There is a famous saying that "veterans never die, just slowly wither", but as long as we remember them, they will not wither, and they will never be.
Today, history may give people an answer, the final outcome of the 800 heroes is like this:
On December 7, 1941, after the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese army surrounded the "Lone Army Camp", detained all officers and soldiers, and sent them to various places to do hard labor. Among them, 70 brave men were transferred to Nanjing Xiaolingwei to work, and the first 8 successfully escaped, and then returned to the safe zone with the help of the New Fourth Army, joined the Chinese Expeditionary Force, and went to Burma. At the beginning of 1943, 28 of the 70 brave men fled victoriously, and some of them joined the local guerrillas of the New Fourth Army at Maoshan.
Another 100 brave men were sent to Yuxikou, Anhui Province, to load and unload coal, and the Japanese did not treat them as people, they did not have enough to eat, they did not wear warm clothes, they engaged in ultra-extreme physical labor every day, and once they became seriously ill, they would be buried alive by the Japanese. At the end of 1942, after learning of the activities of the New Fourth Army nearby, he secretly planned to escape. Taking advantage of the lack of japanese preparations, they killed the guards and snatched a light machine gun and a rifle to escape the prison en masse. More than 30 participants, 29 victorious escapees, asked to return to the army and continue the anti-Japanese resistance, but were refused, after which most returned to their hometowns.
After japan's defeat, eight hundred brave men were freed, after which they returned to Shanghai and came to Xie Jinyuan's tomb. Only at this time they only had more than 100 people left. This also included 36 brave men who had gone to Papua New Guinea and returned to Shanghai in March 1946 after more than three years of hard labor abroad. Subsequently, some of them lived in a small three-story building at No. 466 Wusong Road, with no work and life. According to some sources, the Nationalist army mobilized them to return to the army at that time, "promising to assign platoon commanders even ordinary creeps, but none of these soldiers agreed to such a 'preferential treatment policy'" [i].
Later, under the care of Ling Weicheng, the widow of Xie Jinyuan, the 800 heroes who returned to Shanghai bought "lone soldier brand" towels, soap, etc., and also wanted to open a bus line, but they did not succeed, most of them engaged in porting work at the dock to maintain their lives with labor. Some people with personal strengths, through the recommendation of Widow Ling Weicheng, found a more stable and decent job, such as driving was recommended to some units as a driver. Since then, the brave men have been silent in the same life as ordinary people, some even incognito, and today, we will tell you the story fragments of the experiences of 3 of them.
In 2009, two of the 800 heroes died at once, their names were Guo Xingfa and Zhou Dafa. They rarely mentioned the stories of the 800 heroes, and although Zhou Dafa had the habit of keeping a diary, he rarely mentioned the defense of the Sihang Warehouse, and their experiences were rarely reported.
Guo Xingfa was originally from Shangqiu, Henan, and came from a poor peasant family. He was 21 years old when he was ordered to guard the Sihang warehouse in 1937 and was a machine gunner in a platoon of one battalion and one squad of the 524th Regiment. After the battle began, he and his comrades-in-arms held the four-row warehouse for four days and four nights. Retreating to the British Concession, he was imprisoned in the Lone Army Camp for more than 3 years, and in 1941, he was escorted by the Japanese army to Hangzhou for hard labor. There, together with several of his comrades-in-arms, he secretly observed the route, made an escape plan, and successfully escaped a few months later, relying on the food received by the masses along the way and returning to Shanghai on foot. By this time, he had lost contact with his comrades-in-arms, had no team to return to, and then became an ordinary worker in the Wusong Meat Processing Factory until he retired.
On April 22, 2009, 93-year-old Guo Xing suddenly felt unwell and was taken to Wusong Central Hospital by his family. For the last 3 days of his life, he remained in a coma and said nothing to his family. After he left, his family set up a spiritual hall in his home and sent him away "quietly". How the old hero walked through his life after returning to Shanghai on foot, people have not figured it out, we mentioned a passage about the old man in the article of Xie Jimin, the son of General Xie Jinyuan, who recalled his mother Ling Weicheng.
During the three years of difficult times, Guo Xingfa's family could not open the pot, he wanted to come and go, he thought of Ling Weicheng, and wanted to get some help and help from her. "I took my son to Madame (Ling Weicheng)'s house, and Madame got a small bag of rice for us to bring back, and when she received living expenses every month, Madame prepared a small bag of rice for us, which was a treasure that money could not buy at that time." Madame is so nice! This is the hero's gratitude for a small bag of rice in difficult years, and behind it is the pearl-like friendship of comrades who came from the war, Xie Jimin said: "This life-saving rice was actually purchased by the mother with foreign exchange coupons sent by Taiwan's aunt and uncle." Xie Jimin did not say that his family's situation at that time, but it must not be much better, his mother Ling Weicheng alone with him and his sister, brother 4 children, did not have too much special care, but also worried about the children's food, clothing and school. This is our hero, they care about each other in difficulties, think of each other, help each other through the difficult years together, sincere and selfless.
Zhou Dafa, born in July 1914, his ancestral home is Jianli Wangqiao Town, Hubei Province, and entered Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital in 1946 to engage in miscellaneous work until his retirement. Although Zhou Dafa had a good habit of keeping a diary and involved his own heroic deeds, he always briefly, and even briefly became a paragraph: "Anti-Japanese resistance, I joined the security division, went to Shanghai to resist The Japanese, Shanghai (large troops) retreated, (my regiment) stubbornly guarded the Sixing warehouse, mediated by the anglo-American and French three (parties), when the Nanjing government ordered the withdrawal of the Sixing warehouse, (I) was detained by the British army on Jiaozhou Road in Shanghai." From 1937 to 1941, the Japanese took over the concession, and the British army handed over our Sihang warehouse personnel to the Japanese army, and [we were) escorted to Nanjing Tiger Bridge for detention. On October 12, 1944, I was released by the Japanese army to work in a Japanese cooperative, and (at that time) Japan had not yet surrendered. After the surrender of Japan, I went to work at Drum Tower Hospital and retired in 1975. ”
In this account, the hero is clearly deliberately hiding from the smoke of war, just as he hid his name in later life. Zhou Dafa was originally named Zhou Liedong, born on June 27, 1914, a native of Wangjiaqiao, Jianli, Hubei Province, whose ancestors were smiths... After the July 7 Incident in 1937, Zhou Dafa's "Security Division" was supplemented to the Kuomintang Eighty-eighth Division in Shanghai. After arriving at the Eighty-eighth Division, he changed the name to "Zhou Dafa". The archives show that in 1937, when the "August 13" incident broke out, when the Eighty-eighth Division insisted on the Sihang Warehouse, the "Eight Hundred Heroes" fought bloody battles with the Japanese army for 4 days and nights, and then were ordered to retreat to the British Concession, just around Jiaozhou Road in Shanghai, but unfortunately they were detained by the British army... [ii]
In 2009, the year the old man died, it was discovered that the old man was a squad leader among the 800 heroes and the old man's "discharge certificate", after which the old man's "secluded" life was restored: on November 12, 1943, the old man was released by the Japanese and worked hard in a Japanese cooperative located in Dafang Lane, Nanjing. During this time, Zhou Dafa met his wife Zhang Youming and married her. In May 1945, Zhou Dafa, who came out of the cooperative, came to settle down near the central gate and grew vegetables for a living. Later, after being introduced, the old people came to the Drum Tower Hospital.
The old man had a daughter, named Zhou Jie, working in Shanghai, in 1990, the old man once came to Shanghai, to the Sihang warehouse where he had fought, and said with emotion: "At that time, we were fighting with the Japanese here, fighting very badly, desperately!" After the old man's death, a reporter found that a newspaper clipping kept by the old man in his diary was a newspaper from the 80s, entitled "Shanghai Celebrity Cemetery Notes". The old man wrote a paragraph next to the report: "The first to enter the cemetery is the famous anti-Japanese general Xie Jinyuan, who was originally buried in the Jiaozhou Road cemetery. The reporter sighed: "No matter how many years have passed, their (800 heroes) hearts are always together!" ”
There is also a man named Yang Yangzheng, formerly known as Yang Deyu, born in 1914, his ancestral home is Suizhou, Hubei, he joined the army in 1933, and he was a platoon leader of a battalion and a company of the 524th Regiment of the 88th Division before the Battle of Songhu. It is said that he was the last of the 800 heroes. When he retreated to the concession from the Sihang warehouse, he was armed with a machine gun and a Japanese tank, and as a result, he was wounded in the left eye. After experiencing the life of a "lone army camp", he was escorted by the Japanese to the mouth of the Anhui River to carry coal, plotted an escape with his comrades-in-arms, and seized the Japanese gun. [iii]
After Yang Yang fled in victory, he accidentally saw a couplet: The heavens and the earth are vast, and the law is perfect. This reminded him of Wen Tianxiang's "Song of Righteous Qi", and he thought that the reason why he survived was because he and his comrades-in-arms had this righteous qi, and then he participated in the battle and met a beautiful love in the battle. The other party is 12 years younger than him, quiet and beautiful, named Zhao Xiaofang, they meet not to drive away the devils and not to get married. So they were married on August 16, 1945, the day after Japan's surrender.
After marriage, Yang Yangzheng has been living an ordinary life, in the eyes of children, he is just a "one-eyed uncle" and loves to sing songs of the War of Resistance. His story was only discovered by journalists in the early 2000s, but he felt like he was just doing what every Chinese would do. What is touching is that on December 7, 2010, after the old man's death, his spiritual hall played not mourning music, but "The Big Knife March", which was "The big knife cut off the heads of the devils!" ”
At that time, netizens wrote such a picture for Elder Yang: The hero is not old, the Qiankun must be saved, and it is difficult to sell the tears of the country; loyalty and courage do not die, resting on horseback and waiting for war, and the religion of Shenzhou sighs and sinks. In the face of volunteers from all over the country who came to mourn the hero, his old partner Zhao Xiaofang said: "I said I would go together, but now he left first." He's gone, he has only one eye, and when he gets there without me, what can he do alone? Clearly, the girl of that year can meet with the hero for a lifetime, and what she loves deeply is this righteous spirit in the hero, and the 800 heroes can come together, become a hero collective, and protect the national dignity with their lives, relying on this righteous spirit. Nostalgia thus becomes sublime and great in the ordinary and the simple. In this regard, we would like to say: the hero does not die, only if people remember him, he can live, forever!
[i] "Mother Ling Weicheng: From Miss Shanghai to Mrs. Xie Jinyuan", dictated by Xie Jimin, interviewed by Zhang Jingjing, Shanghai Archives Information Network.
[ii] "The Archives of Zhou Dafa, eight hundred heroes: a lifetime of incognito and ups and downs", April 5, 2009, Yanzhao Evening News;
[iii] "The Last of the Eight Hundred Heroes" Yang Yangzheng, March 3, 2010, Legal Weekly.
(The picture in this article is from the network, partly taken by Dongyou Dragon, thank you to the original!) ）
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