Zhou Enlai took a group photo with Ye Ting (right), commander of the New Fourth Army, and Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the New Fourth Army
Reorganization of the New Fourth Army
The New Fourth Army is an important armed force under the leadership of the Communist Party, and its predecessor was the Red Army guerrillas in the eight southern provinces led by Xiang Ying and Chen Yi, with Ye Ting as the commander and Xiang Ying as the deputy commander. Xiang Ying, known as deputy army commander, is actually a political commissar, and also holds important posts such as member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, secretary of the Southeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and secretary of the New Fourth Army Branch of the Central Military Commission.
Xiang Ying was very old, and joined the Communist Party of China in April 1922; In June 1923, he participated in the Third Congress of the Communist Party of China and was elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee. In June 1928, Xiang Ying participated in the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in Moscow and was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee. In August 1930, Xiang Ying served as the secretary of the Yangtze River Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and at the end of the same year, he was ordered to be transferred to the Central Revolutionary Base to meet Zhu De and Mao Zedong. In January 1931, the Central Bureau of the Soviet District of the Communist Party of China was established in Huangpi, Ningdu County, with Xiang Ying as the acting secretary (secretary Zhou Enlai) and chairman of the Central Military Commission. In October 1934, the Central Red Army withdrew from the Soviet zone and carried out a strategic transfer. Who stayed behind to undertake the heavy task of covering the transfer of the main force of the Red Army? Xiang Ying was ordered to serve as secretary of the Soviet District Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and commander and political commissar of the Central Military Region, and led his troops to plan for the breakthrough of the main force of the Red Army. After the Zunyi Conference, the Central Committee only got in touch with Xiang Ying and the Central Branch on February 5, 1935. In accordance with the instructions of the Party Central Committee, Xiang Ying commanded the troops to break through the encirclement in nine directions and carry out guerrilla warfare in a dispersed manner. Xiang Ying ordered to bury the radio station, burn the password, and break through to the Jiangxi-Guangdong border. After that, a number of party and army leaders such as Qu Qiubai, He Chang, and He Shuheng died one after another.
In early April 1935, Xiang Ying organized and convened the "Changling Conference" and decided to implement the plan of "dividing the whole into parts and dividing the troops into guerrillas" under the struggle policy of "relying on the masses, persisting in struggle, accumulating strength, creating conditions, and ushering in a new revolutionary upsurge." Xiang Ying led the guerrillas in a three-year arduous struggle against the enemy in the mountains.
After the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperated to resist Japan. In December 1937, after participating in the Party Central Committee's determination of the principles for the organization of the New Fourth Army, Xiang Ying arrived in Wuhan to negotiate with the Kuomintang authorities on behalf of the Communist Party of China and reach an agreement on the organization of the New Fourth Army. In the spring of 1938, he, Ye Ting, Chen Yi and others went to various guerrilla areas to convey the instructions of the Party Central Committee on the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the joint war of resistance against Japanese aggression, and the reorganization of the troops. In just three months, the Red Army and guerrilla units scattered in 14 regions in eight southern provinces were organized into four detachments with more than 10,000 people, which were assembled in southern and central Anhui respectively and reorganized into the New Fourth Army.
In 1939, Xiang Ying participated in the formulation of the New Fourth Army's policy of "consolidating to the south, fighting to the east, and developing to the north". After two years of arduous struggle, anti-Japanese base areas were established in southern Jiangsu, central Jiangsu, northern Jiangsu, Huaibei, Huainan, central Anhui, Hubei, Henan, and Anhui, and the troops of the New Fourth Army continued to grow.
Besieged by the enemy
In October 1940, the Kuomintang government sent a "Hao telegram" to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, slandering the Communist-led army for not abiding by the demarcated theater of operations, moving at will, and expanding the number of troops freely. disobeying the orders of the national government, arbitrarily destroying and changing the administrative system; Not actively resisting the Japanese army, but specializing in harassing friendly forces, and so on. The Communist-led army was ordered to move all north of the Yellow River within a month.
On 28 December, Xiang Ying presided over an enlarged meeting of the New Fourth Army Branch to study the unit's action plan. Xiang Ying advocated going south, Ye Ting advocated going east, and there were serious differences of opinion between the two commanders, and some people proposed a plan to go north in batches, believing that it would be mobile and flexible, and that the whole army would not be exposed to the enemy. In the end, at Xiang Ying's insistence, the troops decided to move south.
Late at night on January 4, 1941, Xiang Ying announced that the troops would set off in three routes, with the second column being the central column, and the first and third columns being on the left and right respectively, and starting at the same time. Ye Ting, Xiang Ying, Yuan Guoping, and Zhou Zikun accompanied the military to the action, and Rao Shushi, deputy secretary of the Southeast Bureau, also moved together.
According to the original plan, the troops of the New Fourth Army immediately crossed the Qingyi River and set up a simple pontoon bridge at Zhangjiadu for the use of military commanders and command organs. However, due to the continuous rain for several days, the river water has not stopped. The teams that arrived at the front could not go into the water when they waited on the riverside, and the troops behind continued to gather on the riverside. The black oppressive troops began to move towards Zhangjiadu, the rudimentary pontoon bridge soon collapsed, and the New Fourth Army, which arrived first, was stranded by the river. Xiang Ying could only order the follow-up troops to stop temporarily at a place called Pan Village, and wait for the stragglers to be contained before hurrying. Pan Village, a small village, poured in thousands of people at once. At dusk, the tired team set out on the journey again.
Shangguan Yunxiang, commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang 32nd Group Army, discovered the signs of the New Fourth Army's transfer and immediately took action. Although the vanguard of the second column of the New Fourth Army fought desperately and captured many hills, it was unable to open the way for the advance because the enemy's 40th Division occupied favorable terrain in advance and had artillery support. During this time, Shangguan Yunxiang mobilized nearly 80,000 troops to encircle the Maolin area from the east, south, and west.
Under extraordinary circumstances, the military headquarters of the New Fourth Army was divided into two, and Ye Ting took Li Zhigao, chief of the Operations Section, and some staff officers to advance towards Gaotan with the vanguard troops. Xiang Ying, Zhou Zikun, and Yuan Guoping acted together with the military department and follow-up troops. Xiang Ying's troops did not arrive at Xingtan until the early morning of the next day. At noon, Xiang Ying ordered his troops to attack Gaoling, and as long as they broke through this pass, they could sneak into Huangshan. However, the troops went in the wrong direction and mistook Kamaring for a high ridge. It was almost impossible for a tired team to attack a high ridge that was difficult to defend and difficult to defend on its back. The reconnaissance staff officer brought news: The 144th Division of the recalcitrant army had advanced from Yunling to Maolin, and other enemy divisions were also tightening the encirclement...... There is little hope of rushing out. At this time, Liu Hou, the adjutant on the side, suddenly said: "Political commissar, I will protect a few of you and rush out!" His words caught Xiang Ying's attention.
The reckless and arrogant Red Guard
Liu Houzong, a native of Leiyang, Hunan, participated in the peasant movement in his hometown in 1926 and the peasant Red Guards in 1928. Liu Hou always dared to fight in the struggle and became famous in Leiyang. Gradually, Liu Hou, who was full of the idea of "King of the Mountain", almost became a bandit and did whatever he wanted.
In the winter of 1934, the Red Guerrillas of Southern Hunan were established, and the Leiyang Guerrillas were organized into the Third Brigade, with Liu Hou as the captain. In 1935, Liu Hou joined the Leiyang County Party Committee and was a member of the County Party Committee. Liu Hou was dissatisfied with the organization of sending Liu Dezong and Liu Xiangming to the guerrillas as leaders, believing that it was a distrust of him. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperated for the second time, Wang Tao, secretary of the South Hunan Special Committee of the Communist Party of China, Xie Zhufeng, member of the Special Committee and secretary of the Leiyang County Party Committee, negotiated with Chen Biwen, the magistrate of Leiyang County of the Kuomintang government, to stop the civil war and unanimously resist Japan. The Leiyang guerrillas successively concentrated on rectification in Tianmen Mountain and Tongshuipu, and then went to Liu Houzong's hometown, Jiangtou Liu Ancestral Hall, for about a month of training, and then left for southern Anhui. Before leaving, Liu Hou secretly hid some of his guns in his hometown.
At this time, Liu Hou was at a loss for the new situation of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperating to resist Japan. According to Xie Zhufeng's recollection: "The troops drove to Leiyang Railway Station...... Instead, take the off-town road to the train station. The crowd from dozens of miles away still rushed to bid farewell, and the scene was extremely warm and happy. Mr. Liu Hou asked me if I could shout a few slogans of Long Live Chairman Chiang, and I immediately said that I couldn't shout, so he stopped shouting. At that time, I felt in my heart that Mr. Liu Hou's mind was too simple. Xie Zhufeng also said in his reminiscences that in 1938, Liu Houzong's guerrilla unit went to southern Anhui and was reorganized into the New Fourth Army Special Service Battalion, and moved to Tutang with the military headquarters in late May. Liu Houzong's bad habits have not changed, and he is guilty of violating military discipline such as molesting women, infringing on the interests of the masses, and catching the common people's chickens and ducks to burn and eat. Around September, Liu Hou was sent to study at the Yan'an Central Party School. Liu Hou, who is very thoughtful about the "King of the Mountain", always does not want to go, the organization and discipline are extremely poor, and he wants to return to his hometown.
In the spring of 1939, Xie Zhufeng and Liu Houzong were approved by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee and returned to Hunan. After Liu Houzong returned to Leiyang, he found that the buried guns were still there, but it was no longer possible to pull up a team to fight guerrilla attacks on the spot, so he went to the military headquarters of the New Fourth Army in Yunling, southern Anhui, and asked for assignment of work. He first studied in the teaching corps for a short time, and then served as an adjutant in the adjutant office of the military department. Because he had no actual position, Mr. Liu Hou was even more dissatisfied with the party organization, and his work was unscrupulous. In 1940, the Kuomintang diehards engaged in friction, he was afraid of death and wavering, dissatisfied with the organization and comrades, and became angry at every turn.
The situation was critical, and finally Xiang Ying adopted Liu Houzong's opinion, took Zhou Zikun, Yuan Guoping and more than a dozen guards to break away from the troops, interspersed with breakthroughs, took advantage of the night to highlight Dongliu Mountain, and turned around in the dense jungle, only to find out that he was lost in the early morning of the next day.
The situation continues to deteriorate. On the afternoon of the third day, the forces of the enemy's five divisions suddenly launched a fierce attack, and the special task force's Maolin hill position was lost, and all the defense lines of Shijingkeng were torn apart. Ye Ting had no choice but to order the troops to fight separately and choose their own direction to break through. The soldiers of the New Fourth Army, which had lost its formation, were surrounded by the recalcitrant Kuomintang troops. Xiang Ying, Yuan Guoping, Zhou Zikun and others broke through the defense line of the enemy's 144th Division, and scattered across Hebei from Zhangjia in disguise. Army commander Ye Ting went down the mountain to negotiate with the Kuomintang and was detained.
Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were killed in the bee cave
The money-greedy lieutenant had evil thoughts
On the evening of January 16, 1941, on the way to break through the siege, Xiang Ying and several people met Liu Houzong and others again near Dakangwang Village in Jing County. At this time, Yuan Guoping, director of the Political Department, had already died in the breakout, and the troops were almost completely lost. Xiang Ying learned from the pain and repeatedly said that he would review it to the central government after breaking out. At the end of February, with the help of the local party, Xiang Ying, Zhou Zikun and others temporarily hid in Chikeng Mountain and planned to break through to Jiangbei. The route for the breakthrough has been preliminarily determined through reconnaissance, and all preparations have been largely prepared. Xiang Ying hid in a small hole in the mountain, the bee cave. Xiang Ying, Zhou Zikun, Huang Cheng (Zhou Zikun's guards), and Liu Hou lived in the cave, while Li Zhigao, Xie Zhongliang, Xiang Ying's guards and other personnel were scattered and hidden under the bee cave.
At the beginning of the three-year guerrilla war, Xiang Ying and Chen Yi personally brought the activity funds and silver taels. Later, for insurance, it was handed over to the comrades around him for safekeeping. These silver taels attracted the attention of Liu Houzong, and this "mountain king" who had lost confidence in the revolution had evil thoughts. In the middle of the night on March 13, Mr. Liu Hou quietly got up and shot Xiang Ying, Zhou Zikun, and Huang Cheng in the dark. Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were killed, and Huang Cheng was seriously injured. Liu Hou hurriedly put the pistol into his waist, collected the valuable things around them, and ran down the mountain in a panic. The nearby guards rushed to check after hearing the gunshots and found the two chiefs and the guards lying in a pool of blood, judging that Liu Hou had done it, and immediately pursued, but did not catch up. When he returned to the cave, the nearby comrades had already arrived, and everyone analyzed that Liu Hou had surrendered to the enemy, and they were afraid that he would bring the enemy to arrest people, so they quickly cleaned up the scene, buried the bodies of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun nearby, and carried the wounded to transfer.
Shameless defection to the enemy will be rewarded with evil
After Liu Houzong went down the mountain, he first went to the security chief across the river in Taiping County and reported the situation to him, and the security chief searched the weapons and property that Liu Hou brought with him, but he did not believe that he killed Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun. Liu Houzong went to Yuping Township in Jingde County to change his name to Li Zhenghua, pretending to be a secret agent of the Third War Zone, and asked the township office to send him to the Kuomintang Third War Zone Headquarters. The Yuxiang Office escorted him to the Jingde County Government. After the interrogation of the county magistrate Li Xiekun, on April 28, he sent someone to the bee cave with Liu Houzong to check on the bee hole, but the bodies of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun and the injured Huang Cheng had already been transferred. At this time, Hong Lin, secretary of the Jingjing Taicentral County Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, heard from the villagers that President Liu Hou was coming and wanted to kill the traitor near the bee hole. Liu Hou found that someone was ambushing, fled in a hurry, and went to Taiping County to defect to the Kuomintang county party headquarters. The Taiping County Party Department escorted him to the Anhui Provincial Party Office of the Kuomintang in Tunxi Town, Xiuning County, and then transferred him to the Anhui Administrative Office for further interrogation.
On July 10, 1942, the supplement of "Xuanbao" "Suisheng in Southern Anhui" published a reactionary article signed by General Liu Hou, "Why I Killed Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun", spreading rumors and insulting the Communist Party of China, the Red Army, and the New Fourth Army, and shamelessly said, "I have been living in various counties in southern Anhui for nearly a year, and the facts tell me that the leniency and preferential □treatment of the □ (officials) of the captured army (officials) really make me grateful," "Now I am completely conscious," In the future, I am willing to do my best to serve the country and the nation to the end, so as to atone for my past sins in case of emergency", a slave who wagged his tail and begged for mercy. However, the matter of his killing of a senior Communist Party member has never been verified, and the relevant Kuomintang personnel are suspicious of him. Soon after, the Anhui Provincial Government of the Kuomintang deported Liu Houzong to Chongqing and imprisoned him in the Dregs Cave Detention Center. In the spring of 1948, the Kuomintang Military Command Bureau decided to "release" Liu Houzong and issued 25 million yuan (old currency) to return to his hometown. On the one hand, Liu "felt deeply virtuous", and on the other hand, he reached out and asked for money. He presented a report to Chiang Kai-shek, brazenly claiming credit for the crime of shooting Xiang Ying. Chiang Kai-shek did not reply, but the Kuomintang prison gave him an extra sum of money and sent him back to his hometown.
Liu Hou took the money, how dare he go back to Hunan, after eating, drinking and having fun for a while, there is little money left, so he took a boat to prepare to go to Shanghai to work. The boat traveled to Jiujiang, but he was driven off the boat because he had no money to buy a ticket, and he had no choice but to live a life of begging. One day, Liu Hou was hungry at the door of the Wuji salt shop, the shopkeeper Chen Cixing was a native of Hunan, he helped Liu Hou to the shop, and heard that Liu Hou was a fellow countryman, so he left him to work in the salt shop. Mr. Liu Hou stayed there for a while.
In 1949, the People's Liberation Army marched to the south of the Yangtze River, and Jiujiang was on the front line. Chen Cixing opened a Xingji salt shop: when he saw Liu Hou coming, he took him in to help manage the accounts. A few days later, Xinyu was liberated, and Chen Cixing filled in the household registration book with Liu Houzong as his cousin.
In the early morning of July 28, 1952, Huang Yifan, deputy director of the Public Security Bureau of Xinyu County, who had just come down from the army, urgently summoned personnel to a meeting and announced the immediate arrest of Mr. Ledger of Xingji Salt Shop. It turned out that when the Xinyu County Public Security Bureau carried out the city's household registration verification work, Huang Yifan went to Xingji Salt Shop in the west of the city to check, and found that Mr. Accounts Manager was very familiar, and repeatedly interrogated, and found that Mr. Accounts was not a local, and his answers were inconsistent, which caused Huang Yifan to be highly vigilant. Huang Yifan remembered that when he was a police officer of Zhou Zikun's deputy chief of staff in the New Fourth Army, Liu Houzong, the adjutant of the deputy army commander Xiang Ying, whom he often met, concluded that Mr. Ledger was the traitor Liu Houzong.
Huang Yifan quickly led people to surround Xingji Salt Shop and arrested President Liu Hou. On the same day, after Chen Yi learned that the murderers of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun had been arrested, he called Chen Zhengren, secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial CPC Committee, and instructed the public security and political and legal departments to close the case as soon as possible and execute the traitors. In early August 1952, President Liu Hou was executed in Nanchang, Jiangxi.
(Author's Affiliation: Beijing Shijingshan District Writers Association, this article was originally published in "Yanhuang Chunqiu" Issue 4, 2024)