Text / Wood Wind
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2022, a team from the Veterans Affairs Office in Jinan, Shandong Province, was executing a special project.
They followed the clues to a small village in Yantai City, where they found Zhang Shuqing, the wife of martyr Sun Xuetong.
The elderly are 94 years old and have some backs of their ears.
What everyone did not expect was that she had been single for so many years.
A story that began in 1947 and ended in 2022 can finally be completed.
Spend your whole life waiting for you
After 73 years, Zhang Shuqing still clearly remembers the day her husband left home, which was the fifth day of the first month of June in 1947, and it rained heavily that day.
Sun Xuetong left his newly married wife for 9 months to go to the battlefield, and when the war ended a year later, he disappeared.
Zhang Shuqing asked the soldiers who were on the front line at that time, and they all said that they had not seen Sun Xuetong. She did not believe that a living person had just disappeared, and she had traveled from place to place newspapers to look for people, but there was no news.
It was not until ten years later, in 1958, that Sun Xuetong, who had disappeared during the war, was posthumously honored as a martyr.
The matter seems to have been conclusive, but without seeing the body, Zhang Shuqing has never been able to accept the death of her husband.
She looked forward to seeing her husband again, even if it was a corpse waiting, and she didn't want to give up.
In these years, the country has experienced wars and disputes to peace and tranquility, and Zhang Shuqing has always been alone, not married, let alone children.
According to statistics, there are more than 1.96 million registered martyrs on the mainland, but only 559,000 have a clear burial place.
Due to the rush of the war in that year, the martyrs who sacrificed their lives were buried on the spot, holding the soil as a tomb, cutting wood into a monument, and the changes in history have also turned many "famous" martyrs into "nameless" martyrs.
In the Jinan Martyrs Cemetery, 790 unknown martyrs are buried.
As early as 1998, when there was no Internet, the Jinan Hero Mountain Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery set up a family search team, opened the country's first martyr search hotline, relying on a telephone, the family search team found the relatives of 769 unknown martyrs across the country in three years.
In 2021, the application of DNA technology has given the family search team new hope.
They took samples of the remains, extracted DNA and compared information to find out the approximate location, and then went door-to-door to confirm.
Zhang Shuqing also learned the whereabouts of her husband in this project of "searching for relatives for the unknown martyrs": it turned out that sun Xuetong was buried in the nameless tomb of the Jinan Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery for so many years.
Facing the staff, she said excitedly, "If I could see him, I would really like to pinch him twice!" Why leave me alone? ”
No one knows how she has lived for more than 70 years, and "waiting for her husband" is the only belief that has sustained her life.
If you ask her why she is so loyal to this feeling? The 90-something man just laughed:
I think he's very good to me.
Simple and pure, but it has touched many young people.
There is no vigorousness, no sea oath mountain alliance, waiting for itself, enough to move people's hearts.
You guard the border and I guard you
The story of one person dying on the battlefield and one person waiting for life does not exist only in the war years.
On January 12, 2022, Xiao Chiwen received a gift from the distant Karakoram – a special family portrait.
This is an electronically synthesized photo, and the man on the left wearing a military uniform and smiling is Chen Hongjun, the hero of the Weiguo Shubian, in addition to this identity, he is also Xiao Chiwen's husband.
On June 15, 2020, in the Galwan Valley area of the China-India border, the Indian side openly violated the consensus reached with our side and crossed the line of provocation, causing strong physical clashes between the two sides.
In order to rescue the regimental commander and defend sovereignty, Chen Hongjun, the commander of the Shubian Battalion, died heroically in this conflict at the age of 33.
At the time of his death, his wife Xiao Chiwen was more than 5 months pregnant.
On their last phone call, he also urged his wife to go to the hospital for a check-up. He likes girls, and Xiao Chiwen joked with him: If it was a boy, wouldn't you still love it?
He was busy answering: Love, love, love.
This sentence became Xiao Chiwen's last memory about her husband, "I called him again, I couldn't get through, I called more than 80 times, I just couldn't get in touch, and then the news of his sacrifice came ..."
For a long time, she had been lying to her husband that he was still there.
"The Red Army loves its family so much, loves me so much, and loves its children so much, how can it bear to say and leave?" How could he give it up? The Red Army must have been somewhere, silently watching our family. ”
She often met him in her dreams, and when she woke up, she tried to recall the scenes in the dreams, but she was already in tears.
In the dream, the past of the two people appeared again and again and cruelly disappeared again and again.
In 2014, under the introduction of a friend, they met for the first time, strolling on the road of the county's winter night, and only after talking did they learn that the two had graduated from the same university, and they looked at each other in surprise and smiled shyly.
Looking at the big boy's bright eyes and thick smile, she suddenly felt that they might have passed by the campus.
One night not long after, Chen Hongjun, who learned that her stomach was uncomfortable, quietly ran from a place more than ten kilometers away to deliver medicine, and his concern overflowed into words.
Seeing that it was inconvenient for her to use hot water in the dormitory, Chen Hongjun bought a hot kettle and several large barrels of mineral water to carry upstairs, gasping for breath and laughing: "You drink first, not enough I will buy again." ”
Laughing and laughing, he saw that her stove chimney was crooked, and he dismantled it without saying a word.
These warm details melted Xiao Chiwen's heart little by little, and half a year later, they established a romantic relationship.
Enjoying the sweetness of love, she also began to plan the future of the two people.
She was preparing to apply for graduate school at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music, and Chen Hongjun did not hesitate to choose to support.
It was the end of 2015, and when Chen Hongjun returned from vacation, Xiao Chiwen was preparing for the exam with all his might, he rented a house near the school, prepared three meals a day conscientiously, and helped her review the exam in his free time.
After the initial examination, they entered the palace of marriage as promised, and within two days they received the good news of passing the initial examination, and the moment they heard the news, the two embraced each other with excitement.
With the joint efforts of the two people, Xiao Chiwen was successfully admitted to the master's degree of Xi'an Conservatory of Music.
She often said: "I have come true to my dream, and I have a great deal of credit for the Red Army!" ”
Good love makes people positive.
One person is stationed on the frontier, one person is studying hard, and every night when the video tells each other about what happened that day, they begin to be busy with their own affairs very tacitly, occasionally looking up at each other's serious looks, and their hearts are extremely solid.
Working hard together, looking forward to the future together, although they still can't accompany each other for a long time, a brighter future seems to be close at hand.
They had agreed that she would have children after graduate school.
At the end of 2019, after Chen Hongjun took a vacation, he went to Xi'an to accompany his wife, and they spent a precious time as a two.
Watch TV together and cook together.
"The Red Army hummed songs from time to time, and the mood was particularly good. Usually, the Red Army never hummed songs, he said that he sang out of tune, afraid of my music teacher jokes. In fact, I have heard the Red Army sing "Green Flowers in the Army", which is not out of tune at all, and it is still sonorous and powerful. ”
At the end of the leave period, Chen Hongjun returned to the troops as scheduled, and they did not know that during this time, the "Little Red Army" quietly arrived.
When he heard the news that his wife was pregnant, Chen Hongjun was nervous and excited.
After that, as soon as he had time, he urged his wife to do an examination, imagine the scene of waiting for delivery at the end of the year, laugh and argue about who washed the child's clothes, who coaxed the child to cry, whether the child would be called "daddy" or "mom" first, and they were immersed in the joy of being a parent.
Until one day, Xiao Chiwen could no longer get through Chen Hongjun's phone.
The happy scenes of the past are like pieces of glass, inadvertently flying out and stabbing people's hearts. The better the memories, the more unbearable the pain of reality.
Four months after Chen Hongjun's sacrifice, on October 25, 2020, their son was born, which happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Volunteer Army's war to resist the United States and aid Korea, and Xiao Chiwen believed that this was a kind of blood inheritance in the dark.
Little Red Army meets his father for the first time at the Martyrs' Cemetery
She wanted to raise the child well and make him like a father.
The child looked very much like Chen Hongjun, looking at his lovely face, Xiao Chiwen's heart would always gush with pain, like a large stone pressed against his chest.
She once promised Chen Hongjun: "You guard the border and I guard you." ”
Now, Chen Hongjun guarded the border with his life, but she did not protect him well... Whenever he thought of this promise, Xiao Chiwen always apologized and felt that he did not take good care of him.
After Chen Hongjun's death, Xiao Chiwen received relics sent back from the army, including a letter sealed with scotch tape.
It was Chen Hongjun's 30th birthday, she wrote it to him, and she also drew a birthday cake on the back.
Due to the harsh local conditions, in order to prevent the letters from wearing out, he plastic sealed the credit tape and treasured it well.
In the cold and frozen Kunlun, at every dangerous moment, the temperature of this letter was enough to melt the ice and snow and turn it into a cavity of hot blood.
After a year of separation from her husband, Xiao Chiwen also slowly perked up and began to work actively, taking care of her in-laws and raising children.
"If there is an afterlife, I will also be the wife of the Red Army and make up for the regrets of this life."
I selfishly hope that if there is an afterlife, Chen Hongjun can be an ordinary person, dedicate himself to the motherland in this life, and in the next life, he and his wife will be a pair of immortal couples, and accompany each other to the white-haired cang.
I will try to live for you
For everyone, the soldiers defend the motherland like an iron wall.
And we always inadvertently overlook: under the hard shell, they are also ordinary people with flesh and blood, and they also have lovers who want to spend their lives in peace and stability.
The departure of one person leaves behind the long-term thoughts and pains of another person.
In the CCTV program "See words as Faces", actor Chen Shu read a letter written by Catherine, the widow of a martyr, to her husband, which made people cry:
"I know you're no longer alive, first by telegram, then by letter, and now by card of condolence from General Marshall, and the messages are coming one after another, getting worse and worse each time, but I've resigned myself to my fate."
I cried out loud, I cried, but I didn't wash my face with tears all day, I started to arrange my life again, without you living by our side.
Dear Condra, I believe you know how much I love you, I love you, I still love you, my love for you has never stopped, and will never stop, whether on the day of July 17, 1943, or before and after that day, my love for you has been consistent, I can not help but love you.
But you know what? I will consider remarrying, I have been so happy, the blank you left behind will make me unbearable, I hope that Heaven will make me happy and happy, I will never be as happy as I was with you, because God let me have you.
I just want to have that calm joy, though I will always miss you, your hands, your kisses, your body, and no one will ever make me miss you so much.
But even if I remarry, it will definitely be a long time later, married to an old man who has also lost his love. It would be selfish for me to be associated with young people like Bob and Karl.
I believe that every man would like to have that fiery love, but I have given that love to you, and it is impossible to give it to a second person. ”
"I could have endured the darkness, if I had not seen the sun, but the sun has made my desolation a renewed desolation."
The poem aptly sums up Catherine's grief.
The chance of a person encountering true love in this life is only one in hundreds of millions, and he once had a rare happiness, and even if his life is good, he is filled with the sadness of never losing his beloved.
At the end of the letter, Catherine wrote:
"Now, I'm going to say goodbye to you until we're reunited in another world, please help me through the tough times ahead." Help me, let me do my best for our son, let me always feel your spirit instead of bitterness.
I need your help, you are no longer alive for others, but you will live forever in my heart, and I am not willing to stop writing, because this is the last letter to write to you. ”
Life will always be gone, and love will never fade.
The heroes who are concerned by their wives, although they are buried in the ground, they are always alive in the hearts of their lovers.
In another way, they inspire their lovers, remember the agreement between the two people, and continue to live bravely.
Click one to watch
Salute to the heroes who dedicated themselves to their homeland
Salute to the silent dedication of the military sister-in-law