In March 1942, a Xiang girl named Liu Guiying followed hundreds of thousands of Chinese expeditionary forces to Burma to join hands with the Allies to resist Japan.
However, due to the poor cooperation of the British army and the improper command of the nationalist high command, in May 1942, the Sino-British coalition army was completely defeated. The Japanese cut off the expeditionary force's return route, and Liu Guiying's new 22nd Division was forced into the Hukang River Valley.
The Hukang River Valley is located in the far north of Myanmar and is uninhabited for hundreds of miles. It is said that hukang canyon is often inhabited by wildlings, and nearby residents call it "wildling mountain", and many expeditionary army soldiers have died at wildling mountain.
Liu Guiying successfully walked out of this primeval forest in August 1942 after nine deaths, and she was the only female soldier in the Chinese Expeditionary Force to come out of Savage Mountain alive.
So, how did Liu Guiying get out of the Savage Mountain? After that, what untold stories happened to her?
In 1937, the fierce And vicious Japanese army launched a comprehensive war of aggression against China, and in order to wear away the will to fight of all Chinese anti-Japanese soldiers, the invading Japanese army strictly sealed the coastal ports and important transportation hubs that had been occupied.
In November 1937, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Long Yun, chairman of the Yunnan Provincial Government, to build as soon as possible a road from Kunming to Burma, which was the lifeline for transporting anti-Japanese supplies.
In December 1937, Long Yun gathered 200,000 migrant workers and more than 200 engineers in just one month. Nine months later, the nearly 1,000-kilometer-long Burma Highway was officially opened to traffic at the end of August 1938.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 23 of that year, the Japanese bombed Rangoon, and Burma was in a hurry. In order to ensure the smooth flow of the Burma Road, on December 26, 1941, China and Britain signed the Sino-British Agreement on mutual defense of the Burma Road.
On March 8, 1942, the Japanese army captured Yangon, the capital of Burma, cutting off this important strategic transportation route and posing a great threat to the southwest region of china.
In order to open this lifeline as soon as possible, the Kuomintang sent about 100,000 soldiers of the expeditionary force in nine divisions to fight in Burma in the spring of 1942, and Liu Guiying was one of them.
(The commander of the expeditionary force was Luo Zhuoying, actually under the command of Du Yuming, and gathered 100,000 elites of the nationalist army.) The specific organization was Du Yuming, commander of the Fifth Army; Dai Anlan was the commander of his subordinate 200th Division; and Liao Yaoxiang was the commander of the new 22nd Division. Commander of the Sixth Army, Gan Lichu. Commander of the Sixty-sixth Army Zhang Yi; Sun Liren was the commander of the New 38th Division)
At the beginning of the battle, due to the command error of the expeditionary force, the British army did not cooperate well, and hundreds of thousands of expeditionary troops began to retreat in four ways. With the exception of the 38th Division led by Sun Liren, which retreated safely to India, the other three-way expeditionary forces chose to cross the Wild Man Mountain in the Hukang River Valley to return home.
(Sun Liren refused to obey Du Yuming's orders, and he led the New 38th Division to retreat to India on the main road, becoming the only unit to retain its formation.) Du Yuming strictly followed Chiang Kai-shek's instructions to retreat back to China and led the main force of the expeditionary force into Savage Mountain. ）
There were pursuing soldiers in the front and intercepting in the back, and Du Yuming led the main force of the expeditionary force into the Savage Mountain.
According to statistics, in March 1942, the Chinese Expeditionary Force entered Burma for the first time, its total strength was about 103,000 people, and the number of casualties reached 56,480, of which more than 85% of the expeditionary force died in the Hukang River Valley.
Looking back at Liu Guiying's situation, in 1920, Liu Guiying was born in a peasant family in Changsha, Hunan Province. Because of the bad conditions, when Liu Guiying was three years old, her parents gave her to a wealthy family in Changsha City with good conditions.
In 1930, the 10-year-old Liu Guiying suffered a major blow, and her adoptive parents died of illness. Later, Liu Guiying, with the help of his adoptive father's former friend, was sent to the Changsha Poor Women's Hospital (similar to a welfare home).
After the 1938 Wenxi Fire, she went to the nurse class of Xiangya Hospital to study and signed up for the army.
Subsequently, Liu Guiying followed the troops to many places to fight against the Japanese. On March 12, 1942, 100,000 expeditionary troops entered Burma, which was also the first time that China had crossed the border to fight since the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War.
The soldiers stood tall and tall, and along the way, the common people beat gongs and drums, offered flowers and wine, and sang the battle song of the expeditionary force.
On May 1, 1942, the Japanese army captured Mandalay, an important city in south-central Burma, and the command of the Sino-British coalition army was chaotic, and the situation was very bad. On May 9, 1942, the Japanese army captured Myitkyina and Lashio, completely cutting off the Chinese Expeditionary Force's return route.
The commander of the Fifth Army, Du Yuming, rejected the proposal of Stilwell, the commander-in-chief of the US army in the Sino-Indian-Burmese theater, to withdraw the expeditionary force into India, and he led the Fifth Army, the New 22nd Division, and the New 96th Division to detour through the Hukang River Valley north of Myitkyina. Liu Guiying is a medic soldier, and she walks at the end of the line.
In late May 1942, Liu Guiying arrived at the village of Mo at the end of the Manxi Highway, which was the entrance to Savage Mountain, where the main force of the Fifth Army had been in the mountains for several days.
Thousands of cars and tanks were deliberately burned at the end of Mo's village, and even more tragically, more than 1,500 wounded soldiers of the expeditionary force chose to set themselves on fire in the early morning of May 21 in order not to cause trouble to the main force.
Qiu Zhongyue, commander of the 65th Regiment of the New 22nd Division's Vanguard Battalion, recalled: "The more than 1,500 Sons and Daughters of China who originally remained in Mo, or who were wounded in battle or could not follow the troops on a long journey due to serious illness, took life as a Chinese, died as the zhijie of Chinese ghosts, preferred to die as martyrs, and did not make the determination to surrender prisoners, and suddenly set themselves on fire at one o'clock in the morning of May 21, and ended up with hatred!" ”
After coming to Mo's village, Liu Guiying rearranged the equipment she needed to carry, she brought a rice bag containing a week's worth of grain, a glass canned bottle, a rainproof tarpaulin, and a blanket.
Each of these four things has its own advantages: canned bottles can be used as cooking utensils, and rainproof tarpaulins and blankets can be used when sleeping.
At first, the expeditionary force also had cooking classes to cook and eat, but from mid-June 1942, the troops began to run out of food, war horses, and cattle carrying supplies were all slaughtered. The soldiers then began to put gun holsters, belts, and shoes in pots and cook them, and many began to eat wild fruits on the side of the road.
These wild fruits are often poisonous, and if they are not treated in time, they will lose their lives. Liu Guiying has a certain medical knowledge, she does not dare to eat wild fruits on the side of the road, but digs some wild banana roots in the ground to eat. Sometimes I don't find food all day long, so I can only drink it from a glass bottle of boiling water.
In this way, Liu Guiying and four other female nurses from Hunan traveled together. They help each other and struggle through the primeval forest.
If there is no food, it is not a big deal, but there are thousands of locusts, poisonous snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and large animals such as wolves, wild elephants, and black bears in the Hukang River Valley.
Liu Guiying recalled: "The locusts in the forest are thin and long, and it is difficult to get out of sticking to the body. Once she put her legs on the fire and roasted them, and immediately rolled down 10 locusts. Another time when she was alone at night, through the dim light, she saw a black bear 10 meters away, fortunately the black bear did not find herself, which allowed her to avoid a disaster. ”
In addition, from June to July every year, the forest is full of miasma, all kinds of mosquitoes and snakes are rampant, and warriors often get edema, malaria, tetanus, and many strange diseases. Maybe the last second this person was fine, walking and walking, he fell to the ground and could not get up again.
Sigrave's The Return of the Burmese Surgeon: "Early the next morning, we began our difficult climb towards Mu Bum. Before, we saw fifty or sixty skeletons Chinese, but here we find 10 to 30 skeletons every 100 yards.
Fast forward to the end of June 1942, and Liu Guiying's nurse group began to suffer misfortune.
A nurse about the same age as Liu Guiying, Sun Xiaofeng, was bitten by a poisonous snake in his right leg, and everyone helped Sun Xiaofeng squeeze out poisonous blood, which was considered to have saved a life.
Because Sun Xiaofeng's right leg was bitten by a poisonous snake, causing her legs and stomach to be puffy and difficult to walk, she was left behind by the large army. When the crowd was walking forward in a daze, suddenly, Liu Guiying heard Sun Xiaofeng's cry for help. She turned her head to see that a wolf was biting Sun Xiaofeng's throat viciously.
A passing soldier shot the wolf away, and Liu Guiying ran to Sun Xiaofeng to see that the main artery of her neck had been bitten off by the wolf and killed on the spot.
Immediately after, another nurse, Sun Yuexia, contracted a strange disease, had a high fever and was comatose for 4 days and 4 nights, and Sun Yuexia, who was confused, jumped naked off a cliff and died. Wang Ping also contracted the same strange disease, his body was hot and cold, and he collapsed within a few days.
In early July 1942, the eldest sister in the group, Hu Shan, who was also the head nurse, mistakenly ate the poisonous wild fruit, vomited up and down continuously, pulled out and spit out black water.
Because there was no specific medicine, and there was no relevant medical equipment to wash the stomach, Hu Shan also fell. Before dying, Hu Shan said a word to Sun Guiying: "We sacrificed our lives for the country, we sacrificed our youth and lives for the country, if you can return to China, you must tell the people of our countrymen about what we have experienced." ”
Three months after circling around, at the end of July 1942, an Allied plane spotted expeditionary force units over Savage Mountain. Radios, food and other items were then dropped to support the expeditionary force, and eventually the troops came out of the primeval forest.
Because the scheduled route home was guarded by a large number of Japanese troops, the surviving expeditionary force finally changed its route to India. (General Dai Anlan led part of the Nationalist army to break through the Japanese defense line and retreat to the east bank of the Nu River, where General Dai himself was unfortunately killed.) ）
One day in early August 1942, liu Guiying finally walked out of Savage Mountain, and she saw a clearing in front of her, and there were many tents of different colors on the open space. These tents are the supply stations set up by Britain and the United States, and Liu Guiying ate the first bowl of white rice in more than three months at the supply station.
According to the statistics of the Kuomintang Military and Political Department, there were 45 female soldiers in the Fifth Army when they entered the mountain, and after leaving the mountain, there were 4 survivors, and the mortality rate exceeded 90%. Later, of the 4 surviving female soldiers, only Liu Guiying survived.
Because she was very hungry, Liu Guiying ate three bowls of rice in a row, and someone next to her advised her to eat slowly, because many soldiers ate too much, resulting in the death of a broken belly.
At the end of August 1942, after recuperating at the supply depot for more than half a month, Liu Guiying rushed to the Ramga base in India to meet the large troops.
The new 22nd and 38th divisions have been reorganized into the Chinese Garrison in India, and from 1943 to early 1945, the Chinese Garrison in India counterattacked Burma for the second time with British and American allies. In the end, it drove all the way in, conquered Myitkyina and Lashio, and won the battle.
Liu Guiying met a medical officer named He Hua at the Lanmujia base, and the couple had a secret love affair with the right age, and soon married, and the following year, Liu Guiying gave birth to a daughter.
During the second counter-offensive against Burma, Liu Guiying originally wanted to rush to the front, but the wife of Liao Yaoxiang, the commander of the new 22nd Division, believed that Liu Guiying had just given birth to a child and needed to rest, so she persuaded her to stay in the rear base.
At the end of 1944, Liu Guiying and her husband He Hua returned to China with their daughters and the large army. In August 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, Liu Guiying gave birth to another son, who thought that life would be better, who knew that her husband actually fell in love with someone else and left her and two young children.
Liu Guiying was heartbroken and also thought about jumping into the river to commit suicide, but for the sake of her two children, she finally gave up the idea of suicide. Rely on odd jobs and the help of others to make ends meet.
After the founding of New China, Liu Guiying became a primary school teacher, and her life gradually stabilized. In 1962, because of historical problems, Liu Guiying was devolved and transformed. It was not until 1990 that the 70-year-old Liu Guiying was rehabilitated. After being rehabilitated, Liu Guiying and her eldest daughter went to Live in Hefei, Anhui Province, and received a monthly pension.
The old man Liu Guiying in his later years recalled: The poisonous insect beasts in the Savage Mountain are even more terrifying than the devils!
Although Liu Guiying's conditions are not rich, since 1992, she has helped poor college students every year. In 2005, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Liu Guiying was awarded the "Gold Medal to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" by the Central Military Commission in recognition of her outstanding contributions in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
When a reporter asked Liu Guiying: "Do you regret joining the Chinese Expeditionary Force?" ”
The old man smiled and replied, "When the family is broken, everyone has to do their part, I just do my part." ”
In 2013. Liu Guiying accidentally fell and injured his left leg, but still insisted on exercising every day and did not cause trouble to his children. In 2015, Liu Guiying was awarded the "Medal of Honor for Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression".
On November 16, 2021, the only female soldier of the Chinese Expeditionary Force who came out of the Savage Mountain alive died of illness in Hefei, Anhui Province, at the age of 102.
For the hero to have more ambition, dare to teach the sun and the moon for a new day! The rise of the Chinese nation today is inseparable from the blood spilled by the heroic predecessors. Only the bloody war of resistance of the ancestors can be exchanged for today's prosperous China, and the descendants will continue the aspirations of the ancestors and protect China!
The old man went to join her comrades-in-arms who thought about it day and night, remembering history and remembering heroes! Bless the old man all the way.