During the period of the agrarian revolutionary war, many young generals with both civilian and military skills emerged in our army.
It is a pity that they fought for the establishment of new China, died young or sacrificed, and failed to see the day of the victory of the revolution.
Xu Yangang, former commander of the Red Army, was one of them.
One afternoon in 1950, the town under Yunju Mountain in Yongxiu County was bustling with activity. Huang Ji grocery store has been open here for nearly 10 years, and the business is very good.
The owner of the grocery store is called Huang Shengbin, who is quite low-key, and gets along well with the neighbors, all day long for the grocery store before and after busy, when there are many people, will hire a guy, usually a person busy at the counter.
Suddenly, several police officers entered the grocery store and asked him directly, "Are you Huang Shengbin?" ”
Huang Shengbin was startled, extremely nervous, and said with some trembling: "I am, what are you looking for me for?" The public security officer showed him the arrest warrant, Huang Shengbin sat on the ground with a soft leg, and the police directly put him on the car.
So why did the police arrest him? The incident goes back to a bloody case 15 years ago when a senior commander of our army was killed.
On this day, Huang Shengbin passed by the door of a house in the same village and suddenly saw two warrior-like people in the courtyard sitting in the courtyard holding the wounded.
Huang Shengbin hid in the shadows and looked into the courtyard carefully, the wounded were pinned with guns and carrying a pocket, and from the corners of the inside, it was faintly clear that it contained silver dollars.
He suddenly thought of a notice recently posted in the town: "The commander of the Red 16th Division, the reward for those who are captured in the province is 20,000 yuan, and the reward for those who cut the first level is 10,000 yuan." ”
Because there had just been a war nearby, there were often Red Army wounded in his hometown, and looking at the wounded man with a pistol pinned around his waist, he felt that this should be a big leader of the Red Army, and it was not sure that it was the division commander who offered a reward.
He observed for several days in succession, inquired from many sources, and finally determined that he was Xu Yangang, the commander of the Red 16th Division.
Huang Shengbin thought about the huge reward and suddenly had evil thoughts. A few days later, he contacted his brother and brother, and taking advantage of the opportunity that the three Red Soldiers came to their hometown to beg for food, he blackmailed Xu Yangang and hacked him to death with an axe.
Two other Red Army soldiers, one hygienist and one guard, were also killed and the guards were taken away by the township regiment that had rushed to them.
The three Huang Shengbin brothers found the Kuomintang and offered Xu Yangang's first rank, thinking that they would receive 100 million yuan, but the Kuomintang only gave them 300 yuan. Despite this, this is already a lot of money, and after the brothers and sisters have divided the booty, they all fled the village and came to Zhukeng Village to live a happy life.
Huang Shengbin opened the grocery store in the town until he was arrested after the founding of the People's Republic of China. At this time, his brother and brother were already dead, and he was the only one who was punished by the law, which was also the best consolation for the martyrs who sacrificed.
Xu Yangang, a native of Kaijiang, Sichuan, graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy, and went to Jinggangshan after participating in the Autumn Harvest Uprising in his early years. During the period of the agrarian revolution, Xu Yangang showed super military ability and became one of the important generals of our party and our army in the early days.
After the party Central Committee received the news of Xu Yangang's death, Chairman Mao, Zhu De, and other leaders were extremely saddened and regretted the loss of this senior general in our army. Just a few years after his sacrifice, important leaders of our party and our army still remember him and evaluate his sacrifice.
In 1937, Mr. Zhu wrote bitterly: "Comrade Yan Gang's sacrifice is not only a great loss for the party, but also a major loss for the Chinese revolution, but the spirit is not dead, leaving a glorious page in the history of the Chinese revolution." ”
In the winter of 1939, when Zhou Enlai met with Qin Hualong in Moscow, he said: "Xu Yangang is a good comrade, a shrewd and capable senior commander of our army, he died too early, you should write some articles to commemorate him!" ”
The evaluation of Xu Yangang by these two important figures is enough to explain Xu Yan's position in the Red Army at that time.
If only the evaluation of two important figures was to evaluate his merits. Then, if you carefully comb through his position, you will find his position in the military at that time.
Xu Yangang was the chief of staff of the Red First Army, and everyone knows that the leader of the Red First Army is Lin Biao, and the political commissar is Nie Rongzhen, both of whom later became marshals of the republic.
Later, after he left the post of chief of staff of the Red I Corps, he was replaced by Zuo Quan. After the victory of the Long March, Zuo Quan went to northern Shaanxi and served as deputy chief of general staff of the Eighth Route Army, which was also the highest level of general sacrificed by our army during the Anti-Japanese War.
From this point, it can be seen that Xu Yangang was already one of the senior commanders of our army at that time, and if he did not sacrifice, he might have been a marshal and general-level figure when he was awarded the title in 55 years.
Xu Yangang was the commander of the Red Army.
This Red Third Army was established in southwest Jiangxi. It is worth mentioning that after several reorganizations, the Red Army has experienced a total of three commanders, and several military commanders are well-known, one is Huang Gongluo, one is Zhou Zikun, and the other is Xu Yangang.
Xu Yangang was a very important general of Mao Zedong. As already introduced, after graduating from the Wuhan branch of the Whampoa Military Academy, he participated in the August 1 Nanchang Uprising.
Later, he participated in the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong with the troops, and with Mao Zedong went up jinggang mountain, became a military general relied on by Chairman Mao, and later served as the commander of the Red Ninth Division.
In October 1933, in front of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet, Xu Yangang was received by Chairman Mao as one of the members of the working group sent by the Central Bureau of the Soviet Union to strengthen the leadership of Xiang'egan Province.
Chairman Mao shook Xu Yangang's hand and said to him, "You, the little ghost of Xu in the autumn harvest uprising, the Baby of Sichuan, are now twenty-five or six years old, right?"
Xu Yangang replied: "Yes, yes, Chairman, I am a native of Kaijiang, Sichuan, and I am 26 years old this year. ”
At this time, the staff member next to him interjected: "He was originally the chief of staff of the Red First Army." He was made the commander of the Second Division of the First Army. ”
Mao Zedong then said, "Hey, I know this very well! ”
After speaking, he looked at Xu Yangang again and said to him: "You and the comrades in other districts have held important posts, so the central authorities have sent you to work in Xiang'egan. You must conscientiously sum up the lessons learned, consolidate Soviet power, smash the enemy's 'encirclement and suppression', expand the base areas, and strive to be connected with the Central Soviet Zone. It can be seen from this that Chairman Mao is very familiar with Xu Yangang and has often thought of Xu Yangang at critical times.
As everyone knows, Mao Zedong's first ascension to Jinggangshan was very difficult; there was no mass base, and there were several armed forces fighting for themselves, so how to lay a good mass foundation and unite the armed forces of all factions is an urgent task.
Chairman Mao was able to take root and gain a firm foothold in Jinggangshan later, and a very important measure was to unite all forces that could be united.
At that time, Yuan Wencai was the most famous in his armed forces on Jinggang Mountain, and in order to unite this force and truly transform them into a revolutionary force of workers and peasants, Mao Zedong thought of many ways.
The first method was to send outstanding military cadres to Yuan Wencai's troops for reorganization and training, and the first person Chairman Mao thought of was Xu Yangang.
In the end, Chairman Mao made a decision, and Xu Yangang, You Xuecheng, Chen Bojun, and Jin Mengxiu went to Yuan Wencai's department. Before leaving, Chairman Mao found Xu Yangang again in an ancestral hall and personally confessed to him: "When you go there, you must cooperate well with others, do a good job in relations with the troops, pay attention to understanding the local situation, mobilize the masses, and spread the truth of the revolution." ”
Xu Yangang lived up to his heavy trust and brilliantly fulfilled the tasks entrusted by Chairman Mao, and later this unit was reorganized into the 32nd Regiment of the Red Fourth Army, with him as the regiment's chief of staff.
During Xu Yangang's stay at Jinggangshan, he fought many famous battles. The Battle of Longyuankou, also known as the "Battle of Qixikou", was fought by the Red Fourth Army with weak troops against five enemy regiments.
Just when the two armies were at odds with each other, it was Xu Yangang, then chief of staff of the 32nd Regiment, who led people to destroy the enemy's command center in one fell swoop, so that the enemy lost its command and made a messy regiment, and Zhu De and Mao Zedong quickly commanded the troops to attack in an all-round way.
In the end, it achieved the brilliant result of annihilating one regiment of the enemy and destroying two regiments. Since then, Jinggangshan has entered its heyday, and the base area has suddenly expanded to the three counties of Ninggang, Yongxin, and Lianhua, as well as a small part of other counties.
Soon after, the famous Huangyang Boundary Defense War began. In this battle, even Chairman Mao said that Xu Yangang fought the most brilliantly, he commanded three battalions, fought with four regiments of the enemy, fought the enemy to retreat that night, and finally won the victory in the battle to defend the Huangyang Boundary. After Mao Zedong heard of the victory in this battle, he improvised the poem "Xijiangyue Jinggangshan":
The flag is in sight at the bottom of the mountain, and the drums and horns at the top of the mountain are heard. The enemy is besieged by thousands of weights, I stood still. Barriers have long been tightened, More united. The cannons on the Yellow Ocean Realm roared, Report on the enemy's night recesses.
It is worth mentioning that in January 1933, Xu Yangang, who had already been promoted to chief of staff of the Red First Army, made immortal meritorious achievements in several anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations.
Among them, under his command, he once captured three division commanders of the enemy, namely Chen Shiji, commander of the 59th Division, Xiao Qian, commander of the 11th Division, and Li Ming, commander of the 52nd Division. It can be seen that his battle achievements are by no means ordinary.
In early July 1935, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized more than 100,000 heavy troops to besiege the Soviet area again, and Xu Yangang's 16th Division, with a total of more than 5,000 people, fought fiercely with four enemy divisions for nearly 3 months and was trapped in the area of Egong Mountain.
In the end, there was no jump out of the encirclement, and the breakthrough could only be dispersed on the spot. In the process of breaking through, Xu Yangang was seriously injured and could no longer insist on fighting.
On this day, he weakly handed over the work of the troops to the political commissar, and then withdrew to Yunju Mountain in Yongxiu County with a platoon to recuperate.
Chen Ji, the commander-in-chief of the Xiang'egan "bandit suppression", soon learned of Xu Yangang's serious injury, and he issued a wanted warrant, if anyone can catch the commander of the 16th Division, catch and reward 20,000 silver dollars alive, and raise his head to reward 10,000 silver dollars. On this basis, he sent several search and arrest teams every day to search for officers and men of the Red Army in the mountains and post Xu Yangang's head everywhere.
Because the enemy blockaded all this area, Xu Yangang, who was recuperating, could not supply supplies and medicines, so the troops had to go down the mountain from time to time to contact their fellow villagers and purchase some food and medicine. Unexpectedly, he was found and killed by Huang Shengbin, a gangster with an improper heart.
It is really sad and regrettable that the senior commander of our army did not die on the battlefield, but was killed by gangsters.
Fortunately, after the founding of New China, the party and the people did not severely punish Xu Yangang's murderer, but have been pursuing this case, and finally Arrested and executed Huang Shengbin, giving the hero an explanation and also giving the people an explanation.