Chapter Fifty-Three Decision
The old saying goes, "Killing a thousand enemies, losing eight hundred of our own." The 15th Red Army had eliminated one million enemy troops, with only thirty thousand casualties on their side, which was already extremely rare. However, the cause of the reduction in personnel was not just battles. Due to fighting five consecutive battles in a short period, they even had to rush to march eastward, accumulating a journey of over 500 miles, and at times, there wasn't even time for sleep. As a result, almost every soldier in the 15th Red Army was exhausted, and those who didn't know might have thought it was an outbreak of conjunctivitis. There were also soldiers who vomited blood due to exhaustion, and some even died from exhaustion. Furthermore, under extreme fatigue, the human body's resistance plummeted, and the number of people falling ill increased by more than tenfold compared to normal times. At this time, Su Yu still wanted to fight another major battle, and Hu Weidong discovered his biggest flaw - not being too concerned about the welfare of his soldiers (note 1). Although under the encouragement of consecutive victories, the broad masses of soldiers fully demonstrated their excellent style of not fearing fatigue and continuous fighting, achieving great victories. However, morale alone cannot fill one's stomach. If they were to fight until a critical moment, and suddenly a large number of soldiers in the army couldn't hold on and fell down, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate. What made Hu Weidong even more worried was that after the 15th Red Army had eliminated so many Nationalist troops with great effort, they discovered that their enemies were not decreasing but increasing...
"Xue Yue, Wei Lihuang and Sun Lianzhong are not easy to deal with, and each of them has more than 100,000 troops under their command... Moreover, they all made significant contributions during the War of Resistance. If we were to take them down now, wouldn't that be helping the enemy? ", Hu Weidong furrowed his brow, in previous battles he had always targeted those incompetent and cowardly generals who had hindered friendly forces during the War of Resistance. This approach was easy to win with and indirectly contributed to the future war effort, but as time went on, Hu Weidong discovered that by doing so, he had inadvertently helped the Nationalist Army eliminate its weak links, leaving only capable generals remaining. As for the loss of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, it was a small price to pay for Chiang Kai-shek, who controlled half of China and could easily replenish his forces (the loss of veteran soldiers was regrettable, but the improvement in tactical level and the elimination of incompetent generals made up for it). In fact, most Nationalist Army units were rebuilt several times after the War of Resistance, yet their exchange ratio with the Japanese army continued to improve, which proved this point. As a result, Hu Weidong had inadvertently dug his own grave...
"It seems that I can only leave Hangzhou now. Fortunately, the most important goods have been moved away..." Hu Weidong sighed.
Hu Weidong now clearly understands that as long as the 15th Red Army stays in the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou area, which is most important to Chiang Kai-shek, he will definitely regard them as his number one enemy, even surpassing the Central Red Army and local warlords. Even if the 15th Red Army can fight well, they will still be overwhelmed by the millions of Nationalist troops that cannot be killed off. After giving up Hangzhou, according to Chiang Kai-shek's habits, he will definitely deploy a portion of his army there, at which time the pressure on the 15th Red Army will be somewhat alleviated...
The situation is better than Hu Weidong expected, probably because he was scared this time. The old Chiang has left most of the 200,000 elite troops led by Xue Yue in the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou area to prevent the Red Fifteenth Army from attacking again. This leaves only two divisions, Wei Lihuang and Sun Lianzhong, with a total strength of less than 300,000 men, and both are slightly inferior to Xue Yue in terms of military talent. If the Red Fifteenth Army relies on the Soviet area for internal line operations, it may not be impossible to win. The morale of the Red Fifteenth Army is high, from Su Yu, Mao Zedong to ordinary soldiers, but Hu Weidong has shown his extraordinary insight again: "Winning may not be difficult, but what then? With our strength, we absolutely cannot eliminate the enemy at a speed that keeps up with their recruitment. Here is too close to Chiang's core ruling area, he can continuously dispatch large troops and exhaust us to death. Our army can only jump out of the main force, pull the battlefield far away, and have better development opportunities. Moreover, in politics, our northward march against Japan is more beneficial than repeatedly entangling with the National Party in Jiangnan."
This time, Hu Weidong had really made up his mind to head north immediately, but although he said so, crossing the river was something that even the usually bold Su Yu was somewhat afraid of. The brutal Battle of Xiangjiang was not an experience they had personally gone through, but everyone had heard about it - more than 40,000 people had been sacrificed just to cross the Xiangjiang River with great difficulty, let alone the Yangtze River, which was known as the "heavenly moat"? Moreover, the number of non-combat personnel in the Red Fifteenth Army had surged to 700,000 or 800,000, which would undoubtedly increase the difficulty of crossing the river. Especially those scientists were all treasures in Hu Weidong's heart - if they stayed in the simple conditions of the Soviet district, they would be wasted; but if they took them away and one or two of them were killed by enemy planes during the crossing, wouldn't Hu Weidong be heartbroken? On the ship, encountering air raids was a situation where there was nowhere to hide...
After much consideration, no one had a foolproof plan, but there was one point that reached a consensus, which was to go upstream of the Yangtze River. On the one hand, the river surface is narrower in the upper reaches, and the speed of passing through is much faster. On the other hand, it is far away from the ruling center of Old Chiang, and the enemy's deployment is not as flexible and rapid as in the Yangtze River Delta region. The Red Fifteenth Army thus had the possibility of making up for lost time. However, those non-combat personnel did not all agree to follow along and continue on the road, especially some scientists, and their reason was surprisingly that they were unwilling to leave the Soviet area...
This is partly because the spirit of the Su District masses and the integrity of party members and cadres infected those knowledge elites from the KMT-controlled areas, but more importantly, some technical talents here have achieved results that can only exist in their minds while staying in big cities in the KMT-controlled areas. For a real scientific and technological worker, treatment and respect are not as attractive as achieving research results...
These scientists were able to achieve results in the humble conditions of the Soviet area, and it is inseparable from their own genius and hard work. However, Hu Weidong is also absolutely indispensable, although he only made some suggestions and did not have time to personally participate in scientific research and production, his contribution is essential...
Note 1: Lin was completely opposite to Su Yu in this regard. In order to save a few more soldiers, he would rather expend precious artillery shells and even let some enemies go; whereas Su Yu, as long as he could annihilate more enemies, never cared about his own casualties. It's really hard to say who is right or wrong, but at least the troops definitely liked Lin better. Historically, although Su Yu was exceptionally talented, there was always Chen Yi, good at ideological work, serving as the first-in-command above him...
