At the end of January 1935, the Red Fourth Front Army, which had just won the victory of the "Anti-Six-Way Siege", was faced with the "Sichuan-Shaanxi Meeting" of more than 200 regiments of the Sichuan Army and the ** Army assembled by Chiang Kai-shek.
In order to break the encirclement and suppression and open up new base areas, the Red Fourth Front Army held a meeting in Bazhong, formulated a strategic policy for developing Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu, and decided to focus the breakthrough on Gannan, eliminate the isolated southern part of Huzong, and establish a Sichuan-Shaanxi-Gansu base area.
Thus, the Battle of Guangzhao began. The Red Fourth Front Army launched an attack on Guangyuan and Zhaohua on the Sichuan-Shaanxi-Gansu border, but the enemy troops in Guangyuan and Zhaohua stubbornly resisted despite the danger, and the two sides fought fiercely for several days and could not hold each other.
At this time, the ** Red Army, which was on a long march along the Sichuan-Yunnan-Guizhou border, was surrounded and intercepted by the enemy's 400,000 heavy soldiers, shuttling back and forth in the enemy's encirclement, crossing the Chishui River four times, and the situation was extremely critical. As a result, the Communist Party of China and the Central Revolutionary Military Commission ordered the Red Fourth Front Army to assemble troops, force the Jialing River as soon as possible, attack westward, attract the enemy, and respond to the Red Army's northward movement.
The Red Fourth Front Army held an emergency meeting in Wangcang and decided to resolutely implement the instructions of the ** Military Commission: the main force quickly moved westward, preparing to break through the Jialing River line of the Sichuan Army, move west to the north, and expand to the Shaanxi-Gansu border. Pin down the enemy and cooperate with the ** Red Army to go north.
The Battle of Jialing River is about to break out!
However, at this moment, it was difficult for the Red Army to force the crossing of the Jialing River, because there was not a single bridge over the Jialing River, where the Red Army was preparing to advance westward, and there was not a single boat.
1. Natural Insurance. Thousands of miles of Jialing River from the Qinling Mountains rolling east, the water is deep and rapid. In the section from Guangyuan and Zhaohua Cangxi to Langzhong, where the Red Army crossed to the west, the river was 200,300 meters wide, and there was not a single bridge. The enemy, sensing the Red Army's intentions, seized all the ships along the coast, hijacked some of them to the west bank, and burned most of them. They want to make the Red Army look at the river and sigh, and it will be difficult to move an inch.
Moreover, in order to prevent the Red Army from advancing westward, Tian Songyao and Deng Xihou of the Sichuan Army had been working hard along the Jialing River for a long time, and in order to prevent the Red Army from crossing westward, they built a large number of pillboxes and fortifications along the river, and densely packed fire nets. Only on the 200 miles of defense line from Zhaohua to Ningqiang, there are more than 200 pillboxes, almost ten steps and one sentry, one mile and one fort, and they are ready to fight.
The Sichuan army was also full of traps and set up traps at important ferries and beachheads, and even if the Red Army was lucky enough to cross the river, it would be dangerous and difficult to move an inch.
The river is surging with no bridges and no boats, many pillboxes, heavily guarded and full of traps. The defense of the Jialing River, which is hundreds of miles long, seems to have become an insurmountable natural danger in front of the Red Army.
But the enemy clearly underestimated the courage and wisdom of the Red Army. The Red Fourth Front Army entered Sichuan from Hubei, Henan, and Anhui for thousands of miles, overcoming obstacles and obstacles along the way, and taking countless adventures. The Jialing River is destined to be unable to stop the heroic Red Army.
After studying, the General Headquarters of the Red Fourth Front Army decided to first use the assault troops to force the attack by boat, seize the beachhead, and then quickly cover the passage of the follow-up troops by bridge.
Boats and bridges became the key to the Red Army's forced crossing of the Jialing River.
There were no ships, no bridges, the Red Army decided to build it itself!
2. Shipbuilding. The General Headquarters of the Red Fourth Front Army handed over the task of shipbuilding to the political commissar of the 30th Army, who was born as a carpenter, and after careful investigation, he chose the location of the shipbuilding at Cangxi Wangdu, which is about 40 kilometers away from the Tazishan ferry. The mountains here are dense and dense, easy to hide, and easy to take local materials, and this area has always been a gathering place for boatmen on the Jialing River, with traditional craftsmanship and exquisite technology for shipbuilding.
** A group of local shipbuilders and workers were invited, a total of 300 people, plus more than 300 people from the Red Army Engineer Battalion, a total of more than 600 people, a huge secret shipbuilding base is on the Jialing River, under the nose of the enemy, the construction is in full swing.
In order to prevent detection by the enemy and avoid shelling and aircraft bombing, security and confidentiality work is particularly important. There are strict rules in the shipbuilding base, no one is allowed to go out at will, and no fire is allowed to cook so as not to expose the traces of rising fireworks.
Everyone's meals are ready and then brought in. At this time, the spring in northern Sichuan is still cold, and when the rice is sent into the mountains and forests from miles away, it is already cold. So the shipwrights and the Red officers and soldiers ate cold food for a month, but their hearts were full of enthusiasm. Shipbuilding work is carried out in an orderly manner in a secluded mountain.
As soon as a ship was built, the boatmen and the Red officers and men took advantage of the darkness to cross the 40-mile mountain road and move the boat to Tazishan and other ferries to hide. Everything is silent and seamless.
After more than a month of emergency assault, the Red Fourth Front Army built more than 70 large and small ships at the shipbuilding base in Wangdu, which was enough to transport three regiments of troops at the same time to make a surprise assault from the three ferries at the same time.
The ships of the Red Army, which took the first step to seize the beach, were ready.
3. Bamboo Bridge. But after the beach, what about the bridge where the mighty 100,000 troops crossed the river again?
Building a bridge over the Jialing River, the water is deep and rapid, not only is it difficult, but the target is too big, and once it is discovered by the enemy and bombed by enemy planes, all the achievements made will be lost.
The Red Army urgently needs an improvised bridge that can be built quickly in a short time, will there be?
Heaven helped the Red Army, and it just so happened that the local boatmen in Jialing River would make a simple bamboo bridge made of bamboo. The bamboo bridge process is simple, the material is the bamboo that can be seen everywhere in northern Sichuan, which can be used locally, and the bamboo bridge across the river can be manufactured in sections, which is convenient for concealment. When crossing the river, it can be used by fixing and connecting it with a bracket.
The bamboo bridge is simply a tailor-made artifact for the Red Army to cross the river, and he solved the biggest problem of 100,000 troops crossing the river.
At the same time as the construction of the shipbuilding base was started, the construction of the bamboo bridge was also carried out simultaneously.
In the bamboo forest not far from the river, the Soviets of Cangxi County and Langnan County organized more than 500 bamboo craftsmen and began to build three bamboo bridges at the same time.
These 500 people were active shipwrights and peasants, many of whom had relatives who had joined the Red Army, and this mission was a practical act for them to voluntarily sign up and contribute to the revolution.
Although the bamboo bridge production process is simple, the bamboo bridge components transported are not easy, because the bridge building base is 20 kilometers away from the Jialing River, so it is an extremely difficult task to transport the three bamboo bridges across the Jialing River to the riverside.
Wang Xianfu of Shuiguan Town, Langnan County, was a well-known bamboo strip expert, he was also a family member of the Red Army, two of his four sons and daughters joined the Red Army, and he also mobilized more than a dozen familiar relatives, friends and neighbors to join in the arduous task of building the bamboo bridge. They bring their own tools and dry food every day, abide by strict confidentiality regulations, and work silently in a state of secrecy. The three bamboo bridges across the Jialing River were quietly completed by them with cold dry food.
Fourth, the water army. In addition to boats and bridges, the drill of beach-grabbing and landing is also a compulsory course for forcibly crossing the Jialing River. Therefore, while building ships and building bridges, the training for crossing the river and landing is also in full swing.
On the East River, a tributary on the east side of the Jialing River, at the ancient ferry port of Wangcang Changtan Dam. Braving the cold of early spring and the icy river waters, the troops tasked with assault charges braved the cold and icy waters of early spring and practiced day and night non-stop drills such as swimming, diving, rowing, and water warfare, such as assault maneuvers for collective forcible crossing, beach-rushing landing, consolidating landing positions, and covering the landing of follow-up troops with firepower. It is no exaggeration to say that they are the earliest amphibious combat unit of the squadron - the Marine Corps.
At this time, it was still the beginning of March, and the weather in northern Sichuan was freezing and the water was as cold as a knife, but this did not in any way hinder the Red Army's enthusiasm for training. With tenacious will and firm conviction, the officers and men of the Red Army flickered and moved in the icy water and cold waves, shuttling back and forth, like dragons waking up in early spring, carrying out the final exercise before crossing the river.
Boats, bamboo bridges, water armies, everything is ready.
5. Forced crossing. March 28, 1935. The surface of the Jialing River is foggy, and people can't be seen clearly from five meters away. Heaven is beautiful, this is the best time to force the attack.
At 9 o'clock, the commander-in-chief of the Red Fourth Front Army issued an operational order to forcibly cross the Jialing River, and the mortars and heavy machine guns that had been secretly arranged along the river had been undisguised one after another, and they bombarded the opposite bank together. One by one, the enemy's pillboxes and firing points were destroyed and suppressed. Subsequently, the Red Army launched simultaneous attacks at the three ferries of Tazishan in the south of Cangxi City, Yuanxikou in the north of Cangxi, and Jianxikou in the north of Langzhong.
The Sichuan army on the west bank was caught off guard, they never dreamed that the Red Army would have so many ships at once, and divine soldiers would appear in front of them. The three crossings were in a hurry at the same time, the enemy was overwhelmed and disorganized, and the beachhead at the ferry was soon occupied by the Red Army.
After consolidating the landing position, a section of bamboo bridges was born in the bamboo forest by the river, and was thrown into the river like a dragon. Wang Xianfu and others quickly used a horizontal bamboo raft as a support to connect several bamboo bridges one by one. Soon, bamboo bridges across the east and west stood across the Jialing River, and the moat became a thoroughfare. The second column of the Red Army stepped on a bamboo bridge like a dragon's back and rushed briskly to the ...... on the opposite bank.
When Tian Songyao, commander-in-chief of the enemy's river defense, learned that the Red Army had broken through on three routes and captured several ferries and beachheads, he guessed that the Red Army's follow-up troops must not have made such a quick transition, so he quickly dispatched a whole division to launch a counterattack against the Red Army's main ferry at Tazishan, in an attempt to drive the Red Army, which had not gained a firm foothold and fought against the water, into the Jialing River. The enemy swarmed to the Red Army position at the Tazishan ferry, and the 1st Division of the Red 88th Division stubbornly resisted, and the battle was extremely fierce, and the situation was critical for a time. But what Tian Songyao didn't expect was that the 89th Division, the second echelon of the Red Army, stepped on the bamboo bridge and quickly crossed the river. The attack was launched from the enemy's flank and rear, but instead formed a flanking attack on the enemy, the enemy was quickly routed, the Red Army consolidated the beachhead, and a steady stream of Red Army rushed across the river on bamboo bridges.
In the following days, all 100,000 soldiers of the Red Fourth Front Army crossed the Jialing River.
Ships, bamboo bridges, and marines, this is something that Tian Songyao and Deng Xihou, commanders of the Sichuan Army's river defense, never expected. With their courage, wisdom and discipline, the Red Army did the almost impossible thing under the noses of the enemy who was close at hand. The stormy attack on crossing the river, the lightning of the bamboo bridge crossing, everything coordinated and seamlessly in a very short time, and the defense line of the Jialing River, which they thought was impregnable, collapsed in an instant.
The crossing of the Jialing River by 100,000 Red Army meant that they abandoned their original Sichuan-Shaanxi base area and began a new journey. They went all the way to the west, and they were like bamboos, and they won successive battles. By the end of the battle on April 21, they had conquered nine county towns, including Langzhong, Nannan, Jiange, Zhaohua, Zitong, Qingchuan, Pingwu, Zhangming, and Beichuan, and controlled the Jialing River in the east, Beichuan in the west, and Zitong in the south. It reaches the vast area of Sichuan and Ganbian in the north. A total of 12 enemy regiments and more than 10,000 people were annihilated, which not only broke Chiang Kai-shek's "Sichuan-Shaanxi Meeting" and opened up a large number of new base areas, but also contained 183 regiments of the enemy army, and effectively supported the Red Army to move north.
The wooden boat and bamboo bridge are the dragons on the water condensed by the Red Army with discipline, courage and wisdom. It escorted the Red Fourth Front Army across the Jialing River and began the Long March. They are the cornerstone of the Red Army's advance and victory, and the symbol of the Red Army's overcoming all difficulties and obstacles, and will forever be engraved in the history of China's revolution and shine brightly.