Among the many founding generals, Major General Wang Yaonan is impressive. At a very young age, he followed his father to work as a child laborer in the Anyuan Coal Mine. But he dared to fight against the reactionary government, and at a young age he took the children's group to participate in the Anyuan strike.
Wang Yaonan
In 1927, Mao Zedong led the Autumn Harvest Uprising, and Wang Yaonan and many Anyuan miners joined this revolutionary force. His life changed.
In the ranks, compared with other components such as the peasant army and the guard regiment, he and the miners' comrades were "different.".
We know that the Autumn Harvest Rebel Army includes:
Su Xianjun, a volunteer army of the Liuyang peasants, about 700 or 800 people;
The Pingjiang Peasant Volunteer Army,000 men, about 500 or 600 people;
Lu Deming, former Guard Regiment of the Second Front of the National Revolutionary Army (i.e., the Guard Regiment of the National Government in Wuhan), with more than 1,000 people;
There were other small peasant rebels, such as the Hundred and Ten Tongcheng Peasant Self-Defense Army brought by Luo Ronghuan.
In addition, there are an Anyuan Road miners picket and a mine police team, about 1,400 people.
It can be seen from this that the miners' brigade is obviously the main force of the autumn harvest rebel army, whether it is from the number of people or equipment (compared to the good equipment, about half of the personnel are equipped with firearms), although it is not as good as the regular army of the guard regiment, but the workers are strongly disciplined, have the habit of being able to bear hardships and stand hard work, and the stance is also firm, so the comprehensive combat effectiveness is the strongest.
In addition, the miners had "unique skills", were ready-made "sappers" in the rebel army, and were technical troops, especially in the field of blasting. Because when fighting a war, it is too important to attack the city and destroy the city!
And Wang Yaonan is a master of blasting, of course, the main reason why he can stand out among so many miners, the main reason is that he comes from the "firecracker family", he is a native of Pingxiang, Jiangxi, when he was a child, he would make firecrackers, and often studied gunpowder.
In the autumn harvest uprising team, Wang Yaonan was equivalent to a treasure, and having more than a thousand miners was equivalent to having a sharp spearhead.
When you read the history of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, you may feel that the rebels who are not firm in their positions, such as division commander Yu Shandu and regimental commander Su Xianjun, are more popular than them, but as long as you read the history carefully, you will find that the people will always remember them.
Wang Yaonan has the titles of "Sapper King", "Mine King", "Demolition King" and other titles in our army, and has also become one of the founders of the engineering corps of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
During the war years, most of Wang Yaonan's achievements were "exploded", and his "explosive life" was indeed full of gunpowder. For example, around October 1943, in order to attack the Japanese army, "five consecutive bombs" were launched:
On October 1, Wang Yaonan led his troops to attack the Wangdu County Railway Station, blowing up two Japanese trains and destroying the railway station;
On October 7, with the cooperation of Huang Yongsheng's troops, Wang Yaonan led his troops to attack the Xingtang Railway Station, blowing up two Japanese trains and destroying the railway station;
On October 14, with the cooperation of Huang Yongsheng's troops, Wang Yaonan led his troops to attack the Dingxian Railway Station with an offensive battle, blowing up 5 military trains, destroying the railway station, and capturing hundreds of thousands of catties of corn and a large number of livestock looted by the Japanese army;
On October 31, with the cooperation of Huang Yongsheng, Wang Yaonan led his troops to attack Baoding, attacked the railway station, blew up 3 tanks, blew up 9 military trains, and destroyed the railway station.
On November 9, with the cooperation of Huang Yongsheng's troops, Wang Yaonan led his troops to attack the county railway station and blew up a Japanese train.
Yiwu miners in the movie "The Storm of the Tang Dynasty"
Speaking of miners, history goes back in time, and we can still find them in some armies.
Known as the "strongest army in East Asia in the 16th century", the Qi family army also has a deep relationship with the miners.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the southeast coast of the Wokou ran rampant, and Qi Jiguang trained his army to resist the Wu. In the selection of soldiers, Qi Jiguang had a unique insight and selected miners in the Yiwu area of Zhejiang Province.
At that time, Yiwu miners and Dongyang miners often fought, they had a sense of teamwork, and they could bear hardships and stand hard work, and they were all engaged in soil work and demolition, and Qi Jiajun's sharp weapon "wolf milling" was also invented and brought by these miners.
Since ancient Times, Suzhou and Zhejiang are the hometown of splendid articles, and also the land of commerce and prosperity in agriculture, the soldiers of Su and Zhejiang are not strong, but the Qi family army (Yiwu soldiers) is undoubtedly a special case. Speaking of the reason, of course, it is inseparable from the factor of miners.
TV series "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom"
Then to the modern Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. During the Jintian Uprising, Qin Rigang joined in with more than a thousand silver miners from Guixian County, who also acted as "sappers", engaged in soil work and demolition. The first city that the Taiping Army could lay down, Yong'an City, thanks to the explosion of the miners, the city was extremely critical.
Next hit the Guangxi provincial capital of Guilin, the miners once again came up with a "unique job", but unfortunately Guilin was too strong and did not succeed.
Xiang Rong, the minister of the Qing dynasty, said in the recital: "Those who dig coal are good at piercing holes, so they secretly use mines without being aware."
On June 3, 1852, miners blew up the whole state, and the Taiping Army rushed in.
After the Taiping Army advanced into Hunan, it absorbed more than 5,000 miners in Places such as Leiyang in Shonan Province, mostly coal miners, and then organized them into "earth camps" in a normal way, calling that set of blasting methods "cave siege methods."
When attacking Changsha Province in the north, the city wall collapsed during the blasting process, but the enemy army in the city was too fierce, trying to plug the gap, and finally the Taiping Army had to give up and continue north, to Hubei, Wuchang City was not so lucky, the miners successfully blasted, and the Taiping Army captured the city.
Since then, the Taiping Army has occupied Nanjing, the Northern Expedition to the West, and so on, and the earthen camp led by the miners is undoubtedly a sharp knife and a sharp weapon.
Of course, in the late Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the elite of the early period was destroyed, and the same was true of the tuying, and many surrendered to the Qing army. So the combat effectiveness plummeted. Li Xiucheng and Li Shixian ran the Suzhou and Zhejiang provinces, and most of them were recruits from Suzhou and Zhejiang.
At this time, after opening up the commercial port to the outside world, the economic and cultural prosperity of Jiangsu and Zhejiang had already surpassed the Ming Dynasty where the Qi family army was located, and Li Xiucheng could not find a group of Yiwu miners like Qi Jiguang and train them into elite soldiers. There was only a hasty collection of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, who had not been reformed, were unorganized, undisciplined, scattered and had poor combat effectiveness.
In 1862, Li Xiucheng led 300,000 Taiping troops to spend 44 days in Yuhuatai, and there were foreign guns and cannons, and he did not win against Zeng Guoquan's 20,000 Xiang army, which was an important reason.
In the early stage, whether it was the Eight Banners or the Green Battalion, or the Xiang Army and other regimental trainings, they were all hanged by the Taiping Army. Only later, when the Xiang Army engaged the Taiping Army, it was good at summing up the advantages and disadvantages of the enemy and ourselves.
The Taiping Army's "Cave Siege Method" was too powerful, and the Xiang Army had also learned it! Later, when the Xiang Army attacked the cities of Jiujiang, Anqing, and Nanjing, where the Taiping Army was stationed, it used "the way of its people to rule its body".
Bronze statue of Li Xiucheng, King of Zhong
Moreover, the demolitionists of the Xiang Army were still the miners. The Xiang army commanded by the Zeng Guofan brothers was mainly from Xiangxiang and was not from a miner's background, so Zeng Guoquan also used Shonan miners to be responsible for blasting.
Most of these miners' elites surrendered from the Taiping Army.
After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the capital of Tianjing, in order to commend the soldiers of the tuying, more than 700 of them were rewarded as "division commanders", and these people were the elites in the tuying.
At the beginning, there was only one commander in the tuying camp, and the generals were divided into one, two, and four people, and then they were given command to more than thirty people, more than 600 generals, and their chief producers, supervisors, and military commanders were all equipped. To the capital of Tianjing, the Fengtu battalion commander 762 people. Subsequently, the army was divided into four armies, and there were also earthen camps in various armies.
In the early morning of March 19, 1853, under the explosion of these elites in the tuying camp, "the tunnels and cannons were fired in unison, up and down, the front wall of Lion Rock, and several layers of bricks and stones were unloaded", and the city wall was instantly blasted out of a gap of about two inches wide.
The Taiping Army outside yifengmen seized the opportunity to launch a general offensive and took Nanjing in one fell swoop.
Eleven years later, on July 19, 1864, they were still the miners' demolitionists, but their identities had become the Xiang Army, and they blew up the city wall of the Taiping Gate section of Nanjing, and the Xiang Army took the opportunity to launch a general attack and take the city of Nanjing.