On April 23, 1949, the People's Liberation Army occupied the "Presidential Palace" and Nanjing was liberated.
A few hours later, thousands of miles away, on the Taiyuan front, red signal bombs tore through the night sky before dawn, and more than 1,300 cannons roared in unison and bombarded the Taiyuan city wall. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of shells poured down on the city walls with a piercing roar, the dense explosion sounded like a heavenly collapse, the thick walls could not suppress the trembling of the earth, the burst of flames seemed to burn in the sky, and the dust of the sky shrouded the entire city in a suffocating chaos.
The Battle of Taiyuan became one of the largest artillery battles in the history of the Liberation War, and the ammunition consumption of an urban offensive battle was directly approaching a strategic decisive battle such as the Battle of Huaihai.
After the People's Liberation Army launched a general offensive against Taiyuan, Yan Xishan, who was in Nanjing, moved around to seek support; at the same time, through the special line with Liang Huazhi in Taiyuan, he constantly gave them strength and encouraged them to stick to the end.
According to the memories of Yan Xishan's neighbors such as Zhang Riming and Yuan Futing, in the days of Nanjing and Shanghai, Yan Xishan, who left Taiyuan, was like Jia Baoyu who lost the treasure jade on his neck. Moreover, both confirmed that Yan Xishan had indeed flown back over Taiyuan, because they were on the plane that had to leave the city several times.
Yan Xishan, who was staying in Nanjing and Shanghai, heard the bad news constantly coming from the radio waves, and the only thing he could do was to look at Taiyuan from afar and sigh.
As the ENCIRCLEMENT of the People's Liberation Army shrank smaller and smaller, the Taiyuan defenders became more and more scarce in food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies. The airdropped grain only guaranteed the supply of military food, each soldier only had a quota of 12 taels per day, and the staff of the lower organs were often hungry. Although taiyuan did not have a tragedy similar to the death of hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Siege of Changchun, the situation of ordinary citizens was even more tragic if the military and political personnel were still like this. After the PLA artillery took control of all the airfields in Taiyuan, Chennault's planes did not dare to land from then on, and supplies mainly relied on airdrops. At the end of the Taiyuan Campaign, some citizens only ate one meal a day of bean cake, not even wild vegetables, and everything that could be imported was stuffed into their stomachs. In order to reduce the consumption of grain in the city, Liang Huazhi dispatched an army to try to forcibly drive the people out of the city. Many ordinary people were caught between the positions of the two sides, with no way to the sky and no way into the ground, and eventually they were frozen and starved to death.
The shelling in the early morning of April 24, 1949, is not known how many times more fierce than usual. The sound of the cannons shook the earth, and the shells fell like raindrops into Taiyuan City, and Jinfu, where the Appeasement Office, which was the focus of the attack, was also shot one after another. In the words of Wang Yanhua, who was very difficult to die, "The degree of its dense fire, I could not hear the sporadic sound of cannons, but I could only hear the wind whirring like a wind, shaking the glass shards on the windows of the provincial government." "
Liang Huazhi stood on the first night of the Sui Bureau's office, Qinyuan, and looked at the fire in the railway station area, estimating that the People's Liberation Army had occupied the station, and knew that this time it was dead no matter what. As soon as the shelling began in the early morning, he and the "Five Sisters" took Bai Guangyuan, Wang Yanhua and other guards into the air raid shelter under the bell tower of the Sui Bureau compound. Most of the other high- and middle-level dignitaries hid in the basement of Building 2 of the provincial government.
At about 8:00 a.m., Liang Hua's "fifth sister" drew up a desperate telegram for Yan Xishan, and then asked the guards to take it to Wu Shaozhi, secretary general of the Sui Bureau, and immediately sent it to Nanjing.
The People's Liberation Army fought a bloody battle all the way and gradually surrounded the Suiju compound.
After 10 a.m., when the gunfire at the gate of the Sui Bureau compound suddenly became intense, Wang Yanhua sent 20 guards he had brought to the gate for reinforcements, and then rushed into the air raid shelter and shouted at Liang Huazhi and the "five sisters": "The communist troops have all hit the gate of the Sui Bureau, so rush out!" It's too late! "
He was stunned! He saw the "five sisters" lying quietly on a small bed. Liang Huazhi was sitting on a rattan chair next to the bed, holding a small glass bottle in his hand, and was looking up to drink the poison potion.
Liang Huazhi threw the bottle to the ground with a frown on his face and said loudly, "Wang Yanhua, you go and call Bai Guangyuan in." "
Bai Guangyuan is Liang Huazhi's captain of the guards. Wang Yanhua turned his head and ran out, shouting Bai Guangyuan.
As soon as Bai Guangyuan arrived, Wang Yanhua shouted: "It's over, I saw Chairman Liang drinking medicine." "
Bai Guangyuan rushed into the air raid shelter, and Wang Yanhua was not at ease and followed him.
At this time, he saw Liang Huazhi carrying a flat gasoline barrel used in a jeep and pouring it on the "five girls" on the bed.
Wang Yanhua saw that the "fifth sister" was still alive, as if gasoline had been poured into her nostrils, she coughed a few times and reached out to brush her hair.
Subsequently, Liang Huayi sat down on the rattan chair and said to Bai Guangyuan, "Guangyuan, the last thing to trouble you is." He pointed to several gasoline barrels of the same shape in the corner and said, "Pour gasoline on me and light a fire." "
Bai Guangyuan's lips trembled, he couldn't say anything, he suddenly knelt down and cried out "Wow".
Liang Huazhi said, "Don't cry, I told you earlier that when Taiyuan City is destroyed, it will be the time of my death." Burn me and the 'Five Sisters' to ashes so that the Communist Party can't even catch it. "
When Wang Yanhua saw Liang Huazhi speaking, the medicinal properties may have already occurred, his forehead was covered with sweat, he kept panting, and his words stuttered.
Bai Guangyuan suppressed the crying, first picked up a quilt thrown on the ground, shook it open, and covered Liang Huazhi's hood with his body, and then lifted the gasoline barrel, unscrewed the lid, and while shedding tears, he poured gasoline on Liang Huazhi's head.
Liang Huazhi was already in great pain at this time, his body was convulsing, and the rattan chair was squeezed to "rattl", but he could barely speak, and said to the two guards through the wet quilt: "If you can fight out, you will fight desperately outside, you can't get out, just like me, you can't even surrender." "
Bai Guangyuan nodded in response as he took out a match and took two steps back to wipe it.
Wang Yanhua saw the gasoline flowing to his feet and quickly retreated to the outside of the cave entrance. Only to hear the sound of "bang" in the house, a ball of fire rushed up. Wang Yanhua suddenly found that Bai Guangyuan, who rushed out of the hole, had already burned his eyebrows.
At this time, Wang Yanhua and the 20 guards he had brought from Yan Xishan's attendants were no longer thinking about fighting the People's Liberation Army to the end, but how to save their lives. The small group quickly dispersed, and it was not clear whether the others had been killed or taken prisoner. In the end, only he and 4 guards drilled into the ditch under the city wall, out of Taiyuan City, all the way over the mountains, in the middle of the night of the third day into the position of the Central Army, and then sent to Xi'an, and then traveled thousands of miles, after several inquiries, found Yan Xishan in Shanghai.
Bai Guangyuan was not as lucky as he was and became a prisoner of the People's Liberation Army. According to Bai Guangyuan's account, the People's Liberation Army quickly found the remains of Liang Huazhi and Yan Huiqing, found Liang Huazhi's stamp from the man's pocket, and after being tested by medical experts, it confirmed to the Party Central Committee that Liang Huazhi had committed suicide.
The remains of Liang Huazhi and Yan Huiqing were later buried together in a wasteland outside the East Gate of Taiyuan. In mid-April 1997, Liang Huazhi's children came to Taiyuan from the United States to visit their father's grave on the day of the Qingming Festival. However, due to the expansion of urban construction and the change of terrain, the personnel in charge of the burial took them for a long time, and finally failed to find the exact burial place of Liang Huazhi and Yan Huiqing.
Directly attacking the Appeasement Office were the 563rd Regiment of the 188th Division of the 63rd Army of the People's Liberation Army and the 553rd Regiment of the 185th Division of the 62nd Army. When the officers and men rushed to the vicinity of the gate of the Sui Bureau, the machine guns of the defenders were still firing wildly on Meishan Mountain, the commanding heights of the courtyard. Fortunately, the People's Liberation Army had just captured 3 tanks of the defenders, and the tank soldiers were advised to turn the muzzles and cover them with the fire of two tanks, and the other one drove full horsepower and crashed into the gate of the Sui Bureau, and the red-painted gate was immediately shattered to pieces.
At the same time, friendly neighboring troops also broke through the wall from the back door and the east and west sides. At that moment, the yan generals and high-ranking cadres hiding in the compound had already made a mess and drilled into the basement one after another; Wang Jingguo, Sun Chu, Zhao Shiling, Wu Shaozhi and others also entered the basement of Building 2.
The most ironic thing is that when the PLA soldiers Xu Baoyi and Chen Yongfu first rushed to the entrance of the basement cave, pointed their submachine guns at the enemy hiding inside, and ordered them to surrender their guns, Zhao Shiling, chief of staff of the Sui Bureau, was the first to come out of the prisoner pile and wanted to shake hands with Xu Baoyi, and Xu Baoyi of course ignored him.
Even more ironic was Sun Chu, who came out of the prisoner pile and took out a letter he had written in his own handwriting to Xu Xiangqian, Zhou Shidi, and Luo Ruiqing, saying that he could immediately order the defenders to stop resisting, hoping that the Chinese Communists would quickly send representatives to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Taiyuan problem with him - it was simply ridiculous and sad!
At about 11 o'clock, about 400 high-ranking civil and military officials who had been captured filled the compound of the Sui Bureau. In addition to Wang Jingguo, Sun Chu, and Zhao Shiling, three war criminals named and arrested by the PLA frontline command, there were also 43 senior generals of the Jin army, including Wen Huaiguang, Mengzizhe, Zhang Fengxiang, Han Buzhou, Jia Yuzhi, and Lou Fusheng. Faced with the muzzle of the PLA soldiers' black hole hole, none of them had the courage to use the poison given to them by Yan Xishan, lay down their weapons, and become prisoners in a disciplined manner.
Just before the suicide of the "Five Sisters" and Liang Huazhi, Liang Huazhi ghostwrote for the "Five Sisters" in the air raid shelter, wrote "Yan Huiqing to Yan Xishan's Desperate Telegram", sent guards to Wu Shaozhi, and after Wu Shaozhi's polishing, was photographed by the confidential office and sent to Yan Xishan, who was in Shanghai at the time.
The full text of Breaking Bad is as follows:
"The sound of artillery shells for days was deafening. The bullets flew like rain, and they were terrified. The smoke outside the house was full of smoke and a sea of fire; the interior was dark and dead, and all thoughts were gray. The general trend has gone, and the street battles are not supported. Xu Duan went to the disaster, and Dun Hou was martyred. Tens of millions of soldiers and civilians, bloody streets. Five hundred colleagues, cheng ren in the fire. Although the sister is a female stream, her death will has been decided. Seeing the jade shattering, how dare you destroy it? If he fails to turn the tide of the country in case of death, he should obey the orders of the corpse and not see it with the bandits. Lindian Yiyi, not all said! This life is over, and there is no end to it. Goodbye in the next life, may it not be illusory. The moment of the sister's power generation is still in the human world, and the time when the eldest brother reads the electricity has become another life! The front building was on fire, and the back was avalanche. Death in the eyebrows, peace of mind. Oh, the fruit of the heavens has called Yahweh? It hurts! Or the mercy of the patriarchs? "
The "five hundred colleagues, in the fire" mentioned in the desperate telegram is the "taiyuan five hundred perfect people" that taiwan has hyped up since then.
Xu Duan, mentioned in the cable, is the acting chief of the special police department and is Liang Huazhi's brother-in-law. On the eve of the liberation of Taiyuan, he concentrated the personnel of the SPECIAL Police Department in the special police constitutional command office at No. 45 West Side Street of Jingying. After the People's Liberation Army invaded Taiyuan on April 24, the agents either took poison or shot each other and set themselves on fire with gasoline that had long been prepared, including Liu Jiande and some other female SWAT staff members around the age of 20. Along with the suicide, there were also innocent women such as the wives of some agents and Wang Guiyan, an 18-year-old Famous Jin opera singer.
Yan Xishan, who was in Shanghai at the time, got this bad news and fell down on the sofa with a thud, his eyes straight.
Yuan Futing was frightened and shouted, "President, President, are you okay?" "
At this time, Yan Xishan was already in tears and could not cry.
Yuan Futing knew that his heart was uncomfortable, and it was better to shed tears than to hold them in his heart, so there was no comfort, and he cried bitterly.
Unexpectedly, Yan Xishan's cries were getting louder and louder, and in Yuan Futing's memory, this was something he had never seen before. The Japanese army at the Battle of Xinkou ate 4 of his divisions in one bite, and he did not see Yan Xishan shed a tear.
Yan Xishan's cry attracted all the attendants, and everyone understood what was going on, and they also cried with Yan Xishan.
Yuan Futing recalled: "When Taiyuan City was destroyed, Yan Xishan had already traveled from Nanjing to Shanghai. After receiving Yan Huiqing's desperate telegram, he burst into tears, cried loudly, and then sat like a Buddha and did not eat for two days. "
On October 23, Yan Xishan, in his capacity as "chief executive of the state government" and "minister of national defense," went to the radio to deliver a speech full of affection for Shanxi compatriots, which is also the only voice material that Yan Xishan has left in the world: "All the compatriots in Shanxi, I did not catch up with Taiyuan this time, and I am ashamed to work with my civil and military cadres and all the military and the people to make common sacrifices. Now, when I think about it every day, my heart is still very uncomfortable. But I will not forget you for a moment in one day..."
On October 30, 1949, Wu Tinghuan, a "legislator" of the "National Government," and 36 other people proposed at the "Legislative Yuan" court to establish a "Taiyuan Five Hundred Complete People Chengren Soul Tomb." The case was successfully approved. However, the Kuomintang lost too quickly, and before the Soul Tomb could be moved, the mainland was completely destroyed, and the "State Government" fled to Taiwan.
In March 1950, the Executive Yuan allocated NT$200,000 to demolish the Yasukuni Shrine built by the Japanese in Maruyama and build the "Taiyuan Five Hundred Completed Tombs" on the original site of the shrine.
The "Taiyuan Five Hundred Complete Tombs" is not only a large tomb, but also includes archways, stele altars, magnificent altars and other buildings. The inauguration ceremony was held on February 19, 1951, after the completion of all buildings. Chiang Kai-shek personally led the presidents of the Five Academies and the heads of the military and government to pay tribute to the sacrifice, and also presented a plaque of "National Righteousness", and Chiang Ching-kuo presented a plaque of "Qi Lieliufang", which hung above the gate of the temple.
Li Ao sneered at the Kuomintang with his usual vitriol: "The 'Five Hundred Perfect People of Taiyuan' were a group of victims of the Kuomintang before they retreated from the mainland, but they were not the Kuomintang concubines, but the people of Yan Xishan. Before the fall of Taiyuan, Shanxi, they knew that they could not escape, and the Communist Party would not spare them, but they died on the highest hill in the city, and finally died together. The Kuomintang clan was good at fleeing, and death was not its forte, so that the martyrs were out of stock, and when there was a shortage of goods, they had no choice but to dig up the dead people of Yan Xishan to fill the numbers, collect them in a net, and call them 'Taiyuan Five Hundred Complete People'. "
At this time, Yan Xishan's feelings about the martyred officers and soldiers in Taiyuan were naturally far from being comparable to those of Chiang Kai-shek's father and son. Among the inscriptions of many high-ranking officials and dignitaries, the plaque inscribed by Yan Xishan "Die Before Me" is recognized as the most touching. In addition, he not only wrote inscriptions and sacrifices himself. He also wrote a song "Taiyuan Five Hundred Perfection Songs" that everyone in Taiwan must sing at that time: "The nation has righteousness, Taiyuan is perfect; the sea and the sky are loyal to the soul, and the song is tragic and magnificent." Why is it perfect? Born to kill thieves, dead without leaving behind, the great festival is awe-inspiring..."
However, after the completion of the "Taiyuan Five Hundred Completed Tombs", Yan Xishan only went there once. For him, this story, written with the blood and lives of his officers and soldiers, is too complicated and too heavy...
At a time when there was a wave of surrender among the Kuomintang troops, the phenomenon of "collective suicide" of the Taiyuan defenders was extremely rare in various battlefields. From a military point of view, the martyrdom of these officers and soldiers had no effect on the Nationalist army, which had already collapsed. But mentally, it is nothing less than a shot in the arm.
The five hundred officers and men of this martyred city, their names, places of origin, age, and where they were martyred, were all clearly engraved on marble inscriptions. "Taiyuan Five Hundred Complete People" was also written into an article and compiled into the eighth volume of the textbook Chinese Taiwan Primary School.
However, it was later found that many of the "five hundred perfect people" were still alive and had become prisoners of the People's Liberation Army. Fortunately, at that time, the information on both sides of the strait was cut off, and the overwhelming majority of The Taiwanese could not understand the internal situation, and the authorities would be wrong, allowing these living martyrs to continue to enjoy the Kuomintang's incense sacrifice and receive the praises and remembrance of the Taiwan people.
How many people have committed suicide? Taiwan cannot figure it out, and historians on the mainland, especially in Taiyuan, have painstakingly worked hard for many years and have not been able to verify and verify an accurate figure. In fact, when you think about it, the nature of 200, 300 and 500 people is not very different, which can also explain the tragic and cruel degree of the war, proving that the opponents encountered by the PLA are not all fearful ghosts who raise their hands and surrender or pull out their legs to slip away as soon as they hear the gunshots.
At 8:50 a.m. on April 24, the assault troops planted a red flag with a red quilt face instead of victory to the highest point in Taiyuan City. At 9:15 a.m., another assault force stormed the Pacification Office, the core of Yan Xishan's rule, and engaged in a fierce battle with the guards.
The liberation of Taiyuan proclaimed the demise of the Yan Xishan regime, which had occupied Shanxi for 38 years.