preface
"Li carpenter hangs a line on the mountain, and Zhou blacksmith strikes iron under the mountain", this is the smooth slip of the tongue that spread in the anti-Japanese base area of Yu'e border in that year. Among them, Li Carpenter refers to Li Xiannian, who was the commander of the independent guerrilla group at that time, and was a carpenter before participating in the revolution; and the blacksmith refers to Zhou Zhijian, the chief of staff of the guerrilla brigade, who consulted some materials and did not find that Zhou Zhijian had previous experience as a blacksmith.
In his lifetime, Zhou Zhijian successively served as regimental commander, division commander, commander, military commander, and staff officer of the military region, and participated in important large-scale battles such as the anti-"encirclement and suppression", the Long March, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the War of Liberation, and made great contributions to the revolutionary cause.
Heroes from ancient times out of youth
Zhou Zhijian was born in 1917 in Dawu County, Hubei Province, his father was a poor local farmer, and when he was two years old, his father was taken away and framed by the Kuomintang and died, and the whole family could only rely on his mother to survive. By the time he was 8 years old, his mother was also seriously ill and died because she could not afford to treat the disease. As soon as his mother died, the brothers began to separate the family, and he and the fourth brother were given an acre of land, and as a result, this acre of land was also robbed by the eldest sister-in-law, and the young man had to go with the fourth brother to herd cattle for the landlord and do long-term work to survive.
Because he had been oppressed by landlords and others since he was a child, he hated the cannibalistic society at that time. A few years later, the wave of revolution swept through most of China's provinces, and Zhou Zhijian's three older brothers all joined the revolution, and under their influence, the 12-year-old Zhou Zhijian also threw himself into the revolution and became a Red Army soldier.
Zhou Zhijian, who joined the Red Army, no longer had to be bullied by others, and he did not have to live a life of eating and not eating.
In addition, Zhou Zhijian also felt the warmth of the extended family, he once wrote in his autobiography:
"It was from that time that I established the idea of working for the revolution all my life."
Although Zhou Zhijian was not as tall as a gun at that time, and his body was very thin, he had extraordinary willpower, and he never said a word of tiredness during the march. In the spring of 1930, he was transferred to the newly formed Independent 1st Division of the Red Army and participated in the defense of Eyuwan.
After the war, at the age of 13, he became a squad leader. In 1932, he was promoted to platoon leader and officially joined the Communist Party of China the following year. ，
Subsequently, the Red Fourth Front won the victory in the anti-"three-way siege", the army was expanded, and Zhou Zhijian was also transferred to the 25th Division Commander Xu Shiyou as a battalion instructor. In 1934, he was promoted to deputy commander of the 74th Regiment, when Zhou Zhijian was only 17 years old.
Survived
In July 1934, the Battle of Wanyuan began, when the 25th Division was tasked with guarding the area south of Wanyuan on The Damian Mountain, and Zhou Zhijian's 74th Regiment was placed as a reserve inside the depths of the defense.
As a result, when the battle was at its most intense, a small group of Kuomintang troops actually broke through the cracks in our army's positions, and at a critical moment, Xu Shiyou ordered the 74th Regiment to quickly eliminate this nationalist army. Zhou Zhijian, as deputy regimental commander, led a battalion of fighters to rush forward as soon as they were on horseback; at this time, the enemy's troops had reached the vicinity of our army's division headquarters. Zhou Zhijian and the instructors and the soldiers launched a charge against the enemy and suppressed the Kuomintang troops.
After a while, the enemy launched a counterattack again. Zhou Zhijian had long anticipated the enemy's movements, and immediately after suppressing the enemy, he built fortifications, at which time the fortifications had been completed; relying on the fortifications, Zhou Zhijian repelled the enemy's tidal attack and held his position.
The Nationalist army seemed to know that our division commanded this neighborhood, and organized a frenzied charge, and the casualties of the Red Army gradually increased, and the regimental political commissar Yi Hanwen was wounded in the battle and was sent to the rear. Zhou Zhijian was appointed as the political commissar of the regiment in danger, and continued to command the troops to fight on the front line, and as the enemy's attack intensified, Zhou Zhijian took time out to mobilize soldiers in order to stabilize the army's morale:
"The battle to defend the Soviet zone has reached the final stage, and we must hold our positions and repel the Kuomintang's attack."
The battle situation seemed to be exactly as Zhou Zhijian said, and the Nationalist army launched a final attack on the Red Army positions, and they made a desperate bet and poured out of the nest. The mountains were strewn across the red army positions. Zhou Zhijian took the lead with a large knife and rushed out, engaging in a white-knife battle with the enemy; with the cooperation of his teammates, they repelled the enemy's attack again and began to counterattack.
As a result, in the process of counterattack, Zhou Zhijian was unfortunately hit by two bullets in his left hand and left chest, and the bullet that shot into his left chest drilled directly out of his back, and Zhou Zhijian was bleeding profusely and quickly passed out. At that time, everyone thought that he was killed, but when cleaning up the battlefield after the war and preparing to bury the remains of the martyrs, everyone suddenly found that Zhou Zhijian still had a breath, and everyone quickly carried him to the hospital for rescue, so everyone pulled Zhou Zhijian back from the "ghost gate".
After two weeks of treatment, after Zhou Zhijian "came alive", his comrades-in-arms said that he had a great life, and even the god of death walked around him. In 1935, Zhou Zhijian, who was not dead, was first transferred to the 81st Regiment of the 27th Division of the 9th Army of the Red Army as a political commissar, and then transferred to the commander of the 81st Regiment.
Zhou Zhijian, who had just been promoted to regimental commander, participated in the Battle of Jialing River with the Red 4th Front and began the Great Long March. After the Long March, Zhou Zhijian was again transferred to the 10th Division of the Red 4th Army and entered the Yan'an KangDa for study.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in full swing, in 1939, the CCP began to go south to open up anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, and Zhou Zhijian was transferred to assist Li Xiannian. Through the efforts of Li Carpenter and Zhou Blacksmith, the troops in the base area grew from more than 100 people at the beginning to more than 15,000 people.
In 1945, the 5th Division of the New Fourth Army and the Southward Detachment of the Eighth Route Army led by General Wang Zhen met with Wang Shusheng's Henan Military Region of the Eighth Route Army near Zaoyang, and according to the decision of the Central Committee, it was reorganized into the Central Plains Military Region, with Li Xiannian as commander and Zhou Zhijian as deputy commander of the Second Column.
Missing on wedding night
During the Liberation War, Zhou Zhijian and Liao Haiguang, with the approval of Xu Shiyou, re-formed the New 5th Division and the New 6th Division, with Zhou Zhijian as the commander of the 5th Division and deputy commander of the Military Region. Zhou Zhijian, who had just been appointed, caught up with the enemy again.
On July 1, 1947, the Kuomintang soldiers and horses launched a siege on the Jiaodong area, zhou Zhijian led his 5th division to launch a counterattack at dusk, the battle continued until late at night, the new 5th Division 13 regiment 1 company finally tore a breakthrough and became a breakthrough. After Zhou Zhijian heard the news, he immediately said to Commissar Liao: "I will go to the breakthrough to see."
Liao Haiguang hurriedly blocked:
"I can't go, there are bullets flying on the front line, dangerous"
"If you don't go to the front, how can you command the battle?"
Therefore, Zhou Zhijian took his guards to the breakthrough point despite dissuasion, at this time the assault troops had just been fired, and the gunfire on the front line was still very fierce, and it happened that this was still the position of an enemy artillery.
Zhou Zhijian, who had gone to the front line, sat on the gun mount and commanded the battle. Suddenly, a bullet passed through the guards beside him and hit his left hand and shot out from his left hand and hit him in the thigh. After Xu Shiyou heard that he was injured, he quickly sent someone to take him to the hospital in the rear by a small car, and said:
"That hospital has doctors from Peiping, not simple, and X-rays."
Not long after the establishment of the new 5th Division, the commander of the division was wounded, which caused an uproar in the troops. Zhou Zhijian, on the other hand, was once again blessed by misfortune. During his healing, Zhou Zhijian, 31, met jiaoming, a nurse who took care of him, when he was only 19 years old but had been in the army for three years.
During the period of taking care of Zhou Zhijian, Jiao Ming especially liked Zhou Zhijian to tell her stories about what happened on the battlefield, and the two became familiar with each other as soon as they came and went. All this was seen by Secretary Wang in the hospital, because he knew that Jiao Ming was an arrogant female nurse, and she did not look down on the hairy boys in the hospital on weekdays, rarely dealt with them, and now when she had time, she ran to Zhou Zhijian's ward.
Secretary Wang took the initiative to find the two to match.
Although Zhou Zhijian also has a good feeling for Jiaoming, but because he does not understand feelings and only knows how to fight, and he is also older, looking for a 19-year-old girl, the influence is not too good, and he has been pushing away from Secretary Wang.
However, after understanding the mentality of the two people, Secretary Wang reported the situation to Xu Shiyou, and Xu Shiyou quickly called back after learning the situation, and the content was very simple: immediately become a parent!
In that era, it was very common to get married without falling in love, and many people were married before falling in love. With the help of people around them, Zhou Zhijian and Jiao Ming had a simple blind date, and then on the first day of Zhou Zhijian's discharge, they held a wedding.
After the wedding feast, everyone dispersed and went their separate ways. The bride waited in the wedding room until midnight without waiting for the groom's official. As a result, I had to ask the bride to go out to find someone, which is this, Secretary Wang was very embarrassed after learning about it, and thought that Master Zhou did not want this marriage at this time, deliberately doing so.
After the news reached Xu Shiyou, he scolded even more:
If this little blacksmith were to run away from marriage, Lao Tzu would have to cut off his head when he returned!
The wedding night, which was supposed to be a festive event, has now become a tragedy. Everyone speculated about where Zhou Zhijian went, Liao Haiguang said:
"As a person of Old Zhou, he will not do such a thing, he will not be a spy among us, so let's take him away!"
As soon as this sentence came out, the hearts of the people present all mentioned the throat eye.
At two o'clock in the morning, Zhou Zhijian suddenly returned with several soldiers, and also brought a large amount of equipment.
It turned out that on the eve of the wedding night, Zhou Zhijian, who paid attention to safety, sent a reconnaissance plane to conduct reconnaissance, and as a result, he found an enemy stronghold, and Zhou Zhijian, who had not fought for several months, had already itched his hands, and after learning the intelligence, he took dozens of soldiers to capture this stronghold.
Commissar Liao said annoyedly:
"Old Zhou, how can you do such a stupid thing, get married, run to be a commando, how do you tell me to explain to the bride and Commander Xu?"
After Zhou Zhijian listened, he laughed and defended himself.
After Xu Shiyou learned the truth, he immediately extinguished the fire and said:
"Well, don't forget Ben when you get married!"