In August 1947, Su Yu and Chen Geng attracted attention because of their outstanding performance.
**, who was the leader of the East China Field Army at the time, mentioned in a telegram to the chairman: There have not been many creative military strategists in our army over the years, and Su Yu and Chen Geng, who have stood out, have a great future and are expected to march forward side by side with Peng, Liu, Lin and others.
*The three "Peng, Liu, and Lin" mentioned are the number one military officer of Xiye***Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan***, and the commander-in-chief of the Northeast Democratic Alliance**. These three famous generals are the commanders of the strategic zones that our army is most capable of.
In the opinion of **, Peng, Liu, and Lin proved the gold content of "military strategists" as early as the agrarian revolution and the Anti-Japanese War. However, our army has not had more rising stars for a long time, and in the first year of the Liberation War, the appearance of Su Yu and Chen Geng was a huge gain.
A week later, more than 120,000 people from Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan leaped thousands of miles into Dabie Mountain in accordance with the chairman's strategic intention. Su Yu and Chen Geng also led the two "wingmen" Chen Su Group and Chen Xie Group to fight together, and cooperated with Liu Deng's three armies to pass through the Central Plains.
However, when Su Yu and Peng Liulin were neck and neck step by step, Chen Geng fell behind halfway.
Su Yu was 4 years younger than Chen Geng, and he participated in the revolution later than Chen Geng.
Su Yu's military career began in August 1927 during the Nanchang Uprising, when he was just a guard squad leader. At this time, Chen Geng was already a battalion commander, and his military career had been 11 years since he joined the Hunan Army at the age of 13.
Su Yu, who graduated from the normal school, was not born in a professional class, and has been unknown since the Nanchang Uprising.
Chen Geng, who is also from Hunan, was not only born in a Hunan military family, but also one of the "three heroes" of the first phase of the Huangpu Military Academy, and was an active member during the school. During the Eastern Crusade, he also carried Principal Jiang out of danger in the rain of bullets, which can be regarded as "meritorious rescue".
It is precisely because of the different starting points that Su Yu's popularity during the agrarian revolution was far less than that of Chen Geng
After Su Yu struggled from squad leader to division commander, he fell into a bottleneck, lingered for many years, served as the chief of staff of the corps, and did not rise to a platform where he could display his talents. Chen Geng became the regiment commander from Shanghai Special Branch to Hubei, Henan and Anhui, and was later promoted to division commander and chief of staff of the Red Fourth.
During the Anti-Japanese War, Su Yu did not have a good reputation as Chen Geng of Taihang Mountain.
Su Yu served as the deputy commander and division commander of the New Fourth Army, and mainly fought in the Soviet-Central region. Chen Geng served as a brigade commander in the Eighth Route Army, half a level higher than Su Yu. On the battlefield behind enemy lines, Su Yu's record cannot be compared with Chen Geng, who was "single-handed" with the Japanese army in Taihang Mountain.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, after the strategic contraction of our army, eight relatively large "tuotuos" were formed
The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region under the command of General Peng, the Jinsui District operated by the 120th Division of General He, the Jinchaji District operated by Nie Shuai, the Shanxi-Hebei-Luyu District operated by Liu, Xu Ershuai and the 129th Division, the Northeast District newly opened up by Lin and Luo Ershuai, the Shandong District under the command of **, the Central China District operated by Su Yu and **, and the Central Plains District led by Comrade Xiannian.
The enemy besieged the Central Plains, marking the full-scale outbreak of the Liberation War. Except for the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region in the rear, the remaining seven strategic regions were all involved in the war. After several months of hand-to-hand combat between the two sides, the seven theaters of war have won and lost each other
In the Central Plains, Liu Zhi hit Comrade Xiannian hard;Su Zhong, Su Yu defeated Li Mo'an;Shandong, ** and the Guizhou 7th Army fought into a "bull to the horn";Jin Ji Lu Yu, ** defeated Zhao Xitian;In Jinnan, Chen Geng defeated Huang Zhengcheng;Jinchaji, Fu Zuoyi defeated the Nie and He coalition forces.
In the Northeast Battlefield, Mr. Lin was once chased by Du Yuming to Harbin in North Manchuria.
Throughout the first year of the Liberation War, except for Su Yu's Huaye and Liu Deng's Shanxi-Hebei-Lu-Henan Field Army, the rest of the major strategic areas were unsatisfactory. The reason for this is that except for Mr. Lin's unadaptability to the water and soil in the Northeast, the rest of the major strategic areas have not played a radiant main general for the time being.
In the first year of the Liberation War, Su Yu and Chen Geng's performance was very eye-catching.
Su Yu commanded the Central China Field Army to win seven battles and seven victories, and defeated more than 50,000 people in the first phase of Huangpu Li Mo'an with a weak victory. At the time of repeated invincibility with the Shandong Field Army, he commanded the merged Huaye, and successively created a record of destroying the enemy's rapid column, Li Xianzhou Group, and the entire 74th Division in Lunan, Laiwu, Menglianggu and other areas.
Chen Geng's Taiyue Column, which was far away from the main force of the Shanxi-Hebei-Luyu Field Army, performed remarkably.
In Linfu, Chen Geng defeated Hu Zongnan's descendant of Hu Zongnan's "No. 1 Brigade in the World" in the first phase of Huangpu, and captured alive Huang Zhengcheng, a lieutenant general and brigade commander who graduated from the Japanese Non-commissioned Officer School, the German Artillery School, and the Whampoa Military Academy.
This year, Chen Geng liberated a total of 22 county towns in southern Jinnan, and Hu Zongnan was disgraced.
When the strategy of the three armed forces was developing with the shape of "product" as each other's horns and passing through the Central Plains, Chen Geng and Su Yu worked together with Liu Deng's army and the enemy army on the southern front to become a strategic force in charge of the army, and there was a great tendency to march side by side with Peng, Liu, and Lin.
However, with the deepening of the Liberation War, Su Yu, as the military commander of Huaye, commanded hundreds of thousands of troops to sweep through the southeast, truly realizing the prophecy of the first. And Chen Geng, another military strategist who has high hopes, is a little "high and low".
During the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Geng (left), commander of the 386 Brigade, and Zhou Xihan (right), chief of staff of the brigade, took a group photo after the battle
Chen Geng's military career was not lost to Su Yu at the beginning and mid-game, why did he "fall behind" later?
Some people believe that Su Yu was a military wizard and war expert, and he always focused on fighting a war, so even though he was unknown during the Red Army period, he eventually wore through the water, accumulated a lot of experience in the War of Liberation, and suddenly emerged from a new army, realizing a qualitative change and leap from guerrilla warfare and positional warfare to the command of a large corps.
The all-round "generalist" Chen Geng is a high-achieving student in Huangpu, an expert in explosives and intelligence, and later one of the founders of the military academy.
Some people also believe that in the middle of the Liberation War, Chen Geng made two mistakes, which affected the next level.
The first command mistake was the Battle of the Mountains at the end of 1947.
At this time, Liu Deng's army of 120,000 horses was surrounded by the "Little Zhuge " Bai Chongxi's heavy troops, and fell into a predicament, in order to understand the siege of Dabie Mountain, under the strict order of the chairman, Chen Xie Group and Huaye Chen Tang Corps annihilated nearly 10,000 enemies on Pinghan Road, and besieged Queshan County while the iron was hot, trying to force some of Bai Chongxi's men and horses to evacuate Dabie Mountain.
However, because Chen Geng was not very familiar with the two columns of Huaye, coupled with poor communication, the battle to besiege the 20th Division of the Qushanchuan Army was abandoned halfway, and he was forced to withdraw under the condition of reinforcing the enemy's large-scale pressure, and did not give Liu Deng a strong response.
In May 1948, Chen Geng missed another good opportunity to annihilate the enemy.
This time, the newly established Nakano took advantage of the opportunity of Huaye's main force in eastern Henan to annihilate the enemy and launched the Wandong Campaign. Subsequently, **let *** command and 6 columns feint to attack the mountain to attract Hu Lian's 18th Army;Let Chen Geng command the 10th Column of Huaye and the 28th Brigade of Tongbai to wait for an opportunity to encircle and annihilate Zhang Zhen's corps east of Nanyang.
Under Bai Chongxi's strict order, more than 50,000 people of Zhang Zhen's corps really rushed to the aid of Queshan, everything was as expected, on the evening of May 29, Chen Geng completely twisted Zhang Zhen, and ** 3 columns also rushed to prepare to collect the net to catch this "big fish".
However, Chen Geng underestimated the cunning side of Zhang Zhen, the turtle in the urn, and this person made a false shot, and before Liu Deng's army collected the net, he swam out of the encirclement like a loach and retreated to Nanyang. At the summary meeting, he rarely criticized Chen Geng for being careless and afraid of the appearance of the troops, thus losing the direction of the campaign.
After the Huaihai Campaign began, Su Yu was one of the five general front committees and the commander of the 450,000 troops of the 16 main columns of HuayeAnd Chen Geng is one of the three major groups that encircled and annihilated Huang Wei's 12th Corps, and only the Vertical and Henan-Anhui Soviet Independent Brigades under his command were only more than 60,000 people, but 70% of Huang Wei's corps was annihilated.
Realistically speaking, Chen Geng's "falling behind" is the result of the comprehensive influence of various factors.
First of all, Chen Geng's corps did not always fight independently like ***.
In the later stage of the Anti-Japanese War and the early stage of the Liberation War, the chairman once directly commanded Chen Geng's corps in Yan'an, but in the middle and late stages, due to the excessive consumption of the main force of the Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan field armies, he returned to Liu Deng's command and did not fight independently like Xu Shuai.
Secondly, the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army and Shanxi, Hebei, Luyu, and Henan are not short of generals.
Liu Shuai is highly respected, Xu Shuai has great military achievements, Wang Shusheng is also a representative of the Red Fourth Front Army, and Comrade Xiannian, the founder of the 5th Division of the New Fourth Army, can also be literate and martial. Even Deng Gong, Teng Daiyuan and others, who are mainly political workers, are also above Chen Geng's qualifications.
In the end, Chen Geng spent many years in the white area during the Red Army period and lost the opportunity to stand.
On March 16, 1961, Senior General Chen Geng died young at the age of 58. If the general can live a long life, he should write more legends].
If Chen Geng had always been on the front line like Su Yu after the Nanchang Uprising, perhaps the speed and space for promotion would have been greater. If it weren't for the two serious leg injuries, which caused General Chen Geng's body to be seriously damaged, perhaps after the founding of the People's Republic of China, with a higher emotional intelligence than Su Yu, there would still be great room for improvement.
In any case, as the fourth-ranked founding general, Chen Geng's life was a great killing, defeating the Japanese army, the French army, and the United States and South Korea and other 16-nation coalition forces, with great achievements and fame in history. His charisma and heroic temperament, like his legendary exploits, are admired by the people.