Chapter 58: In the Great Departure Mountain

  Thanks to book friend Wu Dong San Jun for his generous reward, here is today's 3rd update ^_^

  Although even with the addition of over 5,000 people from the Red Fifteenth Army, the Red Twenty-Eighth Army barely reached a strength of 8,000 troops, which was far inferior to the Red Fifteenth Army's more than 100,000 troops. However, after receiving Hu Weidong's promise to "give priority to supplementing new recruits from the Twenty-Eighth Army", the Red Twenty-Eighth Army's strength suddenly expanded to over 30,000 people in just one month, with an additional 50,000 or so as reserve militia. This shows Gao Jingtang's ability to lead troops. Of course, this was also because under the full support of the Red Fifteenth Army, most of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet area had been recovered, otherwise, even if Gao Jingtang had more skills, he would still be unable to cook without rice.

  The reason why the Hubei-Henan-Anhui base area was rebuilt so quickly is precisely because of the extreme cruelty and violence during the White Army's occupation. In the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet Area, where the population has now been reduced to over 20 million (with a maximum of 35 million), almost every ordinary person had relatives who were slaughtered, and hatred has been deeply ingrained in their bones. As long as someone leads them to resist, they are not afraid of anything.

  Hu Weidong was initially opposed to recruiting so many new soldiers in the base area, but local revolutionary masses expressed that as long as the Red Army could avenge their fellow villagers, even if only the elderly, women and children were left behind to farm, they would send their young and strong men to join the Red Army. Hu Weidong couldn't help but secretly sigh, a government that can make its own people hate it so much is really rare in this world...

  As he thought about it, Hu Weidong's eyes became slightly moist. Although this was not the base of his heart, he had to protect the people here no matter what. Even if the party central committee decided to abandon this land for the sake of the war effort in the future (actually the great man had always opposed abandoning the Dabie Mountains base, but at that time the Yangtze Bureau was still controlled by Wang Ming), he would argue with reason and strength, at least to transfer the local masses to other bases. The Red Party relied on the people to rise up, no matter how difficult it was, they could never abandon the people...

  However, the support of the masses is important, but the Red Army was able to recover more than a dozen counties in just one month, also thanks to the fact that the Nationalist Party's last large-scale siege against the 28th Red Army had just failed. The regular army had basically all withdrawn from the Dabie Mountains area, and Hu Weidong's hundred-thousand-strong army was facing only two or three thousand members of the mobile detachment and militia, so what difficulty could be spoken of? On the other hand, there were limited prisoners available for conversion (the mobile detachment members were stubbornly reactionary and difficult to convert, while the militia members were mostly too poorly qualified, and Hu Weidong looked down on them). This was a slight disappointment for Hu Weidong, but thinking that the heinous mobile detachment would no longer be a force to be reckoned with in the future (at its peak it had only over ten thousand people, and the original Central Soviet Area had eliminated over four thousand, while the Dabie Mountains had wiped out another five thousand; the die-hard reactionary elements were basically all dead, and since their leader Kang Ze had long since died, even if they were replenished and rebuilt in the future, the mobile detachment would find it very difficult to recover its peak strength), Hu Weidong felt doubly relieved...

  In this more than a month, Hu Weidong not only restored the base and expanded the Red Army, but also asked Gao Jingtang to mobilize local masses to build a makeshift airfield at the fastest speed. Hu Weidong was not preparing to make Dabie Mountain his permanent base in the future, but after the bloody battle of 8,000 elite soldiers on the Yangtze River, he reflected painfully and thought that if their own air force had participated in the war at that time, the losses would have been greatly reduced. Due to the outstanding political work of the party organizations in Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Anhui, and Jiangsu, more and more captured National Army pilots and flight students were turning around and willing to stand on the side of the people to fight against the National Army. However, since the location where they crossed the river was already "recovered" by the National Army in Nanchang, if they had supported the battle with aircraft at that time, they would have been intercepted by the National Army's air force and anti-aircraft fire. Therefore, Hu Weidong ultimately did not let them take action. But if there was a makeshift airport in Dabie Mountain, the planes from the Soviet area could be transferred here to avoid Nanchang, which had already stationed two flying brigades, and freely go out to support the battle of the Red Eighth Army Corps. In addition, with those aircraft's poor range, they needed an intermediate airfield as a transit point to fly to the base that Hu Weidong had chosen in his heart...

  Although the Fourth Front Army had an airplane before, Gao Jingting was still shocked when he saw the fleet of planes. He had thought that the achievements of the Red 15th Corps were exaggerated, but now he was thoroughly convinced. For the first time, this senior general of the Red Army felt a sense of awe for the young Hu Weidong.

  The plane transferred at the same time, also brought over those pilots and technical experts who stayed in Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. For this reason, Hu Weidong had made arrangements before leaving the Soviet area. He believed that with the Red Army's financial resources, bombers were a luxury item, so it was better to use them as mini transport planes. This way, experts and pilots could quickly transfer between different Soviet areas across the Nationalist-controlled regions. Although there were some risks due to the poor reliability of the planes, it was still much more convenient and safer than traveling by land. The aviation bombs that had been transported to the Soviet area were mostly disassembled and used as materials for making bullets, which greatly improved their cost-effectiveness. After all, even the Red Fifteenth Army mainly relied on captured supplies at present and did not have the resources to engage in luxurious "air-ground coordination". Of course, bomber pilots and bomb droppers still needed to be trained, but only as technical reserves.

  On August 25, 1935, after learning that He Yingqin had redeployed Gu Zhutong and assembled a large army of 300,000 to try to solve the Red Eighth Army Corps and the Dabie Mountains Soviet Area at one stroke, Hu Weidong finally decided to march towards his long-planned target and end the half-year-long thousand-mile turning maneuver. This was because although Gu Zhutong was not considered a top-notch general, he was very stable in using troops, making it difficult to find an opening to attack, and he now had a large army of 300,000 at his disposal, with the Dabie Mountains located between Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, where reinforcements from neighboring Nationalist forces could easily arrive. The Red Eighth Army Corps, despite its increased strength to 150,000 men, would not be able to gain an advantage in a hard fight, so killing on the outer line and mobilizing the enemy was undoubtedly the best choice. Moreover, the Dabie Mountains were only a few hundred miles away from Hu Weidong's ideal base area, and he naturally wanted to solve both problems at once. For this reason, Hu Weidong had already begun to prepare for the worst as soon as he entered the Dabie Mountains, and the report from the Communist Party of China Henan Provincial Committee was even more astonishing, with not just one underground party having infiltrated the Nationalist Party's most important munitions factory. Hu Weidong couldn't help but feel contemptuous of the Nationalist Party's poor counter-espionage capabilities...