In December 1929, Ye Changgeng, the platoon leader of the Nationalist Army, came to the camp of the Red 5th Army and said that he had come to join the Red Army, and when Mr. Peng learned of this news, he immediately personally took 2,000 pieces of ocean to meet Ye Changgeng and expressed his great welcome.
However, when Ye Changgeng saw that Mr. Peng had come to meet him in person, he was very touched, but he rejected the 2,000 pieces of ocean that Mr. Peng was planning to give him, and also firmly said, "I came to the Red Army to do revolution, not to enjoy." ”
Everyone knows that the environment of the Red Army's struggle at that time was very difficult, so why did President Peng give Ye Changgeng such a large sum of money? Because the Red 5 Army at that time had a rule, all the officers and men of the Nationalist Army came to surrender, a heavy machine gun rewarded 250 oceans, a rifle rewarded 80 oceans, and a person rewarded 50 oceans. At that time, Ye Changgeng brought two heavy machine guns, 8 rifles and 22 people, which was exactly 2,000 pieces of ocean.
What is particularly important is that the heavy machine gun brought by Ye Changgeng was a very scarce weapon and equipment of the Red 5 Army at that time, so Mr. Peng would attach so much importance to it and personally take the silver dollar to see Ye Changgeng. After Ye Changgeng joined the Red Army, he successively served as the commander of the Second Regiment of the Fourth Division of the Red Eighth Army, the commander of the Jiangxi Independent Twelfth Division, the commander of the Twenty-second Division of the Red Eighth Army, and the acting chief of staff of the Xianggan Military Region.
In particular, during Ye Changgeng's tenure as chief of staff of the Xianggan Military Region, the enemy army sent 8,000 men to attack Yongxin County, but at that time Ye Changgeng commanded only more than a thousand troops, and once Yongxin was lost, it would seriously affect the main force of the Red Army going north. At this tense moment, Ye Changgeng decided to adopt an ancient strategy, that is, the empty city plan.
Ye Changgeng first commanded the troops to withdraw from Yongxin County before the enemy army pounced, and that night, he scattered all the soldiers on the hills around the county seat, and ordered the soldiers to continue to shoot and blow trumpets at the county town, the enemy army occupied the county town so quickly, the heart was already uneasy, at this time he heard the sound of battle from all directions, everyone was very frightened, and thought that the main force of the Red Army had returned.
Therefore, they withdrew from Yongxin County overnight. In this way, Ye Changgeng, in the face of the huge disparity in strength between the enemy and ourselves, wisely guarded Yongxin and won precious time for the Red Army to go north.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Ye Changgeng moved to the Northeast Battlefield, successively serving as the commander of the Heilongjiang Military Region and the deputy commander of the 50th Army of Siye, and was awarded the rank of major general in 1955. In 1986, Ye Changgeng died of illness in Nanchang at the age of 83.