On September 8, 1931, a brutal and bloody battle unfolded in the Zhu Mountains northwest of Gaoxingwei in Xingguo County, Jiangxi.
The two sides were the 11th Division of our Red Fourth Army and the 60th Division of Cai Tingkai and the 61st Division of Dai Ji of the Kuomintang 19th Route Army.
This is a vicious battle that should not have happened.
Because, at this time, the third victory of our workers' and peasants' Red Army against "encirclement and suppression" is nearing its end.
In the first and second anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations, under the strategic command of Chairman Mao, our Workers' and Peasants' Red Army gave full play to the advantages of mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare, dragged down and collapsed the enemy, and finally won a complete victory.
This time is no exception.
The 23 divisions and 3 brigades mobilized by Chiang Kai-shek, with a total strength of 300,000 troops, went through nearly three months from June to September.
The veterans of the division were tired, had suffered a lot of losses, and were unable to fight again.
Then, a "encirclement and suppression" with a loud wind and a small rain will come to an hasty end.
However, at a time when the Kuomintang armies were retreating in ashes.
Lin Biao, commander of the Red Fourth Army, saw that the enemy's 60th Division and 61st Division were disorganized and demoralized at ZhuShan Mountain, northwest of Gaoxingwei, Xingguo County, Jiangxi, and thought that they could "cut his tail" and ordered the 11th Division to carry out interspersion and eliminate the regiments that were at the end of the line.
This is a big taboo for soldiers.
Sun Tzu's Art of War: The siege of the city must be queuing, and the poor Kou Mo chases.
Moreover, the enemy's strength is far superior to his own, and since he has already been defeated, there is really no need to make any more differences.
In addition, the Nineteenth Route Army was the unit of Jiang Guangnai and Cai Tingkai, mainly soldiers of two Cantonese nationalities.
Among these two Cantonese soldiers, the Guangxi soldiers, known as "wolf soldiers" in Chinese history, although they were short in stature, they were brave and fierce, killing Wokou in the Ming Dynasty, participating in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the Qing Dynasty, and killing all sides and moving the world.
The Kuomintang government has acted retrogradely and has not won the hearts and minds of the people.
The various warlords of the Kuomintang were also obsessed with the civil war and competed for territory.
The people who served as soldiers in the Kuomintang army did not know what they were fighting for, but only for the sake of the leader's salary and food, so the army was scattered and the soldiers had no fighting spirit.
However, their lives are threatened and they will certainly rise up to fight.
Therefore, once the battle began, it soon reached a white-hot state.
The enemy's large troops continued to return to meet them, showing a trend of more and more fighting.
Our army has limited troops, and its weapons are backward, and some people use shuttle markers and large knives, and most of the guns are old-fashioned "Hanyang-made" rifles, and some are equipped with bayonets.
The enemy had a large number of submachine guns, machine guns, and rifles equipped with bayonets.
Therefore, in the reception of troops, our army is at a clear disadvantage.
The fighting was fierce, with fierce fighting between the two sides from morning to dusk.
In the end, our army had to withdraw from the battle in order to preserve its strength.
After the war, the Red 11th Division had suffered more than 2,200 casualties, more than two-thirds of the casualties, and the formation had been crippled.
What shocked the three armies the most was that Zeng Shi'e, the commander of the 11th Division, who was only 27 years old, died heroically.
Chairman Mao received this war report, was filled with grief and indignation, and severely criticized Lin Biao, accusing him of improper use of troops, saying: "How did you fight the war?" Afraid of no battle? ”
At the Zhujie meeting to celebrate the victory of the third anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, Chairman Mao led all the participants to observe a moment of silence to pay tribute to the martyr Zeng Shi'e and instructed the General Political Department of the Red Army to issue a circular order calling on the commanders and fighters of the Red Army to learn from Zeng Shi'e.
The person responsible for issuing these circulars was Xiao Hua, then a youth member of the Military Commission of the Fourth Red Army and later a founding general.
Xiao Hua later said with emotion on many occasions: "The Headquarters of the Red Army issued a circular calling for learning from individuals, and Zeng Shi'e was the first person. ”
In 1955, after our army first assessed its ranks, Xiao Hua also said to Huang Yao, the chief writer of the "Biography of Marshal Luo Ronghuan": "If Zeng Shi'e is there, he should be a marshal. ”
He Changgong also said something similar.
In January 1983, when He Changgong saw Zeng Shi'e's stepson Zeng Tianyuan, he also said with some pain and sadness: "If Zeng Shi'e were there, he should be a marshal, at least a general." ”
Another founding general, Chen Shiyu, said: "Chairman Mao's evaluation of a person's death is more important than Taishan's statement, first applied to Zeng Shi'e, and later to Zhang Side. ”
Chen Shiyu was also Chairman Mao's confidant and beloved general, had deep feelings for Chairman Mao, and accompanied Chairman Mao for a long time during the Jinggangshan period.
A native of Yiyang, Hunan, Zeng Shi'e studied at the Shasan Branch, the principal of the Whampoa Army, and later accompanied Lu Deming in the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the Border of Xianggan and Gansu led by Chairman Mao.
Chairman Mao unified the insurrectionary forces into the 1st Division of the 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, with a total of more than 5,000 people and 3 regiments under its jurisdiction.
After Zeng Shi'e was transferred to the 1st Regiment and Wenjia City, he was reorganized into the Third Regiment as chief of staff of the Three Battalions; after the "Three Bay Reorganization" of Sanwan Village in Yongxin County, Jiangxi, the division was reduced to a regiment with jurisdiction over two battalions and seven companies, with Zeng Shi'e serving as the company commander of the special agent company (numbered four companies), the deputy company commander Zhang Zongxun, and the party representative Luo Ronghuan.
During this period of revolutionary journey, Lu Deming was killed in battle, the division commander Yu Shandu, the leader of the third regiment, Su Xianjun, and others deserted, and some people defected with guns.
Zeng Shi'e was loyal and loyal, and Zhang Ziqing, Luo Ronghuan, He Changgong and others firmly followed Chairman Mao to Jinggangshan.
After that, Zeng Shi'e led his troops to fight in Fujian, participated in a series of battles to conquer Chaling, Suichuan, xincheng, etc., and contributed his due strength to the development and expansion of the Jinggangshan base area.
When Chen Hao, Xu Shu, Han Jianzhuang, and others tried to pull their troops to surrender to the enemy, Zeng Shi'e, Wan Xixian, Zhang Ziqing, He Tingying, Luo Ronghuan, and others united to fight with them and waged a resolute struggle.
In the third attack of the Red Army on yongxin county, Zeng Shi'e was a pioneer and completely annihilated a regiment of Yang Chisheng's troops, and his prestige was far and wide.
Lao Qin would like to say here in particular that Chairman Mao's famous poem "Xi jiang yue jinggangshan" was written specifically to praise Zeng Shi'e's victory in the Huangyang realm.
It was the end of July 1928, and Chairman Mao led his troops down the mountain, leaving only one company and three companies to guard the Huangyang Boundary.
The enemy took advantage of the situation to attack Jinggangshan, and a total of one division of troops came.
The commander of the third company, Zeng Shi'e, took the wounded to the battlefield and fought hard, and finally won the victory in the defensive battle.
In addition, in the first battle of Longgang against "encirclement and suppression," Zeng Shi'e, who was then the commander of the Second Column of the Red Fourth Army, cooperated with Luo Ronghuan, political commissar of the column, and Luo Ruiqing, director of the Political Department, to calmly cope with the battle, capturing Zhang Huizhan, commander of the enemy's Eighteenth Division, and completely annihilating more than 9,000 people in Zhang's department.
In the second anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, Zeng Shi'e was reappointed as the commander of the 11th Division of the Red Fourth Army, commanding the 11th Division to annihilate a brigade of the enemy's 43rd Division in the area of Donggu Jiuzhiling and Guanyinyan.
Compared with Zeng Shi'e, Lin Biao was only a probationary platoon leader at the time of the Nanchang Uprising, and the reason why he became the commander of the Red Fourth Army in 1930 was that on the one hand, he had outstanding military talent; on the other hand, Chairman Mao deliberately promoted the cadres in the remnants of the Nanchang Uprising in order to show the importance he attached to the remnants of the Nanchang Uprising after Zhu and Mao met the division.
In any case, Zeng Shi'e was always a trustworthy person in the depths of Chairman Mao's soul.
This is also the reason why after Zeng Shi'e's death, he couldn't help but scold Lin Biao.
It can be said that if Zeng Shi'e had not died prematurely, he would have been of great use in the magnificent War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation in the future.