In April 1941, in the countryside of Jiaoling, Guangdong, a woman received a bad news that made her feel like she was falling apart.
Her husband died, was killed in the War of Resistance, and died before he could fulfill the promise he had given her. This year, the woman was only 35 years old, and of the four children her husband left for her, the eldest daughter was 12 years old, and the younger son was 6 years old this year, and she had not yet met her father.
At present, the mother-in-law has just passed away, the father-in-law is old, and there are other uncleless brothers and sisters-in-law around him, facing the grieving old man and the children without their fathers in the whole house, the woman can't understand why she has worked hard all year round and supported the family, why she just bought such an ending.
She was not a village woman, 5 years ago, she was a Shanghai lady with ten fingers that did not touch the spring water of the sun. For the sake of her husband, she traveled thousands of miles to Guangdong. Five years of hard work had darkened her fair skin and polished her hands playing the piano, all of which she had no regrets.
But now her husband was one step ahead of her. Looking at the family of 8 waiting to be fed, this woman's spiritual defense line was broken. She didn't know what to do with the next few days.
This woman's name is Ling Weicheng, and her husband is the prototype of the protagonist of the movie "Eight Hundred", and is Xie Jinyuan, the heroic leader who commanded the "Eight Hundred Heroes" to stick to the last moment in the Four Elements Defense War.
01- Loyalty and courage martyrdom
Xie Jinyuan, a native of Jiaoling, Guangdong, was born in 1905, his ancestors had been farming for generations, and he was born in a cold door, but he rarely had the ambition to serve the country. In 1925, after graduating from Guangdong University, Xie Jinyuan, under the influence of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary thoughts, resolutely threw himself into the pen and transferred to the Huangpu Phase IV.
Since the Northern Expedition, Xie Jinyuan started as a platoon leader and charged all the way, and his courage was extraordinary. In 1936, Xie Jinyuan was promoted to lieutenant colonel staff officer of the 88th Division of the National Revolutionary Army.
In August of the following year, the Battle of Songhu broke out, and the Japanese clamored for "three days to occupy Shanghai and three months to destroy China." At that time, Japan invested 14 and a half elite divisions in Shanghai and dispatched more than half of the navy, and the war was unprecedentedly fierce.
By October, more than 700,000 elites sent by Chiang Kai-shek had broken down one after another, and a large number of positions in northern Shanghai had been lost. Chiang Kai-shek, who had planned to die, had to agree to withdraw his troops, but he hoped to leave a sticking force here, so that warlords across the country could see the determination of the Central Army to die to resist Japan, which attracted international attention.
The force that was finally left behind, which was doomed to never return, was the reinforcement battalion of the first battalion of the May 24th Regiment led by Xie Jinyuan at that time.
In order to cover the withdrawal of large troops, in the early morning of October 27, Xie Jinyuan led his troops into the Sihang warehouse on the banks of the Suzhou River. At that time, the Japanese Ace Army's Third Division was opposed, and the actual strength of the first battalion was only more than 400 people. In order to confuse the Japanese army, Xie Jinyuan declared that they had "eight hundred people" to the outside world.
Before the battle, Xie Jinyuan ordered the counting of the number of people and the creation of the roster, and he was determined to break the ship. He told the soldiers: "The Sihang warehouse is our last position and our grave... As long as we still have one person, we must fight the enemy to the end. ”
In the next four days, Xie Jinyuan led the soldiers to defend the Sihang Warehouse, resisting nearly 10 attacks by the Japanese army and annihilating more than 200 enemy troops. On October 29, Xie Jinyuan also sent a telegram to his master Sun Yuanliang to mingzhi:
"Vow not to retreat easily, and never to make a stealing plan for a moment." Before Jin Yuan died, the officers and men of the whole battalion would pay a considerable price to the Wokou. "Never fail, not the country!"
On October 30, the Japanese army, which had been unable to attack the Sihang warehouse for a long time, became angry and blatantly violated international conventions, mobilized 37 mm caliber flat-fire guns to begin to storm the Sihang warehouse, and also fired gas shells into the warehouse.
That night, Xie Jinyuan unexpectedly received orders to retreat. In response, he repeatedly said that "the whole battalion is ready to coexist and die with the warehouse", but he was still forced to retreat. Xie Jinyuan had no choice but to withdraw into the British concession with his troops. However, the concessionary side was forced by the pressure of the Japanese to disarm Xie Jinyuan's battalion, and the first battalion became a lone camp in Shanghai.
Xie Jinyuan and his troops were placed under house arrest here for four years. During this period, Chinese and foreign people repeatedly proposed to use Shanghai refugees to exchange the lone army in batches in the name of going to the lone army camp to offer condolences and rejoicing, but Xie Jinyuan refused one by one, saying: "Because Yu wei was ordered to retreat, the light came, and he also went away." ”
Due to Xie Jinyuan's great influence at that time, Japanese agents broke into the camp several times to assassinate him, but they did not succeed. In 1940, the Wang puppet government lured Xie Jinyuan with the high-ranking official Houlu, but he refused and rebuked him. The Wang puppet government failed to make a plan, and set up another plan.
On the morning of April 24, 1941, when Xie Jinyuan was leading his troops out for exercises as usual, he was stabbed to death by four soldiers bribed by the Wang puppet government with a dagger and an iron pickaxe and other weapons prepared in advance, and he was only 37 years old at the time of his death.
02- Marry a wife like this
After the news of Xie Jinyuan's murder came out, the whole country mourned. A total of more than 100,000 people from all walks of life went to Xie Jinyuan's hometown to attend the memorial service. The scale is unprecedented, the depth of mourning is unprecedented.
Among all the people, the most painful is his wife Ling Weicheng. Her husband was gone, and she had lost all the spiritual sustenance of the first half of her life. The burden of life is mercilessly placed on this former Shanghai Qianjin.
Born in 1907 in a merchant family in Xujiahui, Shanghai, Ling Weicheng was the second eldest of three sisters, studying at Wuben Girls' High School and Shanghai Southeast Sports College. Because he studied music, Ling Weicheng in his teenage years played and sang, and he could do everything. In shanghai beach that year, Ling Weicheng was the standard "white rich beauty" and the most fashionable new woman.
In 1927, Ling Weicheng, who had just graduated from the Southeast Sports College, met Xie Jinyuan at a friend's wedding. That year, Xie Jinyuan was 22 years old and Ling Weicheng was 20 years old.
One is a young hero who has conquered the four sides, the other is a red-faced beauty with both talents, and the two people who are prosperous and prosperous have rubbed the spark of love in the amazement of the first sight, and the two people who were originally separated by thousands of mountains and rivers know and love each other.
In May 1928, Xie Jinyuan was blocked by the Japanese army during the Northern Expedition and was seriously wounded. Ling Weicheng was relieved and visited the hospital in Hankou many times. As a soldier, Xie Jinyuan xu was well aware of the limited life and impermanence of war, and did not want to leave regrets for himself, and when his wounds were about to heal, he proposed to his beloved girl.
In the face of this heroic, heroic and handsome young man in front of him, Ling Weicheng already had a secret wish. But she did not expect that her mother did not approve of this marriage.
In fact, although Ling Weicheng's mother admired Xie Jinyuan's character, considering that the career risk of the military was too great, and she had been gathering with her family for many years, she really could not bear to marry her daughter. It's just that Ling Weicheng's mind has been decided. In September 1929, she and Xie Jinyuan were married at the Dahua Hotel in Hankou.
Life after marriage is as happy as Ling Weicheng expected. Her husband guarded everyone outside for her, and she took care of the two of them' small homes for her husband. During the turbulent years, she used the sound of the piano to soothe her husband's worries and uneasiness. In four years, wherever her husband was stationed, Ling Weicheng followed him.
During this period, Ling Weicheng gave birth to a son and two daughters for her husband. The arrival of several children added a little joy to the gloomy and bleak years. In the spring of 1936, the smell of gunpowder between China and Japan became stronger.
Seeing that the great war was imminent, Xie Jinyuan had the idea of sending his wife and children to the countryside of Jiaoling in Guangdong Province for refuge. This proposal was suddenly opposed by many of Ling Weicheng's relatives and friends.
In everyone's view, Ling Weicheng is a young lady who grew up in the metropolis since childhood, and she is used to pampering herself, and it is difficult to raise three children independently in the countryside no matter what.
At that time, Ling Weicheng's younger brother-in-law, Zhou Zhaotang, also strongly discouraged Ling Weicheng from going to Guangdong. Zhou Zhaotang, also a Whampoa graduate with a certain reputation in politics, proposed that Ling Weicheng take his children to Chongqing with them.
The concerns and proposals of relatives and friends were not unreasonable, but Ling Weicheng once again made a surprising decision, she would take her three children with her to the countryside of Guangdong, where she had never been before.
03- Yinuo is lifelong
Ling Weicheng understood that only when he went to Guangdong, his husband would be truly at ease.
The in-laws in his hometown are old, and her husband is the only male in the family, who has always hated the perennial conquest and cannot go home to accompany the second elder. The husband proposed to let himself go back to Guangdong this time, why not also want the lonely second old man outside the mountains and rivers to hug these grandchildren who have not yet met.
In order to fulfill her husband's filial piety, Ling Weicheng stubbornly made the second major decision in his life.
After the Spring Festival in 1936, under the escort of her husband, Ling Weicheng, who was already pregnant with Liujia, returned to Jiaoling, Guangdong with her three children. Here, Xie Jinyuan only stayed for a short week before he had to rush back to the army, and when he was leaving, he said to his wife with pity:
"It is a last resort for you to stay in such a miserable place, and the burden of serving old parents and raising young children should have been shouldered by me, but as a soldier, I cannot take care of my family for the service of the country, so now I have to give it to you... On the day of victory, I will pick you up and take you back to Shanghai. ”
Ling Weicheng was touched in her heart, but she couldn't imagine that this had become an eternal recipe for her and her husband.
At the end of October of the same year, Ling Weicheng gave birth to his youngest son. According to her husband's instructions, she named her children successors, which means to inherit the good character of her ancestors.
When she first arrived at the Xie family, Ling Weicheng's burden was much heavier than she had imagined. The in-laws are old, the eldest uncle died early, and the eldest uncle and sister-in-law also ran away, leaving only one daughter. Two in-laws, plus four children, a niece, and a family of eight people to eat. Although the husband will also send a salary, but it is a drop in the bucket to share the livelihood of the eight people.
In order to support the family, she took off her cheongsam and high heels, put on the coarse cloth and linen clothes of the peasants, and shouldered all the housework and farm work. The huge turning point in life overwhelmed Ling Weicheng, and her only spiritual pillar was her husband's sentence", "On the day of victory, I will come to pick you up and return to Shanghai." ”
5 years later, Ling Weicheng, who was standing in front of her husband's spiritual hall, remembered this sentence again, and tears fell like rain. In the countless midnight dreams after her husband's departure, she wanted to go with him many times as before, but in the end she could not leave her father-in-law and young daughter in her seventies, so she had to shed tears into her stomach, re-energize her spirits, and support this broken home.
In the autumn of that year, Ling Weicheng, who was living in poverty, took his four children all the way to Chongqing from 5 provinces to receive a 50,000 yuan pension from the government to her husband. In addition, she hoped that Chiang Kai-shek would remember her husband's loyalty and courage before his death and help solve the problem of several children's schooling.
After arriving in Chongqing, Song Meiling personally received her. In the face of Ling Weicheng's appeal, she said that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the country was in difficulty, and after victory, the state will definitely take care of you. In the meantime, Song Meiling took her hand and said kindly in the soft shanghai dialect: "Wei Cheng, Nong rest assured, the country will not forget Nong." In the future, you can come to Chongqing once a year to give a lecture with Nong. ”
These words made Ling Weicheng's heart warm and he was greatly encouraged. But she also knew that the matter of her children's school enrollment was temporarily gone.
After returning to Guangdong, she divided the pension into two halves, half of which was left for her father-in-law to retire, and she took the other half of the money to buy three acres of land in the countryside to cultivate. The work was already very hard, but she insisted on teaching several children to read and write at the same time.
The youngest son, Xie Jimin, later said in an interview: "I can't imagine that my mother was originally a woman who had no worries about food and clothing, loved music and art, and would sow seeds, pick up manure, and fertilize every day in the future... The first half of her life was completely different from the second half of her life, but she survived. ”
04- Widowed wife weak son
In 1945, after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Ling Weicheng decided to return to his hometown of Shanghai. On the one hand, she wants to take her children back to Shanghai to worship her husband; on the other hand, she wants to go back to her hometown to find something to do so that her children can receive a good education.
After settling down in his father-in-law's life, in March 1946, Ling Weicheng and his four children traveled all the way to Shantou to board a boat to Shanghai. However, when he arrived at the dock, Ling Weicheng found that the little entanglement he had made up by selling the land was not enough money for 5 ferry tickets. In the face of the expectant eyes of the four children, as a mother, she blamed herself and was embarrassed.
When locals in Shantou learned that Ling Weicheng was Xie Jinyuan's widow, they interceded with a steamship company that finally promised to provide free tickets and accommodation for the family, but the ship would not leave until a month later. The Shantou people who fought righteousness then arranged for five mothers and sons to live temporarily in the local area.
After more than two months of wandering around, the five mothers and sons who had gone through twists and turns finally arrived in Shanghai. The next day, the local newspaper published the news: "The widow of the anti-Japanese general Xie Jinyuan arrived in Shanghai yesterday and stayed at the Xinxin Hostel. ”
Such a message changed the second half of Ling Weicheng's life.
As the news of the return of the regimental commander's wife spread across the beach, gradually some veterans of the lone army camp began to follow the address in the newspaper to find the door. When they saw the regimental commander's wife, it was as if they had seen the regimental commander of the year, and they were very excited to talk about what had happened over the years.
Ling Weicheng knew that since her husband's death, these lone soldiers had been imprisoned in the concession, and later forced to work as coolies in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. These nine-dead people had been waiting for victory in the War of Resistance, but no one cared about their lives. The vast majority of them are unemployed and live displaced and helpless lives.
To this end, Ling Weicheng made an extraordinary decision. She said to the veterans, "Your regimental commander has died, but I am the regimental commander's wife, and I have an unshirkable duty, and I will pick up the burden he left behind." ”
At that time, there were about forty or fifty survivors of the lone army scattered in various districts of Shanghai, and later a hundred people gathered. In order to give these veterans a place to live, Ling Weicheng personally sat down and led these veterans to seize the property left by the Japanese from the hands of the Three Youth League.
In June 1946, Ling Weicheng personally went to Nanjing to see Chiang Kai-shek, hoping to settle these lone soldiers, but in the end only Song Meiling received her. Song Meiling said very politely: "You should go back first, and will arrange for the Shanghai government to take care of you." ”
But after that, there is no further follow-up. Ling Weicheng went to the Shanghai Municipal Government to discuss the explanation, and as a result, the municipal government pushed it to the Social Bureau, and the Social Bureau pushed it to other departments. Departments blamed each other and achieved no results.
People take tea cool, since ancient times. In the face of this situation, Ling Weicheng's loneliness can be imagined. The government was reluctant to take care of it, but Ling Weicheng was unwilling to ignore these fighters. So she regained the "business experience" of her father's life and began to learn and apply these things that she had heard since childhood.
She has tried to rally people to drive buses to make a living, and she has also organized industrial service agencies to produce towels, socks, soap, etc., and actively seek a way out for her husband's hundreds of old ministries.
Later, even these livelihoods could not be maintained, so Ling Weicheng mobilized all his resources and connections to plead with her husband's former acquaintances to introduce the work to these veterans.
05 - Capitalized people
Under the running of Ling Weicheng, some of xie Jinyuan's old ministers became railway policemen, some entered the enterprise as drivers, and some were introduced to work in the inland shipping company, and their lives were settled. However, Ling Weicheng took a few children to live a life of frugality.
After 1948, due to the impact of the civil war, prices in Shanghai soared. Li Chunlin, who had served as the commander of the Second Lone Army, circled more than sixty acres of land on Yuyao Road, Jiaozhou Road, where the former Lone Army Camp and Xie Jinyuan's cemetery were located, and lent them to the refugees in northern Jiangsu to build a tent, and he gave Ling Weicheng all the rent collected by each household, but Ling Weicheng only took a small part of it for the children's study and life, and the rest were distributed to the lone army to subsidize their lives.
After liberation, the real estate in Shanghai was registered and redistributed, and Ling Weicheng wrote to the then mayor Chen Yi, detailing the plight of the sixty or seventy people who still existed with the lone soldiers. Chen Yi attaches great importance to this and specially approves the right to use Ling Weicheng's house at No. 466 Wusong Road and the location of Xie Jinyuan's cemetery.
Under the care of the government, the soldiers of the lone army camp finally had a legal and stable place to live, and Ling Weicheng's family also lived a stable life. The burden left by her husband, Ling Weicheng used the second half of his life to carry it for him.
However, it is also such a woman who does not allow her eyebrows to be shaved, and in the years when her husband died, she has endured too much pain that is not humane. The youngest son, Xie Jimin, later recalled that as the mother of the martyr's widow, she had actually been frequently threatened and harassed for many years.
When her husband was just sacrificed, Ling Weicheng was still in his early thirties. At that time, she had made up her mind and would not marry another woman, but she was still harassed by many unscrupulous people.
Once, Ling Weicheng even received a secret note, and the person who wrote the note said that if he did not agree to the above conditions, he would be careful about the lives of several children. Ling Weicheng had no one to talk to, secretly called a few children to the attic to discuss, and the stepmin who was still in elementary school at the time indignantly and sensibly said to his mother: "Ignore him, we are not afraid!" ”
The child's sensible confession made Ling Weicheng, as a mother, moved unceasingly. For the sake of the country and the nation, the husband stands up to the heavens and the earth, and sacrifices his life and forgets death, so why should he be afraid of the threat of the nameless villain? Until he became an adult, Xie Jimin could still remember his mother's resolute look.
It was in this adversity that Ling Weicheng single-handedly raised four children to adulthood. When Xie Jimin got married, he only made one request to his wife and treat his mother well. He thinks that his mother's life is not easy.
On January 6, 1991, 84-year-old Ling Weicheng handed a yellowed notebook to his children on his sickbed and said to them:
"The names on the top are all those uncles you've seen." They and your father once wrote a suicide note together in the Sihang Warehouse, determined to live and die together, and these people suffered far more sins than your father. For so many years, I have tried my best to help them, and you must do the same, otherwise your father will be uneasy in the spirit of heaven. ”
Until the last moment of his life, Ling Weicheng was thinking about these lone soldiers. This brave woman has experienced a difficult life, but she has never been silent about her own pain, nor has she ever complained about others, but instead sincerely sympathized with the weak and helped widely.
If General Xie Jinyuan, the protagonist of "Eight Hundred", is a legend, then his wife Ling Weicheng can be called the legend behind the legend.