Don't run with the Kuomintang and stay to save the Northeast
Since he was a child, Lu Zhengcao aspired to be a soldier when he grew up to fight against the Japanese invaders, and the Japanese army's burning, killing and looting of his hometown filled his heart with hatred for the invaders. He was born a poor peasant, but it did not affect him to change his name to "Zheng Cao", practice his skills, fight Japan, and complete the first major event in his life.
When he was 17 years old, he entered the Northeast Lecture Hall for further study, and after graduation, he followed Zhang Xueliang to Beiping and became the commander of the 691st Regiment of the 53rd Army of the Northeast Army of the Kuomintang. In 1937, during the anti-Japanese period, Pingjin was lost, and the Japanese army braved the wind and waves to attack, and the Kuomintang originally stationed in Hebei Province, together with the county party headquarters, county magistrates and other local officials, swept away.
Determined to fight the invaders since he was a child, he refused the order of the Kuomintang 53rd Army to retreat south, led the troops to stay, and insisted on fighting Japan to the end. He led the 691 Regiment to study how to contend with the enemy, "grasp the vanguard of the Northeast Armed Resistance against Japan and Save the Dead, unite the officers and men, and make preparations for ideological mobilization and the guerrilla attack after staying." ”
He judged the situation, secretly joined the underground Communist Party, and resolutely resisted Japan to save the country. On October 9, Lu Zhengcao led his troops to cover the withdrawal of the 53rd Army, and met the enemy when passing through Banbidian, the enemy cavalry was about fifty or sixty people, and he ordered to immediately start an attack on the enemy, killing more than 10 Japanese soldiers and more than 10 horses.
While he was fighting with the enemy, a battalion of the 691st Regiment was also engaged in a fierce battle with the enemy in a town called Meihua Town, and the troops arrived one after another, taking advantage of the terrain of Meihua Town to eliminate more than 300 enemy troops. The next day, the enemy reinforced and surrounded the first battalion, but still failed to break through the position of the first battalion. The local people are also enthusiastic about supporting Japan.
At this time, the front troops of the 53rd Army had run across the Yellow River, the division commander and brigade commander called Lu Zhengcao, asking him to give up the first battalion and lead the third battalion to retreat south, he firmly refused the order, and took the three battalions to support the besieged battalion, and fought a desperate fierce battle with the Japanese army, the Japanese suffered more than 800 casualties, and the 619th regiment killed more than 20 soldiers and a company commander.
This victory improved the combat confidence of the soldiers of the whole regiment, but after the siege of the first battalion was lifted this time, the commander of the 53rd Army also quietly ran away, ignoring Lu Zhengcao and them. The fighters knew the ruthlessness and fear of death of the Kuomintang, and followed Lu Zhengcao to plan to go north together to find the Communists, fight guerrilla warfare, and fight Japan.
In order to let everyone really know what the Kuomintang did, Lu Zhengcao showed the contents of the telegram to the officers, and everyone was even more convinced that running away with the Kuomintang was a dead end, and the correct choice was to go north to resist Japan. Seeing that everyone's anti-Japanese sentiment was high, Lu Zhengcao explained to everyone that he could no longer go to the main force of the Kuomintang, but immediately returned to the division and went north.
When Lü Zhengcao led the officers and men of the regiment to cross the Japanese-controlled territory and arrive in the northeast of Jin County, Lü Zhengcao held a meeting overnight, and he said to the soldiers: "Brothers, the situation has changed, and in less than half a month, a large area of North China has been occupied by the Japanese army, and the Kuomintang has blindly withdrawn southward, unable to defeat Japan, and may even lose its troops. ”
He continued: "Since the 53rd Army has abandoned us and does not want us, then we have only one way to go, go back to the division to the north, and fight guerrillas behind enemy lines, what do you think? After he finished speaking, everyone was passionate, "Yes, escaping is a dead end, insist on the War of Resistance and go back to your hometown in the Northeast!" ”
On October 14, Lu Zhengcao convened the soldiers to hold an anti-Japanese oath meeting, severed the connection with the 53rd Army, stood on the Communist side with a clear banner, and changed the 619 Regiment to the "People's Anti-Japanese Self-Defense Army" Lu Zhengcao served as the commander.
The development and growth of the People's Self-Defense Forces posed a great threat to the Japanese army, and the Japanese army surrounded the Self-Defense Forces in Gaoyang, but our army's combat strategy was clever, and it attacked inside and outside, almost annihilating the entire squadron of the enemy, and then set up an ambush to annihilate more than 400 enemy troops.
In February and March 1938, the enemy fought many fierce battles with the "Eastern Resistance" forces, and the tremendous development and success of guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines caused the Japanese army to switch its spearhead to the Communists and slow down the Kuomintang. The Japanese army concentrated its forces and carried out many large-scale "sweeps" to destroy the main force of our army, but the plan fell through, and the main force of our army grew stronger and stronger.
Accomplish your wish to manage the railway
Lu Zhengcao's vegetable field was next to the South Manchurian Railway, he had a soft spot for railways, and wanted to be able to manage the railways when he grew up, and during the liberation period, when he appointed the deputy commander-in-chief of the Northeast Democratic Alliance Army, he just confirmed his wish to manage the railway, and he managed the maintenance and transportation of the railway.
Under his leadership, the railway mileage of the Northeast Liberated Area reached about 4,690 kilometers, and he became the director and political commissar of the Northeast Railway General Administration after the establishment of the General Administration of Northeast Railway in 1946. With the liberation of the whole country, his railway dream is slowly coming true.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the British wanted to build a railway from Shanghai to Myanmar via Chongqing and Yunnan, but after checking by experts, they thought that it could not be repaired at all, so they abandoned the plan. However, Lu Zhengcao, who firmly believed that he could build the railway to the whole of China, was not afraid of difficulties, even at that time, because of the Great Leap Forward three times on the horse and three times off, the repair and repair stopped, and finally the Chengdu-Kunming line was completed.
With his important influence and efforts, the Southwest Railway, the Guizhou-Kunming Railway, and the Chengdu-Kunming Railway were completed, which played a major role in promoting the economic development and national defense and transportation of the southwest region. He has been in an important railway position for 17 years, and has made great contributions to the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the railways in South China, Southwest China and Northwest China.
Ideological construction
General Xu Guangda's contribution direction was very different from that of General Lu Zhengcao, and when General Xu Guangda was enrolled in a normal school, he saw the Japanese army's murder of Chinese compatriots, which made him understand that revolution can save the country. Immediately after that, he was admitted to the Whampoa Military Academy and entered the military training class to study, laying a solid foundation for his subsequent participation in the war.
In 1932, he was seriously wounded in the battle of Hubei Mountain, and transferred to the Soviet Union to study wound treatment, during which he studied and read a lot of Marxist-Leninist classics, and in 1934, he studied the offensive and defensive tactics of the army at the Eastern University of the Soviet Union; The study of Mao Zedong's works in Yan'an, coupled with the military training of the Whampoa Military Academy and the military technology of the Shanghai Navy, allowed him to form his own unique military ideological system.
Xu Guangda's idea of army building was to regularize the guerrillas under the condition of persisting in resisting Japan, unify the national anti-Japanese front, and form an anti-Japanese army on this basis. He gave a lecture to the cadre class in Yan'an: regularize and organize a large guerrilla force, establish a number of modern corps, train and arm with new technologies, and improve mobility and flexibility.
Xu Guangda's construction ideas were built on the basis of the reality that the enemy was strong and we were weak at that time, and they had strong vitality. He held that the objective situation is already changing, and for the sake of war, military cadres must study military knowledge, arm their minds with advanced military thinking, and command the building of a powerful army, so as to achieve the final victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
During the Yan'an period, he mobilized the masses, developed military technology, carried out production campaigns, and at the same time demanded supplies from the Japanese army to feed the war. He said: Man and technology are the basic factors that determine tactics, and being able to fully use and play a role depends on our correct thinking, and man and technology are indispensable.
In the 1942 Jinsui War, the plan he gave was to first encircle and isolate the enemy, create difficulties, and force him to retreat, and then he was optimistic about the opportunity to attack. In the end, under his leadership, the Jinsui Military Region successfully completed the task of "squeezing the enemy army" and broke the "sweeping and encroachment" of the puppet army.
When Xu Guangxu was the commander of Jinsui, in order to consolidate and develop the base areas under very limited conditions, he put forward the military idea of establishing a united front, but at the same time treated the Kuomintang and the puppet army differently, and planned to jointly resist the Japanese army's sweep and encroachment through unity, and finally made progress.
At that time, the Kuomintang army headed by Gao Zhiguo was stationed in the west of the Yellow River, and the enemy army was luring them to surrender, Xu Guangda analyzed the objective tense at that time, and talked with Gao Zhiguo with the idea of a united front, and gave help, and Gao Zhiguo, who had contradictions with the Kuomintang, finally agreed to unite in the war of resistance, and finally achieved success.
Xu Guangda believes that judging the forces of our army and the enemy army can be compared in several aspects: in terms of situation, whether they are scattered or concentrated; Whether there is experience in battle, how is the morale, the situation of the commander, etc. It is necessary to compare the two armies, and there is also the favorable time and place, external conditions, and so on. Therefore, we were able to reach an anti-Japanese consensus in the Jinsui united front work.
Educational thoughts
Xu Guangda was a military strategist and an outstanding military educator, and his thinking on military education was based on the establishment of an education system and collective exchange and study. He was the principal of the three branch schools composed of people left behind in Yan'an at that time, and in addition to leading the construction of the school, he also participated in teaching work, teaching military theory and military technology.
First of all, he worked out a united front of the whole nation regardless of party affiliation or social strata, and second, he implemented new educational methods, attaching importance to the integration of theory and practice, and achieving the goal of training high-quality military and political cadres in a short period of time. Finally, the division of labor is carried out to cultivate talents, military and political.
It is precisely because of his correct leadership that the Third Branch has trained and sent a large number of military and political personnel to the anti-Japanese front in a short period of time
Ability.
After liberation, General Xu Guangda also served as the commander and political commissar of the armored corps, established the Chinese exhibition PLA motorized armored corps, and finally overcame various difficulties under his leadership, step by step towards success, and he also became the father of the Chinese armored corps.
Before the military rank conferment ceremony in 1955, General Xu Guangda was uneasy when he heard that he would be awarded the rank of general. He was a true military strategist, a revolutionary, and the father of armor, and a well-deserved general.
Bibliography:
"Three Major Events in Lu Zhengcao's Life" - Century Style
"On Xu Guangda's Contribution to the War of Resistance in Northwest Shanxi" - Party History