Wu Xinquan and Yu Huiru talked to the person in charge of the gypsum board factory. Photo by Wang Youfei
Wu Xinquan (center) inspects new samples at the gypsum board factory.
Wu Xinquan and Yu Huiru in October 1955. (File photo)
□ Wang Youfei
In 1987, in May when Yingshan was in full bloom, a wanderer who had been away from his hometown for 38 years returned to Pingjiang with his wife. From the county seat to the town of Changshou, people talked in the streets and relished the story: He once led the 39th Army to go abroad to resist the United States and aid Korea, fought the first battle at Unsan, annihilated the US army's ace division, captured the US army's black company, recaptured Pyongyang, captured Seoul, and played a military prestige, which was called "the most terrible Chinese" by the US army. His wife was an old cadre of the New Fourth Army, Premier Zhou called her an "aircraft carrier," and Chairman Mao praised her as a "mother hero." They were the founding lieutenant general Wu Xinquan and his wife Yu Huiru.
The old garden is deeply loved
General Wu Xinquan returned to Pingjiang County on May 4, 1987, accompanied by Jiang Jinliu, commander of the Hunan Provincial Military Region and secretary of the Party Committee. On the morning of the 5th, accompanied by Dai Development, deputy secretary of the county party committee, and Fu Yiming, director of the county Laogan Bureau, The Old General Wu and his wife Yu Huiru drove to the eastern suburbs of the county seat to visit Tianyue Academy.
This ancient building of Tianyue Academy is a sacred place in the hearts of many founding generals, old cadres and veteran soldiers. On July 22, 1928, after Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan and other Communists launched the Pingjiang Uprising, the Red Fifth Army was founded, and later the Red Third Army was established. In July 1930, Peng Dehuai led the officers of the Three Red Army corps to commemorate the second anniversary of the Pingjiang Uprising and the swearing-in meeting of Changsha. They held high the banner of armed struggle, gathered tens of millions of poor workers and peasants, and organized a large number of guerrillas and Red Guards from the Xiang'e-Gansu Border Region into the Fifth Red Army and the Eighth Red Army. Wu Xinquan and many enthusiastic young people joined the Red Fifth Army at this time, and began their heroic struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people and their contributions to the creation of a new China.
General Wu and his party entered through the gate of the old site, passed through the small garden and entered the main hall house, and visited the house of Mr. Peng. In front of the portrait of Mr. Peng, the veteran general gazed intently and said to his entourage: "I joined the Red Army in the Second Company of the Ninth Regiment of the Third Division of the Fifth Red Army, from the Central Soviet District to the Long March Road, and I have been fighting in the Red Third Army under the leadership of Mr. Peng, and later went to Korea to fight under the command of Mr. Peng. Mr. Peng was extremely loyal to the revolution and made great contributions. ”
To the west, the former soldiers' canteen is the Pingjiang Uprising Materials Exhibition Room. Elder Wu carefully looked at the text and pictures introducing the historical facts of the Pingjiang Uprising, and finally stopped in front of an earthen cannon hollowed out of a large pine tree and made of iron rings on the hoop. He told his entourage: When we participated in the February siege, the peasant army that besieged the city used it. At that time, the artillery was too wide because the river surface was too wide, and the ammunition could not hit the opposite bank of the city, and the lethality was not great. But it was still loud and mighty, and it was a great shock to the enemy in the city. Elder Wu was once the deputy commander of artillery, and in the late cultural revolution, in order to develop China's new artillery weapons, eliminate interference and squat factories and offices, and work hard to grasp production, which was praised by Premier Zhou. Elder Wu was very familiar with the new artillery weapons now, and he said with emotion: "Seeing this pine cannon made by the Pingjiang Peasant Army, I am really full of emotions. The development of our artillery and weapons has entered the world's advanced ranks, and this pine cannon is also a testimony of our Party's leadership of the revolutionary armed struggle from scratch and from weak to strong. ”
In the afternoon, General Wu and his wife visited Chengguan Town, the county seat. They walked into the Martyrs' Park, browsed the environment, and stopped in front of the towering Martyrs' Tower. He introduced himself to his wife: "Pingjiang County is an old revolutionary area, the cradle of the Red Army, and many people have sacrificed. I often think of my fellow revolutionary partners who died in the revolution, and I feel bad in my heart, and I should always remember them. He dragged his wife to take a picture in front of the tower.
Then we went to the White Jade Fan Factory. This enterprise is the use of the abundant Nan bamboo resources in the Pingjiang Mountains to process traditional folding fans, and later introduced new technologies to produce various craft fans, which are exported to Japan and Southeast Asia. After seeing the fan factory, they went to the gypsum board factory. Luo Zuhui, director of the factory, reported that this is a town-run enterprise founded by using the local gypsum mineral resources in Pingjiang, and has been developed by the technical personnel of the factory into a new type of building materials product with waterproof and fireproof functions, which sells well throughout the country. Under the leadership of Lao Luo, General Wu Lao visited the gypsum new product showroom, which was happy for them to adopt new technologies to improve product quality, and encouraged them to boldly reform and innovate, ensure quality, and make good brands.
The next day, General Wu returned to his hometown of Longevity. Arrive at Changshou Street in the morning and have lunch at the district canteen. After lunch, Old General Wu went to the home of his relatives in the northeast street market temple, deng Zhenggen, former chairman of the Nanqiao Township People's Congress, his father was Deng Tingsheng, a lost old Red Army soldier, and his mother was Hu Zhuohua, the sister-in-law of Wu Xinquan's sister-in-law Wu Meihuafu. Old Deng said that after Old General Wu had lunch in the district that day, the old couple only brought a guard secretary to my house for lunch break. As soon as he came in and saw that my family had made a new red brick building, he praised my mother, Hu Zhuohua, and said, "Sister Zhao, this new building you have made is so good, it is wide and beautiful, much better than the house I live in Beijing." "I was very happy to see that I had made a new house and listened to my mother say that life is better now. Deng Zhenggen introduced: After Wu Meihua, the younger sister of The Old General Wu, got married at a young age, she had a very good relationship with Her husband Hu Jianzhong's younger sister Hu Zhuohua, and General Wu was also familiar with Hu Zhuohua from a young age. In the 1960s, Elder Wu once traveled through Changsha to pick up Wu Meihua and Hu Zhuohua to meet in Changsha and ask them to go to Beijing with them. Wu Meihua said that the family wanted to raise pigs and feed chickens and ducks, but they couldn't leave and insisted on refusing to go with them. Elder Wu was very concerned about his sister who lived in the countryside, and often wrote letters to ask for warmth and send money and gifts to her family.
Wu Naturally, the eldest granddaughter of General Wu, recalled that after the grandfather returned, he informed the eldest son's children to come back to meet together. I rushed back to Pingjiang from Xiangtan and accompanied my grandfather all the way back to Changshou Street with my younger siblings. That afternoon, it suddenly rained, the village road was slippery, and Grandpa and grandpa went to the hometown of the former Guiqiao Township Downstairs Village to worship the graves of their grandparents and other relatives. Later, he went to the village of Hunjiang in Dakou Duan Township to visit his sister Wu Meihua's family, and returned to the county seat in the evening.
The general had no tears
In the entourage of General Wu Lao, I saw a familiar young man, who was Wu Wenwei, the eldest grandson of Elder Wu. His father's name was Wu Tingsheng, the eldest son of General Wu Lao, and he was born to the original wife of his hometown. Wu Tingsheng once served as deputy secretary of Lishan Commune in Pingjiang County, in charge of culture, education and enterprises. When I was a private teacher in Kuriyama Commune, he was the supreme leader and knew him well. The little boy who used to come to Kuriyama Commune with his mother had grown into a handsome young man.
During the Spring Festival in 2019, I found the residence of Yuan Aixiang, the eldest daughter-in-law of The Old General Wu, and Wu Wenwei, the eldest grandson, and listened to them talk about the family lineage of the old General Wu:
General Wu Lao was born in March 1912 in Hejia section of Guiqiao, Changshou District, Pingjiang County. His grandparents had eight boys and two daughters, and the family was poor, and five of the eight men could not marry a wife. General Wu's father was the eighth in line, giving birth to two boys and one woman. In order to inherit a lineage for the old sixth brother who was a soldier abroad, the younger son Wu Xinquan was passed on to him and sent him to study private school for more than two years. The father said, "If the sixth uncle sends you to study with the money he sold his life, you have to work hard." Later, liu bo fell ill and died in Fujian, and the family was poor and could not afford to go to school, and Wu Xinquan began to herd cattle and collect firewood. In 1926, Wu Xinquan joined the Peasants' Association, in 1927 he joined the Red Guards, in 1928 he participated in the February Riot with a shuttle dart, and in 1929 he participated in the attack on Changshou Street with the Red Fifth Army, thus becoming a thorn in the eye of the landlords and local tycoons, and was hunted by house-to-door groups and fled into the mountains. In May 1930, when the Fifth Red Army returned to Pingjiang to conquer the county seat, Wu Xinquan and some Red Guards returned to participate in the mass celebration parade in the Longevity area. Unexpectedly, one night in June, the door-to-door regiment broke into Wu's house to arrest him, and Wu Xinquan hurriedly jumped over the wall and jumped out of the house to escape, and then ran to the county town with several Red Guards to join the Red Fifth Army.
In mid-August, the Red Third Army conquered Changsha, then retreated out of the provincial capital and returned to Changshou Street in Pingjiang County to rest. Wu Xinquan's father got the news and immediately ran to Changshou Street to find his son. He was very supportive of his son's participation in the Red Army, but he was reluctant to give up his son, and when he saw his son, he could not speak with excitement, but only tears. Wu Xinquan also shed tears, telling his father to take care of himself, promising, "When the revolution is victorious, I will definitely come back to see you." ”
During the days of the conquest, Wu Xinquan always missed his hometown, and when he saw the poor people fleeing without covering their clothes, he remembered his parents and relatives who lived in poverty in their hometown. In the winter of 1949, Wu Xinquan served as the political commissar of the 39th Army and led his troops to garrison Hankou in Hubei Province for recuperation. He thought that Wuhan was adjacent to Hunan in the south and not far from Pingjiang County, and took advantage of the rare rest time to take leave to return to his hometown to visit his relatives. After the report was approved by the organization, the military party committee also specially approved him to return to his hometown for 200 yuan. Wu Xinquan specially bought grain, salt, quilts, clothes and other popular daily necessities, and returned to his hometown with his wife Yu Huiru and his second daughter to visit his parents. Because his hometown had just been liberated, I was afraid that there were bandits, so Wu Xinquan took more than a dozen fighters and drove two captured American cars on the road. This was the first time Wu Xinquan returned to his hometown after liberation, he had been away from home for 19 years, and he had broken through those hardships and guns and bullets, hoping for the victory of the revolution. On the way home, he was very excited in his heart, did not forget the agreement with his father, and imagined the joy of father and son meeting.
He rushed all the way to his downstairs home in Pingjiang Guiqiao, knocked on the door, and came out to greet him was his crippled brother Wu Ganquan. Wu Xinquan eagerly asked his brother, "What about the parents?" The brother said, "They are all dead." Wu Xinquan was stunned. His brother told him: "After my father came home from Changshou Street, the door-to-door group came and arrested my father, tortured him, and forced him to call you back." My father was tortured to the point of near death, and after being released, he became ill and often wandered the streets of the village, shouting your name, not eating or drinking. One day, he bit the porcelain bowl and ate it, and was punctured by the porcelain piece and died. Her mother was devastated and died soon after. ”
The revolution was victorious, the parents died, the brother was disabled, the sister went to work as a child bride, and the ex-wife and son took refuge and fled. Wu Xinquan could not accept the cruel truth of the family's destruction, and he wept bitterly, ran up the mountain to kneel in front of his parents' graves, and cried bitterly. His wife, Yu Huiru, once said to his relatives: "This is the first time I have seen him cry so sadly and tearfully, and I have seen him shed tears." After that, he never cried again, never shed a tear. ”
Yuan Aixiang said that when her father went to join the Red Army, he was already married and had children at home, and the original wife was called Fang Xuemei, and they all called her Xuegan Niang. After dad joined the Red Army and left, the family suffered great hardships. Because they were family members of the Red Army and were called "bandits," the Kuomintang soldiers, the Qingxiang brigade, and the door-to-door regiment took turns to come to the house to arrest people, arrest their parents and brothers and torture them, the old parents were tortured and sick, and the elder brother was disabled. Xueganniang was caught several times, and she was also subjected to "hanging pig" and stepping on a bar, asking her to call her husband back. She had to flee with her cubs into the mountains for refuge, but she still couldn't hide. Once her cub was caught, and The Snow Lady went crazy. Her cub was carried over several hills by the Kuomintang soldiers, and saw that he was about to be dragged to death, thrown next to a broken temple, but fortunately was found by an old monk and carried in to save him. After more than a month, the cub came home, and The Snow Lady was so happy that she went crazy, and everyone said, "My cub is back!" My cub is back! "The mother was afraid that the cub would be poisoned again, so she fled with him to the field and begged for food. Dad heard that many Red Army family members in Pingjiang had been killed, and for a long time he did not hear from his family, thinking that she was no longer alive and married more than 10 years later. My mother has been staying in the Wu family, successively managing to bury her parents and brothers, suffering for a lifetime, and died in her 80s. Dad is very caring for our family, and the eldest son asked about the condition many times when he was ill, and helped to contact Xiangya Hospital for treatment. Wu Wenwei recalled: "When Grandpa returned to Pingjiang on May 4, he asked me to accompany me throughout the journey when I returned from Changlian, and before returning to Beijing, he sent me to work. Grandpa told me: 'Be responsible for yourself, for your family, for society.' I failed my grandfather. Yuan Aixiang said worriedly: "Wen Wei resigned and went to the sea, the business was not smooth, and the small family was scattered." After returning, he unfortunately fell and suffered cerebral hemorrhage, had open brain surgery, and then suffered another stroke and was paralyzed. How did he get it after I left? On March 22 this year, relatives of the Wu family told Yuan Aixiang that he died of illness at the age of 81. Sure enough, Wu Wenwei was in trouble.
After the death of the eldest son, the grandchildren are all working outside, and there are no relatives in the old family of GuiqiaoXiaxia Village. Old General Wu still often nags his family: "I want to go back to Pingjiang." After returning to Beijing that year, General Wu received several invitations from his hometown to participate in the commemoration of the Pingjiang Uprising. He has been on the battlefield for decades, injured many times, and is full of illness. In addition, during the Cultural Revolution, he was brutally criticized and tortured, fell into serious heart disease, had frequent attacks, and was repeatedly sent to the hospital for rescue. This tiger general, who had made the U.S. army afraid of the storm on the battlefield, often headed south, looking at Angelica from afar, weeping with sorrow, the ridge trees were difficult to cover and the thoughts were heavy, and the general had no tears of consolation. He was invited to write an inscription for the "Biography of the Heroic Martyrs of Pingjiang" in his hometown, and wrote "Remembering Many Unknown Martyrs", pinning his nostalgia for his family:
Conquest of north and south and east and west,
Many martyrs have not been named.
Blood stained the sands of the country,
The most loyal for the benefit of the people.
Heavenly Master Difficult to Compose the Soul Song of Loyalty,
It is difficult for the carver to do this feat.
Mountain flowers are dyed in layers,
The performance has been throughout the rainbow.
Heartbreaking
In October 1950, Wu Xinquan led the 39th Army to fight abroad to resist the United States and aid Korea, and in order to strike hard at the United Nations army led by the US army, he made outstanding military achievements and was awarded two national flag medals of the democratic people's republic of Korea of the first class and one national flag medal of the second class. In April 1953, he was ordered to return to China and served as deputy chief of staff and chief of staff of the Northeast Military Region, chief of staff of the Shenyang Military Region, and in 1955 he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general, and was awarded the order of August 1, 2nd Class, the Order of Independence and Freedom of the First Class, and the Liberation Medal of the First Class.
In 1957, Wu Xinquan entered the Higher Military Academy. During the study period, during the discussion after visiting the lower grassroots units, Wu Xinquan said the truth that "he did not stress science, did not consider the cost, and gained more than he lost" to the following people who engaged in exaggeration, falsified "satellites," and smelted steel on a large scale; in addition, in the winter of 1959, he launched the "anti-right opportunist" campaign. In August 1960, Wu Xinquan was appointed deputy commander of artillery. Artillery commander Qiu Chuangcheng and political commissar Chen Renqi divided their work into charge of artillery academies and universities, scientific research equipment, and conventional weapons work. Because the chief of staff of the headquarters was absent from his post twice, he was also asked to be in charge of the administration of the headquarters, foreign affairs, and artillery operations, organization, and equipment.
In October 1961, the Artillery Party Committee decided to establish the Artillery Engineering College and the Artillery Science and Technology Research Institute. Wu Xinquan was ordered to devote himself wholeheartedly to the regularization of artillery academies and schools. In 1964, in accordance with the instructions of the Central Military Commission, Wu Xinquan was responsible for catching artillerymen to study and popularize the "Guo Xingfu Teaching Method.". Just as Wu Xinquan was vigorously grasping the regularization of artillery and achieving results, the "Cultural Revolution" broke out, and he was once again brutally criticized by the rebels as a "Peng Huang Death Party." Despite the injustice, he worked silently and diligently for the party. Premier Zhou Enlai named Wu Xinquan to personally go to the Second Machine Factory to do a good job in restoring order and finalizing the production of a certain artillery. Wu Xinquan rushed to the Second Machine Factory, went deep among the masses to investigate, clarified the complicated contradictions in the factional struggle, persisted in relying on the masses of workers to help correct and eliminate evil, straightened out the chaos, quickly restored order, and accelerated production. Then, the technical personnel were organized to strengthen research and testing, and the finalization of a series of artillery and shells was implemented. Premier Zhou Enlai was very happy to learn about the new changes in the Second Machine Factory. One day in September 1970, Premier Zhou met Wu's wife, Yu Huiru, at the Beijing Hotel, and happily shook her hand and said, "Well, Wu Xinquan did a good job, and it took only 8 months for the Second Machine Factory to reach the record of production in the past eight years."
In 1980, the Central Military Commission completely rehabilitated Wu Xinquan for his erroneous criticism. In 1982, at the 12th Party Congress, Wu Xinquan was elected a member of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. During this period, he did a great deal of work to straighten out the party style and strengthen the building of a clean and honest government, to correct and rehabilitate unjust, false and wrongly decided cases of comrades-in-arms, and to solve difficulties for the families of martyrs. Peng Xiulan, the daughter of the martyr Peng Ao, the former commander of the Red Army Division in Yueyang County, was seriously ill in 1981, and her son sent her to Beijing to seek medical treatment and encountered difficulties to find Wu Xinquan. When Peng was discharged from the hospital, General Wu bought tickets for them and sent them to the train station to return home.
In 1985, the Central Military Commission approved Wu Xinquan to be treated as a full-time official of the Grand Military Region and awarded him the Red Star Meritorious Service Medal of the First Class. In his later years, Wu Xinquan, with amazing perseverance, wrote a number of reminiscences of military history, battle history, and battle examples during the Red Army, the New Fourth Army, and the Volunteer Army, and he bound these manuscripts with about 1.8 million words of the report he wrote, and bound them into a book and distributed them to the children for study. After retiring in 1988, he began writing a manuscript of his memoir, 1,000 Days on the Korean Battlefield – The 39th Army in Korea. When recalling the Korean War, he especially missed his comrades who died, and wrote in the poem "Remembering the Year of War":
Sword and horse wind year wielding armor,
The battle ended with white hair and untied his helmet.
Remember the hundred battles on the battlefield,
How many loyal souls sleep wild peaks.
I once heard Wu Tingsheng say in Lishan: My father likes to play basketball and watch football. He fought bravely on the basketball court and was called a "tank car". He was old and strong, and he formed a basketball team with several sons, trained seriously, often went to the major departments of the General Staff to participate in basketball competitions, and won many times, and the reputation of the basketball Wu Jiajun was greatly shocked. How many basketball players does the family have? We were curious. Lao Wu introduced: "The Wu family basketball team has 9 father and son members. Every time I went to Beijing, the most embarrassing thing was that I couldn't tell the size of my brothers and sisters, and I couldn't call out names. He said: The stepmother Yu Hui had a culture, taught her father to dance ballroom dance, and gave birth to 8 boys and 4 girls. Premier Zhou once joked: "You are so powerful, you have 12 children, you are an 'aircraft carrier'!" Chairman Mao praised after hearing this: "Do you have 12 children?" It's not easy! It's an aircraft carrier, and it's also a mother hero! ”
According to the relatives of the Wu family, Yu Huiru is a native of Anhui, not only a hero of her mother, but also a heroine among women and a talented woman in the military. She joined the revolution in 1937, joined the Party in 1940, and married Wu Xinquan in 1940. She served as a propaganda captain, the principal of the Anti-Japanese Primary School, the director of the Women's Rescue Association, the director of the kindergarten of the Northeast Military Region, and the deputy director of the Political Department directly under the Artillery Headquarters of the Central Military Commission. In 1955, Yu Huiru was awarded the Order of Independence and Freedom of the Third Class and the Liberation Medal of the Third Class. He left his post in August 1985 to recuperate and was a veteran cadre of the New Fourth Army Division.
General Wu died of illness on April 2, 1992, at the age of 80. On the Qingming Festival in April 2007, General Wu Xinquan's ashes were placed in the Pingjiang County Martyrs' Cemetery. After Wu Xinquan's death, Yu Huiru presided over the revision and completion of the publication of Wu Xinquan's memoirs "1,000 Days on the Korean Battlefield - The 39th Army in Korea" with great affection, and also participated in the compilation of biographies of "General Wu Xinquan" and "General Wu Xinquan". In 2007, she wrote and published the book "Me and Xinquan - Memoirs of Yu Huiru". Yu Huiru was awarded the Medal of Merit for Independence of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in July 1988 and died on January 13, 2015 at the age of 91. For more than 50 years, Wu Xinquan and Yu Huiru have been working together to raise 12 children to become talents, which has been passed down as a good story in the military and in their hometowns.