Speaking of General Xiao Ke, who served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Red Second Front, many students who are very familiar with the history of the Second Front will say that Xiao Ke did not fight any battles, and how he inexplicably became the deputy commander-in-chief. The formation of this argument is not surprising, after all, most of the current Red Army-themed historical dramas take the history of the Red Army as the main line, and the latest TV series with the red second-front military history as the main line, "Xiongguan Mandao", is still a work of 16 years ago.
Stills from the TV series "Xiongguan Mandao"
In fact, in October 1934 alone, after the Red Second and Sixth Armies joined the divisions, in the one-year period of operating the Xiang'echuanqian base area, they successively won four great victories in the nature of annihilation warfare in the 100,000 Ping Valley, Chenjiahe Taozixi, Zhongbao, and Chestnut Garden. Although most of these four great victories were jointly commanded by He Long and Xiao Ke, it is difficult to distinguish who has the greater credit, but the Peach Creek Pursuit And Annihilation Battle is an example of a battle commanded by Xiao Ke alone, from which it can be seen that Xiao Ke did have two brushes in terms of divisional movement warfare command.
On the afternoon of April 12, 1935, the Red Second and Sixth Armies encountered the 172nd Brigade of the 58th Division of the Chiang Kai-shek Army in the town of Chenjiahe in Sangzhi County during the second anti-encirclement and suppression campaign in Xiang'echuanqian. After a day of fierce fighting, the 172nd Brigade was completely annihilated by the Red Army the next day, the brigade commander Li Yanling (zi Huiling), the commander of the 343rd regiment Wang Binrui were killed, the 344th regiment commander Sun Fanglan (No. Futing, Huangpu IV) and the brigade chief of staff Wei Youtang were captured alive, and later became instructors in the Second Front's Military School. The Red Army then took advantage of the victory to pursue and defeated the 347th Regiment and the new battalion of the 174th Brigade, which took another route.
The 58th Division was a beiyang army incorporated by Chiang Kai-shek's army, with jurisdiction over two divisions and four regiments, and had fought against the Red Fourth Front and the Red 25th Army in the Eyu-Anhui Soviet Region for a long time. Division commander Chen Yaohan personally led the 58th Division's direct subordinate unit, the 174th Brigade Headquarters and the 348th Regiment to walk behind the 172nd Brigade, and received a telegram from Li Yanling and the Red Army, Chen Yaohan hurried to reinforcements, only to learn that the 172nd Brigade had been destroyed halfway to the road.
Wei Youtang, chief of staff of the 172nd Brigade, captured in "Xiongguan Mandao"
Chen Yaohan's command ability is actually not very good, what he is best at is to run as soon as he finds danger, which is also the secret of his ability to keep the whole division for many years of combat in the Eyu-Anhui Soviet Area. Because he did not know how many Red Army there were still in front of him, Chen Yaohan was afraid that the Red Army would be ambushed, so he could not care about the death or death of his old subordinate Li Yanling, so he immediately led his troops to flee south, hoping to get closer to Guo Rudong's 26th Division of the Sichuan Army, which had just captured Tawo, the capital of the Qiansu District of Xiang'echuan.
Moreover, Xiao Ke, who was the commander of the Red Sixth Army at the time, when interrogating the captives of Chen Jiahe, learned that the original 58th Division headquarters and the 174th Brigade were still behind, and he correctly judged that after the enemy's defeat, the rest of the army would inevitably not dare to fight but chose to flee, so he personally led the 51st Regiment of the 17th Division of the Sixth Army and the 53rd Regiment of the 18th Division to pursue south. The troops chased for two days, over a large mountain, and chased all the way to the Peach Creek area, which was eighty kilometers away from the Chenjia River, and not far from the Peach Creek there was a small village called Taowo, which was a good place for the army to camp.
It had just rained that afternoon, and the air was foggy, and the Red Army's vanguard reported to Shawker that the river in front of it had become muddy. Xiao Ke pondered, the source of this river, Mr. He's hometown Sang zhi, is a clear water river, and it has just rained heavily at the moment, there are no pedestrians on the road, if there are not many people who have just waded through the river, how can the river be so turbid? He personally went into the water to check and found that there were many footprints in the sediment at the bottom of the river, which pointed in the direction of the peach nest.
Shaw at the beginning of the War of Resistance
Xiao Ke accurately judged from this that the enemy must have just passed not long ago, and they absolutely did not expect that the Red Army would come so quickly, the so-called soldiers were fast, and the fighters were difficult to find, although there were only two regiments of about 2,000 troops in their hands, which was slightly less than the total strength of the enemy (it was later confirmed that Chen Yaohan had more than 4,000 people in his hands), Xiao Ke still decided to attack while the enemy was unstable.
Just as Xiao Ke had predicted, Chen Yaohan had just arrived in Taowo not long ago, and because he thought that after three days of running, the Red Army would not follow him again, and his troops did not even do the most basic fortifications, and the cordon was not much arranged. Coupled with the fact that there were several large mountains further out of Taowo, which were not suitable for passing at night, Chen Yaohan boldly ordered to camp on the spot for the night, and put his division behind Taowo Village on a stone plateau.
Xiao Ke spread out his troops, and when the sky gradually turned dark, he began to attack, when it suddenly rained heavily in the sky, and it was supposed that according to the regular military regulations, it was dark and rainy, which was not suitable for engagement, but such a good opportunity was in front of him, how could he give up? After advancing toward them, the troops quickly seized the 58th Division's signal corps that were setting up telephone lines outside Taowo, and through their surprise interrogation, the Red Army quickly grasped the location of the various units of the 58th Division and the location of Chen Yaohan's division headquarters.
Map of the Battle of Chenjiahe-Taozixi in the Anti-Encirclement Campaign
After a burst of gunfire, the main attacking forces of the Red Army rushed into the village of Taowo and engaged in a melee with the enemy. The officers and men of the 58th Division were caught off guard and were suddenly in disarray, and many of them were taken prisoner before they could rush out of the defense. An enemy still wanted to make a counter-attack and counterattack, but Luo Zhang, deputy battalion commander of a certain regiment of the Red Army, saw it, immediately grabbed a few grenades and rushed up, shouting: "Follow me!" At once, the enemy was shouted at, and the others followed, and at once the enemy's counterattack was destroyed.
In the darkness of the night, accompanied by the sound of rushing rain, the villages and villages outside taowo village were the shouts of the Red Army soldiers to "quickly surrender their guns", and most of the officers and men of the Chiang Kai-shek Army obediently took prisoners. The enemy's machine gun battalion commander was captured inside the house before he could get dressed, and he was accompanied by nineteen light and heavy machine guns that had not yet entered the battle. In the end, the Red Army captured about two regiments of Chiang Kai-shek's army, but zhang Jingming, commander of the 174th Brigade of the 58th Division, and many others escaped from the battlefield under the cover of nightfall.
Chen Yaohan, commander of the 58th Division, and his chief of staff, Zhou Zhixian, were besieged by the Red Army regiment on that stone high ground, and seeing that the Red Army was about to attack the high ground, Chen Yaohan ordered his guard company to fight the Red Army. At this moment, Chen Yaohan's aide-de-camp, Chen Zhong, grabbed his pistol and pushed the division commander down the heights, and then Chen Zhong himself rolled down the hill with several guards. In this way, Chen Yaohan was lucky to escape, but he was also shot in the instep.
Chen Yaohan, commander of the 58th Division in "Xiongguan Mandao"
By dawn, only Chen Yaohan's chief of staff, Zhou Zhixian, was still guarding the stone high ground with more than 40 people, seeing that the battle was almost over, they had not eaten all night, and they grunted with hunger, because they were wearing rubber-soled shoes, and they wanted to climb down and surrender and could not come down. The Red Army soldiers were so angry and like that they finally sent someone to climb up and put the gang down one by one with ropes. Zhou Zhixian was injured and died a few days later due to his injuries.
The victory at Chenjiahe-Taozixi was of great significance to the Red Second and Sixth Armies This was the first time since the second anti-encirclement and suppression campaign in the Qiansu District of Xiang'echuan that the Red Army annihilated a whole division of Chiang Kai-shek's army, basically reversing the overall situation of counter-encirclement and suppression. In addition to killing and wounding more than 3,000 chiang kai-shek troops and capturing 2,000 long and short guns, the Red Army also captured 2 mountain cannons from the artillery battalion of the 58th Division at Peach Creek for the first time in the world, which played a major role in the subsequent stage of the Battle of Zhongbao, one of which also followed the Red Army all the way to northern Shaanxi and has been arranged in the Military Museum of the Capital for people to admire.
As mentioned above, the victory of the Taozixi Pursuit and Annihilation Battle is also a manifestation of Xiao Ke's excellent ability to make temporary decisions on the front line, although when commanding to the army level, Xiao Ke's performance in the Datong Jining Zhangjiakou Campaign and the Rehe Defense Battle in the Liberation War was not very ideal, but in the divisional and regimental level combat command in the Red Army period, Xiao Ke showed a relatively good performance, and in the future, I will also have the opportunity to talk about other examples of battles commanded by Xiao Ke alone in the Red Army period.
The mountain cannon captured by Xiao Ke at Peach Creek became the only one brought to northern Shaanxi by the Red Army
Finally, chen Yaohan, commander of the 58th Division, after the breakthrough, lay in the rear hospital of Chiang Kai-shek's army for more than ten days, and then was dismissed from his military post. Chiang Kai-shek merged the remnants of the division's 174th Brigade and the six Zhejiang security regiments led by Yu Jishi, a first-term student of Huangpu, into the new Low 58th Division, which was one of the three divisions of the 74th Army, one of the five main forces of Chiang Kai-shek's army in the future, and Zhang Jingming, a brigade commander who survived like Chen Yaohan, was soon expelled from the 74th Army because he was not a close associate of Yu Jishi.
Finally, the author here also want to BB a few words, these few sentences did not dare to be posted in other places, "Xiongguan Mandao" this drama seems to deliberately dilute the existence of Xiao Ke, take the decision-making process of the Battle of Peach Creek, you will feel that there is nothing wrong with Xiao Ke after watching it, the board is filmed by Mr. He, and the one who found the fighter is actually the original fictional character in the two plays, is it interesting?