In the middle of the 20th century, the Second World War broke out, and countless sons and daughters of China, in order to protect the national territory, went forward and launched a vigorous anti-Japanese movement against the Japanese invaders.
At that time, the Nanjing government lacked a prejudgment of the strength of the Japanese army, vainly tried to rely on the United States and other external forces to resist foreign enemies, and passively resisted in the War of Resistance Against Japan, resulting in heavy losses to the army.
The soldiers of the Chinese army come from all over the world, and they all have a common goal, that is, to drive the Japanese powers out of our country and swear to die to defend the sons and daughters of China.
In the face of the advanced weapons and equipment of the Japanese army, the soldiers did not flinch, and launched one deadly battle after another with the Japanese army on the battlefield.
The heroic martyrs who sacrificed their lives and blood to the country are countless, and many soldiers who died in battle are left with nameless tombstones, and to this day, these martyrs who sacrificed themselves on the battlefield can only be buried forever on the land of the last moment of life.
Even more warriors did not even have a nameless tombstone, and they became one with the earth, until today, a few years later, that their history was inadvertently excavated by posterity.
The remains that appeared suddenly
On July 9, 2007, the Construction Site of Yiba Expressway connecting Yiling in Yichang and Badong County in Enshi Prefecture was under intense construction.
When the construction team dug to a depth of 37 kilometers, suddenly heavy rain poured down, and the workers of the construction team had to temporarily stop construction and hid in the nearby shed to avoid the rain.
As the rain grew heavier and heavier, there was no intention of stopping, and several co-workers simply played cards in the shed.
Master Liu, the foreman, snuffed out the cigarette butt in his hand, took out a raincoat from the shed, put it on randomly, plunged into the rain, walked towards the construction site, and dug out such a deep tunnel, such a big rain, will it lead to a collapse, in case it really collapses, the construction period will be postponed again, when will this salary arrive!
There has been a lot of rain in the tunnel, the soil on the wall of the tunnel is soaked by the rainwater, and it begins to fall down piece by piece, Master Liu is a little anxious, he chose a relatively high place to jump down, want to follow the direction of the water flow, see if you can dig a drainage ditch, the pit in the water discharged outward.
Without taking two steps, I was tripped by a hard object under my feet and almost slipped.
When the worker leaves the construction site, he often leaves the construction tools on the site, he curses in his heart, crouches down and feels the "tool" in the water under his feet, pulls it hard, and pulls it out.
However, where the tools fished out of the water are, it is obviously a human bone stained with mud.
"Mommy!" Master Liu hurriedly threw away the obscure bone in his hand, and due to excessive fright, his feet slipped and he fell into the puddle.
His expression instantly turned dead gray, and more and more white bones appeared under the potholes under his body, which looked particularly gloomy against the background of the rainy day.
"Save, save, help, kill!" Master Liu was so frightened that his soul was scattered, and he escaped from the tunnel with a rolling belt and ran to the shed to ask for help.
Soon, the news of the dead people's bones dug up at the Yiba Expressway construction site quickly spread throughout the county town, and the villagers in the surrounding areas rushed to see the liveliness.
After receiving the report, the comrades of the Public Security Bureau attached great importance to the case and immediately set up a special case team to seal off the scene.
If you really dig out a lot of bones, you won't really encounter any big murder cases.
Bones of unknown origin
When the torrential rain completely stopped, at the request of the comrades of the Public Security Bureau, the construction site owner and a few courageous workers first pumped the water in the pit, and it was impossible to clean up the specific number of bones in the pit when the water was covered.
About half an hour had passed, and the water in the tunnel had been completely cleared, and with it, countless white bones appeared in front of everyone, some of which had completely surfaced from the ground, and some of which were half-buried in the soil.
Everyone took a breath of cool air, what a big murder case, there will be so many bones.
The police quickly organized the police force and began to take stock of the number of bones, and after the results came out, even the old comrades with many years of experience in criminal investigation were frightened, and there were as many as 3,000 corpses and bones at the scene.
"Comrade policeman, I'm afraid this is not the current case, it is not a funeral pit with tens of thousands of people."
A shaanxi-speaking co-worker came out of the crowd and ran to the police with a waist and said:
"Our hometown often encounters such things, digging and digging out the bones, and the expert comrades of the Cultural Relics Bureau have dug up the tombs of ancient people."
The comrade in charge of the special case group picked up a bone and carefully observed it for a while, and the marks on these bones were indeed some years old.
"Call the county cultural relics bureau immediately and ask them to send experts in this area immediately."
After a while, several experts from the county cultural relics bureau came and jumped into the bone pile to check it out.
After repeated comparisons of the bones, experts found that the age of death of these bones is not long ago, and according to empirical judgments, about the 30s and 40s of the last century, most likely related to the war period.
But why is there such a high density of mass burials in such a place? Experts from the Antiquities Bureau were also puzzled.
The little-known past
"Me, I know." In the crowd, a white-haired old man stood up, pointed to the white bones on the ground, and tears welled up.
"Are you?" An expert greeted him.
"You don't care who I am, I'm 73, I've seen these people with my own eyes, I know who they are." With the opening of the old man's speech box, a dusty past that has been sealed for more than half a century resurfaces in front of people's eyes.
In 1937, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in full swing, and the Chinese army soon formed a large-scale rout in the war in the face of the enemy's sophisticated weapons and fierce attacks, a large number of seriously ill and wounded who had retreated from the battlefield could not be resettled, and almost all the hospitals in the county were temporarily requisitioned, but it was still unable to solve the problem of treating a large number of wounded.
In view of the huge casualties of soldiers and the serious shortage of actual soldiers in some units, the Nanjing government decided to reorganize the troops with heavy casualties, transfer the personnel who could not continue fighting to the hospital for treatment, and merge several regimental headquarters, which was really not enough, and then recruit new soldiers from the rear to supplement the combat strength of the troops.
In May, a newly reorganized unit, the 4th Division, was part of the 75th Army of the 32nd Group Army of the 3rd Theater of Operations, led by division commander Fu Zhengmo, and participated in operations such as the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Suizao, and the Winter Offensive.
Fu Zhengmo
The division commander Fu Zhengmo was born in Hunan, was a cadet of the Whampoa Military Academy, participated in the Northern Expedition, and in the campaign against Wuchang, he organized death squads to fight in the vanguard, and was a well-known general who dared to fight and fight.
The Fourth Division was a newly reorganized unit, and many of the temporary substitute soldiers did not have special military training, and some soldiers were not even very good at fighting guns, so they were forced to go to the battlefield.
It is conceivable how difficult it is for such a team, whose overall quality is not too high, to deal with a well-trained enemy.
However, the warriors still relied on strong perseverance to fight the enemy to the death on the battlefield, and did their best to contain the enemy's attack.
In the winter combat offensive, due to the misjudgment of the enemy's movements, the Chinese army surrounded by the enemy suffered heavy losses, Zhang Zizhong and many other senior generals sacrificed their lives for the country, and the Fourth Division also suffered heavy losses.
At that time, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression turned into a white-hot situation, and the Japanese army was chased and beaten by the Eighth Route Army, and the enemy was attacked on its stomach and back, and only by capturing Sichuan could the deadlock be quickly broken.
The Fourth Division was in the core area of the enemy's artillery fire, at that time, the combat materials were seriously collapsed, the ammunition and guns were not equipped, in order to contain the enemy, the generals and soldiers of the Fourth Division even used their bodies to block the Shells of the Japanese Army when they ran out of ammunition, desperately locked the enemy in the Yibin area of Hubei Province, and launched a four-year tug-of-war with the Japanese army.
More than 3,000 soldiers have died in Yibin's positions, and countless soldiers have been injured.
At that time, the division headquarters of the Fourth Division chose to be set up in the home of a landlord in Zaozishuling, a village south of Yichang, while the field hospital adopted the principle of proximity and was temporarily built next to the division headquarters.
Because of the Japanese blockade of the transportation line, some special drugs could not pass through the enemy's fire point and reach the hospital, and the lack of drugs was almost the norm in all field hospitals in the country.
As the war worsened, the number of wounded admitted to field hospitals increased day by day, and the number of medical personnel responsible for caring for the wounded was clearly insufficient.
The local people were touched by the spirit of the army soldiers defending their homes and defending the country, and spontaneously rose up to the hospital to take care of the wounded.
The old man was still a young child at the time, serving in the hospital with his mother, although he was young, but the hospital was full of scenes of unbearable sight of the wounded, which still left a deep impression on him.
Because of the large number of wounded, the small number of medical personnel, the collapse of drugs, the harsh medical environment and other factors, some of the more seriously injured wounded face two choices:
First, through the enemy's strong fire defense line, use manpower to transport to the county's regular hospital for treatment, and second, stay in place, give up treatment and die.
Many of the seriously injured could not wait to be sent out and swallowed their last breath in the hospital.
He had seen a young warrior lose his leg when he was taken to the hospital.
At that time, the hospital was poorly equipped, and the anti-infective drugs for treating injuries and illnesses had been exhausted, and finally he could only watch him die alive.
In addition to treating the wounded, medical staff usually have a new task, that is, they are responsible for burying the remains of soldiers who died in the hospital.
At first, a body could be buried wrapped in a white cloth, but as the number of wounded who died in the hospital multiplied, the hospital staff had no time to worry about every soldier who died.
In order to simplify the burial procedures, medical personnel can only dig a large pit and bury the bodies of soldiers who died at the same time in a single pit.
Although the situation is special, but Chinese has always paid attention to the safety of the ground, in order to let these sacrificial soldiers leave some traces in the future generations, so that future generations can pay tribute, the hospital personnel did their best, asked the villagers in the village, the same batch of sacrificial soldiers name engraved on a tombstone.
According to the old man's recollection, once, a tombstone was engraved with the names of more than 800 soldiers, and the dense names represented the once vivid lives.
Listening to the old man's tearful description, all the personnel present were silent.
Experts from the Heritage Bureau also found historical records about this past.
Records show that the 75th Army's Reserve Fourth Division was indeed stationed here, and the site where the bones are now found is the site of the former field hospital where the bodies were buried.
At that time, the Japanese army and the Fourth Division fought fiercely in Yibin, trying to hang all the members of the Fourth Division, and it is conceivable how fierce the battle situation was at that time.
In order to commemorate these fallen soldiers, the local government department specially built a cemetery for 3,000 white bones for future generations to pay tribute to.
As future generations, in addition to remembering the heroic achievements of the martyrs, we should also remember this history and always remind ourselves that we cannot let the tragedy of history repeat itself.
CNKI Literature Search:
"Yichang County Literature and History Materials No. 9", "Hubei Yichang Discovered the Burial Site of more than 3,000 Chinese Soldiers During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression", Luoyang Daily, September 3, 2010