【Yun Gui Tengchong Iron Blood Legend 4】
(iii) The last order he carried out was to burn paper money for the brethren who died in battle
In the intelligence war of the Great Counteroffensive in Western Yunnan, the fate of Wu Changqian, intelligence director of the 97th Regiment of the 20th Group Army of the Expeditionary Force, was full of legends.
On July 7, 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident, Wu Changmilling, who was born in Tongzhou, Beijing, just graduated from high school. In order not to be a slave to the country, he and many young students prepared to go to Yan'an. But I heard that the road to Yan'an was very tightly blocked, so the young people in their group chose another path of life, boarded a boat from Tianjin to Qingdao, and then went to Jinan. At the beginning of 1938, their group of students went to Nanyang, Henan Province, just in time to meet the enrollment of the Whampoa Military Academy, so he became the 17th cadet of the Whampoa Military Academy.
In 1943, Wu Changmilling's troops were incorporated into the 20th Group Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force led by Huo Yizhang, and Wu Changmilling was transferred to the 97th Regiment of the 33rd Division as a machine gun company commander. It may be that in view of the bold personality of Wu Changqianshan and the three religions and nine streams mingled together, the commander of wu Company, who learned heavy machine guns, was appointed as the intelligence director of the regiment major, a position that looked more glorious, but brought endless suffering to his life. But the spirited young major at that time could not imagine that day, in order to get more information, he joined the gang, and unexpectedly became a well-known big man in Yunnan and Burma.
Wu Changmilling, the intelligence director of the year
In 1944, during the Great Counteroffensive in Western Yunnan, Wu Changmilling's regiment accepted the task of attacking the dangerous Red Mountain Cliff to completely cut off the passage for the Japanese 56th Division to reinforce Songshan and Tengchong, and ensure the encirclement and annihilation of Tengchong. Wang Yanxi, the commander of the 97th Regiment who graduated from the Huangpu 8th period, re-summoned Wu Changmilling to the line of fire, gathered all the heavy machine guns of the regiment, and commanded by Major Company Commander Wu Changmilling to suppress the Japanese army and cover the infantry attack. A metal storm of dozens of U.S.-made heavy machine guns successfully overwhelmed the Japanese Army, which was known for its tenacity, and the 97th Regiment laid the last pass to the headquarters of the Japanese 56th Division in Mangshi. Only 7 men remained in the machine gun company, leaving less than 100 men in the regiment. Wu Changmill's ears were almost deafened by the heavy machine guns fired violently, and he could not hear others whispering from then on. After the war, the only regimental monument in the entire Western Yunnan counter-offensive was erected on the Red Mountain Cliff.
Before and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in Western Yunnan, the troops were about to be pulled out, but Wu Changmilling, who had a bright future, did not want to leave, because he was in love with a beautiful Dai girl. The hero loves beauty, and Wu Changmilling doesn't even want to go back to his home in Beijing. He was going to make his home in the land he had fought. But the division did not approve, saying that the intelligence officer could not leave the unit. Fortunately, the regimental commander was very kind to Wu Changmilling, saying that if the troops were transferred to the shelter, you would quietly leave, and the regimental commander was afraid that he would be unable to gain a foothold alone in a foreign land, and asked him to bring a guard named Liu Houfu.
Wu Changmilling, who married a Dai girl, lived a stable and sweet life. Because he was an excellent officer, coupled with the status of the boss of the first line of the Lake in Yunnan and Burma, he became an authentic person in the eyes of the local leaders. He served as a local self-defense brigade chief, as a town mayor, and as an inspector in the police station. In 1949, he bought an American Dodge truck to run the business. At that time, a large number of anti-Japanese soldiers who had retired from the army after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression were running and selling on the Burma Highway. On the road they opened with their blood and lives, veterans are scrambling to renovate American military trucks from Burma to Kunming to make ends meet.
A Dodge truck that used to walk on the Burma Road
In late 1949, Kuomintang Lieutenant General Shen Wasun was detained during a telegram revolt by Lu Han, the chairman of Yunnan Province, and was soon handed over to the newly established new regime public security organs. Shen Drunken confessed to the nascent regime the names of 5,000 military intelligence officers, including Wu Changmilling, who was already a civilian, and Wu Changmilling was recorded by the public security organs ever since.
At that time, a public security officer named Jiang Xingzhi participated in the interrogation of Shen Drunk and was appointed to become a full-time member of the hunt for these "latent agents", but the ghost sent god, and they passed by again and again. When Jiang Xingzhi went from Kunming to Mangshi to look for Wu Changmilling, Wu Changmilling went from Mangshi to Kunming. After Wu Chang milled to Kunming, his American-made Dodge truck was collected and no one was allowed to leave. First it was adopted as an associated company, then engaged in public-private partnership, and then became a state-run, and Wu Changmilling worked for seven years. In 1957, Wu Changmill returned to his wife and children empty-handed.
Later, our Party had a policy that it was not historical counter-revolution that had broken away from the Kuomintang army before the civil war in 1946. So Jiang Xingzhi gave up the pursuit of Wu Changmilling. However, the "Cultural Revolution" did not spare Wu Changmilling, and it was the Red Guards who pulled Wu Chang milling out, tied up five flowers, and stood upstream of the ox cart throughout the 8 townships of the county. Wu Changmilling said: "I have not fought with the People's Liberation Army, why do you want to rectify me all the time?" No one listened to Wu Changqian's discernment, and he was thrown into prison for more than ten years.
Later, Wu Chang was released from prison and became a member of the State Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He only submitted one identical proposal a year: to restore the anti-Japanese memorial cemetery in Mangshi. In 1990, the Martyrs' Cemetery was finally rebuilt, and the remnants of the Ninety-Seven Regiments that stood on the Red Mountain Cliff were also re-erected. On the day the monument was rebuilt, Wu Changqian wrote a letter to Wang Yanxi, an old commander in the United States, reporting to the regimental commander that the monument to the 97th Regiment's combat fallen soldiers had been erected again. The elderly head of the regiment, Wang Yanxi, sent a hundred dollars to this end and asked Wu Changmilling to buy paper money to pay tribute to the brethren. Wu Changmilling, who had long since become an old man, carried out the last military order, kneeling in front of the graves of the brothers who had died in battle for decades, burning paper one by one...
Mangshi Anti-Japanese War Monument
Now that Wu Changmilling has passed away, their stories will slowly be forgotten with the passage of time...
There is no eternal existence in this world.
(4) Zhou Guangyong, a true or false spy
At 20:10 on September 3, 2005, the Central Radio News Channel broadcast "Face to Face", a program by Wang Zhi interviewing Zhou Guangyong, a witness to the Tengchong Campaign in Yunnan Province, with the title: Zhou Guangyong: A Living Martyr.
"Face to Face" screen
The show tells a legendary story: 76-year-old Zhou Guangyong is a native of Tengchong County, Yunnan Province, with a well-to-do family, and was only 14 years old when the Japanese occupied Tengchong. Witnessing his uncle being killed by the Japanese, his aunt being taken to work as a comfort woman and finally being killed, Zhou Guangyong, full of grief and anger, encountered the people of the expeditionary army on the way to escape. The people of the expeditionary force saw that he was quite clever and a local, so they took him to Dongguan Village to formally join the army, under the pseudonym "Zhou Longyu", and became an spie of the 106th Regiment of the 36th Division of the Expeditionary Force, who was specifically responsible for entering the city to investigate the enemy's situation and then report to the military headquarters. Since Zhou Guangyong had relatives who worked around the Japanese, his tasks were done very well. He knew very well where the Japanese headquarters were, where the gendarmerie were, where the captured American soldiers were, where the captured Central Army was, and he knew exactly how the Japanese army was being deployed.
In the battle against Tengchong, because he was familiar with the terrain in the city, he was ordered to take the squad leader to bomb a Japanese bunker. The squad leader was killed, and Zhou Guangyong was also blown unconscious. Soon, Zhou Guangyong woke up, dragged the squad leader's gun out of the trench, and walked toward the New Bridge River in a daze. While washing his face, Zhou Guangyong found that his face was full of bomb ashes, and the blood flowed into the river little by little from his fingers, and then he was carried away on stretchers by the soldiers who rushed to him...
After the victory in the Battle of Tengchong, because Zhou Guangyong was young and shrewd and diligent, he was introduced to the Kuomintang elder Li Gengen as an entourage and was responsible for leading horses, and Zhou Guangyong also left Tengchong with Li Gen and went to Kunming. When cleaning up the battlefield, people did not see Zhou Guangyong and thought that he had died on the battlefield. Therefore, when the National Martyrs Cemetery was established in 1945, he set up a tombstone under the name of zhou Longyu when he was an spie, and it was not until he returned home decades later that Zhou Guangyong did not know the fact that the cruel war had left a tombstone for him, and now he retired home to live a peaceful life.
When I read this story interviewed by Wang Zhi, I was deeply moved. Come to think of it, the hero buried in the cemetery died and came back to life decades later, so legendary! However, when I read the "Blood Memory" edited and published by the local official (the Propaganda Department of the Tengchong County CPC Committee), I found that the "martyr" who died and resurrected in the National Martyrs Cemetery was not called Zhou Guangyong, but Zhou Chengde. It is recorded in the book: Zhou Chengde, also known as Liao Shaokang, a native of Nanchong, Sichuan, was the sergeant squad leader of the machine gun company of the 5th Regiment of the 2nd Reserve Division. He was seriously wounded in the battle to retake Tengchong, and his comrades thought he had died, so they erected a monument to him in the "National Martyrs Cemetery", which is still there. Whenever he went to the cemetery to touch his "tombstone", his heart was always full of emotions.
Excerpt from "Blood Memory"
Could it be that there are two stories of "martyrs" who died and rose again in the cemetery? This probability should be somewhat low. I saw another introduction in this book: Zhou Yongguang, a plainclothes member of the 2nd Battalion of the 106th Regiment of the 36th Division. Although the name is somewhat incorrect, from the photos, Zhou Yongguang and Zhou Guangyong should be the same person, but the book does not mention the story of his death and resurrection.
Subsequently, I found a questioning article published by Li Zheng, a non-governmental independent scholar, on the Internet, and suddenly felt that I had fallen into the cloud of five miles, and it was difficult to distinguish the truth. An excerpt from his article is as follows:
I have been doing research on the Tengchong Campaign for many years, and when I watched Mr. Wang Zhi's program on Zhou Guangyong's interview and some other media interviews, I found that Zhou Guangyong's account of joining the expeditionary force and participating in the war was full of flaws and doubts. So I conducted three in-depth interviews with Zhou Guangyong on March 25, 2008, October 31, 2009, and November 2, 2009 using video recordings. I carefully analyzed and studied the contents of the three interviews, and through the examination of historical facts, I came to the conclusion that Zhou Guangyong was deliberately fabricating the identity of the expeditionary force and participating in the Anti-Japanese War.
Then I seriously sought out Zhou Guangyong's military identity, and with the help of the relevant departments, I got that Zhou Guangyong was born in 1930, and when Tengchong fell in 1942, the 12-year-old he and his parents took refuge in the suburbs of Luojiaoping' relatives and friends. After Tengchong was recaptured in September 1944, he successively went to Shunning and Midu Gangren, in 1947 to Fengyi County Tianshui Township Public Office as a township Ding, and in 1948 as a soldier in the Transport Company of the Deng Chuan Yunnan Security Regiment. On December 9, 1949, the chairman of Yunnan Province, Lu Han, revolted, and Zhou Guangyong was reorganized into the engineer battalion directly under the 14th Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1950. Evidence of local work under the 1952 transfer.
The second from the right in the front row is Li Zheng, a non-governmental independent scholar (picture from the Internet)
At the end of the article, li Zheng, a folk independent scholar, wrote: For what purpose Zhou Guangyong made up his personal history, it should be another matter. But a man who had imagined his own experience of participating in the expedition was advertised by the media as a "living martyr." Why can Zhou Guangyong let the media hype himself up as an anti-Japanese veteran and an anti-Japanese hero? It comes from the fact that the interviewer does not understand the historical background of the content stated by the interviewee, from the attitude of treating history with imprecise academics, from the impetuous social atmosphere and the disgusting hype, which is a phenomenon worthy of deep consideration by all of us.
Li Zheng's article was published on November 18, 2016. And Tengchong's authoritative Internet new media platform "Tengchong Release", which has a government background, is still among the list of Tengchong Anti-Japanese War veterans released on January 10, 2019, and Zhou Guangyong is still among them.
Sometimes history is so confusing and difficult to distinguish between true and false. In fact, in the face of that magnificent history, what is this; moreover, in this impetuous and noisy era, no one is willing to distinguish between true and false.
(To be continued: [Yun Gui Tengchong Iron Blood Legend 5] "Looking for the Highest Battlefield in World War II (Part 1)")