Reading guide:In his famous work "Preface to the Pavilion of King Teng", the poet Wang Bo of the early Tang Dynasty once praised Jiangxi as a blessed land of "treasures of nature and outstanding people". Historically, Jiangxi's literary style was at its peak, and there were as many as 11,617 high school scholars in all dynasties, ranking among the top in the country. However, in modern times, Jiangxi has changed its literary style and has become a holy place for armed revolution, with dozens of founding generals, and it is a veritable province of the largest generals.
Among the many founding generals of Jiangxi, one was born in a wealthy family, received a good cultural education since childhood, and could have enjoyed a happy life. But when the nation was in danger, he resolutely embarked on the revolutionary road and dedicated his life to the party and the country, he was the founding general Lai Chuanzhu.
In 1910, Lai Chuanzhu was born in Lai Village, Dabu Township, Ganxian County, Jiangxi Province, and his father Lai Jiafang was originally a poor farmer, because of his thrifty life, he saved some money, and later went out to make money by doing small business, returned to his hometown to buy houses and fields, and became a small landlord in the village.
After Lai Chuanzhu was born, his father didn't want his son to be as uneducated as himself, so he sent him to a private school in the village when he was very young. In the private school, Lai Chuanzhu studied hard, learned the Four Books and Five Classics and other Confucian classics in a few years, and then transferred to the high school in Dabu Township to receive modern education, and three years later, he was admitted to the Gannan Middle School in Ganzhou with excellent results.
After coming to the city to study, Lai Chuanzhu came into contact with revolutionary ideas and began to actively participate in various *** use of his spare time, he also read a large number of books on Marxism-Leninism, and made great progress in his thinking.
In 1925, after the outbreak of the May Day Movement, the whole country set off an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary upsurge, as the leader of the school's patriotic movement, Lai Chuanzhu actively campaigned, propagated revolutionary ideas in the city of Ganzhou, mobilized patriots to donate, and held demonstrations to support the general strike in Shanghai.
After the defeat of the Great Revolution in 1927, the reactionaries began to frantically suppress all kinds of patriotic movements, arresting and killing a large number of patriots and party members. Under the White Terror, Lai Chuanzhu, who hated the reactionary warlords and was full of dissatisfaction with the old society, was not frightened, but joined the Communist Party and continued to adhere to the revolutionary road.
Due to the enemy's search and arrest, Lai Chuanzhu went to Ji'an, Jiangxi Province under the arrangement of the party organization to continue his revolutionary activities. The Nanchang Uprising broke out in 1927, firing the first shot of armed resistance against the reactionaries, and thereafter, under the leadership of the party organization, armed forces such as the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army and the Peasants' Self-Defense Forces were established in various localities.
Lai Chuanzhu also returned to his hometown of Ganxian from Ji'an, secretly propagating revolutionary ideas and mobilizing the peasants to form an armed force to fight against the reactionaries. As a result of his unremitting efforts, many towns and villages in Ganxian County have set up peasant associations and peasant self-defense units, and the number of them has grown to several thousand.
In 1928, according to the instructions of the superiors, Lai Chuanzhu and others prepared to launch an armed riot in Dabu, Gannan County, in order to overthrow the oppression and exploitation of the common people by the landlords and gentry. On the eve of the riot, in order to support his son's revolution, Lai Chuanzhu's father took out all the money in the family to arm the peasants with ammunition.
When the news came, the broad masses of the revolutionary masses were grateful. Over the years, compared with other landlords, Lai Jiafang has never bullied the poor people, and will take the initiative to help anyone in the village when they are in trouble. This time, the father and son contributed money and effort for the revolution, which is really commendable.
In the early morning of February 18, 1928, on the mountain behind Dabuwei, Lai Chuanzhu ordered the first shot of the armed insurrection to be fired. For a time, the self-defense forces and Red Guards in the surrounding villages and townships launched attacks one after another against the reactionary landlords and gentry. Under the command of Lai Chuanzhu, the fighting in the townships and villages went smoothly, only the attacks of Lai Village and Han Village were thwarted, and two reactionary landlords were stubbornly resisting by virtue of their high-walled compounds.
After learning of the situation, Lai Chuanzhu immediately led a team to support, and after several hours of fierce fighting, he successfully broke through the fortress of the landlord's compound, so that the Dabu riot achieved a phased victory. For a time, Dabu was full of joy, and the peasant associations began to organize everyone to fight local tyrants, divide the land, and press the landlords and gentry into the streets.
As the leader of the uprising, Lai Chuanzhu began to study the battle plan and prepare to face the enemy's counterattack. Sure enough, three days after the riot, the enemy began to send a local security regiment to attack Dabu. After analyzing the situation on the battlefield, Lai Chuanzhu commanded the troops to fight separately and use the terrain to ambush the enemy's reinforcements. As a result, two enemy soldiers were defeated in one fell swoop, and even the commander of the security regiment was killed.
After the failure of the first attack, the enemy became angry and sent a large army to encircle and suppress again, and Lai Chuanzhu led his team to fight the enemy in the southern Gannan region for nearly a month, and finally suffered a miserable defeat due to being outnumbered. Lai Chuanzhu and other survivors could only leave the Gannan region incognito.
* The enemy did not capture the leader of the uprising, and turned his butcher knife at the relatives and families of the fighters who participated in the uprising, and according to later statistics, the number of people who were captured and killed at that time was as high as 900. As the leader of the uprising, the enemy arrested Lai Chuanzhu's entire family, and in the face of the enemy's coercion and temptation, none of Lai's family opened their mouths to beg for mercy, and the annoyed and angry enemy killed more than a dozen members of his family, including his parents, uncles, and cousins.
After learning that his family had been wiped out, Lai Chuanzhu was grief-stricken, but this did not frighten him, but strengthened his revolutionary will. After that, he led the scattered troops to the Hunan region to look for party organizations, and at the end of March 1928, he found the first division of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army led by the chairman in the Guidong area.
When he learned that Lai Chuanzhu had destroyed the whole army for the sake of the revolution, the chairman comforted him: "The flame of revolution will not be extinguished." After joining the 1st Division, Lai Chuanzhu was appointed as the party representative of the Special Service Company, responsible for safeguarding the security of the chairman and the division headquarters.
Since then, Lai Chuanzhu has become a supporter of the chairman, from Jinggangshan to the Long March, from the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression to the War of Liberation, he followed the chairman's career for decades, successively served as the political commissar of the Red Army Division, the chief of staff of the New Fourth Army, the political commissar of the 15th Corps of the Fourth Field Army, etc., and was awarded the rank of founding general in 1955.
Closing Remarks:
From organizing and launching the Dabu armed insurrection in 1928 to becoming the founding general in 1955, in these 27 years, Lai Chuanzhu never forgot that he was a communist, always strict with himself, and inherited his father's fine tradition of dedicating his family wealth to the revolution and being selfless.
At the end of the fifties of the last century, he confiscated all his family property and donated it to the people of his hometown, built a nursing home for them, purchased agricultural machinery and tools, and helped them survive the most difficult three years.