In the autumn of 1926, Liu Zhidan, who graduated from the fourth phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, was 23 years old.
At the behest of the party organization, Liu Zhidan, 23 years old, went to Feng Zhi's Fourth Route Army of the Northwest Army as a party representative and political director of the Ma Hongkui Department of the Fourth Route Army of the Northwest Army.
Unexpectedly, at the turn of the spring and summer of the following year, Feng Yuxiang wantonly "cleaned up the party" in the Northwest Army. Liu Zhidan, YiXia's father, Fang Zhongru, and dozens of other communist party members were all detained in Kaifeng and examined one by one.
Feng Yuxiang issued an order: We must declare our separation from the Communist Party, listen to the leadership of the Kuomintang, and abide by the rules of the Kuomintang, otherwise we must find out the shooting!
However, Liu Zhidan and others escaped after escorting wushengguan!
Liu Zhidan returned to Shaanxi and reached the front line of the armed uprising.
In May 1928, the Weihua Uprising officially broke out, and the Northwest Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was proclaimed. The most important components of the revolutionary army were members of the Communist Party, Xu Quanzhong, commander of the newly organized Third Brigade of the Northwest Army, and members of the peasant revolt in the Weihua region.
At that time, Liu Zhidan served as chairman of the military commission, Tang Shu served as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy, Liu Ji served as political commissar, and Xu Quanzhong served as military adviser.
After the establishment of the revolutionary army, it made a slight rectification, launched a large-scale attack, marched east and west, and displayed its might.
For a time, the reactionary regime in an area of 200 square kilometers stretching from Shaohua Mountain in the east to Lintong County in the west, Qinling in the south, and the Tong (Guan) Highway in the west was basically destroyed.
Weihua is located on the main traffic route of Henan and Shaanxi, and it is a place where soldiers must fight. Naturally, the Kuomintang would not tolerate the Communist Party gaining a foothold in Weihua.
In early June, the Kuomintang Northwest Army began to attack the revolutionary army. The revolutionary army concentrated its forces in one place and broke through the enemy's encirclement.
A week later, the enemy again gathered his forces and attacked the headquarters of the revolutionary army. Liu Zhidan, Tang Shu, and others led the revolutionary army around the enemy's flank and launched a fierce counterattack against the enemy.
The enemy was in disarray, hurriedly retreated, and another attack declared bankruptcy.
In late June, Song Zheyuan, the general of the Northwest Army, personally went out on horseback and commanded the three-way army to launch a third attack.
This time, Song Zheyuan used a total of three divisions of regular army strength, including sun Lianzhong's main division. Song Zheyuan divided his troops into three routes, opened a large encirclement, and posed as a complete annihilation of the revolutionary army.
Faced with an enemy nearly seven times larger and better equipped, Liu Zhidan, Tang Shu and other leaders of the revolutionary army discussed and decided to retreat on all fronts and switch to northern Shaanxi.
However, Song Zheyuan advanced rapidly and cut off the route of the revolutionary army retreating to northern Shaanxi. Only when a revolutionary army under siege can it have a glimmer of vitality if it breaks through the siege.
Liu Zhidan led a regiment of the main force, before holding the headquarters of the Revolutionary Army, along the camel canal of the position, to cover the transfer of the wounded and sick and non-combatants.
Song Zheyuan's own men and horses in the middle of the road first attacked the Camel Canal. The two armies fought to the death under the scorching sun.
On the first day, Song Zheyuan organized more than a dozen successive attacks in groups, but all of them were repelled by the revolutionary army.
The next day, Song Zheyuan ordered all the light and heavy artillery to fire and bombard at the same time, and for a time the positions of the revolutionary army on the slope of the Camel Canal were almost overturned.
The blocking troops led by Liu Zhidan suffered heavy casualties. At the same time, a revolutionary army led by Tang Shu with peasants as the main body of more than 60,000 people also fought a bloody battle with the enemy on the western road, and repeatedly repelled the enemy's attacks.
On the third day, the revolutionary army suffered even greater casualties. But they were not intimidated, and they were still nailed to the position like nails.
On the fourth day, the headquarters and the wounded and sick all withdrew, and Liu Zhidan and Tang Shucai each led their men and horses to withdraw from their positions, and withdrew from the area of the two forks of the Luonan River.
Ne Zhi's foothold was unstable, and he fell into the encirclement of five brigades of the Shaanxi warlord Li Huchen.
Tang Shu, the former commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army, led the main force to break through to the west, but instead failed to tear through the enemy's encirclement, but instead ran out of blood, Tang Shu himself also sacrificed heroically, and his head was cut off and hanged in the hanging city.
However, Li Huchen took the opportunity to launch a large-scale attack, invading the garrison of the Liangchahe Revolutionary Army and killing him on a large scale. The remnants of the revolutionary army rushed left and right, dead and wounded, but they could not get out, and finally they were defeated.
Liu Zhidan and Xu Quanzhong took the remnants of the people and horses, desperately killed a bloody road, and ran into the barren Lantian Mountains.
At this time, the team under Liu Zhidan and Xu Quanzhong was less than 200 people! When counting the number of people, Liu Zhidan's tears fell down, and his teeth were clenched.
After all, he was still young, still only 25 years old. Liu Zhidan, who is 25, has not yet matured enough to calmly deal with the tragic failure. But the bitter failure increased his courage and deepened his thinking.
Or it was precisely because of this tragic defeat that he later won one victory after another when he rode through northern Shaanxi.
At a military conference convened by the Shaanxi Eastern Special Committee in early July, Liu Zhidan bravely reviewed the reasons for the failure, summed up the lessons, and assumed personal responsibility.
Subsequently, Liu Zhidan followed the organizational resolution and sneaked back to Xi'an with the situation of the revolutionary army and the results of the military conference to report to the provincial party committee. The remnants of the revolutionary army, led by Xu Quanzhong, left northern Shaanxi and entered Henan. In Deng County, Henan, the revolutionary army was completely annihilated.
Liu Zhidan, who reported the situation to the provincial party committee in Xi'an, was stunned after receiving the news, and did not enter the water for three consecutive days. But he did not collapse, but fought with greater enthusiasm and more resolutely!
Liu Zhidan still resolutely pursued the strategy of armed struggle. In order to quickly grasp the capital of the revolution, people and guns, he plunged into the military movement work of birth and death.
Thanks to the efforts of the party organization and Liu Zhidan himself, in the spring of 1929, Liu Zhidan successfully became the leader of the Baoan County Militia Regiment. After some rectification, a vigilante group that was originally reactionary and harmful was transformed into an armed force controlled by our Party.
In the spring of 1930, Liu Zhidan joined the Mao Yusheng unit of the regular Kuomintang troops stationed in the Fourth Division in Gansu as deputy regimental commander. Soon, he transferred to the activities of the local warlord Tan Shilin in northern Shaanxi and prepared to instigate tanbu to hold an uprising. However, due to the lack of secret planning, the uprising was aborted, and Liu Zhidan was forced to make another transfer.
In September of the same year, Liu Zhidan plotted another rebellion, organized armed personnel to enter Taibai Town, Heshui County, Gansu Province, under the name of the Sixth Battalion of cavalry of the Longdong Militia Regiment, to "borrow grain", and suddenly attacked, killing Huang Yulin, the chief of the Baishui Town Militia Regiment, and more than ten of his troops, capturing more than 60 guns and dozens of mules and horses.
Liu Zhidan was determined to do something big. Over the course of several months, they fought in the areas of Bao'an, Ansai, Heshui, and Ganquan, and the team soon grew to more than 200 people.
The northern Shaanxi warlord Zhang Tingfang hurriedly dispatched troops to attack. Liu Zhidan avoided his sharp edge and retreated into the depths of the dense forest, trying to wait for the enemy to retreat before making plans.
Instead of retreating, the enemy went into the forest to search and threatened to set fire to the forest. Liu Zhidan had no choice but to lead the team out of the dense forest, trying to jump out of the encirclement and make plans, but the team had just withdrawn from the dense forest, and was ambushed by the enemy.
The team collapsed, and Liu Zhidan swallowed up the defeat again.
Liu Zhidan escaped death and once again entered Mao Yusheng's Fourth Cavalry Division and served as the regimental commander.
With military power in his hands, Liu Zhidan decided to instigate an uprising again. Unexpectedly, the act was not secret, the news leaked, and was denounced by the local gentry, Liu Zhidan was defeated again, he was arrested, and all his units were disarmed and reorganized.
This is the second time Liu Zhidan has been imprisoned.
Launching a mutiny is undoubtedly a crime to kill. Liu Zhidan was in danger. Fortunately, the party organization cherished Liu Zhidan's talent and moral character, and soon rescued him through various connections and through the intervention of General Yang Hucheng.
Liu Zhidan has repeatedly failed to do so, but his ambition has not diminished!
At this time, his identity as a Communist Party member had been exposed, but he fearlessly took advantage of the various warlords in northern Shaanxi to fight for power and profit to expand each other's troops, and ventured to cooperate with Chen Juezhang, commander of the 13th Division of the Pingliang-Gansu Army, and established a brigade in Ning County, known as the 11th Brigade of Chen Bu, with Liu Zhidan as the brigade commander.
Chen Juezhang gave the 11th Brigade 300 guns in an attempt to arm the 11th Brigade against other local warlords such as Zhang Tingfang and Tan Shilin.
Liu Zhidan smiled heartily as he took over the armed forces. Chen Juezhang also smiled happily, after all, he had added an extra brigade! But immediately, Chen Juezhang couldn't laugh. Because Liu Zhidan wanted to take away the 11th Brigade that had just been armed!
Chen Juezhang was furious and ordered Liu Zhidan to be captured and reorganized into the 11th Brigade.
Logically, Liu Zhidan's team and Chen Juezhang's team fought.
It was also logical that Liu Zhidan's newly established Eleventh Brigade could not compete with Chen Juezhang's newly organized Thirteenth Division. It was quickly broken up.
Liu Zhidan failed again.
However, Liu Zhidan was still not discouraged, collected the scattered fighters, and retreated into the Qiaoshan Mountains to fight guerrillas.
After the "9.18" incident, Liu Zhidan led his troops into Heshui County, Gansu, and in late 10 october met the revolutionary troops led by Yang Zhongyuan, Yan Hongyan, and others, and then entered Southern Liang to rest. In the winter of that year, in order to adapt to the increasingly high situation of the anti-Japanese movement throughout the country, the unit was renamed the Northwest Anti-Imperialist Alliance Army, with two detachments under its jurisdiction, with Xie Zichang as the commander-in-chief and Liu Zhidan as the deputy commander-in-chief and captain of the second detachment.
In February 1932, according to the instructions of the provincial party committee, the anti-imperialist allied army was reorganized into the Shaanxi-Gansu guerrilla group of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Sanjia, Zhengning County, Gansu, with Xie Zichang as the commander-in-chief, Li Jeff (later defector) as the political commissar, and Yang Zhongyuan as the chief of staff. At the beginning of the reorganization, Liu Zhidan left the army to report on the situation to the provincial party committee, and then carried out a period of agricultural movement work in Weibei and returned to Shaanxi and Gansu. At this time, the guerrillas had been divided into three and five detachments, with Liu Zhidan as the leader of the third detachment and leading his troops to carry out guerrilla warfare in the areas of Yongshou and Qianxian.
In May, the enemy gathered four brigades to launch an offensive aimed at strangling the newly revived Communist forces.
Liu Zhidan had just been appointed to take over Xie Zichang as the commander-in-chief of the anti-imperialist alliance. The provincial party committee ordered Liu Zhidan to lead his troops north to avoid the enemy's front.
This order puzzled Liu Zhidan, who believed that the enemy forces in the areas of Yichun, Luochuan, and Huangling in central China were weak, and that it was a mountainous area where the guerrillas had been active, and that the mass base was good, and that this was the best area for the guerrillas to stay.
After some deep thinking, Liu Zhidan resolutely led his troops to go, and he decided to prove that his decision was correct.
As a result, he was the first to win the battle, and on the night of May 15, he raided the town of Xunyi Malan, annihilating two companies of the 511st Regiment and one militia regiment of the enemy's regular troops in one fell swoop, and capturing more than 200 guns.
On the 17th, within a day, two companies of the 511st Regiment defending the enemy at Phoenix Mountain and the militia groups in Jiaojiaping and Wuli Town were annihilated, and more than 400 guns were surrendered. After the battle, the guerrillas mobilized the masses in the area of Wuli Town, beat up local tycoons to distribute grain, and expanded the Red Army, and the team quickly expanded to more than 1,500 people.
On the 20th, he led his troops to take advantage of the victory and fight again, and annihilated more than 100 people in Baishui County and the Central County Militia Regiment.
Immediately afterward, he attacked the town of Yingwang in Yichuan, completely annihilating a battalion of the enemy's 86th Division, surrendering more than 300 guns and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. The guerrillas were in high esteem.
At this point, the enemy's 86th Division turned to the defensive position, and the reactionary militia groups in Zhong, Yi, and Luo were basically annihilated. In this anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, Liu Zhidan and the guerrillas led by him, relying on the cooperation of local party organizations and the support of the masses of the people, used guerrilla tactics to advance hundreds of miles within half a month, passing through 5 counties, fighting 9 battles of various sizes, winning 8 victories, annihilating more than 1,400 enemy personnel, surrendering more than 1,200 guns, and smashing the enemy's "advance and suppression." In early June, Zhi Dan led a guerrilla group from Fu County to the east, eliminated a part of the militia group in Jiyi Town, and entered Shangguanzhuang in Hancheng, mobilized the masses, and helped the local party organization establish a Red Guard of more than 50 people.
This was the time when Liu Zhidan had done the most comfortable job since he joined the revolution.
However, at this moment, the provincial party committee suddenly gave instructions, asking the Red Army to abandon guerrilla warfare and instead practice position warfare and plain warfare, and be prepared to fight a hard battle with the enemy.
Liu Zhidan repeatedly expressed different opinions, and he was dismissed from his post, and the post of commander-in-chief was succeeded by Yan Hongyan.
Yan Hongyan also supported guerrilla warfare, so he did not follow the wrong instructions of the provincial party committee.
As a result, in late July, the provincial party sent representatives to the guerrillas to further promote the "Left" mistakes, criticize Liu Zhidan, Yan Hongyan, and others, and put on hats such as "escapism" and "uphill route" to crack down on them.
At the same time, he ordered his troops to storm nearby towns, threatening to fight a great victory that would shake the whole country. The Shaanxi-Gansu guerrillas completely deviated from the guerrilla road. As a result, the big victory was not fought, but instead suffered defeats in succession, with heavy casualties and had to retreat to the horse pen area.
Fortunately, the provincial party committee finally realized the mistake of "Left" inclination, and revived Xie Zichang and Liu Zhidan, who were good at fighting guerrilla warfare, as the chief and deputy commanders of the Shaanxi-Gansu guerrillas, and led their troops to fight guerrillas in Yao County in the south.
At this time, the guerrillas were still in good spirits and urgently needed to replenish and recuperate, and the enemy also saw this, so he could not wait to gather his forces to launch a new round of attacks on the guerrillas, in a vain attempt to take advantage of the fact that the guerrillas' combat effectiveness was not strong.
The guerrillas were still taking care of gold, and the enemy divided into three routes and marched with great momentum.
The enemy's first road, more than a thousand people from The Marquis of Hegao, marched from Xunyi Tuqiao via Anzi to Zhaojin; the second road into Yuexiubu, a battalion of more than 200 people in the militia regiment, Yijun entered Malan in an attempt to cut off the Red Army's retreat; the third route, Hu San, led more than 400 militia regiments from Fuping, Yaoxian, and Tongchuan, led by Cai Zifa, the general of the Yaoxian regiment, who was notorious, attacked Zhaojin by Yaoxian, and the situation was very serious. However, Xie Zichang and Liu Zhidan calmly responded to the battle; after finding out the enemy's deployment, they immediately made a decision, decided to avoid the enemy's main force, annihilate its weak links, take advantage of the slow progress of the enemy's He Gao waiting department, and that night used the tactic of retreating to advance, first retreating in the direction of Yijun and Tongchuan, ambushing 20 miles west of Zhaojin, luring the enemy Cai Bu into Zhaojin, and the guerrillas immediately killed a "hui horse gun." At dawn, when the enemy was still asleep, he was surrounded on all sides by me, and in the fog, he fought fiercely for less than two hours, killing Xie Fang, the commander-in-chief of the militia regiment, and Cai Zifa, the commander-in-chief of the Yao County Regiment, and annihilating more than 400 enemies. The victory at the Battle of Zhaojin greatly boosted morale. After the war, the enemy gathered the forces of several counties to jointly counterattack. In order to avoid the enemy's main force, the troops had to withdraw from Zhaojin and go north to guard.
In September, the guerrillas attacked the security guards, but without success, instead suffered more than 100 casualties.
In October, the guerrillas attacked the security again, but they still could not break through the stubborn and stubborn fortified city. Moreover, the rear road was attacked by enemy reinforcements, so they had to quickly retreat and retreat to the Forest Area in Heshui County.
By this time the harsh winter had arrived, and the difficulties faced by the guerrillas were even greater.
To this end, Xie Zichang and Liu Zhidan presided over the convening of the team committee, and decided to break up the whole group, disperse the activities, raise grain funds, solve the problem of winter clothes, and wait for an opportunity to strike at the enemy. After the meeting, the guerrillas divided into three routes: Liu Zhidan led a brigade to Heshui Taryuan; Yang Sen and Huang Ziwen led more than 60 people to the Sanyuan Wuzi District; Yang Zhongyuan and Yan Hongyan led a cavalry team to the Zhaojin area; Xie Zichang relied on the cover of the masses to lead more than 30 people to stay in the mountains and forests of the Pingzheng River and leopard rivers to take care of the wounded and sick. After a period of work, a batch of grain funds were raised and some victories were won, and the troops regained their combat effectiveness.