In October 1936, the three main forces of the Red Army finally triumphantly joined forces in the Hoeryeong area. After I left the First Army, I often missed my commander and comrades-in-arms, and I looked forward to meeting my division for a long time. However, I didn't see the enthusiastic scene of the meeting.
After my second visit to Tongwei, I fell ill all at once due to excessive fatigue due to the continuous rain march. He had a high fever and was unconscious for several days. After seeing it, the doctor said that he was very sick and that it would be dangerous if he did not diagnose and treat it quickly. However, the Ministry of Health of the Army is in dire short of medicines, and the troops still have to carry out tasks, so there is no guarantee of treatment. Commander Xiao Ke immediately sent Comrade Chen Zenglian, chief of the management section of the headquarters, to take a platoon to carry me on a stretcher overnight to the Ministry of Health of the Fourth Front Army to see Minister Su Jingguan for treatment. I lay on the stretcher groggy and I don't know how long it took. One day I woke up and asked my comrades, "Where are we now?" and they told me, "We have been crossing the Yellow River for two days." "It turned out that our party caught up with the general detachment of the Fourth Front Army that was crossing the river on the edge of the Yellow River, and then followed across the Yellow River.
At that time, the troops that crossed the Yellow River to the west successively included the General Detachment of the Fourth Front Army and the 30th Army, the Ninth Army, and the Fifth Army (formerly the 5th Army of the First Front Army), totaling more than 21,000 people. This is the Western Route Army.
After the three armies crossed the Yellow River to the west, the communication with the main force of the Red Army in the east of the river was soon cut off by the enemy. In early November, the Western Route Army began to advance towards the Hexi Corridor in Gansu and won victories one after another. However, due to the deep penetration of the lone army, the offensive soon became dull.
After I crossed the river with the general team directly under the Fourth Front Army, I at first followed the Health Department of the Fourth Front Army on the march and treated my illness. After arriving in Yongchang, my illness was basically cured. However, at this time, the enemy situation became more and more serious, and Ma Bufang, Ma Buqing, and others mobilized seven cavalry brigades and one infantry brigade to surround our Western Route Army. The enemy is fierce and fierce, moves quickly, and is good at running. The Red Ninth Army lost more than half of its losses in the Battle of Gulang and was reduced from six regiments to three regiments. At this moment, Comrade Chen Changhao (then chairman of the Military and Political Committee of the Western Route Army) talked to me and asked me to serve as chief of staff of the Ninth Army.
Soon after I took up my post, Comrade Sun Yuqing, the former commander of the army, was transferred to Comrade Wang Shusheng and the commander of the Ninth Army. Subsequently, the entire Western Route Army moved to Yongchang, Shandan, Gaotai and other places, and was finally surrounded by the enemy in Ni's camp and fought hard for 40 days. All the commanders and fighters of our Western Route Army fought bravely and bloodily, but because the enemy was outnumbered, our army ran out of ammunition and food, and by March 1937, the whole army suffered a tragic defeat, and the remaining 2,000 people fought hard in the Qilian Mountains by two routes, east and west. One of the routes, led by Comrade Li Xiannian, left Xingxing Gorge in the west and entered Xinjiang under the support of Chen Yun and Teng Daiyuan, representatives of the Party Central Committee. About 300 or 400 of our men were scattered by the enemy, and some of our comrades were disguised and stealth, and from then on I began a journey of arduous trekking.
In early spring, the south of the Yangtze River is the season when the grass grows and the warbler flies, while the Qilian Mountain, which is located in the northwest plateau, is frozen and snowy, inaccessible, and there is no trace of birds. Our contingent of several hundred men made a difficult march east. Comrade Xu Taixian and I walked at the end of the team and were responsible for sheltering the stragglers. It was dark, the road was dangerous, the wind was cold, and the people were tired, walking and walking, the front stopped, I went up to ask, it turned out that I had lost contact with the home team, and some comrades started to complain, causing everyone to be depressed. I patiently explained to everyone, hurry up, and you will catch up when you get to the front. The team moved on, but more and more people were left behind.
By daybreak, we had not yet caught up with the main team, and the enemy began to search the mountains, so we had to evacuate to the woods and take cover. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue caused the man to fall to the ground and fall asleep as if he had fallen apart. When I woke up, it was already afternoon, and I checked, and there were only me and Zhu Liangcai, Fang Qiang, Xu Taixian, and a dozen fighters around.
More than a dozen of us walked around in the majestic Qilian Mountains and fought the enemy for four days. There was no food to eat, so they had to kill the war horses, roast them on the fire with bones and meat and eat them with blood, and when they had no water to drink, they grabbed a handful of snow and nibbled on ice cubes... But it was not always a way to go on like this, and even if we were not captured by the enemy, we would starve to death and freeze to death, so we decided to go down the mountain and explore the Pingbazi.
At dawn, we touched the vicinity of a village called Shuiyuan at the foot of the mountain, and found that there were enemies stationed in the village. We saw that it was getting dark, and there was nowhere to hide, so we had to go back up the hill, climb halfway up the hill, and catch our breath on a dry lawn. I propose to you: the enemy at the bottom of the mountain may search the mountain during the day, and everyone must climb to a higher place, evacuate and hide among the cracks and grass, and not let the enemy catch them, and then gather here after dark.
The comrades dispersed in twos and threes, and I climbed with the guards to the top of the mountain, where there stood a huge rocky rock, and a few small trees grew in the recess of the rock, and we climbed into the recess and stood close to the small trees.
The sun was rising, and the neighing of horses, the roars of men, and the sporadic gunfire of the enemy searching the mountains below could be faintly heard until the sun was in the west. At dusk, the guards and I went down to the small lawn halfway up the hill to gather, but there were no other comrades in sight. We searched everywhere, but we were nowhere to be found, and it seemed that there was a lot of bad luck. (Later, I heard that Zhu Liangcai, Fang Qiang, Xu Taixian and other comrades were hunted down by the enemy that day and tortured.) After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, it was sent back from Qinghai after many negotiations by our party. )
At this time, the sun is setting. While I waited for it to get dark, I fell into deep thought: since the day I joined the Red Army, I have experienced battles large and small, both in bitter annihilation and in hasty encounters, in victorious battles and in unfavorable battles, but our army has never encountered an entire company eaten by the enemy. Now I have witnessed with my own eyes the whole process of the tragic defeat of the Western Route Army, the Ninth Army lost more than half of its soldiers, the Fifth Army lost its high platform and was martyred, the Nijia Camp fought a bloody battle, and only 1,000 men remained in the whole army, and the troops were scattered in Shiwo...... The tragic scene of the annihilation of the entire Western Route Army was like the entire Qilian Mountain pressing on my heart, so heavy that people could not breathe.
Looking at the remnant sun that was gradually setting behind the mountain, I had a thought in my heart: When the sun sets, it rises! The Western Route Army has failed, but the revolution is not over, the Party Central Committee is still there, the Hedong Red Army is still there, and the commanders and fighters of the Western Route Army will not be captured and killed. I got up and walked with my guards to the east, toward the place where the sun rose.
The guards and I came down from Qilian Mountain and walked along the side of the mountain. Under the cover of night, we walked into a village and stopped in front of a detached hut. From my experience, the huts that are left alone on the edge of the village are generally poor families. We knocked on the door gently, and a fellow in a torn sheepskin tube let us into the house and brought us two bowls of porridge to eat. The villagers told us: "The Ma family is investigating tightly, and they will arrest the Red Army when they see it." You can't go like this. "
I tentatively discussed with him: "It is inconvenient for us to walk in military uniforms, can we change our clothes?"
The fellow looked at the torn sheepskin on his body, and said with some embarrassment: "My family is poor, and this clothes are too dirty." "
I quickly explained, "It's okay, the more broken the better." "
So the fellow brought me a leather tube full of holes and a bare-covered goatskin coat, and I left him a cotton military uniform and a lambskin coat. The fellow gave me a felt hat peculiar to the peasants of the Northwest. This outfit, with a stick, really looks a bit like a child.
At dawn, the two of us walked to a temple, the small temple was dilapidated, it seemed that the incense had long been cut off, and we were going to hide here during the day. Pushing open the temple door, I saw two wispy men smoking big cigarettes lying inside, and it was obviously impossible to get out, so I took out my dry pipe and leaned in and smoked it by their fire.
The two men looked at us and asked, "Are you two Reds?"
We admit that it was the Red Army. They smoked a lot of cigarettes and insisted on pulling us to their house to eat. We followed one of them into the house.
After the meal, we were about to say goodbye to our master, but the man stopped at the door and said, "Come with me." "
"Where?" I asked.
"Go to the horse's house," he said, and he took out a piece of paper and asked us, "Are you literate?"
I exchanged glances with the guards and said in unison, "Illiterate." "
The man handed the paper to us, raised his voice and said, "Take a good look, I am the adjutant of the Ma family, I have come back from personal leave, come with me!"
I glanced at the paper a few times, and I saw that he was not an adjutant at all, and it was written that he had been expelled for violating the military discipline of the Ma family's team. I saw that this guy was ripping off, so I said to him, "Well, I only have two dollars on me, give you one, and you let us go." "This money is the tail of food that I have saved after joining the Red Army.
The guy pondered. I motioned for the guard to go first, as his feet were frozen and he was slow to walk. I was ready to fight the guy: if he stopped me again, I would unceremoniously give him a stick. This "adjutant" of the Ma family probably saw that we really had no oil and water to squeeze, so he grabbed the two yuan and let me go.
We quickly got out of this place. The guard's feet were so rotten that he couldn't walk. In the evening, I helped him into a poor family, and the fellow sympathized with the Red Army's plight and took the risk to take him in.
I said goodbye to the guards and continued to flee the famine and ask for food and walk east. Since then, I have always been thinking about him, and I have inquired about his whereabouts in many ways, but there has been no news.
Since the fiasco of the Western Route Army, the always arrogant Ma Jiajun has become even more arrogant. From Jiuquan to Wuwei, they spread a dense net along the entire Hexi corridor, and sent many cavalry detachments to search for our military personnel everywhere, and many comrades were captured by the enemy and brutally killed.
I cleaned up my body and prepared for sacrifice. At this time, I was left with only a pistol without bullets, a medal of the Red Star of the Second Degree, and a compass. The gun was taken from the enemy, and it could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy again, I dismantled the empty gun and threw the parts into the ravine one by one; the Red Star Medal was a symbol of the glory of the Red Army, and the enemy must not be allowed to stain it, so I hid it in a hole in a tree; that compass was seized from the enemy's division commander Li Ming during the fourth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign, and I could not do without it to find the Red Army and the Party. I used my compass to find my bearings, tucked it into the hole in my jacket, and set out on my way.
I walked east along the north side of the Hexi Corridor, where rocky mountains were sometimes barren and grassy, and the ancient Great Wall of Wolong stretched eastward. I walked twenty or thirty miles in the dark every night with a compass, and found a place to hide during the day.
One day, I was hiding near Shuimogou, thirty miles west of Yongchang. Dusk was approaching, and I estimated that the enemy, who had been searching for a day, should gather their troops and return to the camp, so that I would come out of the shelter and walk close to the Great Wall in order to hurry early. The ancient Great Wall was like a barrier blocking my left side, and I watched vigilantly while I hurriedly walked. I was about to turn a corner, and I thought that if an enemy turned and bumped into my face, I would not have time to dodge, so I immediately ran to the ditch by the side of the road. Just as I had just descended to the bottom of the ditch, five horsemen came at the turn, and I bent down and pretended to pull weeds, and the enemy soldiers looked at me and left without coming for questioning.
From then on, I carefully avoided the main road and chose the small path. In a place between Yongchang and Wuwei, I once again narrowly escaped the tiger's mouth. On that day, I passed by a village, and a large road passed through the north of the village, and I walked from the path to the south of the village. Seeing that I was about to leave the village, and only the last house was left to hide, I cautiously looked first, and saw two horsemen running along the main road. Going back or dodging may arouse the suspicion of the enemy. At this time, there was a donkey in the field south of the village, and I was in a hurry, pretending to be driving the donkey, and ran away while shouting.
To the east of Wuwei, the enemy's search is not so tight, as long as it is farther away from the main road, sometimes it can be walked during the day. One day, I was approaching a flock of sheep, and I happened to look back at the dust and smoke billowing from the west, far and near. I asked the shepherd, "Is there a cavalry coming from behind?"
He looked to the west, then at me and said, "It's the Ma family team that is coming, you can go quickly!"
I said to him, "It doesn't matter, please drive the sheep south." "
Together we drove away with the flock. By the time the enemy horse team came to the place where we had just stood, we were already two or three hundred meters away. More than 20 enemy cavalry galloped past without stopping. I escaped for the third time.
For more than a month in the Hexi Corridor, I lived a wild life of walking day and night, eating and sleeping in the open air. Every morning and evening, I quietly ran to the edge of the village without anyone and knocked on a small house to ask for something to eat. Those poor people are really good, they are in the spring famine, and they are obviously not full, but they always give me a bowl of porridge and fried noodles. It was only with their help that I was able to sustain myself.
Finally, one day, I walked to the Yellow River.
That night, I unexpectedly met three soldiers of the Red Thirtieth Army on the road, and we traveled together. When the day dawned, we came to a small village by the Yellow River.
The Yellow River splits the canyon and rushes forward, and without ferries and skilled boatmen, you don't even want to cross the river. It happened that a fellow villager came to the river with a plow and an ox, untied a small boat, and prepared to plow the land east of the river. We went up and asked him to take us across the river.
The fellow looked embarrassed and said, "I'll bring you over, and the Ma family will kill my whole family if they know it." "
We can't force it, but we can't cross the Yellow River that is close at hand, and our hearts are burning.
The fellow told us, "There is a ferry five miles down from here, and you can pass through there, and there are many of your people passing there." "
We hurried downstream, as he had instructed, and there was indeed a ferry on the other side of the river. The boatman shouted to us across the river, "Wait a minute, I'll come." "
We hid in the mountains for a while, and the ferry boat rowed over, and the boatman beckoned to us, "Come on." "
When we got into the boat, he opened the lid and told us to lie down. He told us that on the other side of the river is the main road from Lanzhou to Ningxia, and there are often teams of the Ma family coming and going. He repeatedly advised, "When you go ashore, don't take the main road, but go up the mountain, and when you reach the other side of the mountain, you will be on the road to the Tara pool." "
As we lay in the cramped and dimly lit cabin, our bodies bobbing and undulating with the boat, and the roar of the river in our ears, I seemed to see the brave boatman flying over the rapids in a small boat between the mountains and valleys. We crossed the Yellow River safely.
When they disembarked, the three warriors who accompanied him gave the boatman part of the salt on their backs, and the boatman thanked him repeatedly. Originally, he risked his life to help us and help many Red Army soldiers, but he thanked us -- this is the great and simple Yellow River boatman, this is the great and simple people.
After crossing the Yellow River, the three soldiers of the Red 30th Army hurried away, and I was left behind because of a sore foot, so I had to hurry alone. When I crossed the hill and it was getting late, I came to the edge of the village, and was walking to a courtyard when a man appeared through the courtyard gate. The man was about twenty-six or seventeen years old, with flat hair and wearing a half-worn blue tunic that was not new. He doesn't look like an ordinary farmer, but like a person who works outside. The young man asked me, "Where are you from?"
I said, "From Jingyuan." "
"Listen to your accent like that of Jiangxi, how did you come to Jingyuan?" he continued
Asked.
Although I am not from Jiangxi, my southern accent cannot be concealed after all, so I have to lie and say: "I am from the Eighth Division, and I passed through Jingyuan during the Red Army last year, and I fell behind due to illness, so I worked in my villager's house to earn food." "
He asked me, "What is the name of the commander of your eighth division?"
"The commander of the Eighth Division is called Mao Bingwen. I replied without thinking. As an opponent in battle, the situation of the enemy commander must be mastered, not to mention that this Mao Bingwen was a defeated general under us as early as Jiangxi.
He listened to my answer, pondered for a moment, and then said slyly: "No, your division commander is called Mao Zedong!"
I couldn't help but be shocked: Oh no! Eighty percent of this man is from the militia. I escaped from several encounters with the enemy in Hexi, but today I just crossed the Yellow River but sent it to someone's door, which is really unlucky!
I was thinking about countermeasures, but the young man explained: "I used to belong to the 26th Route Army, I went to Jiangxi, fought with the Red Army, and now I am on leave and go home to support my mother. "
When I heard that the "26th Route Army" was moved, our Red Fifth Army was the unit of the 26th Route Army that rioted in Ningdu, and it seemed that he knew something about the Red Army.
He then told me: "The Red Army is now in northern Shaanxi, and you are only part of the people who have gone to Hexi. I know you're in trouble, where are you going?"
I couldn't say it explicitly, so I excused, "Go home." "
Unexpectedly, he said to me: "Don't go home, it's better to be a Red Army." The Red Army is in Qingyang, and you will find the Red Army when you arrive in Qingyang. As he spoke, he pulled me into the courtyard, "Stay at my house for the night today, and leave tomorrow." "
He asked me again: "What are you doing in the Red Army?"
I said it's a fellow. He looked at me and deduced: "It seems that he is an officer, maybe the officer is not small, at least a company commander or battalion commander." "
I saw that he was talking hotly for a while, and then digging into the roots, which was elusive, and I couldn't be careful. I simply stopped talking, and he didn't continue to ask. He took me into a small guest room, the room was very clean, and a few plain flower bedding on the kang bed were neatly folded, and it could be seen that this was a well-off family.
The young man said to a woman in her fifties in the house, "Mother, there is a guest here, let's cook him something to eat." "
The old lady looked at my unkempt and ragged appearance, and sighed, "You have worked hard, it is difficult for people to go out!" She instructed her son to bring me hot water to bathe, and made me noodles and stir-fried vegetables with her own hands.
For the first time since begging, I washed my face and scalded my feet with hot water, and for the first time I ate a hot meal. After the meal, the old lady repeatedly urged me to sleep: "You are tired, rest well." "
Her mother and son left the house. I sat on the kang and still didn't dare to fall asleep, worried about what would happen if the militia group came? I gently pushed open the door and looked into the courtyard: the moon was big and round that night, shining white on the ground, and the courtyard was surrounded by earth more than one person high, and there was only one door to enter and exit, and there was a big tree stump under the root of a wall, and I estimated that as long as I climbed the stump, I could climb over the wall, and outside the wall was a big mountain. I was a little more sure, so I rested on the kang with my clothes, and muttered in my heart: I can't sleep, I must not sleep. Who knew that as soon as his head hit the kang, he really fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes again, it was already dawn and the sun was coming out. I couldn't help but shout, "Oh, oh no!" I hurriedly jumped off the kang and bumped into the young man as soon as I went out.
He asked, "Why are you going?"
I said, "Excuse me, thanks, it's time for me to go." "
"Can't go. He stopped me in a hurry.
While I was talking, the old lady also came over and kept me for breakfast. I thought the night was safe, and it seemed that they were good people, so I stayed for breakfast. After eating, I packed up my things and prepared to leave. The old lady held down the bag of dry food and asked me, "What's in it!" She opened the bag and poured out a small pile of moldy food: a rice ball, a few pieces of dried buns, two handfuls of beans, a pinch of fried noodles, raw, cooked, soft and hard...... There's everything. The old man sighed and said, "This is for human food?
She brought a dustpan of white flour buns and stuffed them into a bag of dry food. The mother and son sent me to the gate of the courtyard, and the old lady pointed ahead and said, "Go forward from here, and five miles past the road will be the road leading to Talachi." "
I thanked them and they were about to go on their way, when the old lady said to her son, "He can't remember, you can send one to him." "
The young man kept sending me on the main road. As I parted, I held his hand, tears rolling in my eyes. He is a good person, and both mother and son are good people. How could I not be moved by the fact that I had met such a good person in such a treacherous environment? When I had walked more than a hundred meters away, I could not help but look back and see the young man still standing on the side of the road watching me. A conjecture suddenly jumped into my mind: this young man was at least a sympathizer of the Communist Party, if not a Communist.
When we parted, I wrote down his name and the name of the village. For decades, I wanted to see them again, but unfortunately, after a long time, I couldn't remember anything. Now, the old lady is afraid that she is long gone, and the young man would be too old if he were still alive, but his appearance at that time is still vividly presented in front of my eyes, twenty-six or seventeen years old, with a flat head, and a blue tunic in his head.
When the three main forces of the Red Army joined forces in Shaanxi and Gansu, I heard that the Party Central Committee was stationed in Qingyang and that the General Headquarters of the Red Army's former enemy was located in Talachi. I walked into the important town of Dalachi at the junction of Gansu and Ningxia, and the remaining slogan on the wall suddenly jumped into my eyes:
"Chinese don't fight Chinese!"
"Stop the civil war, unite with the outside world!"
"Long live the Red Army!"
Although the slogan was already mottled and old, it was still like a fire that made my heart warm, and I seemed to see the Red Army again, and I saw the scene of red fire, and I immediately cheered up.
I walked past a barber shop and tried to cut my hair, because it was too long and out of proportion to the locals, and because I was about to find the Red Army, I couldn't see my comrades like this. I walked to the door of the shop and struck up a conversation with the barber.
He asked me, "You're not a local, are you?"
I told him, "I'm passing by, how do I get to Qingyang?"
The barber shook his head: "I haven't been there either." I heard that it is far away, and from here to the east, you have to pass through Haiyuan and Guyuan. "
I saw that he was kind and enthusiastic, so I asked him to cut my hair, and I told him honestly, "I don't have any money, can I do a favor?"
The barber said cheerfully, "Yes, it's okay if you don't give money." But after thinking about it, he persuaded me, "If you want to go to Qingyang, you have to pass through some Muslim areas on the way, and it will be more convenient for you to look like a Muslim without a haircut and a beard." "
It is clear that he understands in his heart that I am the Red Army, although he did not break it. The two of us tacitly agreed. He also told me: "If someone asks you whether you are a big sect or a small sect, you can say that it is a small sect, remember." "
Although I didn't have a haircut, I was very grateful to him. Bidding farewell to the barber, I quickened my pace and continued to follow the trail of the Red Army.
I went east from Talachi, crossed Ningxia through the Haiyuan and Guyuan areas north of Liupan Mountain, and arrived at Zhenyuan in Longdong.
One night I spent the night in a mule and horse shop, sleeping on a kang with four donkey traders. Before going to bed, the four businessmen excitedly discussed: "It's strange! The army stationed in Wangjiawazi is really good, the trade is fair, and it does not disturb the merchants." "
"I've never seen such a good army. "
My heart lit up and I leaned over and asked them what kind of team it was. They told me: "It's the Red Army, it's the 1st Regiment of the 28th Army of the Red Army." "
I suppressed the ecstasy in my heart and deliberately asked: "The Red Army is not embarrassed by passers-by, is it?"
"Don't be embarrassed, it's very good, don't worry. "
I asked them, "How far is this place from Wangjiawazi?"
"A whole hundred miles. We only left yesterday from Wangjiawazi. "
For the first time in nearly two months, I finally heard the exact news of the Red Army, and I was so happy! I was eager to cross this 100-mile road in one step. Lying on the kang, I was so excited that I didn't close my eyes all night, and the four businessmen around me were already snoring loudly.
The rooster crowed all over the place, and the sky was still dark and hollow, so I got up and hurried away, walked into the night in a hurry, rushed to Wangjiawazi, and found the Red Army.
In the past two months, I have slept in the wilderness, begged for thousands of miles, survived many dangerous situations, and sincerely helped many well-wishers. With a bag of dry rations, a begging stick, a compass, and loyalty to the party and the revolution, I finally returned to the ranks of the Red Army!
In Zhenyuan, I met many commanders and fighters of the Western Route Army, and although they were scattered by the enemy, they all held the same conviction -- to go to the party and the Red Army, to go in disguise and stealth, to endure all kinds of hardships, and to reunite under the red flag of the revolution.
By the way, the compass that accompanied me to escape the famine and ask for food has followed me into Beijing since then. After the liberation of the country, the comrades of the Military Museum put it on display as a witness to the heroic struggle of the Red Army.
The commander of this regiment was originally the commander of the special service company of the 2nd Division of the 1st Red Army, and the political commissar of the regiment was originally a propagandist of the propaganda team of the Political Department of the 2nd Division. They left me at the regimental headquarters for two days, took a shower, changed into military uniforms, and then sent someone to take me to the headquarters of the 28th Army. At the military headquarters, I met Comrade Song Renqiang, who had been transferred to the post of director of the Political Department of the Western Aid Army. After lunch, I followed him to the headquarters of the Western Army set up in Zhenyuan City. Along the way, we talked freely, and he said to me with emotion: "You have come back very well, and the central authorities are looking forward to the comrades of the Western Route Army coming back as soon as possible!"
