On May 2, 1937, the Central Committee held a meeting of representatives of the Soviet Union. At this meeting, Zhang Wentian announced the list of martyrs who have sacrificed for the revolution since the founding of the party. With tears in his eyes, Zhang Wentian read the names of the martyrs on the list to the participants, and when he read the 34th, the name of the martyr was Su Yu.
Su Yu
However, as we all know, after 1937, General Su Yu also participated in the command of famous battles such as the Battle of Huaihai and the Battle of Crossing the River. It was not until 1984 that Su Yu died of illness in Beijing, which shows that the name of Su Yu appeared in the list of martyrs in 1937, which is basically a oolong. So how did this oolong come about?
The ins and outs of the matter must also begin when the Red Army was forced to march. In October 1934, the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" failed, and the Central Soviet Region decided to withdraw the main force of the Red Army and retain the revolutionary fire. Earlier, Su Yu, as the advance unit of the Red Army, led the Red 7th Regiment to leave the Central Soviet Area in July 1934 and went all the way north to open the way for the main central army.
Su Yu led the Red 7 Army to set off, but at this time, the Red 7 Army had a big change. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek sent a large number of troops to surround and block the Red 7 Army, hoping to wipe out the Red 7 Army. Although the Red 7th Army, under the command of Su Yu, repeatedly rushed out of the encirclement of Chiang Kai-shek's army, it was still not the opponent of the strong Kuomintang army.
Fang Zhimin
After many turns, Su Yu led the remaining Red Army of the Red 7 to the Gansu District of Fujian, Zhejiang and Gansu. The Fujian-Zhejiang Gansu District was the old Soviet District founded by Fang Zhimin, and soon after, the remaining troops of the Red 7th Army and the troops of the Fujian-Zhejiang Gansu District jointly formed the Red 10th Army and transferred to the outer line of combat.
As the encirclement of the Nationalist army became more and more serious, in December 1934, the Red 10th Army decided to join the 19th Division of the Red Army near Huangshan Mountain in southern Anhui. At this time, the Kuomintang army, which had secretly received information, mobilized the strength of 5 divisions, two brigades, and four security regiments and surrounded them near Tangkou in Huangshan.
The year 1934 was destined to be a year of blows to the revolutionary forces of the Red Army, as the main forces of the Red Army marched hard and the Red Army units that held out in the rear were undergoing devastating blows. On December 14, the Red 19th Division lost an ambush at Tanjiaqiao in Huangshan, killing most of the Red Army soldiers, the division commander Xun Huaizhou, and the director of the Political Department, Liu Ying, was wounded. On this day, the Red 10th Army was also in the enemy's encirclement and pursuit, and suffered heavy losses. The Red 19th Division and the Red 10th Army could only retreat and lurk.
Red army
But the disaster of the Red Army was far more than that, and on January 12, 1935, the Red 10Th Army was once again attacked by the enemy, and the legion was cut off by the enemy and divided into two sections. In addition to more than 500 people of the advance troops, under the leadership of Su Yu, they broke through the enemy blockade and retreated to Hengfeng County, and more than 2,000 people of the main force were all surrounded by the enemy, and after several days of bloody fighting, they died heroically.
The advance troops who retreated to Hengfeng County soon met with the organs of the Cpc Fujian,Zhejiang,Gan Province. In order to contain the Kuomintang army, protect the transfer of the main force of the Red Army, and also defend the red area of the Fujian-Zhejiang-Gansu-Gansu region, in early February 1935, the zhejiang-Gansu provincial party committee held a meeting.
The meeting decided to form the Advancing Division of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army on the basis of the Red 10th Army. According to the instructions of the provincial party committee organs and the central authorities, the advancing division mainly has three tasks:
First, it went to Zhejiang for a long-term operation to launch a widespread guerrilla war, expand the political influence of the Party and the Soviets, and create new base areas. Second, the establishment of party organizations, the organization of political power, until the distribution of land. Third, in coordination with the actions of the main forces of the Central Red Army, we should mobilize and contain a large number of enemies and completely smash the enemy's plan to "clear and suppress" the Central Red Army.
Advancing Division
Judging from the situation of the advancing division at that time, the burden on them was very heavy; first of all, the advancing division had only a few hundred people, and it was very difficult to cross the enemy's blockade to Zhejiang; second, to establish a base area, and most importantly, to mobilize the masses, but at that time, the masses in most areas did not trust the Red Army much under the influence of the Kuomintang. Finally, it was a question of the strength of the Red Army, how should a few hundred troops contain the enemy?
In order to accomplish the tasks given to the advancing division by the organization, these questions had to be carefully considered. To solve these problems, we must first make a good start, and Su Yu, then the commander of the Advancing Division, after many studies, decided to take the southwestern Zhejiang region centered on Xianxialing as the main area for guerrilla warfare.
This place is at the junction of three provinces, the mountains are more conducive to guerrilla warfare, and most importantly, the mass base in this place is better than elsewhere.
After determining the position, the advancing division headed towards southwest Zhejiang. In order to smoothly enter the southwestern region of Zhejiang, the advancing division and the enemy army came to a battle of "sounding east and attacking west". First, Su Yu and Liu Ying led the troops to the west, and after the strength of the advancing division's troops was replenished, they immediately attacked the enemy whose troops were weaker in the Upper Stream of the Peiyuan River, and after the enemy pursued to the west, the advancing division chose to return to the east. In this way, the advancing division went all the way to the east, to Shangrao, and then to the south.
In the course of its southward movement, the advancing division fought dozens of battles, large and small, and although it failed to hit the enemy's strength, it also laid the foundation for the troops to fully enter the southwestern region of Zhejiang. On 27 April, as the Nationalist army became increasingly threatening the advancing division, Su Yu decided to use the terrain to fight the enemy in order to buy time.
At 6:00 a.m. on April 28, the Advancing Division engaged the enemy in Sairo, Gyeongwon Prefecture. The advancing division made perfect use of the terrain to win the battle, and the enemy had to retreat for a period of time. This won the time for the advancing division to fully enter southwest Zhejiang and open up guerrilla base areas in southwest Zhejiang.
Soon, the Advancing Division came to the southwestern region of Zhejiang, where the Red Army vigorously developed the masses, carried out the action of fighting against the local tyrants and inferior gentry, and distributed the property of these landlords and gentry to the poor peasants.
Memorial Hall of guerrilla base area in southwest Zhejiang
After a period of development, the guerrilla base area in southwest Zhejiang was finally basically formed in early July. As the saying goes, "It is easy to fight in jiangshan, but it is difficult to defend the jiangshan." After the formation of the base area in southwest Zhejiang, in order to make the base area develop better, Su Yu made adjustments to the advancing division: some people developed the masses, and some people held the enemy back.
In this way, the development of the guerrilla base areas in southwest Zhejiang has become better and better, the scope of radiation has gradually become larger, and the advancing division has also developed from more than 500 people to more than 1,500 people.
At the end of 1936, the domestic situation changed drastically, and chiang kai-shek had to accept "stopping the civil war and jointly resisting Japan" after the "Xi'an Incident". However, Chiang Kai-shek ostensibly agreed, but secretly he was still attacking the Communists. Chiang Kai-shek believed that even if he had no way to attack the CPC Central Committee, he could eliminate the Red Army base areas in the south.
Chiang Kai-shek
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek stepped up the "encirclement and suppression" of the Red Army base areas in southwest Zhejiang. Chiang Kai-shek gathered 6 divisions of the regular army, two independent brigades, and part of the security teams of four provinces, totaling more than 100,000 people, and deployed them south of the Zhejiang-Gansu Railway, the Oujiang River Valley, and the Border between Zhejiang and Fujian, adopting the strategic principle of "approaching from the periphery to the center" in order to carry out a large-scale "encirclement and suppression" of the guerrilla area in southwest Zhejiang.
In January 1937, the long-deployed Kuomintang army launched the first attack on the Taishun revolutionary base area. In response to the enemy's tactics, Su Yu resolutely adopted the method of "advancing relatively and fighting in another place" and engaged in a deadly duel with the enemy.
It was also at this time that the only radio station of the Advancing Division was destroyed by the enemy during the battle. Since the troops did not have radios, Su Yu could not contact the central authorities. And the central government could not contact Su Yu for a long time, and naturally thought that Su Yu had died in battle, because there would be the oolong in 1937. At the same time, because Su Yu had been fighting the enemy in the mountains for a long time, he could not learn the news from the outside world at all, so he did not even know the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, nor did he know the news that the Red Army had been reorganized into the Eighth Route Army.
Just four months after the soviet congress was held, Su Yu received news of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists and the common resistance to Japan. Therefore, Su Yu immediately negotiated with the enemy who surrounded and suppressed the Red Army, and reached an agreement on armistice cooperation against Japan. In October of the same year, the Advancing Division was reorganized and became the National Revolutionary Army's Fujian-Zhejiang Border Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Corps, joining the Anti-Japanese Army.
Soon after, Zhou Zikun, deputy chief of staff of the New Fourth Army, learned of this news. So Zhou Zikun immediately wrote to the Party Central Committee and reported the news that "Su Yu is still alive." When Chairman Mao learned of this, he was very happy. Earlier, Chairman Mao had expressed great sorrow over Su Yu's "sacrifice" and said several "pity" in succession.
Chairman Mao
In Chairman Mao's impression, although Su Yu did not spend much time with him, he still remembered this somewhat taciturn young man. At that time, after Su Yu participated in the Nanchang Uprising, he went up Jinggang Mountain with Zhu De and others. During this period, the chairman met with Su Yu several times, but because of Su Yu's introverted personality, Chairman Mao did not have a deep impression of him.
It wasn't until 1929 that the two had more intersection. At that time, Chairman Mao went to Fujian to recuperate from illness due to illness, and Su Yu went to protect Chairman Mao as the commander of the third company of the Red Army. This was the first time that Su Yu had had a long period of contact with Chairman Mao, and coupled with the fact that it was the time when the Kuomintang was encircling and suppressing fiercely, Su Yu did not dare to slack off for a moment.
In order to ensure the safety of the chairman, Su Yu divided the three companies into two parts, one of which was carried by himself to the chairman's side, and the other part was arranged near the station, keeping an eye on the surrounding movements at any time. Su Yu's various practices gave Chairman Mao a deeper understanding of Su Yu, and the chairman gradually realized that although Su Yu was more introverted, he was conscientious and responsible.
In 1934, after the two parted ways, they did not see each other again for a long time, but the chairman never forgot Su Yu. When the chairman successfully arrived in northern Shaanxi, he repeatedly inquired about Su Yu's news, but he got a report that Su Yu had died. After Chairman Mao found out, although he open-mindedly stated that "if you want to struggle, there will be sacrifices, and the dead happen frequently," it is inevitable that there will be sadness and regret in his heart.
Today, Chairman Mao is naturally very happy to learn that Su Yu's sacrifice was nothing more than a oolong, and he is looking forward to Su Yu being able to make a great cause for the party and the people, and Su Yu, who has "come back from the dead," has also lived up to expectations and made outstanding military achievements during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, making indelible contributions to our party and our army.
In 1961, when Montgomery praised our soldiers, Chairman Mao smiled and said, "Among my comrades-in-arms, there is one man who is the most capable of fighting, his name is Su Yu, and the Battle of Huaihai was commanded by him." ”