Historical Memories (I): The Revolutionary Process of a Little Anti-Japanese War Soldier

Poor childhood

I was born in 1925, enlisted in the army in December 1939, and joined the Communist Party of China in April 1941. My father Li Ju is the only son of my grandparents, and because of the poverty of the family, my father and two aunts married children from poor families, which is an inevitable phenomenon of being the right family.

My mother is the daughter of Yang in Panjia Village. My birth brought joy to the elderly in the family, but in addition to joy, it also added sorrow, and how to raise me as an adult became a burden for my parents. The family was poor, malnourished, and suffered from a big belly disease at a young age. As I walked, my relatives and friends gave me the nickname "Master Li", which was called until I was in school, and some of my classmates joked with me with this nickname. I have never been fat since I can remember, and it is inevitable that my family is poor and thin.

When I was about three years old, because there was no food at home, my uncle went to Lanshantou to pick my sister (Li Xiulin) to my grandmother's house in Panjia Village to raise her. Although my grandmother's family is not wealthy, it is always easier to mix in the countryside, and you can eat some coarse grains, sweet potatoes, wild vegetables and other things. At that time, my mother was reluctant to let me go, so she took me to Aunt Beishan's house to order sweet potatoes and other things to satisfy my hunger. On the way to Beishan, he met a man who went to the field to deliver food, and his mother asked him for two sweet potatoes to fill his stomach, so he finally climbed to Aunt Beishan's house. Before leaving, my uncle dug a few pounds in the ungrown sweet potato field and brought it home to me.

In order to feed the whole family, my grandmother sold food on the street to make a living, she didn't know a word, and she didn't know the scales, so she could only sell it with measuring tools, and she ran a small business, went to the countryside to buy it, and then sold it back to Lanshantou, making little money, making ends meet, and after a long time, even the old book was eaten up, and her father went to the beach to pick up clams and touch crab roe, and after selling it, he went to buy some food and cook at home. Later, my father learned to be a carpenter, and he didn't go to school for a day, but he was very smart and learned a good craft from his master. Later, I learned to dye cloth, the owner of the dyeing workshop is a Ganyu person, named Wei Xuling, and my father got along very well, and later Wei Xuling resold the dyeing workshop to my father, and since then my father has regarded dyeing cloth as a lifelong profession.

My father's life was a life of hard work and frugality, he was a kind man, he learned a good hand in calculations, and he was also able to read words, because he suffered from being uneducated, so no matter how difficult it was, he had to provide for me to go to school. First studied in a private school, then a foreign school, first the East Temple School, and then the West Temple School. During the winter vacation, he personally taught me to learn abacus, and taught me the abacus tricks such as "entering the horse and wrestling eggs", "lion rolling hydrangea", "Han Xin's secret soldiers", etc., without reservation, and he always hoped to train me to become a bookkeeper, so that when I grow up, I can eat in the rich man's store. I also think that this is a way to make a living, the rich man's family has a fishing boat to do business, and the landlord's family has hired workers and land, and a family like ours is the best way out.

It was not easy for me to go to a senior elementary school in Lanshantou, and I often did not have enough to eat, and I went to school hungry, and after school at noon, when there was no food at home, my father gave us two copper coins and told me to go to the street to buy something to eat. In the summer, I didn't have shirts, and when I saw the students of the rich man's family wearing Western-style pants, I was so hungry. In winter, I had no cotton shoes, my feet and hands were frozen with sores, and I walked with a limp, so my classmates nicknamed me "Li Cripple", and this nickname was called until I joined the army. These scars are still imprinted on the hands and feet. During the whole school year, my family asked me to drop out of school several times, and I cried many times and didn't want to abandon my studies, so I finally graduated from high school.

The teenager fled the army five times

In the "September 18" incident of 1931, the Japanese invaders invaded and occupied the three northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang, which were sacred to the mainland, and the compatriots outside the border were ravaged and trampled on by the Japanese invaders. A large number of students in Lanshantou Senior Primary School in our hometown were also infected with pure hearts by this affectionate and tragic song, and a passionate feeling of hating the Japanese invaders was deeply imprinted in their minds, especially the song "Crying goodbye to the white mountains and black waters, walking all over the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, wandering, fleeing, fleeing, wandering, wandering, wandering, wandering to, where to flee?...... The song meticulously and vividly describes the suffering of the Northeast compatriots who have been displaced. We sang while shedding tears, expressing our sympathy for the 30 million compatriots in Northeast China and our indignation at Chiang Kai-shek's non-resistance.

The old hatred has not been avenged, and the new hatred has been added. On July 7, 1937, the Japanese invaders launched another war of aggression at Lugou Bridge. The sound of a cannon shook the hearts of the people of the whole country, and the teachers of the school also added lessons to us to resist Japan and save the country. With the growing enthusiasm of the people of the whole country to resist Japan, the students of Lanshantou Senior Primary School, inspired and educated by progressive teachers, set up various rescue organizations. In addition to Wang Jilan, the members of the club include Huang Zhenhuan (Huang Peng), Huang Zhenxu, Wang Anbin, Li Xilin (Li Mian), Chang Yuzhi (Chang Yi, Guancao Wangren), Liu Zhenchen (Tongjia Zhuangzi), and the fifth-grade students also actively participated in the rescue activities, including Huang Zhentang, Wang Yonglan (Wang Fanping), Xu Xuenong, Su Feng, Xu Jiaru, Xu Congxian (Xu Zhenyuan), etc. Under the leadership of the underground party, the fifth and sixth grade students organized anti-Japanese rallies everywhere, developed mass anti-Japanese organizations, and successively established children's leagues. I remember that at that time, Fan Jingpeng (secretary of the Rizhao County Party Committee) and his daughter Fan Shuqin also gathered a large number of students to conduct propaganda and education in a family in the west gate of Lanshantou, explaining the Communist Party's anti-Japanese proposition, and also publicizing some speeches of revolutionary leaders.

After the "77" incident, the Japanese invaders moved south along the Jinpu Road, and Han Fuji, chairman of the Kuomintang Shandong Provincial Government, adopted the doctrine of non-resistance, and without firing a single shot, the whole of Shandong was surrendered to the Japanese invaders, and the enemy soon occupied Jinan, Qingdao, Yantai and other major cities and along the railway, and the county town of Rizhao was also occupied by the enemy, and all parts of the coastal area were also attacked by the Japanese invaders. During this period, enemy warships often went to the waters of Lanshantou to carry out machine-gun strafing and artillery bombardment, causing casualties among residents and the collapse of houses, and the three east houses of my house were also destroyed by enemy shells, and the residents could not get peace, so they often fled to Xixiang and Beishan to take refuge.

The determination to resist Japan was made, but they were at a loss as to where to go. At that time, there were many troops under the banner of anti-Japanese armed forces, including Li Yanxiu's 16th Regiment and the 57th Army of the Northeast Army's withdrawal to Shandong. Where do we go there? When I was blindly pursuing, Huang Zhenhuan asked me to collude with me on how to escape home to participate in the Anti-Japanese War. He said: "The 57th Army's wartime service regiment is recruiting people from our office, should we go to participate?" and said: "This is Huang Yi (a member of the Communist Party of China)." (Later, it became clear that it was Comrade Wang Zhenqian, the person in charge of the 111th Division of the 57th Army, who supported Huang Yi's work at that time.) Accompanied by Wang Jilan, Su Tian, Wang Anbin, etc., when they were discussing the details, they were discovered by my father, he hurriedly walked in front of us, Huang Zhenhuan noticed first, he turned his head and ran away, and I was taken home by my father. The next day, I heard that Wang Jilan and Huang Zhenhuan ran away under Huang Zhenbin's lead, which caused a sensation in Lanshantou at that time, but I know very well that they (she) are not running around, but going out to fight Japanese devils as soldiers, thinking that this time I didn't run, let's talk about it next time, you (referring to my father) can't look at me every day. From then on, I was kept at home and not allowed to go out. It was my first failure in the army.

Since I have run away many times, my family can no longer take me. At this time, there was a Zhang Moqiao at the head of Lanshan, who was entrusted by the First Regiment of the Ninth Detachment of the Eighth Route Army to expand the army in the area of "Anlan", called the Ninth Detachment Special Service Company. At the end of 1939, through Zhang Moqiao, I got in touch with Song Yongtao, a democracy movement officer of the 1st Regiment of the 9th Detachment, and took us to the vicinity of Duduanzi Village in the southwest of Rizhao City without our parents, and found the independent battalion of the 9th Detachment (also an army expansion organization), and after fighting the Wanxianhui (a feudal superstitious organization controlled by the enemy), I went to Ganyu County to merge with the 2nd Detachment to form the 2nd Brigade of the Shandong Column, first in the 2nd Brigade and 4th Regiment Democracy Movement Team, and then to the Propaganda Team, and was appointed as the leader of the 2nd Propaganda Team. This is my fifth time in the army.

First wounded

The Second Brigade and the Fourth Regiment of the Shandong Column are the old foundations of the Second Detachment, and their combat effectiveness is relatively strong, and most of the military commanders above the company level are veteran Red Army soldiers, and every time there is an important combat mission, the four regiments take part in it. The regiment's combat tasks are arduous, and the tasks of the propaganda team are not easy; they often go to the company to teach and sing revolutionary songs; during marching and fighting, they must carry out propaganda and agitation work; on the way of marching and marching, they must put up and write slogans, and they must also seize the gaps in battle, rehearse theatrical programs, and organize entertainment evenings at camps. In an arduous and difficult environment, the troops lacked cultural and recreational activities, and although the level of the propaganda team's performances was not high, they were also very popular with the commanders and fighters of the troops, and the performances were all small programs written and performed by themselves, mainly centering on the combat life of the troops, publicizing the advanced, strengthening the military-civilian relations, and inspiring the will to fight. The props are also very simple, a mule carries a curtain and gongs and drums, and when it comes to the performance task, find a sheltered place, build an earthen platform, pull up the curtain, light the gas lamp, and start the performance. Although the level of the performance was not high, the soldiers and the masses of the people were enthusiastic spectators, and as soon as the gongs and drums sounded, the mood of the masses was aroused.

In 1941, our regiment was stationed in a mountain village west of Zhubian in Junan County, and in order to collect yellow explosives, some earth bombs were picked up from the turret, and propaganda team leader Sun Mingxuan led several members of our second detachment to strip earth bombs in our team's dormitory, so as to strip the yellow explosives from the soil bombsBut when I opened my eyes, I couldn't see anything, and my right ear couldn't hear the sound, the sound and force of the explosion were quite huge, dozens of bombs exploded at the same time, and the two roofs of the masses were all lifted (compensation was later made), which alarmed the entire regiment headquarters, and the regiment commander Sun Jixian also took the cavalry squad to the regiment headquarters to inspect, first buried the dead, and escorted the wounded.

I was wounded this time very young, and I thought to myself that I am only 16 years old this year, and I will be blind from now on, so what will I do in the future? If I can't become a soldier, what will I do for the rest of my life? The head of the health team came to see me and planned to send me to the rear health center, but I didn't want to go, so I stayed in the propaganda team and was treated with the army, and I was given a few drops of eye drops every day, but there was no treatment. During the march, the comrades of the propaganda team carried me along, day and night, and they were the same for me. About a month later, when I woke up in the morning, I opened my eyes and saw the bright light, and happily told the comrades around me, they were also very happy, and since then they have been getting better and better day by day, and after a few days I realized that my eyebrows and hair were destroyed by the air wave and heat of explosives, after this incident, I heard that Zou Yu, who was 13 years old in my detachment, died on the spot after shrapnel hit the heart, and 14-year-old Liu Yu and Peng Jiuling, who were sent to the hospital due to their injuries, also died shortly after being sent to the hospital due to their injuries, and Sun Mingxuan, the leader of the propaganda team, had his eyes blown up, and most of the fingers of his hands were blown off.

In 1964, when I was transferred from Tai'an to work in the Linyi Military Division, I went to the Martyrs' Cemetery to sweep the graves, and on the stone tablets in the north hall of the cemetery, the names of three young comrades-in-arms were engraved. Their premature sacrifices for the sake of the revolution, their voices and smiles, still echo in my mind. Although the propaganda captain survived, he was disabled for life, and when I was wounded for the second time in 1943, I was still living in a ward with him, and after the Japanese surrendered, he returned to his hometown. With three deaths and three injuries in the accident (including a thirteen-year-old trumpeter), I was one of the lucky ones who survived.

The hard life behind enemy lines was a workout for me

When the propaganda team of the fourth regiment, each person was provided with a set of cotton cloth and cotton in the winter of that year, so that he could make it, we helped the little propagandists, where did we do this kind of "work", so we had to turn to the local aunts and sisters-in-law for help, and some of the "work" roads had to be done by themselves, such as quilts, only they learned to dry, and there was no soap when the clothes were dirty, and they asked the masses for tofu pulp to wash.

After the "Southern Anhui Incident," the situation behind enemy lines became even more difficult, and the military and civilian life in the base areas was very difficult. The army collected only a limited amount of food from the local authorities, most of which consisted of miscellaneous grains, corn, miserable seeds, peanut cakes, dried sweet potatoes, and so on. As for vegetables, only self-reliance, tofu and bean sprouts are considered good dishes, spring, summer and autumn, often go to the field to dig wild vegetables to eat.

I didn't have money to buy cigarettes to smoke, so I went to the garden of the masses and rubbed sesame leaves. One year, the supply department stipulated that a set of cotton clothes for two years could be rewarded with three yuan, and I signed up for smoking in order to smoke. The cotton clothes of the second year were already in tatters, so they had to be mended and mended. In the rainy and snowy weather of winter, I also have to march and fight, and once I dropped the sole of my shoe during the march, and on the mountain path covered with stones, every step on the ground hurts. There are countless lice on the body, every winter, there are countless lice in cotton jackets and cotton pants, and they can't be cleaned at all, so they have to roast with fire, just listen to the crackling sound on the fire, usually they can't be bitten by lice, and rub their backs against the door frame or wall, there was a popular quip at that time: lice on the body are glorious, and whoever does not have lice on his body is not considered a real revolution. Due to poor sanitary conditions, scabies and malaria are common, and there is a shortage of medical treatment, and the external drugs are red mercury and iodine wine, and the best internal drugs are sulfonamides, most of which are smuggled in from enemy-occupied areas.

At that time, there were more than 20 people in the propaganda team of the four regiments, and only three people are still alive in the world. In addition to me, there are also instructors of the propaganda team, Sun Yushan and Wang Jianlin, who were political commissars of the Tibet Military Region before his retirement and are now retired in Chengdu.

The 2nd Brigade and the 4th Regiment entered the Yimeng Mountains for the third time

The first time was at the end of 1940, when the Fourth Regiment was ordered to go to the Yimeng Mountains to seize a set of printing machines in the enemy-occupied area for our army's use; the troops set out from Xujiabanzhuang in Ganyu County, Jiangsu Province, and arrived at Daokou Village in Junan County on the afternoon of the first day. Eat rice and baked cards in Ganyu County, and eat miserable pancakes in Junan Daokou Village, although it is uncomfortable to swallow, you have to reluctantly eat it, because you will have to march long distances in the future. The next day, we arrived at Yanlu Village, Yinan County, when the "Southern Anhui Incident" occurred. At that time, life in the base area was even more difficult, he was stationed in Yanlu Village for more than 10 days, he ate two meals of bean foam every day, he was so hungry, his stomach was not full, and his cold resistance was also poor, he slept on the ground covered with soybean leaves at night, and stamped his feet in the cold during the day.

In January 1941, he was ordered to go to the Yimeng Mountains to participate in the anti-stubborn campaign. The road passes through Gegou Village, Yinan County, the New Year Chinese New Year's Eve stationed in the village, the next day is the first day of the first month, the masses set off firecrackers, the rich and poor have to eat a meal of dumplings, and we are eating Wowotou while marching, the cold north wind, blowing through the cotton clothes. I arrived at Jiehu Town that night, and arrived at the small village near Mamuchi very late the next afternoon, hungry, tired, and sleepy, and as soon as I arrived at the edge of the village, I fell asleep leaning on the haystack. I don't know how long later, two comrades from the propaganda team hurriedly came to wake me up and said, "Hurry up and chase the troops." "It turned out that when the troops returned, I was asleep, and on the march they found that I had fallen behind, so they sent someone to return to the same place to wake me up. When returning, he did not pass through the boundary lake, because the boundary lake had been occupied by the enemy, so he made a detour to reach Heyang Village, intending to cross the Yi River east from Heyang.

When crossing the river, it was found that the Japanese puppet army was crossing the river from the south side of the river crossed by our army, from east to west. We crossed the Yi River and prepared to cross the "Taitan" road to return to the coast, but as soon as we reached the west side of the "Taiwei" road, we found that the Japanese puppet army was moving from south to north on the "Taitan" road. The regiment commander wanted to fight, but the political commissar did not agree, because the troops were too tired, and after the enemy had passed, our regiment quickly returned to Daokou Village, Junan County, Binhai District, across the ditch and road. The next morning, I found that the founding team of the "Kang Da" followed our regiment eastward, and when our regiment moved to Zhubian in Junan County, the students of the first branch of the "Kang Da" walked south along Zhubian Village in single clothes, wearing single clothes in the harsh winter. Afterwards, we learned that not long after our regiment left the village near Mamuchi, several Japanese puppet troops surrounded the village, but fortunately we evacuated in time, otherwise, the consequences would be unimaginable.

In November 1941, the Japanese invaders concentrated 50,000 men to carry out a large-scale sweep in the central Luzhong area, and the scale of this sweep was unprecedented; in order to smash the enemy's sweep, the third battalion of our regiment was ordered to return to the Yimeng Mountains. Under the leadership of Deputy Regiment Commander Lai (the old Red Army), the victorious interspersed into the hinterland of Yimeng Mountain, and cooperated with the local military and civilians to counter-sweep and fight devils. On the night of December 2, the third battalion was stationed in Lilin Village, Yinan County, surrounded by more than 3,000 puppet troops, in the case of not being completely surrounded, the sentries discovered the enemy's situation, the troops quickly gathered to break out, first to the southeast, then to the southwest to break through, after being blocked, turned to the direction of due north, at that time the north side had not yet been surrounded by the enemy, our regiment headquarters and the seventh and eighth companies broke out, and the ninth company was intercepted by the enemy, and had to fight with the enemy, from dawn to the afternoon sunset, repeatedly fought countless times, the enemy and us suffered heavy casualties. A platoon commander survived a leg wound that hid under a coffin. After the counter-sweep was completed and the 3rd Battalion returned to the coastal area, the guard company of the Coastal Special Administration was transferred to the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Regiment and 3rd Battalion, which was changed to 3rd Battalion and 9th Company.

At the same time as the enemy carried out a large-scale sweep in the Yimeng Mountains, it also carried out a number of small-scale sweeps in the coastal areas, and the military and civilian facilities in the base areas suffered some losses. By the beginning of 1942, the regiment had been streamlined, the propaganda team had been abolished, and I had been assigned to a special service and re-elected as a youth officer. Soon after taking up his post, he was ordered to be transferred to the Teaching Brigade of the Second Brigade of the "Mountain Column" to study Xi; during the period of his Xi studies, the Second Brigade and the Fourth Regiment were transferred to the formation of the First Brigade of Luzhong.

(Li Mian, Director of the Political Department of the Linyi Military Division)