During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, China's weapons and equipment lagged far behind Japan,Chinese relied on millet plus rifles to defeat the Japanese aircraft and tanks. Unfortunately, a number of revolutionary martyrs were buried forever on the battlefield. In September 2010, more than 3,000 remains were found at a construction site on a highway in the village south of Huanghua Township, Yiling District, Hubei Province.
Later, certified by the local police and verified by archaeologists, these remains are the remains of the soldiers of the Fourth Division of the 75th Army of the Revolutionary Army of the National Government during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Experts can't help but sigh after the examination: This history is really tragic! So what kind of legend did these more than 3,000 heroic warriors perform?
The throats of the three major regions vowed not to let go
Yichang is an important port city in china's inland and an important transportation hub connecting Wuhan, Chongqing and Sichuan. At one time it was known as the throat of these three regions. Yichang is divided into two parts, east and west by the Han River, the west side of Yichang relies on the dangerous terrain of the Three Gorges, and the east is zaoyang, a plain town across the Han River from the Three Gorges.
In the early stages of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist government was defeated by the Japanese army and fled to Chongqing. In 1938, Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, was occupied by Japanese troops, and Japan's next goal was to occupy Yichang, a major transportation route. Because once Yichang was occupied, the Three Gorges Pass would be opened so that the Japanese army could drive straight into the interior of Chongqing. Therefore, the safety of Yichang is the safety of Chongqing and even the entire southwest rear. This is a fact that both Japan and the Nationalist Government understand.
Due to the dangerous terrain of Yichang and its back to the Three Gorges, the Japanese could not conquer it for a long time at the beginning. The Japanese Eleventh Army then formulated a new offensive plan in 1940, and the Japanese concentrated 7 divisions of the 11th Army in an attempt to pry open the Three Gorges Mouth leading to the interior of Chongqing through powerful troops. Zaoyi in Yichang became the main battlefield of this war. This was later known as the Battle of Zaoyi.
After the Outbreak of the Battle of Zaoyi, the Japanese army severely damaged the Nationalist government army and finally occupied the coveted Yichang. But the Japanese themselves paid a terrible price, with a total of about 11,000 Japanese casualties. At that time, the Fourth Reserve Division of the Seventy-fifth Army of the Nationalist Government participated in the Battle of Zaoyi, and they launched a tug-of-war with the Japanese army in Yichang, and a street and a house were the focus of the armed firepower competition between the two sides.
Both sides knew the key to Yichang, so neither dared to breathe a sigh of relief. After the Battle of Zaoyi, the Fourth Division was ordered to continue to hold Yichang and contain the Japanese army. Division commander Fu Zhengmo led the Fourth Army, which had suffered more than half of the casualties, to retreat to the Xiaofeng area and continued to stubbornly fight against the Japanese army. Fu Zhengmo led such a group of defeated soldiers to launch a protracted war with the powerful Japanese army for 4 years, which cannot be said to be a major feat in the history of China's War of Resistance.
3,000 bones of tragic and magnificent
At that time, Fu Zhengmo set up his headquarters in a large household in Zaozishuling, a village in the south, and in order to clean the wounds of the wounded in time, a field hospital was set up on the flat land by the river. All the wounded who had been wounded in a defensive battle were sent here for treatment. In the past 4 years, just by this small river, I don't know how many wounded people have been sent, nor how many wounded people have left forever.
As a result of the four-year-long battle, the wounds of the Fourth Army also increased day by day. At that time, medical conditions were extremely limited, and the Japanese army blockaded Yichang after occupying Yichang. It is almost impossible to transport medical supplies from other places. In the absence of medicines and inadequate medical facilities, many of the wounded have left forever in the midst of severe pain.
Yichang County's literary and historical records record that the division commander Fu Zhengmo was faced with a tragic scene of casualties, and he really couldn't bear it, so he planned to properly arrange these sacrificial soldiers. Fu Zhengmo bought a piece of land in the village south of Huanghua Township to bury the brave soldiers. At first, the martyrs were able to own a separate cemetery of their own, but as the fighting became more and more intense and more and more soldiers died, the large piece of land bought by the division commander was no longer enough.
In desperation, the medical staff could only bury the sacrificed soldiers in a large pit, and after nearly four years of accumulation, more than 3,000 bones were buried in the final pit. The tragedy of such a scene is really moving. Fu Zhengmo later personally erected a tombstone for these brave and righteous soldiers, on which were written 6 big characters: If you don't succeed, you will become a ren. This is both a tombstone that still stands on the hillside and a tombstone that stands in the hearts of every Chinese.
In 2001, the Hubei Nanbian Village Expressway was under construction, because the project needed at that time, a pit was dug on the hillside of the south village of Huanghua Township, and not long after digging, the construction personnel found that a white bone was exposed on the hillside. Later, due to the impact of heavy rain, the construction was delayed by one day. Under the wash of a night of torrential rain, the next day a white bone turned into an uncountable pile of white bones, a face that the construction team had never seen before.
So many people reported to the police at that time, and the police came to the scene and judged that this may be a remnant of the war that year, so they found relevant archaeologists. Through on-site investigation and reading historical materials, archaeologists finally found these 3,000 martyrs who died heroically in the defense of Yichang. This tragic historical fact was thus made public. The more than 3,000 bones were later properly buried by the Hubei government, and the people of Hubei built monuments for them. Decades later, the warriors' spirits finally had their own shelter.
Think of danger in times of peace and cherish the present
Nowadays, our country is getting stronger and stronger, but just as the so-called thinking of danger in times of peace, each of us should always remember that our current life is not easy to come by, and it was bought with blood, sweat and even life by our predecessors. There is no reason why we should not cherish the present life, and now all this ease and peace are built on the tragedy of the past. We don't want war, we want peace, because where there is war, there must be sacrifice.
The more than 3,000 soldiers who died in the defense of Yichang have now been found, but how many heroic and righteous souls there are, we don't know where they are now. Although this is a kind of helplessness and loneliness, in fact, each of them lives in our hearts. Because it was when they went forward and followed each other and regarded death as a homecoming, in exchange for our beautiful life today. It is precisely this spirit of theirs that has supported the soul of our Chinese nation.
Text/Yu Xin