In 1987, 88 soldiers from 4 battalions and 4 companies of the 417th Regiment of the 139th Division of the 47th Army of the Lanzhou Military Region formed a death squad code-named "Operation Black Panther" in the face of repeated provocations of the Vietnamese army, which was bound to seize the 167 heights.
Before leaving, each soldier wrote a suicide note to his family.
Ma Zhanfu, 20 years old, thinking that his mother could not read, borrowed a tape recorder and prepared to record a "suicide note" with the tape recorder.
Ma Zhanfu
Mother, are you okay? Don't be too frugal, be sure to eat enough;
Mother, I performed very well in the army, and the company commander praised me;
Mother, I want to eat the corn paste you made, and I am hungry to think about it;
Mother, I miss home... Miss you too;
mother......
He had a thousand, ten thousand, words he wanted to say to his mother, but in the end, he didn't say anything.
Just shouting mother...
mother...... mother...... mother......
After shouting 26 times, 4 companies of soldiers were shouted and cried, but Ma Zhanfu wiped away his tears, raised his gun, and resolutely said: "Go!" Go to war! ”
Before operation Black Panther
Ma Zhanfu, a Hui ethnic group, was born in 1967 in Datong County, Qinghai.
Due to the poor conditions at home, Ma Zhanfu dropped out of school early. At a young age, he was very sensible, not only helping his parents to do farm work, but also finding some other livelihood to subsidize the family when he was idle.
One day in 1984, Ma Zhanfu and xie Shenghai, a fellow villager, saw the state recruiting troops.
Just turned 18, he immediately went to sign up.
Due to the long-term lack of food, Ma Zhanfu was short, and he was worried that the troops would not be admitted due to height problems.
It didn't take long for him to receive a notice of successful enlistment.
"Comrade Ma Zhanfu was assigned to serve in the 4th Battalion and 4th Company of the 417th Regiment of the 139th Division of the Lanzhou Military Region."
Since then, Ma Zhanfu has officially become a soldier in the ranks of the People's Liberation Army.
Just after joining the army, Ma Zhanfu was not famous. He doesn't like to talk, and he's honest enough to talk.
Other comrades-in-arms looked at him as a bully and always made fun of him. Seeing that he could eat five or six steamed buns in one go, his comrades-in-arms laughed at him, saying that he was a "rice bag", and he was not angry when he listened, and he always laughed twice.
For this reason, everyone said that he was the "most provocative" soldier in the entire company.
In 1979, after Vietnam achieved national reunification, they were ungrateful and regarded China as the "number one enemy" and repeatedly launched attacks on the mainland border.
People's lives and property are threatened, and national sovereignty is wantonly violated. On February 17, the Central Military Commission issued an order for Chinese border troops to conduct a self-defense counterattack against Vietnam.
If there is war, there will inevitably be bloodshed, and countless border guards have exchanged their lives for victory. Over the next month, PLA fighters captured more than 20 cities in northern Vietnam with lightning speed, and Vietnamese troops surrendered.
Unexpectedly, after the withdrawal of the large troops of the People's Liberation Army, the Vietnamese troops have been bouncing around the mainland border like grasshoppers in the autumn.
In this way, the Sino-Vietnamese border war lasted for 10 years. During this period, the two armies fought fiercely in luojiaping dashan, Laoshan, Andyinshan and other areas.
On May 28, 1986, our soldiers paid a huge price to take the 167 heights of the Lao Shan Theater, but it was not long before they were occupied by the Vietnamese army again.
According to the report of our army spies, the Vietnamese army built more than 20 tunbing holes in this highland, stockpiled a large number of light and heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, mortars and other weapons, and also sent a reinforced company of troops, threatening to "poke" a large hole in the northern border of the mainland.
The soldiers of the Lanzhou Military Region swore that they must teach the Vietnamese troops a good lesson, and everything was being planned.
At this time, Ma Zhanfu, who had been serving for more than 2 years, suddenly received a notice from the troops: their superiors arranged for them to go home to visit their relatives.
The delicate Ma Zhanfu noticed something strange, but he didn't say anything and returned to his hometown in Qinghai with his luggage.
He misses the mother!
After returning home, Ma Zhanfu was busy helping his family harvest crops, and he worked day and night, as if he would never have the opportunity to help the family work again.
After finishing the farm work, he cleaned the house up and down again, and then took the money he had saved in the army, pulled a piece of cloth for his mother, and made a new dress. The rest of the money, he quietly stuffed at the head of the mother's bed.
Subsequently, Ma Zhanfu went to his cousin's house near his home. He instructed his cousin: "This time back to the army, I may be going to the battlefield, if I can't come back, please help me take care of my mother." ”
In 1987, the 417th Regiment of the 139th Division of the 47th Army of the People's Liberation Army was connected to the mission: to capture the 167th Heights of the Laoshan Theater in Yunnan.
After Ma Zhanfu heard about the mission, he was the first to raise his hand to sign up for the battle and asked to join the first commando team.
The company commander, knowing that he was agile, granted his request.
Subsequently, their entire company formed a death squad and conducted assault training.
The operation was also known to them as "Operation Black Panther."
20 years old, first class merit
According to the rules, before going to the battlefield, each soldier must write a suicide note to his family, just in case.
Anticipating everything after their sacrifice in advance is the most uncomfortable moment for the warriors.
Each warrior looked serious, and many of them, like Ma Zhanfu, were in their early 20s and were on the battlefield for the first time.
They took pens and wrote and cried.
Ma Zhanfu thought that his mother was illiterate, so he borrowed a tape recorder.
Facing the tape recorder, Ma Zhanfu was silent for a long time.
He wanted to ask his mother about the situation at home; he also wanted to ask her if her health was good, and whether her legs still hurt; he also wanted to tell her that he missed her and wanted her to cook.
There are too many things to say, but I don't know what to say!
A thousand words were blocked in his throat, and finally, Ma Zhanfu tore his heart and lungs and shouted: "Mother! ”
Hearing this, a soldier next to him cried even harder, he was a year younger than Ma Zhanfu.
mother...... mother...... mother......
After shouting 26 times, Ma Zhanfu stood up, handed the tape recorder to the company commander, and then resolutely picked up the gun and walked out first.
Around the early morning of January 6, 1987, 12 daredevils of the 4th Company of the First Assault Group took advantage of the hazy night to ambush the designated position, waiting for an order from their superiors to catch the Vietnamese army by surprise.
At that time, although it was January, the local temperature in Yunnan was already very mild, and all kinds of insects were rampant, and the bites made people itchy and painful.
Ma Zhanfu and his comrades remained motionless, lurking close to the Vietnamese sentries and would be spotted if they were not careful.
From the early morning of January 6 to the early morning of January 7, Ma Zhanfu's first commando team remained motionless for more than 20 hours.
"The First Commando team begins to attack!" Finally, just after the early hours of January 7, Ma Zhanfu received instructions from his superiors.
The soldiers of the 4th Company cleared the Vietnamese troops on the 167 heights with lightning speed. The rest of the Vietnamese troops, seeing the situation, hid in their bunker holes.
The enemy was in the dark, our army was in the light, and for a time, our army entered a passive state.
In addition, the Vietnamese army arranged a lot of concealment in the place close to the Tun Bing Cave, the machine gunners were haunted and hidden deeply, and many fighters were killed by enemy machine gun fire.
Watching his comrades fall one by one, Ma Zhanfu, as a demolitionist, was anxious to find the enemy's main fire point.
Ma Zhanfu moved quickly, approaching one of the enemy's machine gun points and quickly dropping a package of explosives. With a "bang", one of the enemy's fire points was successfully destroyed.
As he prepared to approach the next point of fire, the enemy who reacted increased his firepower, and Ma Zhanfu was unfortunately shot, and the blood kept gushing out like an open faucet.
Ma Zhanfu tore off the corner of his coat and simply treated the wound urgently. Subsequently, he endured severe pain and rushed to the main point of the enemy's fire again.
His eyes were unusually firm, and his injured body was creeping forward on the ground.
With a burst of enemy strafing, several comrades in front of them fell. One of his comrades-in-arms always laughed at him for eating too much, but secretly left his own steamed buns to him.
Immediately after, the comrade who taught himself to shoot fell, and the comrade who always joked that he was a "provocateur" also fell.
Not far ahead, only the squad leader was left holding on.
He knew that as long as he moved fast enough, his comrades would be less dangerous.
Ma Zhanfu had a raging fire burning in his heart, and he crawled angrily toward the enemy.
With a "bang", a bullet hit him in the forehead, and Ma Zhanfu, who was seriously injured, fainted again.
Both the abdomen and the head were injured, and when Ma Zhanfu woke up, he was already dying.
No one expected that such a deeply wounded warrior would have such a powerful explosive force, and Ma Zhanfu took the explosive canister and approached the enemy little by little.
When the enemy found him, he was startled by Ma Zhanfu. He was covered in blood, as if he had crawled out of hell. But the most frightening thing was his murderous eyes.
"Squad leader... Don't tell my mother, I died so badly..." Ma Zhanfu shouted at the squad leader not far away, and then quickly threw the explosive canister in his hand into the enemy's hole.
The Vietnamese in the tunbing cave wanted to escape, they wanted to kick the blasting canister out, but Ma Zhanfu used his last strength to block the entrance to the cave with his body, and also blocked the machine guns strafed by the enemy.
A rumbling explosion resounded through the valley.
The enemy's bunkers were bombed, but the soldiers of our army were red-eyed, and they roared angrily, like an angry lion, rushing towards the enemy in spite of themselves.
In the end, it took only 37 minutes for the fighters of the 4 companies to eliminate 500 Vietnamese troops, and 167 highlands were successfully taken.
This surprise operation, called "Black Panther", ended in the victory of our army.
The operation was completed, but countless comrades-in-arms were also sacrificed. 4 companies of 88 soldiers, only 8 were left when they withdrew.
After the war, the soldiers of our army found the body of Comrade Ma Zhanfu, and on his index finger, he still tightly clasped the ring of fire of the explosive canister.
This little warrior who was only 20 years old, this big hero who resolutely went to the battlefield, this child who shouted "mother" one after another, died heroically on the battlefield.
Ma Zhanfu exchanged his own sacrifice for the victory of the entire contingent, the peace of the motherland, and the safety of the lives of thousands of border people.
After the end of the war, the state awarded Comrade Ma Zhanfu the title of "Huang Jiguang-style Combat Hero" and recorded the first class merit. His comrades-in-arms also buried his mutilated body in the Malipo Martyrs' Cemetery in Yunnan Province.
A "special" reunion
After the war, the comrades-in-arms of the army carried Ma Zhanfu's special "suicide note" and pension with a heavy heart to Ma Zhanfu's hometown to look for the mother he remembered.
After several inquiries, the comrades-in-arms finally found Ma Zhanfu's mother on the streets of Xining.
Looking at the old man with white hair and tattered clothes who was begging, the iron-boned comrades could not help but shed tears.
Seeing a warrior in a military uniform, the old man's eyes flashed a glimmer of light, and she anxiously searched for the figure of her son in the crowd.
The comrades-in-arms could not say the news that Ma Zhanfu had died, and could only silently play the tape recorder that Ma Zhanfu left behind "last words" to the old man.
Hearing his son shouting "Mother", the old man also responded with a loud voice:
ay! ay! ...... Good son of the mother...
But her son could no longer respond to her.
Receiving the pension from the troops, the old man's life was better, but it was only a subsistence.
The old man's greatest wish is to go to his son's grave to see before he dies. But poverty coupled with the long distance of the road, the old man eventually regretted his death.
Before dying, the old man said to Ma Zhanfu's younger brother Ma Zhangui: "Your brother has been waiting for us, and when the conditions are good in the future, you must go to see him for your mother, bring some soil in front of his grave, and come back to sprinkle it on your mother's grave, and your mother thinks of your brother..."
In 2012, Ma Zhangui finally came to Ma Zhanfu's tomb with the help of the government and anti-war veterans.
At this time, a full 25 years had passed since Ma Zhanfu's sacrifice.
Ma Zhangui knelt in front of his brother Ma Zhanfu's grave and cried uncontrollably: "Brother, since you left, my mother has been holding that tape recorder every day, listening and crying at the same time, she dreams of wanting to see you." ”
"I'm sorry brother, it took so many years to see you!"
"Brother, father and mother let me tell you that they are proud of you!"
Before leaving, Ma Zhangui obeyed his mother's last wishes, took a piece of soil from Ma Zhanfu's grave, and sprinkled it on his mother's grave.
"Mother!"
"Hey!"
The child who shouted at his mother must have reunited with his mother in heaven!
epilogue:
"Defending the family and defending the country is the mission, and the shroud of ma ge is the glory." There are many young revolutionary fighters like Ma Zhanfu, who fight against the enemy with their iron will and defend the homeland of the motherland with the spirit of seeing death as a homecoming.
Without them, there would be no mountains and rivers today, and there would be no ordinary and stable life of you, me, and him.
Let us pay tribute to the revolutionary martyrs, remember the revolutionary spirit, and sincerely say: You are the loveliest people!