Ma Lixun was born in 1920 to a poor miner's family in Yujiazhuang, Zichuan District, Zibo City, Shandong Province.
His father and grandfather worked in the Hongshan Coal Mine, then known as the "Great Wasteland", and were brutally exploited and exploited by the Chinese and Japanese capitalists.
On the day of Ma Lixun's 12th birthday, the night was low, the sunset was like being dragged down by someone, and the whole coal kiln was instantly immersed in darkness, emitting a cold and solemn feeling. His grandfather was beaten to death by the Japanese with a leather whip, and his father died in a coal kiln because of the "roof" under the pit.
At the age of 12, he lost two relatives in a year, but in order to make ends meet, he had to cry blood and tears and work as a child laborer in a life-killing coal kiln.
In the coal kiln, he developed a strong interest in explosives, through learning, he learned the technology of making explosives and using explosives, and Ma Lixun, who was only a teenager, became a skilled demolitionist under the guidance of his co-workers, not knowing that this would become his future fame technology and a special skill to avenge his relatives.
After working in the coal kiln for a few years, he was captured by the Kuomintang army as a soldier, and at a young age he charged at the position with guns, and he did not even know whether the enemy on the other side was Japanese or Chinese.
Until January 1940, Ma Lixun's Kuomintang recalcitrant army was wiped out by the Shandong Column of the Eighth Route Army in the area of Xiaotianzhuang in Boshan, and his troops were also incorporated into the 12th Company of the Third Battalion of the Fourth Detachment of the Shandong Column, and in this way he changed from the Kuomintang to the Communist Party overnight.
In the ranks of the Eighth Route Army, he soon began to accept learning, began to read and read, and then he was selected to become a sapper.
In May of the same year, his company was transferred to Qiaodian, Laiwu County, and reorganized into a fourth detachment, three regiments, one battalion, and one company, where he conducted a series of military trainings, and soon he became a soldier with good ideological awareness, high military technology, and courageous combat wit.
In October of the same year, Ma Lixun went to the Yimeng Mountains with his team to fight, and was the first to sign up for the anti-"mopping-up" battle. They successively conquered Xiaotanggang, Xiaohongshan, Banbianzhai, Youlangu, Xiaotianzhuang, Zhoujiagu and other dangerous strongholds.
In the battle to remove the Qingtuo Temple stronghold, Ma Lixun burned the enemy stronghold with an oil-lit rooster in his hand, and when the lit "oil chicken" was thrown into the enemy stronghold, the fire in the stronghold was soaring, the enemy ran around, and the troops quickly occupied the stronghold.
In the spring of 1941, Ma Lixun assisted his comrades in blowing up the Wujiawa stronghold in Laiwu, and he personally buried the explosives, calculated the time, and regularly exploded, killing more than 30 enemy people.
In May, the Japanese troops stationed in Yishui County dispatched more than 700 people to Zhu Baozhuang to sweep, and Ma Lixun's company received orders to counterattack the Japanese army.
When the battle began, Ma Lixun looked wide-eyed, the faint plaster flag was already recognizable, he quickly fell into the battle position, and then engaged in a fierce firefight with the Japanese army.
During the battle, the machine gun squad leader of the company was shot and killed, and hundreds of devils killed the sky, suddenly accelerating the counter-charge speed, and in the blink of an eye, they arrived in front of him. Ma Lixun picked up the squad leader's machine gun to suppress the enemy's fire and covered the troops to attack Zhu Baozhuang.
After entering the village, Ma Lixun quickly occupied the tall buildings, condescending, and fired wildly at the enemy with machine guns, killing more than 100 Japanese troops in this battle, and Ma Lixun made great contributions in this battle, and was appointed as the machine gun squad leader after the war.
In July, he marched into Mengshan with his troops, and in order to crush the enemy's blockade of Mengshan, his superiors decided to eliminate the Yuejia village stronghold.
However, the Yuejia village stronghold has five large bunkers, surrounded by strong walls, and there are trenches, deer and other protective facilities outside the walls, which can be described as copper walls and iron walls.
For this reason, the regimental commander was also very troubled by this, so the regimental commander called on the elite of the troops to learn and study blasting technology, and because Ma Lixun had a lot of experience in blasting, he volunteered to study.
After many studies and trials, the first and second attacks on the Yuejia village stronghold were still unsuccessful.
Later, Ma Lixun proposed to wrap the explosives tightly with rags and sacks, and then bundle the grenades and explosives together, and use wooden sticks to erect them under the enemy's bunkers for blasting, so everyone held the mentality of trying it out, so they used two military blankets and bundled four explosive packages.
After getting ready, the troops took cover of fire, Ma Lixun held the explosive package in both hands, and bravely rushed to the deer pillar, only to hear a loud noise, the deer was blasted, so the comrades rushed to the enemy's bunker with the remaining three explosive packages, and for a time the mud and sand splashed and the crater was dense. Under the bunkers were piled up layers of enemy corpses.
In this battle, more than 100 enemies were annihilated, and Ma Lixun officially became the first demolitionist in the regiment.
In August, in the Battle of Sun Xu in Surabaya County, Shandong Province, Ma Lixun continuously blew up 4 pillboxes of the Japanese puppet army and killed more than 60 Japanese puppet troops. Because of his outstanding military achievements, he was received by Luo Ronghuan, then commander of the Shandong Military Region, and Xiao Hua, director of the Political Department, who praised him as the "King of Shandong Blasting."
In the spring of 1943, Lunan was covered in dust and fog, and it was dead. The troops were ordered to open up the Lunan base area.
Due to the complicated situation in Lunan, there were not only Japanese, puppet troops, nationalists, but also a large number of bandits; and the terrain was also extremely complex, and the troops often marched forward.
At this time, Ma Lixun always carried an explosives package in his hand, rushed to the front, destroyed the enemy's deer and bunkers, and ensured the smooth breakthrough of the troops, so he was called "pioneer" by his comrades-in-arms, as long as there was a place where Ma Lixun was, there was no road that could not be crossed.
Ma Lixun also continued to grow, learn, and summarize in actual combat, he understood the importance of his own blasting task, so he often discussed and researched with people, and constantly improved his blasting technology, which not only made a qualitative leap in his blasting technology, but even the troops blew up an academic wind.
In November 1943, he attacked the village of Lunan Pillar, which was the old nest of the habitual bandit Liu Heiqi (real name Liu Guitang), where Liu Heiqi's main force was located, and after years of painstaking management by Liu Heiqi, this place had long been the strongest fortress.
The whole village has two walls, both more than one foot high and three feet thick, surrounded by protruding artillery towers, Liu Heiqi claimed that the pillar village was "copper gang iron bottom", foolproof.
When Ma Lixun sneaked in and exploded, he was discovered by the enemy in the turret, and he hid in the trench, drilling into the small hole dug in the trench, feeling like a rabbit driven away by a gong and drum.
In order to complete the task, he put his hat on the edge of the trench string to attract the enemy, and he crawled forward to blast, a loud noise like a thunderbolt on a sunny day, a thunder in the middle of the night, and for a moment the enemy was all silent, dumbfounded, and his scalp was numb. Immediately after, the sudden crying sound boiled into a boil.
In this battle, more than 1,200 enemy people were annihilated, a large number of weapons and materials were captured, and Liu Heiqi was also killed.
Because of his outstanding merits, Ma Lixun was promoted to a platoon leader in a row of two platoons.
In the process of fighting against the enemy, Ma Lixun constantly innovated technology, and later created his own explosive methods such as stealing explosions, flying explosions, air explosions, and serial explosions.
In the attack on Surabaya City, Ma Lixun used the "air explosion" method (wrapping explosives on the ladder) to blow up the upper part of the enemy's bunker, and successfully suppressed the dense fire of the 10-meter-high four-story bunker, thus completing the combat task.
In August 1945, the troops were ordered to attack the Stronghold of Yancun in Tengxian County, where the enemy stationed more than 1,500 people and built a large number of fortifications.
On the night of August 3, Ma Lixun led an explosive team to blast the southeast artillery tower, and in one fell swoop, a dazzling bright light flashed on the horizon of the southeast artillery tower, followed by a thick tremor from the earth, and the sky burst into a rumbling reverberation, and in an instant, the morning glow on the edge of the sky seemed to be torn apart by a string of flames, and the dense shells with whistles smashed towards the enemy position like hail.
He led his warriors to charge the gap, unfortunately killed by an enemy bullet in the chest, when he was only 25 years old.
When the regimental leaders learned of Ma Lixun's death, they launched a general offensive, quickly conquered Yancun, completely annihilated the enemy, and captured the pseudo-commander Shen Congzhou and his chief of staff Ma Guanghan alive.
In order to commemorate Ma Lixun, the Lunan Military Region named the second platoon where he was located "Ma Lixun Platoon", and Yancun also changed its name to "Lixun Village".
When Ma Lixun's company was liberated, 108 combat heroes emerged successively, and they were known as the "People's Hero Company".