Written by Yuan Guoxiang
In the summer of 2002, when I went to Beijing to collect historical relics for the Military History Museum of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, Chang Cuiyun, the wife of General Xu Guoxian, donated two relics: a small leather bag containing toiletries used by the old chief from the Long March to his death, and an old mosquito net made from a Japanese parachute. Sister Chang also said: "This mosquito net is the only item he brought when he returned from the south and north and came back from the Central Plains, and all other things were lost." ”
I know a little bit about the revolutionary experience of the old chief Xu Guoxian, because I visited him many times in Beijing 10 years ago when the Southern Xinjiang Military Region was compiling its organizational history. At that time, he was in good health and had an amazing memory, and I could not keep up with the records when I talked about the past wars. Finally, he asked me to go to the 301 General Hospital ward for a talk. Therefore, I am very happy to see these two precious relics, such as the exhibition in the Military History Museum, which to some extent can reflect the glorious revolutionary history and combat exploits of General Xu Guoxian.
Xu Guoxian is a well-known general in the predecessor unit of our Southern Xinjiang Military Region who can fight well and is wise and brave. He has been born and died many times, standing alone, fighting a heavy encirclement in an extremely dangerous place, and leading the team back. Xu Guoxian joined the Red Army at the age of 14 and became a member of the Communist Party at the age of 16. After walking out of the snowy mountains and meadows, he was wounded in the waist during the attack on Liangdang County, and it was his comrades who rescued him on a stretcher. When the Red Army was organized into the Eighth Route Army, he graduated from the second phase of the "Red University" and returned to the 359th Brigade as a battalion commander. Then he crossed the Yellow River to the east, participated in the anti-Japanese resistance behind enemy lines in North China, and fought many battles in the 718th Regiment to sabotage railways and regain lost territory, and was commended by his superiors.
In the autumn of 1939, Chiang Kai-shek launched an anti-communist upsurge, and the 359th Brigade returned to northern Shaanxi to guard the river defense. Xu Guoxian, then the head of the Yanbei detachment, was left on both sides of the Sangqian River and insisted on guerrilla warfare and sparrow warfare. He led his troops to fight many battles with Japanese puppets, recalcitrant troops, and bandits, and once ambushed 8 Japanese vehicles in the battle of Grange, annihilated a squadron of the enemy, captured dozens of machine guns and rifles, and smashed the enemy's sweep. At the same time, he also summoned some anti-Japanese bandits and swept away the bandits who defected to Japan. In the end, the big bandit "Wildcat", which had more than 2,000 people, was driven away. Later, in cooperation with the troops of the 358th Brigade, they defeated the Bai Ziyi Department of Yan Xishan's recalcitrant army, which killed our local cadres, consolidated the Yanbei revolutionary base area, and soon established the prefectural committee and military sub-district. In this way, Xu Guoxian led the Yanbei detachment, in the summer of 1940, broke through the enemy's blockade and blockade, fought back to Suide in northern Shaanxi, and returned to the 359th Brigade after the reorganization of the special service regiment, he served as the head of the regiment, and soon went to Nanniwan to participate in the large-scale production movement.
In the winter of 1944, the 359th Brigade reclaimed land in Nanniwan for four years. The party Central Committee ordered them to be organized into an anti-Japanese advance detachment to the south, and set out from Yan'an in two batches, preparing to fight to South China to open up an anti-Japanese base area. Before leaving, at the Yan'an airport, the heads of the party Central Committee came to see them off, and Chairman Mao inspected the troops and made a speech. He called on the commanders and fighters to have the firmness of the pine tree and the flexibility of the willow tree, and to fight across the Yellow River and the Yangtze River to occupy the vast areas of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong, so as to make contributions to mobilizing the whole nation to resist Japan. At this time, Xu Guoxian served as the captain of the fourth brigade of the first detachment, and he and Liao Ming political commissar had been fighting at the forefront. When the Yangtze River was crossed, the Hunan People's Anti-Japanese National Salvation Army was established, and a large red base area was established, Xu Guoxian served as the commander of the Hunan Central Military Division and the head of the fourth detachment. Later, under the frenzied siege of the Japanese puppet army and the Kuomintang, the fourth detachment joined up with Wang Zhen's main force that went south to Guangdong and returned to Hunan and Jiangxi in the north. In this way, they have made a major contribution to expanding and consolidating the liberated areas of the Central Plains.
In 1946, Chiang Kai-shek besieged the troops of our Central Plains Military Region with 360,000 troops, and our army rose up to resist and opened the prelude to the War of Liberation. Wang Zhen, deputy commander and chief of staff of the Central Plains Military Region, led the 359th Brigade to break through to the west and cover the transfer of the main force of the military region to the Henan-Shaanxi border region. Xu Guoxian and his comrades-in-arms fought hard, tackled key problems, broke through many sieges, and arrived in Shangluo Mountain. Originally, it was intended to establish a base in the area of Zhen'an, but the enemy sent heavy troops to besiege it, and the 359th Brigade had to divide its troops into two routes and break through to the north. Deputy Commander Wang Zhen, together with Brigade Commander Guo Peng and Political Commissar Wang Enmao, led the main force to open a bloody road, break through the encirclement, cross the Sichuan-Shaanxi Highway and the Longhai Railway, join forces with the Third Police Brigade (now the 11th Army Division) that had taken over the border area, and triumphantly returned to the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region. The 717th Regiment, which stayed in the Qinling Mountains to fight guerrillas and cover the main force to break through, under the leadership of Deputy Brigade Commander Xu Guoxian, fought alone, maneuvered with a strong enemy, made three assaults, broke through the enemy blockade of Kongkouzi Gorge, opened the Baoji Tsuitou encirclement, skillfully crossed the Sichuan-Shaanxi Highway and the Weihe enemy defense line, repelled the stubborn enemy who was frantically pursuing, and finally made a detour to Liupan Mountain, broke through the enemy interception on the Xilan Highway, and finally returned to the Longdong area, and arrived in Qingyang on September 8 to join the old comrades-in-arms. General Wang Zhen was overjoyed, he held Xu Guoxian's hand tightly and said, "I didn't expect you to be able to fight back so smoothly." ”
The 359th Brigade returned to Yan'an, and was warmly welcomed by the military and civilians in the border area. Chairman Mao said in his speech at the welcoming meeting in the Central Auditorium: "You are brave and tenacious, not afraid of encirclement, pursuit, and interception, you have experienced the second Long March, and in the future, you will plant the victory banner of the 359th Brigade on the head of Beiping City." "This is also the case, the 359th Brigade galloped thousands of miles, penetrated China, fought with ten times the enemy, and the red flag hit the Wuling Mountains. During the 70 days of the Central Plains Breakout, it was difficult and difficult, and there was no day without fighting, and the army marched urgently to break through the encirclement. Especially like the 717th Regiment led by Xu Guoxian, at the most dangerous moment, it fought alone, met the enemy with wit, rushed to the death, and finally jumped out of the encirclement and returned to Yan'an, the holy land of revolution. Under such circumstances, General Xu Guoxian used the parachute of the captured Japanese army in Hunan to make a mosquito net, which can not only prevent mosquitoes, but also can be used as a cover, traveling thousands of miles, after a hundred battles, it can be brought back, and it has been preserved to this day, which has indeed witnessed that rare and difficult years, and has great commemorative significance.
In the War of Liberation, Xu Guoxian served as the commander of the 359th Brigade. As one of the main forces of the Second Column, he made immortal contributions in the battles to liberate the Great Northwest. At the beginning of 1949, when the unit was reorganized into the Fifth Division of the Second Army, he was also reappointed as the division commander, and he has always led the Fifth Division to take the lead and defend the front. From Guanzhong to Longnan, from Qinghai to the Hexi Corridor, all the way to the gate of Xinjiang, they went through several tough battles on the way, not to mention paying a heavy price for casualties; in the pursuit of the Fumei Campaign, many soldiers died of heat stroke and thirst on the side of the road; while forcibly crossing the Tao River, the Yellow River, and the Datong River, Xu Guoxianzhong, commander of the Fifth Division, talked to Pan Yingjin, the commander of the uprising, in Zhangxian County, Gansu Province, and dozens of soldiers were drowned in the river; in particular, when they crossed the Qilian Mountains in the snowstorm, more than 150 cadres and soldiers were frozen to death on the road. "For the sake of sacrifice and ambition, dare to change the sun and the moon into a new sky." Just before the day when the five-star red flag of the People's Republic of China was raised, what a heavy sacrifice our troops made! Therefore, the Fifth Division was famous in the northwest battlefield for being good at fighting pursuit warfare. It is not surprising that the government of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region and the headquarters of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningjin-Sui Joint Defense Army awarded the 359th Brigade such honorable titles as "Model Party Army" and "Iron Army Winning a Hundred Battles" in connection with their glorious history in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in the past.
I met General Xu Guoxian when he came to the Kashgar Military Region in the summer of 1950, and on August 1, the Second Army Teaching Corps opened and the leaders of all divisions spoke, and I took pictures one by one. I remember that he was a tall and fat division commander with a voice like a bell and a heroic spirit. In the summer of the following year, when I accompanied Deputy Political Commissar Zuo Qi to Aksu, he accompanied Deputy Political Commissar Zuo to see the production area. It was very hot and tired, so they sat under the mulberry tree to rest and talk, and I also took pictures. Later, he was promoted to deputy commander of the Second Army, but did not come to take office. Because he was not only the commander and political commissar of the Fifth Division, but also the secretary of the Aksu Prefectural Party Committee and the commander and political commissar of the military sub-district, he shouldered the party, government, military, and civilian work. But in the spring of 1953, as soon as the Military Commission gave the order, he immediately went to North Korea and served as the deputy commander of the First Army, and fought to the death against the so-called United Nations forces such as the United States and South Korea. It was not until the US imperialists admitted defeat and signed the armistice agreement that he returned home with the volunteers in victory.
In 1962, when the situation on the Sino-Indian border was tense, the Central Military Commission transferred Xu Guoxian back to the Xinjiang Military Region as deputy commander. He immediately went up to the Karakoram Mountains and sat in the Kangxiwa front-line command headquarters, coordinated in a unified manner, and commanded the border troops to launch a sharp and complicated anti-encroachment struggle. When the self-defense counterattack began, he rode a small car over five ice and snow Osaka to the front line. I remember when we went to Ali, we met him on the shore of Pangong Lake. He stopped and asked me, "Where are you going now?" and I replied, "I've arrived at the border station." So he hurried into the car and hurried away. Later, after our army uprooted the six invasion strongholds of the Indian army and recovered all 1,900 square kilometers of territory in Demchuk, he and the former commander went to a hill in Laganhel on the front of Barigas to observe the situation inside and outside the country. At that time, I happened to be returning from the supply of supplies to the frontline troops, so I climbed the mountain to report the situation of the frontline troops to the chiefs and took a meaningful photo. Deputy Commander Xu sat in front of him, flanked by the commander and political commissar of the Third Cavalry Regiment, and behind him were the leaders of the front command. This photo, 30 years later, was used in the "History of Self-Defense and Counterattack Operations on the Sino-Indian Border" (internal version), and became the best souvenir of Deputy Commander Xu Guoxian in the border defense battle on the western front of the motherland. Of course, I also met him in the second battle, but unfortunately I didn't photograph him and Commander He Jiachan struggling to climb the mountain and carry shells to the artillery position on the ridge of the mountain before attacking the Indian army of Reqiong. Because at an altitude of 4,500 meters, it is extremely difficult for anyone to carry a 20-kilogram 120 mortar shell, not to mention that they are older leaders with severe altitude sickness, and it is really difficult to climb the steep slope of 100 meters.
At the beginning of 1963, after the meeting to sum up the experience of self-defense and counterattack operations was held in Kashgar, I never saw Deputy Commander Xu again, and it was not until he retired from the post of deputy commander of the engineering corps that I had the opportunity to visit him and sent him a few photos of him in those years. In this way, we became acquainted, and every time I went to Beijing, I went to visit him. When he saw me, he asked me long and short questions, and he had endless words.
After the old chief passed away at the end of 2003, I went to Beijing to visit his wife, Chang Cuiyun. When I heard that she was planning a book to commemorate General Xu Guoxian, I was very happy and quickly sent me a dense 20-page record that I had written down in the past, and said some suggestions, hoping to write a book as soon as possible to preserve and publicize the glorious deeds of Comrade Xu Guoxian.