On December 24, 1934, it was a little better than the previous day, and although it was still a little cold, at least it was no longer gray and gloomy, and the sun could still be seen. Li Juezheng, commander of the 28th Division of the 19th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, led his troops to search and advance.

Early this morning, Liu Jianxu, commander of the 28th Army, called and told him to contact Zhang Liangji's 16th Division and Tao Guang's 62nd Division by telegram, knowing that both divisions had arrived at their designated locations and inquiring about the current situation of the division. At that time, Li Jue's troops were searching for the remnants of the Red Army in the direction of Linkou by driving horses and Xiaoshui, and they truthfully reported the situation of the Red Army.

Li Jue, born in 1900 in Changsha, Hunan, was an old subordinate of the Hunan warlord Tang Shengzhi and the eldest son-in-law of He Jian, chairman of Hunan Province. It is said that He Jian has three daughters, the eldest daughter He Mei, who is beautiful on the outside and inside. When He Jian married a woman, the man rode a horse, and the woman sat in a "sedan chair"; In addition, the male family gave a lot of dowry, and the female family sent a lot of dowry, which caused a sensation in the provincial capital of Changsha. At present, Li Jue, Chairman He's son-in-law and commander of the 19th Division, learned from the telegram that the 16th and 62nd Divisions were in front of his division, the Zhou Hunyuan Division of the Central Army in the north, and the 15th Army of the Xia Wei Division of the Gui Army in the south. Soon, the head reported that it had entered the small water.

Xiaoshui is just a small mountain village in Shanmuqiao Township, but it is the only way for his Hunan 19th Division to advance. This is the second time that Li Jue has led a large army through this place. The first time was more than three months earlier, in September 1934. At that time, the Red Sixth Army Corps under He Long and Xiao Ke in the Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou Base Area maneuvered here in September and fought fierce battles with Li Jue's Hunan 19th Division. At that time, the Red Sixth Army advanced to the Suining Gaogong Mountain area and was blocked by the Gui army. At this time, the main forces of the enemy forces in Hunan and Guizhou provinces had advanced to the Suining and Jingxian areas. Under these circumstances, the head of the Red Sixth Army made a quick decision and transferred his troops to the south. On the same day, the Red Army entered the area of Shanmuqiao from the Huangsangping area of Suining. On the 15th, the rear guard units of the Red Army had an encounter with the 55th Brigade of Li Jue's Department at Xiaoshui at Shanmu Bridge. Originally, the two sides were inseparable and evenly matched. At this time, a local native of Li Jue's department took the initiative to provide information. Li Jue immediately asked this senior soldier to lead a part of the troops, and with his familiarity with the terrain, he took a shortcut to launch a surprise attack on the Red Army from the boundary of Xiaoshui Dapo. At that moment, the large forces of the Red Army passing through here were cut into two sections. Another force of Li Jue's troops outflanked the Red Army from both flanks of the Dapo Boundary and flanked the Red Army on both sides. In order to cover the main forces to break out of the encirclement, the Red Army sent a platoon of troops to fight their way out, seized another high ground on the Dapo border, and then launched a fierce attack on the enemy with dense firepower. This made Li Juebu mistakenly believe that the Red Army's reinforcements had arrived, so he concentrated his fire on the Red Army's covering troops. Li Jue's troops relied on the large number of people to attack the Red Army's covering troops in turn, and more than 30 Red Army soldiers died bravely. In the end, only 8 warriors remained. When the enemy was outnumbered and the ammunition and food were exhausted, the eight warriors swore to die and should not be taken prisoner, and collectively jumped off the cliff more than 50 meters high, and died heroically, composing a heroic song. As their cover pinned down the enemy's firepower, the real main force took advantage of the opportunity to break through the siege successfully, seized the road and waved south, and occupied the county seat of Tongdao on the 17th.

What makes people sigh is that after the Red Army soldiers jumped off the cliff, because the main force had already taken the road to move forward, and the common people did not dare to enter the gloomy woods under the cliff for a long time, the remains of the eight Red Army soldiers were never found, not even a single grave. It was not until 1991 that the Tongdao County Party Committee and the county government specially built the Xiaoshui Battle Monument and Gatehouse to commemorate the feat of the Eight Warriors of the Red Army. The Xiaoshui Battle Monument and Gatehouse are built on the side of the road under the Dapo boundary. The inscription of General Schoke, "The spirit of the Red Army lives on", is engraved on the monument. The inscription engraved on the base of the stele records the situation of the Battle of Xiaoshui. Every year, people come to the Xiaoshui Battle Monument to gaze at this cliff and commemorate the feat of eight Red Army soldiers who sacrificed their lives to jump off the cliff.

And right now, Li Jue's department is passing through Xiaoshui for the second time. As with the first mission, this time they were again chasing down the Red Army; The difference in the first mission was that the last time it was to hunt down the Red Sixth Army of the Red Army, and this time it was to hunt down the Central Red Army.

The 19th Division under Li Jue's command is the most elite unit in the Hunan army, and because of the last victory, Li Jue now believes that he can build another miraculous feat in this area. Of course, he was known for his good use of his troops and his resourcefulness, so that despite the successive victories of his troops, he did not dare to be careless at all, but simply let them move forward in an orderly manner. Scouts from all walks of life were constantly sent out to spy on the enemy.

Li Jue has been in a good mood recently. Although the Red First Army completed the task of covering the Red Army's crossing of the river, the 19th Hunan Division also played its own prestige and caused heavy casualties to the Red 1st Army. If it weren't for the reflection of the bayonets when the soldiers put on the bayonets and alarmed the guards and soldiers of the Red First Regiment, we would have almost captured their Red First Regiment commander Lin Biao and Red First Army political commissar Nie Rongzhen alive, in that case, the results of the Xiangjiang Battle might have to be rewritten!

For the Red Army, Li Jue's thoughts were twofold. On the one hand, he believed that the Red Army was very powerful, which he had only seen in his life. Since graduating from the ninth class of the Baoding Military Academy in 1924 and participating in the Northern Expedition in 1926, he was the first time he had encountered such a difficult army. We must be 10,000 cautious in dealing with these people, and the slightest mistake will cause those Red Army troops to strike a blow at themselves. The command quality of these Red Army commanders is very high, and the combat effectiveness of the Red Army soldiers is also extraordinary, and they are often able to accomplish some tasks that seem impossible at all. Moreover, both Red Army soldiers and Red Army commanders had a common characteristic: they were not afraid of death! The battle was extraordinarily heroic. This is the most nerve-wracking thing for him. Because every time he conquered a high ground occupied by the Red Army, he had to spend several times his strength! Of course, on the other hand, Li Jue also believed that no matter how strong the Red Army was, it was weaker than weapons and provisions, which would always allow him to win the final victory. As early as February 3, 1931, his Li Jue's unit fought with the then Red Seventh Army. At that time, the secretary and political commissar of the Military Commission of the Red Seventh Army was Deng Xiaoping, the commander-in-chief was Li Mingrui, the army commander was Zhang Yunyi, and the chief of staff was Gong Chu. The rest of the chief officers Li Qian, Zhang Jian, Yuan Zhenwu, Li Xian, etc., are all brave generals in a hundred battles. At that time, Tang Boyin's regiment and Chen Long's regiment, which were led by Li Jue, arrived at Pingshi on January 31, that is, together with the Deng Hui regiment, Tan regiment and Guo regiment of the Guangdong army, to attack the Red Seventh Army that was resting in Meihua, and launched the famous Meihua Campaign. It was a great defeat of the Red Seventh Army after the reorganization of the whole state. After five hours of fierce fighting, the losses of the Red Seventh Army in this operation were unprecedented, with important cadres such as Li Qian and Zhang Jian all killed, and Tsurumura, Zhenwu, and Li Xian wounded, and more than half of the cadres of the whole army were lost.

For Li Jue, Li Jiansheng still knows something. In his impression, Li Jue had successively suffered losses to several giants in his mind, including the aforementioned ones, as well as several leaders such as He Long and Xiao Ke of the Red Second Front. For example, according to the official history, in January 1935, the enemy army attacked the revolutionary base areas in Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou, and the main force of the Red Army rested and recuperated. In early February, the Red Army failed to block Guo Rudong's column in the front of the Cili fortification, and was invaded by Li Jue's troops at Dayong. The Red Army returned to the division and set up an ambush in Dayong's Houping Jigongya to attack Li Jue's column again, and Guo Rudong's column took the opportunity to occupy Sangzhi. During the two-month anti-"encirclement and suppression" operation, the leaders of the Second and Sixth Army Corps decided to move northward because they did not have a deep understanding of the operational principle of "carrying out mobile warfare, selecting the enemy's weak points, and breaking them down in each way during the movement" as instructed by the Central Military Commission, but instead confronted the enemy head-on, suffered repeated setbacks, and the base area continued to shrink, and the situation of the Red Army became increasingly difficult. In addition, in the course of the Red Army's Long March, Li Jue's column also pursued and intercepted and penetrated deep into Guizhou and Yunnan, causing losses to the Red Army.

Of course, this is not to say that Li Jue's unit has always been victorious against the Red Army and the Communists. He was later defeated at the hands of Su Yu. It was 1945. In April of that year, after repelling a series of Japanese offensives against the Hunan, Guangdong, and Jiangxi border areas, the situation in the third theater was relatively stable. Gu Zhutong decided to wipe out the ten detachments (more than 20,000 people) of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region of the New Fourth Army, which had established power in the south at that time, so he ordered Li Jue, then commander-in-chief of the 19th Group Army, to command the 1st Commando, the 2nd Commando, the 52nd Division, the 146th Division, and the 33rd Brigade of the 79th Division to launch the Xiaofeng Campaign. With the 52nd Division, the 1st Division of the 146th Division and the 33rd Brigade as the left corps, and the 79th Division and the Commando Corps as the right corps, the two flanks attacked the Xiaofeng area**. On June 19, 1945, the left and right corps were separated by twenty kilometers and had not yet reached the designated line of attack. Su Yu attacked the left corps with six detachments, repulsing the 52nd Division and the 33rd Brigade. On the 21st, the main force of the New Fourth Army arrived in front of the right corps, and launched the main attack that night, pressing the first commando into a canyon southeast of Xiaofeng, and the first commando was wiped out after two days and nights of fierce fighting, killing Hu Xu, the commander of the commando, Xiong Zhuangyou, the commander of the third battalion, and Chen Shiying, the commander of the fifth battalion, were captured. The offensive was lost.

Of course, Li Jiansheng knows a lot about Li Jue, not because he has successively defeated several giants in his mind, but because of his heroic performance and final destination on the battlefield of resistance against Japan.

You must know that Li Jue was not a descendant of Chairman Chiang, but he fought bravely and was loved by Chiang Kai-shek, and was eventually promoted to the positions of commander-in-chief of the 25th Group Army and commander-in-chief of the 19th Group Army. This is an outlier among the generals of the Hunan army who are not descendants. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he successively served as the commander of the 70th Army of the National Revolutionary Army and the commander-in-chief of the 25th Group Army. And during the eight-year Anti-Japanese War, he has also been on the front line, and later generations call him "eight years without being in the line of fire"! In 1938, Li Jue presided over the Battle of Jinguanqiao, which fought with the Japanese army for every inch of land, and as a result, thousands of Japanese officers and soldiers from Osaka suffered heavy losses. Several times the reinforcement of troops has left only a few vendors and clerks in Osaka. Later generations ridiculed that the commander of the 106th Division, Lieutenant General Songpu, no longer had to be ashamed of the indecent nickname of "Merchant Division".