On January 6, 1941, the Kuomintang reactionaries premeditated ambushed the Headquarters of the New Fourth Army and its subordinate units that were moving north in Maolin, Jing County, Anhui Province, and after 7 days and nights of hard resistance, most of the rest of the New Fourth Army, except for more than 2,000 people scattered to break through, most of them were killed, of which the commander Ye Ting was forcibly detained when he went to the enemy camp for negotiations, and Yuan Guoping, director of the Political Department, Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the army, and Zhou Zikun, chief of staff, were all killed in the breakthrough.
In fact, the three senior generals of the New Fourth Army who died, Yuan Guoping, after being seriously injured, raised his gun to kill himself in order not to drag down the team, Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were killed by traitors, and the traitor who brutally killed the two senior generals of the New Fourth Army was a former Officer of the New Fourth Army named Liu Houzong.
Figure 丨 Leaf Ting
For a long time, there have been many opinions about Liu Houzong's ending, and one version is very popular, and even included in a certain degree of a certain subject.
According to this version, Liu Houzong came to a shop in Xinyu County, Jiangxi Province, under a pseudonym, to work as a buddy in a shop in Xinyu County, Jiangxi Province, in order to evade the search of the People's Liberation Army, and later Huang Yifan, deputy director of the Xinyu County Public Security Bureau, went to the store to check the household registration, Huang Yifan was originally a veteran soldier of the New Fourth Army, he recognized Liu Houzong at a glance, so Liu Houzong was quickly arrested, and in August 1952, Liu Houzong was executed by shooting in Nanchang.
The above story about Liu Houzong's ending had been widely spread many years ago, so that it alarmed the descendants of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, and when they saw the news, they tried their best to investigate the authenticity of this matter. They had commissioned an investigation by the Preparatory Committee of the New Fourth Army Research Association in Yichun City, Jiangxi Province, and the results confirmed that the matter was purely fictitious, and they also learned that since the liberation of the Xinyu Public Security Bureau, there had never been a director or deputy director named Huang Yifan.
At this point, the ending of Liu Houzong's "shooting in 1952" can be determined to be false.
So, who is Liu Houzong? How did he kill Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun at that time? And since he was not executed in 1952, what happened to him? With this series of questions in mind, let's move on.
Liu Houzong, a native of Leiyang, Hunan, was born into poverty, worked as a miner in his early years, and in 1926, he joined the peasant association in his hometown, because of his large stature, strength and very active role as a pioneer in fighting the landlords, so he soon became a backbone member of the peasant association. In 1928, he joined the peasant Red Guards, and in the face of the frenzied counterattack of the Kuomintang reactionaries, Liu Houzong led the members of the Red Guards to execute a number of local tycoons and inferior gentry who acted as accomplices of the Kuomintang in a "tit-for-tat" manner.
Because of his poisonous methods, Liu Houzong was very famous in the local area, and the local people called him "Chief Master" and also said that he was a "great killer star", while the Kuomintang hated him to the bone, and out of revenge, he killed Liu Houzong's cousin and five cousins overnight.
Therefore, many people cannot understand why Liu Houzong, who had such a bloody vendetta against the Kuomintang reactionaries, would defect during the Anhui Incident, and in terms of danger, his situation in the Red Guards when he fought guerrilla warfare with the Kuomintang was not much better than when he was in the Southern Anhui Incident. How many times, Liu Hou was lucky to survive in blood and fire, if he was afraid of death, so Shi Jun did not believe it at first, but the truth was often so surprising, sometimes like a joke.
When the Shonan Special Committee decided to reorganize the local Red Guards and establish the Shonan Red Guerrillas, Liu Houzong refused in his heart, and his true thoughts at that time must have been
Superiors don't trust themselves
And deliberately wanted to divide his own military power, because his troops were incorporated into the third brigade, and the captain of the brigade was not himself but someone else!
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Liu Houzong's unit was reorganized into the Special Agent Battalion of the New Fourth Army, with Liu Houzong as the deputy battalion commander.
For the arrangement of this post, Liu Houzong is still dissatisfied, in his opinion, the battalion commander is his own, when in Leiyang, in the face of the Kuomintang's heavy encirclement and suppression, he insisted on guerrilla warfare for 3 years, the number of his men was the smallest when there were only 7 people, it was he Liu Houzong who developed the troops little by little in these 3 years, but now he can no longer command this unit, for Liu Houzong, this is absolutely unacceptable.
So, what Liu Houzong can't accept is that the military power has been divided? This is never the case! Because after being appointed deputy battalion commander, Liu Houzong began to expose some of his vices, for example, when the troops were stationed in Tutang, he once flirted with local women, and he also took the chickens and ducks of the common people without authorization to relieve himself.
Figure 丨 Xiang Ying
Therefore, Liu Houzong's behavior had seriously touched the bottom line of military discipline of the Eighth Route Army, but in view of the fact that Liu Houzong had made contributions during the guerrilla attack in Leiyang and was essentially the principle of curing diseases and saving people, at that time, his superiors only punished him and arranged for him to go to Yan'an to study and reform, and did not directly expel him from the party.
For the light hair and fall of the superior, Liu Houzong not only did not appreciate it, but was more dissatisfied with the organization, and he also felt more that he was ostracized.
I have to say that this is a disease, a psychological disease, Liu Hou always feels that the world is the enemy of himself everywhere, and even his former comrades-in-arms do not trust him.
It was with this increasingly morbid mentality that he returned to the army after studying and reforming in the following year, this time he was assigned to the Military Department of the New Fourth Army as an aide-de-camp.
How to say it, this is a position far away from the battlefield and the front line troops,
Through this assignment of Liu Houzong, it can be seen that the superiors have begun to understand and be alert to Liu Houzong's personality, and they do not want Liu Houzong to return to the front line to continue to command the troops, but instead assign him a position that does not cause much impact.
If it can be said that the New Fourth Army was not subjected to the Anhui Incident, Shi Jun believed that even if Liu Houzong wanted to defect, it would be absolutely impossible to cause too much loss to the New Fourth Army, because he could neither grasp the important secrets of the New Fourth Army, nor command the troops, let alone contact the main leaders of the New Fourth Army, and such a person would have no use value even if he went to the Kuomintang side.
Liu Houzong was also very clear about his own situation, so he gradually changed from dissatisfaction at the beginning to hatred for his superiors! Moreover, God seems to have given Liu Houzong an opportunity to vent his hatred - the Anhui Southern Incident.
The outbreak of the Anhui Incident in southern Anhui was completely unexpected by all the officers and men of the New Fourth Army, because they had already withdrawn from the south of the Yangtze River one after another in accordance with the requirements of the Kuomintang, and they thought that leaving would avoid the Kuomintang's hostility to the New Fourth Army, but no one could have imagined how resolute Chiang Kai-shek's idea of putting the New Fourth Army to death was!
When there was a sudden burst of gunfire around the troops, and the sound of explosions sounded in his ears one after another, Liu Houzong did not have the slightest fear, but a trace of joy in his heart!
Is it the hatred that is cathartic? Probably!
Those 7 days and nights were the longest and most difficult 7 days and nights in the history of the New Fourth Army, when the comrades around him sacrificed their lives and scattered, Liu Houzong could only temporarily put away the secret joy, he began to calm down, in order to save his life and flee to the surrounding mountains.
Liu Hou is not stupid, he is proud, but he still wants to live, he does not want to die.
When Liu Houzong ran to King Dakang and wandered around, on the evening of January 16, he suddenly found that there was a small bonfire not far from him, which was difficult to find if he did not look closely.
At that time, Liu Houzong thought that it must be a unit that escaped from the New Fourth Army, because at that time, the sky had begun to darken, and at this time, the Kuomintang soldiers were unwilling to go into the mountains to search for them in the dark, so in the evening, they would gradually withdraw from the mountains, so it must be the people of the New Fourth Army who lit the bonfire!
Thinking of this, Liu Houzong began to walk towards the bonfire, and sure enough, after confirming his identity, he joined the team, and after being introduced, he was surprised to find that
In this squad of several people, there was Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the New Fourth Army, and Zhou Zikun, chief of staff!
Figure 丨 Zhou Zikun
At that time, Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were accompanied by several soldiers of the guard squad, such as Li De, Xia Dongqing, Zheng Desheng and others, all of whom were guard soldiers who had protected Xiang Ying for many years.
With the consent of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, Liu Houzong successfully joined this detachment, and in the next few days, they continued to break through to the outside world, and on the way they successively found Li Zhigao, chief of the operations section of the New Fourth Army, Xie Zhongliang, chief of the reconnaissance section, Chen Ajin, a guard of Yuan Guoping, and Zhang Yiping, the head of the reconnaissance company of the military department.
However, for Liu Houzong's joining, many people in the squad at that time expressed some vague concerns, according to Xiang Ying's guard Li De later recalled:
At that time, Comrades Li Zhigao, Xie Zhongliang, and other comrades repeatedly put forward opinions to Xiang Ying, hoping that he would not take Liu Hou with him.
Out of consideration for the safety of the chief, Li Zhigao, Xie Zhongliang and others would remind Xiang Ying many times in good faith, but Xiang Ying trusted Liu Houzong very much at that time, and he refused the reminder of the two, and I have to say that this is a great regret.
Picture 丨 from left: Xiang Ying, Zhou Enlai, Ye Ting
So, how much does Xiang Ying trust Liu Houzong? An example can be given here.
At that time, the breakthrough detachment had not eaten a decent meal for more than ten days, everyone was hungry all day, one day, Zhang Yiping accidentally bought a little egg from the people down the mountain, because there were not many eggs, Li Zhigao, Xie Zhongliang and other team members were reluctant to eat, they all wanted to leave it for the chief to eat.
Later, when Zhang Yiping recalled this incident, he was very dissatisfied and said:
We would rather starve than let the chief starve, but the chief left it for Liu Hou to eat, and we saw that we were very angry, complaining that the chief himself did not eat and give him food, and we also did not understand why the chief hurt Liu Houzong so much.
In fact, at that time, Liu Houzong was still a soldier in the New Fourth Army, and in the absence of any evidence to prove that Liu Houzong was going to defect, Xiang Ying had no problem trusting his comrades, but unfortunately, Xiang Ying still misbelieved Liu Houzong.
Tu 丨 Was Xie Zhongliang, then chief of the reconnaissance section of the New Fourth Army
In this way, the squad has been walking in the mountains for almost two months, and since this time, Liu Houzong and Xiang Ying have been inseparable.
Because of this, Liu Houzong gradually understood many things, especially Xiang Ying's body was wrapped in a gold bar!
One day, after the rain had passed, Xiang Ying had untied his belt and basked in the sun at the mouth of a hidden cave, and inadvertently, the gold bars wrapped around his waist were exposed, which was part of the activities of the troops and had been kept by Xiang Ying himself.
After the gold bar was revealed, because he trusted Liu Houzong too much, Xiang Ying did not pay attention to it, he casually put the gold bar aside, and then continued to bask in the sun.
Although Liu Houzong pretended to be calm on the surface, he had already made a small calculation in his heart, and he began to analyze in his heart:
It has been two months since the outbreak of the Anhui Incident, and in the past two months, the Kuomintang troops have not relaxed their search and suppression of the remnants of the New Fourth Army, the small detachment has been unable to get in touch with the central authorities for a long time, and the living environment it is facing has become more and more dangerous.
Thinking about this, Liu Houzong suddenly felt that the squad was already the general trend and was doomed, so he must seize this last opportunity to "abandon the dark and cast the light" and create a chance for himself to have a new life!
In this way, a piece of gold made Liu Houzong completely make up his mind to defect, and an assassination plan against Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun began to take shape!
The cave where Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were killed
At that time, Xiang Ying, Zhou Zikun, Liu Houzong and Zhou Zikun's guard Huang Cheng lived in a place called Huang Cheng
Bee Cave
In the hidden cave, because the cave is too small, only these four people can live.
According to common sense, Liu Houzong was not qualified to live in this hole, and the person who lived in this hole should be Xiang Ying's guards Li De or Zheng Desheng, but Xiang Ying insisted on letting Liu Hou always accompany him. In this way, some members of the team, including Li De and Zheng Desheng and other old guards, could only live in the cave far away from the small cave on the mountain, while the other part of the team members went to the foot of the mountain and the mountainside to serve as a guard.
All in all, except for Huang Cheng, the rest of the members of the squad were very far away from Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, and once Liu Houzong suddenly launched an attack on the two chiefs, the success rate was almost one hundred percent.
On the evening of March 13, the sky suddenly flashed and thundered, and soon the wind and rain were great, the mountains were roaring, disturbing Xiang Ying's mood, and between the boredom, he lit a candle, took out the only chess piece that could be used for relief and recreation, and played against Zhou Zikun.
In the middle of the night, drowsiness struck, the two fell asleep at the end, and Huang Cheng also quickly fell asleep, at this time, Liu Houzong, who was lying on the side, was very awake, because he decided to do it tonight!
In the middle of the night, the sound of the three people sleeping sounded one after another, after lying for a while, Liu Houzong was sure that the three people were already asleep, so he crept up, first looked around, to make sure that there was no one else, and then took out the new shell gun, with his skillful marksmanship, it was a shot at Xiang Ying's temple, and the gunshot woke Zhou Zikun and Huang Cheng, but Liu Houzong did not panic, after killing Xiang Ying, he first shot another shot at the head of Zhou Zikun, who was awakened, Zhou Zikun also fell to the ground, and then, he fired several shots at Huang Cheng.
However, at this time, Huang Cheng had already gotten up and drew his gun while dodging and preparing to return fire, so in a hurry, Liu Houzong only hit Huang Cheng's left and right arms and neck, although the injury was more serious, but there was no fear of life. Seeing Huang Cheng collapsed in a pool of blood, he thought that Huang Cheng was dead, so out of weakness of heart, he did not go forward to observe, but just put the gold, banknotes, pens, gold watches, etc. that Xiang Ying carried with him into his pocket, and then pretended to be indifferent and walked towards the cave under the mountain.
Because before the action, Liu Houzong had already thought about how to get out.
The day before, Xiang Ying had arranged for several people in the cave under the mountain to go down the mountain to carry grain and oil and salt, at this time Liu Houzong came to the cave under the mountain and asked those people to go on a mission with him in the name of Xiang Ying, which was naturally reasonable.
As for why Liu Houzong's gunshots did not attract the attention of others, it was also because since the day of the Anhui Incident, the team members in the mountains could often hear the sound of gunfire, most of which were shots fired at the mountains by the surrounding Kuomintang encirclement and suppression troops, so Liu Houzong's gunshots were normal in the eyes of the rest of the people.
In this way, Liu Houzong followed the grain-carrying team down the mountain after killing Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun.
After descending the mountain, Liu Houzong broke away from the army in the name of disarming, and then fled.
When the rest of the people waited for most of the day and did not wait for him, they realized that things were not good, so the crowd ran to the bee cave, only to go inside and see, and everyone was stunned by the sight in front of them!
Only to see the remains of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun lying in the cave, the blood stained the entire cave red, only Huang Cheng was alone in the pool of blood gasping for weak breath, and intermittently crying: "I did not protect the chief, I did not protect the chief..."
Although the crowd could not believe that this was true, they had to believe it, and the angry and anguished people shed tears and dug two pits nearby, buried the two chiefs, and then carried the badly injured Huang Cheng down the mountain to find a place for him to heal his wounds.
The whole process of xiang ying and Zhou Zikun's murder came to an end, and the traitor Liu Houzong did indeed go down the mountain to join the Kuomintang.
Originally, he planned to go to the National Government to ask for merits and rewards for the great merit of "killing Xiang Ying", and then a certain official and a half-time post so that he could continue to live a beautiful life, but the reality was often very cruel to him.
When he led the Kuomintang people to the Bee Cave to look for the remains of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, he found nothing, so Liu Houzong could only take the opportunity to escape again, because if he did not run, he would definitely be punished by the Kuomintang.
Please reward the "robbery"
Liu Houzong really got home, because all the property he took from Xiang Ying was snatched by the Kuomintang people, and later after Liu Houzong gave a report to Chiang Kai-shek, it was known that the gold bar he took from Xiang Ying at that time weighed 825 yuan.
Although the bodies of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun were gone, and the gold bars and other belongings were also snatched away by the Kuomintang bandits, Liu Houzong was still not dead-hearted, and he ran to the first stretcher company of the 11th Health Brigade of the Maolin Military and Political Department of the Kuomintang to find an opportunity to surrender, but the Kuomintang's small stretcher company was really unable to help Liu Houzong "one arm" on the road to promotion and wealth.
So he sneaked to Jingde County, was captured by the county magistrate Li Xiekun, and later during the interrogation, Liu Houzong once again confessed the whole process of killing Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, and then in order to show his loyalty, he published an article in the newspaper in July 1942 entitled "Why Did I Kill Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun", in which he said: "In the future, I am willing to give my unfinished life to serve the loyalty of the country and the nation to the end, in order to redeem my past sins in case."
Obviously, what he called "service to the loyalty of the state and the nation" was nothing more than service to the Kuomintang.
And this article, apart from making the Communists hate him more and more, did not bring him any substantial feedback.
For unknown reasons, Liu Houzong was later taken to Chongqing and imprisoned
Slag hole
It was not until May 1948, as the situation in the War of Liberation became clearer, that the Kuomintang authorities released him.
After Liu Houzong was released, he still did not have a dead heart for the promotion of officials and wealth, and it can even be said that he was not dead to the Kuomintang, of course, because of the killing of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, he had no choice, except to pray that the Kuomintang regime was safe and sound, he could only pray that time would come again...
In order to be able to make more money, Liu Houzong brazenly wrote a report to Chiang Kai-shek, in which he once again wrote down the entire history of the killing of Xiang Ying and Zhou Zikun, and then expressed his heartfelt feelings to Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang again, and finally bent his knees to ask for rewards.
Take a screenshot of one of the passages for your entertainment:
... At present, the headquarters of the Mongolian Bureau (that is, the Kuomintang Military Command Bureau) has been released and given 25 million yuan to return home with funds, and I feel deeply virtuous... To this end, do not speculate on the blasphemy, put on the chen, plead for mercy on the foolishness of his surrender, and grant another relief fee (or bonus, thick general self-reporting thanks) to prolong the life of the ant, and use Zhao to persuade him
Liu Houzong's brazenness is vividly displayed in this report, but this passage is not without a little merit, after all, Liu Houzong's life is indeed "ant life".
After Liu Houzong was released, although he wrote this report to Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Kai-shek did not look at him more because of this, and he still did not get the appointment of the Kuomintang, so he had no choice but to leave Chongqing.
Although he didn't want to believe it, he still regretted to tell everyone that from the moment Liu Houzong left Chongqing, his whereabouts became a mystery. Although after liberation, the relevant state departments, especially the government of Leiyang County, where Liu Houzong was originally from, tried every means to find Liu Houzong, they still could not find any trace of him.
As a result, over time, there were many rumors about Liu Houzong's fate, some saying that he died in the rebellion in 1949, some saying that he took the money given to him by the Kuomintang and went to Taiwan, and later there was another theory that he was arrested and executed in 1952 mentioned at the beginning of this article, but this statement was eventually proved to be false.
Therefore, It is very likely that Liu Houzong spent the rest of his life in anonymity and somewhere in New China!
Even if this should not be the fate of a deeply sinful traitor, this possibility exists until the truth is clearly investigated, after all, the world is not always so beautiful.