Author:Junyi
Among the many anecdotes about Chen Mingren, there is such a thing to the effect that after liberation, the chairman invited Chen Mingren to a banquet, and at the banquet, the chairman praised Chen Mingren and said: I see that Lin Biao is not as good as you in fighting. When the chairman said this, it was not only a kind of respect and courtesy to the rebel generals, but also some military comparisons, otherwise he would not have deliberately lifted Lin Biao out for comparison.
Chen Mingren was born in the first phase of Huangpu, and at the beginning of his military career, he had an innate advantage over Lin Biao of huangpu phase IV. Before Lin Biao entered the Whampoa Military Academy, Chen Mingren was already a fierce general in the revolutionary army. In October 1925, Chen Mingren participated in the Second Crusade, and was promoted to the position of major battalion commander of the 4th Regiment of the 2nd Division because he took the lead in ascending to Huizhou City and won the first merit, receiving salutes from the whole army. Chen Mingren also had a prominent performance in the later Northern Expedition and the Central Plains War. In particular, in July 1931, he participated in the campaign against Shi Yousan and achieved the record of "one brigade and three divisions".
Chiang Kai-shek's army in the Battle of the Central Plains
However, after this, Chen Mingren made slow progress, and was only promoted to the commander of the 80th Division in 1934, which was definitely a slow progress among the first batch of Whampoa students at that time. Chen Mingren did not expect that he would stay for 7 years during the term of office of the division commander. It was not until 1944 that Chen Mingren served as the commander of the 71st Army, and was suppressed by Song Xilian, who was also a first-born student. During the eight years of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chen Mingren was always full of complaints, and even once annoyed President Jiang because of his pretense, and was dismissed from the post of commander of a division with real power and replaced by a deputy commander. His apprentice Lin Biao, on the other hand, was a different story.
Lin Biao during the Red Army period
Starting from the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, Lin Biao gradually grew from a company commander in the rebel army to the commander of the Red First Army, the number one main force of the Red Army. During this period, Chen Mingren had been left behind by his own apprentices. But during this period, the two had not really met on the battlefield. In the subsequent anti-Japanese battlefield, Lin Biao led the 115th Division to victory in the first battle of Pingxingguan, and became famous in the world. At this time, Chen Mingren was studying at Luda University, but with Lin Biao's accidental injury in Shanxi, he temporarily withdrew from the front-line command post. In the later stages of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chen Mingren finally came to the fore in the counter-offensive in western Yunnan.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Lin Biao was ordered to leave the customs and take charge of the northeast military. Chen Mingren also led the 71st Army to the northeast in January 1946, and fate arranged the two together, and the initial confrontation between the two was a big surprise.
On March 19, 1946, Chen Mingren personally led the army and the 87th Division and the 91st Division to the north from the west side of Zhongchang Road. At first, it was still very smooth, but on April 4, he occupied Faku and prepared to continue north along the road through the mouth of the Tongjiang River, trying to detour from Bamian City to Siping. However, Chen Mingren, who had just entered the northeast, still underestimated his apprentice, and Chen Mingren's trick of wanting to make a detour had long been mastered by Lin Biao. Lin Biao, on the one hand, ordered the 3rd Regiment of the Independent Brigade and a brigade of the 13th Regiment to resist Chen Mingren's roundabout 87th Division and bring it into his ambush position. On the one hand, 14 regiments of the Shandong 1st Division southwest of Siping, the 10th Brigade of the 3rd Division of the New Fourth Army, the main force of the 8th Brigade, and the 7th Column were mobilized, and quickly moved west to set up ambushes around Dawa and Jinshan fort.
Chen Mingren did not care about the crisis ahead, and continued to order the 87th Division to attack forward, only to crash into the ambush circle arranged by Lin Biao. This time, Lin Biao concentrated the main 14 regiments of siping defenders to launch a front ambush against the advancing 87th Division, and it took only one night to annihilate most of the 87th Division. After the troops were surrounded, Chen Mingren was also helpless for a while, and sent a regiment of the 91st Division to break the siege under the left and right, but before the troops could get closer, they were defeated by the blocking troops arranged in advance by Lin Biao. This battle annihilated more than 4,500 people of the 87th Division, and 31 artillery pieces were captured. In the fierce battle of Siping. This battle became a rare campaign of annihilation, and Chen Mingren, as the commander of the 71st Army, paid an expensive tuition fee as soon as he arrived in the northeast battlefield.
Chen Mingren is in the northeast
After suffering a heavy loss, Chen Mingren also became cautious, directly abandoning his plan to detour from the left wing to Siping and turning around to join the new army on the right. Faced with the increasing strength of Chiang Kai-shek's army, lin biao chose to withdraw from the battle after losing his position at Tazishan on the outskirts of Siping. Although Jiang Jun laid the four flats, Lin Biao's main force still existed. Chen Mingren also followed jiang jun's main force into Siping on May 27, and Chen Mingren could not imagine that the city of Siping would leave a strong mark in his life.
After the Battle of Siping, Lin Biao retreated to the north of the Songhua River, and Chiang's army did not pursue the Songhua River due to its own strength. After Lin Biao finished recuperating, he launched the Three Battles of Jiangnan. The brothers Chen Mingren and Lin Biao will also usher in the second round of competition.
On March 8, 1947, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army crossed the Songhua River in three ways, and Chiang Kai-shek's army retreated in order to avoid being annihilated. The 5th Division of the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army quickly annihilated a battalion of the 262nd Regiment of the rear cover force of the 88th Division at Ping'an Fort, and took advantage of the victory to surround 1,300 men in 5 companies of the division at Paoshantun . Zhong Wei, commander of the 5th Division, did not wait for orders from his superiors, and resolutely decided to concentrate his forces to besiege Paoshantun by the method of two-sided attack, and by the evening of March 10, the defenders of Paoshantun had been completely annihilated. At this time, Chen Mingren panicked and hurriedly ordered the 88th Division to come from Dehui to the north, and ordered the 87th Division to advance from Nong'an to the area of Reed Gou and Artemisia Station in the northwest.
Lin Biao had already estimated Chen Mingren's possible reinforcements. When besieging Paoshantun , he ordered the main force of the 2nd Column to block the 87th Division. The 6th Column 16th Division, the 18th Division, and the Independent 1st Division swerved to the right, cutting off the retreat of the defenders of Shantun. The Independent 2nd Division alerted Dehui, the main force of the 1st Column and the Independent 3rd Division threatened Dehui in situ, and the 6th Column 17th Division was a reserve. As a result, Chiang's army was wiped out too quickly during the battle, and the 87th Division saw that The Chiang army in Shantun was annihilated and retreated to Nong'an in two ways.
This withdrawal was right in Lin Biao's arms. Lin Biao ordered the troops to launch an all-round pursuit, demanding that all units should not be afraid of fatigue and cold, pursue and fight fiercely, pursue wherever they hear gunshots, and all units should automatically coordinate in the pursuit, and ensure that they completely annihilate the enemy who has retreated. In the subsequent battles, there was a one-sided situation. On March 11, in Sidaogou, west of Dehui, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army annihilated the 71st Army's special task force, engineer battalion, transport battalion, and 88th Division's subordinate units. At dawn the next day, the main force of the 88th Division was again surrounded in Guojiatun and Jiangjiadian, and most of them were annihilated after only one day of fighting. The 87th Division was also attacked by the 2nd and 6th Columns and destroyed.
In the end, because Du Yuming drew the main force from the northeast to the north, Lin Biao ended the southward operation. In this round of competition, Chen Mingren was defeated again, and another basic unit of the 71st Army was also devastated. After these two rounds of competition, two of chen Mingren's three divisions of the 71st Army were annihilated by Lin Biao.
Chen Mingren's doom was not over, and in the summer offensive of 1947, Chen Mingren's 71st Army once again became the focus of the attack. On May 8, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army crossed the Songhua River south, and on May 13, it annihilated a battalion of the 88th Division at Shuangshan and besieged Huaide. During the attack on Huaide, Lin Biao once again used the tactic of encircling points to attract Jiang's army. As a result, Chen Mingren was deceived again, on May 16, two divisions of the 71st Army entered the big black forest, Lin Biao immediately ordered the 1st Column all, the 2nd Column 5th Division launched a surprise attack on these two divisions, the battle began at 6 o'clock in the morning of May 18, only 12 hours the two divisions of the 71st Army were completely destroyed, the commander of the 88th Division Han Zengdong was killed, in this battle, Chen Mingren's other division, the 91st Division, did not escape the doom of annihilation. At this point, the three divisions that Chen Mingren brought to the northeast in 1946 were all picked up by Lin Biao one by one.
The situation on the battlefield often changed rapidly, and as Chen Mingren was defeated again and again on the battlefield, Lin Biao and the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army also began to despise Chen Mingren. In the end, a wrong battle was fought at the wrong time.
On June 9, 1947, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army launched the Siping Campaign. Before the attack, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army believed that siping's defenders were only 18,000 people, but it was not expected that Chen Mingren would rebuild in a short period of time the 88th Division, which was annihilated by the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army half a month ago, strengthen the 54th Division of the 13th Army, and add the 87th Division that had not suffered losses in this stage of the battle, and the entire Siping garrison reached 35,000 people. As a result, this four-level battle was beaten into a sandwich. The Siping Offensive began on June 9 and took only five days to clear the periphery, but encountered difficulties when entering the siege phase.
At 20:00 on June 14, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army launched a general attack on Siping, but until June 21, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army was still unable to break the enemy's defense line. At this time, Du Yuming concentrated the main force of 10 divisions to the north and prepared for a decisive battle with Lin Biao. In the battle of fighting aid, because Chiang Kai-shek's army adopted the tactic of advancing hand in hand and fighting steadily and steadily. Lin Biao commanded the northeast Democratic Coalition Army reinforcements and could not find the fighter planes that annihilated Chiang Kai-shek's army, so Lin Biao ended the Siping Campaign on June 30. This battle can be said to be another setback for Lin Biao after the Siping Defense War, and Chen Mingren also achieved a victory after many defeats.
However, there has always been controversy about who loses and who wins the Battle of Siping, and Su Yu once said that the Battle of Siping was a war of attrition, not a defeat. Because Chiang Kai-shek's army did not cause the destruction of the main force of our army, it was surprising that Chen Mingren left the northeast after this battle because of the "corruption problem."
But from another point of view, Chen Mingren was lucky, and after Chen Mingren left the northeast, the 88th Division was annihilated again. In the Battle of Liaoshen, the 71st Army was also completely annihilated by the Northeast Field Army in western Liaoning, and the commander Xiang Fengwu was captured. Chen Mingren also went to the light at this time, resolutely announced the uprising, and began his new life.
Jeong Dong-kook
So, how should the chairman understand that "Chen Mingren is more capable of fighting wars than Lin Biao"? In this regard, it has always been the benevolent and the wise. Once, Deng Fei, former vice minister of the Ministry of Grain, and Zheng Dongguo chatted about this topic. Zheng Dongguo once served as the "deputy commander-in-chief of the Northeast Suppression" of Chiang Kai-shek's army, and was an important witness to the northeast battlefield at that time, and his seniority and position were not inferior to Chen Mingren, and the commander-in-chief of siping at that time was Zheng Dongguo. With his understanding of Lin Biao and Chen Mingren, it should be said that he has a say on this question, and his reaction may be used as a reference answer:
"Lin Biao can't fight, who will fight?" He's very good at fighting! ”
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