During the difficult years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the New Fourth Army galloped through central China, fighting the enemy 24,600 times, resisting 160,000 Japanese troops and 230,000 puppet troops invading China. It itself has grown from small to large, from weak to strong, from more than 10,000 people when it was first formed, to more than 250,000 people when it was victorious in the War of Resistance. Central China is the center of Japanese and pseudo-stubborn rule, and it is also the focus of contention by all parties, how did the New Fourth Army grow in a complicated environment?
Wherever there are devils, go wherever they go
In the autumn of 1937, according to the agreements negotiated by the Kuomintang and the Communists on many occasions, the Red Army and the Red Army guerrillas in the eight southern provinces were formed into the "Fourth Army of the New Formation of the National Revolutionary Army", referred to as the "New Fourth Army". Subsequently, after consultation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, Ye Ting was appointed as the commander of the army, Xiang Ying as the deputy commander and political commissar, and Zhang Yunyi as the chief of staff.
On December 25, 1937, it was established in Hankou, Hubei Province. On January 6, 1938, it was moved to Nanchang, Jiangxi. On the 22nd, it moved to southern Anhui. At the end of March and the beginning of April, the whole army was assembled. The Troops of Jiangbei were concentrated in Zhugou Town, Qishan County, Henan Province, and Qiliping, Huang'an County, Hubei Province, respectively, and the various units in Jiangnan had also entered Yansi Temple, Shexian County, Anhui Province, and the whole army was initially organized into 4 detachments and 9 regiments. Chen Yi, commander of the first detachment, and Fu Qiutao, deputy commander; Zhang Dingcheng, commander of the second detachment, and Su Yu, deputy commander; Zhang Yunyi, commander of the third detachment, and Tan Zhenlin, deputy commander; and Gao Jingting, commander of the fourth detachment, totaled more than 10,000 people.
The former site of the New Fourth Army Headquarters
After the formation of the New Fourth Army, in accordance with the decision of the Party Central Committee, the Southeast Branch of the CPC Central Committee and the New Fourth Army Branch of the Revolutionary Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee were established. With Xiang Ying as the secretary of the sub-bureau and secretary of the military branch, Chen Yi as the deputy secretary of the military branch.
The three years of guerrilla life in the south have tempered the will of the fighters, but when the troops have just descended the mountain, these experts in guerrilla warfare are faced with completely new problems, including: the battlefields are different, from the deep mountains and old forests to the plains and water networks; the environment is different, from the old revolutionary areas to the battlefield behind the enemy lines; the struggle tasks are different: from fighting the Kuomintang to the national war against Japan; there are also different affiliations of the troops, the guerrillas all adhere to the independent leadership of the party, and the New Fourth Army is the product of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and it is structurally subordinate to the Kuomintang.
At that time, if we acted in accordance with the narrow areas formulated by the Kuomintang, it was equivalent to "sitting still and waiting." The commanders and fighters of the New Fourth Army all realized that they had to break through the Kuomintang's restrictions, and wherever there were ghosts, they would go wherever they wanted!
On May 4, 1938, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong issued instructions on the tasks and course of action of the New Fourth Army: "... The main force of the New Fourth Army should quickly advance behind enemy lines in central China to carry out guerrilla warfare..." Before and after the above instructions, the Party Central Committee gave many instructions to the New Fourth Army. All these instructions directed the strategic direction of the New Fourth Army to northern Jiangsu and northern Anhui. Northern Jiangsu borders Shandong and is backed by the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army; northern Anhui is adjacent to Jiluyu and echoes the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army. In this way, the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army can join hands, and the two major enemy rear battlefields in North China and Central China can be connected.
Try the water armed and cavalry units
Although the newly formed New Fourth Army was poorly equipped, a series of battles in Jiangbei all played out the military prestige of the New Fourth Army and shattered the myth of the invincibility of the Japanese army.
The Continuous Development and Expansion of the New Fourth Army in the course of the war against Japan made the Kuomintang diehards very afraid and jealous. In January 1941, the Kuomintang, in the second anti-communist upsurge, created the Anhui Incident that shocked China and foreign countries, Ye Ting was detained, and Xiang Ying was killed.
After the "Anhui Incident", the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China issued an order on January 20, 1941 to rebuild the Military Headquarters of the New Fourth Army (with Chen Yi as acting commander, Liu Shaoqi as political commissar, Zhang Yunyi as deputy commander, and Lai Chuanzhu as chief of staff). The New Army Unified the New Fourth Army in the south and north of the Yangtze River and the Eighth Route Army south of the Longhai Railway into 7 divisions and 1 independent brigade, with a total of 90,000 people.
Central China is mainly a plain, not only the water network is long, but also a long coastline, and many water swings and coastal waters are natural barriers and battlefields. With the development of the struggle, the New Fourth Army cannot be limited to land operations, and the vast water areas should also become the direction of the development of the troops, which calls for the New Fourth Army to have its own water armed forces.
In November 1942, the Coastal Defense Regiment of the Central Soviet Military Region was established.
At the beginning of 1942, Su Yu, then commander of the First Division of the New Fourth Army, formed the Central Soviet Coastal Defense Regiment on the basis of the incorporated sea bandit troops and fought along the yellow sea coast. This unit was the first maritime armed force created by the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, and later became the predecessor of the East China Sea Fleet.
Previously, on the west side of the hongze lake in the middle of the northern Jiangsu Plain, in order to completely eliminate the lake bandits who plagued the fishermen and were known as the "Ninth Route Army", Zhang Aiping (then the brigade commander of the Ninth Brigade of the Third Division of the New Fourth Army), who had never commanded water operations, learned from a novel describing the Soviet naval battle from a warship formation, and fishing boats of different sizes were named by him as capital ships, frigates, and supply ships, and launched an attack on the lake bandits.
Peng Xuefeng, commander of the Fourth Division, established the New Fourth Army Cavalry Regiment, which was adapted to the needs of plain operations and fighting with Japanese cavalry, with more than 500 warhorses and more than 600 soldiers, which was a considerable cavalry unit in central China at that time. Peng Xuefeng also personally designed and created a "snow maple knife" from captured Japanese steel, which is long, light and sharp. There is such a saying in the Japanese army: if a person's head is cut off, the soul will not go home, so the "snow maple knife" makes them frightened and frightened. The cavalry regiment allowed the New Fourth Army to fight like a tiger and fought many victorious battles.
Cavalry Regiment of the New Fourth Army
It can be said that in addition to the Air Force, the New Fourth Army tried and developed all branches of the armed forces in the revolutionary years.
"There are many people in the second division, many people in the fourth division, and more money in the seventh division"
After the "Anhui Incident," the Kuomintang slandered the New Fourth Army as a "rebel army" and stopped supplying military salaries; while resisting the enemy's stubbornness and improving its living conditions, the New Fourth Army also had to break the enemy's blockade, develop the economy, and ensure supply. Economic construction has become another main battlefield in the New Fourth Army's struggle against the enemy. Among them, the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army was the most successful.
At that time, the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army entered the Wuwei area of Anhui and opened up the Anhui River Anti-Japanese Base Area. The Anhui River is the hometown of fish and rice in Anhui, and Wuwei is the gateway to the Anhui River, with developed transportation and a good economic foundation. The leaders of the Seventh Division decided to set up the Central China Trade Administration Bureau in Tanggou. In the war years, this was undoubtedly a bold decision ahead of its time.
In 1945, some cadres of the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army in the Anti-Japanese Base Area of the Anhui River took a group photo. From left: Zhou Shaokun, Liang Jinhua, Zeng Xisheng, Huang Yaonan.
The Seventh Division assigned the General Trade Administration with a guard brigade of more than 200 people, which was specially responsible for the safety and security of merchants and the transportation of materials. Through economic development, the Seventh Division got out of the economic predicament after the "Anhui Southern Incident", drove the economy of one side, and also vigorously supported other fraternal troops.
According to Lai Chuanzhu's diary, in just a few years, the Seventh Division supported the Central Committee and the Military Headquarters by about 14.87 million yuan, and the fifth division reached 30 million yuan in one aid. Under the circumstance that the Eighth Route Army in North China was faced with difficulties in food and clothing, the anti-Japanese democratic base areas in central China could buy 62 million kilograms of flour for the people of the north China base areas with only one thousand miles of funds, and if calculated at 300 kilograms a year, these flours could be eaten by 210,000 people for one year.
At that time, it was popular in the New Fourth Army: "There are many people in the second division, many people in the fourth division, and more money in the seventh division." ”
Establish people's power in the base areas
As early as March 1940, the New Fourth Army captured the county seat of Dingyuan in Anhui. Someone suggested that a good County Governor of the Kuomintang be invited to take office, and Liu Shaoqi, who was assigned by the Party Central Committee to work in Central China at the time, said: "Send it yourself." We have one county and send a county chief, and several counties send commissioners, and we can send a governor. ”
The Anti-Japanese Democratic Government of Dingyuan County was the first county government in central China established by the Communist Party, and in accordance with the instructions of Liu Shaoqi and others, wei Wenbo, the first county magistrate, did two things on his first day of office: First, he put on new clothes specially tailored, and second, he held a banquet in the name of the county chief and invited representatives and gentry from various townships to attend.
Liu Shaoqi (second from left) in Dingyuan County
At the beginning of 1942, at the first enlarged meeting of the Central China Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Zeng Shan, director of the Organization Department of the Central China Bureau, summed up the construction of the Central China Base Area in the "Government Work Report": By the end of 1941, 12 administrative offices and commissioners' offices, 50 county governments, 298 district governments, and more than 2,700 township governments had been established in the Central China Base Area, with a population of 15 million and more than 500,000 militiamen. Zeng Shan figuratively said: "Finland has only 3 million people in one country, and we have 5 Finlands as big as we have, so the power is very large." ”
Democratic elections of township-level political power have also been widely practiced in many base areas. Because the vast majority of peasants were illiterate and could not write votes, later they wrote the names of the candidates, such as the chief and deputy county chiefs and county government members, and the people sat with their backs to the masses, and a bowl was placed behind a person, and then the villagers threw beans, red beans were county chiefs, mung beans were deputy county chiefs, peas were committee members, and finally it depended on who had more beans and who was elected.