Welcome to The History Column No. 2610. Commander Su and Chen Geng were both founding generals, but unlike Zhang Yunyi and others in the generals, they were not strictly speaking the founding fathers of the army in the early days. Although Both Su and Chen participated in the Nanchang Uprising of 1927, chen Geng was a grassroots cadre at the battalion commander level at that time, while Commander Su was only a squad leader, and neither of them was the main leader. During the Nanchang Uprising, Commander Su and Chen Geng did not know each other and belonged to the ranks of General He Laozong and General Ye Ting, respectively. It wasn't until the late stages of the Liberation War that the two really met for the first time.
Although General Chen Geng was 4 years older than Commander Su, he had a very bold personality and had always been very respectful, appreciative and humble to those with outstanding military talents. In the second stage of the Huaihai Campaign in 1948, the Central Plains Field Army, which was not well staffed and had poor weapons, although it blocked the Kuomintang Huang Wei Twelfth Corps that tried to reinforce the East China Battlefield, but it was very difficult to really take down this elite enemy, and Nakano's repeated attacks were not smooth, the casualties were still very serious, and the war was deadlocked.
At this time, commander Su, who had already solved huang Baitao's Seventh Corps in Nianzhuang, introduced a method of attacking the stronghold to Nakano's side, that is, the soil work industry. By constantly digging tunnels and slowly approaching the enemy's defensive line before launching an attack, the troops can greatly reduce the casualties of the attacking troops, and the attack effect is much better than blindly attacking, and it is precisely this method used to fight the Huang Baitao Corps. Chen Geng's unit was an important combat force in Nakano's double pile, and after drawing on the experience introduced by Commander Su, the columns of the Central Plains Field Army finally gnawed away the hard bone of the Huang Wei Corps under the support of HuaYe's artillery fire. Chen Geng, who had originally admired Commander Su, was even more impressed at this time, and he also firmly remembered the magic weapon of "soil work" in his heart.
During the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Chen Geng became the commander of the Third Corps of the Volunteer Army in 1951 and arrived at the Korean front. After the end of the five large-scale campaign battles, the two armies entered a phase of stalemate, and in order to be able to compete with the US army, which had the absolute upper hand in weapons and equipment, Chen Geng remembered the fighting style recommended by Commander Su during the Huaihai Campaign. With U.S. military firepower dominant, why not use the same tactics again on the Korean battlefield? Therefore, under Chen Geng's argument, the Volunteer Army Headquarters resolutely agreed to the tunnel warfare method, and transferred Wang Yaonan and other engineering elites and technical talents from China to Korea to preside over the excavation of the tunnel.
Sure enough, by using this method of play, the US military could not do anything about the stable defensive line of the volunteer army, the front line could not be promoted for a long time, and the two sides continued to engage in military confrontation near the 38th Line until the Korean Armistice in 1953. General Chen Geng undoubtedly made great contributions, and although he was transferred back to China to preside over the construction of the Kazakh military industry in the later period, the tactics and ideas left behind have always been used in the Korean battlefield. It can be seen from this that Commander Su had a deep influence on Chen Geng. It is necessary to know that Chen Geng was already a genius-level commander in the history of our army, but he thought that his talent was inferior to that of Commander Su, and it is not difficult to see that General Su was called the "God of War" by the military and the people, and there was no exaggeration at all.
However, due to some work contradictions after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Commander Su, who served as the chief of the general staff of the whole army, was criticized by The Minister of National Defense Peng Lao, Nie Shuai, General Huang Kecheng and others, and the crime at that time was extreme individualism. At the enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission in 1958, thousands of generals attended the meeting, and under pressure or other purposes, many people poured dirty water on Su Zong, and even pointed out that he could not actually fight, and that during the Liberation War, he lost a lot of troops in the Battle of Nanlin and the Battle of Eastern Henan. This accusation is undoubtedly absurd, because of course, there is no general who wins every battle, and although Su Zong has a high military level, it is not realistic to win every specific battle. Limited by subjective and objective factors, it is normal to suffer setbacks in individual battles.
General Chen Geng was also present at the time, and he was very unhappy to hear that someone had slandered Commander Su in this way. He also ignored the atmosphere of the meeting at that time and retorted on the spot: You said that he would not fight, so which one would fight? Now please stand up, I'd love to see! Hearing Chen Geng speak so solemnly, the venue was much quieter for a while, and did not continue this topic. Chen Geng had high military achievements and good popularity, so no one grasped this sentence to embarrass him. Chen Geng and Su Zong had a deep friendship and were very insistent on the truth, so that they could speak for the criticized people so brazenly at the venue.
Having said that, Commander Su's argument that "it is not possible to fight a war" is related to the fact that tan Zhenlin, deputy political commissar of the field army, wrote to Su Zong in 1947 after Huaye suffered several defeats. At that time, While acknowledging The military genius of General Su, Deputy Political Commissar Tan also pointed out some shortcomings in his command, of course, the letter belonged to Tan's personal views. The letter was used by some in 1958 to exaggerate the accusations against Commander Su, which aroused Chen Geng's disgust.
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