Most of the founding generals in New China lived very frugally, knowing that the victory of the revolution was not easy to come by, so they would never be extravagant and wasteful. Among them, there was a founding lieutenant general who served in the northwest region for many years and was called "General Buyi" by the vast number of northwestern people, and his name was Zhang Dazhi.
He was also legendary as a brigade commander in May 1949, but was awarded the rank of lieutenant general in 1955, which outperformed most division commanders in 1949!
Zhang Dazhi was born in 1911 in Ye County (now Jia County), Shaanxi Province, and came into contact with progressive ideas very early, but in 1927 the revolutionary situation was grim, and the Kuomintang reactionaries set off white terror everywhere, but Zhang Dazhi joined the Communist Youth League in this year, which shows the firmness of his will.
Subsequently, he obeyed the organization's arrangements and returned to the area around Wang Chengjia Village in Jia County, using his status as a primary school teacher as a cover to secretly develop the party organization and carry out military movement work.
Because of his outstanding performance, in 1931 Zhang Dazhi was appointed secretary of the CPC Yexian Special Administrative Region Party Committee, he became the secretary and then led his family to start the revolution, every time a meeting was held in his home, documents and funds were also hidden in his home, they knew how to hide, even if the vigilante groups heard the wind and came to his home many times to search, they did not find what they wanted.
However, these vigilante groups were so angry that they arrested Zhang Dazhi's father and whipped him, and almost beat him to death several times. In order to ensure the safety of Zhang Dazhi's father, the organization took Zhang Father home and held a fake funeral, saying to the outside world that Zhang Dazhi's father died of severe beatings, which deceived the enemy.
After that, Zhang Dazhi's whole family was not intimidated by difficulties, and still actively revolutionized, developed many comrades, and formed a guerrilla force.
In 1934, Xie Zichang and Liu Zhidan returned to northern Shaanxi one after another, and Zhang Dazhi formed the Red 27th Army with them, so Zhang Dazhi was one of the main representative figures, which was an important plus for his later title.
Originally, the Red 27th Army had no military headquarters and only a 700-strong 84th Division, zhang Dazhi was the political commissar of the 84th Division, and he fought with the division commander Yang Qi (who died in 1936) and defeated the regular army of the Nationalist army three times.
Later, Zhang Dazhi also served as the political commissar of the Red 81st Division, the Red 78th Division, and the Independent 1st Division in Northern Shaanxi, and participated in most of the important battles of the Red Army in northern Shaanxi.
After the all-round anti-Japanese resistance, Zhang Dazhi served as the political commissar of the 6th Regiment of the Eighth Route Army Garrison, the director of the political department of the Daqingshan Cavalry Detachment of the 120th Division, and participated in leading the creation of the Anti-Japanese Base Areas in Yanbei and Daqingshan.
In the early stage of the Liberation War, Zhang Dazhi served as the political commissar of the Suimeng Military Region, and the arrangements for his appointment at this time were still normal. However, later, the northwest region was extremely difficult to fund, and in order to solve this problem, General Manager He appointed Zhang Dazhi as the guerrilla commander of the five provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningbo, and Jinsui, and asked him to lead two cavalry regiments of the Suimeng Military Region to Guanzhong and Jinnan to carry out commercial activities and raise funds. So Zhang Dazhiyuan left the front line for a while.
Facts have proved that Mr. He did not look at the wrong person, Zhang Dazhi was originally very frugal, the clothes he wore were patches, he ate coarse grain rice on weekdays, he did not let the cooks cook cook if he wanted to drink, and he got some peppers to drink. When he arrived in Guanzhong, he firmly controlled every penny, sold some of the specialties of the troops, and then tried his best to get tens of thousands of funds to ease the economic situation of the 120th Division.
When Zhang Dazhi returned to the army, the political commissar of the Suimeng Military Region was already appointed, and he was reappointed as the commander of the Suide Military Sub-district and the commander of the 2nd Garrison Brigade.
These two transfers demoted Zhang Dazhi's position and he became a brigade-level cadre, but he did not complain at all, and after that, he was still very fierce in the battlefield, and the Jinzhong Campaign and the Taiyuan Campaign were both ordered to attack the most difficult strongholds, but they all completed the task well.
These two battles made Zhang Dazhi famous, so that later there were 4,000 enemy troops in Yulin, and when he heard that Zhang Dazhi led his troops, he was frightened and quickly revolted.
In June 1949, Zhang Dazhi was promoted from the commander of the 2nd Garrison Brigade to the commander of the 4th Army of Ichino, and only after arriving at his post did he catch up with the Battle of Lanzhou, when two regiments of the 4th Army attacked Shenjialing during the day, but after paying heavy casualties, they failed to take it, and morale was somewhat low.
When Zhang Dazhi arrived at the army headquarters in the evening, he immediately held a meeting to redeploy and attack Shenjialing again, and the 4th Army took 13 hours to finally conquer the enemy position, killing and wounding more than 3,000 Majiajun troops.
Shenjialing is the most important and difficult stronghold on the outskirts of Lanzhou, and once it is broken, the positions such as Dogwa Mountain, Majia Mountain, and Gucheng Ridge behind it have also been taken. Therefore, Zhang Dazhi can be said to have made the first contribution to the Lanzhou Campaign, and Peng Dehuai said happily after the war: As soon as you came, the 4th Army fought an important big victory, which is rare!
After liberation, Zhang Dazhi took root in the northwest, and after liberation, he served as the commander and political commissar of the Public Security Army of the Northwest Military Region, and in 1955, the Northwest Military Region was reorganized into the Lanzhou Military Region, zhang Dazhi became the first commander, and in the same year he was also awarded the rank of lieutenant general.
Zhang Dazhi served as the commander of the Lanzhou Military Region for 14 years, but he was not the kind of person who lay on the merit book and enjoyed the blessings, he always considered himself an ordinary soldier. He has traveled all over the four provinces and regions of Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Qingdao, and he has also been to the Yushu, Guoluo and Tanggula areas and done a lot of practical things.
Because he wore ordinary clothes every time he traveled and never engaged in specialization, the people in the northwest called him "General Cloth".
Zhang Dazhi was particularly opposed to the abuse of public funds, and once after a meeting of the military region, everyone ate together, Zhang Dazhi found that each table had added a dog meat dish, which made him very angry, and immediately asked whoever decided to add money, and finally made up 170 yuan of vegetable money.
At that time, the environment in the northwest was relatively difficult, and Zhang Dazhi called on everyone to vigorously carry out construction and strive to develop agriculture and animal husbandry, and these measures were quite effective. When he was transferred out of Lanzhou, he accumulated more than 70 million yuan of funds for the military region.
At the end of 1969, Zhang Dazhi was reappointed as the commander of the artillery of the People's Liberation Army, and after ten years of work in this position, he still maintained a hard and simple style. Zhang Dazhi died in Beijing on January 15, 1992, at the age of 81.
The revolutionary feelings of the older generation are really touching, they are truly dedicated to the country, worthy of our eternal admiration!