Order to Reduce Our Baggage and
Number of Horses
(August 17, 1931)
In the course of the Third Campaign, the enemy used a great deal of highly
mobile forces to move its troops and attack the Red Army. We have already won
victory in the first and second stages. Now we must prepare to fight a prolonged
war against the enemy and prepare to march often at night. This requires that we
enhance the mobility of the Red Army and surpass the enemy not merely ten
times but a hundred times, in order to achieve complete victory in the Third
Campaign. Consequently, every military unit must strive to carry out the following two items:
1. Cut down on clumsy and heavy baggage. The elimination of clumsy and
heavy baggage and large items of baggage that are seldom used must be completed by tomorrow. It should be gathered together at every army headquarters
and be stored at isolated, remote, and safe places (the locations will be given in
another circular). The weight of the remaining loads must not exceed 40 jin per
load.
2. During the current operations, the horses in every unit are really an extremely great encumbrance to the advance of the army. To obstruct the march of
the army is to hamper the carrying out of our strategy. Moreover, every army
often acquires horses after the battle at its own whim, and this not only
hampers the progress of the army but fosters cowardliness and corruption among
the fighters. This is absolutely wrong. In the past, the Thirty-fourth Division of
the Twelfth Army once made the decision that there should not be a single horse
in a company and the result was very good. Now, in order to enhance the
mobility of the Red Army, we must resolutely order a reduction in the number of
horses. If it is laid down that the number of horses must be reduced, the company
should not have a single horse, the regiment may keep two, the division may
keep two, and the army may keep seven (for the army commander, army political commissar, head of the army political department, chief of staff, director of
the logistics department, adjutant general, and director of the medical department). Of those units with special needs, such as the radio department, communications department, and machine gun company, the number of horses they can
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have should be approved by the army commander and army political commissar
on the basis of their need. Moreover, when horses are retained, bad ones must be
eliminated. Those that are excluded from this decision must be gathered together
(including the grooms) by every army by tomorrow (the 18th) and be sent to
Guantian, where they will be handed over to the Southern Jiangxi Special Committee for use in transporting the wounded, weapons, and food supplies.
It is required that every army carry out earnestly the above two items.
Commander-in-Chief
Zhu De
Political Commissar
Mao Zedong

--- Notes

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. I, pp. 248-49, where it is
reprinted from Junshi weijian, distributed in 1942.