In 1955, China held a solemn ceremony to confer the title, and more than a thousand senior generals were awarded the rank of major general or above, praising and rewarding these soldiers who fought bloody battles for the Chinese revolution.
Now that more than half a century has passed, many of the generals who participated in the conferral of titles have passed away, but there are still two founding generals, who are still alive and healthy.
These two founding generals are Zou Yan and Yang Yongsong, what unforgettable stories have they experienced in their legendary lives? How are their lives today in 2021?
Brave cowherds
Zou Yan was born in 1915 in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, the family to farm for a living, living very poor, poor family conditions, so that Zou Yan had to take on the responsibility of supporting the family from an early age, in addition to helping the family to work in the fields, when the farmers are idle to herd cattle for others.
At the age of 13, under the propaganda of the local party organization, Zou Yan joined the local peasant organization, and thanks to the advantage that his young age would not be suspicious, Zou Yan often helped the agricultural association to inquire about the news and stand guard.
Because of his positive ideological consciousness and excellent performance, he was promoted organizationally to the position of instructor of the Children's League, and from then on, he formed an indissoluble relationship with the Communist Party of China and the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
In September 1930, the ideas of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army were widely spread throughout China and received strong support from a large number of proletarian masses, and it happened that the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was about to launch its ninth offensive against Ji'an, and Zou Yan, who was only 15 years old, joined the Chongxian Red Guards. The party organization leaders of the Red Guards saw that Zou Yan was a teenager who had just turned 15 years old, and did not dare to let him engage in a particularly dangerous combat mission, but only put him in charge of logistics and transportation.
However, the young Zou Yan's ambition in his heart was not much at all, and he repeatedly asked the party organization to participate in the battle on the front line, so the superior leaders arranged a less dangerous task for him, that is, to use the "fire bull array" to break through the enemy's peripheral defense line.
Zou Yan found his cattle herding friends, tied sharp knives and spears to the horns of the cattle, hung firecrackers on their bodies, ambushed around the battlefield, and when our army launched an all-out attack, he lit firecrackers and drove the cattle to rush towards the enemy.
It has to be said that this is a very ingenious method, which can not only reduce the casualties caused by our army's charge, but also cause fear to the enemy's psychology with loud firecrackers.
However, in the battlefield full of bullets, any accident could happen, although the Red Guards soldiers took the position, but also paid a lot of casualties, and many of the small partners who carried out the Fire Bull Array plan with Zou Yan were hit by stray bullets and also died on the battlefield.
The 15-year-old Zou Yan felt the grief of losing his friends for the first time, but he knew that his partners were dying on the road to building socialism, so Zou Yan strengthened his faith even more.
Subsequently, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army incorporated the personnel of the Chongxian Red Guards, and Zou Yan also formally joined the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and in the Fifth Anti-Encirclement and Suppression Campaign, he was commended by the Party organization for taking the lead in discovering the enemy situation and avoiding the sacrifice of a large number of Red Army soldiers.
He was promoted to Luo Ronghuan's guard.
In the following days, he participated in the 25,000-mile Long March, followed the party's army to conquer the four directions, and made great achievements.
At the 1955 New China Conferment Ceremony,
Zou Yan was awarded the rank of major general,
This is an affirmation of his performance in the revolution.
Until 1988, Zou Yan retired, and is still alive today, Zou Yan under the care of the party and the government, living a happy old age.
Pioneer of China's mechanized forces
There was also a founding general named Yang Yongsong, who was born in Meizhou City, Guangdong Province in 1919, and when Yang Yongsong was 5 years old, his father died, and the burden of supporting the family fell on yang's mother.
Yang Yongsong in his childhood was often accompanied by hungry memories, even though the family was too poor to open the pot, but Yang's mother still did not relax the education of her children. The family tightened their clothes and food, just so that Yang Yongsong could go to the primary school in the town to study.
It is said that knowledge changes fate, and Yang Yongsong's brilliant achievements in the future are inseparable from the education he received in his childhood.
After the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, the Communist Party of China established the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and actively propagated communist ideas in the vast rural areas, so in this year, Yang Yongsong joined the boy group in the school and actively studied the practical theory of Marxist ideological socialism.
In 1931, Yang Yongsong officially joined the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and most of the people in the team at that time came from poor rural areas, and very few people knew chinese, let alone went to school.
Because Yang Yongsong was cultured and knowledgeable, he was quickly valued by his superiors, but he was too young to do some documentation work first.
On paper, I finally realized that I had to do something about it. As he followed the Red Army to participate in many anti-encirclement and suppression campaigns, Yang Yongsong gradually saw the cruelty on the battlefield and the difficulty of the revolutionary cause, and he noticed that the weapons and equipment used by the enemy army were often more than one notch higher than that of our army.
In fact, our army's fighting spirit has always been very tenacious, but in the face of the enemy's strong firepower superiority, it often has to pay extremely high casualties.
Yang Yongsong
It was the first person in our army to conduct theoretical research on mechanization
After the baptism of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Yang Yongsong used the captured weapons and equipment,
The formation of our first mechanized force began
，
That was the chariot division of the four fields during the Liberation War
。
In the battle against the Kuomintang reactionary army, the flexible operational ability of the chariot division provided great convenience for our army to implement tactical interspersing on the battlefield and made great contributions to the victory of our army.
After the founding of New China, Yang Yongsong's efforts have also been recognized by the state.
In 1955 he was awarded the rank of Major General.
Yang Yongsong was not bound by fame and fortune, but continued to study the mechanized army building in depth, and served as the director of the political department of the armored corps of the North China Military Region.
It can be said that our army can be at the forefront of the world in terms of armored vehicles and tanks in the army, and it is inseparable from the foundation laid by the research done by the founding major general for many years.
In 1981, Yang Yongsong officially retired, and he used his retirement time to write a number of memoirs, providing valuable reference materials for the compilation of China's war history. After retirement, Yang Yongsong was cared for by the state and the government, enjoyed his old age in peace, and is still alive today.
brief summary:
The founding generals of the People's Republic of China were heroes of the country and the people, and they experienced battlefield battles of blood and tears, and it is not too much to give them the best treatment.
Zou Yan and Yang Yongsong, two old predecessors, witnessed the development of our country and believed that today's social construction has not disappointed these pioneers. At the same time, people's heroes like them, we should remember and praise their great deeds, passed on from generation to generation.