On January 22, 1935, just as the Red Fourth Front decided to go north, it received a telegram from the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee and the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, which instructed:
"Quickly gather troops, complete the preparations for the attack, and in the recent period attack west of the Jialing River."
On March 11, Xu Xiangqian, then commander-in-chief of the Red Fourth Front, telephoned the Central Revolutionary Military Commission and said:
"Our army has now won a great victory in the south, and it is planned to prepare to completely destroy the enemy and cooperate with the actions of the Western army."
The Jialing River is one of the largest tributaries in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, flowing through southern Shaanxi and northern Sichuan respectively, and joining the Yangtze River in Chongqing. Chiang Kai-shek was well aware of the importance of this position, so he deployed the Kuomintang Sichuan Army troops who were familiar with the terrain here in an attempt to use the favorable terrain to encircle the Red Army.
Jialing River
On the west bank of the Jialing River, on a defensive line of more than 300 kilometers, Chiang Kai-shek sent a total of 53 regiments of Deng Xihou and Tian Songyao's troops to build pillboxes along the river and impose a strict seal on the river.
Faced with the deployment of enemy forces, Xu Xiangqian decided to concentrate the main force of the Red Fourth Front, choose the location where the enemy's defense is weakest to cross the Jialing River, and adopt the strategy of "movement warfare" in the area between the Jialing River and the Luojiang River to annihilate the enemy.
The battle plan was drawn up, and then Xu Xiangqian needed to select a front-line commander who could fight a hard battle.
After some thought, Xu Xiangqian thought of Wang Shusheng, who at this time served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Red Fourth Front and the commander of the 31st Army.
Wang Shusheng
Wang Shusheng was a well-known fierce general in the Red Fourth Front, known for being good at fighting hard battles and daring to fight evil battles
"Tiger of Dabie Mountain"
。 Coincidentally, the Sichuan army general Tian Songyao, who was stationed on the west bank of the Jialing River, was called
"Sitting Tiger"
。
As the saying goes, a mountain does not allow two tigers, and Wang Shusheng and Tian Songyao's "two tigers" compete with each other, and it is inevitable that there will be an injury.
After receiving the task, Wang Shusheng made a military order in front of Xu Xiangqian and personally went to the front line of the battle to direct the battle. In the face of the "encirclement and suppression" of the Kuomintang troops, he commanded the troops to stubbornly resist, and the two sides fought fiercely for five days and nights, repelling one attack after another by the enemy.
In this battle, the Kuomintang army suffered heavy losses, and Tian Songyao saw the strength of the Red Army. In the many subsequent "encirclement and suppression" operations against the Red Army, Tian Songyao, like Deng Xihou, did not contribute to the battlefield and tried to avoid a frontal conflict with the Red Army.
Xu Xiangqian
In order to prevent the Red Army from crossing the Jialing River, the Kuomintang Sichuan Army deployed a large number of troops in the west bank area, and built many pillboxes, and all the ships on the river were emptied. In addition, Tian Songyao forced the local people to dig traps in important beachhead positions in an attempt to use this natural barrier to contain the Red Army.
In the face of such a tightly deployed Defense Line of the Jialing River, the Red Fourth Front chose the foot of Cangxi Tazi Mountain defended from Tian Songyao's troops as a breakthrough point. There are three main considerations for making such a decision:
Because the Jialing River flows through the foot of Cangxi Tazi Mountain, the flow rate becomes slower, and the river surface is not too wide.
The Red Fourth Front had the commanding heights of Tazi Mountain on the bank of the Jialing River as a cover, and the vegetation on the mountain was dense, which was convenient for the soldiers to hide.
The number of enemy troops stationed here was small, and Tian Songyao believed that with the natural barrier of the Jialing River, it was completely possible to withstand tens of thousands of defenders. Therefore, he only deployed a squad of sentries on the riverside, and the main force was stationed in the town of Cangxi a few kilometers away.
The breakthrough point of the battle was selected, everything was ready, and only the east wind was owed.
However, since the day the Red Fourth Front was founded, it has mostly fought against the enemy in the mountains and hills, and has no experience in crossing the river. In view of this situation, Wang Shusheng, as the commander-in-chief of the front line, decided to draw manpower from the whole army and form a company of sailors.
In the 31st Army commanded by Wang Shusheng, there was a unit known as the "Night Tiger Regiment", which was very good at night raids, so they handed over this battle across the Jialing River to this unit.
At the same time, Wang Shusheng also selected a group of fighters who could row or swim from various units and formed a sailor company of the Red Fourth Front.
However, if you want to cross the river, you must have a boat, and the ships on the Jialing River have all been confiscated by the enemy, and the Red Army has to build ships by itself.
In order to support the Red Fourth Front in building ships, nearby villagers dismantled the door panels of their homes and donated them. At that time, from time to time, Kuomintang planes would circling over the Jialing River for reconnaissance, and building large-scale ships under the eyes of the enemy would inevitably lead to bombing by enemy planes.
In order to carry out secret shipbuilding, Wang Shusheng chose the address on the East River, 20 kilometers away from Tazishan Bay. The bamboo forest here is dense, and even if the enemy planes are reconnaissance over the sky, all they see is a bamboo forest. In this way, the Red Army could confidently and boldly build the ships needed to cross the river.
Fearing that the smoke from the fire would expose the target when cooking, the workers could only eat the nest they brought with them when building the boat, but no one complained.
The soldiers and the local people united and cooperated, and in more than a month, they successfully built more than 70 wooden boats and 3 wooden pontoon bridges. On the other hand, due to the lack of experience in river crossing, Red Army soldiers trained the skills needed to cross the river in the cold and bone-chilling river water.
After the boats needed to cross the river were built, Wang Shusheng immediately ordered the soldiers to carry out training in crossing the river at night, and specially invited some excellent veteran sailors to participate in the training. In order to give full play to the night battles that the Red Army was good at, the soldiers even blindfolded themselves and trained in full accordance with the operational requirements of the night crossing.
On March 8, 1935, Wang Shusheng once again came to the marine company to inspect the results of this period of training, and brought an infantry battalion, asking them to train together, which made the soldiers full of confidence in victory in the battle across the river.
Before the Battle of Jialing River began, Wang Shusheng, in order to confuse the Kuomintang defenders, organized propaganda teams at various major crossings along the river to carry out shouting activities against the enemy.
In late March, the main force of the Red Fourth Front was assembled on the east bank of the Jialing River, more than 200 kilometers from Guangyuan in the north to the south, and was ready to launch the Battle of Jialing River.
The day before the battle to cross the river was about to begin, Wang Shusheng personally came to the sailor company to conduct a general mobilization before the war, and he said to the soldiers:
"To ensure that the troops arrive on the other side on time, they must also be prepared for sacrifice, and even if there is one person left, they must complete the task."
Wang Shusheng's speech at the pre-war general mobilization meeting not only inspired the morale of the soldiers, but also sounded the clarion call for the upcoming Battle of Jialing River.
On the evening of March 28, taking advantage of the darkness, Xu Xiangqian and Wang Shusheng came to the headquarters of the Dujiang Front, located near Tazi Mountain in the south of Cangxi County, and all the troops involved in the Battle of Dujiang had arrived at the designated location.
With Xu Xiangqian's order, the Battle of Qiangdu Jialing River was officially launched.
The company of sailors, in coordination with the assault units of the Red 30th Army, first forcibly crossed the river from the Cangxi Tazishan ferry on the middle road and launched an attack on the west bank of the Jialing River.
Tian Songyao
Xu Xiangqian and Wang Shusheng repeatedly ordered the troops crossing the river to minimize movement when they moved. However, dozens of ships were launched at the same time, and it was inevitable that there would be a noise, and it was soon detected by the enemy on the other side of the Jialing River, and intensive artillery fire was fired.
Under the heavy enemy artillery fire, the Red Army's ships still rushed to the west bank at full speed, and when they were about 20 meters from the shore, the soldiers jumped off the boats and waded to the shore.
At this time, the artillery units of the Red Army deployed at TaziShan also began a fierce artillery attack, and the shells poured down on the enemy's forward positions like raindrops, providing effective support to the troops crossing the river.
After successfully occupying the beachhead position on the west bank of the Jialing River, the soldiers of the Navy Company ignored the enemy's artillery fire and the cold river water, and quickly jumped into the river to build a pontoon bridge to meet the subsequent infantry units to cross the river.
After a day of fierce fighting, the 9th, 30th and 31st Armies of the Red Fourth Front successfully crossed the Jialing River, and the more than 300-kilometer Jialing River defense line held by Deng Xihou and Tian Songyao gradually collapsed.
When the news of the loss of the Jialing River defense line reached Chiang Kai-shek's ears, Chiang Kai-shek was very angry and immediately dismissed Tian Songyao, commander of the 29th Army of the Sichuan Army, from his post and investigated it. At the same time, he sent a telegram to Deng Xihou, commander of the 28th Army of the Sichuan Army, in which he wrote:
Immediately dispatched more than ten regiments of troops from the rear and Zhaoguang troops to garrison the Golden Immortal Field and the Sword Pavilion respectively to "purge" the Red Army. ”
By this time, the Jialing River defense line defended by the Sichuan Army still had an important strategic support point left, that is, Jiange County and Jianmen Pass, which was more than fifty miles away from the county seat.
In order to completely disintegrate the enemy's defense line, Wang Shusheng decided to take advantage of the victory and pursue, leading the 31st Army to launch a rapid attack on Jiange County, which was successfully taken on March 31.
The sword door is closed
After losing the county seat of Jiange County, the Sichuan army troops could only pin their last hopes on the last pass of the Jianmen Pass.
The most important thing about Jianmen Pass is that it can echo the Kuomintang Shaanxi army troops to the north, preventing the Red Army from entering the southern Shaanxi region. To the south, it was possible to attack the Flank of the Red Army and cut off the Road south of the Red Army.
To this end, Deng Xihou sent three regiments of troops to garrison Jianmen Pass, and set up a large number of Ming Diao Secret Forts, and he assured Chiang Kai-shek that "the fortifications of Jianmen Pass are impregnable."
Although it was impregnable, Wang Shusheng was a Red Army general who loved to gnaw hard bones, and he had no fear and rushed straight to the sword gate in anger.
The Red Army conquered the Memorial Hall of Jianmen Pass
After carefully observing the terrain of the Sword Gate Pass, Wang Shusheng decided to take it
"Avoid the front, after hitting the enemy side, the surprise attack"
Combined the operational policy and divided the forces into three offensive routes.
The first way: a regiment of the 91st Division of the 31st Army was sent to pretend to attack Lijiazui as a way to attract enemy fire.
The second way: the 88th Division of the 30th Army was dispatched to directly insert the Sword Gate from the south to prepare for the main force of the 31st Army to attack the Sword Gate Pass.
The third road: the 93rd Division of the 31st Army and a part of the cavalry were dispatched to attack the main peak of Jianmen Pass from Wulipo straight to the Guangou.
In order to take the Jianmen Pass position as soon as possible and ensure that nothing was lost, Wang Shusheng also sent the 274th Regiment of the reserve team to serve as the main force to attack the main peak position of the Jianmen Pass.
At 11:00 a.m. on April 2, Wang Shusheng ordered the 2nd Battalion of the 274th Regiment to attack the main peak position of Jianmen Pass. When the attack reached the halfway point, the enemy all penetrated into the fortifications, using fire holes to resist the Red Army's charge.
During the battle, Chen Kang, commander of the 2nd Battalion, was unfortunately wounded by a bullet in the left arm, and the attacking troops had to retreat.
Seeing that the troops were not attacking smoothly, Wang Shusheng realized that if he wanted to quickly take down the main peak position of the Sword Gate Pass, he must have heavy firepower points. Therefore, Xu Xiangqian applied to the Headquarters of the Red Army for the use of mortar companies.
With the blessing of the heavy fire point, Wang Shusheng personally commanded the firing of artillery, and soon took the main peak position of the Sword Gate Pass, and the enemy army was forced to retreat in the pass slot.
The battle ended at 16:00 on April 2, and the Red Army annihilated about 3,000 enemy troops at the cost of more than 50 casualties.
The loss of the sword gate pass also meant that the Entire Defense Line of the Jialing River collapsed, and the Sichuan Army troops stationed here scattered and fled, and the Red Army took advantage of the victory to pursue. Until April 21, the 24-day Battle of Jialing River ended with the victory of the Red Army.
The Northwest Revolutionary Military Commission gave full affirmation and praise to the victory in the Battle of Jialing River, especially the victory in the breach of Jianmen Pass, at the military conference held in Jiange County.