Author: Xiao Yu
In the life of the old shipwright Zhang Chaoman, May 3, 1935 is unforgettable. In his memory, that night, it was "dark" and "I couldn't see my fingers", and an armed team with "a red star on my hat" came to the Kyaukpyeong Ferry port on the banks of the Jinsha River.
In the seven days and seven nights that followed, Zhang Chaoman, his brother Zhang Chaoshou, and 34 other boatmen used seven dilapidated wooden boats to cross the rushing Jinsha River, creating a miracle of crossing the river that was unheard of in ancient and modern China and abroad.
Kyaukpyeong Ferry
Zhang Chaoman and Zhang Chaoshou would not have imagined that their seven broken wooden boats had changed China's destiny.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > must seize the ferry within four days</h1>
When Mao Zedong had just completed the miraculous stroke of "four crossings of chishui" and transferred the Dian army into Guizhou by pretending to attack Guiyang, the seemingly desperate Red Army ushered in a desperate opportunity to enter Yunnan in a big circle, temporarily jumping out of the encirclement of the warlords of the four provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Qian.
After crossing the Beipan River, the Red Army headed westward, and by late April 1935 had all entered Yunnan. The Dian army was sent to Guizhou, and Wang Longyun of Yunnan had only one independent regiment in his hands. The severe enemy situation that the Red Army has been facing since the fight against Zunyi has temporarily eased.
Dragon Cloud
On April 29, the 1st and 3rd Armies, the two main forces of the Red Army, captured Songming and Xundian, two counties adjacent to Kunming, respectively, causing panic in kunming, which was almost undefended. Long Yun urged the returning Dian army to rescue the car at full speed, and on the other hand, he was ready to flee to Burma.
Of course, the Red Army would not really attack Kunming, because the most urgent task was to cross the Jinsha River in the north and make a round with the Four Fronts. The so-called slogan of "entering Kunming and capturing Longyun alive" is the same suspicious tactic as the previous attack on Guiyang.
Long Yun's mobilization of the Dian army caused a gap in the number of troops along the Jinsha River in northern Yunnan, and the conditions for the Central Red Army to quickly cross eastern Yunnan from south to north to reach the Jinsha River were ripe.
Lin Biao
Prior to this, Lin Biao had suggested occupying Dongchuan first and crossing the river from here into the river. Mao Zedong did not agree to choose the ferry port in Dongchuan, mainly on the grounds that Dongchuan was not far from the Dian army that was returning to reinforcements, and there was a possibility of fierce fighting. On the contrary, the Yuanmou in northern Yunnan was very close to the Jinsha River, and it was very advantageous to cross the river.
On May 1, the Second Bureau of the Central Military Commission, which had repeatedly built up its feats since the Long March, once again successfully deciphered the code of Chiang Kai-shek's telegrams, and learned that the Xue Yue Column of the Central Army was advancing in the direction of Huize, while the Sun Du Column of the Yunnan Army was responsible for head-on interception. From this point of view, Mao Zedong's judgment of the situation was completely correct.
There was not much time left for the Red Army to cross the river, and Xue Yue, who had followed all the way from Jiangxi, was like a shadow, and his vanguard wan Yaohuang Division was 3 or 4 days away from the Red Army. The continued rainy weather made Mao very worried about the rise of the river. Sure enough, according to the investigation report, in addition to Kyaukpyeong ferry, several other ferries are not optimistic.
Xue Yue
The Central Military Commission ordered: 1 Corps marched west to Yuanmou to seize the Longjie Ferry, 3 Corps entered the north through Xundian to seize the Hongmen Ferry, and the Central Column went straight to the Kyaukpyeong Ferry. The Central Military Commission ordered the Red Army of the Three Roads to seize the above-mentioned crossings by May 3, collect ships, and prepare to cross the river.
If the Dian army had reached the river before the Red Army and burned down the ferry boats, the Red Army would have been unable to escape. Therefore, whether or not the ferry could be seized within four days became the key to the survival of the Red Army.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > cadre regiment surprise attack kyaukpyeongdu</h1>
The Jinsha River, which runs down the Sichuan-Tibet border, cuts out a Grand Canyon more than 3,000 meters deep in the lofty mountains. Since ancient times, no one has been able to build a bridge over the Jinsha River.
Jinsha river
In the three ferry ports of Longjie, Hongmen and Kyaukpyeong, Kyaukpyeongdu is the top priority. In order to ensure the success of the crossing, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission used the cadre regiment of the ace troops that were easily unwilling to take action in this direction.
The cadre regiment was formed by the merger of 4 school cadets in the Central Soviet Region, including the Red Army University and the Pengyang Infantry School, and the members were all company platoon cadres with first-class military and political quality. If it weren't for the 100,000 firestorms, no one would be willing to use them as ordinary soldiers. Prior to this, in the Battle of Tucheng and the Battle of Laoya Mountain, the cadre regiment had already had two feats of turning the tide of the tide. In Mao Zedong's eyes, the cadre corps was the last trump card.
Liu Bo, chief of the general staff of the Red Army and commander of the advance detachment, was ordered to personally lead the cadre regiment to capture Kyaukpyeongdu, and after studying with Chen Geng and Song Renqian, he decided that he would personally lead three battalions to complete this arduous task. They had to run 160 miles a day and destroy the enemy at the crossing as fast as they could and consolidate their positions on the north shore. As for the troops on the south bank, they tried their best to collect ships and prepare for the main force to cross the river.
Liu Bocheng
Zhou Enlai, vice chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, had already made the worst plan, and he told Chen Geng that if the cadre regiment crossed the river but did not secure the ferry, and the main force could not cross the river, it would be ready to fight a guerrilla attack alone in the north of the river.
The advance battalion set out disguised as Nationalist troops. In this line, a marshal of the republic, a general, dozens of lieutenant generals, major generals came out later.
The cadre regiment forcibly marched 160 miles to the Kyaukpyeong Ferry crossing on time, accidentally found two wooden boats, and later learned that the defenders on the opposite shore were used for reconnaissance across the river. The soldiers also learned from the shipwright that there was a company of defenders on the opposite shore, and there was a gold bureau in the town, which had dozens of security guards. They considered this not to be the main ferry port and were therefore negligent.
The cadre regiment quickly smuggled to the other side, and effortlessly eliminated the defenders and captured all the security guards in the Gold Bureau. At this point, the Kyaukpyeong Ferry Port had been completely controlled by the cadre regiment, and only waited for the large troops to cross the river.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > thousands of troops and horses will pass through here</h1>
The good news that the cadre regiment had taken Kyaukpyeongdu was quickly reported to the Central Military Commission, but the central military commission's call back was disturbing: a Sichuan army unit was marching towards Tong'an Prefecture, and the vanguard troops may have arrived in an attempt to approach Kyaukpyeongdu. The situation was extremely urgent, and Liu Bocheng ordered: "The cadre regiment must make all sacrifices and resolutely take down Tong'an Prefecture."
Except for leaving the advance battalion to guard the ferry, the rest of the cadre regiment all followed Chen Geng to Tong'an Prefecture. When they broke through the sporadic enemy raids and rushed to Tong'an Prefecture, they immediately encountered a brigade of the Sichuan Army. Liu Bocheng saw that the situation was serious and immediately asked Song Renqian to take the lead in sending reinforcements to the camp. The combat effectiveness of the cadre regiment was indeed extraordinary, and it was forced to crush an opponent's brigade with a regiment of troops and occupy Tong'an Prefecture.
The Red Army on the march
Lin Biao's Red 1st Army, after completing the task of pretending to attack Kunming, ran a full 300 miles to the Longjie ferry port within 48 hours. The ferries here had all been burned down, and they tried to build a pontoon bridge, but for two days they made no progress. After the Red 3Rd Army occupied the Hongmen ferry port, they found only one boat, and they could not complete the bridge. In desperation, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission had no choice but to let both legions cross the river from Kyaukpyeong.
According to the original plan, the Red Army soldiers crossed the river in three ways, and the Column of the Central Military Commission could cross the river in a day at Kyaukpyeong, but now thousands of troops and horses had to cross the river from here, and the difficulties suddenly increased sharply.
On the evening of May 3, Xue Yue's forward force, Wan Yaohuang Division, was approaching Kunming. If the Red 5 Corps, which was responsible for blocking the attack, could not stop the enemy, and the main force of the Red Army could not cross the river within a week, there was a danger of being cut off by the enemy across the river.
Wan Yaohuang
At this time, the Second Bureau of the Central Military Commission deciphered Wan Yaohuang's telegram and learned that he had decided to rest and reported to Chiang Kai-shek that no Red Army had been found. Wan Yaohuang, who graduated from the Baoding Military Academy, was not a descendant of Chiang Kai-shek, and his loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek was limited, and he would not easily go deep alone.
When Mao Zedong received the report, he was overjoyed and said to several combat staff officers around him: "Long Yun's troops have been transferred to Guizhou by us, and now Wan Yaohuang's 13th Division is going to listen to our command again." Do you know the story of Zhuge Liang borrowing the East Wind? We should now borrow the contradiction between Chiang Kai-shek and Wan Yaohuang to transfer the main force here to cross the river, and in the future let future generations write a story!"
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > guaranteed an organized and orderly crossing of the river</h1>
The Kyaoping Ferry is wide and the waves are rapid, and it takes 40 minutes for a boat to cross the river once. On the first day of crossing the river, there were only two small boats ferrying back and forth, and only more than a thousand people could be crossed in a day and night. It would take at least a month to cross all thirty thousand Red Army troops in this way.
With the help of the shipwright Zhang Chaoshou and others, the Red Army found five more boats and temporarily solved the urgent need. The largest of the five boats could ferry 30 people at a time, and the smaller one had 11 people at a time, and most of these boats were in tatters, and each time they had to dump the water in the boat to start again.
At the critical moment of life and death, Chen Yun, who was low-key, decisive, and good at organization and coordination, took on the heavy responsibility of organizing the crossing of the river.
The Red Army made Zhang Chaoshou a temporary captain, and he divided the 35 shipwrights he found into two shifts, day and night, and people kept ferrying without stopping. In this way, the speed of crossing the river has been greatly accelerated.
Chen yun
The central leaders crossed the river first with the column of the Central Military Commission, set up a command center for crossing the river in a cave on the north bank, and formulated the "Code of Conduct for Crossing the River" and issued it to all departments to ensure that the river was crossed in an organized and orderly manner. When the troops were still on their way, they were told of the discipline of crossing the river, and demanded that they must stop when they reached the river. Each boat is numbered, the number of people on board is specified and the order of seating is indicated, and the phenomenon of scrambling is resolutely put an end to the phenomenon of scrambling.
Not only that, Chen Yun also assigned a commander to each ship, and enjoyed absolute command on the ship, even if Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai crossed the river, they must obediently obey orders.
Peng Dehuai
At the most stressful time of crossing the river, the chiefs of the Red Army personally did the ideological work of the shipwrights, propagating the revolutionary principles to them and arousing their enthusiasm. At the same time, pigs and sheep are slaughtered, 6 meals are eaten day and night, and labor fees of 5 yuan are paid every day. The boatmen were enthusiastic and desperately contributed to row the wooden boats carrying the hopes of the Chinese revolution across the stormy Jinsha River.
By May 9, all 30,000 Red Troops had crossed the Jinsha River, and when the last ship crossed the river, the bullets of the pursuing soldiers on the other side also hit the river. The Red Army rewarded 36 boatmen with 30 pieces of ocean each, and burned all 7 boats on fire. The Troops of Chiang Kai-shek's Army on the other side only sighed at Wangjiang Xing.
That's how miracles are produced.