Speaking of General Chen Geng, almost everyone who understands the history of China's modern revolution knows and knows everyone.
However, when it comes to Chen Geng's past, there is even an anecdote that has not been recorded in history, and outsiders do not know much about it, but in his hometown of Xiangxiang, Hunan, it is widely circulated.
That is, he "abducted" his brother-in-law to participate in the revolution, so that his father, Chen Shaochun, was angrily approached by his son's relative Tan Run district, looking for him to have a son, and almost fell out.
Figure 1
That year was 1927, and 28 years later, in 1955, in the Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, Chen Geng was awarded the rank of great general, and one of the people who was also awarded the rank of great general was actually his brother-in-law who was "abducted" by him that year.
Why did Chen Geng "abduct" his brother-in-law? Who is his brother-in-law? Did the two parents fall out over this? What kind of revolutionary achievements did he and his brother-in-law receive at the same time the rank of Grand General?
A letter triggered the "abduction" incident
Chen Geng, whose original name was Chen Shukang, was born in 1903 to a wealthy family in Xiangxiang, Hunan.
Such a family origin can be said to be worry-free, but how did Chen Geng break through the shackles of his family and embark on the revolutionary road step by step?
Figure 2
First of all, we must start with the powerful martial arts and military traditions in Hunan, especially in the Xiangxiang area.
Hunan is the birthplace of Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army. Not only zeng guofan was ranked as a high-ranking subject because of his achievements in creating and leading the Xiang army to conquer the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom; There were many grassroots soldiers in the Xiang Army, who were also greatly rewarded by the Qing court for their outstanding military achievements.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the Xiang army almost became a powerful military force that could shake the imperial court, and in order to avoid the Qing Dynasty from believing that he was self-respecting and plotting against him, Zeng Guofan had to disband the main force of the Xiang army on his own.
Figure 3
However, this very short history of the Xiang Army in the long river of history has a very great impact on Hunan.
This influence is mainly reflected in two aspects: First, among the people of Hunan, a trend of shangwu and military service has been formed; Second, let Hunan people have the awareness of not being afraid of risks and serving the country and saving the people.
It is precisely the organic combination of these two concepts that makes young people in Hunan, especially in the Xiangxiang area, no matter what their family situation is, have a strong complex of "joining the army and following the military, making meritorious achievements, and serving the country and the people".
At the beginning, this complex was more or less accompanied by the feudal brand of establishing military merit through joining the army, and then returning to the hometown and honoring the ancestors, but with the introduction of progressive ideas, the interaction between the old democracy and the new democratic revolution made Hunan the cradle of the revolution.
As the main body of the people of Hunan to realize their ideals and aspirations in joining the army, the Xiang Army participated in almost all the epoch-making revolutionary movements in the early days of China's modern history, including the republican revolution that overthrew the Qing government and the national defense movement that overthrew Yuan Shikai's restoration.
Figure 4
Chen Geng was born and raised in such a place and in such an environment, and it can be said that he has been deeply influenced by this traditional concept since he was a child, and has formed his most simple world view.
In addition, his grandfather Chen Yihuai, who relied on the Xiang army of Zeng Guofan, jumped from a young man from a poor background to a famous general of the Xiang Army, and after being disarmed and returned to his hometown, he was deeply respected and admired by the people of Xiangxiang.
As the eldest grandson of Chen Yihuai, Chen Geng set up the ambition to join the army from an early age under the influence of his grandfather's military history and legendary stories.
Therefore, in the process of his growth, in addition to receiving a new type of cultural education, his favorite one was to learn martial arts, and the other was the art of war, which laid a solid foundation for him to become a Confucian general of the Chinese revolution in the future.
With this ambition and dream, in 1916, Chen Geng, who was not yet 14 years old, joined the Xiang Army on his own initiative and became a young soldier in the Xiang Army.
Figure 5
However, the Xiang Army at this time was completely different from the Xiang Army in the Zeng Guofan period, and with the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Xiang Army in Hunan had become a veritable local armed force, and after resisting Yuan Shikai's patriotic movement to claim the emperor, the follow-up war of this army, whether active or passive, was basically a battle for territory between warlords.
As he grew older, Chen Geng had changed from an ignorant teenager to a young man with independent thoughts, and he found that if he continued to stay in the Xiang Army, he would eventually become cannon fodder for the warlord war.
In 1921, after awakening his consciousness, he resolutely left the Xiang Army.
At this time, Chen Geng fell into an unprecedented confusion, he had the ambition to serve the country, but he could not find the direction.
During this time, he was forced to choose to work as a railway clerk, and when he was ready to spend his life in a blur, a ray of light shone into his heart, that is, he Shuheng and Guo Liang and other early Communists transmitted the revolutionary ideas of new democracy to him.
And under the introduction of the two, in 1922, Chen Geng officially joined the Communist Party of China.
Figure 6
In May 1924, under the arrangement of the party organization, he was admitted to the newly established Whampoa Military Academy, became the first batch of cadets of the Whampoa Military Academy, and participated in the Eastern Crusade war against the Guangdong warlord Chen Jiongming twice in a row, and during the Second Crusade, he personally rescued Chiang Kai-shek, who was surrounded by enemy troops and wanted to draw a gun and commit suicide.
At a time when Chen Geng continued to experience the baptism of war and accompanied the continuous growth and development of the revolutionary cause, in his hometown, he was very good friends with him at an early age, and Tan Shiming, who was three years younger than him, had also grown up.
Tan Shiming is also a native of Xiangxiang, Hunan, but his origin and family background are completely different from Chen Geng's.
Figure 7
The Tan family has been a scholar for generations, and has always been known for entering the literary examination and winning meritorious service, but with the demise of the Qing Dynasty, the Tan family also declined, but Tan Run, the father of Tan Shiming, was still a well-known local old-school intellectual, who made a living by opening private schools.
Tan Shiming was influenced by Chen Geng since he was a child, coupled with the war-torn social environment, so that he could not be at ease to be a rural scholar.
He also has the lofty ambition of serving the country and saving the people, and also has the ambition of a good boy in all directions, but the complex social environment and ecology make him unable to see the future way out.
Because the Tan family and the Chen family were family friends, when Tan Shiming was seventeen years old, the Chen family gave chen Geng's fourth sister Chen Okra Xu to him, and after the two were married, Tan Shiming informed his wife of his heart knot.
After Chen Okra knew her husband's idea, she not only understood, but also supported it very much: "If you really have this idea, you may wish to write a letter to the eldest brother and listen to his ideas?" ”
Figure 8
Tan Shiming knew that Chen Geng had been wandering outside for so many years, and the things he had come into contact with and his understanding of the current society had far exceeded his own, and perhaps only this brother-in-law could point out a clear path for himself, so he and his wife summed up and sent a family letter to Chen Geng in the common name of the husband and wife.
The year of the letter was sent in 1926, when Chen Geng had gone to the Soviet Union for military studies under the party's arrangement, and was not in China.
When Chen Geng received this letter, it was already after returning to China in 1927, and the situation at this time was completely different from earlier, and with the continuous rise of Chiang Kai-shek's position in the Kuomintang, he began to gradually deviate from Dr. Sun Yat-sen's concept of "uniting with Russia and supporting peasants and workers".
Figure 9
Originally, Chen Geng had thought of letting Tan Shiming enter the Whampoa Military Academy first, and then make arrangements, but considering the complicated situation at that time, he chose to join the special service battalion of the Fourth Front Of the National Revolutionary Army and serve as a civilian, at this time in February 1927.
With the later Chiang Kai-shek launching the April 12 counter-revolutionary incident, the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party officially broke down, and the Kuomintang began to vigorously arrest and kill Communists.
At this time, the top level of the Chinese Communist Party reached a consensus that "power came out of the barrel of a gun", so through strict organization and personnel transfer arrangements, they prepared to carry out uprisings in various places.
The most famous of these are the Nanchang Uprising under the leadership of Comrade Zhou Enlai, who was centered on the city, and the autumn harvest uprising under the leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong, who was oriented toward the countryside.
Figure 10
Chen Geng and Tan Shiming were arranged for the site of the two uprisings respectively, and Chen Geng went to Nanchang and became a cadre general under Zhou Enlai; Tan Shiming came to Xiangxi and became Mao Zedong's confidential secretary.
In this way, Chen Geng and Tan Shiming (whose name has been changed to Tan Zheng) participated in and witnessed the founding of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Nanchang and Xiangxi respectively during the most critical period of the Chinese Revolution.
Because Tan Zheng left home to run to Chen Geng, there was also an anecdote that was widely circulated in Xiangxiang, that is, when Tan Zheng's father Tan Run District heard that his son had been "abducted" by Chen Geng, he angrily went to Chen Geng's father, Chen Shaochun, to discuss the matter.
Of course, as a good family friend, coupled with the family relationship of relatives and relatives, Tan Run District is also very aware that his son left home to join the revolution, and Chen Geng did not have much to do with him, it was completely his own choice, no wonder others, he could only complain a few words sadly.
We have created brilliant revolutionary achievements with one article and one force
With the Nanchang Uprising led by Zhou Enlai and the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong meeting at Jinggangshan, the Chinese revolution opened a new prelude.
Since then, two revolutionaries who came out of Xiangxiang, Hunan Province, one by one, have embarked on a vigorous revolutionary career in different revolutionary posts under the guidance of the same revolutionary conviction and direction.
During the agrarian revolution, Chen Geng worked mainly in the CCP's Special Branch led by Zhou Enlai, and then transferred to Eyuwan to participate in the construction of base areas and anti-encirclement and suppression campaigns; Tan Zheng, on the other hand, was in the Central Soviet Region of Gannan in western Fujian, where he was the former secretary of the CPC Committee and grew all the way to become the director of the political department of the division, regiment and front army, and became an excellent political work cadre.
Figure 11
In 1934, Chen Geng and Tan Zheng met again on the road of the Long March.
During the Long March, Chen Geng served as the head of the cadre regiment, and was the vanguard force in the Long March of the Red Army, and the troops attacked the Kyaukpyeong Ferry crossing and ensured the smooth crossing of the Jinsha River by the Red Army; Tan Zheng, then director of the Political Department of the First Division of the First Red Army, commanded and participated in many battles against the Kuomintang army to pursue and block, and wrote a large number of guiding articles on the army's political work.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chen Geng served as the brigade commander of the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division, and later as the commander of the Taiyue Column, all the way to the Taihang Mountains, Northwest Lu, Jinnan, Northern Henan and other places, and created the Jinji-Hebei Yu base area, which once made the Japanese army fear Chen Geng's troops.
Tan Zheng, on the other hand, mainly remained in the rear of the Central Committee, serving as deputy director of the General Political Department of the Revolutionary Committee of the CPC Central Committee, responsible for the political work of the whole army, in which he published important guiding articles on political work, such as "On the Political Work of the Revolutionary Army" and "The Cadre Policy of the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army."
Figure 12
Tan Zheng, as an important military political work cadre who cooperated with Comrade Mao Zedong and Comrade Zhou Enlai, not only theoretically constructed a complete political work system of the army, but also ensured the purity of the army through the rectification movement between cadres and the army.
In the Liberation War, Chen Geng led his troops to participate in the famous Shangdang Campaign, and in the subsequent Battle of Jinnan, the Nationalist army, including Hu Zongnan's reorganized First Brigade, was wiped out in one fell swoop, totaling more than 30,000 people.
Through lightning and roundabout tactics, in the course of the movement, the Kuomintang troops in the Jin-Hebei area were annihilated, and then they forcibly crossed the Yellow River, creating the Liberated Areas of Henan, Shaanxi, and Hubei within a year, greatly expanding the strategic rear of our army, and laying a solid rear foundation for the large armies of Comrades Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping and the field armies of Comrades Chen Yi and Su Yu to advance into the Central Plains.
Subsequently, in the Battle of Huaihai, he led the Fourth Column to participate in the battle to comprehensively encircle and annihilate the Huang Wei Corps, and achieved brilliant results, making important contributions to the overall victory of the Liberation War.
Figure 13
At the same time, Tan Zheng, as a political work cadre of the army, comprehensively led the creation and consolidation of the Liberated Areas in Northeast China, and participated in and commanded the famous Liaoshen Campaign and the Pingjin Campaign, playing a key leadership and command role in the comprehensive liberation of Northeast China and North China.
With the founding of New China in 1949, Chen Geng and Tan Zheng, who had been fighting against the enemy on their respective battlefields, once again gathered together in Beijing, and the two looked back on the more than thirty years since they were separated from Xiangxiang in their youth, and it had been exactly 28 years since Tan Zheng was "abducted" by Chen Geng to join the revolution.
In the 28 years of this common revolution, Chen Geng and Tan Zheng had only a few opportunities to meet, and each time they met was a milestone turning point in the Chinese revolution.
The first is the red base area during the agrarian revolution, the second is the Long March Road, and the third is the revolutionary holy land of Yan'an, and this time the rendezvous ushered in the final result of the Chinese revolution, that is, the birth of new China.
Among the ten generals, the Chen family actually produced two
In 1955, in the Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, Chairman Mao personally presided over the award ceremony, and in addition to the ten marshals, Chen Geng and Tan Zheng and ten others were awarded the rank of "general" second only to the rank of marshal.
Both of them came out of Xiangxiang, Hunan, and they were not only friends with their youth, but also the relationship between their brother-in-law and brother-in-law, and they were really a family.
As Chen Geng's father, Chen Shaochun, he may not have expected that his son, who gave him a headache, would actually become a general who has been passed down through the ages; When Tan Zheng's father ran to the Chen family in anger, he did not expect that the son who was "abducted" by Chen Geng had also become a generation of famous generals.
Figure 14
Unfortunately, because Chen Geng and Tan Zheng participated in the revolution, the two families were also implicated, and the crackdown and persecution of the revolutionary families by the Kuomintang local government not only led to the sharp decline of the Chen family and the Tan family, which were originally famous and prestigious families in Xiangxiang, but also caused the two old gentlemen to die one after another in the family's changes.
They did not live to see the new China founded by their sons, did not see their sons become a generation of stars, and did not hear the legends of their sons' brilliant achievements and immortality.
The most painful thing is that Chen Geng's most beloved fourth sister, also Tan Zheng's lover and wife Chen Okra, after Tan Zheng participated in the revolution, because of his physical weakness, coupled with his thoughts and worries about her husband, she soon fell ill and died.
When Tan Zheng's sister said afterwards that Chen Okra held Tan Zheng's photo tightly to her chest before she died, Tan Zheng's tears could not stop flowing.
Figure 15
However, both Chen Geng and Tan Zheng knew very well that they sometimes had to abandon their families for the sake of the revolution, and in the entire revolutionary ranks, far more than the two of them. Wasn't the founding of New China precisely what countless revolutionaries sacrificed their small homes in exchange for?
After the founding of New China, the two did not have time to share the joy of revolutionary success, did not have time to feel the grief of losing their relatives for the revolutionary struggle, and immediately went to their respective posts.
Chen Geng successively served as the chairman of the Yunnan Provincial People's Government and the commander of the Yunnan Provincial Military District, and participated in the war to aid Vietnam and the War to Resist the United States and Aid Korea, and at the same time participated in the creation of military education systems such as hitachi, and was appointed vice minister of national defense in 1959, and died of illness in 1961 at the age of 58.
Tan Zheng, who served as vice minister of national defense, vice governor of Fujian Province, and adviser to the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, died in Beijing in November 1988 at the age of 83.
epilogue
The lives of Chen Geng and Tan Zheng, almost condensed the entire history of China's modern revolution and development, and they are not only the tide of stepping on the tide of the times, but also a member of ordinary people.
Under the influence of the old culture and old traditions, both of them gradually stepped from the old thinking of personal struggle to the road of serving the country and the people, from the pursuit of personal ideals to the pursuit of national and social progress and development.
Figure 16
The lives of the two are constantly intersecting because of common beliefs, and they are scattered and less together because of the common cause, and even they can only give up their small families and take the great righteousness, and the guilt of the family and relatives is a pain hidden in the hearts of the two that can never be erased.
They were not bound by the tide of history, but took the initiative to throw themselves into the revolutionary wave of saving the country and the people, and closely bound their personal ideals and aspirations to the great righteousness of the country and the nation.
Chen Geng and Tan Zheng, with their bloody half-life and lifelong struggle, have written their lives into a true legend.