Peng Dehuai

Peng Dehuai was a Chinese general and China's Minister of National Defense from 1954 to 1959. Peng was born into a poor peasant family, and received several years of primary education before his family's poverty forced him to suspend his education at the age of ten, and to work for several years as a manual laborer. When he was sixteen, Peng became a professional soldier. Over the next ten years Peng served in the armies of several Hunan-based warlord armies, raising himself from the rank of private second class to major. In 1926, Peng's forces joined the Kuomintang, and Peng was first introduced to communism. Peng participated in the Northern Expedition, and supported Wang Jingwei's attempt to form a left-leaning Kuomintang government based in Wuhan. After Wang was defeated, Peng briefly rejoined Chiang Kai-shek's forces before joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), allying himself with Mao Zedong and Zhu De.

24 October 1898

Born on the same birth day (24 October): Anthony Babington • Ashton Sanders • Brad Sherman • Elijah Greer • Fredrik Mikkelsen • George Tsontakis • Marianne North • Miroslav Sládek • Peter Gellhorn • Peter Takeo Okada • Shenae Grimes • Stephen Covey

Born in the same month (October 1898): Adolf Reichwein • Alan Barker • Bill Terry • Dámaso Alonso • Eduard Pütsep • Eileen Sedgwick • Joe Sewell • Karl Anton • Leo McCarey • Lilly Daché • Lotte Lenya • Nachum Gutman • Shinichi Suzuki • Simon Vestdijk • Tawfiq al-Hakim • Thomas William Holmes • William O. Douglas