In 1942, there was a report on Mao Zedong's desk in Yan'an. After reading the report, Mao Zedong couldn't help but admire:
"It should be regarded as a miracle! A miracle! Who has such magical powers?" "
The person in charge of the Central Social Department said: "This is done by Comrade Bru."
"This Bru is really our ' Holmes '!"
Mao Zedong said humorously: "It's a pity that we only have one Bru. It would be great to have 10 more Brus. We need people like Bru to protect our Yan'an!"
This Bru is our party's intelligence wizard Chen Bo.
What special experience did Chen Bo have before coming to Yan'an? How did he repeatedly solve major KMT spy cases?
Chen Bo
After the Anti-Japanese War broke out, although the Kuomintang and the Communist Party reached a consensus on cooperation for the second time, during this period the Kuomintang had been sending spies deep into Yan'an to collect important intelligence and even attempted to assassinate our party's leaders.
In this context, protecting the security of Yan'an has become one of the important tasks of the Yan'an intelligence department. The Border Region Security Office in Yan'an, as a professional anti-special agency in our party's intelligence system, is responsible for protecting the political environment of the border region during the Anti-Japanese War.
After Chen Bo graduated from Yan'an Red Army University in 1937, he was assigned to the Security Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, serving successively as the chief of the reconnaissance section, the chief of the intelligence section, and finally the minister of security.
Chen Bo’s original name was Lu Maohuan, also known as Bru. He was born in a fisherman's family in , Hainan Island. The family's income depends on fishing at sea.
In 1926, Chen Bo joined the Communist Party of China. The following year, Chen Bo participated in the Qiongya 422 Incident. Chen Bo was arrested by the Kuomintang military police in Haikou. After being detained for a month, he was released on bail by his relatives. After being released from prison, Chen Bo joined the Qiongya Revolutionary Army. With his outstanding courage, he soon became the deputy company commander of the revolutionary army's company.
The Red Detachment of Women from Hainan
Due to a cover mission in 1928, Chen Bo was separated from his comrades and was forced to come to Indonesia to join his uncle who opened a restaurant. In Indonesia, he helped his uncle run a restaurant while studying at a local overseas Chinese school.
While in Indonesia, Chen Bo organized some overseas Chinese youth to establish party organizations, and often organized overseas Chinese to carry out revolutionary propaganda activities. With the support of the Communist Party of Singapore, Chen Bo established the "Palembang Special Branch" in Indonesia.
"Palembang Special Branch" is an organization equivalent to the port workers' union. The stevedores at the port at that time came from all over the world. They were poor people trying to make a living, and they were a group of people exploited and oppressed by the capitalists.
Chen Bo used the new organization of the Palembang Special Branch to preach revolutionary principles to the workers and organize workers to carry out rights protection actions. In this way, under the influence of Chen Bo, the Palembang Special Branch carried out many general strikes demanding salary increases, and they all won.
In the spring of 1931, many revolutionary comrades in Singapore and Indonesia were killed due to the rebellion of Lee Jinbiao of the Singapore underground party organization.
In order to maintain the safety of Indonesian underground party organizations, Chen Bo volunteered to take on the task of eradicating rape. This was also the first time that Chen Bo faced the traitors lurking in the party organization.
Because Li Jinbiao was still valuable at that time, he was closely protected by the British colonial authorities. After many investigations, Chen Bo discovered that Li Jinbiao was protected by British detectives every time he traveled.
In order to get rid of this traitor, Chen Bo decided to use bombs. On the eve of the operation, Chen Bo was lurking upstairs in a cafe to install a bomb. When Chen Bo was installing the bomb in a hidden location, there was a sudden knock on the door. Chen Bo reflexively turned around and detonated the bomb in a hurry. His left hand was instantly blown away by the bomb.
Chen Bo
The unexpected explosion also attracted the police. They took the bloody Chen Bo to the police station for interrogation. The witty Chen Bo defended himself during the interrogation:
I just went into the cafe to have a cup of coffee. Someone threw the bomb in from outside. I came here to drink coffee, but my left hand was blown off.I ask you to pay for medical expenses and compensation!
The police were at a loss when faced with such an answer. Because they could not produce any evidence, they could only reduce the serious matter to a trivial matter, acquitting Chen Bo, and even compensated him with a small amount of money as consolation.
In 1932, Chen Bo returned to his motherland. Under the arrangement of the party organization, he was sent to work in Shanghai. Four years later, he came to Yan'an and entered the Red Army University to study.
In the summer of 1937, Chen Bo was selected to work in the Security Department of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. Soon, he was highly praised by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai for his excellent intelligence work and reconnaissance skills. Intelligence work is the eyes and ears of military command operations. With accurate intelligence, you have a better chance of winning by knowing yourself and the enemy.
Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region
Because intelligence work was once the weak link of our party at that time, the Red Army operations suffered huge losses due to intelligence errors, so after the Party Central Committee arrived in northern Shaanxi, it attached great importance to intelligence and security work, which also gave Chen Bo a place to use.
In fact, when he was studying in Indonesia, Chen Bo liked reading detective novels very much. His most admired idol was Sherlock Holmes. Moreover, Chen Bo gained valuable practical experience in the activities organized during his stay in Indonesia. So after arriving in Yan'an, he used all these experiences in the construction of intelligence agencies, which greatly improved the quality of our party's intelligence work.
During the Anti-Japanese War, how did Chen Bo get rid of all the Kuomintang spies sent to Yan'an?
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1942, the Yan'an security department captured a Kuomintang agent named Chen Xinglin. During the interrogation, the agent expressed his willingness to abandon the dark side and join the light, and proposed to meet with the head of the Yan'an Intelligence Division. After Chen Bo heard about it, he immediately went to see Chen Xinglin.
Chen Xinglin confessed: I was caught by Kuomintang agents on my way to Yan'an to participate in the revolution in 1938. The spies saw that I could read and read, so they forcibly sent me to a spy training base in Xi'an. After being brainwashed and trained by special agents, he became a teacher of the Hanzhong special training class.
The Hanzhong Special Training Class is a secret spy agency of the Kuomintang. Those who graduate from here will find ways to enter the Communist Party to engage in spy work. By October 1941, this Hanzhong special training class had trained nine batches of spy trainees. After graduation, these people sneaked into Yan'an and worked in various jobs in various departments of our party.
The former address of the Hanzhong Special Training Class
At the end of 1941, Chiang Kai-shek decided to send Hu Zongnan to massively attack Yan'an. At such a critical moment, Hu Zongnan sent Chen Xinglin to sneak into Yan'an secretly, leading the spies in Yan'an to collect intelligence and cooperate with the Kuomintang army's attack. These Kuomintang agents who infiltrated into Yan'an in advance were told before they sneaked into Yan'an that they were not allowed to contact their superiors and could only wait for instructions from their superiors in Yan'an.
These Kuomintang agents who are hiding everywhere are not allowed to use their names when they participate in the Hanzhong training, but can only use code names. And no one knows each other, so the agents don't know each other's real names and identities.
But Chen Xinglin's identity is very special, because he has been the instructor of the Hanzhong Special Training Class from the first to the ninth period, so he knows all the trainees. It was based on this consideration that Hu Zongnan sent Chen Xinglin to sneak into Yan'an to lead these agents at the critical moment.
For Chen Bo, the situation explained by Chen Xinglin is very important.
So Chen Bo reported this important information directly to Mao Zedong in detail. Mao Zedong immediately arranged for Zhou Enlai to fully assist Chen Bo, and he must find out the Kuomintang spies lurking in Yan'an.
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai
The time came to May 1942, which coincided with the May 4th Youth Day. A celebration meeting will be held in Yan'an, and Yan'an youth from various departments will participate. Chen Bo thought this was an excellent opportunity to identify the spy. He took Chen Xinglin and hid behind an entrance door. At 9 o'clock, people from various units and schools entered the venue from the entrance. At this time, Chen Xinglin opened his eyes and carefully identified each person. Every time he recognized an agent, he sent a secret signal to Chen Bo, and the personnel of the Yan'an security department secretly inquired about the unit where the person worked and his name.During this celebration, Chen Xinglin recognized a total of 36 spies.
After these 36 spies were captured, Chen Bo, through interrogation, followed the clues and captured more than 20 spies who entered Yan'an through other channels. Hu Zongnan was extremely surprised by the major case of the Hanzhong training class uncovered by Chen Bo. He never expected that these agents carefully trained and selected by the Kuomintang would be uncovered by the CCP's intelligence agency before they were put to use. Even Chiang Kai-shek was deeply shocked when he learned about it and had to admire the power of the CCP Intelligence Department.
Hu Zongnan
In June 1943, the Eighth Route Army garrison in Wuqi County, Yan'an discovered two illegal crossing incidents one after another:
The first illegal crossing incident was reported by the Eighth Route Army Police seven times. The brigade discovered that it was early in the morning and the guard post of the 7th Police Brigade discovered that someone was preparing to cross the mountain pass secretly. The 7th Brigade immediately mobilized troops to round them up. In the process, all seventy-five agents were shot dead. When the other two agents were captured by the soldiers, they bit the poison hidden in their collars and committed suicide.
Unexpectedly, a few days later, another trespassing incident occurred at the border line of Fu County, which is not far away. Two agents were discovered by Eighth Route Army sentries when they entered Fu County in the middle of the night. One was beaten to death by the sentries, and the other committed suicide by taking poison after being captured.
These two incidents attracted great attention from the security department of the Yan'an Border Region. Chen Bo reported these two incidents of secret agents to the Central Military Commission. The Central Military Commission ordered Chen Bo to find out as soon as possible the real purpose behind the secret agents' infiltration. Chen Bo, who has been engaged in intelligence work for many years, vaguely felt that the two acts of Kuomintang agents forcefully breaking through the border were not simple. If the Kuomintang agents are willing to pay such a high price, there must be a big conspiracy brewing behind it.
On this day, when Chen Bo was copying the arrangements for the daily activities of central leaders, he saw this content: On June 22, Chairman Mao Zedong met with Tian Shouyao, commander of the Eighth Brigade of the Third Division of the New Fourth Army.
Tian Shouyao
Tian Shouyao was a native of Lu'an, Anhui Province. He participated in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. During the Anti-Japanese War, he served as the brigade commander of the 18th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army and the commander of the Second Army Division in Northern Jiangsu. At that time, for the sake of the anti-Japanese plan, Tian Shouyao would rush to Yan'an in June to attend an important meeting. After Mao Zedong learned about it, he specially arranged to meet Tian Shouyao in person on June 22. Chen Bo, who was in charge of security work, immediately sent someone to contact the New Fourth Army headquarters in northern Jiangsu to verify his identity in accordance with security work procedures.
After investigation, it was found that Tian Shouyao's route from central China to Yan'an in March of that year was via Bohai, Jidong, Pingxi, and then into northwest Shanxi. He arrived in northwest Shanxi in May, where he sent a telegram to the central government to report the situation.
However, Chen Bo learned during the investigation that the letter of introduction issued by the Central China Bureau that Tian Shouyao carried was lost.
During the war years, telegraphs could not be used except as a last resort in order to maintain confidentiality. Therefore, some important personnel transfers required a letter of introduction from the superior department to prove the person's identity.
Yan'an and northern Jiangsu are thousands of miles apart. Tian Shouyao's anti-Japanese deeds are famous far and wide. Many people in the base area know about him, but they have only heard of his name but never met him. Therefore, although Tian Shouyao came without a letter of introduction this time, he entered Yan'an smoothly. But Chen Bo did not relax because he was an anti-Japanese hero. With many years of experience in intelligence work, he had doubts: Why was the letter of introduction issued by the Central China Bureau that Tian Shouyao carried with him, the only document that could prove his identity, lost?
What’s even more suspicious is that Tian Shouyao had arrived safely in northwest Shanxi and lost his letter of introduction when he arrived in Yan’an? The more Chen Bo thought about it, the more something was wrong, so he immediately reported his ideas to the Party Central Committee and suggested that Mao Zedong's interview with Tian Shouyao be temporarily canceled until Tian Shouyao's true identity was found out.
Chen Bo
In order to find out the doubts about Tian Shouyao, Chen Bo sent a number of comrades from the Intelligence and Security Division to the Eighth Route Army depot in northwest Shanxi to verify the situation. According to the confirmation from comrades at the reception desk of the Eighth Route Army’s Northwestern Shanxi Military Station, no one named Tian Shouyao has been received at the reception desk of the Northwestern Shanxi Military Station.
As for the so-called telegram that arrived safely in northwest Shanxi, it was not sent from here. Comrades from the Security Department immediately rushed back to Yan'an and reported the investigation situation to Chen Bo.After hearing this, Chen Bo let out a long breath, and his suspicion was finally confirmed.
Later, with the help of my underground intelligence organization that had infiltrated the enemy, Chen Bo found out the whole story:
The person Mao Zedong wanted to meet on June 22 was a fake Tian Shouyao who had been transferred. The real Brigadier Tian Shouyao was indeed preparing to go to Yan'an via waterway, but unfortunately, the boat they were on encountered the Japanese patrol boat not long after setting out to sea. During the battle with the Japanese army, 16 people including Brigadier Tian Shouyao died heroically in the battle.
The Japanese army knew that a New Fourth Army leader had died in this battle, but could not find the specific identity and destination, so they disclosed the matter to the Kuomintang military reunification agents.
The military special agents soon found out Tian Shouyao's true identity and his plan to go to Yan'an. Dai Li thought this was a golden opportunity at the time, so he personally planned a shocking conspiracy to murder the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
Dai Li
Dai Li sent many capable military agents to sneak into Yan'an, including Jia Tian Shouyao. Just when they thought they had deceived the Yan'an security department and could further implement their plan to assassinate Mao Zedong, all these spies were arrested. There are only five days left until June 22nd.
Chen Bo's uncovering of a plot by Kuomintang military agents to assassinate Mao Zedong caused a sensation in Yan'an. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other Party Central Committee leaders spoke highly of Chen Bo's intelligence work.
From then on, Chen Bo, the "Sherlock Holmes of Yan'an", became famous far and wide. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Bo was sent to Northeast China and served as deputy director of the Harbin Municipal Public Security Bureau and director of the Provincial Public Security Department.
In 1949, Chen Bo followed the army of and four wild soldiers southward. In October, after the liberation of Guangzhou, Chen Bo served as director of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department.
During these days in Guangdong, Chen Bo repeatedly solved major cases and became a real "Sherlock Holmes".
