In August 1947, Su Yu and Chen Geng attracted people's attention because of their outstanding performance. In a telegram to the chairman, the leader of the East China Field Army mentioned that there have not been many creative military strategists in our army for many years, and Su Yu and Chen Geng, who have stood out, have a great future and are expected to move forward side by side with others such as ***.
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, for a long time, no more rising stars have emerged in our army. It was not until the first year of the Liberation War that the emergence of Su Yu and Chen Geng brought huge gains. 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.
Although Su Yu was 4 years younger than Chen Geng and participated in the revolution later than Chen Geng, his military career began in the Nanchang Uprising in August 1927, when he was only a guard squad leader.
At this time, Chen Geng was already a battalion commander, and he had an 11-year military career since he joined the Hunan Army at the age of 13. Although Su Yu, who graduated from the normal school, was not from a professional background, he remained unknown after the Nanchang Uprising.
Chen Geng, who is also from Hunan, was born in a Hunan military family, and was 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, Chen Geng also carried Principal Jiang out of danger in the rain of bullets, which can be regarded as "meritorious rescue".
Therefore, during the agrarian revolution, Chen Geng's popularity was much higher than that of Su Yu. Although 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 went from Shanghai Special Branch to Hubei, Henan and Anhui as the regiment commander, and was later promoted to division commander and chief of staff of the Red Fourth. During the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Geng's reputation was much louder than Su Yu's reputation as the deputy commander and division commander of the detachment in the New Fourth Army, and his reputation for mainly fighting in the Soviet-central region.
Although Su Yu served as the deputy commander of the detachment and division commander in the New Fourth Army, Chen Geng served as the 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 end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, our army adopted strategic contraction measures and formed eight major strategic areas, namely the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region of General Peng, the Jinsui District of General He, the Jin-Cha-Ji District of Nie Shuai, the Shanxi-Hebei-Luyu District of Liu and Xu Ershuai and the 129th Division, the Northeast District of Lin and Luo Ershuai, the Shandong District of **, the Central China District of Su Yu and ***, and the Central Plains District of Comrade Xiannian.
At this time, the enemy's attack on the Central Plains marked the full-scale outbreak of the Liberation War, and except for the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region in the rear, the remaining seven strategic areas were involved in the war.
After months of hand-to-hand combat, the results of the seven theaters of war were mixed. In the Central Plains, Liu Zhi dealt a heavy blow to Comrade Xiannian; In Suzhong, Su Yu defeated Li Mo'an; In Shandong, ** and the 7th Army of the Gui Department fought a "bull to the horn"; In Jin, Hebei and Luyu, ** defeated Zhao Xitian; In Jinnan, Chen Geng defeated Huang Zhengcheng; In Jinchaji, Fu Zuoyi defeated the combined forces of Nie and He.
In the Northeast Battlefield, Mr. Lin was once chased by Du Yuming to Harbin in North Manchuria. In the first year of the Liberation War, except for Su Yu's Huaye and Liu Deng's Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army, the performance of the other major strategic areas was unsatisfactory.
This is mainly because except for Mr. Lin who is not accustomed to the water and soil in the Northeast, the rest of the 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 eye-catching. Su Yu commanded the Central China Field Army to win seven battles and seven victories after the Battle of Luoyang, defeating the strong with the weak and annihilating more than 50,000 people of Li Mo'an in the first phase of Huangpu.
Chen Geng, on the other hand, commanded the merged Huaye when the Shandong Field Army was repeatedly invincible, and successively set records of destroying the enemy in Lunan, Laiwu, Menglianggu and other places. Chen Geng's Taiyue Column also performed well when it was far away from the main force, successfully defeating Hu Zongnan's descendants"The first brigade in the world", captured alive the lieutenant general brigade commander Huang Zhengcheng, 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. In the three armies"products"When the strategy of turning the glyphs into horns and passing through the Central Plains was unfolding, 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, and there was a tendency to advance side by side with Peng, Liu, and Lin.
However, with the deepening of the Liberation War, Su Yu, as the military commander of Huaye, truly realized the prophecy of the first and commanded hundreds of thousands of troops to sweep through the southeast and became an important force of the People's Liberation Army.
And Chen Geng, another military strategist who has high hopes, has some"Drive high and go low", the performance was a bit disappointing.
During the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Geng, commander of the 386 Brigade, and Zhou Xihan, chief of staff of the brigade, took a group photo after the battle, both of them were full of trophies] Although Chen Geng was not inferior to Su Yu at the beginning and middle of his military career, he eventually "fell behind".
Some people believe that Su Yu was a dedicated and professional war specialist, who was always committed to fighting a war during the Red Army period and the War of Liberation, so he achieved qualitative changes and leaps and bounds in the course of long-term accumulation, and completed the transformation from guerrilla warfare to positional warfare and then to the command of large corps.
And Chen Geng, the all-round "generalist", has superb explosives and intelligence skills, and is also one of the founders of the military academy, with extremely high emotional intelligence, but his focus is too scattered to fully exert his military talents.
On the other hand, there is a view that in the middle of the Liberation War, Chen Geng made two mistakes, which affected his development. The first time was in the Battle of Queshan at the end of 1947, when the Chen Xie Group and the Huaye Chen Tang Corps, under the orders of the chairman, tried to besiege the county town of Queshan to force Bai Chongxi to evacuate Dabie Mountain.
However, due to the unfamiliarity with the two columns of Huaye and the inconvenience of communication, the siege campaign was abandoned halfway, and he was finally forced to retreat, unable to provide strong support for Liu Deng.
**With Chen Geng] In May 1948, after the main force of Huaye annihilated the enemy in eastern Henan, Nakano launched the Wandong Campaign. **Order*** Command and 6 Columns feint to attack Queshan and attract Hu Lian's 18th Army; Chen Geng commanded 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, Zhang Zhen's corps really rushed to the aid of Queshan, as expected. On the evening of May 29, Chen Geng completely restrained Zhang Zhen, and ** 3 columns also rushed to prepare to close the net.
However, Zhang Zhen shook a false shot, and before Liu Deng's army collected the net, he swam out of the encirclement and retreated to Nanyang. At the summary meeting, he rarely criticized Chen Geng for being careless and afraid of the appearance of the troops, and lost 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 Huaye; And 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.
Senior General Chen Geng has shown a realistic attitude in Kazakhstan's military industry. His "falling behind" is not caused by a single factor, but is the result of a combination of factors.
First of all, Chen Geng's corps did not always maintain an independent operation like ***. In the late stage of the Anti-Japanese War and the early days of the Liberation War, he was under the direct command of the chairman in Yan'an, but in the middle and later periods, 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.
Secondly, the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army and Shanxi, Hebei, Luyu and Henan both have many outstanding generals, such as Liu Shuai, who is highly respected, Xu Shuai, who 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, they can all be literate and martial.
Even political cadres like Deng Gong and Teng Daiyuan have qualifications above Chen Geng. In the end, Chen Geng fought in the white area for many years during the Red Army period and lost the opportunity to stand in the Red Army.
General Chen Geng died young, leaving behind countless legends] After the Nanchang Uprising, if General Chen Geng always fought on the front line like Su Yu, perhaps the speed and space for promotion would be greater.
But two severe leg injuries left him physically devastated and unable to continue fighting on the front lines. Despite this, General Chen Geng still ranked fourth among the founding generals, and he defeated the 16-nation coalition forces of the Japanese army, the French army, and the United States and South Korea.