After the victorious liberation of Shanghai on May 27, 1949, when the citizens of Shanghai opened their doors in the early morning and saw rows of soldiers of our army who preferred to sleep on the streets rather than disturb the people, they finally understood that the era of the Kuomintang reactionary warlords' dictatorship in Shanghai had come to an end.
At this moment, Chen Yi unexpectedly received a letter of help, only to learn that there were more than 100 anti-Japanese heroes in Shanghai who were poor and miserable, and life was difficult to sustain. Who are these more than 100 anti-Japanese heroes? Why did the anti-Japanese heroes go poor?
On the afternoon of the second day after the full liberation of Shanghai, Chen Yi slowly walked into the Shanghai Municipal Government Building surrounded by people and announced that he had officially entered the mayor's office.
According to Chairman Mao's instructions, for a long time to come, Chen Yi, who is both literate and martial, will personally sit in Shanghai and fight a beautiful "battle of urban management" to prove to the people of the whole country and the whole world that our Party, which has come out of the ravines, also has the ability to manage big cities.
The Shanghai mayor's office is about 80 square meters in size, the decoration is magnificent, Chen Yi's desk has several telephones of different colors, from his first day as mayor of Shanghai, the phone has been ringing non-stop, Chen Yi is also busy without touching his feet.
Old Shanghai Beach was once known as the "Adventurer's Paradise", full of military and political elites, celebrities, gang bosses, their forces lurking in the streets and alleys, the relationship is intertwined, to straighten out these things, Chen Yi needs to spend a lot of energy.
On this day, the wife of a major general of the Nationalist Army named Ling Weicheng suddenly wrote a letter of help to Chen Yi, the content of which was very simple, hoping that the Shanghai people's government would grant her a three-story building on the third floor of No. 466 Wusong Road and an empty space near Jiaozhou Road for her to continue to use.
After the liberation of Shanghai, a large number of high-ranking military and political officials and dignitaries of the Kuomintang followed Chiang Kai-shek in defeat and fled to the Taiwan area, and the mansions they left behind were also naturally taken over by our army, but at this juncture, the wife of a major general of the Nationalist army not only did not cooperate with the handover work of our army, but instead wrote a letter to Chen Yi to make demands, which was simply excessive.
However, when Chen Yi learned more about the contents of the letter of help, he immediately called the Housing Management Office and the Finance Office, agreed to all of Ling Weicheng's requirements, and personally ordered: "The three-story three-story and Jiaozhou Road vacant land at No. 466 Wusong Road are all left for her to continue to use, and she must not collect rent and land donations privately. ”
What's going on? Why would Chen Yi agree to this lady's unreasonable request? What special status does she have to enjoy such treatment?
It turned out that Ling Weicheng's husband was xie Jinyuan, a famous anti-Japanese general, and Chen Yi also learned a secret old story from this letter of help, it turned out that there were more than 100 anti-Japanese heroes living a poor and destitute life in Shanghai, and they once had an incomparably loud name - "Eight Hundred Heroes".
In October 1937, Xie Jinyuan, the commander of the Nationalist Army, decided to stay in Shanghai, using the Sihang Warehouse as a base, using 414 people to impersonate 800 people to fight against the Japanese army, he and his soldiers became the focus of public opinion on the beach and even the whole country, killing more than 200 Japanese troops in a bloody battle for 4 days, holding the position so that the Japanese army could not move forward.
At the end of October, Xie Jinyuan's troops ran out of ammunition, so when the night was thick and the Japanese army was exhausted, all the soldiers used 3 machine guns as a cover to safely retreat to the lease and successfully broke through, which is the historical origin and inspiration of the "Eight Hundred Heroes" film and television works.
Originally, Xie Jinyuan led the nationalist generals to retreat into the concession before they were heavily armed, but the despicable and shameless British, on the pretext of giving them a blessing and trying to send them out of Shanghai, directly made the nationalist soldiers disarm, and as a result, they were directly detained in a leased wasteland, and a wire grid was circled around them, guarded day and night by a group of Belarusian soldiers, and the famous eight hundred brave men became a lone army from 1937 to 1941, and were detained for four years.
After learning that he had been deceived, Xie Jinyuan, although extremely sad and indignant in his heart, has been trying his best to maintain the daily life of the soldiers, in addition to military training, boxing training and other military training, he also organized the soldiers to build barracks with the donation of social democratic patriots.
The Republic of China's blue sky and white sun flag flies high, and the walls are full of patriotic slogans that read "Down with Japanese imperialism", which have almost disappeared in other places in Shanghai Beach, but Xie Jinyuan has never given up hope, waiting for the opportunity to lead his troops to fight and kill the enemy again.
In 1939, when the Japanese army's aggression against our country became more and more arrogant, Xie Jinyuan seemed to have a premonition of something, so he wrote a family letter to his parents, mentioning a sentence in the letter: If the enemy abducts the day, that is, the time when the man becomes a ren.
He has repaid the conviction of killing himself. But unexpectedly, Xie Jinyuan did not die on the battlefield, but died at the hands of his own people.
One day in late April 1941, because the four soldiers failed to return to the team for training on time, Xie Jinyuan called them to the side alone for training, but unexpectedly, these 4 people had been bribed by the Wang puppet government with heavy money, and took out a dagger and stabbed Xie Jinyuan's body, and General Xie died on the spot due to excessive blood loss.
After Xie Jinyuan's death, the nationalist military government held a grand memorial service for him, posthumously promoted him to major general of the army, and rented 300,000 ordinary people to spontaneously go to mourn.
A few months later, the Japanese army secretly attacked Pearl Harbor in the United States, the Pacific War broke out, and the Japanese army officially took over the Shanghai Concession, leaving the lone army camp with two ways: first, join the Japanese puppet army, maybe you will be able to regain your freedom and soar; second, send it to do coolies, and never see the light of day.
No one chose the first path, so the remaining 300 anti-Japanese heroes of Xie Jinyuan's department were split into four teams and sent to Xiaoshan, Anhui Coal Mine, Nanjing, and isolated islands in Papua New Guinea to work as coolies.
The fates of these 300 anti-Japanese heroes are also different, some people are lucky to escape, but most of them are used as wrestling tools of the Japanese army and sent to the bacteria laboratory to torture to death.
Until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, only 100 of the 300 anti-Japanese heroes were left, all acquitted, and they gathered back on Shanghai Beach, their only wish was to live well in this city, but they were unaccompanied in Shanghai, luckily survived from the Hands of the Japanese Army, and were unwilling to get involved in the civil war and shoot their own people, so they could only beg along the streets of the blue wisps of the road to make a living.
Finally, after thinking about it, they joined forces to write a letter to Ling Weicheng, the wife of General Xie Jinyuan, hoping that she could come to Shanghai to administer justice for them and lead the more than 100 lone troops to live again.
In April 1946, Ling Weicheng set out from Guangdong and rushed to Shanghai in many places, met her husband's subordinates before his death, and imagined how arrogant it was that Xie Jinyuan had vowed to go out on a campaign to expel the enemy and restore China, but now how desolate it was to disperse at the end of the song.
Originally, after the death of her husband, Ling Weicheng made a special trip to Chongqing in the autumn of 1941 to meet Chiang Kai-shek, and in order to buy people's hearts, Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Meiling expressed that they would properly arrange the veterans brought out by Xie Jinyuan after the victory of the War of Resistance, and also promised to take good care of Ling Weicheng's family, and paid her a pension of 50,000 French yuan, so they sent her back to their hometown in Guangdong.
But not long after, because of inflation, this money has almost become a pile of waste paper, so that 4 years later, when Ling Weicheng took his children to Shanghai to join the lone soldiers, she could not even pay the road fee, if it were not for the Shantou wharf to hear that she was the widow of the anti-Japanese hero Xie Jinyuan and took the initiative to reduce the road fee for her, she would not have been able to reach Shanghai at all.
As soon as he arrived in Shanghai, Ling Weicheng was taken to live in a three-story building at No. 466 Wusong Road by the soldiers of the "Lone Army Camp", and the veterans cleaned the second floor and let it out for Ling Weicheng and the children to live, while the rest of the country was divided into multiple cubicles and divided into the veterans of the "Lone Army Camp", because they did not want to continue to participate in the civil war, so these people had no one to take care of it, and they had to make a living on their own.
Ling Weicheng is a native of Shanghai and the wife of their regimental commander, so he has been trying to find a way for the veterans, but he has found a job at the Huangpu River Wharf and the Bund in Shanghai, and while waiting for employment, the Shanghai police suddenly came to the door to provoke trouble, forcing the veterans of the "lone army camp" to participate in the civil war.
In desperation, Ling Weicheng had no choice but to go to Chongqing to meet Chiang Kai-shek to ask for an explanation, but unexpectedly, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife's attitude this time was no longer harmonious, not only did they not see Chiang Kai-shek, But Song Meiling even directly and coldly dropped a sentence: "You go back, and later the Shanghai Municipal Government will arrange for the Shanghai Municipal Government to take good care of you." ”
But unexpectedly, the municipal government also played the trick of throwing pots and kicking the ball, from the government to the various people's livelihood functional departments turned around, no one was willing to care about the lives of these veterans, because they had completely lost their use value.
After recognizing this, Ling Weicheng could only ask for people everywhere, put down his body and begged the leaders of the Shanghai Railway Bureau and the bosses of private enterprises to try to accept some veterans of the "lone army camp".
And these people are also very contentious, hard-working, and have a good reputation in society, which makes Ling Weicheng feel very pleased, and later in order to take care of the veterans who have no education and are left with lifelong disabilities, Ling Weicheng reclaimed 60 acres of wasteland near the cemetery of her husband Xie Jinyuan and rented it to the refugees to live.
Veterans are responsible for protecting their lives, charging each family a small amount of rent, giving refugees a shelter from the wind and rain, and stipulating that every veteran of the "lone army camp" can come here once a month to receive money.
After 1948, the Nationalist army was defeated and retreated in the War of Liberation, the reactionaries were even more unscrupulous in plundering the people's fat and people's cream, and everyone's life became more and more difficult, and every month more than 100 veterans would find Ling Weicheng to collect money, sit on the mountain and eat the sky, and become more and more impoverished.
After the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, the people joyfully welcomed the People's Liberation Army into the city, but the three-story building where Ling Weicheng and the veterans lived and the 60 acres of land enclosed were counted as assets of the national army and were to be accepted by our army for unified distribution.
When she heard that our party was a teacher of benevolence and righteousness, and that Shanghai Mayor Chen Yi was also a fair and just general, she had the courage to write him a letter of help, hoping that he would think of a way to leave a way for these anti-Japanese heroes to live.
Chen Yi had mixed feelings after receiving the letter, and he did not expect that there were more than 100 impoverished anti-Japanese heroes in Shanghai, so he immediately gave the following instructions: First, buildings and land should be used as usual, and priority should be given to their use, and rent and land donations should not be collected.
Second, arrange for Ling Weicheng, the widow of the martyr, to become the deputy director of the nursery to ensure the normal life of her and her children.
Third, arrange regular work for the well-able veterans of the "lone army camp", and if they want to return home and give preferential treatment, the heroes cannot be chilled.
In the late 1950s, most of the non-Shanghai veterans all returned to their hometowns, and before leaving, they all came to say goodbye to Ling Weicheng, and Ling Weicheng paid a travel fee to each veteran, warning them to go home to live a good life, not to cause trouble, and not to embarrass you Xie Regiment commander.
In 1991, Ling Weicheng died of illness in Shanghai at the age of 84, and government workers buried her next to her husband Xie Jinyuan in accordance with the old man's last wishes.