In March 1947, the Kuomintang general Hu Zongnan led 250,000 elite troops in an attempt to capture Yan'an in three days. However, at that time, the only PLA troops in Yan'an City were only 30,000, and their ** equipment was far inferior to the elite Kuomintang troops who came prepared.
However, what Chiang Kai-shek did not expect was that ** actually made the decision to abandon Yan'an.
When the PLA troops retreated, their radio signals were unfortunately intercepted by the Kuomintang troops, and the whereabouts of the chairman were also exposed. In the face of the following pursuers, the chairman remained calm and did not panic.
He even left a sign on the way to retreat, with seven big characters written on it. After seeing these seven words, the Kuomintang pursuers did not dare to move forward again, but chose to retreat to the garrison where the large army was located, and finally even retreated without a fight, and Mingjin withdrew his troops.
The seven words left by Grandpa Mao when he retreated discouraged the pursuing soldiers of the Kuomintang. In the face of the huge disparity in strength between the enemy and us, our party's army has taken not being greedy for war and preserving its strength as its core strategy.
In the early days of the War of Liberation, the total strength of the Kuomintang army was three times that of ours, and their equipment was more advanced. Under these circumstances, the Kuomintang top brass, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, was blindly confident that it would be possible to easily destroy the armed forces of our party.
However, Grandpa Mao's seven words made them stop.
Chiang Kai-shek once made wild remarks about the US ambassador to China, Stuart Leiden, claiming that it would only take six months to destroy the military strength of our party. However, in fact the Kuomintang army was far inferior to the Communists in terms of strategy and tactics.
In addition, after a protracted struggle against Japan, our party has laid a solid foundation among the masses of the people. Therefore, in the face of a huge disparity in the strength of the enemy and ourselves, our party can often win battles.
The Huaihai Campaign is a typical example of our party's army's "winning more with less." In the Huaihai Campaign, our party used 600,000 troops against the 800,000 troops sent by the Kuomintang.
After 65 days of fierce fighting, our army annihilated more than 550,000 enemy troops, basically eliminating Chiang Kai-shek's elite forces on the southern front.
The victory in the Huaihai Campaign liberated the vast areas of East China and the Central Plains north of the Yangtze River, and laid the foundation for the capture of Nanjing, the center of reactionary rule of the Kuomintang. In 1947, the Kuomintang sent elite troops to attack Yan'an, and Chiang Kai-shek personally took a special plane to supervise the front line.
In March, Kuomintang general Hu Zongnan led 250,000 elite troops to launch a fierce attack on Yan'an.
In order to capture Yan'an, the center of our party, Chiang Kai-shek not only equipped the troops with cutting-edge American-style **, but also invited several US military instructors and professional military research teams to provide advice for the training of the army.
In sharp contrast, there were only 30,000 communist troops stationed in Yan'an at that time, and during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to more effectively resist the invasion of the Japanese army, our party's troops were mainly deployed in the North China Plain and the northern mountainous areas, and the distribution of troops was relatively scattered.
Due to the backwardness of transport equipment, the troop mobilization and material capacity of our party's army are much lower than those of the troops with the assistance of US transport planes. Therefore, the troops remaining in Yan'an became the main force of our party against the Kuomintang army.
However, if the war goes on for too long, the army inside the city of Yan'an may face a shortage of supplies. After thorough consideration, a surprising decision was made: to abandon Yan'an and withdraw all the troops in the city.
At a critical juncture, the chairman made a seven-character decision, which is not difficult to understand. In front of the 250,000 elite troops of **, our party only has 30,000 troops, and the situation is quite grim.
In addition, Yan'an is the political center of our party and is of great strategic importance to the Kuomintang. But in fact, for our party, it is the leaders with outstanding military qualities and leadership ability that are the real strategic core of our party.
There is an old Chinese saying: "If you stay in the green mountains, you are not afraid of running out of firewood." "In this context, Chairman ** made the decision to abandon Yan'an, which is the best choice after weighing the actual situation and the strength of both sides.
History has also proved that this decision not only protected the strength of our party's army, but also laid the foundation for a long-term struggle and victory against the Kuomintang army in the future.
During the evacuation, in order to reduce the risk of exposure and avoid being tracked by the enemy, 30,000 soldiers and horses dispersed under the guidance of *** and evacuated separately along different routes. After the communication equipment, documents and materials and other important strategic materials and large troops were successfully evacuated from Yan'an, ** finally led his own guard troops to leave.
During the evacuation, the bombers of the Kuomintang Air Force were always circling around, and the roar of engines and the sound of shells were incessant. Sometimes the enemy's bombs are too close, and you can even faintly see the fire and thick black smoke.
General *** and General Wang Zhen, who stayed behind with ***, listened to the continuous **** sound behind them, and looked at the *** who was still working anxiously like ants on a hot pot.
Despite the indiscriminate bombardment by the enemy, *** always remained calm and ordered the troops to advance after completing the work at hand. When evacuating, he did not forget to look back at the ancient city of Yan'an, which has a red background.
Even in a life-and-death situation, when he could be hit by enemy shells at any time, ** could still calmly joke with the soldiers around him, saying: "The road is facing the sky, each side of the road, we and Lao Chiang's troops do not interfere with each other." ”
Hu Zongnan led the Kuomintang troops to Yan'an, only to see an empty city. In order to catch up with the PLA as soon as possible, he ordered his right-hand man Liu Jian to search for *** and the evacuated PLA in the nearby area.
After the outbreak of the Liberation War, he was sent to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo region to prepare for the attack on Yan'an, and had an in-depth understanding of the situation in Yan'an and the surrounding areas, which is why Hu Zongnan asked him to search for traces of the Communists.
Taking advantage of his rich experience in the past, Liu Jian quickly led the troops to Wangjiawan. **After the evacuation of Yan'an, hundreds of soldiers of the guard regiment were placed in Xiaohe Village, which is only more than 20 kilometers away from Wangjiawan.
In the process, when exchanging information and transmitting information with various places, the troops stationed in Xiaohe Village had to use radio equipment. Liu Jian was immediately alert to the intermittent radio signals, and led his subordinates to follow the clues to explore deeply, and advanced towards Xiaohe Village.
However, our party has a unique advantage in the surrounding villages of Yan'an, that is, a deep mass base. Therefore, as soon as Liu Jian left Wangjiawan, the local villagers passed the news to the *** place in Xiaohe Village.
In the face of the exposure of their whereabouts, the guard troops around ** are ready to fight to the death with the enemy and defend *** with their lives. But *** showed a very different attitude from the guard troops.
Although the enemy was only twenty kilometers away from the station, he remained calm and withdrew with hundreds of his men to the vicinity of a small ravine. Soon, Liu Huan's troops followed the captured radio signal to Xiaohe Village and launched a detailed search.
As Liu Huan's troops slowly approached the small ravine, it suddenly began to pour down, and the sky and the earth were instantly shrouded in mist, and the visibility plummeted due to the impact of the heavy rain.
Under the cover of heavy rain, ** led the troops to a rapid transfer. Hundreds of soldiers involved in the transfer moved forward silently, only the sound of the rain hitting the ground, even the sound of breathing, clothing rubbing, and footsteps was muffled by the loud sound of rain.
Just then, a gunshot rang out in the distance. Liu Jian immediately led half of the troops and quickly killed them towards the place where the guns rang out. However, ** found that Liu Jian still left half of the men and horses on standby, so he immediately asked the guards around him to also shoot into the air, creating a similar movement.
The gunshots rang out one after the other, as if the PLA troops had surrounded the search and arrest troops brought by Liu Huan in the heavy rain. Liu Jian realized that he had fallen into the trap of our party, and in order to avoid the annihilation of the whole army, he immediately gathered his troops and left Xiaohe Village.
After Liu Jian found out that he had been fooled, he was indignant, and he was eager to find the whereabouts of ***, and he did not let go of any possible clues. When he learned that *** had left Xiaohe Village and led his troops to the Yellow River, he did not cross the Yellow River to join the troops on the opposite bank as suggested by everyone, but decided to follow *** and lead the guard troops to the east and climb a small hill.
When Liu Jian chased to the Yellow River, ** and his party had disappeared without a trace, leaving only a lonely sign on the river beach. There are seven big characters written on it: "Mao Runzhi goes east from here." ”
This sign clearly indicates the direction of *** evacuation. However, Liu Jian fell into hesitation. He couldn't believe that ** would be so blatant about his evacuation route being made public.
If he really led his troops to pursue eastward, he would most likely fall into the trap of **.
After receiving the order of suspicion of fraud, Liu Jian immediately ordered the troops to withdraw by the same route, and finally succeeded in returning to Yan'an City. This retreat did not rely solely on the seven words left by *** to scare off the enemy, but was the result of thorough preparation.
At the time of the evacuation of Yan'an City, Hu Zongnan, the general who attacked Yan'an, had already conducted an in-depth study. Although Chiang Kai-shek thought that he was well-armed, well-trained, and had the support of the American army behind him, he did not realize that Hu Zongnan had fought against the ** general Chen Geng in the Taiyue Mountains, and that Hu Zongnan was defeated by Chen Geng's troops at that time.
Hu Zongnan used to be a fierce rival of our party, but when he was sent to fight against our army again, and even to attack Yan'an, the center of our party, he was actually a little anxious for quick success in his heart.
He hopes to prove his strength through this war. In response to Hu Zongnan's mentality, he formulated a strict plan to defend Yan'an to show the enemy our party's determination to hold Yan'an.
But in fact, ** has long been ready to retreat. The previous plan was just a trap set to confuse the enemy. Therefore, when Hu Zongnan led the elite troops to Yan'an, they did not encounter fierce resistance from our party troops.
They were greeted by an empty city. And when Hu Zongnan searched the residence and office of our party, he did not find a single useful document.
Although Hu Zongnan successfully occupied Yan'an City, he fell into deep anxiety in his heart. Because he could not report the results of the war to Chiang Kai-shek, because Chiang Kai-shek attached great importance to this war, and even personally came to the front from Nanjing to supervise the war.
One of Chiang Kai-shek's goals was to seize Chairman *** and inflict heavy damage on our party. However, not to mention the chairman now, even the shadow of the People's Liberation Army has not been found in Yan'an City.
Hu Zongnan is facing a dilemma at the moment. The empty city of Yan'an seemed to hint to him that if he pushed forward, he would be tantamount to stepping into the trap of our party. Once defeated, his black gauze hat may not be protected.
However, if he chose to retreat without a fight, it would not only be difficult to communicate with Chiang Kai-shek, but also difficult to raise his head in front of his colleagues.
After weighing the pros and cons, Hu Zongnan decided to place the main force in the city of Yan'an and sent a large number of troops to search for traces of the PLA. When reporting the war situation to Chiang Kai-shek, Hu Zongnan, who was eager to prove himself, actually had the idea of falsifying the war situation.
Although the army sent out to search for the People's Liberation Army after entering Yan'an City never found any trace of the People's Liberation Army, he claimed in the report that he had captured 50,000 people**.
Chiang Kai-shek was overjoyed to hear the news of Hu Zongnan's initial victory in the Battle of Yan'an, and awarded Hu Zongnan a special second-class medal in recognition of his contribution to the crushing of Communist rule.
Although Chiang Kai-shek praised him vigorously, Hu Zongnan did not have the slightest joy in his heart. His mood at this time was like being put on a fire. He knew that once Chiang Kai-shek found out that he had falsified the war report, the consequences would be unimaginable, not just as simple as losing his official position.
In order to fulfill his lie, Hu Zongnan had to speed up the pace of finding ***'s whereabouts. He also specially found Liu Hu, who was familiar with the terrain of northern Shaanxi, hoping to use his help. However, since entering Yan'an City, they have never been able to figure out what kind of medicine is sold in the gourd, and they are always worried about fraud.
Therefore, on the side of the Yellow River, even if he saw a sign pointing to the whereabouts of ***, Liu Jian didn't dare to believe it easily, and even made the decision to stop the flag and withdraw his troops and return to the city.