Dispositions for Wiping Out Yuan Kezheng's
Regiment and Other Units
(January 9, 1936, 8:00 P.M.)
To Peng, Xu, and Cheng, and for transmittal to Zuo and Nie:¹
1. Apart from Yuan's enemy regiment² and five companies of the 684th
Regiment, today (the 9th) two battalions of the 630th Regiment and four battalions of the 117th Division were added, making in all three regiments and five
companies. What is the situation today? It is hoped that Xu and Cheng will
inform Peng and also let me know.


2. Xu and Cheng, Zuo and Nie should, in accordance with the telegram of
7:00 A.M. on the 9th from Peng and Yang regarding deployment,³ resolutely
destroy this enemy. The troops should be concentrated for this purpose. If Zuo
and Nie have not yet arrived, then a small unit may pin down the enemy's main
force while our largest main force surrounds one of the enemy's regiments and
wipes it out. If Zuo and Nie and the Thirteenth Regiment have arrived, then the
plan of surrounding and eliminating the enemy's main force is to be adopted.


3. When is it estimated that Zuo and Nie can reach Luoshengzhen? Please
have Peng inform me.
Mao


Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 430-31, where it is
reproduced from a copy in the Central Archives.

--- Notes

1. Peng is Peng Dehuai. Xu and Cheng are Xu Haidong, Commander of the First
Front Army's Fifteenth Army Group, and its political commissar, Cheng Zihua. Zuo and
Nie are Zuo Quan and Nie Rongzhen, mentioned above in the text of January 5, 1936.

2. The reference is to the 685th Regiment of the 129th Division of the Guomindang's
Sixty-seventh Army, commanded by Yuan Kezheng.

3. The reference is to a telegram from Peng Dehuai and Yang Shangkun to Xu
Haidong and Cheng Zihua, to be copied and transmitted to Zuo Quan and Nie Rongzhen
and reported to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. The telegram ordered the Seventy-fifth
Division of the Fifteenth Army Group, together with the Second Division and the
Thirteenth Regiment of the First Army Group, to annihilate the enemy advancing toward
Sanhuangzhang and Yongxiangzhen.