As we all know, the most tragic battle in the Long March of the Red Army was the Battle of the Xiangjiang River, in fact, before the Battle of the Xiangjiang River, the Red Army also suffered heavy losses, that is, the Battle of Ganxi.
This battle caused the Red Sixth Army, the vanguard of the Red Army, to be severely damaged, and many founding generals who had experienced it mentioned this battle, and their grief was no less than that of the Xiangjiang Campaign, which showed the fierceness of the battle.
So, who was the general of the Nationalist army who commanded the Battle of Ganxi? He was Liao Lei, the fierce general under Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi.
Liao Lei was born in Luchuan, Guangxi in 1890, and was later admitted to the second phase of the Baoding Military Academy, counting, Liao Lei is still the senior of Bai Chongxi, who is a student of the third period in Baoding.
After graduating from the Baoding Military Academy, Liao Lei joined the Xiang Army and participated in the Northern Expedition with Tang Shengzhi. After Tang Shengzhi went to the wilderness, Liao Lei defected to Bai Chongxi again, and the two had a good personal relationship, and when the Jiang Gui War broke out, Liao Lei had a life-saving grace for Bai Chongxi.
However, Liao Lei was able to gain a firm foothold in the Gui Army, relying on his own ability to fight. In the Gui army, Liao Lei was second only to Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, and Li Pinxian, and almost all of the battles fought by the Gui army Liao Lei participated, especially in the Central Plains War, Liao Lei performed very well, and Li and Bai also trusted him very much.
The trump card of the Gui Army for many years has always been the Seventh Army, which is the starting force of Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, from the Northern Expedition To the Liberation War, it is the strongest fighting force of the Gui Army, and Liao Lei once served as the commander of the Seventh Army, which shows its strong ability.
In October 1934, the Central Red Army lost the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" and was forced to carry out the Long March, before that, the Red Sixth Army led by Ren Bishi and Xiao Ke had already set out as an advance team, and after more than a month of marching, crossed Hunan and Guangxi and arrived at Ganxi, Guizhou.
On the side of the Kuomintang army, it concentrated the strength of 24 regiments in the three provinces of Guangxi, Hunan, and Guizhou to intercept the Red Sixth Army, and it was Liao Lei who unified the command.
Due to intelligence errors, the Red Sixth Army was blocked by Liao Lei's troops in the Ganxi area, and after more than half a month of fierce fighting, although the Red Sixth Army fought bravely, it still suffered heavy losses in the face of the enemy's superior strength, and the whole army was sharply reduced from 9,000 to less than 4,000.
After the Battle of Ganxi, Liao Lei led the Seventh Army of the Gui Army to participate in the Battle of Xiangjiang, and blocked the Red Third Army led by Peng Laozong in Longsheng County, causing great losses to the Red Third Army.
Seeing this, everyone may definitely hate Liao Lei with gritted teeth, after all, it has brought a tragic experience to the Red Army. However, people are complex, and the stories that happened later made people admire Liao Lei.
On August 13, 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out, and Liao Lei, who had just been promoted to commander of the Twenty-first Army, took the initiative to ask for help, led his troops on a long journey of two months, reached the Songhu front, could not even eat food, and immediately threw himself into battle.
Liao Lei, with 60,000 Guangxi straw shoe soldiers, stubbornly blocked two elite Japanese divisions in the area of Razohama, and took the initiative to attack many times, severely damaging the Japanese army.
After the Battle of Songhu, Liao Lei led his troops to participate in the Battle of Xuzhou and the Battle of Wuhan.
In the Battle of Xuzhou, Liao Lei's subordinate Zhou Yuan led more than 2,000 people to defend Mengcheng, and in the face of the siege of the superior Japanese army, Zhou Yuan's troops ran out of ammunition and had to ask Liao Lei for help. Unexpectedly, Liao Lei replied to him like this: "In order to carry forward the reputation of this army and serve the country, Deputy Division Commander Wangzhou urged all officers and men to stick to it and coexist with the city!" In the end, all these two thousand people except 21 people broke through, and General Zhou Yuan was also martyred.
During the Battle of Wuhan, Liao Lei took the initiative to invite Miao to form a guerrilla force at Dabie Mountain in the rear of the Japanese army, relying on Dabie Mountain, fully mobilizing the masses, harmonizing military-civilian relations, frequently attacking the Japanese puppet army, and recovering a large number of lost land. According to statistics, in 1939 alone, Liao Lei led his troops to recover 19 counties in Anhui.
In addition, during the period when he was in charge of Anhui, because Liao Lei was a clean and honest official and advocated simplicity, the military and people of Anhui had a very high evaluation of him. Many years later, li Zongren and Bai Chongxi mentioned Liao Lei and sincerely admired him.
But unfortunately, just when the base area he personally created was booming, Liao Lei suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in the winter of 1939 and died at the age of 49.
Before his death, Liao Lei did not explain the family affairs or leave a will for his children, but only said: "I can't do it, I hope you will work hard to resist the war, and don't let the Japanese Kou sneak into the Dabie Mountain." "Everyone present was impressed.
Because of Liao Lei's anti-Japanese meritorious service, after his death, our army did not care about the previous suspicions, and The Eighth Route Army's General Zhu lao and Peng Lao, Ye Ting, Xiang Ying, Chen Lao, Zhang Yunyi, and others of the New Fourth Army all sent them to the league one after another to express their respect for this famous anti-Japanese general.
History Inn by Wittingenstein