In 1971, a special old man came to the gate of the Jinan Military Region.
He was thin, disheveled, dressed in rags, and there was nothing special about his body, and after hesitating at the door for a long time, he finally plucked up the courage to ask the sentry where Commander Yang was.
Looking at the old man dressed as a peasant, the sentry felt very strange, such an ordinary old man, looking for Commander Yang what to do? The leader's itinerary they could not casually reveal, the sentry could only say "I don't know" with one sentence.
Unexpectedly, the old man insisted on not leaving, and felt the perfunctory attitude of the sentry,
The old man claimed to be a comrade-in-arms who fought alongside Commander Yang and was a former red army commander.
For the old man's words, the sentry was very surprised, such an ordinary old man, but with Commander Yang was once a comrade-in-arms? The sentry could not distinguish between true and false in the old man's words, so he had to settle the old man in the guest house first.
Subsequently, he informed Commander Yang Dezhi of this situation, who knew that After Commander Yang heard the old man's name, he attached great importance to it.
Quickly rushed back. As soon as they met, they shook the old man's hand, and the two of them looked like old friends who had not seen each other for a long time, and they were very excited. Commander Yang's familiar attitude made the others present wonder,
Who is this old man, and why can Commander Yang personally receive him? What did he experience again, and would he come to the Jinan Military Region to find Commander Yang?
A lifetime of fighting horses and fighting on the battlefield
Hou Lixiang, who was born in 1912 in Xionghe Town, Jiangling County, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, was the old man who looked for Commander Yang Dezhi.
He served as the head of the Central Military Commission, was brave and decisive on the battlefield, resourceful, and not only made outstanding military achievements, but also won himself a lot of honors. And why did such a soldier with a bright future become what he is now?
When Hou Lixiang was young, he attended a private school for four years, but unfortunately the good times were not long, because of economic difficulties, after four years of studying in the private school, Hou Lixiang was forced to drop out of school. At the age of 12, Hou Lixiang's parents passed away one after another, leaving Hou Lixiang, who was still young, living alone in the world.
In that era of social turmoil, he had no support for him in an even poorer life, so he could only leave his hometown and go to work hard in other places.
He spent two years in Jingzhou and Wuhan, which was the time when the domestic revolutionary trend was on the rise, and under the influence of the social environment, Hou Lixiang began to slowly contact the revolution. In 1928, Hou Lixiang came from Hubei to Jiangxi, which had a strong revolutionary atmosphere, to participate in the revolution and began his anti-war career.
By the winter of 1929, Hou Lixiang, who was infected by the revolutionary atmosphere, decided to join the army, just when the Red Army in the Soviet Area expanded, hou Lixiang, who was only seventeen years old, entered Peng Zong's Red Third Army as a soldier.
Hou Lixiang participated in many anti-encirclement and suppression operations in the Central Soviet Region.
During the Long March, Hou Lixiang, who had performed well, was incorporated into the first division and one regiment of the Red First Army, and soon after, he took the position of battalion commander with his own efforts.
Although he was not very old, Hou Lixiang was not afraid at all when he went to the battlefield, and he bravely moved forward in the rain of bullets and bullets.
Because of his bravery in battle, he has always been appreciated by the leadership,
In this way, when Hou Lixiang was in the Red Regiment, he was promoted one after another, from squad leader to platoon leader, and later became a company commander. When Hou Lixiang was the battalion commander of a regiment, Yang Dezhi was the regimental commander of a regiment.
The two had many years of tacit understanding of fighting, participated in anti-encirclement and suppression together, forcibly crossed the Wujiang and Dadu rivers, experienced countless tests of life and death, and they were also comrades-in-arms with very good relations.
The founding general Yang Dezhi was a famous general with outstanding merits, and the Red Regiment he led at that time was known as the "First Regiment of the Red Army under the Heavens".
He played a huge role in the domestic revolution, the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, and Yang Dezhi was also one of the well-known "three Yangs" in the army.
The "Three Yangs" were Yang Dezhi, Yang Yong, and Yang Chengwu, all three of whom were tough generals in the army during the Red Army period, and they had already played the name of "Three Yangs" through their outstanding combat effectiveness and outstanding strategy
Later, during the period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, these three generals successively entered Korea to participate in the war, and Zhou Enlai called them "Three Yang Kaitai".
In addition to Yang Dezhi, Yang Yong, another general in the "Three Yangs", also had contact with Hou Lixiang.
In 1936, Hou Lixiang went to work under Yang Yong
Until 1938, Hou Lixiang relied on his personal ability to serve as the Central Military Commission, and also became the deputy head of the eighth route army headquarters, responsible for the work of defending the central government, and had a very high status in the army.
Hou Lixiang's two leaders, Yang Dezhi and Yang Yong, were both awarded the rank of general in 1955, and they lamented that if "Li Xiang" had not disappeared, it should now be possible to award lieutenant general. So who is "Li Xiang"? What kind of relationship did he have with Hou Lixiang?
Identity is lost, contact is lost
In the turbulent years, information gathering was not developed, and many revolutionary heroes were misidentified. Hou Lixiang's experiences stem from the loss of identity. When Hou Lixiang first joined the revolution, everyone used to remove their surnames and only call out a person's name, hou Lixiang was like this, because everyone called him "Lixiang".
The person in charge of registration thought that his name was "Li Xiang", and in this way, Hou Lixiang's name on the file became Li Xiang.
It was this mistake that laid the groundwork for Hou Lixiang's tortuous life of finding identity in the future.
Therefore, the "Li Xiang" who makes Yang Dezhi and Yang Yong feel regret is Hou Lixiang. So why did Hou Lixiang disappear and lose contact with the organization?
Hou Lixiang, who had climbed all the way at that time, already had a certain position in the army, but his life did not go on smoothly like this. During the Long March, Hou Lixiang was injured many times,
Later, in the battle of Ganquan in Shaanxi in early 1939, he was wounded again.
The new injury caused the recurrence of the old injury, his legs could not walk normally, the conditions of the Eighth Route Army at that time were difficult, many medicines were scarce, and Hou Lixiang's injury had not improved.
Because of the seriousness of his injuries, Hou Lixiang's physical condition made it impossible for him to follow the organization to march and fight, and later, referring to Hou Lixiang's opinions and the organization's considerations,
It was decided to arrange for Hou Lixiang to return to his hometown. A year later,
The organization also sent him to an official position in the Kuomintang, penetrated into the enemy's interior, and carried out underground work to help our army obtain classified information.
Because this work is extremely special, in order to prevent the enemy from discovering his identity, Hou Lixiang hid his name and locked the information that could prove his identity in a suitcase. There were unexpected storms in the sky, and the place where he lived at that time, the people of the three religions and nine streams gathered here,
The box containing Hou Lixiang's important information was stolen soon after.
Soon after, Hou Lixiang's subordinate organization was destroyed by the enemy, and the person who could confirm his identity disappeared.
Hou Lixiang's identity information was thus buried under the dust of history.
He lost all contact with the party organization. After the founding of New China, Hou Lixiang participated in the land reform and agricultural cooperation movement, because Hou Lixiang had worked for the Kuomintang state, and such historical issues could not be clarified because Hou Lixiang's identity could not be confirmed.
Hou Lixiang has since suffered from white eyes and ridicule. How to prove his identity has become the most urgent thing for Hou Lixiang at this moment.
Because there is no relevant supporting information, Hou Lixiang has not been in contact with the organization.
I can only stay in my hometown in my current capacity. After many years of marching career, Hou Lixiang was not at all accustomed to rural life and farming, and there was no way, and finally the people in the village could only arrange for Hou Lixiang to herd cattle. And his former red army identity, because there is no evidence, was buried in this way.
In such an environment, Hou Lixiang accidentally saw the news of Yang Dezhi and Yang Yong in the newspaper.
He made up his mind to write a letter to the troops complaining about his revolutionary experience and the reasons for his fall, and soon received letters from the two leaders
In the letter, they expressed their excitement that Hou Lixiang was still alive, and the two leaders also gave proof of his lost identity.
After receiving the reply letter from the two leaders, Hou Lixiang was very excited, he thought that he could restore his party membership and Red Army identity in this way, but what Hou Lixiang did not expect was that
Instead of proving his identity, the letters caused him to suffer more.
Hou Lixiang took out the letter written by the two leaders, but the people in the village did not believe it, and everyone thought that Hou Lixiang's letter was fake.
Local cadres believed that he had forged letters from the central leadership and punished him for labor reform, during which time Hou Lixiang's personal freedom was restricted.
After that, Hou Lixiang lived in this capacity for more than ten years, during which he experienced a lot of suffering, humiliation and insults, but he never gave up on finding his identity.
In 1971, Hou Lixiang inadvertently learned from the newspaper that his old leader, Yang Dezhi, was now in the Jinan Military Region.
Hou Lixiang, who had been misunderstood for so many years, lit up hope again, and he was determined to find Yang Dezhi and prove his identity in this life. He did not hesitate, and soon he was able to embark on the road to Jinan, to rush from Hubei to Jinan, a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, but did not make him retreat in the slightest, just after running around for a few days and nights, Hou Lixiang finally came to the Jinan Military Region.
A difficult road to restoration
When Hou Lixiang and Yang Dezhi met, both of them had two sideburns, and the years had left traces on their bodies.
Seeing the former leader, Hou Lixiang was so excited that he almost burst into tears, and Yang Dezhi was also very excited, so he had the opening scene
。
Because hou Lixiang needed to write down his revolutionary experience and memories in the army, he did not expect that he would write dozens of pages, Yang Dezhi looked at the above content, his eyes gradually moistened, he could imagine what his old comrades-in-arms had experienced over the years.
The loss of his identity should not erase all his achievements and dedication.
Therefore, Yang Dezhi immediately decided that he must find his identity for Hou Lixiang.
But Hou Lixiang did not expect that although he had already met Yang Dezhi, his road to regaining his name was far from so easy.
Although Yang Dezhi was the commander of the Jinan Military Region, the Central Committee had a special policy on the remaining problems of the Red Army.
Not to mention that separated by two provinces, Yang Dezhi is not good at commanding across provinces.
Yang Dezhi could only go through the process, he wrote the letter full of Hou Lixiang's situation, handed over to the hands of the superiors, other comrades-in-arms who had been in the army, learned that Hou Lixiang wanted to find his identity, and they also came to help and do their part.
This incident was later known to General Yang Yong, who was far away in Xinjiang, and he also issued a certificate.
I thought that Hou Lixiang's procedures were complete and he could easily restore his identity, but he did not expect that there was still a lot of resistance in this matter.
Many local officials have great opinions on Hou Lixiang's issue. There are many people who stubbornly believe that
Hou Lixiang worked inside the enemy for a long time, and what happened during this time, no one knows, he is likely to defect to the revolution and defect to the enemy, so he did not agree to restore Hou Lixiang's identity.
In order to explain this matter clearly, the Party Central Committee specially explained that Hou Lixiang's going from the army to Jiangling was arranged by the party organization, and all his work after Jiangling was also done in accordance with the orders of the organization, and there was no place to leave the organization, even Wei Xi, the main leader of Jiangling County
In order to solve Hou Lixiang's problem, he also went there twice.
The first time Wei Xi came to Jiangling, he was entrusted by Commander Yang, who hoped that he could come to see Hou Lixiang's life problems and give him some help.
Make life better for this troubled veteran. When he arrived at the place where Hou Lixiang lived, Wei Xi found that the living conditions of this Veteran of the Red Army were very poor, and there was no preferential treatment for the veterans. The second time Wei Xi came to Jiangling, he was entrusted by Hou Lixiang to come to Jiangling to help Hou Lixiang restore his identity and relationship with the organization. However, due to many local organizations, there is a great prejudice against Hou Lixiang, and the process of this matter is very difficult.
In 1973, the commander of the military region was transferred, and Yang Dezhi came to Wuhan to take up a post, and the issue of Hou Lixiang's identity was finally able to intervene.
To this end, he specially came to Jiangling and asked the local organization to investigate the identity of Hou Lixiang.
Finally, in 1975, after review, the Gangneung County Party Committee decided to restore Hou Lixiang's Red Army treatment. Since then, Hou Lixiang's status as the commander of the Red Army has been recognized.
From leaving the army in 1939 to restoring his identity in 1975, in these thirty-six years, what the veteran soldier Hou Lixiang has experienced, we can only glimpse from some information, and what specific suffering he has suffered, only he himself can know. Hou Lixiang's deep love for the party and the country, and the inseparability of the Experience of the Red Army, let us see the determination and persistence of this old man.
In 1991, the old Red Army soldier died in the winter of Gangneung at the age of 80.
From the age of fifteen, Hou Lixiang's life was full of ups and downs, and his outstanding contributions to the war and his dedication to the party should have allowed him to enjoy the treatment of the country as a veteran of the Red Army after he was injured and retired, but because of the accidental loss of identity, he suffered so much suffering.
But in the face of all difficulties, he always maintained the courage to move upwards,
In his experience, we have seen Hou Lixiang, his deep thoughts about the party and the country, his experience in the Red Army, and his contributions to the war, which future generations will always remember.