Su Yu

Su Yu (August 10, 1907 – February 5, 1984) was a Chinese Communist military leader. He was considered by Chinese Communist Leader Mao Zedong to be among the best commanders of the PLA only next to Lin Biao and Liu Bocheng. Su Yu fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and in the Chinese Civil War. He commanded the East China Field Army (renamed 3rd Field Army in 1949) during the Chinese Civil War.

Early life
Su Yu was born in Huitong County in Hunan on August 10, 1907 to an ethnic Dong (侗族) family, but he considered himself a Han (汉族); he was the 3rd child among six siblings. Su's father was Su Zhouheng (粟周亨), his mother was Liang Manmei (梁满妹), and the family depended on the 30 mu of inherited farmland for survival. By the age of 18, Su Yu entered the Hunan Provincial 2nd Normal School at Changde for his post-secondary education.

Encirclement Campaigns and the Long March
In 1926, he joined the Communist Youth League of China, and in 1927 joined the Communist Party of China. He took part of the Northern Expedition and later the Nanchang Uprising. He emerged as one of the ablest guerrilla commanders in the Jiangxi Soviet during the 1930s. He did not join The Long March because he was tasked to fight against the nationalist troops for a delaying action, and stayed in the South of Zhejiang until 1937.

Second Sino-Japanese War


In the Second Sino-Japanese War, he won the Cheqiao Campaign against the Japanese Army. After this, he had some other campaigns in Central Jiangsu. He was also responsible for expanding communist power bases in Shandong and Jiangsu provinces by attacking nationalist-controlled cities; the nationalist forces under General Gu Zhutong retaliated by wiping out a large segment of communist troops in the New Fourth Army Incident, which marked the end of the united front.

Chinese Civil War
The successes of the battle persuaded Mao Zedong to change his military strategy of the Chinese Civil War, from traditional guerrilla style warfare to a more mobile and conventional approach. In July 1946, he led 30,000 communist troops which triumphed over 120,000 American-armed nationalist troops in seven different engagements, captured and killed 53,000 Kuomingtang soldiers and stunned the country. The Central Jiangsu Campaign was the first of many of the brilliant campaigns that defined his legacy. He was also the commander of the PLA in the famous and much propagandized Menglianggu Campaign. In this campaign, the elite Nationalist Seventy-Fourth division was completely destroyed after Su Yu succeeded in encircling the unit.

He was the major commander during the Huaihai Campaign (淮海战役, November 1948 to January 1949). It was at his suggestion on January 22, 1948 that the two armies of Liu and Su followed a sudden-concentrate, sudden-disperse strategy that led to this decisive victory in late 1948, with the destruction of five Nationalist armies and the killing or capture of 550,000 Nationalist soldiers. Su's army alone destroyed 4 nationalist armies, and was the decisive force in destroying the fifth.

After the Establishment of the PRC


When the Korean War broke out in 1950, it was rumored that Su Yu was the commander that Mao wanted to lead the Chinese Volunteer Army into Korea, because of his experience of commanding a large number of troops. However, because of his illness (caused by shell fragments in the 1930s), neither Su nor Lin Biao (also rumored to be sick) was able to command the CVA. In the end, Peng Dehuai was selected, after Lin refused to lead the army.

He was made a Senior General (General of the Army) in 1955. He served in numerous positions, including the Chief of the General Staff of the PLA in the 1950s. When he was old, he wrote a book called 《The Memoirs of Su Yu》(《粟裕回忆录》). He died in Beijing on February 5, 1984 at the age of 77.

Family


Su Yu married Chu Qing (楚青) on February 1941. They had three children, all of whom were sent to join the PLA by Su Yu. The eldest son Su Rongsheng (粟戎生) was born in 1942, followed by the second son Su Hansheng (粟寒生), and the youngest, a daughter Su Huining (粟惠宁), who married Chen Xiaolu (陈小鲁) in August 1975. Chen Xiaolu (陈小鲁) was the youngest son of Chen Yi who was Su Yu's direct superior during war time. According to Su Rongsheng, Su Yu was an extremely strict father. When Su Rongsheng was only three years old, Su Yu forced him to learn how to swim by giving him only a piece of bamboo as a float, and pushed him into the water in front of his mother, and prohibited anyone from attempting to save Su Rongsheng. Su Yu's wife, Chu Qing was outraged and asked Su Yu angrily whether he was not worried about Su Rongsheng being drowned. But Su Yu answered that Su Rongsheng would have never learned how to swim any other way and besides, he was not being drowned. At age of 20, Su Rongsheng joined the PLA and remained in service for 45 years, rising from an ordinary soldier to a lieutenant general when he retired as the deputy commander-in-chief of Beijing Military District at age 65.