In early September 1929, the Fifth and Sixth Columns of the Red Fourth Army met with the Red Army detachments in Xiang'e, Gansu, and Gansu to re-form the Fifth Army. Peng Dehuai served as the commander, Teng Daiyuan as the political commissar, Huang Gongluo as the deputy commander, and Deng Ping as the chief of staff. At that time, the Red 5th Army had 5 columns under its jurisdiction, with a total strength of several thousand people. According to the scale of the Red Army at that time, the strength of an army with thousands of people was not small, but the guns and ammunition of the Red 5 Army were seriously insufficient, and the heavy machine guns were even fewer, so the combat effectiveness of the troops was greatly affected.
In order to increase the firepower of the troops, Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan and others thought of many ways to try to capture the enemy's heavy machine guns on the battlefield. But after several battles, only some rifles were captured, and none of the heavy machine guns were obtained. Just when Peng Dehuai was worried about this, a platoon leader of the Nationalist Army defected to the Red 5th Army with two heavy machine guns. Peng Dehuai was very happy to learn this news, personally received the platoon leader, and formed a machine gun brigade directly under the military headquarters on the basis of these two heavy machine guns.
So who is this platoon leader of the National Army who sent charcoal in the snow? He is Ye Zhanggen. Ye Zhanggen is a native of Kaihua, Zhejiang Province, whose parents made a living from farming and whose family was very poor. In order to make a living, Ye Zhanggen worked odd jobs everywhere and later became a porter. In 1926, at the age of 23, Ye Zhanggen came to Shaoguang, Guangdong Province, joined the National Revolutionary Army, and served as a soldier in the machine gun company of the 13th Regiment of the 5th Division of Tan Yanmin's Second Army. At that time, during the period of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, many Communists served as party representatives in the Fifth Division, and Ye Zhanggen followed the troops on the Northern Expedition, during which he accepted progressive ideas.
Because of the good machine gun fighting, Ye Zhanggen won the trust of company commander Zhang Zhiping and was promoted to deputy squad leader. Zhang Zhiping is a high school graduate, has a certain culture, he said to Ye Zhanggen: "Your name is not good, I will change your name, simply take a harmonic word, call chang Gung." 'Chang Gung' is a star in the sky, the sun has just set, it appears in the western sky, bright and bright, called 'Chang Gung Star', you are called Ye Chang Gung! After that, Ye Zhanggen was officially renamed Ye Changgeng.
At the end of 1928, Ye Changgeng's 13th Regiment moved to Ji'an, Jiangxi. Here, Ye Changgeng became acquainted with Zhao Tuo, a communist, and became his secret liaison. In the nearly a year that followed, Ye Changgeng and Zhao Tuo met secretly in a small restaurant on the back street of Ji'an several times, and passed on a lot of valuable information. At the same time, Ye Changgeng also secretly contacted some like-minded people in the company, preparing to defect to the Red Army at the right time.
In early December 1929, the 13th Regiment was sent to fight the Red Army near the Lone River. Ye Changgeng, who was the platoon commander at the time, was ordered to lead two squads of 22 people to take on the avant-garde search mission, and he took the opportunity to lead his troops to defect to the Red 5th Army. Ye Changgeng brought two heavy machine guns and 8 rifles, which was undoubtedly a very precious gift for the Red Army, which was very scarce in heavy weapons, and he was personally received by the commander Peng Dehuai. After that, Ye Changgeng followed the Red Army in the southern expedition to the north, made many military achievements, and in June 1932 he was promoted to the commander of the Red 12th Division.
After that, Ye Changgeng participated in many anti-encirclement and suppression operations and the Long March. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he entered the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region of the Eighth Route Army and served as deputy commander and chief of staff of the 4th Military Subdistrict, leading his troops to fight bloody battles with the Japanese puppet army many times, injured more than ten times, and left his left thumb with a permanent disability due to serious injuries. Since joining the Red Army, Ye Changgeng has been fighting on the front line and has been wounded many times. Due to the intensity of the fighting, these injuries did not heal completely. During the Liberation War, these old wounds often recurred, and Ye Changgeng had to leave the front line for treatment, which to some extent affected his performance and promotion on the battlefield.
It was not until November 1948 that Ye Changgeng was promoted to the first deputy commander of the 50th Army. You know, as early as June 1932, he was the commander of the main division of the Red Army. That is to say, 16 years after the revolution, he was only half a level up. The situation of Ye Changgeng was very rare among the senior generals of the Red Army. In 1955, when the title was awarded, in the face of this old Red Army, who had only been promoted half a grade in the 16 years of the revolution, Luo Ronghuan, who was in charge of the evaluation of military ranks, made a mistake. In the end, he personally found Ye Changgeng and asked for his own opinion. Ye Changgeng stated on the spot that he could accept any military rank he conferred, and in the end he was awarded the rank of major general and received three first-class medals
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