From October 1934 to October 1936, after two full years of Long March and 14 provinces, the Red Army in the Central Soviet Region finally met in Huining, Shaanxi Province, opened up a new revolutionary base area, and began a new journey of the Red Army.
On the road of the Two-Year Long March, the Red Army did not lack stories of generosity, tragedy and touching, but the story of the Red Army that took place in Guizhou in October 1934 was confusing.
According to the records, more than 100 Red Army troops were forced to the mountains by the enemy, but there was no whereabouts since then, no one alive, let alone the bodies of the victims. When later generations searched, they found that not only had they not heard the story of these Red Army, but even the mountain in the story had never appeared.
What happened to this mountain, which disappeared with more than a hundred Red Army soldiers, was finally answered by party history experts 70 years after the incident.
Stick figures of the Red Army
In August 1934, the Fifth Anti-"Encirclement and Suppression" Campaign of the Red Army was not yet over, but the Red Army was in a state of inferiority in the struggle against the Kuomintang reactionaries for a long time. The reduction of the base areas in the Soviet zone allowed the Red Army to adopt the method of dividing up troops and resisting, but still failed to stop the all-out attack of the Kuomintang.
The Red Seventh Army, as an anti-Japanese advance detachment, detoured around the border of Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Gansu, but failed to contain the Kuomintang reinforcements, and nearly 10,000 people of the Red Sixth Army went to the Qiandong base area to join helong's troops under the leadership of Ren Bishi, regimental commander Xiao Ke, and political commissar Wang Zhen.
Ren Bishi with his wife
The Red Sixth Army set out on August 7, encountered numerous enemy obstacles on the way, and fought and advanced, entering the territory of Shiquan County, Guizhou Province, on October 5. The Red Sixth Army advanced according to the route deployed by Commander-in-Chief Zhu De, and unexpectedly encountered the Gui army that had joined the Xiang and Qian warlords.
On October 7, the Red Sixth Army and the enemy engaged in an encounter in the Ganxi area of Shiquan County, Guizhou, and the three sides of Xiang, Qian, and Gui had reached the strength of 24 regiments, and they were fully equipped, and the Red Sixth Army, which had been running for days, had no chance of victory.
Xiao Ke immediately made a decision, leaving the 52nd Regiment of the 18th Division responsible for covering the retreat of the main force of the regiment, and the division commander Long Yun and the regimental commander Tian Haiqing fought with the army. Long Yun was already a Red Army general with the same name as Su Yu at that time, and Xiao Ke was very relieved about him.
Long Yun, commander of the 18th Division of the Sixth Red Army, died at the age of 32 at the hands of the Kuomintang in 1936
Long Yun did not live up to the expectations of his superiors, leading the 52nd Regiment to successfully cover the main force transfer and attract all the enemy fire to his side. After the main force retreated safely, Long Yun chased after the 52nd Regiment, but was stopped by enemy reinforcements at the Zhujiaba junction in Longtang.
The 52nd Regiment could only engage in fierce battles with the enemy on the spot, and the two sides fought for several hours without being able to distinguish between victory and defeat. Fortunately, Xiao Ke sent the 49th Regiment back to reinforce the 52nd Regiment, and only after the front and rear attacks did it tear a hole in the enemy's defense, allowing the 52nd Regiment to break through smoothly.
However, the enemy was in hot pursuit behind him, and Long Yun broke away from the cover of the 49th Regiment and decided to advance westward, in the wrong direction from the main force in the north, which also made the enemy mistakenly think that the main force of the Red Army was heading west.
The Red Army held back the enemy
The 52nd Regiment successfully attracted all the enemies, but because they were not familiar with the land, they had been circling around longtang town, and the battle attrition in the team was also very serious, leaving only about 400 people.
Since most of Guizhou belonged to the Kuomintang region, the Kuomintang reactionaries spared no effort to smear the image of the Red Army and described the Red Army and the CCP as red-haired evil spirits with green faces and fangs, resulting in many ordinary people in Ganxi not providing help to the 52nd Regiment, but instead closing their doors.
On October 16, Long Yun and Tian Haiqing and the rest of the 52nd Regiment groped in the mountains for a long time, and finally met a villager who was willing to show them the way. The well-meaning villagers led the 52nd Regiment up a large mountain that nearby residents called "Sleepy Cow Mountain."
The Red Army on the cliffs of Sleepy Cow Mountain
Trapped Cow Mountain is surrounded by water on three sides, and only one direction can go up, and the villagers' cattle are often lost on the mountain, so it is called "Sleepy Cow Mountain". After the 52nd Regiment ascended the hill, the enemy, who thought it was the main force of the Red Army, followed close behind. At this time, the troops were once again divided into two roads, and Long Yun led more than 200 fighters to take advantage of the enemy's lack of attention to go down the mountain.
After more than a month of trekking, Long Yun finally caught up with the large troops of the Red Sixth Army, and successfully joined the He Long Third Army in the Qiandong base area to continue to fight with the Kuomintang. However, the 200 people who were led to the Trapped Cow Mountain have since disappeared, not only did not a single soldier return to report the news, but even the Red Army later went back to look for it and found that the so-called Sleepy Cow Mountain did not exist.
With the victory of the Long March, the victory of the War of Resistance, the liberation of the whole country, and even the founding of New China, the veteran soldiers of the Red Sixth Army have never forgotten their comrades-in-arms, and have sent people to the area around Shiquan County many times to inquire about it, and have also entrusted military history investigation experts to conduct exclusive interviews.
However, the local people in Shiquan County have said that they have no knowledge, and occasionally some people have heard that there was a fierce battle there, but they do not know the identity and final whereabouts of the two sides of the battle, and the name Ofe Niu Shan has never been heard.
Ten years later, the military historian revisited the search route in Shiquan County, but there was still no clue, and the Trapped Cow Mountain and the 200 soldiers seemed to disappear out of thin air and did not appear in anyone's memory.
The red arrow in the lower left corner is the Ganxi Red Army Martyrs Monument
In 2002, Yang Youzhu, deputy director of the Shiquan County Party History Research Office, paid attention to the situation of the Red Army fighting here at the people's congress. As a party history research enthusiast, Yang Youzhu consulted the data, but did not find more records in the county chronicle or party history, and the story of the Red Army's combat came to an abrupt end.
Yang Youzhu personally went to Shiquan County to look for Sleepy Cow Mountain, and learned among some elderly people that there was a large mountain in Longtang Town that fit the description. So Yang Youzhu lived with the comrades in the research room in Longtang Town, and Yang Youzhu himself took the villagers' special shuttle every day to obtain information by chatting with them.
Sleepy Cow Mountain
Yang Youzhu's action lasted for two full years, during which he sorted out a lot of information, and also found several old Red Army and Descendants of the Red Army who retreated from Sleepy Niu Mountain with Long Yun, although there was still no whereabouts of the Red Army soldiers on the mountain, but learned the key clue of Ganxi Trough Village.
According to the villagers' accounts, Ganxi Trough Village will hold a public sacrifice on the chongyang Festival every year, and the whole village will participate. If it is to sacrifice their ancestors, the possibility of the whole village of Ganxigou Village is not very likely, and Yang Youzhu directly associated with the missing Red Army soldiers.
Tribute to the martyrs of the Red Army
Yang Youzhu and several colleagues went to Ganxi Trough Village to visit and investigate, and gradually pieced together a truth from the mouths of the villagers: the villagers sacrificed the Red Army soldiers who died on the Sleepy Cow Mountain, and their sacrifice in 1934 was extremely tragic and touching.
After division commander Long Yun led more than 200 soldiers to leave, the remaining 200 retreated to the top of the mountain under the leadership of Tian Haiqing. Because the troops used tung oil as cooking oil when they bought oil the day before, many soldiers in the unit had diarrhea and their combat effectiveness was weakened, and the regimental commander Tian Haiqing died heroically on the way back.
Sleepy Cow Mountain Stage Play
The remaining fighters retreated step by step to the edge of the 300-meter-long cliff of Hujinggou, but they never dared to shoot at the enemy. The reason is that these cunning reactionaries have seized many local people as shields and placed them at the forefront of the ranks, causing the Red Army, which loves the people, to be helpless and can only retreat to the edge of the cliff step by step.
More than 170 soldiers held guns and confronted the enemy, and they could not hear a single gunshot for half a day. A company commander broke the silence and shouted to the soldiers, "I'd rather die than be taken prisoner!" Then they threw the bullets under the cliff and jumped, and the Red Army soldiers after that followed the feats of the company commander one by one, all chose to jump off the cliff, preferring to commit suicide rather than shoot at the common people.
Many people in Ganxichu Village had heard the older generation tell the story of the scene at that time, and after they heard the gunshots, they used to secretly hide in their homes and look at the opposite hill, only to see many people jumping off the cliff together, and they were all a group of young babies.
According to the recollections of the old man who had seen the corpses of the Red Army, there were about a hundred Red Army soldiers under the cliff, some scattered, some piled up, and one Red Army sat on the stump when he jumped down, and the death was very tragic.
Villagers released by the Kuomintang spontaneously rescued the Red Army, and a dozen surviving Red Army soldiers were brought back to the village, and Chen Shirong, who was weak and weak due to his young age and diarrhea, was one of the survivors.
Chen Shirong, whose original name was He Burong, was only 19 years old at the time, was a trumpeter of the 52nd Regiment, and was hung by a tree vine when he jumped off a cliff, and his consciousness was still awake. Chen Shirong waited until dark, judging that the enemy had retreated, before climbing out of the vine, and did not go far before encountering bandits.
Chen Shirong
When the bandits were about to kill Chen Shirong, a passing landlord began to persuade him: "He is still a doll, what will he do?" Chen Shirong escaped from death, but the wounds on his body had festered and maggots, and he was later adopted by a man named Chen Guoshan in Manger Creek Village, so he changed his name to Chen Shirong and settled here.
Several of the other Red Army soldiers who were rescued chose to go back to look for troops, and a few remained in the village like Chen Shirong. Together with the people in the village, they collected the bones of the Red Army under the cliff of Hujinggou and told everyone about the touching deeds of the Red Army, completely without fear of the threat of the Nationalist Government.
Local marks for the Red Army for jumping off cliffs
After the founding of New China, Chen Shirong also became the director of the peasant association and the secretary of the brigade. Chen Shirong often remembers his son's life in the Red Army, sings him a lot of Red Army songs, and every year he will pay tribute to his comrades who sacrificed himself with his surviving comrades in the vicinity.
The collective cliff jumping incident of more than 100 Red Army troops of the 52nd Regiment was the largest collective cliff jumping incident in the Chinese Revolutionary War, and the village of Sleepy Niushan at the junction of Shiquan County and Sinan County was the only insider until this story, but the county governments of the two places did not record this history, and the story of the Red Army jumping off the cliff has been circulating in the word of mouth of the elderly and children.
In the 1970s, the village commune of Sleepy Niushan Village once salvaged the bones of the Red Army in the river at the bottom of the cliff, and the villagers would spontaneously burn paper to worship the rocks of Hujinggou every time they went to Qingming and Chongyang, and over the years, the rocks in that area were smoked black.
Monument to the feats of the Red Army on Sleepy Cow Mountain
After the truth of the Red Army's cliff jumping on The Cow Mountain was revealed, the local government built a monument together with the descendants of the Red Army, which also had the name of the stele inscribed by Xiao Ke himself, and the corresponding inscriptions, biographies and materials were gradually enriched, and the soldiers of the Red Army who died heroically were no longer unknown, and now the smoke of gunfire is no longer there, but the spirit of the 52nd Regiment Jumping Red Army will live on forever, and more people outside the village of Niu and Ganxi Trough who are trapped in their hearts will be remembered.