【Village Story】
Ban Lou, a place stained red by the blood of martyrs
(Dongfang Yihong/Wen)
On the border between Henan and Anhui, there is such a small village, the reason why it is small is because it belongs to a natural village in Heilizhuang Village, Handaokou Town, Xiayi County, with a population of only more than 300 people. However, it is such an unknown small village, but there are ten revolutionary martyrs who died heroically for the liberation war, they have not left their names, they do not even know where their homes are, and their young lives will be forever fixed in the place of Banlou.
In the autumn of 1948, the People's War of Liberation entered a decisive stage of victory over the whole country. After the Liaoshen Campaign, the situation developed more and more favorable to the People's Liberation Army, and in order to save the defeat, the Kuomintang mobilized its main forces on the eve of the Huaihuai Campaign and assembled in the direction of Xuzhou. Among them, a Kuomintang army, on the way to assemble, was in the area of present-day Zhonglou and Cuilou jihuangzhuang, and attacked and harassed villages in the liberated areas. In order to intercept and eliminate the Kuomintang army, a certain unit of the Sixth Column of the Central Plains Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army under the leadership of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping assigned a company of troops to be stationed near Banlou Village to form a north-south confrontation with the Kuomintang army.
The arrival of the People's Liberation Army was warmly accepted by the villagers of Banlou, and opened the gate of the village to welcome the People's Liberation Army, and also provided a Li Shizong Temple located in the southwest of the village to the PLA troops as a temporary rest and command place.
Ban Lou Village is an ancient village, originally inhabited by the Ban surname, and later the Ban surname was extinct. In the last year of the Ming Dynasty, xia yi taiping set the daliu li clan to expand the production and living environment of the clan, and its eleventh grandson Li Zhaogeng came to Banlou, purchased the land of the ban surname village, and settled here. After the Li clan settled down, they had a good family and were diligent in farming, and the family grew day by day, coupled with the rich ancestral support of taiping, the villagers' lives were relatively surplus. In the early years of the Republic of China, in order to prevent banditry and war, the surrounding village was dug with zhaihaizi, a wall was built, and a zhaimen suspension bridge was set up in the south of the village entrance, which was commonly known as the "front gate" of the villagers, which was a castle-style village that was easy to defend and difficult to attack.
According to the old man in the village, in the middle of the night in the late autumn, it was still drizzling in the sky, and the Kuomintang troops took advantage of the rainy night to launch an attack on the Plaster here, and the PLA soldiers who were standing guard outside the village were alert to find that there were faintly crowded people at the mouth of Huangzhuang Village in the northwest of the village, and immediately reported to the leaders of the PLA and made preparations for battle. Seeing that the Kuomintang army launched an artillery attack in the direction of Banlou, the PLA fighters who had long been prepared returned fire with a network of rifles, machine guns, and grenades, only to make the other side lose their armor and abandon their armor, and they could not feed the army. The battle lasted for several hours, and in the brutal and fierce bloody battle, the PLA soldiers fought bravely and well- and successfully destroyed this bone force, annihilating hundreds of Kuomintang troops, and the PLA also suffered more than a dozen casualties.
After the battle, the villagers spontaneously organized to assist the People's Liberation Army in cleaning up the battlefield, of which the remains of ten soldiers were buried on the spot in the northwest corner outside the banlou village, arranged from west to east to form ten graves, and split from the trunks of trees, written with the names of the martyrs, and inserted in front of the graves to show respect and remembrance.
Although the villagers of Banlou did not go to the battlefield to engage the Kuomintang army with real swords and guns, they actively cooperated with the Platon Army in the rear to raise grain and rescue the wounded, which also played an irreplaceable role in the victory of the battle. Sadly, in the early morning after the withdrawal of the PLA troops, a crazy old man in the local area was collecting firewood and grass near the martyr's tomb, mistakenly thinking that the wooden block inserted in front of the grave was useless firewood, so he took it home and put it in the firewood pile as chopping firewood. After the villagers found out, they rushed to their homes to return, but it was too late to tell which grave was the sign, and since then these ten martyrs have become unknown martyrs and have become eternal regrets!
Later, in the successive years of Qingming festival sweeping, digging soil to add graves, the tomb of the martyrs' tomb gradually connected into one, becoming a long east-west large tomb bag, far away like an earthen mound, in front of the grave there are several old locust trees and kudzu trees, kudzu vines attached to the locust tree tightly intertwined, every year before and after the Qingming Festival, kudzu flowers bloom, purple flowers fragrant all over the ground. In the 1950s and 1960s, the descendants of martyrs from a certain place in Shanxi came here to look for relatives, saying that they were platoon leaders at the time of sacrifice. According to this clue, according to the villagers who participated in the burial of the martyrs at that time, the platoon leader's attire was slightly different from that of the soldiers, and according to this characteristic, the approximate location of the buried martyrs was determined. After the remains of the martyrs were removed, a ditch was formed in the east of the long tomb, which divided the originally connected martyrs' tombs into two grave bags, one large and one small. In 2013, in order to commemorate the revolutionary martyrs, the People's Government of Xiayi County invested special funds to re-plan and build a martyrs' cemetery in Banlou Village. Every Qingming Festival, the vast number of cadres and groups in the surrounding area, teachers and students of the school come here to visit the graves and mourn the endless stream.
Nowadays, walking into Banlou Village, a clean and tidy cement road leads directly to the cemetery, only to see the solemn gate engraved with the four characters of "Martyrs' Cemetery". The entire cemetery covers an area of about 2.5 acres and is composed of five parts: the martyrs' tomb, the monument, the management room, the gate and the cemetery square. Facing the gate, a marble monument was erected by the people's government of Handaokou Town in October 2014, on which was engraved "Revolutionary Martyrs Forever And Forever". On the right side of the monument is the "Revolutionary Martyrs Immortal" prayer monument erected on the Qingming Festival in 2010, and behind the monument is the single tomb of nine martyrs who are buried here, each tomb is inlaid with a square tombstone erected by the People's Government of Xiayi County in 2013, and the "Tomb of the Unknown Martyr" is engraved in the center, which is more solemn and solemn in the shade of greenery. Although the martyrs are nameless, they seem to be famous, and is this not the truest portrayal of the thousands of unsung heroes who died for the revolution?
More than seventy years later, in the face of this monument stained red by the blood of revolutionary martyrs, people can't help but think of a poem by the old writer Mr. Zang Kejia, "Some people are alive, he is dead; Some people are dead, and he's still alive..."
Oh, yes! As time flies, everything drifts away and blurs in people's memories. The revolutionary spirit of bravery and tenacity and not afraid of sacrifice in the battle of Banlou is eternal here, leaving it to future generations to remember, to inherit, and to receive the baptism of the soul.
The autumn wind is blowing again, the golden leaves are falling in the martyrs' cemetery, and the autumn wind is whimpering, as if to tell us that the land under our feet has experienced such gunfire and smoke, and the blood of so many martyrs has been thrown in this place of Banlou Village, which also shows even more that the martyrs who heroically sacrificed their lives for the cause of the people's liberation will always live in the hearts of the people.
