One day in 2020, the 94-year-old retired cadre of Wuhan University
Yan Chuanmei
Lying on the bed, looking at the worried children in front of him, he said:
"I have an old suitcase with a lock and I hope you can keep it."
Several children burst into tears after listening to it, it was during the epidemic period, Yan Chuanmei's perennial basic disease had deteriorated, and now the medical resources are tight, they all know in their hearts that their father is probably confessing the aftermath.
Watching his father tremble and take out the already mottled appearance of the suitcase, solemnly open it, several children are busy wiping away tears and rushing to the side, accompanying the father for decades, never heard him say anything about the suitcase.
Pieces of heavy military merit medals came into view, and one after another with traces of age recounted the thrills and hardships of the war years, and the children turned their heads to look at Yan Chuanmei, who had never really understood what kind of person their father really was.
What did an ordinary retired university cadre go through in exchange for a box full of military merit? Why did he hide his honor at the bottom of the box?
Pictured: Yan Chuanmei won some of the military merit medals
He vowed not to give up until he destroyed the Japanese devils
Yan Chuanmei was originally a native of Zhongxiang, Hubei Province, and was born in 1926 as the only son in the family. Just when he was 14 years old, several new faces came to the village, and they would often put wooden boxes with lenses on all sides at the intersection on market day, and when the lights were illuminated, one person pulled the rope on the wooden box, and as long as others approached, they could see the pictures passing in front of them.
Yan Chuanmei was half a teenager, and he naturally couldn't help but be curious when he saw this strange object, but when he looked closer, the contents of it made him out of anger. What he saw was nothing else, but a scene of his compatriots being ravaged, slaughtered, and persecuted by Japanese devils.
At that time, Japanese imperialism had just occupied Zhongxiang, and this was the first time he deeply felt humiliated and helpless. Yan Chuanmei shed tears, and his deep hatred for the invaders was rooted in his heart from then on, and the idea of driving the Japanese devils out of China always lingered in his mind and never dissipated for a long time.
Pictured: Yan Chuanmei in her youth
On that day, he was taking shelter with a few children at the entrance of the village, a Japanese soldier armed with a spear appeared, his mouth was chattering and he didn't know what he was saying, one of them saw the bayonet dangling behind his back, quickly stood up and nodded and shouted "Tai jun", and everyone did the same. Only Yan Chuanmei straightened his waist and stared stubbornly at the Japanese soldiers.
The unusual Yan Chuanmei attracted the attention of the Japanese soldiers, who were taken away, and seeing that he was young and strong, the devil wanted him to carry the looted grain as a coolie. After the parents heard that their son had been taken away, they were anxious to fidget, and waited at the door all night, but still did not see Yan Chuanmei's figure.
Thinking that his son was likely to suffer misfortune, Yan Father cried sadly. But at this moment, Yan Chuanmei actually returned intact.
It turned out that when he set out from the village with rice to the Japanese stronghold, he saw that the enemy was not ready to take the opportunity to shake him off, and saw that the hard-won Zhuang Ding had escaped, and the Japanese devils took out their guns and shot indiscriminately, fortunately, Yan Chuanmei was flexible, he ran to the mountain to hide for a night, and then quietly returned home.
This incident made Yan Chuanmei famous in the village, and also attracted the attention of several new faces in the village. Later, Yan Chuanmei learned that it was here that these people were propagating the anti-Japanese underground party, and inspired by this, he joined the Anti-Japanese Ten Regiment without his parents and secretly launched the Anti-Japanese Salvation Movement.
In 1942, Yan Chuanmei, who became a party member, saw that the whole country was scorched earth, gave up the opportunity to study and further study, and took up arms and stepped into the battlefield.
It is said that a cruel and ruthless war can make people grow up quickly, and Yan Chuanmei is no exception, and the 17-year-old has become a local through tempering
Platoon leader of the guard platoon of the Anti-Japanese Armed Detachment
During one mission, he offered to complete the assassination mission.
Their target is a notorious local traitor, who not only nods to the Japanese for his own selfish desires, but also often leads wolves into the house to help the devils bully the people, and everyone is eager to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
"I've met this guy, and it's best for me to go."
When he heard that the higher-level organization wanted to eliminate harm for the people, Yan Chuanmei was very excited. Considering his safety, the leader of the armed detachment decided to send several people with him.
Before leaving, Yan Chuanmei asked for several grenades and distributed them to the other four people, "In case something goes wrong, we will pull the grenade and die with the devil." Yan Chuanmei, whose life had just unfolded, was completely unable to care about his own life and death, and he was full of thoughts about how to eliminate Japanese devils and black sheep.
On a cold winter night, he and four small warriors braved the wind and snow for tens of miles to finally reach the devil's stronghold. According to the information collected before, the traitor was now in the stronghold, and if he wanted to complete the assassination mission, he could only cross the many levels of the devil.
Coincidentally, the weather was too cold that night, and the ghosts in charge of the guard patrol sneaked into the house with the stove to keep warm, and the garrison was very lax, and Yan Chuanmei and a few small soldiers were able to sneak into the stronghold at night.
Not long after he left, he saw a person walking out of the room with his teeth on his face, who else could he be if he wasn't a traitor? Saying that it was late and fast, Yan Chuanmei rushed up to knock him unconscious, and several small warriors carried the people up and prepared to retreat, but they ran into the sentries who came out of the house.
Just as the sentries were firing at them, Yan Chuanmei and a few people took out prepared grenades and threw them at the stronghold, and the ghosts suddenly panicked and could no longer care about chasing them.
The capture of traitors is only the epitome of yan Chuanmei's more than seventy battles in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1945, he served as the commander of the second company of the Liberation Brigade of the 11th Brigade of the 4th Column of Nakano, and began to fight everywhere to liberate the people of the whole country.
Of the more than one hundred and forty comrades-in-arms, only about a dozen are alive
In November 1948, the Battle of Huaihai began, and after Liu Bocheng led Nakano to cut off the Jinpu road section connecting Xu and Beng, the nationalist army's southward retreat route was also cut off.
The old Chiang Kai-shek had to throw out his last trump card, the Huang Wei Corps, to join the southern battlefield, thus opening the most crucial stage of the second phase of the Huaihai Campaign
Double Stack Campaign
。
Pictured: The Battle of Shuangduiji, the second phase of the entire Huaihai Campaign, took place from November 23 to December 15, 1948, in the 37th year of the Republic of China (1948), 23 days before and after
"Nerd" Huang Wei led the 800,000-strong National Mechanized Corps of Armament and Equipment, regardless of the attack and flanking attack of Nakano's troops, and drove all the way to the area of Suxian County, Anhui Province. He would not have thought that at this moment, the entire corps had quietly entered the pocket formation carefully set up by Liu Bocheng.
Yan Chuanmei's unit was mainly responsible for the blockade battle south of shuangduiji, and they had to capture the villages occupied by the Nationalist army in two days and one night, and join the follow-up troops to encircle the enemy.
Compared with the Huang Wei Corps, which is all American equipment, Yan Chuanmei's weapons and equipment are mostly made in the old Hanyang, and the relatively handy guys are all weapons captured in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and bullets are very scarce.
The disparity in the strength of the enemy and us was extremely large, resulting in the battle just starting, and it instantly entered a white-hot situation.
"Rush up as if you've sacrificed yourself." It was a sentence that Yan Chuanmei often said on the battlefield, the soldier instigated one, and the bear was a nest, inspired by him, and more than a hundred soldiers under his command also like him, putting life and death aside.
Without heavy weapons, the warriors used discarded oil barrels and loaded with dozens of kilograms of explosives to make homemade "flying thunder barrels" and violently bombarded the enemy's fortified area; in the face of each other's howitzers and mountain cannons, they relied on favorable terrain to carry out a gradual fight, often a piece of land, and both sides could repeatedly compete for more than ten times.
That night, the smoke of the battle had not yet dissipated, and Yan Chuanmei took advantage of the suspension of enemy fire to begin repairing the few remaining fortifications that had been blown up. Thinking that there were still countless hard battles to be fought, he decided to stand guard on the periphery and let the warriors take a nap.
"Company commander, stand up, you are not afraid of death." A small warrior saw the situation and quickly pulled Yan Chuanmei into the lir, and then said: "You regard death as a homecoming, and we are not instigating goods." ”
Seeing that he insisted on standing guard, Yan Chuanmei could only smile and say, "Okay, you come." ”
But after a while, the opposite side suddenly burst into flames, and a row of merciless bullets instantly took away the life of the little warrior, and at the moment of falling, his eyes were still slightly smiling at Yan Chuanmei.
He remembered the correspondent who had blocked the bullet for him not long ago, shouted "danger" at the last moment of his death, turned around and used his chest to block the bullet that should have been fired at him. Endless chagrin and anger suddenly surged into Yan Chuanmei's heart.
He picked up the gun that the little soldier was dragging in his hand and launched a fierce attack on the enemy with other soldiers.
In this blockade battle, he had lost more than a hundred brothers, and there were not many old faces left. He must win this battle with the whole company to be worthy of those heroic souls who sacrificed.
In the dead of night, Yan Chuanmei was heartbroken at the thought of the loss of their lives one by one familiar comrades-in-arms, and he knew in his heart that as long as there was a war, some people would die, but the combat effectiveness of the company could not be greatly reduced because of the reduction of personnel.
People are gone, where to replenish? This is the biggest headache in his spare time.
When he saw the frustrated prisoners of the Nationalist army, he had an idea in his heart.
Years of war career, not only let Yan Chuanmei train a body of iron guts, but also exercised a skillful mouth that was good at doing ideological work.
Before several confrontations with the Nationalist army, many of the captured soldiers actively joined the PLA troops after he mobilized, most of them had received good military training, they could fight wars on the battlefield, followed the Communist Party for a long time, and their ideological consciousness was slowly improving.
In order to persuade the prisoners in front of them to achieve the purpose of "feeding the war with war", Yan Chuanmei invited out veterans who had previously been in the Nationalist army to carry out reform education with their own words.
Most of these prisoners were ordinary people who were captured by the nationalist army and pulled by Zhuang Ding, and the greatest wish in their hearts was to live a peaceful birthday as soon as possible, and looking at the situation in front of them, everyone understood that the nationalist army was nothing more than doing a battle of trapped beasts.
Although they were captured at present, the People's Liberation Army never treated them harshly, and their hearts slowly shook, and when they heard Yan Chuanmei say that they could return to their hometowns to reunite with their families as soon as possible, they wept bitterly.
In this way, relying on Xiao Zhi's ideological work of acting with reason and emotion, Yan Chuanmei's company had to survive several bitter battles, and although its personnel were constantly decreasing, its combat effectiveness was still very fierce, and it also carried out a tug-of-war with the strength of a battalion of the enemy and won a great victory.
With the collapse of the Huang Wei Legion,
Yan Chuanmei was also awarded the Special Meritorious Service
Looking at the heavy medal in his hand, he couldn't laugh, and the vivid faces of his former comrades-in-arms kept coming to mind, and he knew that if they hadn't stepped forward, he would have sacrificed countless times.
During the arduous battle of crossing the river, he made new meritorious contributions and was awarded the title of "Meritorious Hero of the People" for the second time.
The great victory in the three major battles made Yan Chuanmei realize that the vision of his youth, hoping that the poor people in the whole world would be able to eat and wear warm, and no longer suffer from the scourge of war, would soon come.
Hiding all his merits, he guarded the motherland in another way
After the liberation of New China, Yan Chuanmei participated in the Kinmen Artillery Battle with the troops, and suffered serious injuries to his lumbar spine. Considering his dedication to the country, his superiors originally wanted to promote him to a regimental cadre and stay in the army to recuperate, but he did not expect Yan Chuanmei to shake his head after listening to it.
"You have so many military achievements, if you continue to stay in the army, everyone will not say anything." In the face of the chief's persuasion, Yan Chuanmei's attitude was very firm:
"As a soldier, if you can't go to the battlefield to fight, it's better to change careers and go back to the local area."
The chief could not resist him, and could only reluctantly agree. When he took off his military uniform, Yan Chuanmei packed all the honors he had won over the years of conquest into a suitcase, planning to never mention it again, even if it was a close family.
Pictured: Yan Chuanmei received the Liberation Medal and the Independence Freedom Medal
When he saw that he could fill in three volunteers for the transfer, he first wrote about Xinjiang, because the conditions there were harsh and a large number of personnel were urgently needed to build; considering that the Pingdingshan coal mine was rich in resources, he could go to the grass-roots frontline to add bricks and tiles to the motherland's energy construction, he thought a little about filling in the second volunteer, and when it came to the third column, he wrote obedience and distribution.
Yan Chuanmei was bent on contributing more to the motherland, but his superiors also had their own considerations. In the early years, Yan Chuanmei and his wife Yu Congzhi met and knew each other in Yunnan, and now, because of the job transfer, the two gathered less and left more, so the leader assigned Yan Chuanmei to the Wuhan Institute of Water Conservancy and Electric Power to engage in management political work.
With the later incorporation of Wuhan Institute of Water Conservancy and Electric Power into Wuhan University, Yan Chuanmei changed the "battlefield" again, but no matter where he went, he always dedicated everything he had for decades.
Photo: Yan Chuanmei
After leaving in 1983, Yan Chuanmei was not idle, and in addition to often going to school to give party lessons to his classmates, he also served as the director of the neighborhood committee in his community.
In his free time, he will also go out with his wife to travel, see the great rivers and mountains that are not in the past, and always sigh when he comes back: "The country has really changed a lot, and the previous era of lack of food and clothing is really gone." ”
The people's lives are thriving, which makes Yan Chuanmei overjoyed, but the hardships and hardships he has suffered over the years have been deeply imprinted in his heart, and although his living standards have improved, his habit of thrift and thrift has not changed.
A pair of eighty yuan leather shoes, Yan Chuanmei wore for many years, the whole family went out to travel, occasionally lived in a three-star hotel, he felt too luxurious.
"It's too spacious, the guest house is very good, it's good to have a bed to sleep in." Knowing that her children were hurting themselves, Yan Chuanmei still couldn't help but blame.
Pictured: Yan Chuanmei and his wife Yu Congzhi
Thinking of his deceased comrades-in-arms, he was full of guilt when his children and grandchildren were full of children and grandchildren
At the beginning of 2020, a sudden new crown epidemic made the hustle and bustle of Wuhan press the pause button in an instant.
The empty commercial district, the Yangtze River Bridge, which used to be bustling with traffic, is unusually quiet, and only the number of new confirmations added daily in the news is rising.
Yan Chuanmei, who was standing in front of the TV, suddenly felt a mixture of tastes in his heart, and he knew that the country was suffering.
The 14-year-old vowed to fight against the Wokou came to mind again, but this time the invader was a virus, and the whole Wuhan people had to experience another battlefield.
Batches of white-clad angels from all over the country rushed to major hospitals, Leishenshan and Huoshenshan Hospitals rose up with the national order, and he was most familiar with a smear of military uniforms, and the national forces were concentrated in Wuhan to fight against the virus.
He felt that he could not be idle, even if he was old now, he had to do something for the country.
On that day, Yan Chuanmei, who had always been frugal, took out thirty thousand yuan and submitted a special membership fee to the organization.
"The state has used so many resources to fight the epidemic, the money invested will certainly not be less, I am a 79-year-old party member, this money is nothing."
Pictured: Yan Chuanmei (first from left) lectures on party history to students at Wuhan University
In fact, the after-effects of many years of war years coupled with the reason of old age, Yan Chuanmei has long been suffering from a variety of diseases, just when the epidemic in Wuhan was at its most serious, the sudden illness once endangered his life, but he never thought of adding a little burden to the country, but silently lay in bed, considering his own affairs.
The wife has been with her for many years, has suffered a lot, and several children have become talents, so there is no need to worry about it anymore. In addition to keeping enough living expenses for his wife, Yan Chuanmei repeatedly explained to her children that all of them must be handed over to the party organization.
Also, it is the old suitcase that has been treasured, it is also time to take it out, in case I am not there in the future, leave it for my wife and children to think about.
It is precisely because Yan Chuanmei is critically ill this time and his children who have lived with him for decades know that Dad is not only an ordinary veteran, but also a people's hero who has made countless contributions.
Soon, Yan Chuanmei's deeds of hiding his meritorious name were widely reported by the media, and when asked by many reporters why they had been hidden for many years, the old man was very emotional:
"Many of my comrades-in-arms have sacrificed for the sake of the country and the people, and they have even given their lives, but I am full of children and grandchildren, and I have always felt ashamed in my heart."
This may be the real reason why Yan Chuanmei never talks about these honors with children and the outside world.
He felt that he could live because of the sacrifice and selfless dedication of his comrades-in-arms, watching the earth-shaking changes in the motherland, Yan Chuanmei often shed tears with excitement, and he looked forward to the day when he met his comrades-in-arms, and he could proudly tell them that your blood did not flow in vain, the country became stronger and stronger, and it would become better and better in the future.
Fortunately, under the treatment of the hospital, the elderly Yan Chuanmei got out of the dangerous period, and Wuhan also restored its former prosperity, sincerely wishing his old man a long and healthy life, and then look at the prosperity of this country's rich soldiers and strong mountains and rivers.