In September 1955, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) was awarded the title for the first time in history. The process of awarding titles may seem like a one-off process, but in fact there are very strict standards.
Take the rank of general, at that time, if you want to be rated as a general, you need to follow these two criteria: first, you participated in several major uprisings in the early days of our party; Second, he once served as the commander of a front. In addition, it is to look at the individual's achievements on the battlefield and the resume of joining the party.
(Top 10 Generals of the Republic)
However, before the official conferral of the title in September 1955, a general whose qualifications were comparable to the rank of major general died of illness at the age of 54.
After learning of his death, Zhou Enlai, then premier of the State Council, was overwhelmed with grief and personally presided over his funeral. Among the later ten founding marshals, He Long, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying and Nie Rongzhen also attended to express their condolences.
(Zhou Enlai)
So, who is this general who was mourned by Zhou Enlai and others? What kind of contribution did he make to the cause of the liberation of New China, so that later generations thought that he was enough to evaluate the rank of general?
Today, this program tells you: the uncrowned general - Yang Lisan.
(Yang Lisan)
The general, whom Zhou Enlai and others mourned together, was named Yang Lisan, a veteran member who joined our party in 1927 and was even more the main pioneer and founder of the logistics work of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
On November 8, 1900, Yang Lisan was born in Changsha, Hunan Province, to a landless tenant farmer family. Despite his modest family, his parents attached great importance to his education. At the age of 11, Yang Lisan was sent to private school to study with his husband. And Yang Lisan was also very competitive, and was admitted to the local primary school with excellent results.
Unfortunately, due to the increasing poverty of his family, Yang Lisan had to stop his studies at the age of 20 and serve in the Xiang Army to earn a living. Because Yang Lisan had studied in private schools and primary schools and could read, he was quickly appreciated by the officers of the Xiang Army and asked him to serve as the chief of the department in the regiment headquarters, and later because of his ability to calculate, he became a quartermaster of the Xiang Army, and this experience laid the foundation for Yang Lisan to later create the logistics work of the people's army.
In the ranks of warlords, Yang Lisan saw all the bullying and domineering appearance of the old army, and Yang Lisan did not want to collude with these bullies who endangered the township, so in 1922, he submitted his resignation to the officers of the Xiang Army and returned to his hometown to work with his family and live a short peaceful life.
(Xiang Army)
In 1924, Sun Yat-sen put forward the new Three People's Principles policy of "uniting Russia, uniting with the Communist Party, and supporting workers and peasants", and announced cooperation with the Communist Party, and the wave of national revolution swept across the land of China. Yang Lisan, who experienced oppression by warlords and landlords on weekdays and was deeply inspired by the times, resolutely joined the Chinese Kuomintang and devoted himself to the National Revolution from 1924. During this period, Yang Lisan was appointed as a member of the Kuomintang's Changsha Local Party Department Supervisory Committee, and founded Changsha County Higher Primary School and Zunyang Girls' School to propagate revolutionary ideas.
But what impressed Yang Lisan in the upsurge was a fellow villager who was seven years older than him and who often gave speeches on the peasant movement in Changsha. Yang Lisan, who came from a rural background, was very interested in this fellow villager's content about how farmers suffered and how they sought liberation, so he took the initiative to talk to this fellow villager and became friends.
This person was the Chairman Mao we later knew.
(Young Chairman Mao)
In 1926, the National Revolutionary Army swore in the Northern Expedition from Guangdong, and the huge national revolutionary movement ushered in a climax - in 1926, Yang Lisan, as a member of the Kuomintang, planned the Northern Expedition of the National Revolutionary Army to march into Hunan. After the arrival of the National Revolutionary Army in Hunan, Yang Lisan was appointed as the leader of the second detachment of the second column of the Changyue guerrilla force of the National Revolutionary Army. Yang Lisan's previous experience in the Xiang Army allowed him to show his skills during his service in the National Revolutionary Army and was appreciated by the Kuomintang generals.
However, at this time, Yang Lisan's thinking had undergone a major change. Influenced by Chairman Mao's speech at the Peasant Movement Seminar, Yang Lisan had already undergone a transformation of his thinking in 1927 and became a communist. In January 1927, Yang Lisan secretly joined the Communist Party of China and embarked on a real revolutionary journey.
However, what Yang Lisan did not expect was that on April 12, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek openly betrayed the revolution and wantonly arrested and massacred Kuomintang leftists and communists in Nanjing, Shanghai and other places on this day, and the fruits of the victory of the national revolution were in danger of being stolen by new warlords. On May 21, 1927, local warlords in Henan responded to Chiang Kai-shek by arresting and massacring communists in Changsha and releasing all previously imprisoned landlords, and Yang Lisan became a repeat offender arrested by Hunan warlords.
Yang Lisan, who suffered setbacks, did not feel discouraged by this, but embarked on a road of armed resistance. On August 1, 1927, the news that Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and others led the Nanchang Uprising made Yang Lisan feel happy. In September 1927, Yang Lisan joined Chairman Mao's team and raised the banner of uprising in the Xianggan Border District, which became known in history as the Autumn Harvest Uprising – since then, Yang Lisan has become Chairman Mao's right hand man, and the market has been by Chairman Mao's side, advising the revolution.
(Autumn Harvest Uprising)
Due to the overwhelming strength of the enemy army, the Autumn Harvest Uprising army led by Chairman Mao could only temporarily avoid the front and advance towards Jiangxi. However, when he arrived at Sanwan Village, Yongxin County, Jiangxi Province, there were less than 800 troops left in the autumn harvest uprising, and Chairman Mao realized the importance of reorganizing the army and reorganizing morale, so he proposed three reorganization plans based on "streamlining the army," "equality among officers and men," and "establishing party branches at the company level."
After the reorganization of the Autumn Harvest Uprising Army in Sanwan, its combat effectiveness was greatly enhanced. Chairman Mao then led this rebel army to Jinggangshan Mountain, and Yang Lisan thus became a group of people who followed Chairman Mao to Jinggangshan troops. At this time, Chairman Mao's "three major reorganization policies" still need to be implemented, and Yang Lisan, who previously served in the Xiang Army and served as a quartermaster, became Chairman Mao's right-hand man in reorganizing the army. Because Chairman Mao advocated equality among officers and soldiers, every soldier should receive the same supplies. Yang Lisan made careful calculations, so that the original more than 800 soldiers got the necessities of life that they deserved. After that, Chairman Mao led this army to fight local tyrants and divide up fields, and Yang Lisan also assisted in the overall planning of land finance and logistics construction.
(Chairman Mao led the army to Jinggangshan Mountain)
In 1928, as the troops of Zhu De, Chen Yi and others ascended Jinggangshan Mountain, Yang Lisan needed to do more and more logistical statistics every day. After that, Yang Lisan served as the captain of the 31st Red Regiment and the quartermaster of the Red Division, and coordinated and planned the logistics work of the Red Army. In 1930, Yang Lisan was officially appointed as the deputy chief of the General Headquarters and the head of the General Manager's Office of the First Front of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and presided over and customized the first supply standard system of the Red Army when the Red Army had abolished the wage system.
In 1932, Yang Lisan was again entrusted with the important task of serving as director of the rear office, director of the military station department, and political commissar, presiding over the overall construction of the rear. During this period, Yang Lisan made overall plans for the Red Army's own military factories, hospitals, garment factories, and quilt factories, providing powerful logistical support for the Red Army fighting bravely on the front line.
In October 1934, affected by the failure of the fifth counter-encirclement and suppression, Yang Lisan followed the large army of the Red Army and began the Long March. During the Long March, Yang Lisan was also responsible for the overall planning of the Red Army's logistics work, and tried his best to minimize the Red Army's logistical losses.
It is worth mentioning that Yang Lisan had a life-saving grace for Zhou Enlai on the road of the Long March. When the Red Army passed through the Songpan meadow, Zhou Enlai had a high fever due to infection with parasites, and his life was in danger, so Yang Lisan made a stretcher and personally carried the seriously ill Zhou Enlai out of the meadow, so that Zhou Enlai could be treated. For this, Zhou Enlai has always been grateful.
(Zhou Enlai)
In 1937, the Anti-Japanese War broke out in full force, and although Yang Lisan did not go to the front line at this time, the logistical support work he did was closely related to every front-line soldier - in February 1939, with the increasingly severe anti-Japanese situation, Yang Lisan was transferred to the logistics chief of the forward headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, responsible for the overall logistics support of the Eighth Route Army.
In June 1939, as the blockade of revolutionary base areas by the Japanese invaders and the Kuomintang diehards became increasingly serious, Yang Lisan began to participate in the overall planning of military production in the rear. At that time, in order to limit the development and growth of the Eighth Route Army, Chiang Kai-shek stopped paying the Eighth Route Army, and our army had to re-adopt the in-kind rationing system of the Red Army period, and also adopted the departmental salary system, which made the workload of the Red Army's logistics supply calculation very heavy. Yang Lisan faced one account book after another, invented the character "饻" as a physical unit of measurement, and used it to calculate the salary of the Eighth Route Army. In 1944, Yang Lisan and Teng Daiyuan put forward the "Teng Yang Plan" for saving materials, which provided an important logistical support for our army to preserve its effective forces.
(Yang Lisan and Zhou Enlai)
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, our army formally established the General Logistics Department, and Yang Lisan served as the director of the General Logistics Department, and since then he has become the "first person" in the logistics of the people's army. In addition, Yang Lisan also served as the external commander of the North China Logistics Department and the deputy director of the North China Finance and Economic Office. After the outbreak of the Huaihai Campaign in 1948, Yang Lisan organized the military and civilians to carry out material transportation, making the Huaihai Battle a "battle won by relying on the small carts of the common people."
After the founding of New China in 1949, Yang Lisan served as director of the General Rear Logistics Department of the mainland and director of the Ministry of Food Industry of the People's Government. In October 1950, after the outbreak of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Yang Lisan, Hong Xuezhi and others jointly planned the logistics work of the Chinese People's Volunteers during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. During his painstaking work, Yang Lisan became ill and suffered from brain cancer.
(Yang Lisan)
In January 1954, Yang Lisan was appointed minister of the General Finance Department to make overall plans for the mainland's economic construction and financial work. In the fall of 1954, after several domestic hospitals without success, Yang Lisan was sent to the Kremlin Hospital in Moscow, Soviet Union. However, Yang Lisan's brain cancer at this time has entered the advanced stage. On November 28, 1954, Yang Lisan died of illness in the Moscow Kremlin Hospital at the age of 54.
After Yang Lisan's body was cremated and sent to China, the state decided to bury Comrade Yang Lisan's ashes in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery. After Zhou Enlai learned that Yang Lisan, who had saved his life in the past, died of illness, he was immediately full of grief, personally presided over Yang Lisan's funeral, and sent him a spirit to repay Yang Lisan for his former grace of "carrying a stretcher". He Long, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying and Nie Rongzhen's later four founding marshals all attended Yang Lisan's funeral, and in their opinion - without Yang Lisan presiding over logistics in the rear, there would not have been a series of brilliant victories of the front-line People's Liberation Army.
(Yang Lisan's funeral)
Yang Lisan worked tirelessly for the people and the country all his life, and after his death, the logistics work he pioneered has far-reaching significance to the Chinese People's Liberation Army to this day, and later generations praised Yang Lisan as Chairman Mao's "red Xiao He", and this title Yang Lisan can be said to be well-deserved!