Su Yu's glorious years in southwest Zhejiang

Author: Zhou Dechun

From August 1934 to March 1938, Su Yu led his troops into southwest Zhejiang, made great sacrifices to the strategic actions of the Central Red Army, fought alone in the heartland of the Kuomintang rule, and showed his infinite loyalty to the party and the people and to the revolutionary cause.

Advance into Zhejiang

In June 1934, on the eve of the strategic transfer of the main force of the Red Army, the Red Seventh Army was ordered to be reorganized into a northward anti-Japanese advance team, going deep into the far rear of the Kuomintang rule in Fujian, Zhejiang, Gansu, and Anhui, covering the implementation of the strategic transfer by the central government and promoting the anti-Japanese movement.

On the evening of July 6, about 6,000 advance troops set off from Ruijin, Jiangxi Province, and began a bloody conquest. During this period, he once moved to Qingyuan and Longquan in southwest Zhejiang, entered and occupied the county seat of Qingyuan, and won a great victory in Zhukou. In mid-October, the main force of the Central Red Army and more than 86,000 people of the central organs embarked on the journey of strategic transfer and began the Long March. At this point, the advance team was ordered to preserve its strength, enter the Fujian-Zhejiang-Gansu region, and end the 4-month "Small Long March". With weak troops and bloody enemy rear, the advance detachment fought more than 1,600 kilometers, covered the implementation of the strategic transfer by the central authorities, held high the banner of anti-Japanese resistance, and left military backbones for the guerrilla areas.

In January 1935, the Red Tenth Army (still called the Northbound Anti-Japanese Advance Detachment), which was combined with the Red Tenth Army, was surrounded by heavy enemy troops in the Huaiyu Mountains of Jiangxi, most of the commanders and fighters were killed, and the strategic response to the Long March suffered setbacks.

The provincial party committee immediately conveyed a telegram from the Central Sub-Bureau of the Soviet District to form an advancing division of the Red Army and enter Zhejiang to carry out guerrilla warfare on the basis of the vanguard troops and the breakthrough troops of the advance detachment. Zhejiang was the heartland of the Kuomintang rule, and the struggle environment was particularly harsh, and the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China established in June 1927 was repeatedly destroyed, and ten secretaries (acting secretaries) were replaced in less than two years, resulting in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China being forced to abolish the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee in April 1929; more than 60 peasant uprisings and the struggles of the Red Thirteenth Army were suppressed in the province. With Su Yu as the division commander and Liu Ying as the political commissar, the advancing division, with only more than 500 people, was not afraid of weak troops, lack of ammunition, and no response, and held the strong determination to inherit the legacy of the martyrs and swear to advance to Zhejiang to the death. On the way, he was attacked by the enemy, the radio station was destroyed, he lost contact with his superiors, and after falling into a lonely battle, he still had no remorse and was determined to open up the situation into Zhejiang with his own actions.

In order to achieve a strategic change, the troops carried out rectification training in northern Fujian and established a political committee to strengthen leadership to adapt to guerrilla warfare. Then, the advancing division went back and forth to the Fujian and Zhejiang sides, attracting and mobilizing the enemy, causing the enemy to mistakenly think that the advancing division would be based on the Fujian and Zhejiang borders, and then in late April it was carefully deployed at Qingyuan Zailang to meet the nearly 4,000 enemies who were attracted to it, achieving a great victory and opening up a passage into the southwest of Zhejiang to open up the base area.

Transferred to southwest Zhejiang

After the great victory of Zailang, Su Yu and Liu Ying led their troops to advance into the hinterland of southwest Zhejiang, and after being welcomed by the local progressive mass organizations in Songyang County, they divided their troops to mobilize the masses, concentrated on attacking the enemy, and opened up base areas. In early June 1935, the various units of the Advancing Division met in Xiaoji Village, Songyang County, held a meeting of the Political Committee, and deployed to create a base area. In July, Su Yu led the advancing division headquarters to the Wangcunkou of Suichang County to comprehensively carry out the construction of the base area.

In order to attract and contain the enemy and strategically respond to the Long March, the Advancing Division extensively carried out guerrilla warfare. Every locality first eliminates the Kuomintang's district and township armed forces and local reactionary forces, and then opens warehouses to help the poor, beats up local tycoons and distributes floating wealth, and mobilizes the masses to join the revolution. Launched the August 1st military demonstration, took the initiative to attack 19 large and small towns, and burned the revolutionary fire to the Zhejiang-Gansu railway line. Revolutionary base areas were established among the five counties of Songyang, Suichang, Longquan, Jiangshan, and Pucheng, and the agrarian revolution of checking fields, inserting bids, and dividing young seedlings was vigorously carried out.

The struggle of the advancing division quickly attracted the Kuomintang army. In August 1935, the Kuomintang mobilized about 70,000 troops with the Eighteenth Army as the main force and launched a large-scale "cleansing and suppressing" southwest Zhejiang. Su Yu and others creatively practiced "the enemy advancing and we are advancing," leaving the second and fifth columns to persist in the base areas, leading the main force to break through the enemy's encirclement, advancing behind the enemy's rear, turning to the Fujian-Zhejiang border, attracting and mobilizing the enemy, and then meeting with the Red Army in eastern Fujian led by Ye Fei to form the CPC's Provisional Provincial Committee on the Fujian-Zhejiang Border, jointly carrying out struggle, and opening up guerrilla base areas in southern Zhejiang.

After February 1936, Liu Ying led the commando team to carry out work in southern Zhejiang; Su Yu led the group to extensive guerrilla warfare, and several times moved to southwest Zhejiang, establishing a guerrilla base area on the long (quan) Pu (cheng) river (mountain) Sui (Chang) side. In June 1936, when Su Yu led his troops to retake Wangcunkou, they carefully reconnoitred and analyzed the enemy's situation, went deep into the masses to investigate and study, and then, based on the information that the enemy was tightly armed and the local old farmers judged that there had been heavy rains in recent days, led the troops to set off late at night, wading through the mountains and wading around the Wangcunkou and driving toward Qu County. When passing through Dukou Village, only the guns of the enemy sentries were surrendered, and the enemy sentries fled back to Wangcunkou; when the enemy was convinced that the Red Army had marched to Quxian County, he secretly pulled the troops back to Longquan Zhuxi, and then took advantage of the rainy rain and fog and the enemy's relaxation of defense to raid Wangcunkou and retake Wangcunkou without any casualties. This operation showed Su Yu's insistence on exchanging the smallest sacrifice for the greatest victory, and the strategy and tactics of maneuvering and flexibility.

At the beginning of 1937, the Kuomintang once again launched a large-scale "cleansing and suppression" to advance into divisions, and Su Yu and other large-scale dragnet tactics against the enemy "reduced the troops into pieces" and divided them into guerrillas. In April, Su Yu led his troops to the Sui (Chang) Xuan (Ping) Tang (Xi) Border Region, met with Xie Wenqing's troops, established a guerrilla base area, and relied on the base area to carry out anti-"Qing suppression" with excellence, causing the enemy to lament that "the skin work has not been performed."

Realize the long-cherished wish of the Anti-Japanese Resistance

Since july 1934, when the anti-Japanese advance team went north, Su Yu always regarded propaganda and promotion of the anti-Japanese movement as an important task, and everywhere where the advancing division carried out its activities, there were slogans everywhere such as "The Red Army is an armed force of the anti-Japanese resistance" and "Abolish the traitorous treaty" and other slogans to publicize the anti-Japanese resistance.

Su Yu was very concerned about the development and changes in the situation, and not only repeatedly called for "stopping the civil war and unanimously resisting Japan," but also consciously and constantly adjusting the struggle tactics and policies in accordance with the situation and using practical actions to win unity against Japan. The first is to change the confiscation committee of the advancing division into a collection committee, no longer to fight the local tycoons to raise funds, but to collect anti-Japanese donations from the landlords and gentry on the basis of their affordability; the second is to promote the two-sided regime of "white skin and red heart" and change the suppression of the Kuomintang township and town chiefs and the chiefs of the armor to fight for them so that they can serve the Red Army; the third is to treat the gentry and the middle-class merchants differently, welcome progress, allow them to come and go freely, continue to operate without infringement, and welcome the ardent merchants of the plain towns to enter the mountains to do business, develop the economy in the mountainous areas, and improve the livelihood of the masses Fourth, it was changed from "welcome the soldiers of the White Army to kill the officers and commanders and drag their guns as the Red Army" to "welcome the officers and men of the White Army to go out of the muzzle of their guns and work together with the Red Army to resist Japan"; fifth, to do a good job in uniting and winning over the urban intellectuals, and the books and newspapers in the hands of many intellectuals have become an important source of information for Su Yu to understand and analyze the situation.

In September 1937, Su Yu, who led his troops in southwest Zhejiang, was keenly aware of the situation and rumors that "the Communist Party surrendered" and "the Red Army was absorbed", and keenly aware that the two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party may have begun to cooperate in the anti-Japanese resistance. After receiving confirmation, he immediately proposed to the Suichang County authorities to cooperate in the anti-Japanese resistance. On September 18, the Suichang County authorities replied to a letter asking the Red Army to send plenipotentiaries to Jin'an to "contact." Su Yu, who was highly vigilant, saw through the other side's plot to absorb the Red Army and asked the other side to send representatives to the base areas for negotiations.

On October 14, Su Yu assigned Xie Wenqing, Liu Qingyang, and representatives of the Suichang County authorities to hold peace talks in Menjin Village, the center of the base area, and reached an agreement on cooperation against Japan. On October 19, Su Yu led his troops to southern Zhejiang to assemble and stand by. Before leaving the gate, many peasant activists in the base areas asked to join the Red Army to go to the front line to resist Japan, but Su Yu insisted on not taking away comrades with family burdens, not increasing the burden on the masses, and only taking away 7 people who did not have family burdens.

On March 18, 1938, Su Yu led the seventh team of the third detachment of the New Fourth Army, which was reorganized from the main force of the advancing division, left southern Zhejiang and rushed to the front line in southern Anhui, and began to gallop across the anti-Japanese frontier and the battlefield of liberation. (Zhou Dechun)

Source: Learning Times