enemy taking and disturbing us, and avoiding the strong and the weak, and extensively attacking and harassing the enemy troops on both the east and the south with mass armed forces, so that the enemy would be exhausted; Xu Xiangqian commanded the Red Thirty-first Division, first counterattacking the enemy troops on the northern road with weak combat effectiveness, and then concentrating its forces to attack the enemy troops in the east and south and smashing the enemy's "meeting and suppression." Xu Xiangqian immediately led the troops of the two brigades, leading the enemy in a "circle" in the mountains, waiting for the opportunity to annihilate the enemy in a mobile battle.
At the end of June, thousands of enemy troops on the North Road, Li Kebang and the Red Gun Society, entered the Baisha pass area. Baisha Pass is a high mountain pass on the main traffic road on the Eyu border, and after the enemy occupied it, he thought that he could sit on a commanding position and sit back and relax, so he used it as a base to wantonly plunder the surrounding villages and massacre the revolutionary masses. In order to strike at this enemy, the CPC's Northeast Hubei Special Committee and the leaders of the Red Army decided after studying that the troops should be divided into four routes and launch a surprise attack on Baisha Pass to eliminate the defending enemy in one fell swoop.
In the early hours of July 1, 1929, fighting began. With the cooperation of thousands of revolutionary masses, Xu Xiangqian led the Red Thirty-first Division to divide into four routes and launch a fierce attack on Baisha Pass at the same time.
When the attacking troops and the revolutionary masses climbed up and approached the cottage, the enemy began to shoot wildly. The underground party members and revolutionary masses who infiltrated Baisha Pass in disguise in advance quickly came out of the enemy village to meet them, and the enemy was immediately in chaos. The Red Army first rushed from the south of the pass to the fortifications of the enemy's regular army, quickly broke through the position, and annihilated a company of the enemy. After more than an hour of fierce fighting, the Red Army killed and wounded hundreds of enemy troops and completely captured Baisha Pass. When the Red Gun Society congregation saw that the regular Kuomintang army had been annihilated, they immediately scattered and desperately fled to Guanhou. The Red Army took advantage of the victory to pursue, chasing out more than 30 miles in one go, not only destroying a large number of enemies on the way, but also capturing the reactionary leader of the Red Gun Society alive.
After that, the Red Army concentrated its forces to launch five consecutive strikes against the Kuomintang army Li Kebang's troops, killing more than 100 people below its battalion commander and crushing the enemy on the north road. The other two enemies saw the situation and retreated in a hurry. In this way, the enemy's "meeting to suppress" was crushed by the Red Army in less than half a month. After this victory, the revolutionary base area in northeast Hubei pushed northward for tens of miles, which greatly boosted the morale of the military and people in the base area, and the red army team expanded rapidly, and the Red Thirty-first Division added more than 500 people at a time.
(Source: People's Daily News)
Director system: Tu Mengjin| Producer: Wu Yubing
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yan| Editor: Xu Tingting
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