On October 14, 1952, the famous Battle of Shangganling was officially launched. The chinese volunteers invested 43,000 troops, and the United Nations army led by the United States invested more than 60,000 troops, and the battle lasted more than 40 days, and the battle was very fierce.
Battle of Shangganling
After four days and nights of fierce fighting with the enemy, Huang Jiguang's unit was ordered to seize the 597.9 heights on the west side of Shangganling on the night of the 19th. After capturing 3 enemy positions in succession, the troops were blocked by Position Zero. At that time, the enemy's dense firepower consisting of 3 heavy machine guns and 4 light machine guns controlled the commanding heights to the death, and the soldiers of our volunteer army suffered heavy casualties. In order to capture Position Zero, you must first take this fire point. The troops organized demolition teams, but unfortunately the first two groups of fighters all died heroically, and the third group was trapped in front of the enemy position. If it cannot be attacked for a long time, the enemy will exert air superiority after dawn, not only can not complete the combat task, but also suffer greater casualties.
At this time, Huang Jiguang, as a signal soldier, took the initiative to ask the superior leader to carry out the task. The battalion chief of staff pondered for a moment, and immediately appointed Huang Jiguang as the leader of the sixth squad and led two soldiers to be responsible for the blasting. During this period, they destroyed several enemy fire points in a row, one comrade-in-arms was unfortunately killed, another comrade-in-arms was seriously injured, and Huang Jiguang's left arm was also pierced. In the face of the enemy's fierce strafing, he was not afraid, endured the pain, quickly approached the enemy's fire point, he threw several grenades in succession, and the enemy machine gun suddenly stopped shooting. However, when the large troops launched an attack, the machine guns in the enemy bunker suddenly began to strafe again, and our large troops were once again blocked.
At this time, Huang Jiguang had run out of ammunition, and in order to win the battle, he endured the pain, stubbornly pounced on it, blocked the enemy's gun hole with his chest, and sacrificed heroically, only 21 years old. Inspired by Huang Jiguang's heroic feats, our volunteer soldiers quickly captured Position Zero and completely annihilated two enemy battalions.
Huang Jiguang
After the war, Cui Jiangong, commander of Huang Jiguang's division, once said: "From the perspective of military strategy, Huang Jiguang used his sacrifice to make us sacrifice more than 3,000 people less. ”
The party committee of the army posthumously recognized Huang Jiguang as a member of the Communist Party of China and posthumously awarded him the title of model regiment member. The headquarters of the Volunteer Army gave him a special merit and posthumously awarded him the honorary title of special hero.
However, after Huang Jiguang's sacrifice, the comrades-in-arms wanted to find his photos, but they could go through his relics and find nothing. Before joining the army, Huang Jiguang was from a poor family and had no conditions to take pictures. After joining the army, he remained on the front line, when the division headquarters had only two photographers, three old-fashioned black and white cameras, and film was a scarce commodity. As an ordinary soldier, Huang Jiguang had no conditions to take pictures.
Although before going to the battlefield, the military department sent a reporter accompanying the army to take pictures of the soldiers, but later went through all the negatives and photos, but did not find Huang Jiguang's figure.
Things took a turn for the worse in January 1953, when two artists from Beijing came to the army to experience life, a well-known old woodcarver who had participated in the Guangzhou Uprising, and Chen Xinghua, a young painter in his 30s. Some people thought that although Huang Jiguang was gone, not a single photo was left, so why not take advantage of the fact that the two painters came to the army and paint a "photo" of Huang Jiguang? Later, the division department came forward and asked two painters to paint Huang Jiguang's portraits.
However, neither painter has ever seen Huang Jiguang, so how should he paint it? Everyone racked their brains and finally came up with a good solution. They found more than a dozen soldiers from the regiment who joined the army at the same time as Huang Jiguang, who were about the same age, fat and thin, and all of them were Sichuan boys of about 1.68 meters who were brushed together, and then invited Huang Jiguang's former comrades-in-arms, pointing one by one, from the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth a little comparison, to see whose most resembled Huang Jiguang, just paint whose part ...
Finally, after such a patchwork, the frontal portrait of Huang Jiguang's half-body written by Chen Xinghua was thus completed. Soon after, this portrait was published in the People's Daily, and the positive portraits of Huang Jiguang that we see so far are also based on this.
Portrait of Huang Jiguang
Although Huang Jiguang's portrait was completed, everyone was still not at ease. In the early autumn of 1953, Shili sent someone to pick up Huang Jiguang's mother, Deng Fangzhi, from her hometown in Sichuan and ask the old man to correct Huang Jiguang's portrait. When Old Man Deng Fangzhi stepped into the gate and was confronted with the huge portrait of Huang Jiguang that was about to have a wall high, she blurted out at once: "This is my Jiguang'er!" Three or four meters away, he pounced on it, and everyone present was unmoved, and their hearts were full of mixed feelings. It was both exciting and relieved, and a little sour. In my heart, I was relieved to have completed the glorious and arduous task of painting a portrait of a hero, but at the same time, I finally understood that huang Jiguang, a comrade-in-arms who always smiled thickly and thickly, had left everyone forever...
Although the martyr Huang Jiguang has left us for nearly 70 years, his spirit of giving up his life and treating death as a homecoming will always remain in our hearts, and his glorious deeds are worth remembering forever from generation to generation!