Text/Gibb
In other words, the protagonist to be told today was once one of the famous "Eight Hundred" heroes, who chose to return to his hometown to prepare for an anonymous life after successfully defending the Sihang Warehouse, and after his identity was exposed decades later, the hero passed away in the next 4 days.
This person, named Zhou Dafa, was born in July 1914 in JianliWangqiao Town, Hubei Province, his parents were authentic poor farmers, and when Zhou Dafa was 12 years old, he was forced to herd cattle for the family in order to let the family eat a hot meal.
By 1930, after the Red Army liberated Zhou Dafa's county seat, it established Soviet authorities and began to call on local young people to learn advanced cultural knowledge. Zhou Dafa took this opportunity to come to Huarong in Hunan to receive an education, and during this period, his life was also counted as peaceful.
However, such a comfortable day did not last long, and the enemy began to carry out various raids on the "Soviet zone", and even used bombers to bomb here, which made people panic, so the school decided to move to the countryside.
When Zhou Dafa and the teachers and students of the school came to the countryside for vigilance, for the first time, they felt that the cruelty of the war was so close to him and the fire. At this time, he missed his relatives and home more than ever, after all, Zhou Dafa was only 16 years old at this time, and he was a half-grown child.
In June 1931, when the flood of Honghu Lake was heavy, our army had to be transferred to Hanchuan County, at this time Zhou Dafa was preparing to go to Honghu Lake because he was slightly injured, but on the way he found that many people were fleeing from Honghu Lake to other places.
During that turbulent period, the life of fleeing the desert was extremely difficult, and in order to make a living for his family, Zhou Dafa had to come to Yufu Grain Bank to feed the pigs for a living. After this, Zhou Dafa chose to join the National Revolutionary Army, and then went to Shanghai with the large army to fight with the little devils.
In August 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out, during which he received orders from his superiors, Zhou Dafa's troops were left behind in the Sihang warehouse to block the Japanese Kou in order to cover the successful retreat of the large troops, and the regimental commander Xie Jinyuan led more than 400 dead soldiers to defend the Sihang warehouse and repeatedly repelled the frontal attacks of the Japanese Kou.
In the fierce battle between China and Japan that lasted for 4 days and 4 nights, Britain and France forcibly intervened, and the two sides reached an agreement on the temporary withdrawal of troops, after which this unit against the Japanese Kou was held in the British Concession for 4 years.
After the Japanese army occupied the concession, Zhou Dafa and others were handed over to the Japanese army and were once again imprisoned in the "Tiger Bridge" prison in Nanjing. In October 1944, Zhou Dafa was released by the Japanese and assigned to work in a Japanese cooperative.
In August 1945, the Japanese Emperor announced his unconditional surrender, and Zhou Dafa decided to work in the Drum Tower Hospital in anonymity, and worked peacefully until his retirement in 1975.
Zhou Dafa was one of the "Eight Hundred" heroes, always remembering the life-and-death comrades who had fought alongside him, and in 1984, he learned from the newspaper that his former regimental commander Xie Jinyuan had long since died.
In his later years, Zhou Dafa has been living in a nursing home, and one day, Xiao Chen, a volunteer working in a nursing home, accidentally discovered the true identity of Zhou Dafa. The image in front of him was ordinary, the old man with a low level of education, and occasionally a sentence or two of Japanese with dialects appeared to be a hero of the War of Resistance, and he was also related to Xie Jinyuan.
At that time, Xiao Chen did not care too much, until Xiao Chen saw the relevant report in the newspaper - "Welcoming the Remains of Anti-Japanese Soldiers back to China" and suddenly remembered that Old Master Zhou, who had taken care of himself for more than two years, might be a survivor of one of the "Eight Hundred" heroes.
Therefore, Xiao Chen directly contacted the Shanghai Songhu Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall and told all his conjectures to the relevant staff. After being affirmed, the identity of the elderly attracted the attention of many social media and people from all walks of life.
In March 2009, after verification by the deputy director of the Shanghai Songhu Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall, it was confirmed that the elderly Zhou Dafa was one of the "Eight Hundred" heroes.
The curator brought the staff and the media to visit the old hero in the nursing home, but at this time, the old man's physical condition was not optimistic, but what was unexpected was that he died of illness at the age of 95 on the 4th day after the true identity of the old man Zhou Dafa was made public.
After that, the ashes of the elderly Zhou Dafa were buried by the local civil affairs department in the Nanxiangshan Cemetery in Nanjing, so that the old man and his former old comrades-in-arms were "reunited", which can also be regarded as the completion of the old man's many-year wish to "return to the team".
References for this article: "Complete Record of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China 1931-1945", "Battle of Songhu", "CNKI Related Materials - Records of the Battle of Sixing Warehouse", "Baidu Encyclopedia Related Terms - Battle of Songhu, Yaobai, Zhou Dafa, etc."