In May 1935, after the Red Army flew across the Dadu River and seized the Luding Bridge, it basically got rid of the encirclement and interception of hundreds of thousands of enemy troops.
Political work is especially important in a very difficult environment. But during the Long March, there was no better way to do political work than to lead by example by political cadres. In order to maintain the morale and combat effectiveness of the troops, I demand that every Communist Party member and Communist Youth League member of the 12 th Regiment influence and boost the morale of the troops with their own exemplary and leading role. At that time, the living conditions were very difficult, and for more than a month, they hardly slept a single restful night's sleep, let alone eaten a full meal, and the comrades were very weak. Despite this, the troops maintained high combat morale. For the sake of a common belief, for the liberation of the suffering people of the whole of China and the salvation of the Chinese nation, which is full of disasters and difficulties, it is to let us endure all the hardships of the world, and our hearts are also sweet.
In June, we joined forces with the Red Fourth Front Army in the Maoergai area of Songpan. The regiment conveyed Chairman Mao's instructions that the convergence of the First and Fourth Front armies had made the Red Army even stronger. However, we must do a good job in ideological and political work in the troops and do a good job in unity with fraternal units. In accordance with Comrade Mao Zedong's instructions, we welcomed the arrival of the comrades of the Fourth Front Army at the rendezvous site with gongs and drums, and at the same time held a gala meeting, wrote letters to each other, and exchanged gifts and food. In the arduous years, revolutionary friendship was really closer than brothers.
One day, our regiment received instructions to rest and recuperate, and the comrades were very happy when they heard about it. At that time, the troops were so tired that they should rest for a few days, even a day or a night, and the comrades were very happy, and first of all, they had to sleep well.
On the day of the break, the regimental commander and I went to the regiment to attend a meeting of cadres at and above the regimental level. At the meeting, the commander of the regiment Gu Dehuai conveyed Chairman Mao's instructions: "The troops should seize the time to rest and recuperate, and actively make all preparations for crossing the grassland, especially to make combat preparations for fighting the enemy's cavalry." "Commander Peng told everyone that on the way across the meadow, the enemy's cavalry attacked our army with a greater threat. The vanguard of the 1st Army was attacked by enemy cavalry while crossing the meadow. He asked the regiments to think as much about difficulties as possible so that they could be prepared. Subsequently, the director of the political department of the corps gave detailed instructions on how to do a good job in the political and ideological work of the troops, because the grasslands through which the Red Army passed were areas of minority nationalities, and he gave a special explanation of how to do a good job in national unity. Since the minority nationalities have long been subjected to the deceptive propaganda of the Kuomintang reactionaries, and our Red Army has not affected these areas, the masses of the minority nationalities do not understand our Red Army, and in addition to the long-term ethnic estrangement, if we fail to respect the traditional customs and Xi of the minority nationalities and do not strictly implement our party's ethnic policy, it will be very difficult for the Red Army to pass through the grassland smoothly. The instructions of the head of the corps are very important and very timely for us to do a good job in the troops.
The troops moved into the Maulgai area. The Tibetans here have long since disappeared. There was not a trace of cooking smoke in the whole village, and not a single cow or sheep could be seen. The barley and peas that looked ripe but had no one to take care of them were desolate. In order to abide by the national policy and discipline, I put forward strict requirements to all companies: No matter how difficult the troops are, they must not touch the slightest thing of the masses, and they must protect the crops in the fields. In order to summon back the masses who had taken refuge in the mountains, I organized several small detachments to go to the mountains to give shouts and publicize our national policy. In order not to misunderstand the Red Army among the masses of minority nationalities, our troops were not stationed in the houses of the masses, but camped in straw huts, on the roadside, and under trees. At the same time, it also helps the masses to harvest the ripe crops and put them in place. When the supply of the troops was really difficult, the borrowed grain had to be paid according to the price, and the notes were written down and placed in the field where it was easy to find. In order not to use the food of the masses as much as possible, when the troops went up to the mountains to call for people, they all dug up some wild vegetables to satisfy their hunger. Once, some soldiers in the unit suddenly pulled up their stomachs, and many of them had swollen faces, and some even fell dozens of people at once. We were in a hurry, and after investigation, we learned that it was caused by the soldiers of the army who had picked and eaten poisonous wild vegetables in the mountains. Due to the timely investigation of the problem, there were no serious consequences, but the fighters' bodies were even weaker. One day, a few warriors caught some wild goats in the mountains, and everyone was happy and had a good meal. This was a rare occurrence at the time.
We insisted on going up the hill to shout and scatter leaflets everywhere to find people. One day, we finally found a man in a jungle in the middle of a ravine. I warmly entertained this man and preached to him that the Red Army was an army that did things for the people. This man saw with his own eyes that our Red Army camped in the fields without living in their houses, and that they did not eat their food, but helped them to harvest their crops. The facts made him finally see clearly who was the benefactor and who was the enemy, and finally he volunteered to lead the way for the Red Army and go to the mountains to recall the villagers. We sent Wang Deqing, the commander of the third company, to take a few soldiers to go up the mountain with the villagers. That day, before it was dark, they brought back a few Tibetan compatriots. The soldiers were very happy and rushed to clean the yard and carry water for the Tibetan compatriots who had returned. Since the Tibetan compatriots did not understand our words, at first, several people just stared at us in a daze, probably not believing what they were seeing. There was a platoon commander named Chen Zhongming in the regiment who was very clever, he first pointed to the red five stars on his hat with his finger, and then took the hand of a fellow countryman and patted it with his own, indicating that we were our own team and a family. A few Tibetan compatriots probably understood, so they also took our hands and clapped happily. The next day, we took these Tibetan compatriots to see all over the village. When they saw that every household in the village had remained the same and that the crops in the field had been harvested for them, they folded their hands together excitedly and nodded their heads in thanks. Subsequently, he took the initiative to take the Red Army up the mountain to mobilize the Tibetan compatriots to return. With their help, the Tibetan compatriots in the village finally returned.
In order to further mobilize the masses and prepare to cross the grasslands, we have recruited into the army a few young Tibetan compatriots who have actively asked to join the Red Army. With these Tibetan fighters, our work in minority areas is much more convenient. With their help, the troops were able to collect some food. Since the areas inhabited by minority nationalities are already vast and sparsely populated, there is not much food to eat, so the troops still educate the troops by saving grain.
When we were about to step into the meadow, the people from the Fourth Front Army, who were not far from us, said that their troops were no more than meadows. Since he did not know about Zhang Guotao's split of the Red Army at that time, he felt very strange when he heard the news: Didn't the Red Army go north to resist Japan? Just as he was speculating, the troops received an order from Chairman Mao to cross the grassland. I presided over a meeting of all party members and cadres, and the corps also sent representatives to explain the importance of the Red Army's march into the grasslands and the northward march to resist Japan. After the meeting, all the companies were mobilized according to my request, and I went to the second and fifth companies to participate in the discussions among the soldiers, and the soldiers were full of confidence and were mentally prepared to overcome all difficulties and hardships.
At the end of August, the troops set off. When the troops crossed a wooden bridge, a horse from the regimental political office fell off the wooden bridge and was swept away by the rushing river. Immediately he drifted away with some documents and food, which made it more difficult for us to cross the meadow. Soon, an endless meadow appeared in front of us. The ground was overgrown with water and weeds, and was shrouded in a mist. As soon as the sun set, the temperature on the grass immediately became very cold and cold. On the first night of camping in the meadow, the fighters had to lean against each other one by one to keep warm. The regimental headquarters was stationed on a relatively high mound, and we asked the companies to pay attention to the terrain and be ready to deal with the unexpected. Several cadres in the regiment did not rest at all, and went to each company separately to check the camping and combat readiness. Originally, it was decided to leave after dawn the next day, but before dawn, everyone was frozen. Because the weather was too cold and the comrades had few clothes, they got up and moved for a while to make their bodies a little hot. After the troops set off, although the sun had risen in the east, the weather was still very cold. The troops walked very fast, and they also wanted to drive away the cold air on their bodies. We walked for seven or eight hours in one go, and the weather suddenly changed, and soon dark clouds covered the whole grassland, followed by lightning and thunder, and a torrential downpour of hail bigger than soybeans, which came at us with a head and face. In the vast grassland, there was no place to hide, so everyone had to take out everything that could protect against hail and put it on their heads and continue to walk forward. There are those with basins, some wearing straw hats, some with umbrellas, and some with quilts. It rained for a while, but the sky finally cleared. At this time, comrades, you look at me, I look at you, some of them were hit by hail on their heads several times, and some of their umbrellas had been broken into the bottom of a sieve, and the comrades couldn't help but laugh. The climate on the meadow is like the face of a monkey, changeable. At nightfall, it snowed heavily on the meadows, and the temperature was even lower. In one day, it was as if we had spent the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. After camping, the comrades brought some dry grass and prepared to cook on the fire, but the wind seemed to be deliberately against us, and the fire that had just been lit was blown out at once. No matter how great the difficulties were, the Red Army soldiers could not be bothered, and later everyone formed a wall one by one to tightly surround the firewood in the middle, so that they could not only cook, but also bake the fire for warmth, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone. Because the weather was too cold, and the grass was full of mud pools and puddles, it was rare to have a place where people could stand, so the Red Army soldiers could not sleep, so they had to stand and sit for a while, and when they couldn't stand it anymore, they chatted back to back and sang revolutionary songs. I remember a song that goes like this:
In June, the weather is hot, and there is snow on Jiajin Mountain.
The 14th and 2nd Front Armies were combined in the Maogong Regional Assembly.
In July, when I came to western Sichuan, Heishui Luhua fluttered the battle flag.
Worked hard for that, in order to resist Japan and save China.
………
After a difficult night, I went to the army in the morning and saw that although the mood of the soldiers was very high, due to the difficult living conditions and excessive fatigue, the number of sick people had increased significantly, and more than 20 soldiers were already suffering from high fevers. I hastened to ask all the doctors and hygienists in the regiment to go down to the unit to take care of the sick and inform the troops to take care of the disease. At the same time, the regiment also decided that, except for special reasons, all the horses in the regiment should be used by the sick number, and it was necessary to ensure that no sick number would be left behind.
Early in the morning of the fourth day of entering the meadow, I received a notice from the division asking us to strengthen our vigilance against the attack of the enemy's cavalry. I immediately conveyed the division's instructions to the troops, and at the same time asked them to quickly prepare for the enemy's cavalry. Sure enough, in the afternoon, an enemy cavalry force of about seventy or eighty men appeared to the west of our troops. At first the enemy just went around there, as if trying to figure out what was going on with us. We learned the lesson of the vanguard fighting the enemy cavalry, and asked the troops not to run around when they encountered the enemy cavalry, because they could not outrun the enemy cavalry if they ran on the grass. According to the deployment, the troops quickly changed from marching columns to fighting formations with companies and platoons as units, and concentrated their firepower as much as possible to disrupt the enemy's formation. It didn't take long for the enemy cavalry to swoop down on us with their sabers waving their sabers, howling. When the enemy was only 180 meters away from our troops, the vanguard opened fire, and with only a few volleys, the enemy left more than a dozen corpses and fled in disarray. Although the battle was short, it immediately knocked out everyone's original fear of the enemy's cavalry. Several carbines and sabers were also captured, and the fighting enthusiasm of the troops suddenly increased. The comrades of the regimental political department quickly went down to the troops to carry out propaganda and agitation work, and the song of fighting cavalry, which is still sung to this day, began to be sung at that time:
The enemy's cavalry is not to be feared,
Fight it with composure,
The goal is big and easy to play,
Platoon guns kill in one fell swoop,
We defeat it,
We destroy it.
On the fifth day of entering the meadow, the troops were running out of food, and several companies had empty rice bags. I immediately summoned the cadres to a meeting to study how to get the troops out of the meadows, and put forward the demand that food should be conserved as much as possible. The comrades also came up with a lot of good ideas, such as which wild vegetables in the meadow can be eaten with food, and which can be eaten as a meal alone, and so on. In short, everyone has only one belief, we must go out of the grassland and go north to resist Japan. In the days to come, each of us could only eat a few taels of soup mixed with barley wheat and wild vegetables every day, coupled with the lack of salt and oil, all of us were yellow and thin, and our whole body was weak, and the soldiers almost had no strength to laugh, and the troops were too tired.
The desolate steppes have taken the lives of many of our excellent warriors. The further you go, the more you see the martyrs lying in the grass. The names of many of the martyrs are still unknown. Some of them died in battle with the enemy's cavalry, while others starved to death due to the lack of food. There was a soldier surnamed Li in the third squad of the first company of our regiment, and in order to get everyone out of the meadow, he usually gave his food to other comrades for various reasons, but later he starved to death on the march.
Walking, walking, walking for seven days and seven nights, we saw a few houses, and only after inquiring did we know that we had arrived in the Banyou area. At this time, the news came from the front that the vanguard of the 1st Red Army had broken through Lazikou and wiped out a brigade in Ludachang, Gansu. In this way, our troops walked out of Lazikou at a very fast speed and were stationed in the Hadapu area for rest and recuperation.
Due to the excessively large attrition of the Red First Army, the Party Central Committee announced that the First Red Army Corps would be changed into a column and the Third Red Army Corps would be changed into a second column to form the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment, and Comrade Peng Dehuai would be appointed as the commander, and Chairman Mao himself would concurrently serve as the political commissar of the detachment. During this period, we learned from Chairman Mao about Zhang Guotao's split of the Red Army by the Fourth Front Army. Chairman Mao said to us: "Now that Zhang Guotao is not coming, we will go north to resist Japan, and he will take the Fourth Front Army to the south and go to the Chuankang area to establish a separate central government." But I believe that the comrades of the Four Front Army will definitely return. Chairman Mao's wise foresight has indeed been proved by practice. It didn't take long for the comrades of the Four Front Army to return. Under the personal command of Chairman Mao, Vice Chairman Zhou Enlai, and Commander Peng, our Shaanxi-Gansu detachment continued to advance and arrived at Wuqi Town in northern Shaanxi to join the Red Army Liu Zhidan's troops.
Along the way, while doing political work and mass work, I also inspected the troops' implementation of the three disciplines and eight points of attention. On the march, some soldiers were sick and couldn't walk, so they asked other soldiers to help them carry their guns, and I always walked behind to contain the stragglers. This practice boosted morale and enabled us to smash Chiang's third "encirclement and suppression" of the Red Army in northern Shaanxi and annihilate a regiment of the enemy's 109th Division and 106th Division. After this battle, I went to Yanchang County to mobilize more than 700 people to join the Red Army. After the expansion of the Red Army, the number of the 1st Red Division of the 1st Army Corps was restored, and I was the political commissar of any regiment, and Chen Zhengxiang was the commander of the regiment. In 1936, our regiment was ordered to go north to resist the Japanese, and after crossing the Yellow River in the east, it fought fiercely with Yan Xishan's troops in Shangguan Town and Duijiuyu area, annihilating more than 700 enemies, capturing more than 300 enemies, capturing Jixian County, until Zhaocheng and Hongdong, and controlling the Tongpu railway line. At this time, the enemy increased by more than 100,000 men to besiege our army. In order to get rid of the enemy's encirclement, our regiment temporarily withdrew to northern Shaanxi for rest. At this time, I served as the director of the Political Department of the 1st Red Division. In October 1936, the 1st and 15th Army Corps triumphantly joined up with the Red 2nd and 4th Front Armies. Announcing the victory of the Second Civil Revolutionary War, Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy to "encircle and suppress" the Red Army was completely bankrupt.
In October 1935, the Central Red Army went through untold hardships and repeatedly defeated the encirclement and interception of the Kuomintang army. Finally arrived at Wuqi Town in northern Shaanxi and completed the world-famous 25,000-mile Long March. Comrade Mao Zedong highly praised and appraised the Long March in his article "On the Strategy of Opposing Japanese Imperialism." He said: "The Long March is the first time in history, the Long March is a manifesto, the Long March is a propaganda team, and the Long March is a seeding machine. Since Pangu opened the world, and the three emperors and five emperors have been up to the present, has there ever been a long march like ours in history? During the 12 months, dozens of planes in the sky reconnoitred and bombed every day, and hundreds of thousands of troops underground surrounded and intercepted us, and we encountered indescribable difficulties and dangers on the road, but we drove each person's two feet and drove more than 20,000 miles across 11 provinces. Has there ever been a long march like ours in history? No, never. All veteran comrades who have gone through the Long March and revisit this passage of Comrade Mao Zedong are all stirring and cordial.
[Luo Yuanfa, 1910.11.15-2010.5.10, from Longmen Village, Longmen Township, Longyan County, Fujian Province. He joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in 1928, transferred to the Communist Party of China in 1929, and joined the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in the same year. He once served as the director of the Political Department of the 1st Red Division. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as the director of the Political Office of the Independent Regiment of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, and the political commissar of the Second Brigade of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningjin-Sui Joint Defense Army. During the Liberation War, he served as the commander and political commissar of the teaching brigade of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningjin-Sui Joint Defense Army, the commander of the Sixth Column of the Northwest Field Army, and the commander of the Sixth Army of the First Field Army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he successively served as commander of the Northern Xinjiang Military Region and secretary of the CPC Committee of the Northern Xinjiang Region, commander of the Air Force of the Northwest Military Region, deputy commander of the Beijing Military Region and commander of the Air Force of the Military Region, deputy commander of the Air Force of the People's Liberation Army of the Chinese People's Republic of China and deputy director of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission, and adviser to the National Defense Science and Technology Commission Chinese. In 1955, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general. He was awarded the Order of August 1 of the Second Class, the Order of Independence and Freedom of the First Class, the Order of Liberation of the First Class, and the Order of Merit of the Red Star of the First Class in 1988. 】