From the hereditary first-class Yiyong Marquis Zeng Guofan, the commander of the Xiang Army, the recent history of China was basically written by Hunan people. Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Hu Yaobang, Peng Dehuai, Chen Geng, Huang Kecheng, Tan Zheng, and other CPC celebrities are well known to the world for their great deeds, but one person, although he was from Henan, was also a graduate of the 11th infantry class of the Central Army Academy, who had participated in the encirclement and suppression of the Red Army, and had also participated in the Songhu Campaign and the Nanjing Defense War. This person was General Li Yuan, who was in charge of Hunan Province as the commander of the Forty-seventh Army and the director of the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee during the special period of the Cultural Revolution. In that era, General Li Yuan's prestige far exceeded that of Major General Long Shujin, commander of the Hunan Provincial Military Region in 1955, Yang Dayi, political commissar, and Chairman Hua Guofeng, who later led the smashing of the "Gang of Four." It should be known that General Li Yuan was only the commander of the 359th Brigade during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and during the War of Liberation, he was the commander of the Tenth Column of Higashino, and it was not until the period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea that he was promoted to the commander of the 140th Division of the Forty-seventh Army. Le Yuan was awarded the rank of colonel in 1955 and promoted to the rank of major general in 1964.
General Li Yuan, whose original name was Guan Junyan, was a native of Guandian, Xi County, Henan Province, and was born in 1917. At the age of 8, he entered a private school, and then studied at the county's no. 1 high school and the no. 7 middle school in Henan Province. After the Japanese devils occupied northeast China during the "918" incident, Li Yuan, who had patriotic feelings, was admitted to the Nanjing Central Military Academy (Whampoa Military Academy) in 1934 in order to serve the motherland. After graduation, he served in the 87th Division of the Nationalist Army, and participated with the division in the Battle of Songhu in August 1937. In the battle, because Li Yuan had gone to the 260th Brigade where the battle was most fierce to convey combat orders, the first close contact with the Japanese army, with national hatred, Li Yuan asked for a rifle from the brigade commander's guard, and then shot the Japanese troops who rushed forward one by one.
When the "Nanjing Defense War" was lost, General Li Yuan, who had long been in contact with progressive books, joined our party's camp in Wuhan through the introduction of Dong Biwu because of his extreme disappointment in the corruption of the Kuomintang after thinking about it.
During the Yan'an period, he first became a cadet at Kang Da, and then the leaders of Kang Da made him an instructor of Kang Da according to his level, and then Li Yuan gloriously joined the Communist Party of China.
When Li Yuan was serving in the 359th Brigade, it was coincidental that his brigade commander was General Wang Zhen, and other superiors and comrades-in-arms such as Liu Zhuanlian, Yan Fusheng, He Qingji, and others were all Hunan people. It was this relationship that laid a solid foundation for him to govern Hunan with ease in the future.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Li Yuan followed Liu Zhuanlian, Yan Fusheng, and He Qingji into the northeast. As the commander of the regiment at the time, he made many meritorious contributions in both the Mudanjiang bandit suppression and the "Black Mountain Blockade Battle" that was related to the victory or defeat of the "Liaoshen Campaign", and his regiment became the main force of the division.
After the founding of New China, Li Yuan, then commander of the 417th Regiment of the 14th O Division of the Forty-seventh Army, was ordered to go to Xiangxi to suppress bandits, annihilated 169 enemy soldiers and captured 325 enemy soldiers in the Battle of Mao Congzhai, and killed the giant bandit Zhang Biaozi, who had been a disaster for many years.
After the outbreak of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Li Yuan entered the Korean War with the Forty-seventh Army and successively served as regimental commander, deputy division commander, and commander of the 140th Division.
After all, Li Yuan came from a military academy, and after arriving on the Korean battlefield, he carefully observed and thought about it, and used tunnel tactics in a timely manner according to the advantages and disadvantages of the enemy's and his own weapons. The implementation of this tactic enabled the ground troops of our army to reduce the number of casualties of our army to the greatest extent possible under the attack of the enemy's air superiority and heavy artillery superiority. This tunnel tactic was quickly popularized by my troops fighting in Korea with the consent of Shiji.
It was precisely by using this tactic that General Li Yuan defeated the US Ace Cavalry Division on the Korean battlefield in June 1951, and after more than twenty days of fierce fighting, the US army had no ability to touch our army's positions except for the loss of troops.
After the end of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, General Li Yuan successively served as chief of staff and deputy commander of the Forty-seventh Army, and formally took over the post of commander of the Forty-seventh Army in 1965.
General LiMing had both the integrity of a soldier and the wisdom of a reader, and when Marshal Ye Jianying and General Wang Zhen were sent to Hunan during the "Cultural Revolution", General Li Yuan still did his best to take care of the two old chiefs.
During the "Cultural Revolution," so many people were killed for various so-called crimes, but Li Yuan, who was born in the former Kuomintang army, always won chairman Mao's trust, and even when someone defiled Li Yuan in front of Chairman Mao, our Chairman Mao only smiled indifferently, so General Li Yuan became one of the military figures who were not attacked during the "Cultural Revolution."