My grandfather, General Lee, founded the Red Fourteenth Army

In the autumn of 1929, the provincial party committee decided to set up the party's Tonghai Special Zone Committee, appointing Comrade Li Overtime as secretary, and Comrades He Kun (Li Weisen), Wang Yuwen, Zhang Xin (Wu Xiren), Lu Ke, Shi Jun (also known as Li Yeping, Liu Ruilong), and Gu Chenxian as members.

The official announcement of the establishment of the Red Fourteenth Army was on May 1, 1930, and the Decision of the Party Central Committee to establish the Red Fourteenth Army in northern Jiangsu was as early as the winter of 1929.

In the winter of 1929, the provincial party committee held the second provincial congress of the party, at which the work in the Tonghai area was inspected.

On January 20, 1930, the Provincial Party Committee issued a directive in response to the situation at that time, pointing out: "Although Jiangsu is the center of imperialist and Kuomintang rule, it is not easy for the vast number of Red Army to concentrate in one place at present, but under the current situation of development of rural struggle, it is undoubtedly possible and necessary for the Red Army to carry out guerrilla warfare in the form of guerrillas and under centralized command. ”

In February, the Tonghai Regional Special Committee held a joint meeting of county party secretaries to discuss the political situation and work line in the Tonghai area in accordance with the resolutions and instructions of the party's second provincial congress. The joint meeting drew up an outline of guerrilla warfare operations and made arrangements for guerrilla operations in the counties. The outline of action proposes that the following preparatory work should be made first: (1) Convene mass meetings, launch the spring famine struggle, set up peasant self-defense forces and guerrilla units, and organize the general headquarters of the Tonghai region. (ii) To strengthen work in the enemy's army, it is necessary to organize the clues everywhere and launch mutinies. (3) Strengthen the work of peasants along the roads on the outskirts of urban factories. (iv) Work among automobile workers. (5) Expand publicity activities. (6) Investigate the military strength of the reactionaries. (7) Set up traffic stations. (8) Strengthen reconnaissance work, organize special action teams, and sabotage enemy transportation.

In the winter of 1929, the Party Central Committee decided to establish the Fourteenth Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in northern Jiangsu. The provincial party committee has successively sent a large number of cadres, including He Kun (Li Weisen), Xu De, Huang Huoqing, and Li Huasheng, to the Tonghai area to strengthen the work of the troops. He Kun was appointed commander of the Red Fourteenth Army, Li Overtime and political commissar of the Red Fourteenth Army, Xue Hengjian as chief of staff, Yu Naicheng as director of the military political department, and Xu De and Huang Huoqing as military commissioners.

After the establishment of the Red Fourteenth Army, the guerrilla armed forces of the Red Army throughout tonghai were unified. The First Brigade of the Red Army in Nantong was organized into the first detachment and appointed Liu Tingjie as the detachment leader; later renamed the Second Division, Qin Chao was appointed as the division commander, and Chen Xuesheng was appointed as the director of the political department. Shen Jianzhong, Tang Chuyun, Chen Zhongheng, and Yu Haiqing respectively served as the leaders of each brigade. The Red Army brigade on the Rutai side was organized into the second detachment, which was later reorganized into the First Division, with He Kun concurrently serving as the division commander and Li Shizhong as the political commissar. Zhang Aiping, He Yang, Xu Kun, Cao Yubin (Zheng Wenlin), and Shen Cheng respectively served as the leaders of each brigade (battalion). On April 16, 1930 (the eighteenth day of the third lunar month), three brigades of the second detachment of the Red Fourteenth Army, plus the Red Guards and tens of thousands of people who came to support them, attacked Laohuzhuang, an important stronghold southwest of Rugao, in three ways. Commander He Kun died heroically in this attack. Comrade He Kun is a native of Hunan and graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy. After Chiang Kai-shek's rebellion, He Kun did revolutionary work in Shanghai. In the winter of 1929, after being ordered to the Tonghai area, he made great contributions to the construction of the Red Fourteenth Army.

After the death of Comrade He Kun, the provincial party committee appointed Li Overtime, secretary of the Tonghai District Special Committee, as the commander of the Red Fourteenth Army and the Reform Committee, and Shi Jun as the secretary of the Tonghai District Special Committee. Comrade Li Overtime, formerly known as Zhenhua, is a native of Bayiji, Pi County, Jiangsu Province, and a student of Xuzhou Normal School. He joined the Party in 1926 and went to wuhan military academy to study. In the summer of 1927, Comrade Li Overtime returned to Pi County as the secretary of the county party committee and the chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions. Working together were comrades Xie Mutang, Song Yuanpei (Song Qiyun), Xu Lifang, Shi Dejun and other comrades. In the winter of 1927, the provincial party committee transferred Comrade Li Overtime to be the secretary of the Donghai Central County Party Committee. In 1929, he was transferred to the work of the Hai Special Committee. After the defeat of the Red Fourteenth Army. Li overtime transferred to the provincial party committee. In June 1931, he was instructed by the provincial party committee to inspect the Xuhai Beng Special Zone, but unfortunately was arrested at Zhenjiang East Station. Comrade Li Chaoshi was severely tortured in the enemy's prison, but he still adhered to revolutionary integrity and was always heroic and indomitable. Ye Chuling, governor of Jiangsu Province of the Kuomintang, tried in vain to induce him to surrender, but was severely reprimanded by Comrade Li Overtime. After all kinds of means, the enemy set out to kill Comrade Li Overtime. A few days before the uprising, Comrade Li Chaoshi knew that the enemy was going to kill him, and once said to the comrades in the same prison: "We have sacrificed, the work in Jiangbei will not be completed, and the fire of the revolution cannot be extinguished." "On September 19 (the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth lunar month), Comrade Li Overtime bravely took up his righteousness at the Gushan Execution Ground in the north of Zhenjiang. Before his execution, Comrade Li Overtime bid farewell to his friends and said, "The Communist Party will definitely win" and "those who are alive must struggle!" Along the way, he shouted "Long live the Communist Party" and "Down with the Kuomintang!" "Avenge the martyrs!" " and other slogans.

The many struggles proclaimed and carried out by the Red Fourteenth Army made the enemy very alarmed, saying that Tonghai was "only one day's journey away from Nanjing, which was really a disaster for Kisuke", and asked Chiang Kai-shek to send heavy troops to "clear and suppress". With the victorious development of the military struggle, the mass work in the guerrilla areas also began rapidly, and the Red Guards grew to fifty thousand men, and in addition to fighting with the Red Army, they also assisted in the formation of village soviets. From the second half of 1929 to the first half of 1930, the domestic situation took place in favour of the revolution. Contradictions among the enemy deepened, and new warlord melee wars broke out. The development of the Red Army and revolutionary base areas throughout the country has accelerated. There has been a certain degree of recovery in the organization and work of the Party in the White Zone. There have been new developments in the people's revolutionary struggle and armed guerrilla movement in the Tonghai Rutai area.

Note: Liu Ruilong, former adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture and member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, is a former comrade-in-arms of Li Overtime Martyr. This is a piece of his remembrance of the martyr Li Overtime in his book "Remembering the Red Fourteenth Army" written in 1980.