introduction
There was a popular saying on the Internet: "Where there are good years, but some people are carrying weights forward", indeed, in today's social development, we have never experienced war, and we were born in a peaceful era, but in fact, we were born in a peaceful country. In a certain corner of the world, there are still wars and riots, and the lives and safety of people are threatened at any time. However, a few decades ago, our country was also plunged into war, and there were many wars, the most memorable of which was the War of Resistance Against Japan.
From the outbreak of the "September 18 Incident" in 1931 to the surrender of Japan in 1945, it took Chinese a full 14 years for the Japanese invaders to drive out of China, and then experienced many wars such as the War of Liberation and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. In the past many years of the war, many fighters have been in anonymity and lived an ordinary life, and Qian Jianmin is one of them.
01
Qian Jianmin was born in September 1922 in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. At that time, China was in an era of ups and downs, not only the warlords at home, but also the countries abroad, who had witnessed China's bullying and continuous civil war since childhood, and Qian Jianmin was determined to serve the motherland when he grew up. Therefore, at the age of 18, he was admitted to the "Army Mechanization School" in Chongqing, entered the chariot student team, and learned chariot driving and chariot command, which made Qian Jianmin have a special affection for armored vehicles.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Qian Jianmin, who was full of enthusiasm, resolutely chose to join the army, and due to his professional reasons, Qian Jianmin was assigned to the tank battalion to open tanks.
02
After graduating from the Whampoa School, Qian Jianmin returned to the army and followed the army to see the War of Resistance Against Japan. In the memory of the old man, March 8, 1944 was the proudest day of his life.
In 1943, Qian Jianmin entered Burma with the Chinese Expeditionary Force to fight the Japanese army. At dusk that day, Qian Jianmin and his comrades-in-arms went to the field with a battalion of chariots for training, and when they left the garrison and entered the primeval jungle, they found that there were many thatched houses on both sides of the road, and there were also Japanese troops in and out, and the Japanese army also found the traces of Qian Jianmin's troops, and the two sides began a firefight. The final result ended in the defeat of the Japanese army, after investigation, in this war, the defeat was the headquarters of the Japanese 18th Division, Qian Jianmin and his comrades captured a complete number of Japanese armored vehicles, and there was also a Japanese officer's border defense seal, which was equivalent to the tiger charm of the ancient general, which was used to dispatch soldiers and issue combat orders.
Afterwards, General Stilwell, chief of staff of the US army in the China-Burma-India Theater, praised the Chinese expeditionary force and gave Qian Jianmin's unit a jeep with a striking line of "Chinese Armored Corps NO.1" written on the car.
03
The guns on the battlefield had no eyes, and in 1945, misfortune fell on Qian Jianmin. At that time, when Qian Jianmin was rescuing refugees in the mountains of Zhenyuan County, Guizhou, he was unfortunately hit in the jaw by a bullet, and then his eyes were also stabbed with splashed glass, because the medical conditions were limited at that time, so he was blind in both eyes and left a large scar on his chin. After becoming blind in both eyes, Qian Jianmin could only withdraw from the army and return to ordinary life, when he retired, the army handed over the original trophy, the Japanese Army Seal, to Qian Jianmin for safekeeping. Until the end of the war, he did not tell anyone about his glorious past.
It was not until one time when the daughter was packing up her things that she turned over the big seal that had been hidden for many years that she learned the original deeds from her father's mouth. In 2016, the elderly Qian Jianmin told his daughter what he had wanted for many years:
"I hope that in my own lifetime, I will be able to sit in the tank unit and touch our own Tanks in China."
Later, after many contacts in society, the 38th Group Army of our army dispatched 6 domestically produced and built tanks, which made the old man who had been anonymous for 71 years realize his dream. In the early morning of February 9, 2018, the elderly Qian Jianmin died of a lung infection at the age of 96