The Autumn Harvest Uprising on the Hunan-Gansu Border, which broke out in September 1927, was jointly led by Chairman Mao, the commissioner of the Central Committee, Peng Gongda, secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, and Yi Lirong, secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee Action Committee.
Chairman Mao was the first secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee after the founding of the Party, serving from October 1921 to April 1923; the second secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee was Li Weihan, who served from April 1923 to May 1927; the third secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee was Xia Xi, who served for a short period of less than a month. After Xia Xi, Guo Liang and Lin Wei both acted as secretaries of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, and from then until October 1927, the secretaries of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee were replaced by three more, namely Yi Lirong, Peng Gongda, and Wang Yifei.
The main force of the autumn harvest uprising on the border of Xianggan and Gansu was the Wuhan Nationalist Government Guard Regiment headed by Lu Deming. According to the instructions of its superiors, the guard regiment took a boat east along the Yangtze River in early August 1927 to prepare to meet the 24th Division led by Ye Ting in Nanchang, Jiangxi. On the way, it was learned that the Nanchang uprising troops had left Nanchang and moved south to Guangdong. Lu Deming immediately ordered the guard regiment to change the route of the march and accelerate forward to catch up with the rebel troops.
On August 8, the guard regiment reached the Fengxin area west of Nanchang. At this time, the local traffic officer forwarded a letter from Xia Xi, the former secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee who participated in the Nanchang uprising, saying that the Nanchang uprising troops seriously lacked commanders who understood the military, and asked Lu Deming, the head of the guard regiment, Xin Huanwen, the political guide, and Han Jun, chief of staff of the guard regiment, to leave the team and pursue the rebel troops going south alone.
Lu Deming and the other 3 people were about to leave, and then information came that Zhang Fakui had sent people to occupy Nanchang, Zhu Peide's troops had also blocked the Ganjiang River, and it was impossible to join the rebel forces.
Lu Deming, Xin Huanwen, and Han Jun decided that the three of them would first return to Wuhan and ask the CPC Central Committee for instructions before making a decision. The guard regiment was handed over to the lieutenant colonel regiment and the commander of the 1st Battalion, Yu Shandu, to temporarily go to the Xiushui area of Jiangxi at the junction of Xianggan and Hubei to rest and stand by.
Yu Shandu and the guard regiment moved to Xiushui, where they happened to encounter the Pingjiang Workers' and Peasants' Volunteer Brigade who had retreated to this place. There were more than a thousand people in the Pingjiang Workers' and Peasants' Volunteer Brigade, who were originally going to participate in the Nanchang Uprising (but did not catch up), and their leader was Yu Benmin.
Yu Shandu and Yu Benmin are both from Pingjiang, Hunan, and they are from their own family. Therefore, the Pingjiang Workers' and Peasants' Volunteer Brigade joined forces with the guard regiment and stayed in Xiushui to wait for instructions from their superiors. They also made contact with the Liuyang Workers' and Peasants' Volunteer Brigade stationed in the nearby town of Tonggu County, and they added another force.
In order to feed the nearly 3,000 people of these teams, several leaders, after discussion, decided to pretend to be zhu Peide, commander-in-chief of the 5th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army and chairman of Jiangxi Province, and then wait for the opportunity.
After negotiations with Zhu Peide's department, it was agreed that the guard regiment and the Liuyang and Pingjiang peasant armies would be merged and renamed the "1st Division of the Jiangxi Provincial Defense Army", with Yu Shandu as the commander of the division and Yu Benmin as the deputy division commander. After receiving the military salaries and materials allocated by Zhu Peide, this unit solved the problem of eating and successively incorporated Qiu Guoxuan's department, Chongyang and Tongcheng Peasants' Self-Defense Army, and some other scattered workers and peasants.
On the eve of the autumn harvest uprising on the Border of Xianggan and Gansu, the "1st Division of the Jiangxi Provincial Defense Army" led by Yu Shandu and Yu Benmin also received instructions from their superiors to launch a separate attack on the provincial capital Changsha. On the way in, he met Lu Deming, who had returned from Wuhan. It turned out that after Lu Deming and the other three arrived in Wuhan, they found the main leader of the party who remained in Wuhan at that time and reported the situation to the police. After asking the CPC Central Committee for instructions, Xiang Jianyu rejected Xia Xi's opinion and conveyed the instructions of the "Eighty-Seven Conference" of the CPC Central Committee, asking them to return to their original troops and participate in the autumn harvest uprising led by Chairman Mao and others.
The central authorities also appointed Lu Deming as the commander-in-chief of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Han Jun as the deputy commander-in-chief, and Xin Huanwen as the political instructor, and was uniformly responsible for the military work of the uprising. As a result, 3 people were attacked by the vigilante group, Xin Huanwen was killed, Han Jun was captured, and only Lu Deming escaped alone.
Under the unified leadership of Chairman Mao, secretary of the Committee of Former Enemies of the Uprising, the various insurrectionary units were uniformly reorganized into the 1st Division of the 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, with about 6,000 people, with the commander-in-chief Lu Deming, Yu Shandu as the division commander, and Yu Benmin as the deputy division commander.
The commander-in-chief Lu Deming died before going to Jinggangshan, and the division commander Yu Shandu immediately betrayed the revolution and defected to Chiang Kai-shek's clique.
Yu was loyal to the revolution and followed Chairman Mao until the last moment of his life.
Yu Benmin was not only the deputy commander of the 1st Division of the 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, but also a member of the Committee of Former Enemies of the Autumn Harvest Uprising.
Among Yu Benmin's men at that time, the warriors were like clouds! There were the later founding marshals Luo Ronghuan, the founding general Tan Zheng, the founding generals Zhang Zongxun, Song Renqian, Chen Bojun, Huang Yongsheng, Chen Shiyu, the founding lieutenant generals Tan Xilin and Zhang Lingbin, as well as zhang Ziqing, Wan Xixian, Wang Liang, Xu Yangang, Deng Ping, Xun Huaizhou and other martyrs who died during the Red Army period.
Yu Benmin, who is 5 years older than Chairman Mao, has deep revolutionary qualifications. Graduated from the Hunan Military Academy, he participated in the Xinhai Revolution, was wounded in the battle to conquer Wuchang, and soon retired to his hometown to serve as the president of the Pingjiang County Farmers' Association.
In the spring of 1922, Yu Benmin went to Qingshuitang in Changsha and secretly participated in a short-term training course held by the Xiang District Committee of the CPC under the leadership of Chairman Mao and joined the Communist Party of China. The person who introduced him to the party was Chairman Mao.
In 1926, on the recommendation of the Pingjiang County Committee of the Communist Party of China, Yu Benmin went to Guangdong to participate in the Sixth Peasant Movement Training Institute. It was Chairman Mao who presided over the work of this seminar.
Therefore, Yu Benmin has always said that he is a student of Chairman Mao.
When the Autumn Harvest Uprising broke out on September 9, 1927, the 1st Division and the 1st Regiment of the 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, under the leadership of Lu Deming, Yu Shandu and Yu Benmin, marched from Xiushui to Pingjiang. Unexpectedly, Qiu Guoxuan, commander of the 4th Regiment of the 1st Division of the 1st Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, defected to the enemy, turned against each other, and secretly attacked the rebel troops.
Yu Immediately rushed to the site of the incident, collected the scattered troops and moved them to the Golden Cave.
At that time, the main force of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had already shifted to Liuyang, and Yu Benmin led his troops to move closer to the main force day and night with firm revolutionary conviction.
Therefore, at the meeting of the front committee held in Wenjia City, Liuyang, Yu Benmin was absent. This meeting, after fierce struggle, finally adopted Chairman Mao's proposition of transferring the revolutionary forces to the countryside.
On the fourth day after the Wenjia City Conference, Lu Deming, the commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, died heroically, causing Chairman Mao to lose an important supporter.
Just when Chairman Mao was isolated and helpless, Yu Benmin led the collected men and horses to arrive. With the support of Yu Benmin and others, Chairman Mao gradually mastered this revolutionary contingent and achieved the goal of transferring revolutionary forces to the countryside.
According to General Zhang Lingbin, the founding lieutenant general who participated in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Yu Benmin's prestige was very high, and the commanders and fighters affectionately called him "Ben Lao".
After the autumn harvest rebel troops went up the mountain, logistical support became a major problem. After some deliberation, Chairman Mao decided to let Yu Benmin take on this heavy burden and prepare to build a quilt factory.
At that time, there were no necessary conditions such as plant, personnel, equipment, and funds required to run a factory. But Yu Benmin had to build the factory.
After the first batch of military uniforms left the factory, Yang Lisan, director of the Left Guard Office, knew that Yu Benmin had severe rheumatoid arthritis, so he took out a set of military uniforms for Yu Ben to use, but Yu Benmin refused, saying that it was better to meet the needs of the comrades in the front first, and my difficulty was nothing.
Later, Yu served as a member of the CPC Xianggan Border Special Committee, the finance minister of the Xianggan Border Workers' and Peasants' And Soldiers' Soviet Government, and the military minister of the Xiang'e-Gansu Provincial Committee of the CPC. In December 1932, the Kuomintang army dispatched 1 division to attack the Xiaoyuan area of Wanzai County, Jiangxi Province, where the Xiang'egan Provincial Party Committee was located.
In order to cover the transfer of the Xiang'e-Gan Provincial Party Committee to Liuyang, Yu Benmin faced the enemy head-on, was wounded in the battle, and unfortunately died on April 9, 1933 at the Xiaoyuan Red Army Hospital in Wanzai County, at the age of 45 due to the failure to be treated in time. (Liu Jixing)