The wind and cold of Shiwo Mountain were bone-chilling, the left detachment of the Western Route Army had already left, the right detachment set off under the leadership of Wang Shusheng, and Fang Qiang and Zhu Liangcai walked behind the line to help take care of the wounded.
At dawn, Wang Shusheng saw a group of "Ma JiaJun" cavalry on the top of the mountain chasing after him, and immediately ordered his troops to climb over another hill and throw the enemy away. In the evening, Fang Qiang, Zhu Liangcai, and others gathered their troops to go down the mountain, counted the number of people, and only more than 200 people remained, and came to the mountain of Kanglong Temple.
Soon, the enemy cavalry found them, and Pegasus chased after them, without bullets, and the more than 200 exhausted Red Army soldiers could only flee in all directions.
Night once again enveloped the land, and Fang Qiang, Li Jukui, and others came out of their hiding places, gathered up the soldiers who had been scattered, and continued to chase the team.
Fang Qiang
Soon, Fang Qiang and the others found that in front of them was a large horseshoe print. This was left behind by the cavalry of the "Ma Family Army", so Fang Qiang and others led the team back to Kanglong Temple, planning to fight a guerrilla war on the spot.
However, they were not so lucky, the enemy found them, and they were once again scattered by the enemy, this time leaving only Fang Qiang, Li Jukui, Zhu Liangcai, Xu Taixian and a dozen others.
So, they scattered and hid, ready to wait for the opportunity to go down the mountain and then take a detour back to Yan'an. However, when the enemy searched the mountain, Fang Qiang, Zhu Liangcai, and others were found and captured by the enemy. On the way to escort, Zhu Liangcai took the opportunity to escape and escaped a disaster.
Fang Qiang, a revolutionary volunteer born in Pingjiang, Hunan Province, joined the Red Army in 1928, successively served as political commissar of the team, company, regiment, division, etc., participated in the first to fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations in the Central Soviet Region, and worked in the Red Fourth Front Army after the Long March Division, and was a revolutionary soldier who had withstood the test of blood and fire. In October 1937, during the Western Expedition of the Western Route Army, Fang Qiang served as the propaganda director of the Red Ninth Army.
Fang Qiang and other captured Red Army generals were taken to the Lanzhou concentration camp, where he met Qin Jiwei, Xu Liqing, Xu Taixian, Xin Yuanlin and others, and later assigned to a class with Xu Liqing, Xu Taixian and others.
The enemy knew that many of these people were high-ranking cadres of the Red Army, so he adopted the tactics of coercion and inducement, soft and hard, in an attempt to win them over. However, Fang Qiang and others waged a resolute struggle against the enemy, and he and Bu Shengguang found Xu Taixian, director of the Political Department of the Red Ninth Army, to discuss the establishment of a secret party branch in prison, with Fang Qiang as secretary, Bu Shengguang as the organizing committee member, and Xu Taixian as the propaganda committee member.
At this time, the anti-Japanese national united front had been formed, and the Party Central Committee was actively organizing the rescue of the captured comrades of the Western Route Army and sending Zhang Wenbin to Lanzhou to visit the imprisoned Commanders and Fighters of the Red Army. Zhang Wenbin came to the Lanzhou concentration camp and told everyone that the Party Central Committee was organizing a rescue and that everyone would definitely return to Yan'an. Before leaving, Zhang Wenbin also left 40 yuan for everyone. This greatly encouraged Fang Qiang and others in prison.
Zhang Wenbin
Soon, the enemy decided to escort the Red Army from the Lanzhou concentration camp to Xi'an and then to Nanjing.
After hearing this news, Fang Qiang was sensitive to realizing that the opportunity to escape had come. Therefore, he organized the party branch personnel to discuss and decided to find an opportunity to escape on the way to Nanjing.
Finally, the enemy sent a battalion of the 98th Division to escort them. Fang Qiang and the others were carefully observing all the way, looking for the best chance to escape.
When the party reached Jinghuajialing, a man with a disheveled face, a sallow face, deep eyes, a grass rope tied around his waist, and two different broken shoes on his feet looked at them in a daze, and then walked towards them with a trembling cane in his hand.
This person had been staring at Fang Qiang and others, unwilling to leave. "You guys... Don't...... Don't you really recognize me coming?"
Fang Qiang, Zeng Qingliang and others took a closer look, isn't this Gong Xinggui!
Gong Xinggui was once the radio commissar of the Red Army, known as the "tailwind ear" in the Red Army, and everyone is familiar with him, but now he has actually become like this. Fang Qiang organized several Red Army soldiers to help Gong Xinggui walk together.
The opportunity finally came, Fang Qiang and his party were about to reach Forty Lipu, the east of this place was the guerrilla zone, and the western reinforcement army led by Liu Bocheng was not far from here. By this time, the Western Aid Army had received the news that a large number of scouts had been dispatched along the Sealand Highway to rescue the captured soldiers of the Western Route Army in the middle of the way.
Fang Qiang was calculating in his mind, and a plan was slowly formed.
When it got dark, Liu Yuting and the others received a note from the party branch that read, "North of forty Mile Shop is a guerrilla zone," and everyone immediately understood and secretly made preparations.
The next day, the team passed through a mountain ridge, and Fang Qiang and others offered to go faster, and took the lead in walking at the front of the line. The enemy also wanted to go faster, so he urged everyone to speed up their pace.
However, some of the Red Army soldiers were still unmoved, deliberately walking slowly, the line was getting longer and longer, and many soldiers proposed to go to the toilet, so that after a delay, the team went slower and slower.
Wait until it gets dark, just walk to the forty mile shop. It was small, with no barracks or a large courtyard that could accommodate more than 1,000 people, and everyone was scattered in the homes of their fellow villagers. The enemy sent two companies to guard the surroundings.
Fang Qiang knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At about 9 o'clock in the evening, suddenly thunder and lightning intersected, and the wind and rain were great. Fang Qiang and the others immediately organized everyone to brave the torrential rain and run wildly, crossing the Jing River overnight, climbing northeast to Caofengyuan, over Panyangjian, and successively returning to the Zhenyuan reception station and returning to the western army garrison.
After returning to Yan'an, after a period of study, Fang Qiang embarked on the journey again and served as the director of the political department of the 385th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, starting a new journey to resist Japanese aggression. During the Liberation War, Fang Qiang participated in the Liaoshen Campaign, the Pingjin Campaign, and the Guangdong Campaign, and was awarded the rank of lieutenant general in 1955.