Su Yu was the founding general of New China, who was good at fighting the "battle of the gods", commanding the troops to win victories in the battles of Central Jiangsu, Subei, Lunan, Laiwu, Menglianggu, Eastern Henan, and Huaihai, and annihilating many elite Kuomintang elites.
But objectively speaking, he was not a hundred victories, and in 1947, Nanma and Linqu lost two times in a row, which put him under a lot of pressure.
This pressure was not only on the battlefield against the enemy, but also after the war was criticized by comrades, and his former partner Tan Zhenlin even wrote a letter accusing him of "often being careless and lacking in strategic foresight".
When Su Yu was in a hurry, a young cadre in Huaye bravely stood up and wrote an article to defend Su Yu, reasonably analyzing it from all angles, so that others could look at the defeat from multiple angles, and alleviated Su Yu's embarrassing situation.
After that, the young cadre developed rapidly, and his achievements in his later years even surpassed Su Yu.
1. Why was Nanlin defeated?
1947 was an extremely critical year for Huaye, at the beginning of the year two major victories in Laiwu and Menglianggu, and the integrated 74th Division, one of the five main forces of the Nationalist Army, was annihilated.
However, due to the continuous civil war, the situation in the base area was very difficult, and Huaye had no choice but to divide the troops in July, Chen Shiyu and Tang Liang led the 3rd, 8th, and 10th columns to attack southwest Lunan; Ye Fei 1st Column and Tao Yong 4th Column pulled the battle line to Lunan;
Chen Yi and Su Yu led the Huaye headquarters and the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 9th and special columns to stay in Luzhong. In this way, Huaye has formed a relatively embarrassing situation, most of the commanders and fighters are still proud, but their own strength has been dispersed.
At this time, Chiang Kai-shek concentrated 11 integrated divisions with a total of more than 240,000 people to invade the Yimeng Mountains, but Huaye still had the upper hand in pride and decided to annihilate Hu Lian's integrated 11th division.
In accordance with this goal, Huaye made deployments, allowing all the way to attack Tai'an and Qufu, and all the way south to support Liu Deng's army, so that Chiang Kai-shek also quickly transferred troops back to help.
In the end, only Wang Lingyun's 9th Division, Hu Lian's 11th Division, Huang Baitao's 25th Division, and Huang Guoliang's 64th Division remained in Luzhong. There was still a certain distance between these divisions, so Su Yu decided to seize the gap and annihilate the entire 11th Division with all his might.
But Hu Lian is also a smart man, and after finding that he was gradually becoming a lonely, he immediately built fortifications in Nanma, with pillboxes and sub-mother forts on the ground, pulled up barbed wire, and the ground was also covered with mines, and actively did a good job of defense.
On the evening of 17 July, Huaye's four columns attacked the entire 11th Division, but the battle did not go smoothly because of the mood of underestimating the enemy and the enemy's early preparations.
What is even worse is that heavy rain has fallen in the Nanma area, and many of our army's ammunition have lost their lethality due to dampness, and the forward movement and deployment of the special heavy artillery have encountered great difficulties, and they cannot provide effective cover for the attacking troops.
It is recorded in the "History of the Field War" that due to the continuous rain, the ammunition was damp and invalidated, and there was no effective way to take an effective way to the Zimu Fort for a while, and the artillery could not keep up, and he also injured his own people by mistake.
Such a difficult situation caused Nanma to be unable to overcome it for a long time. On the other side, Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Cheng strictly ordered the surrounding national troops to come to the rescue, and the entire 9th and 25th divisions quickly approached Nanma.
Seeing that he couldn't do anything, Su Yu had no choice but to order a retreat on the evening of July 21.
On July 22, Huaye heard that Li Mi's Eighth Army was seizing Linqu, which was Huaye's rear, so Chen Yi and Su Yu prepared to launch a surprise attack while the enemy's foothold was not stable. Unexpectedly, after Li Mi entered the city, he quickly occupied the commanding heights and key points.
With the same torrential rain and the same fortifications, the enemy's entire 9th and 25th divisions also rushed to support, and the tragedy of Nanma was staged again.
In these two battles, our army destroyed 14,514 enemies, but lost 21,586 of its own troops, and the casualties were greater than the enemy's, which is very rare. The four columns could not gnaw at the enemy's army/integrated division, which was even more terrifying, so after the war, the Huaye leadership conducted a self-examination.
However, the development of events was beyond most people's expectations, and various rumors appeared in the army, the source of which was a review letter from Su Yu.
Second, Su Yu was criticized
At that time, Chen Yi and Tan Zhenlin both hoped that Su Yu would draft a review on their behalf, and then jointly call the central government. Su Yu wrote that he believed that victory and defeat were a common thing in soldiers, so the perspective of the review was the problems that arose in Nanma and Linqu and how to avoid them in the future.
But after this review was completed, Chen Yi and Tan Zhenlin both thought that the writing was not profound, especially Tan Zhenlin, before leading the troops to Jiaodong, he specially wrote a letter to criticize Su Yu, and the main points were four:
1. Su Yu often made mistakes militarily; 2. Su Yu lacked foresight in warfare; 3. The defeat in the south was due to being too optimistic and being proud of the enemy; 4. Su Yu was not humble enough, and he let the people below him fight, and he did not realize his mistakes.
There is a sentence in the original text, "often rough branches, and the strategy lacks foresight" is very explicit. In order to confirm these views, Tan Zhenlin, the former political commissar of the Central China Field Army, also wrote about the shortcomings of his old partner Su Yu in every command since the Soviet-Chinese campaign.
After writing the letter, Tan Zhenlin asked Mr. Chen to help transfer it, and he led his troops to Jiaodong without even seeing him. Mr. Chen recognized the content of the letter and deliberately went to Su Yu for a long talk.
And Su Yu was a little angry when he saw the letter, saying that you think I am too optimistic, and I think your optimism is far worse than mine. Then he took back the original review and wrote another one, bluntly saying that he bore all the responsibility for the defeat and did not need Chen and Tan to jointly sign it.
After Chairman Mao saw the review telegram, he noticed that Su Yu's mood was wrong, and immediately called back to appease him, telling him not to blame himself too much.
It's just that there were five people in Huaye at that time, Chen Yi and Tan Zhenlin held the same opinion, and Chen Shiyu and Tang Liang, who were far away in Luxi, were more arrogant, and there was a high probability that they would also support Chen and Tan, so the doubts about Su Yu in the army increased a lot.
At the critical moment, Zhang Zhen, then the deputy commander of the Huaye Second Column, wrote an article to analyze it from the overall level, so that Su Yu's situation improved.
3. Zhang Zhen wrote an article to help
Zhang Zhen admired Su Yu very much, and he had a different understanding of the war situation, so on August 29, 1947, he published a review article entitled "Improving Our Tactics and Command Discussion".
The main central point of the content is that Nanma and Linqu have not been fought well, and there are reasons for both sides of the enemy, and the enemy's large-scale use of new defensive tactics has increased the difficulty of attacking forts by more than one level, and our army's tactics are rough and cannot be effectively dealt with in a short period of time.
He started from the history of Zimu Fort, saying that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the US military summed up it according to the operational characteristics of the national army, which could be built in a short period of time and had strong lethality.
The number of troops deployed in the first line in each bunker is small, but the number of reserve personnel in the second line is large, which can ensure the effective coverage of the firepower network.
In the Battle of Nanma, Huaye's artillery fire was too affected by the weather and did not play a role. The effect of the warriors in blasting the fort at close range was not good, so it was delayed in opening the situation.
In the article, Zhang Zhen also comprehensively analyzed our army's communications, logistical support, soldiers' tactics, and ammunition consumption, and bluntly said that the defeat in the war was caused by comprehensive factors, and was by no means a single issue of command.
After his article was issued, he won the recognition of many people, and when everyone thought about it carefully, it was really a matter at all levels, and there was no longer so much resentment towards Su Yu.
Su Yu keenly felt from the article that Zhang Zhen's excellent tactical analysis ability and insight were very suitable for staff work. There is also the noble quality of this stone, which is also worthy of trust.
Therefore, after the defense of Jiaodong, Su Yu quickly promoted Zhang Zhen to Huaye's deputy chief of staff. At that time, the chief of staff was Chen Shiyu, but Chen Shenzuo had been leading troops on the front line for a long time, and was basically not at the field army headquarters, so Zhang Zhen basically assisted Su Yu in fighting in the future.
Zhang Zhen also lived up to expectations, and the Eastern Henan Campaign, the Jinan Campaign, the Huaihai Campaign, etc., all provided a lot of useful suggestions and made great contributions to the victory. After Huaye was changed to Sanye, Zhang Zhenming and Shi both became chiefs of staff and stood out among young cadres.
He has a lot of feelings for Su Yu, Su Yu was homesick in his later years, but his body was no longer able to travel, Zhang Zhen went to take a lot of photos at the meeting after the end of official business, and also brought Su Yu hometown specialties, which made Su Yu feel very warm.
The most important thing is that in 1994, Zhang Zhen and Liu Huaqing, who were already vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, jointly published "Remembering Comrade Su Yu" to restore Su Yu's reputation.
Since 1958, Su Yu has been detained for 36 years as a "hat", and finally took it off with the efforts of Zhang Zhen and others, which is not easy.