In the War of Liberation, the Huaihai Campaign was undoubtedly a key battle that determined the trend of the entire war, for which Chairman Mao made instructions to merge the Central China Field Army and the Shandong Field Army to form the East China Field Army, with Chen Yi as the commander and Su Yu as the deputy commander.
But then Chairman Mao sent another telegram, which said:
Under the leadership of Chen Yi, the major policies were jointly responsible, and the campaign commander Jiao Su Yu was responsible.
This kind of practice of having the deputy commander of the corps assume military command work has no precedent before, which also shows Chairman Mao's full trust in Su Yu.
After that, General Su Yu's outstanding performance in a series of battles did not live up to Chairman Mao's trust in him, and he also became a well-known "victorious general" among the commanders and fighters of the People's Liberation Army.
So why did Chairman Mao dare to hand over the heavy burden to General Su Yu in the first place? The author believes that this is related to General Su Yu's unique experience and the combat methods he has tempered as a result.
General Su Yu joined the Communist Party of China in 1926 and participated in the Nanchang Uprising the following year, and has been responsible for the military construction and command of the Red Army since then.
In the past few years, Su Yu has been by the side of Chairman Mao, Zhu De and others, and he has a very deep understanding of guerrilla warfare and other tactics, and has also accumulated valuable experience in the fields of army training and combat command.
At the end of 1934, with the failure of the fifth anti-encirclement battle, the main forces of the Red Army made the decision of the Long March.
In order to distract the Kuomintang reactionaries, in February 1935, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China organized an advance division to carry out guerrilla warfare in southern Zhejiang, with Su Yu as the division commander and Liu Ying as the political commissar.
Zhejiang, as Chiang Kai-shek's hometown, had always been the core base of the Kuomintang reactionaries, and at that time it was once regarded by the Red Army as a military "dead land", which posed a great test to Su Yu's military command ability.
When they moved to southern Zhejiang, the only radio station was damaged, which completely lost contact with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
However, this accident gave Su Yu a more free military command space, and after he entered southern Zhejiang, in order to facilitate his work, he and political commissar Liu Ying acted separately, which gave Su Yu a more independent command environment.
At that time, the Kuomintang reactionaries were quite jealous of the advance team led by Su Yu, and they successively invested dozens of times the Red Army's troops in southern Zhejiang to carry out encirclement and suppression work.
The lack of a mass base in southern Zhejiang made General Su Yu's situation even more difficult, and in the face of the enemy's daily harassment and pressing, his previous combat experience was not enough to help him get rid of and defeat the enemy.
As a result, General Su Yu gradually explored a new way of fighting, which was also the key to his future great might in the Central Plains.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Marshal Lin Biao once said that because he had been carrying out defense work around the Party Central Committee for a long time, he was very cautious in battle, and only dared to attack when he was sure, but General Su Yu, who fought independently in southern Zhejiang, did not have so many concerns, so he dared to attack bravely when his troops were at a disadvantage.
During the campaign in southern Zhejiang, General Su Yu's advance division numbered only more than 3,000 at its peak, while he faced tens of thousands of enemy troops.
Even if he was able to use tactics to divide large forces of the enemy into several small parts, the enemy tended to outnumber the Red Army fighters and was better armed.
However, if General Su Yu wanted to gain a foothold in southern Zhejiang, he had to seize the fleeting opportunity to make a decisive attack on the enemy, and although they suffered several painful defeats, General Su Yu never lost the courage to take the initiative to attack, and this adventurous spirit was rare for a military commander.
In the later Soviet-Chinese campaign, General Su Yu's defeat of Chiang Kai-shek's 120,000 U.S. weapons and equipment troops with 30,000 men may have been risky in the eyes of other commanders, but for General Su Yu, this was much richer than the battles in southern Zhejiang.
The reason why General Su Yu's adventurous spirit is so famous is that it is also supported by his meticulous pre-war analysis and preparation, as well as flexible combat thinking.
During the operation in southern Zhejiang, the advance division was at a disadvantage in strength for a long time, which required the commander to use strategy flexibly, hide his true intentions during guerrilla operations, and avoid engaging the enemy's main force head-on.
In order to achieve this goal, General Su Yu developed a series of combat methods, such as when marching, it was necessary to "be erratic, haunting and impermanent, going east to west, leaving early and returning late, and attacking the west with a voice."
In order to confuse the enemy, he invented many roundabout ways to march in a roundabout way, including large circles, small circles, S-shaped circles, figure-8 circles, etc., and when necessary, he would take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness to kill a horse gun.
Under this mode of operation, the enemy could not understand General Su Yu's combat intentions, and could only be led by the nose in his base camp, which was also the key to the advance division's ability to persist in fighting for two years.
In the Battle of Menglianggu, General Su Yu used two columns to cut off the connection between the 74th Division of the National Army and other troops, and then sent strange troops to outflank the battlements behind him, completely besieging Zhang Lingfu's troops in the Menglianggu area.
An important factor in the success of this strategic arrangement was that the Kuomintang miscalculated Su Yu's strategic objectives.
Because General Su Yu was good at using cunning in battle, he was very good at using his troops flexibly in battle, and he was not only very happy to divide the battlefield by means of large-scale maneuvering, but also used to flexibly adjust the division and integration of troops according to changes in the battlefield situation.
This makes the PLA soldiers on the Huaihai battlefield, although they are at a disadvantage in terms of total strength, they can always form a local advantage and effectively kill and injure the enemy.
The military literacy and combat style that General Su Yu cultivated in his early revolutionary career are very consistent with the situation in the Huaihai Battlefield, which is also an important reason why Chairman Mao handed over the front-line command task to General Su Yu.
Moreover, as an old revolutionary who came all the way from the Nanchang Uprising, General Su Yu also had a very close relationship with Chairman Mao and was a trustworthy commander.
In the subsequent war, General Su Yu led the officers and men of the East China Field Army to achieve a series of victories with his outstanding command ability, and then joined the Battle of Crossing the River, the Battle of Shanghai and other battlefields, and also achieved remarkable results, which can also see Chairman Mao's unique vision in employing people.
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